Joe Has An Old
Flintlock Musket Suggestive Of Hudson's Bay Times, Which He Wished To
Discharge And Reload.
So, stepping in front of the sail, he fired at
a gull that was flying past before I could prevent him, and it fell
slowly with outspread wings alongside the canoe, with blood dripping
from its bill.
I asked him why he had killed the bird, and followed
the question by a severe reprimand for his stupid cruelty, to which
he could offer no other excuse than that he had learned from the
whites to be careless about taking life. Captain Tyeen denounced the
deed as likely to bring bad luck.
Before the whites came most of the Thlinkits held, with Agassiz, that
animals have souls, and that it was wrong and unlucky to even speak
disrespectfully of the fishes or any of the animals that supplied
them with food. A case illustrating their superstitious beliefs in
this connection occurred at Fort Wrangell while I was there the year
before. One of the sub-chiefs of the Stickeens had a little son five
or six years old, to whom he was very much attached, always taking
him with him in his short canoe-trips, and leading him by the hand
while going about town. Last summer the boy was taken sick, and
gradually grew weak and thin, whereupon his father became alarmed,
and feared, as is usual in such obscure cases, that the boy had been
bewitched. He first applied in his trouble to Dr. Carliss, one of the
missionaries, who gave medicine, without effecting the immediate cure
that the fond father demanded.
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