HAIDA INDIANS
Copying British styles they have uniformed themselves with red coats, forming quite a large army, and have a brilliantly uniformed fire company. Their parades are frequent and they present a very self-important, if not formidable, appearance as they march proudly along, keeping time to the wild, grand music of the tribes, their own boisterous drums, and the native whistles and trumpets, through their rough narrow streets, performing various evolutions and halting to drill. Indifferent whether armed with guns or sticks, many of the swords of the officers being of wood, they draw up in line, go through the facings, marching and counter-marching, the manual of arms and various other exercises. Conspicuous on such occasions is Mr. John, whose portrait is here presented. He is very ambitious to become one of the general officers of the army. So, as often as the drilling day comes around he calls on the Rev. Gould, who was a soldier in the late civil war, for instructions in military tactics. On one occasion the good man asked him if he expected to learn in a moment what it took him (Mr. Gould) three years to learn. This discouraged Mr. John for a time, but he soon recovered and is now occasionally a military pupil of Mr. Gould’s. The parades of the fire company are pompous and magnificent, but damaging stories are told of them so far as their real usefulness is concerned. One evening Mr. E. T. McLeod looked out of the door of his store and beheld one of the Indian’s houses in flames. With the aid of a fire extinguisher and a little water he quickly quenched the blaze before the fire company arrived. The Indians who composed the company were very angry with him for not waiting until they could get their suits on and reach the scene in dress parade uniform. The latter incident illustrates the childish notions of a savage race capable of a high degree of cultivation.
CHAPTER XXXVI
POTLATCH AND DEVIL DANCE
The potlatch was the greatest institution of the Indian and is to this day. It was the crowning glory of the Indian life and worth the meade of a thousand victories over the foe. It was the ambition of the hyas tyee, the politics of every ruler who could secure wealth enough to accomplish the great and glorious end. It impoverished the giver but brought gladness to the hearts of the people, and honor ever after to him who gave. It was a beautiful custom; beautiful in the eyes of the natives of high or low degree, confined to no particular tribe but to be met with everywhere along the coast. It no doubt had its origin far back in the misty past. Come from whence—who can tell? Perhaps, through the generations of the world down through all the ups and downs and changes and variation of mankind, keeping step with that most beautiful of all civilized customs, the gifts of Yuletide, for Christ’s sake, and perchance the very same origin marked the beginning of both.
Before the introduction of the cloths and implements of civilized man, the simple native satisfied himself and the people by giving of those things he could gather from the chase or manufacture by his crude arts. Skins of wild animals fancifully wrought and colored, the wild ponies of his herds, bows and arrows, his canoes, everything he sacrificed on the altar of the potlatch which meant a gift, to give, etc. When he was enabled to get blankets, knives, guns, etc., from the whites the potlatch took a wider range and not even the glittering yellow gold was spared the sacrifice. The great day set so many suns or moons ahead, arrived, great was the interest and excitement of the occasion. From far and near assembled the invited guests and tribes and with feasting, singing, chanting and dancing, the bounteous collection was distributed; a chief was made penniless, the wealth of a life time was dissipated in an hour, but his head forever after was crowned with the glory of a satisfied ambition; he had won the honor and reverence of the people.
The gifts were not always preserved by the recipients, especially with some of the Sound tribes for it was a work of a noble unselfish brave to immediately destroy whatever had been thrown to him. So it was that fine new blankets, guns, bows and arrows and the like were often destroyed scarcely before they touched the ground. At the Old-Man-House potlatches have been given within the residency of the whites when the frenzied Indians have fallen upon a shower of gifts and soon had them entirely destroyed. The blankets, easily secured by barter with the Hudsons Bay company’s agents, were usually hung up and with knives and daggers would in a twinkling be slashed and cut into hundreds of fragments and strips. The blankets in those days cost a great deal of money, $10 to $20 a pair, so that in a very short time hundreds of dollars worth of valuables would soon be destroyed.
Back in the distant past and not within the memory of the Indians of to-day the ceremony had its attendant features of a more heathenish kind, for the blood of sacrifice was spilled as a more fitting observance of the grand occasion. Slaves succumbed to the horrible rites and moaned out their death chants which blended and contrasted with the mirthful song of their possessors, engaged for the time in their dance of blood. An incident of the awful tragedies is inspiringly told, if such a construction can be put upon it, by an early missionary, an eye witness, whose description is re-clothed in the splendid words of Hezzekiah Butterworth:
“I once witnessed a potlatch and I hope I may never see such a scene again. I had landed among a tribe of northern Indians on the Whulge, where I had gathered a little church some months before, and I expected to hold a meeting on the night I arrived in one of the canoes. The place was deserted; the woods were all silent. Sunset flashed his red light along the sea, such a sunset as one only sees here in these northern latitudes. A wannish glare of smoky crimson lingering long into the night. As soon as the sun went down I began to hear a piping sound like birds in all the woods around. The calls answered one another everywhere. I had never heard a sound like that. I tried to approach one of the sounds but it receded before me.