A large canoe will easily carry ten persons and one thousand pounds of baggage. One of these commodious travelers, with a load of natives and their “ictas” (baggage) landed on a stormy day at Alki and the occupants spent several hours ashore. While engaged with their meal one of them exclaimed, “Nannitch!” (look) at the same time pointing at the smoke of the campfire curling steadily straight upward. Without another word they tumbled themselves and belongings aboard and paddled off in silent satisfaction.
The ascending column of smoke was their barometer which read “Fair weather, no wind.”
The white people, unacquainted with the shores, tides and winds of the great Inland Sea, did well to listen to their Indian canoemen; sometimes their unwillingness to do so exposed them to great danger and even loss of life.
The Indians living on Elliott Bay were chiefly the indigenous tribe of D’wampsh or Duwampsh, changed by white people into “Duwamish.”
They gave abundant evidence of possessing human feeling beneath their rough exterior.
One of the white women at Alki, prepared some food for a sick Indian child which finally recovered. The child’s father, “Old Alki John,” was a very “hard case,” but his heart was tender toward his child, and to show his gratitude he brought and offered as a present to the kind white “slanna” (woman) a bright, new tin pail, a very precious thing to the Indian mind. Of course she readily accepted his thanks but persuaded him to keep the pail.
Savages though they were, or so appeared, the Indians of Elliott Bay were correctly described in these words:
“We found a race, though rude and wild, Still tender toward friend or child, For dark eyes laughed or shone with tears As joy or sorrow filled the years. Their black-eyed babes the red men kissed And captive brothers sorely missed; With broken hearts brown mothers wept When babes away by death were swept.”
—Song of the Pioneers.
But there were amusing as well as pathetic experiences. The Indians were like untaught children in many things. Their curiosity over-came them and their innocent impertinence sometimes required reproof.