It is a singular idea that they have of uncleanness. During all this time, according to Holmberg, only the girl's mother approaches her, and that only to place food within her reach. There she lies, wallowing in her filth, scarcely able to move. It is almost incredible that human beings can bring themselves so to distort nature. To this singular custom, as well as to that of the block, female slaves do not conform. After the girl's immurement is over, if her parents are wealthy, her old clothing is destroyed, she is washed and dressed anew, and a grand feast given in honor of the occasion.[169] The natural sufferings of mothers during confinement are also aggravated by custom. At this time they too are considered unclean, and must withdraw into the forest or fields, away from all others, and take care of themselves and their offspring. After the birth of a child, the mother is locked up in a shed for ten days.
A marriage ceremony consists in the assembling of friends and distribution of presents. A newly married pair must fast for two days thereafter, in order to insure domestic felicity. After the expiration of that time they are permitted to partake of a little food, when a second two days' fast is added, after which they are allowed to come together for the first time; but the mysteries of wedlock are not fully unfolded to them until four weeks after marriage.
Very little is said by travelers regarding the bath-houses of the Thlinkeets, but I do not infer that they used them less than their neighbors. In fact, notwithstanding their filth, purgations and purifications are commenced at an early age. As soon as an infant is born, and before it has tasted food, whatever is in the stomach must be squeezed out. Mothers nurse their children from one to two and a half years. When the child is able to leave its cradle, it is bathed in the ocean every day without regard to season, and this custom is kept up by both sexes through life. Those that survive the first year of filth, and the succeeding years of applied ice water and exposure, are very justly held to be well toughened.
The Thlinkeet child is frequently given two names, one from the father's side and one from the mother's; and when a son becomes more famous than his father, the latter drops his own name, and is known only as the father of his son. Their habits of life are regular. In summer, at early dawn they put out to sea in their boats, or seek for food upon the beach, returning before noon for their first meal. A second one is taken just before night. The work is not unequally divided between the sexes, and the division is based upon the economical principles of civilized communities. The men rarely conclude a bargain without consulting their wives.
Marchand draws a revolting picture of their treatment of infants. The little bodies are so excoriated by fermented filth, and so scarred by their cradle, that they carry the marks to the grave. No wonder that when they grow up they are insensible to pain. Nor are the mothers especially given to personal cleanliness and decorum.[170]
Music, as well as the arts, is cultivated by the Thlinkeets, and, if we may believe Marchand, ranks with them as a social institution. "At fixed times," he says, "evening and morning, they sing in chorus, every one takes part in the concert, and from the pensive air which they assume while singing, one would imagine that the song has some deep interest for them." The men do the dancing, while the women, who are rather given to fatness and flaccidity, accompany them with song and tambourine.[171]
Their principal gambling game is played with thirty small sticks, of various colors, and called by divers names, as the crab, the whale, and the duck. The player shuffles together all the sticks, then counting out seven, he hides them under a bunch of moss, keeping the remainder covered at the same time. The game is to guess in which pile is the whale, and the crab, and the duck. During the progress of the game, they present a perfect picture of melancholic stoicism.[172]
The Thlinkeets burn their dead. An exception is made when the deceased is a shamán or a slave; the body of the former is preserved, after having been wrapped in furs, in a large wooden sarcophagus; and the latter is thrown out into the ocean or anywhere, like a beast. The ashes of the burned Thlinkeet are carefully collected in a box covered with hieroglyphic figures, and placed upon four posts. The head of a warrior killed in battle is cut off before the body is burned, and placed in a box supported by two poles over the box that holds his ashes.[173] Some tribes preserve the bodies of those who die during the winter, until forced to get rid of them by the warmer weather of spring. Their grandest feasts are for the dead. Besides the funeral ceremony, which is the occasion of a festival, they hold an annual 'elevation of the dead,' at which times they erect monuments to the memory of their departed.
The shamáns possess some knowledge of the medicinal properties of herbs, but the healing of the body does not constitute so important a part of their vocation as do their dealings with supernatural powers.
THLINKEET CHARACTER.