United States or Comoros ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
About the middle of June, the Tonquin entered Nootka Sound, an ocean estuary between Nootka and Vancouver Islands, about midway of the western shore of the latter. There she anchored before a large Nootka Indian village, called Newity. The place was even then not unknown to history. The Nootkas were a fierce and savage race.
Houses very like these are built by the Ahts or Nootkas, a tribe of Indians inhabiting parts of Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland. A Nootka calls his house an ourt. The good offices of Lewis and Clark, who were always ready to make peace between hostile tribes, were again successful here.
The Vancouver Island Indians are called Nootkas, from the name of an important tribe upon the west coast. Those of Queen Charlotte Islands, still farther north, are known as Haidas. These two groups are very similar. They live upon the shores of densely wooded, mountainous lands and travel little except by water.
When they heard of his cruel action, the Nootkas swore to be revenged on the next ship that entered the Sound. The next ship happened to be the ill-fated Tonquin. Now, no Indians that ever lived could seize a ship like the Tonquin if proper precautions were taken by her crew. Mr.
Tohomish the seer, as the oldest chief and most renowned medicine-man present, came forward and lighted the pipe, a long, thin piece of carving in black stone, the workmanship of the Nootkas or Hydahs, who made the more elaborate pipes used by the Indians of the Columbia River.
Their moral standard was the Wolf Code of Existence which the white man has elaborated in his evolution to take whatever they had the dexterity and strength to take and to keep. When caught in theft, they did not betray as much sense of guilt as a dog stealing a bone. Why should they? Their code was to take. The chief of the Nootkas presented Cook with a sea-otter cloak.
The Arcadians were bears, knew it, and possibly danced a bear dance, as Mandans or Nootkas dance a buffalo dance or a wolf dance. But all such dances are not totemistic. They have often other aims. One only names such dances totemistic when performed by people who call themselves by the name of the animal represented, and claim descent from him.
Let us seek a new home beyond the Klamath and the Shasta, in the South Land, where the sun is always warm, and the grass is always green, and the cold never comes. The spirits are against us here, and to stay is to perish. Let us seek a new home, where the spirits are not angry; even as our fathers in the time that is far back left their old home in the ice country of the Nootkas and came hither.
The Hurons thought that the soul had a head and body, arms and legs; in short, that it was a complete little model of the man himself. The Esquimaux believe that "the soul exhibits the same shape as the body it belongs to, but is of a more subtle and ethereal nature." According to the Nootkas the soul has the shape of a tiny man; its seat is the crown of the head.
Toasts were drunk, foaming toasts to glory, and the navigators of the Pacific, and Maquinna, grand chief of the Nootkas, who responded by rising in his place, glass in hand, to express regret that Spain should withdraw from the North Pacific.
Word Of The Day