CHIEF KITSAP, FINANCIER
BY
JOSEPH BLETHEN
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
When young Johnny Kitsap, having made up his mind that his clerkship in the reservation agency did not offer the chance of advancement to which the son of a Puyallup chief and a graduate of Carlisle was entitled, applied for work to the President of the Elliott Bay National Bank, it was not an act of such presumption as some might suppose. No one, to be sure, when he saw the high cheek-bones, wiry black hair brushed pompadour, dull brown eyes, and copper complexion, could possibly have been deceived by Johnny's well-cut clothes, clean linen, and good English. Nor did Johnny affect these things as a disguise or as signifying that, in adopting the apparel and speech of the white man, he had renounced his nationality—had, to all intents and purposes, become a dead Indian. Quite to the contrary, what secured Johnny his position in the bank was precisely that, besides having a pleasant manner and civilized ways, he was so manifestly an exceptionally live Indian.
The Elliott Bay National's famous line of "red paper" had paid from the start. When, some years before, the proposition to loan old Peter Coultee, a full blood of the Puyallup reservation, was laid before the directors, they had laughed, but, like true Western men, they wanted to know the details. What they learned was that old Peter Coultee owned one hundred and sixty acres of fine reservation land, well stocked and highly cultivated; that his crop of hops was fast ripening; that he needed money to pay the hop-pickers of his own tribe; and that hop-house receipts in the White River Valley were as good as wheat receipts in the Palouse. This put the matter in other, at least, than a sneering light, and one of the laughing directors offered to visit the reservation and make a full report. The result was that old Peter Coultee got his loan, and that this turned out to be the first of many others, both to himself and to his tribesmen, and all of much mutual profit alike to white man and red.
When, accordingly, Johnny Kitsap did the Elliott National the honor of preferring its employment to that of the government, the president did not laugh, but, with all due formality, laid his application before the board, and suggested that a bank which loaned money to Indians might in time find it convenient to have a clerk who could interpret not only the language of the Siwash customers, but the more subtle emotions of the Indian heart. And so Johnny came by his job, and the bank had as little cause to regret it as the first loan to old Peter Coultee, which was the original cause of it.
To the young Indian, the bank became a magic house. The brass-barred windows before the tellers; the wire cages; the tiled floors; the great doors of the vault, with the tick-tick-tick of the time locks; all seemed to him to be parts of a powerful chieftain's house. The vault itself, with its store of gold and currency, and its cabinet of mysterious treaties, which the tyee made with the busy white men, filled him with awe. This was the white man's magic treasure-chest, wherein money bred money. No one bought or sold, so far as he could see, yet this treasure-chest paid salaries, distributed profits, and always continued full. With his imagination thus enlisted in firing his work with the zest of play, it is no wonder that he proved an apt pupil and in a rapidly flying trio of years had filled various positions and had earned high appreciation.
With his entrance upon the duties of collection clerk, Kitsap became the credit man on all "red paper." Every bit of Indian business received the approval of the Chief before the discount committee would act upon it. Thus the young Indian became surely, even if indirectly, a power on the reservation, where the tribal leaders regarded him as being at heart a white man and continued to address him quizzingly as Italapas (The Coyote That Wanders). Kitsap maintained a modest room in Seattle, enjoyed the privileges of an athletic club, owned a one-twentieth interest in a yacht, and, out on the reservation, kept a cayuse in father Kitsap's corral and a suit of Indian finery in father Kitsap's house. Thus he zigzagged across the borderland of civilization and led a most picturesque, but strictly honorable, double life.
Kitsap had been four years in the bank when three hop-buyers from St. Louis attempted to raid the White River hop fields in advance of picking and to buy the entire crop of the valley at fourteen cents a pound. The raid had progressed far towards success when Kitsap accidentally heard of it.
The Indian hop-growers of the reservation had made their fall estimates, Kitsap had inspected their fields and approved their items, and some ten thousand dollars in "red paper" was entered on the books of the Elliott Bay National Bank, the loans to be secured by the warehouse receipts on hops. Kitsap had spent the first Sunday of the picking on the reservation, greeting friends who had come on their annual pilgrimage to the hop fields from other reservations; and early on Monday morning he was on the way to take a train for Seattle, when Peter Coultee's cayuse overtook him, bearing Peter Coultee's oldest son.
"Good morning, Italapas. Is your bank short of money?" called the young Indian, with enough dire suggestion in his tone to start a Wall Street panic.
Kitsap faced his questioner. "It has more gold than the son of Coultee can count," he retorted sharply.
"Then why is Lamson, who owns the largest fields of all the white men in the valley, saying that the bank will not loan him enough to pay the pickers?"
Lamson, who was wealthy, as ranchers go, was a heavy client of the Elliott Bay National, but, since he was a white man, his accounts were unknown to Kitsap. The bank clerk was thus taken at a disadvantage and could not give a direct answer. But, desiring to learn what he could, he bantered the younger Indian to talk on, and listened carefully, that his words might be carried to the cashier.
"Lamson is paying two picking tickets out of every three in cash; for the third ticket he gives an order on the stores in the village. When the pickers complain, he laughs and says that the bank has loaned the Indians so much that it cannot lend him the little he needs. Peter Coultee sends word to you: Let Italapas run to the bank and count the gold." Then the younger Indian smiled suggestively, whirled his cayuse, and rode away.
Kitsap was troubled by young Coultee's words. Not that any thought of weakness in the Elliott Bay National entered his mind; but he felt at once that such a report, if allowed to circulate undenied, would be harmful to the magic treasure-chest. He was all nerves when he reported to the cashier.
As soon as the president arrived, the cashier went to him with the report. Together they reviewed Lamson's account, and decided that no danger was to be found there. Lamson's hops were being delivered to a warehouse, and the warehouse receipts were being delivered to the bank as security for the hop-gathering loan. All this was regular and customary. But Lamson's motive in making such talk disturbed the president. He sent for Kitsap to question him.
Never before had the young red man been called into a conference with the president. He felt both proud and alarmed at the incident. When told the facts, Kitsap was greatly relieved, but he could suggest no motive for Lamson's story. He volunteered to visit the valley in an endeavor to ascertain the facts. The suggestion pleased the president, who at once ordered it put into effect.
"I suppose," said the gray-headed president, "that you will enjoy this scouting expedition all the more because you are on the trail of a white man. But while I am going to trust to your own good sense and your knowledge of your people in running this lie right back to the man who fathered it, I want to caution you to play well inside the rules of the game.
"Now, you are out to hit the trail of that lie and chase it home. When you have corralled it, let me know what company it is keeping and I will tell you what to do next. Lamson has been a good client and this lie may run away from him. If so, we must not offend him and thus lose his account. But if it hikes home to his ranch house, then I want to know what he is doing, and the nearer he is related to this rumor, the quicker we shall cash his hop receipts and cancel his note.
"If you find it necessary to use the bank's authority, then come out strong as ambassador plenipotentiary and read the stiffest kind of a bluff to your man in the name of the Elliott Bay National Bank. Talk as little as possible about the bank; but when you do talk, make every man jealous of your connection with the institution. A conservative remark may bring a new customer to our books; a flippant word may go into business for itself and start a run that no bank could weather. Now get at it, and let us hear something from you by day after to-morrow."
Scout! The president himself had said it! The Indian's blood thrilled with his commission. His voice shook a little in its attempt to be very, very steady as he telephoned out to the reservation station for a saddle-horse. Then he ran for the five o'clock south-bound train.
At eight o'clock Kitsap arrived at the reservation. On all sides were the lights among the camps, where the hop-pickers were making merry. More than one group hailed him as he passed, demanding to know if he had come out from town to dance, to gamble, or to see a maid. But he had replied to each in kind and pressed on to his father's house. Kitsap the elder greeted his son in the native tongue.
"Huh! Is The Coyote still prowling?"
"The Coyote hunts big game for his tyee, my father. Let The Coyote's horse be cared for till he returns."
Then Kitsap, the bank clerk, decked himself as an Indian should and as The Coyote went forth to listen at many camp-fires and to hear what tales were telling there. Till far into the night he prowled, learning what families of Indians were picking for Lamson, what form Lamson's bank story was taking, and to what store the orders were sent for redemption. The fires were low and the valley was still when he sought his father's house and slept.
The next morning he resumed the dress of the white man. It was a day spent in the saddle. He rode from store to store, from ranch to ranch and warehouse to warehouse, the length and breadth of the valley, questioning, listening, brisk, businesslike, and polite, in all respects the decorous representative of the white man's bank. Yet, as he stood that evening at the white man's telephone, and recounted to his cashier the facts he had learned, the gleam in his eyes and the pride in his heart were those of the young red warrior who has tracked his foe and makes report to the high chiefs of his tribe. He concluded by asking his cashier to telegraph to St. Louis and the other hop markets and ascertain the probable trend of hops, and telephone him in the morning.
And then Kitsap, the clerk, donned the tribal finery of his ancestors and again The Coyote prowled among the camp-fires. At each he dropped a faggot for thought:
"Lamson, the biggest hop rancher in the valley, is buying hops at fourteen cents and paying his pickers with store orders. That's why he lied about the bank."
The pickers buzzed the news about the fires till the overseers heard it; the overseers bore the tale to the ranchers; the ranchers went to their telephones and set the tale to flashing. In the morning, when the valley rose to resume picking, Lamson's raid was in cold type in the Seattle papers and at eight o'clock Lamson himself read it. Then he realized that the pool had been betrayed, and he went on the war-path to find the mysterious Indian.
Kitsap rose late, and loitered about, gossiping with the idle, till ten o'clock. Then he called up the bank. The cashier had received a wire from the East.
"Hops opened in St. Louis at sixteen cents, Milwaukee sixteen cents, Cincinnati seventeen cents," said the cashier over the telephone. "Crop reports indicate light yield abroad and heavy demand on American hops. Rise in price certain. I have asked a Seattle broker to cable Liverpool. The president says to spread the news and call me again at four o'clock."
Then Kitsap mounted his own spotted cayuse and rode from ranch to ranch till every Indian planter on the reservation had heard his news:
"The biyu tyee of the money house sends greetings. Hops are seventeen cents and going up."
At four o'clock Kitsap was once more at the telephone, and received a message from the cashier which sent his heart pounding in his throat for very enthusiasm.
Copyrighted by E. S. Curtis, Seattle