"Dance!"
The couples formed two circles around the tom-tom, one within the other, then slowly the two rings moved 'round and 'round, with a kind of short, springing step, droning the never-varying chant. At the end of the dance the one who had chosen his partner presented him with a gift. In some cases a horse or a cow was bestowed and not infrequently blankets and the most cherished bead-work belts and hat-bands. Custom makes the acceptance of these favours compulsory. Even the alien visitors were asked to take part and the Indians laughed like pleased children to welcome them to the dance. One very old squaw, Mrs. "Nine Pipes," took her blanket from her body and her 'kerchief from her head to give to her white partner, and a brave, having chosen a pale-faced lady for the figure, and being depleted in fortune by his generosity at a former festival, borrowed fifty cents from a richer companion to bestow upon her. It was all done in the best of faith and friendliness, with child-like good will and pleasure in the doing.
When the next number was called, those who had been honoured with invitations and gifts returned the compliment. After this was done, the Master of the Dance, Michel Kaiser, stepped into the center of the circle, saying in the deep gutturals of the Selish tongue, with all the pomp of one who makes a proclamation, something which may be broadly rendered into these English words:
"This brave, Jerome, chose for his partner, Mary, and gave to her a belt of beads, and Mary chose for her partner, Jerome, and gave to him a silken scarf."
Around the circumference of the great ring he moved, crying aloud the names of the braves and maids who had joined together in the dance, and holding up to view the presents they had exchanged.
The next in order was a dance of the chase by the four young men who had performed the war dance. In this the hunter and the beast he pursued were impersonated and the pantomime carried out every detail of the fleeing prey and the crafty huntsmen who relentlessly drove him to earth.
The fourth measure was the scalp dance given by the squaws, a rite anciently practiced by the female members of families whose lords had returned victorious from battle, bearing as trophies the scalps of enemies they had slain. It was considered an indignity and a matter of just reproach to her husband or brother, if a squaw were unable to take part in this dance. The scalps captured in war were first displayed outside the lodges of the warriors whose spoil they were, and after a time, when they began to mortify or "break down," as the Indians say, the triumphant squaws gathered them together, threw them into the dust and stamped on them, heaping upon them every insult and in the weird ceremony of that ghoulish dance, consigning them to eternal darkness, for no brave without his scalp could enter the Happy Hunting Ground. The chant changed in this figure. The voices of the women rose in a piercing falsetto, broken by a rapid utterance of the single syllable "la, la" repeated an incredible length of time. The effect was singularly savage and strange, emphasizing the barbarous joy of the vengeful women. As the war dance was the call to battle, this was the aftermath.
In pleasing contrast to this cruel rite was the marriage dance, celebrated by both belles and braves. The young squaws, in their gayest attire, ornamented with the best samples of their bead work and painted bright vermillion about the lips and cheeks, formed a chain around the tom-tom, singing shrilly. Then a brave with a party of his friends stepped within the circle, bearing in his hand a stick, generally a small branch of pine or other native tree. He approached the object of his love and laid the branch on her shoulder. If she rejected his suit she pushed the branch aside and he, with his followers, retired in humiliation and chagrin. It often happened that more than one youth desired the hand of the same maiden, and the place of the rejected lover was taken immediately by a rival who made his prayer. If the maid looked with favor upon him she inclined her head, laying her cheek upon the branch. This was at once the betrothal and the marriage. At the close of the festivities the lover bore her to his lodge and they were considered man and wife.
*****
The sun set mellow rose behind the hills which swam in seas of deepening blue. Twilight unfolded shadows that climbed from the valleys to the peaks and touched them with deadening gray chill, until the warm glow died in the bosom of the night. Still the tom-tom beat, the chant rose and fell, the dancers wheeled on madly, singing as they danced. The darkness thickened. The stars wrote midnight in the sky. Papooses had fallen asleep and women sat mute and tired with watching. By the flare of a camp fire, running in uneven lights over the hurrying figures, one might see four braves leaping and swaying in the war dance. The night wore on. A heavy silence was upon the hills which echoed back the war cry, the tom-tom's throb and the chant. One, then another, then a third dropped out. Still the quivering, sweat-burnished bronze body of Michel writhed and twisted, bent and sprang. The lines of his face had hardened, the vermillion ran down his cheeks in rivulets, as of blood, and the corners of his mouth were drawn like the curves of a bow. The camp fire glowed low. The gray of the dawn came up out of the East with a little shuddering wind and the faint stars burned out. The tom-tom pulsed slower, the chant was broken. Suddenly a wild cry thrilled through the pallid morn. The figure of Michel darted upward like a rocket in a final brilliant gush of life, then fell senseless upon the ground.