"Well, anyhow," said Fannin, "you can see that these children, doing this sort of work from babyhood until they're grown up, would get to be mighty skilful at it; and you can understand how they can work at it, just as you and Hugh here can get on your horses in the morning and ride until dark; while, if I did that, in the first place, I'd have to be tied on the horse; and in the second place, I would not be able to walk for a week afterward. But there's no mistake about it, these Siwashes are good watermen."
"That's a word I've heard three or four times, Mr. Fannin," said Jack, "and I'd like you to tell me what it is—what it means—Siwash."
"Well, it means an Indian," said Fannin. "It's a Chinook jargon word, and yet it don't exactly mean an Indian either. It means a male Indian. An Indian woman is a klootchman."
"Klootchman!" said Jack. "That sounds Dutch."
"Well," said Fannin, "I don't know what language it is. You know this Chinook jargon is a language made up of words taken from many tongues. It's called Chinook; but I don't feel sure that the words in it are mostly from the Chinook language. I guess Siwash, for example, is a French word—probably it was originally sauvage, meaning savage. There are lots of French words in the Chinook jargon, though I can't think of them at the present moment. One of them, though, is lecou, meaning neck; and another is lahache, an axe. These are plain enough; but a good many of the words are taken from different Indian languages, and are just hitched together without any grammar at all. It's a sort of a trade language; a good deal, I expect, like the pigeon English that the coast Chinese are said to use in communicating with white men."
"I suppose," said Jack, "that the Siwashes are mainly fishermen, are they not? About all I've seen have been on the water paddling around in their canoes, and whenever we've seen them doing anything, except paddling, they have been fishing."
"Yes," said Fannin, "you're right about that; they are fishermen, or at least they derive the most of their subsistence from the water. Of course they depend chiefly upon the salmon, which they eat fresh, and dry for winter food; for the salmon are here only in summer. The Indians do some land hunting. They kill a good many deer, and some mountain goats, but their chief dependence for food is the salt-water fish. When the salmon begin to run in June or July, and before they have got into the fresh water streams, the Indians catch them in numbers with a trolling spoon. Of course the Indians do considerable water hunting; that is to say, they kill seals, and porpoises, and now and then a whale; but what they depend on is fishing."
"It means," said Jack, "that to these Indians the salmon are what the buffalo is to the Indians of the plains."
"Yes," said Fannin, "that's about it," and Hugh added: "The canoe here is about the same as the horse back where we live."
"Just about," agreed Fannin.