Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]

Dance camp near the Mission of St. Ignatius, Flathead Reservation

[blocks in formation]

We have read much of late years concerning the Hopi, their gentleness and peaceable pursuits, but we have heard little or nothing of the Selish, living in their valley home, along the Jocko river or among the sheltering foothills beneath the heights of Sin-yal-min. Happily, the home of the Hopi is remote, their pueblos lie upon citadels of stone, and the way to them is paved with the burning sands of the desert. They possess nothing that greed can covet, so the Hopi are safe enough for a time, at least, until the pressure of civilization sends forth a tidal wave so sweeping that even the deserts shall not be spared. Paradoxical as it sounds, the Selish, in being more fortunate, have been proportionately more unfortunate. Dwelling in a fertile valley lush with grain and berry, watered with streams and lakes, their holdings were too valuable an asset for commerce to over

look, and it was therefore ordained that the pumpkin should flourish where the Bitter Root had bloomed and the ploughshare should supplant the arrow.

Before the last traces of the customs of the Selish vanish utterly under the blight of artificial conditions, it is well to stop and look back at their history, first in the light of recorded fact and then in the diaphanous glow of their own quaint myths and hero-tales.

When Lewis and Clark penetrated the unknown in their adventurous journey, they found a particularly gentle and hospitable people who called themselves the Selish, living in the Bitter Root Valley. A few of these Indians had seen the Sieur de la Verendrye and his cavaliers on their futile search for a highway to the Pacific sea, but of the entire tribe there was but a handful of aged hunters who had looked upon the face of a white man. They welcomed the strangers, offered them the hospitality of their lodges and manifested. a spirit of friendliness which sent the explorers rejoicing on their way. The white

men described them as simple, straightforward people, the women distinguished for their virtue and the men for their bravery in the battle and the chase. They were cleanly in their habits and honorable in their dealings with each other. If a man lost his bow or other valuable, the one who found it delivered it to the chief, the Great Father, and he caused it to be hung in a place where it might be seen by all. Then when the owner came seeking his goods, the Chief restored it to him. They were also charitable. If a man were hungry, no one said him nay, and he was welcome even at the board of the head men, to share the best of their fare. In appearance they were of the shade of the "palest new copper after being freshly rubbed." They were well formed, supple and tall, but Lewis and Clark confusing them with certain of the tribes living about the mouth of the Columbia River, called them the Flatheads, though they had never practiced the barbarous custom of flattening the heads of their offspring. However, in the early journals they were given the misnomer, and it has clung to them, libelous as it is, through the centuries.

The Selish remained in their native

Bitter Root valley, hunting buffalo and warring over that noble game with their enemies, the Blackfeet, without disturbance from the outer world, until a party of Iroquois came amongst them, led by one Ignace La Mousse, bringing tidings of a mysterious faith. That was the beginning of an impulse to seek the "Medicine" of the white man, and expedition after expedition-four in all-were sacrificed to the cause before a missionary from St. Louis came to teach the Indians the word of God. However sincere of purpose these good fathers wereand surely their black-robed figures loom heroically against the background of the past-they were the first feeble impulse of that civilization which was to bring destruction to the natives of the wilderness. In the footsteps of the fathers followed the gold-seekers and the settlers, the armed troops and Governmental grasp, and the Indians, struggling with demoniac fury were beaten back and driven from their own. In this sweeping survey it must be remembered that the Selish took no part in the reign of bloodshed and death. Peaceably they toiled in their garden plots after the buffalo were no more, or hunted smaller game.

[graphic][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

men, gave them protection in the valley, and when Chief Joseph and his band came through the land bent on vengeance, leaving ashes and blood in their wake, Charlot and his braves met the war party and declared that if one white settler in the Bitter Root were harmed, the Selish would rise against Joseph and his men.

Yet it was not long after this that the Garfield treaty was drafted and presented to Charlot to sign. In that document Charlot was required to renounce forever the home of his forefathers and retire with his tribe to the Jocko reservation, which included the region of Sin-yal-min. It was a stern, impassive gathering. Charlot, great chief, in reality king of his tribe, Arlee the war-chief, elected to that office by the vote of the people, and others represented the Indians, while the Government of the United States had eloquent and persuasive statesmen armed with documentary force and red tape to persuade Charlot that his evacuation of the Bitter Root was at once desirable and necessary. But Charlot was a man of shrewdness and iron will. He declined the offer of a pension and the privilege of roaming at large over the pastures of the Jocko. The Bitter Root was the home of his fathers. There they had lived from time immemorial; he, himself, was born within its glades; there he had grown to maturity and sunk, as sinks the sun towards its setting, into old age. He added with finality that there also he would lie down to his eternal sleep.

Arlee, the war-chief, had no such patriotic scruples. He signed the treaty thereby courting and receiving Governmental favor and by the decree of those to whom he pandered, superceded Charlot as Great Chief and drew the pension and other preferment that went with that high trust. Before this extreme measure was carried out, the old chief, with Duncan McDonald, Chief Antoine Moise and other faithful followers decided that if the President, the Great Father himself, understood, he would not be so harsh with an old man whose years to live would be few and whose wrongs were many and sore. So they went to Washington and told their story. Charlot asked for nothing but the "poor privilege" of living where his fathers had lived, and lying down to rest where

they had rested through the centuries, before the echo of the white men's booted tread disturbed the primeval quiet. He said, moreover, that he would never be taken alive to the Jocko. After this ultimatum, which was listened to rather coldly, coldly, the Indians went as they had come, shadows out of a gaily-colored past who aroused the frank curiosity, and often the fear of the orderly citizens of the capital. Their mission had failed; they returned to the Bitter Root empty-handed, heavy-hearted. Charlot Charlot might remain in the valley, the wise men had said, but in remaining he sacrificed his title, his land rights, his pension-in other words he was an outcast and a pauper.

For years he lingered on in his old, beloved haunts and happily there is no record of the indignity and poverty he suffered, but this much we do know: he

[graphic][merged small]

turned with all his will against the white man, and his former love was changed to hate. He lifted no hostile hand against his enemies-indeed, his hands were shackled in all but actual fact-but no word of the despised tongue profaned his lips and no expression of forgiveness softened the iron hardness of his face. At last, closer and closer pressed, he and his braves arrayed in the jealously preserved remnants of their war-regalia, war-regalia, issued forth proudly, like a conquering army, and entered the Jocko. There was rejoicing among the Selish, even those who had followed Arlee honored the royal Charlot, and paid him homage when, with the mien of a triumphant victor, he rode into the land of exile.

[blocks in formation]

A wealth of folk-lore and poetry will pass with the passing of the reservation; therefore, it is well to stop and listen before the light is quite vanished from the hill-tops, while still the streams sing with articulate murmur, and the trees whisper regretfully of things lost forever, and a time that will come no more. We of the work-a-day world are too prone to believe that our own country is lacking in myth and tradition, in hero-tale and romance, yet here in our midst is a legended land where every land-mark is a chapter in the great, natural record-book of a folk whose day is done and whose song is but an echo.

Already the young Indians, who are contaminated by alien influences, are neglecting the lore of their fathers, and the patriarchs, jealous of the tribal dignity and honor, are slow to betray their myths to those who may prove vandals and desecrate with mockery things sacred to the nation from whom they are sprung.

Το

trace these stories out is almost as difficult as to follow the spider's strand or to surprise the wild bird, yet the task is worth the labor. The scope of the present sketch permits the recital of only a few legends gathered from the Indians themselves, and therefore they have been chosen with some care. A foreword of explanation may be necessary to make their meaning clearer. The Indians believe that there was a time when men and beasts conversed together in a common tongue. To that era belonged Coyote, the mythical hero of the tribe.

How the Selish Came Out of the
Mountains.

In the long, long ago, the valley land was inhabited by a terrible Monster who fed on human victims. Through fear of him the Indians kept to the lean hills, ever gazing with yearning eyes upon the fertile fields spreading out in an emerald flood below. At length Coyote, the most daring of all the braves, challenged the Monster to mortal combat. The Monster accepted the challenge, and Coyote sought out the poison spider in the rocks and bade it sting the Monster to the death. But not even the spider's venom could penetrate the horned scales of the enemy. Then Coyote took counsel of the Fox, his crafty friend, and prepared himself for the fray. He bound a strong, leathern thong around his body and tied the other end of it fast to a great pine tree. The Monster approached with gaping jaws and poison breath, and Coyote retreated farther and farther until the thong stretched taut and the pine curved like a bow. Finally, the tree, strained to the ultimate limit, sprang back with terrific force, felling the Monster with a deadly blow. Coyote was victorious, and the Woodpecker, coming to his aid, cut the pine and sharpened its trunk to a point. Coyote drove this through his dead enemy's breast, impaling him to the earth. Thus the valley was rid of the man-eater, and Coyote, the deliverer of his people, led them down into the verdant fields, where they lived in plenty and content.

Next in interest to this allegorical story of the advent of the Selish into the lowlands is, perhaps, the more modern ac

« PreviousContinue »