Vancouver’s ship ([frontispiece])PAGE
On the Sound[3]
Sunlight on the water[9]
Typical Siwash face[10]
A Klootchman[11]
La Belle Klootchman[12]
Launching[16]
Paddling[18]
All that’s left of Old-Man-House[20]
Wm. Deshaw[22]
Grand potlatch[25]
Old-Man-House village[28]
Digging clams[32]
Guardian spirit Totem[41]
Wolf mask[42]
Wolf mask[44]
Bowl and spoon, by Twana Indians[47]
Vignette of Chief Seattle[50]
Night around the sing-gamble[53]
The Twana Thunderbird mask[54]
Box made of slate, carving[56]
Thunderbird, Dakotah Indians[58]
Ojibwa, flying Thunderbird[59]
Haida Thunderbird head[60]
Ojibwa Thunderer[61]
Building Siwash canim[63]
Symbolic drawing[68]
Indian implements[76]
Face mask of Twanas[83]
Charm mask[84]
Stone and copper war clubs[85]
Quinaiults hunting the hair seal[97]
Copper and iron daggers[99]
Twana war clubs[100]
A Quinaiult hut[101]
Chief Sealth[102]
Oldest house in King county[110]
Duke of York[112]
East Indian carving[113]
Canoe head Totem[114]
Totem column, northern Indian[126]
The bear mother[129]
Haida child dance at Houkan[130]
Haida Thundermask[133]
Skamson the Thunderer[137]
Corner of Houkan village[138]
Haida grave-yard[140]
Mrs. Schooltka[143]
Silver and copper ornaments[144]
Quinaiult tribesman[147]
Yakutat Alaska[149]
Volcano of Boguslof[151]
Kodiak Alaska[153]
“Kla-how-ya”[157]
Spearing the hair seal[158]
Indian duck hunting[160]
Klootchman gathering rushes[161]
An educated Indian[163]
Stone hatchets[164]
Sea otter lookout[165]
Beaver marsh[167]

THE SIWASH

CHAPTER I
A BIT OF HISTORY

Early explorations of the Northwest coast now embraced in the limits of the state of Washington came after the discovery and occupation of the coast further south. Unlike the Mexican and California conquests it was devoid of wild and extravagant fact or fancy. There is found in the old annals no mention of barbaric splendor, no great empires or extensive cities, no magnificent spoils to be carried away.

The Spaniards first laid claim to the island of Vancouver in 1774. During the war of the Revolution, when England was occupied with her rebellious subjects on the Atlantic sea board, Perez Heceta and other Spanish navigators, explored and took possession, in the name of their sovereign, of the largest island on the Pacific coast.

What is now the straits of Juan de Fuca, or at that time Anian, had been explored by trading vessels from Spanish settlements along the Mexican coast, and doubtless by navigators of other nationalities, but it was not until near the close of the eighteenth century that the Northwest coast became disputed territory between Spaniards, English, Russians and Americans. In 1688, Martinez and Haro were dispatched by the government to the Pacific Northwest, to guard their newly claimed possessions, and here in the following year, Martinez seized a couple of English craft and immediately embroiled his parental country in a serious dispute with Great Britain. This was the initial movement in that spirited competition between the two rival nations which only ended when the Spaniards finally succumbed to British diplomacy and betook themselves to their southern possessions.

Captain Cook, the English navigator, who later fell a victim to the savage inhabitants of the Sandwich islands, was sent over by his government a few years after the Spanish occupation of the island, to discover, if possible a northwest passage which should unite the widely separated waters of the Atlantic and Pacific. Cook perpetuated the memory of this voyage by giving names to a number of capes and promontories, chief of which is Cape Flattery. At that time the waters of Fuca strait, Puget Sound and lands adjoining had not been christened by those names by which they are now known.

English navigators explored and gave names to Queen Charlotte islands and the surrounding waters soon after the occupation of the larger island of Vancouver, but they appear not to have visited the waters of the Georgian gulf until some years afterwards.