“Spul-queet-sa!” (“A Ghost! A Ghost!”)
We usually travelled in a much smaller canoe than the one in which we made the trip narrated above. On several occasions, when on my missionary tours, I took Her Majesty’s mail to Victoria from Nanaimo.
On one occasion Dr. Evans and I made a trip along the east coast to look out ground for an industrial school, where we might educate our young native men, with the hope of preparing them for teachers or missionaries. This was in 1868. We selected a fine place, on an island, but the Missionary Society could not see its way clear to undertake this work. Strangely enough, this was the very spot where afterwards the Dominion Government built Kuyper Island Industrial School. As the Methodist Church did not see its way to undertake this charge, the Government placed the school under the direction of the Roman Catholic Church.
One fine day on that trip a very amusing incident occurred, which illustrates the Indian’s superstitious dread of anything which seems unnatural. As we were paddling along the Doctor was relating a joke about a miner and an Indian woman on the streets of Victoria. In order to appreciate the story, one must be told that the Indians lived to a considerable extent upon clams, which fact was made the butt of continual jokes, while the miners, in those days, subsisted largely on bacon and beans. The Doctor said: “An Indian woman was passing a group of miners on the street, when one of them drawled out, ‘Cla-ms!’ in a mocking tone of voice. The woman at once turned around very sharply and, much to the amusement of the crowd, retorted, ‘B-b-beans!’”
As the Doctor, in relating the story, was attempting to imitate the Indian woman’s way of saying “beans,” his set of false teeth fell out and very nearly went overboard. The Indian in the stern, seeing the teeth fly out, threw up both hands and very nearly went overboard himself.
“Ah-na! ah-na-na! this man has come from the grave!” he cried. “Spul-queet-sa! Spul-queet-sa! I can’t go on. This man is not a living man, he is a spirit,” he told his friend in the bow.
The other man refused to believe that a man could handle his teeth, as it was said the Doctor had done. They commenced to wrangle over the matter and were losing time.
“Doctor, you will have to show the other fellow your teeth,” I said. In an instant the Doctor pulled them out and held them before the man’s face. With that he threw up his hands and screeched and screamed till we thought he would fall overboard. Then they got a little quieted down and paddled on, but every once in a while they would stop to discuss the thing, whether this was really a living man or a ghost from the grave. They watched him, especially when we went ashore to camp for the night. When they saw that he could eat and laugh and talk like the rest of us they could not understand it.
This reminds me of a trader’s wife, a devoted Christian, living up the coast, who had a native servant. The girl had been with her for some time and had become very much attached to her mistress. She used to go home to the camp every night and return to her work early in the morning. One morning, as the lady, whose name was Viona, was busy with her toilet, and was in the act of brushing her teeth, the Indian maid, returning, chanced to look in at the door. Seeing her mistress putting her teeth in her mouth, she cried out, “Oh, Viona! Viona!” and ran away as hard as she could run. She told her friends that the lady was a ghost and had come from the grave, and she could not be persuaded to return for many a day.