This man Kinneclimmets was particularly odious to Thompson, who would never join in the laugh at his tricks, but when he began, would almost always quit the house with a very surly look, and an exclamation of "Cursed fool!" which Maquina, who thought nothing could equal the cleverness of his _Climmer-habbee_, used to remark with much dissatisfaction, asking me why Thompson never laughed, observing that I must have had a very good-tempered woman indeed for my mother, as my father was so very ill-natured a man. Among those performances that gained him the greatest applause was his talent of eating to excess, for I have known him devour at one meal no less than seventy-five large herrings; and at another time, when a great feast was given by Maquina, he undertook, after drinking three pints of oil by way of a whet, to eat four dried salmon, and five quarts of spawn, mixed up with a gallon of train-oil, and actually succeeded in swallowing the greater part of this mess, until his stomach became so overloaded as to discharge its contents in the dish. One of his exhibitions, however, had nearly cost him his life; this was on the occasion of Kla-quak-ee-na, one of the chiefs, having bought him a new wife, in celebration of which he ran three times through a large fire, and burned himself in such a manner that he was not able to stir for more than four weeks. These feats of savage skill were much praised by Maquina, who never failed to make him presents of cloth, muskets, etc., on such occasions. The death of Tootoosch increased still more the disquietude which his delirium had excited among the savages, and all those chiefs who had killed our men became much alarmed lest they should be seized with the same disorder and die like him; more particularly, as I had told Maquina that I believed his insanity was a punishment inflicted on him by Quahootze, for his cruelty in murdering two innocent men who had never injured him. FOOTNOTES: [113] When an Indian dies, all of his property which has not been given away, is either buried with him, or, in extreme cases, burned, not for the purpose of accompanying him to the Spirit Land, but, so the people have told me, to prevent any temptation to indulge in the bad luck of mentioning his name. The only things that are exempted from this practice are the dead man's best canoes, his house-planks, and fishing and hunting implements, which, with any slaves he may possess, go to his eldest son. I have known the deceased's house and all its contents to be burned; but when this is not the case, then the materials are removed elsewhere, and another building is erected. Around his grave--a box raised from the ground on pillars, often quaintly carved, or a canoe, or a box fixed up a tree--are placed various articles belonging to him (or her). At one time they buried his money with him. But for obvious reasons this custom has fallen into abeyance.