“The Tsimpseans had one small cannon. They had gotten it from the Hudson Bay Company, far to the southward, in exchange for furs. While their enemies slept, they carried the cannon to the top of the hill and fired on the fort. Then a terrible battle was fought. The Thlingets seized their war clubs and fell upon the Tsimpseans with such fury that almost all of them were either killed or taken prisoner. Then the Tsimpsean tribe laid down their war clubs and again lived in peace with the Thlingets.
“But,” said the Story Teller, “my people were still at war with a Thlinget clan that made their camp at Sheet-kah. It started longer, much longer ago than the war with the Tsimpseans. They fought with bows and arrows and with clubs made of bone.
“This was the way the big fight started. Every year my people would take plenty salmon over to Pinnock Island and hang it there to dry for their winter food.
“The Sheet-kah Indians had fine big canoes. They made them of rotten spruce logs, which they hollowed out with sharp stones. Some of them held thirty or forty people. In them they would paddle as far south as Dixon’s Entrance fishing and trading. Once they landed on Pinnock Island and carried off all the salmon they found there.
“That winter was long and cold and there was very little food. The old and many young children died. Then the hearts of my people grew hot with anger. There was a big fight and Chief Nah-goot was killed by Schook-klatch, chief of the Sheet-kah tribe. Then they fight, fight, all the time fight until Captain Cook came. He was the first Pale Face my people had ever seen. Soon the Red Men began trading furs for guns with which to fight each other.
“But at last the great white chief in Washington sent his soldiers to tell the Red Men that they must live in peace with each other. There must be no more fighting.
“Now,” said the Store Teller proudly, “my people live like their white brothers. Our children go to school. We have fine big fishing boats. Our lodges are like the white men’s lodges.
“There,” pointing to where half a mile away a long pier extended far out from the little village of Saxman, “I hope some day to see an Indian village like the white men’s villages, where [[21]]my people will be able to do all that my white brothers do. Its harbor will be crowded with fishing boats. There shall be canneries and sawmills so our children need not seek work in the villages of the white men. The Indian will no longer be a child. He will be a man.
“But,” the Story Teller ended sadly, “the young look not with the eyes of the old. I dream, but my dreams may not come true.”