CANADIAN INDIANS

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 December 1935, Page 12

CANADIAN INDIANS

POWER TO DIE AT WILL. Like some African natives, the In-i dians of Western Canada, seem to have the strange power of being able to die at. will. An instance oi tins is quoted by Mr W. M. Halliday, tor many years an Indian Agent, in 1 otlatch and Totem. A number of Indians were out fishing when suddenly an old man who was watching his net being hauled in, said: “1 have seen the devil, and 1 know I am going to die.” The others laughed at him and tried to get the idea out of Ins head, but nothing would convince him to the contrary, and, getting into Ins own skiff, he palled as hard as he could to the camp where he had been staying. On arrival there, he shouted to his wife, who was in the tent near the shore, and asked her to tie up the boat for him. He told her he had seen the devil, and he knew he was going to die. He went to the tent ami she walked dowm and tied up his skilf, after which she went' quietly to the tent to see how he was. When she got there she found him lying on the ground, dead. Nobody ever found out what had frightened him. 'rhe Indians, says Mr Halliday, seem to have no fear of death. A young woman was being treated for tuberculosis, but did not get better. So her father decided tc <ake her back to Kingcome inlet, as Mie had expressed the desire to die in her own illahie. He had sent to town and had got a. nice coffin, and, strange as it may seem to us, the girl lay in the coffin and slept in it for two nights on the way home to her own village, perfectly happy, perfectly reconciled, and very proud that when she died she was going to have such a nice coffin in which to be buried. THE DANGERS OF SMOKE. Their huts were heated by means of a fire built on the ground in the middle of the building, the smoke escaping through. crevices both in the roof and in the walls; but the Indians lived so much in this smoke, that until a few years ago almost all the old people were more or less bund through its evil effects. Since better ventilation and better construction of dwellings are in common use, blindness is becoming more or less rare.

The “feather dance,” which Mr Halliday witnessed as a young man, is an uncanny affair. A huge washtub was brought into the middle of the room; about twelve Indians in full war-paint, each carrying an eagle’s feather in his hand, entered and danced round it.

At a signal, each threw his feather into the air, when to our intense surprise they remained in mid-air, each feather keeping above the chief who had. thrown it. At a motion of the finger from the owner, his. feather would dart hither and thither through the room; sometimes going thirty cr forty feet away from the owner. The dance, we are told, was kept up for some time. Then suddenly, all the feathers fell into the tub. Immediately the Indians standing round threw buckets of water on them.

At another signal the feathers rose from the water and went sailing all round? the room, shooting hither and thither. The chiefs retired one by one, and as each went his feather would dart from the other end of the room into his hand, to be carried out with him. It tvas one of the most puzzling sights I have ever seen, and we tried with all our might to discover how it was done, but did not succeed.

The potlatch of Mr Halliday’s title is, to us,, a crazy and inexplicable custom. The word signifies a gift; bul it is a gift that usually comes back with interest! At the potlatch gather ings all matters of business were settled —in public .so that everybody could be a. witness. The things that were to be given away were arranged in piles to show them at their best advantage. Often the preliminaries took thirty or forty days. Orators were appointed and paid to sing the greatness and glory of the man who was giving the potlatch. His greatness was so much that he could not resist the temptation to pour out his wealth and riches on the assembled multitude. The gifts which were to be given had,- in many cases, been borrowed at ruinous rates of interest, and were sometimes given back to the very people from whom they had been borrowed, but even when this was done it was still incumbent on the borrower to repay the loan 'either in cash or kind, with interest.

In this way, chiefs often ruined ;hemselves and their families. “Potatching” is now forbidden by law.

MEANING OF TOTEMS

The totem poles, are the visible signs of the Indians’ heraldry. All these totems have a meaning, as the marriages and inter-marriages of the forefathers of the owner of the totem are delineated on the pole, and no one dare use any crest on his totem to which he is not entitled, as he would be laughed to scorn by the other Indians. Of late years there has been considerable business done amongst the Indians by the manufacture and sale of miniature totems; but with regard to these miniatures, the sad part of it is that many of them have no history of any kind attached to them, but are made simply to sell. Totem poles, we learn, are even imported from Japan and sold as Indian work. This has a certain irony when one realises that these Indians of the Pacific coast are probably descended from Japanese stock.