"Whin Oi come to th' sun was hoigh. Ut must o' bin tree hours Oi laid there sinseless. Oi throied to git up, but me legs wuz dead. Oi cud pull mesilf up a little wid me arrms, an' there Oi saw fur th' furrst toim th' baste thut bruk me. He wuz lyin' besoid me, stone dead. 'Twas all th' joy Oi had.
"Well, there Oi wuz, undher all th' logs an' brush, an' down in a little hollow in th' muck—an' helpless. 'Twas too fur away to make Steve hear. Oi hollered as best Oi cud, but 'twas no use. Th' bear hadn't left me much breath. Then Oi thought Oi'd thry annyhow. Me arrums wuz good, an' th' bushes wuz thick, so Oi begun to pull meself along troo th' muck by me hands, usin' me knoif whin th' bushes blocked me. It tuck me two hours to gain th' top av th' hill in soight av th' camp, an' anither to make a flag av a bit o' ma shurrt an' wave it on a pole so that Steve cud see it. He drug me down to camp, put me in th' canoe, an' here Oi am wid all th' man squose out av me, bad cess to th' bear. Ef anny one says anny man c'n fight anny bear wid his two han's an' bate it, tell 'im from me he's a loiarr."
We raised a purse and sent Big Mike on the monthly steamboat to Victoria. He lived several years. They gave him the position of watchman on the wharves, and we used to see him—a pathetic figure, creeping slowly about the dock, first with a pair of crutches and then with a cane. He was never a man again, after his encounter with the hootz.
Native Houses, Showing Totem Poles
In such a house Snook lived
But although the hootz was so strong and so fierce there was in almost every Indian tribe one who would attack and kill him. In the Stickeen tribe this man's name was Snook. Tilly, our star pupil and my interpreter, proudly pointed him out, one day when I was down in the Indian village, as her granduncle and the head of the family.
I had never before seen Snook. He never came to church or to my house. He must have been sixty or sixty-five years old—a great, stalwart, big-boned savage with a huge head and a tremendous jaw. He was almost always absent from Fort Wrangell, hunting in the mountains or fishing among the islands. "My gran'fader, the greatest hootz-hunter in the world," was Tilly's introduction.
It was on the occasion of a visit with Tilly to the community house of her family. As she spoke she went behind the carved totemic corner post which supported the roof, and brought forth old Snook's most valuable and proudest possession. It was a beautiful spear. The shaft was of crabapple wood and eight feet long, thick enough for a good grip, and polished until it shone like brown granite. It was carved all over with the totemic images of the eagle and the brown bear, the totems of Snook's family. The head was made of a large steel rasp and was a foot and a half long, five inches across in the widest place, finely pointed, the edges sharp as a razor. The handle of the spear-head was let into the end of the shaft in a very ingenious way, and secured by many tightly wrapped turns of a cord of deer-sinew. It was a most perfect and ferocious weapon. I learned that the chief of another tribe had offered a slave, whose value was five hundred blankets, for the spear, and his offer had been refused.
All efforts to get Snook to talk about his hunting exploits were unavailing. He only grunted and went on with some carving with which he was occupied. But Sam Tahtain, a member of Snook's family, who was noted for his powers of oratory, described most graphically, in a mixture of Chinook, Thlinget and bad English, Snook's way of killing the big bears. He acted it so perfectly that even if I had not understood a word, the scene would have stood out very vividly before my mental vision. He showed the hootz grubbing among mossy logs and flirting the salmon out of a swift mountain stream; then Snook came in sight, creeping stealthily through the forest, a flintlock musket in one hand, his spear in the other. From that point the story grew more animated and the gestures more rapid to the climax. I can best tell it in the present tense: