Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/511

Rh The reactions of the Kootenays to the proposal to have their stature, etc., determined were often very interesting. Most of them at first refused altogether, and their prejudices were very difficult to overcome. One Indian told the writer that he could measure him when dead, and another said that he was not a child—others, however, were very unwilling that their children, in particular, should be measured. To measure the women, was, of course, except in rare instances, impossible.

With the language it was different. The Indians would often come to the writer, without having been asked, and inform him that they had some words which they wanted him to put in his 'book' of their language, so eager, apparently, were some of them to help in the preservation of their speech. This is a rather common experience with those who have come into sympathetic relations with savage and barbarous peoples. Amelu, after he had told the writer a great many things about himself and his people, would sometimes turn round and catechize his catechizer, asking him all manner of questions about the whites, their manners and customs, etc., showing great interest, and being sometimes much amused. 'What do you call this in your language?' he would often ask, as he came across something new or interesting. 'Haven't you white people any stories about Coyote?' he would say, after relating some of the Kootenay legends. Once, when an Indian was asked to tell the story of the sun and moon, he began to give a version of the Bible account of the creation, as he had it, probably from some priest. He appeared surprised when the writer informed him that that was the story of his people, and after a little while admitted that it wasn't Indian, and began to tell the Kootenay story of how the coyote and the chicken hawk made the sun and moon. Amelu, who was an Indian under mission influence, did not hesitate to shoot a chicken-hawk for the writer, although that bird is one of the chief figures in Kootenay mythology—he had more fear of 'medicine-men' than he had superstitious views of mythological personages. He would not eat meat on Friday, but would eat the 'saw-bill' duck, which, he declared, ate so much fish that it was practically fish itself. Another 'religious' practise of his was wearing the old Indian breech-clout, even when he had adopted the trousers of the whites. In a few other respects also he was a curious mixture of the old and the new.

The Indians are very prompt to notice any personal peculiarities or idiosyncrasies of speech, action, movement, etc. In climbing into the saddle the Kootenays swing off the right foot, and not off the left, as does the white man. The fact that the writer (amateur in his horsemanship) happened to climb into the saddle 'off-side,' as we say, gained him at once the name, 'The man who rides like an Indian.' This circumstance was a road to the favor of these people, who are always delighted to have one do instinctively as they do. The mastery of the