Game, fish and potatoes were staple articles of diet and judging from the stalwart frames of the Indians were safe and substantial.
Trading with the Indians brought about some acquaintance with their leading characteristics.
On one occasion, the youngest of the white women, Louisa Boren, attempted to barter some red flannel for a basket of potatoes.
The basket of “wapatoes” occupied the center of a level spot in front of the cabin, backed by a semicircle of perhaps twenty-five Indians. A tall, bronze tyee (chief) stood up to wa-wa (talk). He wanted so much cloth; stretching out his long arms to their utmost extent, fully two yards.
“No,” she said, “I will give you so much,” about one yard.
“Wake, cultus potlatch” (No, that is just giving them away) answered the Indian, who measured several times and insisted that he would not trade for an inch less. Out of patience at last, she disdainfully turned her back and retired inside the cabin behind a mat screen. No amount of coaxing from the savages could induce her to return, and the disappointed spectators filed off, bearing their “hyas mokoke” (very valuable) potatoes with them, no doubt marveling at the firmness of the white “slanna” (woman).
A more successful deal in potatoes was the venture of A. A. Denny and J. N. Low, who traveled from Alki to Fort Nesqually, in a big canoe manned by four Indians and obtained fifty bushels of little, round, red potatoes grown by Indians from seed obtained from the “Sking George” men. The green hides of beeves were spread in the bottom of the canoe and the potatoes piled thereon.
Returning to Alki it was a little rough and the vegetables were well moistened with salt chuck, as were the passengers also, probably, deponent saith not.
It is not difficult for those who have traveled the Sound in all kinds of weather to realize the aptness of the expression of the Chinese cook of a camping party who were moving in a large canoe; when the waves began to rise, he exclaimed in agitation, “Too littlee boat for too muchee big waters.” It is well to bear in mind that the “Sound” is a great inland sea. A tenderfoot’s description of the water over which he floated, the timorous occupant of a canoe, testifies that it looked to him to be “Two hundred feet deep, as clear as a kitten’s eye and as cold as death.”
All the different sorts of canoes of which I shall speak in another chapter look “wobbly” and uncertain, yet the Indians make long voyages of hundreds of miles by carefully observing the wind and tide.