Читать книгу The Siwash, Their Life, Legends, and Tales: Puget Sound and Pacfic Northwest - J. A. Costello - Страница 13

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The history of the Old-Man-House (or as the Indians called it Tsu-Suc-Cub) if fully known would unfold a story as interesting as romance. At this late day its time and surroundings are so shrouded in the mists of the past that but only a glimpse can be had. Its habitats like itself have long years since withered and returned to dust. Probably the best and most authentic account of its history and purpose is the story told by Indian Williams, or as the Indians called him, Sub-Qualth, about 80 or 85 years old at that time, and long since joined to his fathers. Old Williams told his story through an intelligent interpreter also of the Old-Man-House reservation, whose name had been christianized to that of H. S. Alfred.

In the Tsu-Suc-Cub lived eight great chiefs and their people. Space in the big house was allotted to each chief and his people and this was religiously consecrated to them and never encroached upon by others. To old Chief Sealth was given the position of honor; Chief Kitsap came next, Sealth’s aged father ranked third, and Tsu-lu-Cub came fourth. These four Sub Qualth remembered and they represented one-half of the Tsu-Suc-Cub. The next four Sub Qualth did not remember but his father, who was a cousin of Chief Sealth had told him their names. There was Bec-kl-lus, Ste-ach-e-cum, Oc-ub, and Lach-e-ma-sub. These were petty chieftains with subordinate tribes and authority and each had a carved totem supposed to properly delineate and perpetuate the deeds of valor of himself and people.

In 1859 there were many of these carved posts remaining and yet standing in fairly good preservation with the big logs still resting on them 16 to 20 feet above the ground. Three of them remained in position in 1870, but during the next fifteen years all were torn down, or falling from decay, were carried off and lost to the historian.

The posts in the front were about 25 feet apart, making the length of the structure over 1,000 feet frontage with the width of the main room fully 60 feet inside. The big corner post was of cedar, as were all of them for that matter, and was of immense size, showing that the tree from which it was cut must have been seven feet through. Clear and distinctly cut on the front of the big totem stood out first and foremost the big Thunderbird in the proportions in which it had fixed itself in the minds of the particular tribe. On the same totem was carved the full sized figure of a man with bow and arrows, representing the old Chief Kitsap, the most noted chief for great strength and prowess on the Sound, save possibly old Sealth.

ALL THAT’S LEFT OF OLD-MAN-HOUSE

What a home it must have been. Although the family residing there was large, yet never a resident of Washington lived in a home more spacious. It covered the length and breadth of sandy beach like a king’s palace that it was. Three hundred and eighty-four or ninety-four yards, as Wm. Deshaw remembered, did it stretch away up and down the beach of the narrow Agate passage. Twenty yards or more in breadth it extended back to the edge of the little bluff where its long timbers rested as on a footstool, and high enough for the tallest Indian brave.

The outlines of the old pile are still readily traceable along the ground although it has been nearly thirty years since the Indians gave it up as a place of abode and took to constructing little huts and lean-tos along the beach and on the gentle slopes above. The attractive relic of the old structure and the one that lends the best idea of the old building’s original shape, is one of the log rafters still resting in position on two immense uprights just as it did in the days when the allied tribes hoisted its great weight into the air. It is a cedar log 63 feet long, 12 inches in diameter at the smaller end and probably 23 or 24 inches at the larger end. The uprights, to lend color to the great proportions the old building must have attained, are of immense cedar trees that must have been four feet through. The one nearer the water is 12 feet high and the other fully eight feet. The big timbers were first split asunder and the inside hollowed out and hewn away until a piece probably 10 or 12 inches thick had been left to form the upright. They have been hoisted into position with the convex or bark side turned to face the interior of the house and tamped into the ground until they became solidly set and able to support the great weight that was put on above. Back of the row of uprights that stood at the rear and furthest from the beach, extended another row of stringers or girders to the bank, supporting also a roof, and this greatly enlarged the area of the building. Up and down the beach are numberless posts and foundation blocks of the old house and all in a good state of preservation, as is the single big rafter and two uprights yet in position. These latter are only worn and rotted where they came in contact once with the other or where they enter at the surface of the ground.

An alder bush, a salal bush, and a weed or two have found a foothold in an old wind crack of the rafter and now add to its quaint and picturesque appearance. All else has been torn down or fallen down by the lapse of time and has either floated off with the tide or been burned up in their earthen fires.

Five hundred, six hundred, and as high as seven hundred Indians lived in the big palace here at one time. They lived here long after the white people came among them. The site had been their great village for probably hundreds of years before. Successive chiefs have sat in council here and great war dances and night orgies held through generations of time under the chiefs of the Sealth.

Great banks of crushed and broken and roasted clam shells that whiten the beach and cover the bottom of the sea as with a porcelain lining far out into deep water, attest this better than could have musty scroll or parchment. The entire sea beach extending back onto the high ground is but a bed of decayed clam shells, and even as high up as the Indian farmer’s little garden, soil had to be carted in and put upon it, in which the seed germs could take hold and grow. Below it was a bed of lime-like earth, the offal and remains of many thousands of Indian feasts.

Besides the vast amount of crumbled shell mounds there are other and smaller mounds about the site that look as if they might have served the purpose of an elevated fire place. The whole area is overgrown with a thick carpet of short sand grass which even now makes it a most inviting place for campers or picnic parties. Beyond the few things mentioned above there is nothing to remind one now of the interesting past hereabouts.

An interesting character still resides, 1895, at the Old-Man-House reservation. He is William Deshaw, whom the tides of time cast upon the beach at Agate point, Kitsap county, 27 years ago.

WILLIAM DESHAW, THE PIONEER AND INTIMATE FRIEND OF CHIEF SEALTH

From a Life Sketch

Deshaw, a rank copper-head to this day, is part of the flotsam and jetsam that came into the Sound along with the early tide of emigration. He was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1834, and was part of the early drift of Arizona, New Mexico and California. He went into the Sacramento valley a year before the others struck the coast and true to his nature of moving out on the flood tides soon left there and came this way. He has been shot full of arrow holes, and has among numerous other trophies five Indian scalps in his trunk of his own taking. That he ever remained here so long is entirely due to the climate. Let the rains of one long winter on Puget Sound percolate down a man’s back and he seldom gets away after that. He takes to it, as it were, like the moss on the roof, and becomes a fixture of the location. And so it was with the old Texan. He drifted in here for a stay of a month or two and he is here yet. He soon got mixed up with the natives, became a squaw man and never after that could he pull himself away. And why should he leave? He had wedded into the royal house of Sealth; wedded a princess, a grand-daughter of the chief of the allied tribes of the Duwamish, Samamish, Squamish, etc., and probably forgot about his old-time habit of drifting. Mrs. Deshaw, nee Princess Mary Sealth, has been dead these many years, and now lies buried in the little reservation churchyard on the hill across the narrow strip of tide water. There are, however, two fine looking girls and some boys left of the union, and in their society the old man is happy and contented. Speaking of the little “God’s acre” on the hill near the reservation church reminds us very vividly that within its sacred precincts rests almost all that there is of the races and tribes of Sealth. Eighteen new mounds have been added during the past year. Yet a little while and there will not be a solitary individual left alive to remind those of to-day that such a people ever lived. Father Time has wrought some rapid changes with the allied tribes since the whites came among them. The evil and contaminating influences that have ever followed civilization into the dominion of the simple natives, coupled in this case with their severe and taxing superstitions, have combined to quickly wipe them out of existence.

So quickly have the changes been wrought that whole families have disappeared almost in the night-time. A Siwash with a wife and eight or ten apparently healthy children might wake up to-morrow to find himself a widower without family. Men there are now at the Old-Man-House who have buried their third wife and living with the fourth. Klootchmen were pointed out who have married five different times and only the fifth man living. Chief of Police Jimmy Sealth is the fourth husband of his present wife, who is not over 30 years of age. She lost her first, second and third husbands successively, and with the first one buried seven children. The record of the second and third marriages was not given. Jimmy Sealth, no relation of the old chief, who besides being chief of police, was sheriff, prosecuting attorney, judge and general factotum on the reservation, has been married two or three times and buried two children by his first wife. In one little family plot in the reservation churchyard 23 graves were counted side by side. The dead are not alone buried side by side—they are piled in one on top of another in many cases, although there is a waste of wilderness on every side of the burying ground.

Disease has fallen with a heavy hand upon the allied tribes, but even in the memory of the first white man superstition has done almost as much in the labor of thinning out the population. Graves there are at the Old-Man-House that have been wet with the blood of human sacrifice within the memory of their great Ta-mahn-a-wis, William Deshaw. One man there is on the Old-Man-House reservation who has slain 11 children in the practice of their Skal-lal-a-toot, or hoodooism, and whose blood saturated the tomb of their hy-as-tyees.

Such in a few words is the rather sympathetic story of a people who hereabouts were the first in the land. A people whose Ta-mahn-a-wis men, or great medicine men, foretold the coming of the white people days and days before the Indians themselves saw the ships of Vancouver sailing from out the heavy cloud banks and high up in the air, for from such a source did the three ships appear to the simple natives as told now in some of their traditions. The Old-Man-House, or Port Madison Indian reservation lies about 15 miles northwest of Seattle and not far from the Port Madison mills, one of the big lumber camps of Puget Sound, now idle and almost tenantless, a result as much probably of extensive litigation as anything else. It is a mill town owned exclusively by the mill company, which furnishes all the employment of the place to its 300 or 400 inhabitants when the mill is busy. Now that there is nothing to do in the mill there is no occasion for remaining there and the mill men with their families have moved elsewhere and the rows of pretty whitewashed cottages are empty and voiceless.

The mill property is situated in a pretty little bight of the Sound, once a favorite nook of the Indians, hid away from view until one is right upon it. It is located nearly at the northernmost end of Bainbridge island, and the mill town at one time besides supporting a considerable mill population, was the county seat of Kitsap county. But during a few years past, however, the most officious and omnipresent individual over there was the court’s officer, who held the keys to the mill and looked after the property for the court pending final adjudication of the case on behalf of all litigants.

The Indian reservation lies about three miles distant from the mill and separated from it by Agate passage, a narrow thread of water 900 feet across at half tide.

The way over to the reservation is nothing more than a narrow trail hewn out of the woods a few feet up from the beach, and was apparently first cut by the men who strung the old Puget Sound telegraph and cable company’s wire to the lower Sound.

GRAND POTLATCH—OLD-MAN-HOUSE.

At the extreme limit of Bainbridge island is Agate point and directly across, the reservation. On the point is the old trading store of William Deshaw, first started in the early sixties, and has been a trading store ever since. Deshaw has been left in undisturbed possession ever since and there he is to-day, probably his only accumulation being his now motherless but happy family of half-breed boys and girls. Every nook and corner hereabouts appears remindful of the musty past, everything is interesting to look upon or ruminate over. Deshaw’s old trading store is a museum of antiquities, and its restless, gray-haired and slippered proprietor is the one living specimen and most interesting of all there is on exhibition. Sixty years old, yet he is apparently as full of vitality as he ever was. There is just as much fire in his small gray eyes and as much of a spring in the step as there was when he was taking the scalp-locks of the bloodthirsty Comanche and Apaches.

The old gentleman hearing our approach one Wednesday morning came shambling out onto his front porch and was soon in the midst of an interesting talk on the Indians with whom for so long he has been associated. Although the better part of his life he has spent among the tribes that first held possession of the wooded shores of the Sound here, he is by no means an Indian lover, especially of the renegade set which now has possession of Old-Man-House village. He has without doubt during the last 25 years talked twice as much Chinook and pure Siwash as English yet he uses the strongest expletives of the English tongue in speaking of his present Indian neighbors. “Lo, the poor Indian,” finds no sympathy in his breast. He thinks it a great pity that 14,800 acres of land should be kept exclusively for a few shiftless and unworthy Indians to live upon it to the exclusion of the white people, and so it appears. They have had these lands for generations yet there is just the narrowest border of clearing along the waters that bears any resemblance to cultivation, and that for the most part is due to the labor of a few white men rather than to the Indians.

“They never would work,” says Deshaw, “and never will. Kindness is wasted upon them; every kind act done them is returned with an injury.”

Probably the otherwise kind-hearted old man would not talk so but for the fact that the old Indians, those who gave allegiance to old Chief Sealth, have all been crowded out and either dead or driven away and become lost in other tribes by renegade Indians. These last are “cultus” people, who have been run out of and off other reservations and becoming wanderers and veritable Indian tramps have at last found a stopping place at Old-Man-House.

Deshaw says there are about 60 inhabitants on the reservation, big, little, old, young and indifferent, but the agent would probably give a larger number. Of these, he counts but six that are truly men of the allied tribes, once ruled by old Chief Sealth. These men are Big John, now chief, Charley Shafton, Charley Uk-a-ton, Charley Ke-ok-uk, one of the two honest Indians on the reservation, according to Deshaw, George Thle-wah and Jacob Huston, one of the old-time Indians, but a slave. None of these are of the family or descendants of the old chief though the families of Big John and Jacob have always been considered among the nobility of the allied tribes. Not even all the six Indians mentioned are good Indians, for Deshaw reckons but five on the reservation who care for a home or make any effort toward providing for their necessities in the way the white men have taught them. They prefer to keep to their old customs and superstitions; would rather troll for salmon and send their klootchmen to dig for clams than plant potatoes or milk a cow. Two or three years without the watchful care of the government and the very few whites who take interest enough to look after them, and they would drift back into a barbarism as deep as that of 50 years ago. The government pays a man to reside upon the reservation in the capacity of Indian farmer to see to it that the men with families and homes do something toward raising gardens and gather the fruit that ripens in the little orchards. The Indian agent proper does not reside there but anon visits the spot in his official capacity. That personage lives at Tulalip, Lummi, Old-Man-House reservation, Muk-il-shoot and one other. The present Indian farmer, J. Y. Roe, and his wife, have been upon the reservation a little over a year and are full of sympathy for the wards they watch over. They have done much to improve the situation on the reservation and give up all their time and a portion of the small pittance they receive, $50 a month, to do the work. Among the improvements in the village on the reservation the farmer has accomplished is the building of a new court house or town hall and “skookum” house, and a number of other things in the way of improvements to the small gardens and orchards.

The reservation forms a large body of land which ends in a beautiful peninsula between Squim bay and the narrows. The site of the reservation village which is also the site of the famous Old-Man-House, fronts the water on the south in a gentle slope, covered with half grown evergreens and the narrowest border of cleared lands set to orchards, flower gardens and vegetables. The most conspicuous figure of the village is the Catholic church, a perfect little model in its way, and as white and gleaming in the sun as a snowy peak. It will bear the utmost scrutiny for it is just the same in or out, far or near. By far the most interesting thing to be found there at this day is the relic of the Old-Man-House, which can just be made out from the porch of the old trading store on the opposite side of the bay. It is down close to the water’s edge and about midway in the little clearing. But how can one be expected to glean anything from its past and old associations without the presence of the big Tah-mahn-a-wis man along. So Mr. Deshaw shambled away after his big, rusty key, locks up his store and goes off for a whole day with us, perfectly unconcerned as to the propriety of good business methods.

At the waters’s edge on the reservation side of the narrows lives the Indian farmer, a sub-agent, and his spouse, a very easy-going, plodding, pleasant natured old couple. Old-Man-House is usually as serene and quiet as a Sabbath day, in fact every day is a Sunday in this respect.

There is a school, but no business, no nothing but what would prove to a white person a monotonous and unbearable existence. There is one irregular and vagrant looking street connecting with a little beaten trail that leads to the cemetery on the hill. Here is the populous part of the village. We lead the way into the inclosure and through the windings between the thickly made mounds, a large portion of which have a little emblem of the crucifixion raised above them. The old Texan with us has known, in their day, most of the Indians who are sleeping the last quiet sleep here and hesitates not to indicate who were the cultus and who were the good Indians. “That fellow,” he would say, “was as big a rascal as ever lived,” or of another, “he was a good Indian and a hard worker.” Directly he leads the way up near the north side of the inclosure where a large marble monument marks the resting place of some big tyee. There are a dozen small mounds in the same little plot and ranged on either side of it, but the only inscription is on the big monument and it reads:

SEATTLE

Chief of the Suquamps and allied tribes

Died June 7, 1866

The firm friend of the whites, and for him

the city of Seattle was named by

its founders

On the reverse is inscribed the following:

Baptismal name, Noah Sealth. Age probably

80 years.

That is the only bit of history there is about or on the monument. The little plot is not enclosed, and the weeds have full possession. The dozen or more graves in the same plot are of the family of the old chief, but the Texan fails now to call them by name. He however takes exception to the inscription as being incorrect, and in part superfluous. He objects to the name Sealth or Seattle, but says the Indian pronunciation was as near Se-at-tlee as the English language can reproduce it. The word Sealth, says Deshaw, was the translation of the old settlers who lived on Elliott bay. The old chief himself spoke the name for him a thousand times or more as given above, as did the people of the Old-Man-House. The Indians never knew the old chief by the name of Noah, that word being used probably but once, and that at the time of his baptism into the Catholic faith.

There are graves of other old-time chiefs in the little churchyard, the most conspicuous one being that of Alex. George, whose little monument is surrounded by twenty-two other graves, all enclosed in a neat white-washed picket fence. They are all of the immediate family of the dead chieftain.

On the way back to the village we stop and inspect the garden and orchard of the boss gardener of the Indians, John Kettle. Besides himself and wife, he has about a score of dogs of every hair and color, which set up a perfect pandemonium as we approach. Kettle is one of the old slaves, a Clayoquot sound, or West coast Indian, who was sold to a chief of the allied tribes when a boy by some other tribe who had captured him and brought him into the Sound country. Kettle seemed pleased at the interest shown his garden and orchard and said he had 160 acres of fine land, and some day would be a rich Indian.

THE OLD-MAN-HOUSE VILLAGE AS IT APPEARS TO-DAY

Kettle when brought into the allied tribes’ camp could not speak a word of their language nor could they understand him. He was almost starved. The old chief who bought him was with the family eating from a big kettle of roasted or boiled clams. When Siwash and Chinook failed, the old chief motioned to his slave to eat clams. John didn’t wait for a second bidding, and soon finished the kettle of clams. Then another kettle filled with the bivalves was prepared for him. John had heard the Indians speak the word kettle several times when dipping into the pot and he took the word to mean clams. So John began to call out as best he could,“kettle, kettle.” “Umph,” cried the old chief in Siwash, “he wants more clams. I have it, that will be his name, John Kettle,” and from that day to this the new slave was called John Kettle. The fellow is not over 35 years old, but his wife, who has been married five or six times and had a cultus husband every time, and who has been beaten all through her life, looks as if she might be John Kettle’s grandmother instead of his spouse.

The first “Boston” house built on the reservation is still standing and occupied by one of the chief men of the village. It was built entirely at the expense of William Deshaw as his first free offering towards a reform in the mode of life of the Old-Man-House Indians. This was a reform very much desired by the government at that time, but towards the accomplishment of which it did very little according to Mr. Deshaw.

The Old-Man-House agency was, according to this authority, very much of a sinecure to the early agents, a half dozen of whom he thinks, probably never set foot on the agency. Deshaw for several years acted as a sub-agent for these appointees and virtually had the say in everything at Old-Man-House or that concerned the allied tribes. He got to be such a trusted lieutenant that he would be intrusted with large sums of money to spend for the Indians and at one time had $18,000 which the government gave him and with which he bought supplies in Portland. This was during the incumbency of the late George D. Hill of Seattle as Indian agent. Hillory Butler of Seattle was another agent for whom Mr. Deshaw looked after things at Old-Man-House.

The first great duty with which the government charged Mr. Deshaw was the breaking up of the Old-Man-House and the isolation of the 600 or 800 Indians in separate households with the idea of inculcating civilized ideas of living. It was a hard task and one fraught with many disappointments before it was accomplished. The Indians were a curious lot. To-day they were your friends; to-morrow they were ready to plug you full of lead from an old Hudsons bay company’s musket. Finally he got one or two to make the first attempts at separate residence and by degrees got them all out of the building and ruined it from further inhabitancy. But in almost every instance the Indians wanted the work all done by the sub-agent and refused to lend a hand themselves.

Old Chief Sealth was a great power at Old-Man-House and lived for several years after Mr. Deshaw went among them. He became very friendly with the sub-agent and accepted his advice in everything and tried to make his people live up to the orders of the great father at Washington City. According to Deshaw, the old chief was greatly reverenced and to as great degree feared by the Indians. Sealth gave all the assistance in his power to Deshaw in an effort to break up the heathenish practices of the Ta-mahn a-wis men and destroy the superstition of their scal-al-a-toots, but these evils were never eradicated and to this day, but for the ridicule cast upon them by the whites, thy would still practice them openly.

The habit of burying their dead in trees and elevated places was in vogue long after Deshaw went among them, but was never done openly or with the consent of the old chief. Even the baneful practice of slaying the dead chief’s horse or dog and his slaves on the grave was religiously carried out for several years after Deshaw’s appearance whenever the Indians could do it with safety.

Deshaw tells of one prominent Indian now living on the reservation, Huston, who was a slave at that time and who was with his klootchman and his little daughter doomed to suffer death on the grave of their master, Chief Ska-ga-ti-quis. Huston got wind of what the Indians were about to attempt and, with his klootchman and 12-year-old girl, slipped away in a canoe to the other side of the narrows and took refuge in Deshaw’s trading store. Seventeen big and brawny bucks with Hudsons bay company muskets followed the refugees over and stormed the store. They rushed in clamorous and gesticulating and swinging their guns, and demanded their prisoners, saying they were going to kill them over Ska-ga-ti-quis’ grave. The prisoners were hid away in a little side building. Deshaw began parleying with the blood-thirsty fellows and directly several of them carelessly lay their guns on the counter. Deshaw, without attracting attention, moved up close to them and quickly pulled the guns over and allowed them to fall on the floor back of the counter. Almost at the same time old Chief Sealth, who had heard of the trouble at the store, quickly got into a canoe, paddled across and went rushing into the store. The old chief possessed a powerful voice and herculean strength.

“Whoo, whoo, do I hear; what do I hear,” he cried several tunes upon his entry, but the Indians began falling back and said never a word. Then the old chief’s little grand-daughter, one of Mr. Deshaw’s daughters, yet living, went up to the old gray head and in her Indian and childish way said, “Grandpa, they are going to kill the Hustons over Ska-ga-ti-quis’ grave.”

Then, “whoo, whoo,” puffed the old chief, and grabbing up a musket, prepared to slay every Indian in sight, but the Indians knew the old fellow’s temper too well and shot out of the doorway in a twinkling, and went pell-mell into the water and scrambled into their canoes. The old chief rushing after them grabbed up a big cedar rail, after dropping the gun (it was entirely too light for him), and tried to reach them with that, but they got away and across back to the village. The old chief kept right after them, and once on his own side called the whole village together and made the people a speech.

He could be heard distinctly on the opposite side of the channel haranguing them on the evil of killing their slaves.

“Mr. Deshaw, the big white medicine, did not want it done, Governor Stevens did not want it, Colonel Simmons did not want it, and the great chief at Washington City did not want it, and it must stop.” Such was the speech, as now remembered and translated by one of those most interested in the occurrence. The speech seemed to have a good effect, at least for the time. Guards were placed over the Hustons, and they remained out of sight for a week or more, and no attempt was again made to take and kill them in so barbarous a way.

Until quite recently several very aged Siwash resided at the Old-Man-House reservation. There was Jacob, aged about 75 years, a grandson of the old Chief Kitsap; old man Williams, aged about 85; William Kitsap, grandson Of old Chief Kitsap, and H. S. Alfred, both educated Indians. Old William’s daughter married a Kitsap county pioneer who as the years went by grew rich and prominent and his half-breed progeny promise to become honorary and intelligent members of society.

When old Williams was a boy his people were very numerous and happy, and dwelt on the borders of the salt water from Vashon island to Port Townsend On the beach in front of Tsu-Suc-Cub, were drawn up at all times hundreds of canoes, so many that all the beach was covered with them. Many thousands of Indians gathered and lived in the big Tsu-Suc-Cub, and the country round about it. There were so many that chiefs Sealth and Kitsap were very big Indians, and were not afraid of any warlike tribes. Sealth the first, and Chief Kitsap once headed an expedition against the Cape Flattery and Victoria Indians, but this was at so early a date that William himself was too young to take part. His father was a brave and helped fight the enemy. At the head of great numbers of war canoes they raided the villages of the tribes on both sides of the straits, and at Victoria harbor a great battle was fought. The older Chief Sealth, or as he is sometimes spoken of, Sealth the First, it was said could drive an arrow through the side of the biggest canoe, and his strength was most wonderful. This expedition was an epoch in the Indian history of the Puget Sound natives. It was successful and the raids that had annually been made by the tribes from the north on the southern Indians of the Sound ceased, and it was due to the bravery of the two chiefs Sealth First and Second, that it was so. To the latter was due the glory of patting a stop to the invasions of Puget Sound Indians by the tribes east of the mountains. Sealth the Second, he for whom the city of Seattle was named, exercised late in his life so powerful an influence over near-by tribes that he was able to consolidate six tribes into one, which took the name of Duwamish or the allied tribes. He was an orator; an arbitrator rather than a great warrior, and with the exception perhaps of a great campaign to head off the invading Indians from east of the mountains which he executed at one time most successfully, never was engaged in any great battle. Not only was that affair well planned, but it proved a great and decisive battle. No whites were living on Puget Sound at the time. There are no recorded facts regarding it. It was told by the father to the son, and was one of the cherished memories which the whites first heard when they arrived.

Old Williams was asked who did the carving on the totems and why no work of the kind had been done since the whites came among them. The old fellow said that long ago there were many skilled carvers of totems and fine canoe builders and their implements were made from flints, agates and elk horn, fashioned into the shape of rude hatchets and knives. Many, many years before, while the old Indian was but a little boy, one of the chiefs of that day secured a piece of iron or steel from a Spanish trader, and for years after this piece of iron was turned to good account by the canoe builders in the tribes in making their canoes. Before the year 1800, or about that time, as arrived at by computing the time given in his aboriginal way by old William, only horn and agate hatchets and shell instruments were used in the work of totem carving or canoe building. These rude instruments were fastened on to rude handles wound around and bound around, and were deftly handled in carving and fashioning the softer woods as alder and maple into totems, canoes or bows and arrows.

Then came Vancouver, and from him old Kitsap procured a good supply of knives and iron which for fifty years after were used and in the keeping of the tribesmen, replacing the older instruments of their ancestors.