Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget SoundDenny, Emily Inez
History
Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound
Denny, Emily Inez
Indians of North America -- Northwestern States; Oregon Territory -- History; Washington (State) -- History
This Indian received his name from a limp occasioned by a gunshot wound
inflicted by Lower Sound Indians on one of their raids. He was just
recovering when the white people settled on Elliott Bay.
The very mention of these raids must have been terrifying to our
Indians, as we called those who lived on the Upper Sound. On one
occasion as a party of them were digging clams on the eastern shore of
Admiralty Inlet, north of Meadow Point, they were attacked by their
northern enemies, who shot two or three while the rest _klatawaw-ed_
with all the _hyak_ (hurry) possible and hid themselves.
CHAPTER II.
PIONEER JOKES AND ANECDOTES.
In early days, the preachers came in for some rather severe criticisms,
although the roughest of the frontiersmen had a genuine reverence for
their calling.
Ministers of the Gospel, as well as others, were obliged to turn the
hand to toil with ax and saw. Now these tools require frequent recourse
to sharpening processes and the minister with ax on shoulder, requesting
the privilege of grinding that useful article on one of the few
grindstones in the settlement occasioned no surprise, but when he
prepared to grind by putting the handle on "wrong side to," gave it a
brisk turn and snapped it off short, the disgust of the owner found vent
in the caustic comment, "Well, if you're such a blame fool as that, I'll
never go to hear you preach in the world!"
James G. Swan tells of an amusing experience with a Neah Bay Indian
chief, in these words:
"I had a lively time with old Kobetsi, the war chief, whose name
was Kobetsi-bis, which in the Makah language means frost. I had
been directed by Agent Webster to make a survey of the
reservation as far south as the Tsoess river, where Kobetsi
lived, and claimed exclusive ownership to the cranberry meadows
along the bank of that river. He was then at his summer residence
on Tatoosh Island. The Makah Indians had seen and understood
something of the mariner's compass, but a surveyor's compass was
a riddle to them.
"A slave of Kobetsi, who had seen me at work on the cranberry
meadows, hurried to Tatoosh Island and reported that I was
working a tamanuse, or magic, by which I could collect all the
cranberries in one pile, and that Peter had sold me the land.
This enraged the old ruffian, and he came up to Neah Bay with
sixteen braves, with their faces painted black, their long hair
tied in a knot on top of their heads with spruce twigs, their
regular war paint, and all whooping and yelling. The old fellow
declared he would have my head. Peter and the others laughed at
him, and I explained to him what I had been about. He was
pacified with me, but on his return to Tatoosh Island he shot the
slave dead for making a fool of his chief."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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