The guests of the village were escorted to the council-house, to which were also taken their belongings. Here they were supplied with venison, salmon, partridges, and dried berries; and here, after supper, they received many visitors, all anxious for a sight of the magic tooth. Most prominent of these were the head Shaman of the village, and the principal woman of the tribe, whose name was so unpronounceable that Phil called her “[The Princess],” a title with which she seemed to be well pleased.
She was the widow of Kloh-kutz, most famous of Chilkat chiefs, and the one who had presented the fur-seal’s tooth to Serge Belcofsky’s father. On the occasion of this visit she wore a beautifully embroidered dress, together with a Chilkat blanket of exquisite fineness thrown over her shoulders like a shawl, and fastened at the throat with a stout safety-pin. The Princess devoted herself to Serge, whom she evidently considered the most important person in the party, and to little Nel-te, who took to her at once. While she pronounced the fur-seal’s tooth to be the same that had belonged to her husband, the Shaman shook his head doubtfully. Then it was handed from one to another of a number of lesser Shamans and chiefs for inspection. Suddenly one of these dropped it to the floor, and, when search was made, it could not be found.
Phil was furious at the impudence of this trick. Even Serge was indignant; while Jalap Coombs said it was just what might be expected from land-sharks and pirates.
The Shaman insisted that the tooth was not lost, but had disappeared of its own accord. If it were not the same fur-seal’s tooth that belonged to their tribe in former years, it would not be seen again. If it were, it would appear within a few days attached to a hideously carved representative of Hutle, the thunder-bird that stood in one of Kloh-kutz’s houses, now used as a place for incantation.
“We don’t care anything about all that!” exclaimed Phil, when this was translated to him. “Tell him he can do as he pleases with the tooth, so long as he gives us the canoe we have bargained for.”
To this the Shaman replied that they should surely have a canoe as soon as the tooth proved its genuineness by reappearing. In the meantime, if they were in such a hurry to get away that they did not care to wait, he had a very fine canoe that he would let them have at once in exchange for their guns and their dogs.
“You may tell him that we will wait,” replied Phil, grimly, “but you need not tell him what is equally true—that we shall only wait until we find a chance to help ourselves to the best canoe in the village and take French leave.”
So they waited, though very impatiently, in Klukwan for nearly a week, during which time Phil had ample opportunities for studying Chilkat architecture and totem poles. The houses of the village were all built of heavy hewn planks set on end. They had bark or plank roofs, with a square opening in each for the egress of smoke. Many of them had glass windows and ordinary doors; but in others the doors were placed so high from the ground as to be reached by ladders on both outside and inside. The great totem poles that stood before every house were ten, twenty, or thirty feet tall, and covered with heraldic carvings from bottom to top.