Page:Cathlamet On the Columbia.djvu/79

 the wild rush and frenzy of a genuine war dance about the campfires of the Spokanes and Cayuses. These were performances to stir the blood and raise the hair. Nowhere along the seacoast were there any war dances to speak of. Even among the Hydahs, Tlinklits and Chilcats of Alaska the war dance was a spiritless, tame affair. The medicine dance, however, an entirely different thing, was at its best among the Coast tribes.

There were reports of Indian lodges in Western Oregon that were two hundred and twenty-four feet long, but this is probably an exaggeration, and a lodge sixty or seventy feet long must have been a large one. In such a lodge in case of sickness of some distinguished person, would be gathered at night a hundred or more Indians. In the sunken place in the middle of