Читать книгу Trails Through Western Woods - Helen Fitzgerald Sanders - Страница 6

Table of Contents

WHEN Lewis and Clark took their way through the Western wilderness in 1805, they came upon a fair valley, watered by pleasant streams, bounded by snowy mountain crests, and starred, in the Springtime, by a strangely beautiful flower with silvery-rose fringed petals called the Bitter Root, whence the valley took its name. In the mild enclosure of this land lived a gentle folk differing as much from the hostile people around them as the place of their nativity differed from the stern, mountainous country of long winters and lofty altitudes surrounding it. These early adventurers, confusing this tribe with the nations dwelling about the mouth of the Columbia River, spoke of them as the Flatheads. It is one of those curious historical anomalies that the Chinooks who flattened the heads of their children, should never have been designated as Flatheads, while the Selish, among whom the practice was unknown, have borne the undeserved title until their own proper and euphonious name is unused and all but forgotten.

The Selish proper, living in the Bitter Root Valley, were one branch of a group composed of several nations collectively known as the Selish family. These kindred tribes were the Selish, or Flatheads, the Pend d'Oreilles, the Cœur d'Alenes, the Colvilles, the Spokanes and the Pisquouse. The Nez Percés of the Clearwater were also counted as tribal kin through inter-marriage.

Lewis and Clark were received with great kindness and much wonder by the Selish. There was current among them a story of a hunting party that came back after a long absence East of the Rocky Mountains, bearing strange tidings of a pale-faced race whom they had met,—probably the adventurous Sieur de La Vérendrye and his cavaliers who set out from Montreal to find a highway to the Pacific Sea. But it was only a memory with a few, a curious legend to the many, and these men of white skin and blue eyes came to them as a revelation.

The traders who followed in the footsteps of the first trail-blazers found the natives at their pursuits of hunting, roving over the Bitter Root Valley and into the contested region east of the Main Range of the Rocky Mountains, where both they, and their enemies, the Blackfeet, claimed hereditary right to hunt the buffalo. They were at all times friendly to the white men who came among them, and these visitors described them as simple, straight-forward people, the women distinguished for their virtue, and the men for their bravery in the battle and the chase. They were cleanly in their habits and honorable in their dealings with each other. If a man lost his horse, his bow or other valuable, the one who found it delivered it to the Chief, or Great Father, and he caused it to be hung in a place where it might be seen by all. Then when the owner came seeking his goods, the Chief restored it to him. They were also charitable. If a man were hungry no one said him nay and he was welcome even at the board of the head men to share the best of their fare. This spirit of kindliness they extended to all save their foes and the prisoners taken in war whom they tortured after the manner of more hostile tribes. In appearance they were "comparatively very fair and their complexions a shade lighter than the palest new copper after being freshly rubbed." They were well formed, lithe and tall, a characteristic that still prevails with the pure bloods, as does something of the detail of their ancient dress. They preserve the custom of handing down by word of mouth, from generation to generation, their myths, traditions and history. Some of these chronicles celebrate events which are estimated to have happened two hundred years or more ago.

Of the origin of the Selish nothing is known save the legend of their coming out of the mountains; and perhaps we are none the poorer, for no bald historical record of dates and migrations could be as suggestively charming as this story of the people, themselves, colored by their own fancy and reflecting their inner life. Indeed, a nation's history and tradition bear much the same relation to each other as the conventional public existence of a man compared with that intangible part of him which we call imagination, but which is in reality the sum-total of his mental inheritance: the hidden treasure of his spiritual wealth. Let us look then, through the medium of the Indian's poetic imagery, into a past rose-hued with the sunrise of the new day.

Coyote, the hero of this legend, figures in many of the myths of the Selish; but they do not profess to know if he were a great brave bearing that name or if he were the animal itself, living in the legendary age when beasts and birds spoke the tongue of man. Likely he was a dual personality such as the white buffalo of numerous fables, who was at will a beautiful maiden or one among the vast herds of the plains. Possibly there was, indeed, such a mighty warrior in ages gone by about whose glorified memory has gathered the half-chimerical hero-tales which are the first step toward the ancestor-worship of primitive peoples. In all of the myths given here in which his name is mentioned, except that one of Coyote and the Flint, we shall consider him as an Ideal embodying the Indians' highest conception of valor and achievement.

Long, long ago the Jocko was inhabited by a man-eating monster who lured the tribes from the hills into his domain and then sucked their blood. Coyote determined to deliver the people, so he challenged the monster to a mortal combat. The monster accepted the challenge, and Coyote went into the mountains and got the poison spider from the rocks and bade him sting his enemy, but even the venom of the spider could not penetrate the monster's hide.

Coyote took counsel of the Fox, his friend, and prepared himself for the fray. He got a stout leather thong and bound it around his body, then tied it fast to a huge pine tree. The monster appeared with dripping fangs and gaping jaws, approached Coyote, who retreated farther and farther away, until the thong stretched taut and the pine curved like a bow. Suddenly, the tree, strained to its utmost limit, sprang back, felling the monster with a mortal stroke. Coyote was triumphant and the Woodpecker of the forest cut the pine and sharpened its trunk to a point which Coyote drove through the dead monster's breast, impaling it to the earth. Thus, the Jocko was rid of the man-eater, and the Selish, fearing him no more, came down from the hills into the valley where they lived in plenty and content.

The following story of Coyote and the Flint is of exceptional interest because it is from the lips of the dying Charlot—Charlot the unbending, the silent Chieftain. No word of English ever profaned his tongue, so this myth, told in the impressive Selish language, was translated word for word by Michel Rivais, the blind interpreter at the Flathead Agency, who has served faithfully and well for a period of thirty years.

"In the old times the animals had tribes just like the Indians. The Coyote had his tipi. He was hungry and had nothing to eat. He had bark to shoot his arrow with and the arrow did not go through the deer. He was that way a long time when he heard there was Flint coming on the road that gave a piece of flint to the Fox and he could shoot a deer and kill it, but the Coyote did not know that and used the bark. They did not give the Coyote anything. They only gave some to the Fox. Next day the Fox put a piece of meat on the end of a stick and took it to the fire. The Fox had the piece of meat cooking there and the Coyote was looking at the meat and when it was cooked the Coyote jumped and got the piece of meat and took a bite and in it was the flint, and he bit the flint and asked why they did not tell him how to kill a deer with flint.

"'Why didn't you tell me?' the Coyote asked his friend, the Fox. 'When did the Flint go by here?'

"The Fox said three days it went by here.

"The Coyote took his blanket and his things and started after the Flint and kept on his track all day and evening and said, 'Here is where the Flint camped,' and he stayed there all night himself, and next day he travelled to where the Flint camped, and he said, 'Here is where the Flint camped last night,' and he stayed there, and the next day he went farther and found where the Flint camped and he said, 'The Flint started from here this morning.' He followed the track next morning and went not very far, and he saw the Flint going on the road, and he went 'way out that way and went ahead of the Flint and stayed there for the Flint to come. When the Flint met him there the Coyote told him:

"'Come here. Now, I want to have a fight with you to-day.'

"And the Flint said:

"'Come on. We will fight.'

"The Flint went to him and the Coyote took the thing he had in his hand and struck him three or four times and the Flint broke all to pieces and the Coyote had his blanket there and put the pieces in the blanket and after they were through fighting and he had the pieces of flint in his blanket he packed the flint on his back and went to all the tribes and gave them some flint and said:

"'Here is some flint for you to kill deer and things with.'

"And he went to another tribe and did the same thing and to other tribes and did the same until he came to Flint Creek and then from that time they used the flint to put in their arrows and kill deer and elk.

"That is the story of the Flint."

*****

Coyote was the chosen one to whom the Great Spirit revealed the disaster which reduced the Selish from goodly multitudes of warriors to a handful of wretched, plague-stricken invalids. Old women are still fond of relating the story which they received from their mothers and their mothers' mothers even to the third and fourth generation.

Coyote laid down to rest and dreamed that the Voice of the Great Spirit sounded in his ears, saying that unless the daughter of the Chief became his bride a scourge would fall upon the people. When morning broke he sought out the Chief and told him of the words of the Voice, but the Chief, who was a haughty man, would not heed Coyote and coldly denied him the hand of his daughter in marriage.

Coyote returned to his lodge and soon there resounded through the forests the piercing cry of one in distress. Coyote rushed forth and beheld a man covered with sores across the river. This man related to Coyote how he was the last survivor of a war party that had come upon a village once occupied by the enemy whom they sought, but as they approached they saw no smoke arising from the tipis and no sign of life. They came forward very cautiously, but all was silent and deserted. From lodge to lodge they passed, and finally they came upon an old woman, pitted and scabbed, lying alone and dying. With her last breath she told them of a scourge which had fallen upon the village, consuming brave and child alike, until she, of all the lodges, was left to mourn the rest. Then one by one the war party which had ridden so gallantly to conquest and glory, felt an awful heat as of fire run through their veins. Burning and distraught they leaped into the cold waters of a river and died.

Such was the story of the man whom Coyote met in the woods. He alone remained, disfigured, diseased, doomed. So Coyote brought him into the village and quenched his thirst that he might pass more easily to the Happy Hunting Ground. But as the Great Spirit had revealed to Coyote while he slept, the scourge fell upon the people and laid them low, scarcely enough grief-stricken survivors remaining to weep for their lost dead.

*****

Besides this legendary narrative of the visitation of smallpox there are other authenticated instances of the plague wreaking its vengeance upon the Selish and depleting their villages to desolation. In this wise the tribe was thinned again and again and as early as 1813, Mr. Cox of the Northwest Fur Company, told in his "Adventures" that once the Selish were more powerful by far in number than in the day of his coming amongst them.

There was also another cause for the nation's decline quite as destructive as the plague;—the unequal hostility continuing generation after generation, without capitulation or truce, with the Blackfeet. The country of the Selish abounded in game but it was a part of the tribal code of honour to hunt the buffalo in the fields where their ancestors had hunted. All of the deadly animosity between the two peoples, all of the bloodshed of their cruel wars, was for no other purpose than to maintain the right to seek the beloved herds in the favoured fields which they believed their forefathers had won. The jealousy with which this privilege of the chase was guarded and preserved even to the death explains many national peculiarities, forms, indeed, the keynote to their life of freedom on the plains.

It is possible that the Selish would have been annihilated had not the establishment of new trading-posts enabled them to get fire-arms which the Blackfeet had long possessed. This means of defence gave them fresh strength and thereafter the odds against them were not as great.

The annals of the tribe, so full of tragedy and joy, of fact and fancy, of folk-lore and wood-lore, contain many stories of war glory reminiscent of the days of struggle. Even now there stands, near Ravalli in the Jocko, a rock resembling a man, called by the Indians the Stone Sentinel, which touchingly attests the fidelity and bravery of a nameless hero. The story is that one of the runners who had gone in advance of a war-party after the Indian custom, was surprised while keeping watch and killed by the Blackfeet. The body remained erect and was turned to stone, a monument of devotion to duty so strong that not even death could break his everlasting vigil.

Notwithstanding their love of glory on the war-path and hunting-field, they were a peaceable people. The most beautiful of their traditions are based upon religious themes out of which grew a poetical symbolism, half devotional, half fantastic. And even to-day, in spite of their profession of Christianity, there lives in the heart of the Indian the old paganism, not unlike that of the Greeks, which spiritualizes every object of the woods and waters.

They thought that in the Beginning the good Spirit came up out of the East and the Evil Spirit out of the West, and then began the struggle, typified by light and darkness, which has gone on ever since. From this central idea they have drawn the rainbow Spirit-fancy which arches their dream-sky from horizon to horizon. They consider some trees and rocks sacred; again they hold a lake or stream in superstitious dread and shun it as a habitation of the evil one.

Thus, a cave in the neighbouring hills where rattlesnakes sleep in Winter, they avoided in the past, not on account of the common snakes, but because within the damp, dark recesses of that subterranean den, the King of Snakes, a huge, horned reptile dwelt, appearing occasionally in all his venomous, scaled beauty, striking terror wherever he was seen. A clear spring bubbled near the cave but not even the cold purity of the water could tempt the Indians to that accursed vicinity until by some revelation they learned that the King Snake had migrated to other fastnesses. He is still seen, so they say, gliding stealthily amongst deserted wastes, his crest reared evily, and death in his poison tail.

In contrast to this cave of darkness is the spiritual legend of the Sacred Pine. Upon those same gentle hills of the Jocko it grows, lifting its lessening cone of green toward heaven. It has been there past the memory of the great-grand-fathers of the present generation and from time immemorial it has been held sacred by the Selish tribe. High upon its venerable branches hangs the horn of a Bighorn Sheep, fixed there so firmly by an unknown hand, before even the tradition of the Selish had shaped its ghostly form out of the mists of the past, that the blizzard has not been strong enough to wrench it from its place, nor the frost to gnaw it away. No one knows whence the ram's horn came nor what it signifies, but the tree is considered holy and the Indians believe that it possesses supernatural powers. Hence, offerings are made to it of moccasins, beads, weasel skins, and such little treasures of wearing apparel or handiwork as they most esteem, and at certain seasons, beneath the cool, sweet shadow of its generous boughs the devoted worshippers, going back through the little superficialities of recent civilization to the magnetic pole of their own true blood and beliefs, assemble to dance with religious fervor around its base upon the green. The missionary fathers discourage such idolatrous practices; but the poor children of the woods play truant, nevertheless, and wander back through the cycle of the centuries to do honour to the old, sweet object of their devotion in the primitive, pagan way. And surely the Great Spirit who watches over white and red man impartially, can scarcely be jealous of this tribute of love to a tree,—the instinctive, race-old festival of a woodland tribe.

There is another pine near Ravalli revered because it recalls the days of the chase. It stands upon the face of a mountain somewhat apart from its brethren of the forest, and there the Bighorn Sheep used to take refuge when pursued. If driven to bay, the leader, followed by his band, leaped to death from this eminence. It is known as the Pine of the Bighorn Sheep.

Thus, it will be seen there lives among the Selish a symbolism, making objects which they love chapters in the great unwritten book, wherein is celebrated the heroic past. He who has the key to that volume of tribe-lore, may learn lessons of valour and achievement, of patience and sacrifice. And colouring the whole story, making beautiful its least phase, is the sentiment of the people, even as the haze is the poetry of the hills.