After wandering about a long while they sat down to rest on mossy logs beside the trail. They sat facing the water, the day was waning, and as they thought of their return one of them said, “O look at the canoe!” It was far out on the shining water; the tide had come up while the party wandered in the woods and the canoe, with its stake, was quite a distance from the bank. Mamie ran down the trail to the beach, took off her moccasins and swam out to the canoe, her mother and the rest intently watching her. Then she dived down to the bottom; as her round, black head disappeared beneath the rippling surface, Angeline said “Now she’s gone.” But in a few moments we breathed a sigh of relief as up she rose, having pulled up the stake, and climbed into the canoe, although how she did it one cannot tell, and paddled to the shore to take in the happy crew. This little incident, but more especially the scene, the forms and faces of my friends, the dark forest, moss-cushioned seats under drooping branches, and the graceful canoe afloat on the silvery water—and it did seem for a few, long moments that Mamie was gone as Angeline said in her anxiety for her child’s safety showing she too was a human mother—all this has never left my memory!
Angeline lived for many years in her little shanty near the water front, assisted often with food and clothing from kindly white friends. She had a determination to live, die and be buried in Seattle, as it was her home, and that, too, near her old pioneer friends, thus typifying one of the dearest wishes of the Indians.
She was one of the good Indian washerwomen, gratefully remembered by pioneer housewives. These faithful servitors took on them much toil, wearing and wearisome, now accomplished by machinery or Chinese.
The world is still deceived by the external appearance; but even the toad “ugly and venomous” was credited with a jewel in its head.
Now Angeline was ugly and untidy, and all that, but not as soulless as some who relegated her to the lowest class of living creatures.
A white friend whom she often visited, Mrs. Sarah Kellogg, said to the writer, “Angeline lived up to the light she had; she was honest and would never take anything that was offered her unless she needed it. I always made her some little present, saying, ‘Well, Angeline, what do you want? Some sugar?’ ‘No, I have plenty of sugar, I would like a little tea.’ So it was with anything else mentioned, if she was supplied she said so. I had not seen her for quite a while at one time, and hearing she was sick sent my husband to the door of her shack to inquire after her. Sure enough she lay in her bunk unable to rise. When asked if she wanted anything to eat, she replied, ‘No, I have plenty of muck-amuck; Arthur Denny sent me a box full, but I want some candles and matches.’
“She told me that she was getting old and might die any time and that she never went to bed without saying her prayers.
“During a long illness she came to my house quite often, but was sent away by those in charge; when I was at last able to sit up, I saw her approaching the house and went down to the kitchen to be ready to receive her. As usual I inquired after her wants, when she somewhat indignantly asked, ‘Don’t you suppose I can come to see you without wanting something?’
“One day as she sat in my kitchen a young white girl asked before her, in English, of course, ‘Does Angeline know anything about God?’ She said quickly in Chinook, ‘You tell that girl that I know God sees me all the time; I might lie or steal and you would never find it out, but God would see me do it.’”
In her old age she exerted herself, even when feeble from sickness, to walk long distances in quest of food and other necessities, stumping along with her cane and sitting down now and then on a door-step to rest.