After I had left school and was recuperating at my father's house, a gentleman of the name of Wellover, who had known me all my life, and who was a plain man of the common people, came to my father's house to see me. His residence was in what was called the Burr Oak Settlement, distant about six miles from the town of Sturgis. He was a member of the Methodist Church and a very exemplary Christian. He seemed to be much troubled. He said to me: "Orange, you know I have been a believer in the Bible and its doctrines for many years. A man has been delivering a course of lectures in the school-house in our settlement. He claims to be a Greek and Latin scholar, and he is attempting to show that the priests have so translated the Bible that it is a deception and a fraud. Now, Orange," he said, "I want you to go down with me to listen to one of his lectures, and afterwards to tell me whether his translations are true or not." I said to him, "You go up to town and see William Allman, who is a graduate of Greenbury College, Indiana, and is reputed to be a good Greek scholar, and ask him to go with me. Tell him to bring with him his large Cooper's Greek Dictionary, and if he will go, I will also." He departed, and soon returned with Allman. I took my large Cooper's Latin Dictionary; we got into Wellover's carriage and we went to his fine residence, took supper with him, and then went to hear the lecture of that evening. We found a good-sized audience in attendance at the school-house. The lecturer, who had passed the middle age in life, stated in his introductory remarks that he would pursue the same course as theretofore, and show, by reference to the Greek and Latin languages, how the priests had translated the Scriptures; sometimes correctly, but in most cases, where their interests were involved, so as to create a dismal terror in the present, and perpetuate by fear, their power in the future. He said that if there were any present acquainted with these languages, he would be glad, if he made an incorrect statement, to be interrupted, and if the statement was incorrect he would correct it. He denied the existence of a God and the immortality of man. He further declared that religion, on account of its doctrine of hate and vengeance, made men crazy. I interrupted, and asked him what was the proof of the last statement; he said the proof was manifest, for that men babbled of religion, of God, immortality and hell, after they became crazy. I answered by saying that I had heard men babble of snakes in their boots, snakes in the bed and snakes everywhere in the room, but I never knew that snakes had anything to do with their madness; in fact, I said, such madness had a well-recognized and efficient cause. He said: "Don't attempt to be smart, young man," and I took my seat. He further declared that if man were immortal, beasts were also, for the Romans had used the word "animus" indiscriminately as to both, and that the priests had translated "animus" to mean intellect and what was called by them, the soul of man. I told him I thought he was mistaken. He rather uncourteously asked me what I knew about Latin. I told him that I had some knowledge of it and that the Romans used the word "mens" from which we derived our word mind, mental, and many other words of the same character, to signify the soul of man; and did not use the word "animus" for that purpose, or with that meaning. I read to him and to the audience from the Dictionary the definitions of "animus" and of "mens." This drove him out of the Latin language, and he and Allman had a spirited and sharp and somewhat personal dispute, about some Greek or pretended Greek word. The controversy showed that he had no knowledge, or only a very limited knowledge, of what he was talking about. He said, after the wrangle with Allman was ended, that he had been interrupted so much by the two young men from town, that he would not proceed with his lecture on that evening, but would close by telling his experience. He said that he had been a minister for eighteen years—nine years in the Methodist Church, and nine years in the Christian or Campbellite Church. He divided all ministers into two classes—knaves and fools. I interrupted him again and asked him, inasmuch as he had been a minister for eighteen years and classed all ministers as knaves and fools, what class he belonged to. He hesitated a moment and said: "I am willing to confess that I belong to the class of fools." "Then," I said, "that confession proves the Bible to be true, for it says, 'the fool hath said in his heart, "there is no God."'" The meeting dissolved, and he lectured no more in that settlement. His pretended knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages was a deception and fraud.
Indians and Their Customs
The Indians are fast passing away, and their customs and mode of thought are passing with them and will only linger in dim tradition. For over fifty-five years I have been in close contact with many individuals of the different tribes of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and California and I have taken considerable interest in the study of their characteristics. I have already stated that the Indian is an impassive stoic. If he has any human emotions, they are with the exception of anger, never displayed in his countenance. When angry, his countenance becomes fixed, sullen, morose and determined. He does not voice his anger, but silently nurses his wrath to keep it warm. He has no wit, but has a keen sense of the ludicrous, sometimes degenerating into short pungent sarcasm. This is the exception, not the general rule. He reasons from surface indications and has a keen perception of the absurd, or what he considers such. I have given one illustration in the narration of R.'s civilizing efforts. It is stated that an Indian chief said to General Isaac I. Stevens, in one of his treaty conventions, "We and our fathers have always possessed this country. We have no objections to the whites coming and enjoying it with us. The country is ours. Why do the whites always urge the Indian to go upon reservations? The Indian never tells the whites that they must go on reservations." On my return from Colville in 1855 I met an Indian with a fine mare. I asked him if he would sell her to me. "Yes," he said, "you may have her for fifteen dollars." I had with me a surplus of blankets and coarse but warm clothing, and I offered to trade him three pair of blankets and a suit of coarse clothing for his mare. It was a cold morning, and the grass was stiff with hoar frost. He had nothing on him in the shape of clothing or wraps, with the exception of a thin calico shirt. I told him that he needed these blankets and clothes to keep him warm. I asked him if he was not cold. He answered in the Yankee style by asking me if my face was cold. I told him "No." "Well," says he, "I am face all over."
The most thorough and extended system of Esperanto which ever existed, so far as my knowledge goes, was spoken on this Coast. It was an invention of the Hudson Bay Company, and extended and was spoken by the Indians generally from the northern portion of California through all of Oregon and Washington and British Columbia, and north of that along the Coast for a great distance. It was also spoken and understood by the pioneers, settlers and trappers through all this vast region. It was Spartan in some of its laconisms. As an illustration: I was appointed by the Court, in the trial of a criminal case in Southern Oregon, for the defense of three Indians on the charge of grand larceny. They were indicted for horse-stealing. The proof against them was clear and satisfactory. I labored to reduce the offense from grand to petit larceny, and I succeeded, for the jury brought in a verdict of "guilty of petit larceny." The Court sentenced them to three months' imprisonment each, in the county jail. When their time expired, the sheriff opened the doors and told them they might go; but, instead of going, they went to the further end of a long, narrow hall, and two of them squatted in the corners and the other between them against the wall. The sheriff came to my office and said to me, "Jacobs, I want you to go with me over to the jail. I can't make those clients of yours understand that they may go." I went over with him and found them thus situated. I told them in the jargon, or Esperanto, that they had paid the debt they owed to the whites and that they were free to go to their homes to see their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and friends. The center man—the oldest of the three—slowly arose and very emphatically spoke the following: "Halo mammook, hiyu muck-a-muck, hyas close, wake klatawa." This being interpreted means: "We have nothing to do, we have plenty to eat, we think it very good, we will not go." We had to drive them out of the jail and into the road on their way home. I walked slowly back to my office meditating on the philosophy of such punishment for an Indian.
Before I came to Puget Sound I had heard of a cultus potlatch. A potlatch is the giving-away of all of our earthly possessions without any hope or expectation of any return, either in kind or value. There was an Indian on the Sound known by the whites as Indian Jim. Jim had a wonderful ability to accumulate property; he was an Indian Morgan, or Rockefeller. He was an expert gambler and trader, and very industrious withal. He usually worked at the mills, where many other Indians were employed, and he not only saved the money earned by himself, but obtained, by his expertness in gambling, much of the money earned by the other Indians, and much of that earned by the white laborers. This money he invested in blankets—usually at Victoria. Some of his accumulation of gold he had changed into fifty and twenty-five cent pieces. He also purchased quite a quantity of calico and Indian trinkets. When he had secured a large accumulation of such things, he gave a potlatch. The one I attended was held on the tide-flats south of Seattle. As the time approached, many canoes were on the Bay, headed by a joyous crowd going to the potlatch. Jim was very anxious that I should attend the closing-day of the potlatch. I told him that I would go. He sent a large canoe with eight paddle-men to take me to the potlatch. So I went in style, I witnessed the closing ceremonies and Jim had enough to give every one in attendance, a blanket, or piece of money, or some gaudy calico, beads or other trinkets.
He even took off a pretty good suit of clothes that he was accustomed to wear and gave them away, substituting an old suit for them. He accompanied me to the city on my return. I said to him, "Jim, you now are a vagabond; you have no clothes to wear, no provisions to eat, and no money." He said that that was all right; he would soon get some more. He said it was all the same as that of the whites, but it was much better than the white man's potlatch. He said that whenever he met his friends he could see in their countenance a pleasant light. He also gave me to understand that it made a sort of nobleman of him. But he said when the white man died his children make a potlatch of what he left behind him; and, being dead he could not see in their countenances that light arising from what they had received from him. I thought possibly that Jim's philosophy had a touch of sarcasm, and a good deal of truth in it.