He Was, To Some Extent, A Believer In
The Powers Of Missionaries, Both As To Material And Spiritual
Affairs, But In So Serious An Exigency It Was Natural That He Should
Go Back To The Faith Of His Fathers.
Accordingly, he sent for one of
the shamans, or medicine-men, of his tribe, and submitted the case to
him, who, after going through the customary incantations, declared
that he had discovered the cause of the difficulty.
"Your boy," he said, "has lost his soul, and this is the way it
happened. He was playing among the stones down on the beach when he
saw a crawfish in the water, and made fun of it, pointing his finger
at it and saying, 'Oh, you crooked legs! Oh, you crooked legs! You
can't walk straight; you go sidewise,' which made the crab so angry
that he reached out his long nippers, seized the lad's soul, pulled
it out of him and made off with it into deep water. And," continued
the medicine-man, "unless his stolen soul is restored to him and put
back in its place he will die. Your boy is really dead already; it is
only his lonely, empty body that is living now, and though it may
continue to live in this way for a year or two, the boy will never be
of any account, not strong, nor wise, nor brave."
The father then inquired whether anything could be done about it; was
the soul still in possession of the crab, and if so, could it be
recovered and re-installed in his forlorn son? Yes, the doctor rather
thought it might be charmed back and re-united, but the job would be
a difficult one, and would probably cost about fifteen blankets.
After we were fairly out of the bay into Stephens Passage, the wind
died away, and the Indians had to take to their oars again, which
ended our talk. On we sped over the silvery level, close alongshore.
The dark forests extending far and near, planted like a field of
wheat, might seem monotonous in general views, but the appreciative
observer, looking closely, will find no lack of interesting variety,
however far he may go. The steep slopes on which they grow allow
almost every individual tree, with its peculiarities of form and
color, to be seen like an audience on seats rising above one
another - the blue-green, sharply tapered spires of the Menzies
spruce, the warm yellow-green Mertens spruce with their finger-like
tops all pointing in the same direction, or drooping gracefully like
leaves of grass, and the airy, feathery, brownish-green Alaska cedar.
The outer fringe of bushes along the shore and hanging over the brows
of the cliffs, the white mountains above, the shining water beneath,
the changing sky over all, form pictures of divine beauty in which no
healthy eye may ever grow weary.
Toward evening at the head of a picturesque bay we came to a village
belonging to the Taku tribe. We found it silent and deserted. Not a
single shaman or policeman had been left to keep it. These people are
so happily rich as to have but little of a perishable kind to keep,
nothing worth fretting about. They were away catching salmon, our
Indians said. All the Indian villages hereabout are thus abandoned at
regular periods every year, just as a tent is left for a day, while
they repair to fishing, berrying, and hunting stations, occupying
each in succession for a week or two at a time, coming and going from
the main, substantially built villages. Then, after their summer's
work is done, the winter supply of salmon dried and packed, fish-oil
and seal-oil stored in boxes, berries and spruce bark pressed into
cakes, their trading-trips completed, and the year's stock of
quarrels with the neighboring tribe patched up in some way, they
devote themselves to feasting, dancing, and hootchenoo drinking. The
Takus, once a powerful and warlike tribe, were at this time, like
most of the neighboring tribes, whiskied nearly out of existence.
They had a larger village on the Taku River, but, according to the
census taken that year by the missionaries, they numbered only 269 in
all, - 109 men, 79 women, and 81 children, figures that show the
vanishing condition of the tribe at a glance.
Our Indians wanted to camp for the night in one of the deserted
houses, but I urged them on into the clean wilderness until dark,
when we landed on a rocky beach fringed with devil's-clubs, greatly
to the disgust of our crew. We had to make the best of it, however,
as it was too dark to seek farther. After supper was accomplished
among the boulders, they retired to the canoe, which they anchored a
little way out, beyond low tide, while Mr. Young and I at the expense
of a good deal of scrambling and panax stinging, discovered a spot on
which we managed to sleep.
The next morning, about two hours after leaving our thorny camp, we
rounded a great mountain rock nearly a mile in height and entered the
Taku fiord. It is about eighteen miles long and from three to five
miles wide, and extends directly back into the heart of the
mountains, draining hundreds of glaciers and streams. The ancient
glacier that formed it was far too deep and broad and too little
concentrated to erode one of those narrow canyons, usually so
impressive in sculpture and architecture, but it is all the more
interesting on this account when the grandeur of the ice work
accomplished is recognized. This fiord, more than any other I have
examined, explains the formation of the wonderful system of channels
extending along the coast from Puget Sound to about latitude 59
degrees, for it is a marked portion of the system, - a branch of
Stephens Passage. Its trends and general sculpture are as distinctly
glacial as those of the narrowest fiord, while the largest
tributaries of the great glacier that occupied it are still in
existence.
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