Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/13



THE INDIAN OF THE NORTHWEST 5

making of presents; and among the Eraser River tribes the shaking of hands even to the extent of twelve hundred at a sitting many of these are common to many journals. But on the coast, as pictured by the earliest visitors, the bonfires gleam through the mist; the canoes put out from shore; the natives sing in time to the beat of a paddle on the gunwale; some occupants, as the earliest observer, Fray Crespi 6 quaintly puts it, "make movements like dancing" ; the canoes make three turns about the stranger ship; the birds' down flutters through the air like snow and floats upon the water ; the chief, orating and shaking his rattle, invites the visitors to his own harbor, for the neighboring tribes are all "peshak" or bad; and the cry "Wocash! Wocash!" in token of friendship rings out, so Vancouver 7 records, until the visitors are "almost stunned by their graduations." Cook 8 would call these Indians "Waka- shians" from the word which was so frequently in their mouths. If visitors meet natives on shore first, the latter stretch out their arms to the sky to show that they have laid aside their weapons; or they display the white robe or a tuft of white feathers, or they cross their arms to the sky in token of friend- ship. In a few cases, as Bering 9 among the Kayaks, Gray 10 among the Nesomahs, and Hunt 11 among some bands of Bannacks, the natives fled and could not be induced to return. Here is an unpublished account from the pen of John Hos- kins, 12 one of Captain Gray's journalists, which, though em- bodying none of these enumerated ceremonies, preserves and defines the spirit: "I was received at my landing by an old chief who conducted me with Mr. Smith to his house; seated us by a good fire ; offered us to eat and drink of the best the house afforded; which was dried fish of various sorts, roasted clams and mussels. Water was our drink, handed in a wooden box, with a large sea clam shell to drink out of; the chiefs

6 Crespi: Diarv.

7 Voyage : Vol. III., p. 307.

9 Lauridsen : Vitus Bering.

10 Haswell: p. 33.

11 Irving' s Astona. I a Narratire: p. 37.