Popular Science Monthly/Volume 68/June 1906/The Human Side of the Indian
| THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE INDIAN |
By ALEXANDER F. CHAMBERLAIN, Ph.D.
CLARK UNIVERSITY
THE oneness of the American Indians with all races of men (including us whites) is readily admitted by those who have seen them in their human activities and not merely in their forced relations with so-called 'higher civilization.' The writer was fortunate enough, a number of years ago, to come into the friendliest contact with the Kootenay Indians of northern Idaho and southern British Columbia, one of the least spoiled aboriginal peoples of the continent, and brought back with him to the east many pleasant experiences and reminiscences of 'savage' life. Since that time the building of the Crow's Nest Pass railroad and the opening up of the Kootenay district consequent upon it have made impossible some of the incidents occurring during his visit as an investigator under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
The Kootenays are very fond of their children, the men much more so than is commonly believed, or even supposed. To see a man carrying a little child is by no means a rare sight. Among the Lower Kootenay in Idaho, the writer saw one of the older men of the tribe playing in right human fashion with his children. The little ones ran merrily all about him, pulling his hair, pinching him, etc. One little tot of some five years of age persisted in crawling all over him. He was very affectionate toward them and even allowed this child to put its toes into his mouth. Surely white man could go no further!
About the same time, a young woman of fifteen was busy chopping firewood—and she handled the axe remarkably well. After carrying on her back to the tent the wood she had cut to pieces, she looked around for a little girl of five or six who was amusing herself at a distance. 'Tláne! tláne! (Come! come!),' she cried loudly, but the child did not or would not hear. Soon she ran over to the child, caught her, spanked her and brought her home. The spanking was quite after the fashion of the whites, and was probably learned from them, as that method of punishment is un-Indian. The Kootenays seldom, if ever, whip their children, and one of them said that he would rather die than see a white man chastise his offspring. At one of the stores in the Upper Kootenay country a little Indian boy was playing 'hide-and-seek' with a little white girl as blithely as might be. This same little fellow, whose skin seemed even dirtier than the shirt forming his only garment, was promised some candy if he would wash his face. Going to the river, a few yards off, he marched in, clothes and all, coming back dripping from head to foot, but beaming with smiles. The candy he ate in a way that would do credit to any white child. Not alone the children, but the adults as well, are very fond of candy, which they call gāktlētl k'kōktsi, or 'variegated sugar (sweetness).'
On another occasion, and at a different place, the writer had a little Indian boy to breakfast with him. After the first shyness was over, the little fellow conducted himself with a grace and dignity quite unknown to many white children of his age. And through it all his beautiful dark-brown eyes shone in the most captivating fashion.
At the Mission of St. Eugene, on the St. Mary's river a few miles from Ft. Steele, B. C, a school of a more or less industrial character had been established, and, at the time of the writer's visit, was attended by about sixteen girls and ten boys, a number of whom were of mixed blood, children of white men who had married Kootenay women. The school was conducted by members of one of the Catholic sisterhoods, under the superintendence of Father Coccolo, the resident missionary, who exerts a great and abiding influence over these Indians, who thoroughly appreciate his absolute devotion and self-sacrifice. The children, who were from seven to fifteen years of age, showed gratifying progress in their attempts to acquire some of the learning of the whites. Although they had been in attendance only a few months, some of them could already read from 'Sadler's Dominion Catholic First Reader,' and sang also, not very badly, 'God Save the Queen,' and 'Great and Glorious St. Patrick,' which seemed to be their pièces de résistance. Some could write a very fair hand—it is curious with what facility the Indian can often master this art as compared with his white brothers under similar circumstances. It should be mentioned in this connection that many of the Kootenays, as their drawings made for the writer indicate, have a good graphic sense. They can likewise draw maps and recognize on the maps of their country made by white men the chief topographical features. No extensive carvings on rocks or pictographic records have been reported from their country, however, the 'Painted Rocks,' on Lower Arrow Lake, being quite within the territory of the Salish Indians, and not belonging to the Kootenays. While in the Lower Kootenay country, the writer received from the daughter of David McLaughlin, from whom he collected many native texts of myths and legends, the Kootenay equivalent for 'God save the Queen,' which is presented here as a literary curiosity:
Gä́mnākōtlṓkōníqan
May he save
Yä́kasinkínawáskē
He who made us
Gūwítlkā nāsūkwin pā́tlkē!
Greatwomanchief!
On a Sunday afternoon, which is the holiday of the week among those Indians more or less under the influence of the Roman Catholic missions, the Lower Kootenays indulge in horse-racing, or, more properly, horse-running, on the great grassy plains beside the Kootenay river. Their whole herd is collected in an open space near the camp and then driven in all directions over the prairie and through the bushes, chased by laughing and shouting Indians, armed with quirts, willow gads, etc. The horses are run down, tripped, lassooed, driven into the water. Some of the Indians took particular delight in driving the horses as close as possible, in full course, to the writer's tent, to his evident embarrassment, which they keenly enjoyed. As horse after horse thundered past, at very close quarters, shouts and peals of laughter would fill the air, accompanied by remarks in the native language provocative of still more amusement. While all this is going on, the children sport about in the bushes, or caper about in the plain, seemingly in imminent danger of life or limb. It is very interesting to see them chase one another with long whips, or try to lassoo each other. Often they attempt to run down or lassoo the colts or the tamer horses, and the skill some of them develop in so doing is really surprising.
Many of the Indians are quite fond of their horses and treat them better than do the white men. Some, however, use only too readily the spur and the heavy whip of the whites. The Indian Amelu, when out on the trail with the writer, even when the horses had no packs to carry, would walk them up and down the steep grades and was in other little ways 'merciful unto his beast.' In the Upper Kootenay country, an Indian was seen to beat cruelly with his whip the dog of a Chinaman, which had tried to bite the toe of his moccasin, after having been teased for a long time. Some of the younger Indians are rather companionable with their horses, and it is worth noting that they have coined a few slang words, such as k'āddla, instead of k'kā́tlahā́atltsin, 'horse,' and mistak'ādla, 'colt.' The Kootenay name of the horse bears witness to its exotic origin, for it signifies literally 'elk-dog,' these Indians having had recourse to the aspect of these two animals already familiar to them, in order to assign a name to the new creature, the horse, introduced by the neighboring Indians directly or indirectly through the whites. Other animals not originally natives of the Indian country have sometimes very interesting names. Thus, the cow is 'the variegated horned animal'; the pig, 'the cut-off nosed'; the mule, 'the big ear'; the hen 'the variegated tail,' or 'the spotted tail,' or, again, 'the prominent tail'—these names applying particularly to the 'rooster.' Some of the names of plants new to the Kootenays and introduced through the whites are: Cabbage, 'edible leaf plant'; cucumber, 'plant that grows on the ground wild'; oats, 'horses' food'; orange, 'big rose-hip' (the apricot, peach, pear, tomato, apple, are all named after the hip of the prairie-rose). The daughter of David McLaughlin, of the Lower Kootenay, a métis, who spoke only Kootenay, coined for the writer a new word on the spot. This was a name for the sunflower, which she called kākādlimū́kōwādlī́dl'it, which seems to be derived from the word for 'light.' The Indian Amelu was not nearly so ready to assign names to new things—it is probably true that women exceed men in this respect among some primitive races. When asked to name a strange plant Amelu would often reply simply, nōtlūkinē, 'it is strange (foreign, unknown),' or tsákō nána, 'it is small (a little thing),' or, again, hòk•ā ū́phaneē, 'I don't know.' Still Amelu did know a great many things, for one evening he reeled off 91 names of birds. On other occasions he had named over 100 species of plants, shrubs and trees, besides a large number of animals, fish, etc. Of every one of all these he was able to give brief descriptions.
When a scientific investigator first makes his appearance among a primitive people, it is often difficult to convince them that his advent is not connected with the attempts of white men to steal their land or ill use their women—these are the two chief sins laid to the charge of the 'superior' race. The writer once by accident intruded on what might be called the meeting of the 'sewing circle' of the Kootenays, but the shouts of the women immediately reminded him of breach of primitive etiquette he was committing by peering into the women's tent. One of the chief men of the Upper Kootenays, who was unfriendly to the writer's objects, resurrected a dead-letter law of the tribe by which the women were forbidden to talk English with the white men. When the writer overcame this difficulty by using the Chinook jargon, the same man used his influence to have the women forbidden to talk anything but Kootenay, but by that time he had learned enough Kootenay to make this prohibition of not much avail. Some of the Indians understood very readily the idea of having their language and their legends preserved by means of the white man's records, and took the utmost pains to secure accuracy and completeness. Amelu was so interested in the matter that he suggested a new method of procedure, viz., that the writer, if he really wanted to make the best possible investigations and record everything, should marry the niece of the old chief, who was about to resign office—the inheritance was in the female line—and thus become chief of the tribe, when he would be able to accomplish his heart's desire in the way of scientific knowledge. The ties of his own people, naturally, prevented this consummation, which certainly would have had its advantages for science, for as chief of the Lower Kootenays the writer might have accomplished much.
The reactions of the Kootenays to the proposal to have their stature, etc., determined were often very interesting. Most of them at first refused altogether, and their prejudices were very difficult to overcome. One Indian told the writer that he could measure him when dead, and another said that he was not a child—others, however, were very unwilling that their children, in particular, should be measured. To measure the women, was, of course, except in rare instances, impossible.
With the language it was different. The Indians would often come to the writer, without having been asked, and inform him that they had some words which they wanted him to put in his 'book' of their language, so eager, apparently, were some of them to help in the preservation of their speech. This is a rather common experience with those who have come into sympathetic relations with savage and barbarous peoples. Amelu, after he had told the writer a great many things about himself and his people, would sometimes turn round and catechize his catechizer, asking him all manner of questions about the whites, their manners and customs, etc., showing great interest, and being sometimes much amused. 'What do you call this in your language?' he would often ask, as he came across something new or interesting. 'Haven't you white people any stories about Coyote?' he would say, after relating some of the Kootenay legends. Once, when an Indian was asked to tell the story of the sun and moon, he began to give a version of the Bible account of the creation, as he had it, probably from some priest. He appeared surprised when the writer informed him that that was the story of his people, and after a little while admitted that it wasn't Indian, and began to tell the Kootenay story of how the coyote and the chicken hawk made the sun and moon. Amelu, who was an Indian under mission influence, did not hesitate to shoot a chicken-hawk for the writer, although that bird is one of the chief figures in Kootenay mythology—he had more fear of 'medicine-men' than he had superstitious views of mythological personages. He would not eat meat on Friday, but would eat the 'saw-bill' duck, which, he declared, ate so much fish that it was practically fish itself. Another 'religious' practise of his was wearing the old Indian breech-clout, even when he had adopted the trousers of the whites. In a few other respects also he was a curious mixture of the old and the new.
The Indians are very prompt to notice any personal peculiarities or idiosyncrasies of speech, action, movement, etc. In climbing into the saddle the Kootenays swing off the right foot, and not off the left, as does the white man. The fact that the writer (amateur in his horsemanship) happened to climb into the saddle 'off-side,' as we say, gained him at once the name, 'The man who rides like an Indian.' This circumstance was a road to the favor of these people, who are always delighted to have one do instinctively as they do. The mastery of the difficult k and tl sounds, so characteristic of the Kootenay language, is also much appreciated by the Indians. This will be easily understood when one learns that, in the mouths of the whites the word for 'horse,' k'kātlahaatltsin, is made over into kallahalshin, or worse, while the distinction between words of entirely different significations, e. g., g • ūstet, 'trout,' and k • ūstet, 'tamarack,' is altogether ignored. His attention to these points caused the Indian to dub him 'The man who talks straight.' A third name conferred upon him recorded the fact that he never lied to them. In another the Indians called attention to his very dark hair, 'The man with hair like an Indian'—the possession of which was another bond of union with them. A fifth, and more formidable name, 'He uses the long stick'—he owed to the anthropometric apparatus which he carried with him. By use of these various names the coming and going of the writer was heralded all over the Indian country and the natives soon came to know him well and understand the reason of his presence among them. Some of the white settlers have also received interesting nicknames, one prominent individual, who had a glass eye, being termed 'The man who takes out his eye,' and the Indians are clever in their imitation of his manipulation of it.
To hear a white man blundering along in his efforts to speak Kootenay correctly is one of the best quarter-hours the Indians ever enjoy. Even the wives and children of white men who have married squaws extract considerable amusement out of the linguistic mistakes of their husbands and fathers. Any one who believes that the Indian never laughs will be heartily undeceived after a session of this sort. The inability of the whites to master the numerous gutturals with which the Kootenay language is provided is a never-ending source of laughter. The Indians went off into roars of merriment over such mistakes as saying inisin (horsefly) for inisimin (rainbow); k'ūpi (owl) for k'ūpōk (woodpecker); hāhās (skunk) for hāhā (crow), etc. When some one said for känkūptsē (bread baked in a pan), the perfectly unmeaning tankūptsē, it reminded the Indians of a real word, t'ānkūts (grouse), and they indulged in a fit of laughter. When the writer mispronounced the word g • ūstet (trout), on one occasion, an Indian went off into the woods near by and returned with a diminutive 'tamarack,' the name of which is in Kootenay k • 'ūstit, pronouncing that word correctly, as he handed him the shrub. The writer's desire, which the Indians fully comprehended, to obtain a large vocabulary and a considerable body of texts of myths and stories in the native language led naturally enough to the very embarrassing demand that he should read every word and every sentence over and over again until he could repeat them all without the slightest error—this was worse than the child's well-known demand for the repetition of its favorite stories without any deviation from the original text, since he could often write down the word correctly, when he could hardly satisfy the Indian's requirement in the way of pronunciation.
The Indians have their 'chatter' and 'nonsense' as well as the whites. Amelu was very fond of chanting and talking to himself in somewhat waggish fashion. This he called, in the Chinook jargon, 'cultus wawa' (nonsense). As he sped along the trail he would sing to his horse, slapping it on the flanks, or making rhythmic motions with his hands:
Tō tō tō tō!
Turn turn turn turn!
Tā tā tā tā
Tai tai tai tai!
The repetition was ad libitum, according to his mood, or his fancy. Another refrain, which had an 'infinite variety' of inflection, intonation, etc., was the following, which he sang with great animation:
Hai yā! hā hē yau!
Ē yā! hā hā hai yau!
Hē yā! hō yō!
This sounds a good deal like some of the refrains used in the gambling games of the Kootenays. Another refrain, which he chanted as the fire was being spoiled by the scattering of the burning logs, was:
Hum kē pupum!
Hum ke̱ pupum!
An interesting procedure, indulged in often by Amelu, was the mispronunciation and distortion of words, amounting not seldom to real punning. Thus for saiwā́skō, the name of a species of dragon-fly, he would repeat: Saiwā́sukw', sauwā́tskō, sauwā́sko, saiwā́sekō, saiwā́tshkō, etc. Sometimes when the Indians were telling legends in their own language, they would deliberately mispronounce or distort words to see if the writer noticed the difference—if he did not at the time they would generally tell him, and have a little fun over it. When they came to the parts of the stories where the animals played tricks on one another they would stop to laugh over it, making fun of those who couldn't talk very well. The Indians would laugh to themselves when the writer used a proper Kootenay term, and one of the other white men about a slang or jargon term without knowing it.
While the writer and Amelu were out botanizing and sampling every edible berry (the Indian, of course, tasting first), they ran across the 'soap-berry' (Shephardia canadensis), the gōpātētl of the Kootenays. The wry faces made by him as he chewed up a few of the berries, greatly amused his guide, who explained that the Kootenays did not like these berries half as well as did the Shuswap Indians, for they 'tasted like bad whiskey.' It may be said here that the Kootenays have many names, but little use for whiskey, both on account of their own inclination against it, and by reason of the stringent laws and the good influence of the Catholic missionaries—the miners also, as a mere matter of self-defense, aid in the thorough enforcement of the law. The story is told of a Kootenay who, when sick, was told by a priest to take a little whiskey as medicine. He sturdily refused, with the emphatic declaration: 'You say whiskey bad. Bad one time, bad all time.' Poetic justice was satisfied by the recovery of the patient. The Indians are very skilful in their mimicry of the drunken white man. Among the Kootenay names for whiskey are the following: wūō (water, liquor), sūyā́pi wūō (white man's water), nip'ik' · ā wūō (spirit water), nōtlūkinē wūō (strange, foreign water).
After the tasting of the berries was over, Amelu took pleasure in crushing some of them between the palms of his hands and showing how 'soap' could be made. The leaves of the shrub he then used as a very primitive towel. Other experiences of the writer on this excursion convinced him that the Kootenays are not without a sense of humor. On the Mooyai trail the writer ran into a group of nettles, and Amelu hugely enjoyed his surprise at being stung.
This humorous reaction to the surprise, embarrassment, awkward predicament, accidental discomfiture, etc., of a fellow man is common among these Indians, both with reference to their own tribesmen and to individuals of other races, such as whites and Chinese, with whom they come into contact. In the region of the Columbia lakes, there are a cold spring and a warm spring (not steaming so as to be noticed) close beside each other, and a common trick of the Indians is to induce an unsuspecting stranger (red or white) to step into one immediately after the other. The writer, upon the suggestion of Amelu, once took a plunge in the Kootenay at Ft. Steele, but did not stay in more than a moment. The water was almost icy cold, as the Indian knew, by his own confession, and the haste with which his white friend got out of the water stirred deeply his sense of the ridiculous. Similarly, whenever the Indian horse threw him off into the pine-brush or cast him over its head into a creek, his guide would feel bound to laugh more or less heartily. Another fertile source of amusement was the embarrassment caused the writer by his first acquaintance with the snapping and snarling, no less than thieving, Indian dogs, who were the pest of the camp. One of these curs actually seized hold of a can of corned beef and was running off with it, when the use of another can as a missile caused him to give up his plunder. This action must have seemed very funny to Amelu.
This sense of humor is collective as well as individual. The writer was present beside the camp-fire one night, when one of the Indians was giving, for his benefit, an account of a government official who had recently 'inspected' the Canadian Kootenays. This individual was said to have insisted on taking with him all the appurtenances and conveniences of civilization, including a cook-stove, a feather bed, etc., and the group of listeners expressed loudly their merriment, as the speaker touched off the white man's peculiarities. The Indians were fully conscious of the fact that another official (likewise another white man, a storekeeper) was really very much afraid of them. They made this known to the writer in sarcastically humorous fashion. Indeed, the white settlers hardly are aware how much the Indians comment upon their appearance, their character and their actions, especially in a quasi-humorous way. One Indian actually told the writer, with 'fun' in his eye, however, the order in which the white people would be killed off, should trouble ever occur—a certain settler, who could see nothing good in the Indians, was to be the first victim, and the writer (if he had to be included) was to be the last.
The Kootenays take delight in playing tricks, not only upon one another, but also upon the whites. The writer had complained of the first horse procured from them as being altogether too fast for his liking and too 'wild,' so the next time he asked for a horse he was given a creature, which, except when he was in the company of other Indian horses, went at less than the proverbial snail's pace. The writer's indignant remonstrances evoked abundant mirth on the part of the 'guileless' natives. While measuring an Indian in the Lower Kootenay country, he had an experience of a more startling sort. The Indian suddenly rose to his full height, and, quickly drawing his knife from its sheath, pretended to strike him—the writer being soon reassured, however, by the loud laughter of the other natives about him. Tricks like this are much enjoyed by them.
In the mining regions of the Kootenay country, there are a considerable number of Chinese, who have taken up the claims abandoned by the whites, and manage to make a good living from them. The superior attitude assumed toward these people by the whites has its effect in the way the Indians look upon them. As a rule the Kootenays and the Chinese get along well together, but the former sometimes hector and bully the latter, and not infrequently Indians become semiparasitic, doing odd jobs for the Chinese, or imposing upon their charity. Many of the Indians regard the Chinese as quite inferior beings, and the poor Celestials seem in more or less awe of them. In jesting fashion, the Indians will call the Chinese 'brothers' or 'cousins,' but persistently deny any close relationship. One of the Kootenays, who knew that the whites thought the Chinese and Indians looked alike, pointed out to the writer several differences between them of a physical character, and then remarked, in the Chinook jargon, 'halo siwash'—not Indian. The single braid, or 'pig-tail' of the Chinese is a matter of sport for the Indians who usually wear their hair free, or in several braids. The Kootenay name for Chinaman is Gōōktlām, or 'tail head,' in reference to the hair-braid. The Indians also make fun of the alleged use by the Chinese of cats as an article of food. One of the Chinese of Wild Horse Creek, a certain Lam Kin, acted as 'doctor' for some of the Ft. Steele Indians, his cure being a sort of medical tattooing, known by the Indians as katlku, which many of them affected after their own ancient shamanism had been more or less abolished through missionary influence.
One afternoon, when camped in the Lower Kootenay country, the writer thought he detected the presence of a skunk in the vicinity of the tent. He saw his Indian guide some distance away and hailed him about it. Only a non-committal answer was obtained. Noticing that the Indian did not venture to come near, he asked him what he had been doing, and started to go toward him, when he soon perceived what was the matter. Amelu had been trying to kill a skunk, and his scanty raiment exhaled abundant evidence of the encounter. He was given some money to get new clothes at the little store not very far off, and soon returned in triumph, having taken a bath in the river on the way back. How he induced the storekeeper to let him get near enough to purchase what he wanted he did not say, but perhaps the exchange was effected after the primitive fashion sometimes indulged in by children. However that may be, Amelu was a thoroughly shamefaced red-skin, as he stood off at a distance, afraid to come near the tent until the cause of his embarrassment had been disclosed. It appears that the Chinese in the mining districts of the Kootenay use certain parts of this animal for medicinal purposes, and the Indians catch them and sell them. Some of the Kootenays are said to catch skunks with their naked hands—usually they knock them over with sticks or stones. In capturing these and other small animals they take pleasure in getting as close to them as possible before striking. When using the writer's gun, Amelu would creep up so close to the grouse, known locally as 'fool hens,' that they would be blown to pieces when he did discharge his weapon. He also appeared to take great delight in 'gaffing' fish as compared with catching them with hook and line, although he enjoyed that very much, especially when he became aware of the writer's inexpertness as a fisherman.
Past one of the camping-places on the Kootenay river a steamer used to go every few days, and Amelu, from the moment he first heard the whistle till the vessel disappeared from his sight, would stand upon the bank waiting for it, gazing at it, peering after it. The sound of the whistle never failed to arouse him, or to call him forth, wherever he might be, and the steamboat was, doubtless, one of the wonders of his life. When a trip up the river, from the international boundary to the settlements on Kootenay lake, was proposed, he was beside himself with joy and anticipation. He became excited beyond all bounds, and when the whistle sounded danced with delight and capered about, not exactly like a gazelle, for he weighed 177 pounds and was heavily built. When he got on board and could examine things at his leisure, he was 'tickled to death.' He inspected everything that was at all accessible, watched the motion of the vessel and the revolutions of the wheel, listened to the noise of the engine and the hissing of the steam, gazed in rapt wonder at a score of different things that from time to time riveted his attention. But his keenest delight, after all, was when he could signal or shout to some of his tribe on the banks or in canoes in the stream. The relish with which he did this was unmistakable. And, on the journey back, he was quite as elated, if not so inquisitive. Certainly that trip on the 'fire canoe' was one of the events of his life.
The 'fire canoe' seems to have appeared more natural to the Indians than the locomotive, or 'fire wagon,' possibly because of its progress in the water, like a canoe, and not over the land with the 'fearful eye' of the latter, which so impresses many primitive peoples. In northern Idaho the Indians were very much frightened by the first steam trains. When the railroad was near Kathdrum, several Lower Kootenays, who had been sent into that part of the country to deliver some letters, were so affected by the sight of the puffing, snorting, firespouting locomotive that they threw down their letters on the spot, turned about and fled for dear life, not daring to look back once until they were safe again with their own people. They reported that they had been chased by the 'Evil One,' himself, and had escaped with the greatest difficulty. Later on. as happens with other peoples, familiarity bred contempt, and the Indians can now look at these creations of the white man's genius with much less of fear than of wonder or of interest. The Kootenay youth is more afraid of doing 'woman's work' than he is of the 'fire-wagon.' This was the case with Amelu, the writer's guide, who was with difficulty persuaded to make his own pan-bread on the trail. He was 'hiyu shame' (much ashamed), and used to make it always before an Indian camp was reached. In other things also, he shared the disinclination of his fellow tribesmen to perform any labor that properly belonged to women, according to the customs of his people.
Some writers would deny to the American Indian all possession of romantic love, or of love in any very high sense of the term. This, of course, is an utterly untenable theory, as any one who has seen the Indian at home well knows. The writer's 'guide, philosopher and friend,' Amelu, a young man of 22 years, was in love all the time he was with him, and gave expression to many of the orthodox symptoms of that state in an undoubted fashion. The shamefaced way in which he would answer when asked why he had been away from the tent (in the neighborhood of an Indian encampment) so long the night before was a convincing fact. One evening he asked for a little money, and no amount of coaxing would for a long time induce him to say what he wanted it for. At last, however, in real lover fashion, he admitted that he wanted to buy some article or other to take to his lady friend, who was to put the finishing touches upon it. On this occasion Amelu blushed as much as the redskin can, and that is a good deal. Altogether, as an eminent Americanist once said, the Indian is a man, even as we are men. This the writer knows by actual experience, from the moment of his first arrival among the Kootenays, when halo naiha cumtux (Chinook jargon for 'I don't know') was the only conversation on their part, to the time when he sat with them, round the campfire and himself began the story-telling: Kānáqē Skínkūts, 'The Coyote was going along.'