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Updated: September 25, 2025
No Thlinkit child would dare ever to put her tongue forth at the Moon, for fear of a like fate to that of Squiance, the Moon maiden." Tanana's voice was soft and low and she looked very pretty as she sat in the moonlight at the door of the hut and told Kalitan and Ted quaint old stories.
"These are near enough civilized to show the best side of their race, but theirs must be a terrible existence who are inland or on islands where no one ever comes, and whose only idea of life is a constant struggle for food." "I think I would rather be an American," remarked Ted, while Kalitan said, briefly: "I like Thlinkit."
In my letter I told you I had arranged with the young Thlinkit Indian. He smuggled the canoe over the side just before I leaped in, and picked me up. I am a good swimmer. Then he paddled me ashore while the boats were making their search." In a moment she had placed a gulf between them again, on the other side of which she stood unattainable.
The whole work is serious in aspect and brave and true in execution. Similar monuments are made by other Thlinkit tribes. The erection of a totem pole is made a grand affair, and is often talked of for a year or two beforehand. A feast, to which many are invited, is held, and the joyous occasion is spent in eating, dancing, and the distribution of gifts.
Odd carved boxes, too, made of an unknown wood and inlaid with shells, were here in plenty; cases of buckskin, containing the conjuring-sticks or gambling-kits of the Thlinkit medicine-men; loin-cloths, ornamented with multitudes of rattling puffin-beaks; head-dresses of defunct warriors; fantastic and horrible masks; huge spoons carved out of the horns of the mountain-ibex; bead-work on leather; robes of many-colored skins quilted together; images carved to resemble otters; fleecy robes of wild sheep and goat; pipes cut with nude figures; antlers; stuffed animals; white-breasted loons, and the like.
"Don't you get terribly cold hunting in the winter?" asked Ted. "Thlinkit boy not a baby," said Kalitan, a trifle scornfully. "We begin to be hardened when we are babies. When I was five years old, I left my father and went to my uncle to be taught. Every morning I bathed in the ocean, even if I had to break ice to find water, and then I rolled in the snow.
The Thlinkit people had shut themselves in with a curtain of blankets, and from the stillness he judged they were asleep. The evening passed slowly for him after that, until at last he went to his cabin and tried to interest himself in a book. It was something he had anticipated reading, but after a little he wondered if the writing was stupid, or if it was himself.
"Very bad luck!" he said, and Kalitan explained: "Indians don't like to kill bears or ravens. Spirits in them, maybe ancestors." Ted looked at him in great astonishment, but Kalitan explained: "Once, long ago, a Thlinkit girl laughed at a bear track in the snow and said: 'Ugly animal must have made that track! But a bear heard and was angry.
It was at their largest village that an American schooner was seized and all the crew except one man murdered. A gunboat sent to punish them burned the village. I saw the anchor of the ill-fated vessel lying near the shore. Though all the Thlinkit tribes believe in witchcraft, they are less superstitious in some respects than many of the lower classes of whites.
The Chilcats, Haidahs, and Tsimsheans are all Thlinkits, and are by far the best of the brown people of the Northland. They are honest, simple, and kind, and more intelligent than the Indians living farther north, in the colder regions. The Thlinkit coast is washed by the warm current from the Japan Sea, and it is not much colder than Chicago or Boston, though the winter is a little longer.
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