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. In Memoriam