Of all those present there were only two poorly dressed ones and these were a couple of rank outsiders who had come from down under and now saw for the first time what Indian high-life really meant. Jack and Bill felt like a couple of hobos who had tumbled out of a box-car and landed in the midst of a fancy dress hall in progress on Fifth Avenue.
When all were assembled the man-who-would-be-chief opened the potlatch with a recital of the wonderful deeds his ancestors had done, that his family had done, and especially those that he had done.
“It’s the same old stuff the politician who wants to be mayor, or governor, or president pulls in the States,” Bill pointed out.
Then the players began to beat their tom-toms and when the rhythm of this bombastic music had stirred the souls of the guests to their very depths, it got them going and they danced for all they were worth. Most of them carried huge wooden masks that were a nightmare to look at. Different from our dances their movements were not regulated by art but by the simple history of their lives and of those of their ancestors; in other words they were folk-dances.
“I could do that dance as good as any of them if I only had a false-face,” spoke up Bill, who could see nothing whatever in the energetic but solemn performance.
“What do you want a false-face for? What’s the matter with the one you have on?” said Jack, laughing heartily.
“I knew it was purtty bad but I didn’t know it was as bad as all that,” retorted his partner.
The dance over, the man-who-would-be-chief began to talk to the spirits of his ancestors. Getting no immediate response he called upon his guests to wake them up that they might hear what he had to say to them. He started them off with a large assortment of terrifying yells and this was augmented by cries, shrieks and screams of the others until it sounded like a band of renegade savages rushing to the first onslaught of battle.
Bill wasn’t the least bit afraid of anything happening, because Jack had told him all of the people in Alaska and the Yukon country, whatever the color of their exteriors might be, were white at heart. But his excess of caution just naturally led him to fold his arms so that his hand wouldn’t be more than half-a-second away from his six-gun should he need it.
The yelling kept up at a pitch so that a white man could not have heard himself think and it lasted for fifteen or twenty minutes. Neither Jack nor Bill took very much stock in what they were yelling for but (it is sad to relate and hard to believe) the primitive instinct in these boys overpowered the civilizing influences to which they had been subjected and time and again they both let loose the awful and heartrending yi-yi, yi-yi, of the cowboy.