The Siwash, Their Life, Legends, and Tales: Puget Sound and Pacfic Northwest

by J. A. Costello

The one thing only which the old-time Siwash thinks it not beneath his dignity to indulge in is fishing, and this is his particular special privilege which he never permits any interference with. True, his dame has the privilege of fishing for cod and dogfish and the commoner species, but the taking of the lordly salmon is never relegated to her. If he is one of the old-time Indians wrapped still in the superstitious beliefs of his ancestors, not only is she not permitted the pleasure of the chase for salmon, but she is never permitted to put her foot inside the salmon canim, nor is she ever allowed to touch the salmon line or hook. That would forever spoil either canoe or line from use by the imperious head of the household. These practices, while still in vogue among the more isolated villages, is not so strictly adhered to by Indians who almost daily come in contact with the whites, nor are these remnants of a superstitious race very widely known among their enlightened and civilized neighbors. A trip to any of the favorite fishing grounds about the Sound and a study of the life of the village will convince any one that were they suddenly removed from all influence of civilized life, the Indian of today is just as he was when the first white man’s boat ploughed the gentle waters of the Sound. The thoroughbred Siwash will not even countenance the pretty gearing of the modern fisherman, but clings tenaciously to those articles fashioned by his own hand. He, however, will use the spoon in trolling, but it is one he has made himself from the metal and polished in his own way, swung from a bit of wire crooked and fashioned in his own odd fashion. His is an invention unprotected, yet he will never trouble himself about letters patent, for no white man can ever imitate his work successfully. There is something about it that seems to have a most unusual attraction for the finest and best, for a Siwash is seldom met with winter or summer, on a fishing expedition without one or more of the best fish the water contains.

They know just the hour, just the spot and place when and where to fish and seldom are seen trolling any other time. Trout a Siwash has no love for and never attempts to take. He may have his camp on a stream alive with the finest of the trout species, but he never molests them. A polluted dog salmon lying dead upon the sand bank is more preferable in his eyes and he will pick up one and walk away with the same grim satisfaction that he will after having speared or hooked a monster silver side, the king of the genus.

The klootchman is no less characteristic in appearance and features than the Siwash himself. They are decrepit in looks, bowed in form from the constant life-long use of the canim, prematurely old and unsociable as a black bear. There is if possible more superstition, more mystery to the klootchman than to her lordly partner. She never talks to the whites unless it is to offer for sale the fruit from the forest, the catch from the salt water or when around on begging expeditions, and of the latter there is little. The Siwash will stoop to outright begging, especially if he is a chief or has become debauched by associates with evil-minded whites, but his wife scarcely ever.

La belle klootchman is both the pride of the family and the belle of the village, and on her is lavished all the fashion and vermillion of the sweet society of the natives. She dotes on loud colors and is noticeably proud of whatever she wears as long as it is bright and showy. She ages, however, like an autumn leaf and once past sweet sixteen she is relegated to the shades of ugliness and forgotten. Of all things, Indian, the hardest to determine would be the age of the pure blood Siwash or klootchman. They may be about 30 or may be 75, they all look alike after reaching the usual majority in years.

Outside the supplying of daily wants the only other task of the pure-blood Siwash is the building of his cedar canoes. Seldom is it that the whites get an opportunity of seeing this work in progress. It is most always done on or near the beach in out-of-the-way places and the old-fashioned Indian-made hand adz is as religiously adhered to as it ever was. The interior of the cedar log was originally cleared by burning, but occasionally they will now condescend to the use of a heavier instrument secured from the whites to get rid of the core. In trimming down, fashioning and finishing up the canoe the little bit of sharpened steel is, however, always used.

Early Indians, and for that matter all of the present day, entertained a righteous dread of photography. Electricity, the galvanic battery and the telegraph wires were things as dreadful to them as their imaginary Skal-lal-la-toot, that ranged the woods about their villages. They believe that these things are spirits of some kind that have been through the influence of the white man’s Ta-mahn-a-wis or big medicines enslaved to the fellow who happens to possess the electrical appliance.

When the old trader, William Deshaw, who has been frequently mentioned in connection with Port Madison Indians, first came to Agate pass to look after the Indians there he took with him an old-fashioned galvanic battery. This mysterious instrument probably invested him, in the eyes of the simple savages, who had never before heard of such things, with greater power than anything else he could possibly have taken among them. It promoted him at once to the position of a great white Ta-mahn-a-wis, whose influence was never afterwards disputed. Soon after his appearance there and acquaintance with the Old-Man-House tribes the construction of the old Puget Sound Telegraph & Cable company’s line was carried past their village and it became a thing of dreadful consequence to the Indians. They avoided it and feared it as they did the “evil eye.” It was quite an impossible thing to ever get an Indian to lend a hand at replacing the wires in position when they happened to become broken down during the winter storms. Touch an electric wire? They would sooner have suffered the loss of a hand under a chopping block.

The old trader tells of many amusing spectacles with the use of the old galvanic battery on some of the Indians. As before stated the practices of their severe superstitious rites often caused many of the Ta-mahn-a-wis men to fall into trance-like and comatose conditions, from which it was impossible, by any known Indian agency to arouse them. The old trader tells of one that occurred at Old-Man-House in which the efficacy of the old galvanic battery was proved to the Indians satisfaction with a vengeance. One of these old medicine men had after several days of unusual exertion and privation fallen into a comatose condition. Every art known to the other’s Ta-mahn-a-wis had been exerted to no purpose and as a last resort the Indians had sent for the white Ta-mahn-a-wis living across the narrow pass.“So he’s dead, is he?” inquired the trader of the Indians who went after him.

“Yes, he’s dead. Indian Ta-mahn-a-wis no good for him,” returned the couriers.

“Umph! yes, well white man’s Ta-mahn-a-wis fetch him,” said the trader and he went after the old battery. Going across he found the Indian lying on the floor of a hut upon the inevitable rush mat and to all intents and purposes dead as a mackerel, with a howling, prancing mob of his brethren about him.