They Adapted Many
Articles Of Finery, Also, To Their Own Previous Tastes.
Both
sexes were fond of adorning themselves with bracelets of iron,
brass, or copper.
They were delighted, also, with blue and white
beads, particularly the former, and wore broad tight bands of
them round the waist and ankles, large rolls of them round the
neck, and pendants of them in the ears. The men, especially, who
in savage life carry a passion for personal decoration further
than the females, did not think their gala equipments complete
unless they had a jewel of hiaqua, or wampum, dangling at the
nose. Thus arrayed, their hair besmeared with fish oil, and their
bodies bedaubed with red clay, they considered themselves
irresistible.
When on warlike expeditions, they painted their faces and bodies
in the most hideous and grotesque manner, according to the
universal practice of American savages. Their arms were bows and
arrows, spears, and war clubs. Some wore a corselet of pieces of
hard wood laced together with bear grass, so as to form a light
coat of mail, pliant to the body; and a kind of casque of cedar
bark, leather, and bear grass, sufficient to protect the head
from an arrow or war club. A more complete article of defensive
armor was a buff jerkin or shirt of great thickness, made of
doublings of elk skin, and reaching to the feet, holes being left
for the head and arms. This was perfectly arrowproof; add to
which, it was often endowed with charmed virtues, by the spells
and mystic ceremonials of the medicine man, or conjurer.
Of the peculiar custom, prevalent among these people, of
flattening the head, we have already spoken. It is one of those
instances of human caprice, like the crippling of the feet of
females in China, which are quite incomprehensible. This custom
prevails principally among the tribes on the sea-coast, and about
the lower parts of the rivers. How far it extends along the coast
we are not able to ascertain. Some of the tribes, both north and
south of the Columbia, practice it; but they all speak the
Chinook language, and probably originated from the same stock. As
far as we can learn, the remoter tribes, which speak an entirely
different language, do not flatten the head. This absurd custom
declines, also, in receding from the shores of the Pacific; few
traces of it are to be found among the tribes of the Rocky
Mountains, and after crossing the mountains it disappears
altogether. Those Indians, therefore, about the head waters of
the Columbia, and in the solitary mountain regions, who are often
called Flatheads, must not be supposed to be characterized by
this deformity. It is an appellation often given by the hunters
east of the mountain chain, to all western Indians, excepting the
Snakes.
The religious belief of these people was extremely limited and
confined; or rather, in all probability, their explanations were
but little understood by their visitors. They had an idea of a
benevolent and omnipotent spirit, the creator of all things. They
represent him as assuming various shapes at pleasure, but
generally that of an immense bird. He usually inhabits the sun,
but occasionally wings his way through the aerial regions, and
sees all that is doing upon earth. Should anything displease him,
he vents his wrath in terrific storms and tempests, the lightning
being the flashes of his eyes, and the thunder the clapping of
his wings. To propitiate his favor they offer to him annual
sacrifices of salmon and venison, the first fruits of their
fishing and hunting.
Besides this aerial spirit they believe in an inferior one, who
inhabits the fire, and of whom they are in perpetual dread, as,
though he possesses equally the power of good and evil, the evil
is apt to predominate. They endeavor, therefore, to keep him in
good humor by frequent offerings. He is supposed also to have
great influence with the winged spirit, their sovereign protector
and benefactor. They implore him, therefore, to act as their
interpreter, and procure them all desirable things, such as
success in fishing and hunting, abundance of game, fleet horses,
obedient wives, and male children.
These Indians have likewise their priests, or conjurers, or
medicine men, who pretend to be in the confidence of the deities,
and the expounders and enforcers of their will. Each of these
medicine men has his idols carved in wood, representing the
spirits of the air and of the fire, under some rude and grotesque
form of a horse, a bear, a beaver, or other quadruped, or that of
bird or fish. These idols are hung round with amulets and votive
offerings, such as beavers' teeth, and bears' and eagles' claws.
When any chief personage is on his death-bed, or dangerously ill,
the medicine men are sent for. Each brings with him his idols,
with which he retires into a canoe to hold a consultation. As
doctors are prone to disagree, so these medicine men have now and
then a violent altercation as to the malady of the patient, or
the treatment of it. To settle this they beat their idols soundly
against each other; whichever first loses a tooth or a claw is
considered as confuted, and his votary retires from the field.
Polygamy is not only allowed, but considered honorable, and the
greater number of wives a man can maintain, the more important is
he in the eyes of the tribe. The first wife, however, takes rank
of all the others, and is considered mistress of the house. Still
the domestic establishment is liable to jealousies and cabals,
and the lord and master has much difficulty in maintaining
harmony in his jangling household.
In the manuscript from which we draw many of these particulars,
it is stated that he who exceeds his neighbors in the number of
his wives, male children, and slaves, is elected chief of the
village; a title to office which we do not recollect ever before
to have met with.
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