Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/515

Rh This sense of humor is collective as well as individual. The writer was present beside the camp-fire one night, when one of the Indians was giving, for his benefit, an account of a government official who had recently 'inspected' the Canadian Kootenays. This individual was said to have insisted on taking with him all the appurtenances and conveniences of civilization, including a cook-stove, a feather bed, etc., and the group of listeners expressed loudly their merriment, as the speaker touched off the white man's peculiarities. The Indians were fully conscious of the fact that another official (likewise another white man, a storekeeper) was really very much afraid of them. They made this known to the writer in sarcastically humorous fashion. Indeed, the white settlers hardly are aware how much the Indians comment upon their appearance, their character and their actions, especially in a quasi-humorous way. One Indian actually told the writer, with 'fun' in his eye, however, the order in which the white people would be killed off, should trouble ever occur—a certain settler, who could see nothing good in the Indians, was to be the first victim, and the writer (if he had to be included) was to be the last.

The Kootenays take delight in playing tricks, not only upon one another, but also upon the whites. The writer had complained of the first horse procured from them as being altogether too fast for his liking and too 'wild,' so the next time he asked for a horse he was given a creature, which, except when he was in the company of other Indian horses, went at less than the proverbial snail's pace. The writer's indignant remonstrances evoked abundant mirth on the part of the 'guileless' natives. While measuring an Indian in the Lower Kootenay country, he had an experience of a more startling sort. The Indian suddenly rose to his full height, and, quickly drawing his knife from its sheath, pretended to strike him—the writer being soon reassured, however, by the loud laughter of the other natives about him. Tricks like this are much enjoyed by them.

In the mining regions of the Kootenay country, there are a considerable number of Chinese, who have taken up the claims abandoned by the whites, and manage to make a good living from them. The superior attitude assumed toward these people by the whites has its effect in the way the Indians look upon them. As a rule the Kootenays and the Chinese get along well together, but the former sometimes hector and bully the latter, and not infrequently Indians become semiparasitic, doing odd jobs for the Chinese, or imposing upon their charity. Many of the Indians regard the Chinese as quite inferior beings, and the poor Celestials seem in more or less awe of them. In jesting fashion, the Indians will call the Chinese 'brothers' or 'cousins,' but persistently deny any close relationship. One of the Kootenays, who knew that the whites thought the Chinese and