When old Williams was a boy his people were very numerous and happy, and dwelt on the borders of the salt water from Vashon island to Port Townsend On the beach in front of Tsu-Suc-Cub, were drawn up at all times hundreds of canoes, so many that all the beach was covered with them. Many thousands of Indians gathered and lived in the big Tsu-Suc-Cub, and the country round about it. There were so many that chiefs Sealth and Kitsap were very big Indians, and were not afraid of any warlike tribes. Sealth the first, and Chief Kitsap once headed an expedition against the Cape Flattery and Victoria Indians, but this was at so early a date that William himself was too young to take part. His father was a brave and helped fight the enemy. At the head of great numbers of war canoes they raided the villages of the tribes on both sides of the straits, and at Victoria harbor a great battle was fought. The older Chief Sealth, or as he is sometimes spoken of, Sealth the First, it was said could drive an arrow through the side of the biggest canoe, and his strength was most wonderful. This expedition was an epoch in the Indian history of the Puget Sound natives. It was successful and the raids that had annually been made by the tribes from the north on the southern Indians of the Sound ceased, and it was due to the bravery of the two chiefs Sealth First and Second, that it was so. To the latter was due the glory of patting a stop to the invasions of Puget Sound Indians by the tribes east of the mountains. Sealth the Second, he for whom the city of Seattle was named, exercised late in his life so powerful an influence over near-by tribes that he was able to consolidate six tribes into one, which took the name of Duwamish or the allied tribes. He was an orator; an arbitrator rather than a great warrior, and with the exception perhaps of a great campaign to head off the invading Indians from east of the mountains which he executed at one time most successfully, never was engaged in any great battle. Not only was that affair well planned, but it proved a great and decisive battle. No whites were living on Puget Sound at the time. There are no recorded facts regarding it. It was told by the father to the son, and was one of the cherished memories which the whites first heard when they arrived.

Old Williams was asked who did the carving on the totems and why no work of the kind had been done since the whites came among them. The old fellow said that long ago there were many skilled carvers of totems and fine canoe builders and their implements were made from flints, agates and elk horn, fashioned into the shape of rude hatchets and knives. Many, many years before, while the old Indian was but a little boy, one of the chiefs of that day secured a piece of iron or steel from a Spanish trader, and for years after this piece of iron was turned to good account by the canoe builders in the tribes in making their canoes. Before the year 1800, or about that time, as arrived at by computing the time given in his aboriginal way by old William, only horn and agate hatchets and shell instruments were used in the work of totem carving or canoe building. These rude instruments were fastened on to rude handles wound around and bound around, and were deftly handled in carving and fashioning the softer woods as alder and maple into totems, canoes or bows and arrows.

Then came Vancouver, and from him old Kitsap procured a good supply of knives and iron which for fifty years after were used and in the keeping of the tribesmen, replacing the older instruments of their ancestors.

CHAPTER IX
THE TWANA OR SKOKOMISH TRIBE

In the days and generations past, when the Indians were the only people who occupied the shores of Puget Sound, the Twana tribe, now the Skokomish, lived in the broad strip of territory bordering on the west side of Hood’s canal and extending back to the top of the Olympic mountains and reaching from the Skokomish river on the south to Quilcene, near Port Townsend, on the north. They had for neighbors on the south and east the Squaxon tribe, while near them on the north and northwest were the Clallams and Ma-kahs. On the west were the Quillayutes and Quiniaults, but as the high mountains intervened there was not much intercourse in that direction, either in peace or war. The Twanas apparently much preferred peace to war and happiness on their own hunting and fishing grounds to pillage and robbery, for there are no old-time battle grounds pointed out now as having been once the scene of great carnage among them. However, they were Indians and as remarkable for their extreme and foolish superstitions and baneful practices as any on the Sound.

They possessed a fine country, especially the beautiful valley of the Skokomish river, which today is one of the prettiest places in the state. When the government made a treaty with these Indians and took most of their land away from them it left them the best section of all their territory for a permanent home. That was the ground at the mouth of the river on the north bank. Here resides the remnant of the Twanas, which, however, is composed of the blood of three former tribes, the Skokomish proper, Quilcenes and Duhl-ay-lips, the head Indian agent for whom is stationed at the beautiful agency of Tulalip on the east side of the Sound.

There are about 200 of these mongrel Indians now living on the reservation of 5,997 acres at the mouth of the river. Twenty years ago there were but about 250 of them, so that the decrease in population has been comparatively very small. In 1880 a census taken that year showed 237 Indians. In 1890, ten years from that time, there had been 100 deaths on the reservation, but the increase in population from birth alone was such that the real decrease was not more than fifteen persons. There is little if any increase to the population from people settling there from other tribes. This showing is better than that of any Indian tribe on the Sound, and is undoubtedly due to the isolation on the west side of the canal and removal from the contaminating influence of worthless white people. One beneficial effect of late years, really for the past thirty or forty years, has been the example of a few good farmers who settled in the fine valley of the Skokomish. Then to, they have always been blessed with good Indian agents, which cannot be said to have been always the case at many other reservations. The Indians generally nowadays work well and want to work and make good lumbermen in the logging camps, earning almost as much as the white men when the camps are going.