The Native Races (Vol. 1-5). Hubert Howe Bancroft

DWELLINGS.

The inland dwelling is a frame of poles, covered with rush matting, or with the skins of the buffalo or elk. As a rule the richest tribes and individuals use skins, although many of the finest Sahaptin houses are covered with mats only. Notwithstanding these nations are rich in horses, I find no mention that horse-hides are ever employed for this or any other purpose. The form of the lodge is that of a tent, conical or oblong, and usually sharp at the top, where an open space is left for light and air to enter, and smoke to escape. Their internal condition presents a marked contrast with that of the Chinook and Nootka habitations, since they are by many interior tribes kept free from vermin and filth. Their light material and the frequency with which their location is changed contributes to this result. The lodges are pitched by the women, who acquire great skill and celerity in the work. Holes are left along the sides for entrance, and within, a floor of sticks is laid, or more frequently the ground is spread with mats, and skins serve for beds. Dwellings are often built sufficiently large to accommodate many families, each of which in such case has its own fireplace on a central longitudinal line, a definite space being allotted for its goods, but no dividing partitions are ever used. The dwellings are arranged in small villages generally located in winter on the banks of small streams a little away from the main rivers. For a short distance up the Columbia, houses similar to those of the Chinooks are built of split cedar and bark. The Walla Wallas, living in summer in the ordinary mat lodge, often construct for winter a subterranean abode by digging a circular hole ten or twelve feet deep, roofing it with poles or split cedar covered with grass and mud, leaving a small opening at the top for exit and entrance by means of a notched-log ladder. The Atnahs on Fraser River spend the winter in similar structures, a simple slant roof of mats or bark sufficing for shade and shelter in summer. The Okanagans construct their lodges over an excavation in the ground several feet deep, and like many other nations, cover their matting in winter with grass and earth.389

      FOOD OF THE INLAND NATIONS.

The inland families eat fish and game, with roots and fruit; no nation subsists without all these supplies; but the proportion of each consumed varies greatly according to locality. Some tribes divide their forces regularly into bands, of men to fish and hunt, of women to cure fish and flesh, and to gather roots and berries. I have spoken of the coast tribes as a fish-eating, and the interior tribes as a hunting people, attributing in great degree their differences of person and character to their food, or rather to their methods of obtaining it; yet fish constitutes an important element of inland subsistence as well. Few tribes live altogether without salmon, the great staple of the Northwest; since those dwelling on streams inaccessible to the salmon by reason of intervening falls, obtain their supply by annual migrations to the fishing-grounds, or by trade with other nations. The principal salmon fisheries of the Columbia are at the Dalles, the falls ten miles above, and at Kettle Falls. Other productive stations are on the Powder, Snake, Yakima, Okanagan, and Clarke rivers. On the Fraser, which has no falls in its lower course, fishing is carried on all along the banks of the river instead of at regular stations, as on the Columbia. Nets, weirs, hooks, spears, and all the implements and methods by which fish are taken and cured have been sufficiently described in treating of the coast region; in the interior I find no important variations except in the basket method in use at the Chaudières or Kettle Falls by the Quiarlpi tribe. Here an immense willow basket, often ten feet in diameter and twelve feet deep, is suspended at the falls from strong timbers fixed in crevices of the rocks, and above this is a frame so attached that the salmon in attempting to leap the fall strike the sticks of the frame and are thrown back into the basket, in the largest of which naked men armed with clubs await them. Five thousand pounds of salmon have thus been taken in a day by means of a single basket. During the fishing-season the Salmon Chief has full authority; his basket is the largest, and must be located a month before others are allowed to fish. The small nets used in the same region have also the peculiarity of a stick which keeps the mouth open when the net is empty, but is removed by the weight of the fish. Besides the salmon, sturgeon are extensively taken in the Fraser, and in the Arrow Lakes, while trout and other varieties of small fish abound in most of the streams. The fishing-season is the summer, between June and September, varying a month or more according to locality. This is also the season of trade and festivity, when tribes from all directions assemble to exchange commodities, gamble, dance, and in later times to drink and fight.390

      HUNTING BY SHUSHWAPS, SALISH, AND SAHAPTINS.

The larger varieties of game are hunted by the natives on horseback wherever the nature of the country will permit. Buffalo are now never found west of the Rocky Mountains, and there are but few localities where large game has ever been abundant, at least since the country became known to white men. Consequently the Flatheads, Nez Percés, and Kootenais, the distinctively hunting nations, as well as bands from nearly every other tribe, cross the mountains once or twice each year, penetrating to the buffalo-plains between the Yellowstone and the Missouri, in the territory of hostile nations. The bow and arrow was the weapon with which buffalo and all other game were shot. No peculiar cunning seems to have been necessary to the native hunter of buffalo; he had only to ride into the immense herds on his well-trained horse, and select the fattest animals for his arrows. Various devices are mentioned as being practiced in the chase of deer, elk, and mountain sheep; such as driving them by a circle of fire on the prairie towards the concealed hunters, or approaching within arrow-shot by skillful manipulations of a decoy animal; or the frightened deer are driven into an ambush by converging lines of bright-colored rags so placed in the bushes as to represent men. Kane states that about the Arrow Lakes hunting dogs are trained to follow the deer and to bring back the game to their masters even from very long distances. Deer are also pursued in the winter on snow-shoes, and in deep snow often knocked down with clubs. Bear and beaver are trapped in some places; and, especially about the northern lakes and marshes, wild fowl are very abundant, and help materially to eke out the supply of native food.391

      FOOD AND ITS PREPARATION.

Their natural improvidence, or an occasional unlucky hunting or fishing season, often reduces them to want, and in such case the resort is to roots, berries, and mosses, several varieties of which are also gathered and laid up as a part of their regular winter supplies. Chief among the roots are the camass, a sweet, onion-like bulb, which grows in moist prairies, the couse, which flourishes in more sterile and rocky spots, and the bitter-root, which names a valley and mountain range. To obtain these roots the natives make regular migrations, as for game or fish. The varieties of roots and berries used for food are very numerous; and none seem to grow in the country which to the native taste are unpalatable or injurious, though many are both to the European.392

Towards obtaining food the men hunt and fish; all the other work of digging roots, picking berries, as well as dressing, preserving, and cooking all kinds of food is done by the women, with some exceptions among the Nez Percés and Pend d'Oreilles. Buffalo-meat is jerked by cutting in thin pieces and drying in the sun and over smouldering fires on scaffolds of poles. Fish is sun-dried on scaffolds, and by some tribes on the lower Columbia is also pulverized between two stones and packed in baskets lined with fish-skin. Here, as on the coast, the heads and offal only are eaten during the fishing-season. The Walla Wallas are said usually to eat fish without cooking. Roots, mosses, and such berries as are preserved, are usually kept in cakes, which for eating are moistened, mixed in various proportions and cooked, or eaten without preparation. To make the cakes simply drying, pulverizing, moistening, and sun-drying usually suffice; but camas and pine-moss are baked or fermented for several days in an underground kiln by means of hot stones, coming out in the form of a dark gluey paste of the proper consistency for moulding. Many of these powdered roots may be preserved for years without injury. Boiling by means of hot stones and roasting on sharp sticks fixed in the ground near the fire, are the universal methods of cooking. No mention is made of peculiar customs in eating; to eat often and much is the aim; the style of serving is a secondary consideration.393 Life with all