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The Columbia is a rolling flood of silver, and the gigantic trees of the centuries become a ghostly and shadowy splendor. There is a deep and reverent silence everywhere, save the cry of the water-fowl in the high air and the plash of the Cascades. Even the Chinook winds cease to blow, and the pine-tops to murmur. It was such a night that the Potlatch began.
Quail mother-bird singing to her nest! I love that music. "Say, you play at Potlatch, frighten away the hawks; mother-birds sing. No devil dance. Say, I have been good; no harm old wah-wah. Will you will you play play that tin-tin at Potlatch under the big moon?" A great thought had taken possession of the young Indian's mind, and a great plan one worthy of a leader of a peace congress.
The show-shoe trail we were following was made by a messenger despatched by the Minchúmina people to invite the Talida people to a potlatch; for the caches were filled with moose meat beyond local consumption. Early on the second day we met him returning and learned that he had gone on to yet another village a day's journey farther, still on our route.
The word "Potlatch," spoken by the Indian boy, had caused his brow to cloud and his face to turn dark. "We will all go into the house," said the master. "Umatilla, will you not honor us with a visit this morning?" "No me come this afternoon for the boy; me wait for him outside. Boston tilicum, let me speak to you a little. I am a father." "Yes, and a good father."
Three days of good travel had put us forward seventy-five or eighty miles; now once more we were "up against" deep snow and trail breaking. An old native whom we met on his way to the potlatch later in the day spread out his hands with a look of despair and cried: "Good trail all lose'm!"
Water-fowl filled the streams and drifted through the air, and the forests seemed filled with young and beautiful animals full of happy life. A potlatch among the tribes of the Northwest means a feast at which some wealthy Indian gives away to his own people or to a friendly tribe all that he has.
That was a terrible event, and it was a scene like that that the new settlers feared, at the approaching Potlatch; and the thought of that dreadful day almost weakened the faith of Mr. Mann in the Indians. We must tell you the old-time history of the tragedy which was now revived in the new settlement.
" they whet their beaks," continued Benjamin. "Potlatch!" The whole company were filled with excitement or terror. Gretchen trembled, and began to cry. Three Indians were seen coming down the trail, and the sight seemed to fill Benjamin with a mysterious delight. Mrs. Woods saw them with secret fear, and the master with apprehension.
And as for dress, the average woman piles a lot of truck on her like a klootch at a potlatch, and cinches herself up in a " "Hush!" said Sheila. "Huh!" said Farwell. "Why shouldn't I call things by their names? I never could see " "You aren't supposed to see. That's plenty. I won't be lectured on the follies of my sex." "You're different from the others," said Farwell. "That's just it.
Some thirty years ago when I first knew the Seshahts, they still celebrated the great Lokwana dance or wolf ritual on the occasion of an important potlatch, and I remember well the din made by the blowing of horns, the shaking of rattles, and the beating of sticks on the roof boards of Big Tom's great potlatch house, when the Indians sighted the suppositional wolves on the river bank opposite the Village.
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