cealed even from their nearest friends. Fasts in subsequent life appear to have for their object a renewal of the powers and virtues which they attribute to the rite: and they are observed more frequently by those who strive to preserve unaltered the ancient state of society among them, or by men who assume austere habits for the purpose of acquiring influence in the tribe, or as preparatives for war or some extraordinary feat. It will be inferred from these facts that the Indians believe fasts to be very meritorious. They are deemed most acceptable to the manitous or spirits whose influence and protection they wish to engage or preserve. And it is thus clearly deducible that a very large portion of the time devoted by the Indians to secret worship, so to say, is devoted to these guardians or intermediate spirits, and not to the Great Spirit or Creator."

The Indians north of the Columbia river and west of the Cascade Mountains had some habits and customs not common to those south of that river, or to the inland tribes. One of these was the "potlach," or givingaway custom, which prevailed among the Puget Sound Indians. From some unknown source they had long ago learned the beautiful lesson that “it is more blessed to give than to receive." It has been one of the great objects of the ambition of many members of these tribes, whether chiefs or not, at some time in their lives, to give a grand potlach, for which they would prepare years beforehand, by collecting all sorts of goods, useful or desirable among Indians, and they would utterly bankrupt themselves in order to give the greatest possible number of presents to their Indian friends and neighbors. These presents usually consisted of blankets, calicoes, knives, guns, canoes, clothing, skins of animals, and money in the form of silver dollars. Sometimes two or more Indians would combine their collections and join in giving one of these potlaches, by which they hoped to acquire power and political influence, perhaps secure a chieftainship in the tribe to which they belonged. The day appointed for the ceremony would be announced sometimes months in advance, and when the time came all the Indians invited would arrive in their canoes and remain until it was over.

The method of distributing the gifts is in many respects like the ceremony usually attending the Christmas tree allotments at Sunday schools in Christian lands, where the name of each scholar is called out, and his present is thereupon delivered to him in person.

The potlach exercises very often last several days, during which time the Indian, who may be giving away the accumulations of a lifetime, furnishes the visitors with provisions while they remain. After they are concluded he may have nothing left in the world but the proud consciousness that he has given the potlach, and thereby acquired a reputation among his neighbors and friends for generosity and enterprise, not otherwise to be secured.

Another custom, more generally recognized throughout the Indian tribes of North America, is Totemism, which is a complex religious and social system not yet fully understood.

The full significance of totemic carvings, legends, myths, and folklore has not as yet been determined. Fraser, in his work on Totemism, says: "A totem is a class of material objects, which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that there exists between him and every member of the class an intimate and altogether special relation. The connection between a man and his totem is mutually beneficent, the totem protects the man, and the man shows his respect for the totem in various ways, by not killing it, if it be an animal, and not cutting it if it be a plant. Considered in relation to man, totems are of at least three kinds: (1) the clan totem, common to a whole clan, and passing from generation to generation; (2) the sex totem; * * (3) the individual totem, belonging to a single individual and not passing to his descendants. The clan totem is reverenced by a body of men and women who call themselves by the name of the totem and believe themselves to be of one blood, descendants of a common ancestor, and are bound together by common obligations to each other, and by a common faith in the totem. In its religious aspect it consists of the relations of mutual respect and protection between a man and his totem, and in its social aspect it consists of the relations of the clansmen to cach other, and to men of other clans."

In the Indian mind there is and always has been a close relationship between the Indian race and the wild animals by which he has been surrounded and with which he is familiar. According to Indian tradition, his originally descended from, or was made by certain members of the animal creation, when they were supposed to have been much more powerful and intelligent than they are now, or have been in modern times. There is still a strong disposition among Indians to believe that these animals can assist them in their struggles for existence, or for supremacy, or for success in any of their undertakings. In some tribes it is the custom for a young On reaching his maturity and before taking upon himself the duties. and responsibilities of membership in his clan or band, to go out into some lonely spot in the mountains, and there by fasting and prayer supplicate the favor and assistance of some supposed friend in the animal or in the spiritual He did this under the advice of the old men of the tribe, who directed

man,

world.

him to continue his fasting and prayer for several days, or until his physical system became exhausted, when he was to lie down and sleep, and whatever he should dream of, whether eagle, bear, beaver, elk, should become his totem or his friend, to whom he should look, in time of need, for help and succor. In the course of his supplications he was instructed to ask, not for any special

thing, but to confess his need of assistance and if he dreamed of a bear, he was convinced that the bear came, or was sent in answer to his prayers to aid him in his undertakings, and ever after he looked upon the bear as his special friend and assistant, who would strengthen him when he needed strength or would assist him in overcoming his enemies, in any struggle in which he might be engaged. Thenceforth the bear became his totem, and he looked upon that animal as a friend and partner in all his undertakings. It became his totem, to be carved upon a pillar to be placed in front of his house, and a number of totems representing the different families of the tribe might be carved on one pillar, the totem of the chief placed at the head or on the top. All the men having the bear, for example, for their totem, were supposed to belong to one clan or band, and the social relation between them was in some respects a sacred one, fully as strong as any blood relationship.

As families rose and fell in distinction, wealth or importance, so the totem became, like a family crest, of more or less importance, becoming sub-totems, phratry or sub-phratry, according to the prominence of the head of the clan or gens, having a common totem. Judge Swan says, "The Indians can see but little or no difference between their system of Tomanawos (or guardian spirits) and our own views as taught them. For instance, the talipus, or fox, is their emblem of the creative power; the smispee, or duck, that of wisdom. And they say that the Boston people, or Americans, have for their Tomanawos, the wheurk, or eagle, and that the King George, or English people, have a lion for their Tomanawos."

An experience similar to that above described, for ascertaining the totem of each individual, was gone through in the preparation or education of the medicine men, who were thereby supposed to secure control of the spirits, good and evil, which was necessary in the practice of their profession. As all diseases were supposed to be the work of evil spirits, or to indicate their presence, it was necessary to drive them out before health could be restored.

Association with white men and the extension of the white man's laws over them, have ended slavery, polygamy, and war between the several tribes, but the influences of ignorance and superstition are hard to eradicate, and it will be many years before they are entirely overcome. The education of Indian children in the habits of industry and in the principles of Christianity is the only way to remove the incubus which weighs down the Indian character, debases his imagination and shortens his life.

Volumes might be written with reference to the ideas, habits and customs of these primitive people, but only a few suggestions can be offered here, which may lead to further investigation of the subject. Reference to them will be made later on, when the Indian war of 1855-56 will receive some notice.

CHAPTER XII.

LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION.

The closing years of the eighteenth century formed a period of unusual activity in the work of discovery and development on the northwest coast of America. Spain and France were slowly surrendering their rights and claims in that region to Great Britain and the United States. A long struggle between these two powers, for supremacy, or possession, or control, began when Captain Robert Gray discovered and entered the Columbia river. In the same year Vancouver made his surveys and explorations of the Puget Sound Country. While these events were taking place, a distinguished explorer, traveler and fur trader was making his slow and toilsome way, by land, in the same direction. This was Alexander Mackenzie, the first white man to cross the continent, including the Rocky Mountains, and to reach the shores of the Pacific ocean, through the territory westward of the Stony Mountains to the South Sea. He was the agent and representative of the Northwest Fur Company, the most powerful rival which the Hudson's Bay Company ever had in its fur-trading and fur-dealing operations. This company was organized at Montreal in 1784 by some of its enterprising merchants, for the purpose of meeting and overcoming the arbitrary methods of the Hudson's Bay Company in its dealings with the individual traders who had ventured into its vast domains. The headquarters of this company were at "Fort Chippewyan" on Lake Athabasca, and were under the charge of Alexander Mackenzie, a bold, resolute and able man, whose explorations stamped his name on the geography of all the west and north. In 1791 he organized a small party for western exploration, intending to prosecute his journey until he reached the Pacific ocean. Two years before, he had discovered the river which has ever since borne his name, and had followed it nine hundred miles north to its mouth in the Arctic ocean, in latitude sixty-nine degrees north, longitude one hundred and thirty-six degrees west of Greenwich. Determined, on his return, to find his way to the Pacific ocean, he left Fort Chippewyan on the 10th of October, 1791, and ascended the Peace river to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where he encamped for the winter.

The following June he resumed his journey, tracing that river to its Source near the fifty-fourth parallel of latitude, and distant about one thousand miles from its mouth. After making a short portage with his party of ten men and three thousand pounds of provisions and trading goods, he came upon the waters of a stream flowing westward, which he followed for two hundred and fifty miles. Thence he proceeded westward by land, and on the 22nd of July, 1792, reached the Pacific ocean, at the mouth of an inlet, in latitude fifty-two degrees ten minutes. This inlet had only a few weeks before

been surveyed by Vancouver, and thus the land and water explorations of Great Britain had been connected on the Pacific coast by Mackenzie.

In this same memorable year of 1792, in which Captain Gray had discovered the Columbia river, Vancouver had explored Puget Sound and Mackenzie had crossed the continent, Thomas Jefferson, then minister to France from the United States, was taking a deep interest in this region. As an American he could not feel otherwise, but there was something in him of the seer or prophet in the matter, beyond doubt, and he even then had visions of what his country might do in this far-off region at some time in the near or distant future. As early as 1786 he met, in Paris, John Ledyard, of Connecticut, who had been with Captain Cook on his last voyage, and arranged with him to go overland, by way of Russia and Siberia, to Kamschatka, thence to Nootka Sound and the latitude of the Missouri, whence he was to make his way by land to the United States. This project was not successfully accomplished because Ledyard was arrested at Irkootsk and compelled to return to Europe in 1787. Jefferson's thoughts continued, evidently, to take the same direction, for in 1792 he proposed to the American Philosophical Society that a subscription be raised to defray the expenses of an exploring party and that a competent person be employed as its leader. He suggested that it ascend the Missouri river, cross the Stony Mountains, and descend the nearest river to the Pacific. His recommendation was favorably considered by the society, and Captain Meriwether Lewis, at the suggestion of Jefferson, was selected to lead the expedition, and André Micheaux, a distinguished French botanist, was selected to accompany him. They proceeded as far as Kentucky, when Micheaux was recalled by the French minister at Washington, and the project, for the time being, was abandoned. Subsequently, after Mr. Jefferson became president and while the treaty with Napoleon for the purchase of Louisiana was pending, he sent a special message to Congress in which he recommended that an official expedition be dispatched in the same direction and for the same purpose. In view of the important results attending the Louisiana purchase, the great commercial developments which have taken place in recent years in this northwest territory, the diplomatic manner in which Jefferson placed the matter before Congress, that no offence might be given "the nation claiming the territory," the following extracts from this confidential message are particularly interesting at the present time. This message is dated January 18, 1803, and is addressed to the "Gentlemen of the Senate and of the House of Representatives." **"The river Missouri and the Indians inhabiting it are not as well known as is rendered desirable by their connection with the Mississippi and consequently with us. It is, however, understood that the country on that river is inhabited by numerous tribes who furnish great supplies of furs and peltry to the trade of another nation, carried on

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