Winter is the time mentioned, because during the summer the men are generally dispersed in their pursuit of game, especially of salmon, which they dry and preserve for winter use. But about November they return to their homes, and a time of general feasting and enjoyment sets in. Cooking goes on all day, and the revellers are perpetually feasting, while during times of work they only eat twice in the day, namely, in the morning and evening, and even then do not eat much at each meal. Fish is the principal article of their diet, and dried salmon is the food which is most plentiful, though they also eat the flesh of the seal and the whale when they can get it. Of late years the Ahts have obtained rice and molasses, and apparently with a bad effect upon their health.
The pots in which the food is cooked are made of wood, the water being boiled, not by placing the pots on the fire, but by heating stones red hot and throwing them into it. Rude as this mode of boiling water may seem, it is much more rapid and effectual than might be imagined, which will account for the wide spreading of the custom. In more than one place, when the white man visited the natives for the first time, nothing impressed them so strongly as the fact that, when he boiled water, he put the vessel on the fire. The capability of making a vessel that would endure such treatment had, in their eyes, something of the supernatural.
An old native illustrated well the astonishment which they themselves felt when they saw a kettle placed on the fire for the first time. He narrated the story to Mr. Duncan in the following quaint but forcible language:—“The strangers landed, and beckoned the Indians to come to them and bring them some fish. One of them had over his shoulder what was supposed to be only a stick. Presently he pointed it at a bird that was flying past—a violent ‘poo’ went forth—down came the bird to the ground. The Indians died! As they revived, they questioned each other as to their state, whether any were dead, and what each had felt.
“The whites then made signs for a fire to be lighted. The Indians proceeded at once according to their tedious practice of rubbing two sticks together. The strangers laughed, and one of them, snatching up a handful of dry grass, struck a spark into a little powder placed under it. Instantly, another ‘poo’ and a blaze! The Indians died! After this, the new-comers wanted some fish boiled. The Indians therefore put the fish and some water into one of their square wooden buckets, and set some stones in the fire, intending, when they were hot, to cast them into the vessel, and thus boil the food. The whites were not satisfied with this way. One of them fetched a tin kettle out of the boat, put the fish and some water into it, and then, strange to say, set it on the fire. The Indians looked on with astonishment. However, the kettle did not consume, the water did not run into the fire. Then again the Indians died!”
Sometimes a man of consequence issues invitations for a solemn feast, and on such an occasion he seizes the opportunity of showing his wealth by the liberal distribution of presents, every individual present receiving a share of the property. Consequently, a feast always affords a scene of destruction. For example, Captain Mayne mentions that at one feast which he witnessed, he recognized three sea-otter skins, for one of which thirty blankets had been offered and refused. Yet, valuable as they were, they were cut up into little pieces about three inches by one, so that every guest might have a piece. As each blanket is to the Aht the equivalent of a sovereign among ourselves, the amount of waste may be imagined. Mr. Duncan, the successful missionary among these people, relates several instances of the waste of property which takes place both on these and other occasions. For example, a chief had just built a house, and issued invitations for a great feast. “After feasting, I heard he was to give away property to the amount of four hundred and eighty blankets, of which one hundred and eighty were his own property, and the three hundred were to be subscribed by his people.
“On the first day of the feast, as much as possible of the property to be given to him was exhibited in the camp. Hundreds of yards of cotton were flapping in the breeze, hung from house to house, or on lines put up for the occasion. Furs, too, were nailed up on the fronts of houses. Those who were going to give away blankets or elk-skins managed to get a bearer for every one, and exhibited them by making the persons walk in single file to the house of the chief. On the next day, the cotton which had been hung out was now brought on the beach, at a good distance from the chief’s house, and there run out at full length, and a number of bearers, about three yards apart, bore it triumphantly away from the giver to the receivers. I suppose that about six to eight hundred yards were thus disposed of.
“After all the property the chief is to receive has been thus openly handed to him, a day or two is taken up in apportioning it for fresh owners. When this is done, all the chiefs and their families are called together, and each receives according to his or her position. If, however, a chief’s wife is not descended from a chief, she has no share in this distribution, nor is she ever invited to the same feasts as her husband. Thus do the chiefs and their people go on reducing themselves to poverty. In the case of the chiefs, however, this poverty lasts but a short time; they are soon replenished from the next giving away, but the people only grow rich again according to their industry. One cannot but pity them, while one laments their folly.
“All the pleasure these poor Indians seem to have in their property is in hoarding it up for such an occasion as I have described. They never think of appropriating what they can gather to enhance their comforts, but are satisfied if they can make a display like this now and then; so that the man possessing but one blanket seems to be as well off as the one who possesses twenty; and thus it is that there is a vast amount of dead stock accumulated in the camp, doomed never to be used, but only now and then to be transferred from hand to hand for the mere vanity of the thing.
“There is another way, however, in which property is disposed of even more foolishly. If a person be insulted, or meet with an accident, or in any way suffers an injury, real or supposed, either of mind or body, property must at once be sacrificed to avoid disgrace. A number of blankets, shirts, or cotton, according to the rank of the person, is torn into small pieces, and carried off.”
Sometimes a feast assumes a sacred character, and such festivals are held during the latter half of the last month in the year, their object being to induce the demons who have charge of the weather to give them rain instead of snow. In one of these feasts, witnessed by Mr. Garrett, the principal part was performed by a female chief, who lay on her back in the middle of the house as if dead, while all the people assembled were making a hideous noise, howling, wailing, and beating with sticks the bench on which they sat, while a young man added to the hubbub by drumming upon a wooden box. After a while the prostrate woman began to show signs of life, and gradually assumed a sitting posture. In this attitude she contrived to jump round the room, and exhibited some extraordinary vagaries, the other occupants of the room alternating dead silence with deafening uproar at signals from her hand.