Page:Voyages in the Northern Pacific - 1896.djvu/81

Rh They are about two feet deep, handsomely ornamented and painted; the ornamental parts are the teeth of the wolf and sea-otter, which navigators have taken for human teeth. The paddles are made light and small, the length generally 6 feet, of which 2½ feet forms the blade; the lower end is forked like a fish's tail, and the upper end is crutched very neatly. In the canoes they keep nets, hooks, harpoons, and fish-gigs, etc., also long spears for spearing salmon. The Chinook women are short and very stout, with thick and often bandy legs. Their hair, which is jet black, they allow to hang loose all round their heads and over their shoulders, never cutting it off unless at the death of some near relative. They wear, as I have noticed, a petticoat made of rushes twisted over a string, with ends hanging loosely down. This garment reaches the knee, and keeps them very warm. The war-dress of the men is made of the elk-skin, which is dressed in the interior; it is very thick and yet pliable; an arrow cannot penetrate it, and I have even tried with a pistol-ball at the distance of 12 yards without effect. It is worn exactly as the common dress, but is doubled about the body. The men also wear a hat in the shape of a cone, with a string that fastens under the chin. These people have a horrid custom of flattening the heads of infants. When a child is born, they lay it in a small canoe or cradle made for that purpose; they then fix a pad on the forehead and bind it tight down, and keep it so till it broadens the face and forces the eye out, giving them a most