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4. Owhhigh
- University of Nebraska Press
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4. Owhhigh It was harsh penance to a bootless man to tramp the natural Macadam1 of minced trap-rock on the plateau above the Sound. The little pebbles of the adust2 volcanic pavement cut my moccasined feet like unboiled peas of pilgrimage. I marched along under the oaks as stately as frequent limping permitted. My motley retinue followed me humbly, bearing “ikta,”3 my traps, and their own plunder. Their demeanor was crushed and cringing, greatly changed since the truculent scene over the captured lumoti, which I still kept as a trophy, hung at my waist to balance my pistol. After a walk of a mile, with my body-guard of shabby S’Klalam aristocrats, I entered the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fort of Nisqually. Disrepute draggled after me, but my character was already established in a previous visit. I had left Dr. Tolmie, the factor, at Vancouver ’s Island; Mr. H., his substitute, received me hospitably at the postern.4 Nisqually is a palisaded enclosure, two hundred feet Owhhigh 37 square. Bartizan towers protect its corners. Within are blockhouses for goods and furs, and one-story cottages for residence.5 Indian leaguers have of yore beset this fort. Indians have lifted Indians up toward the fifteenth and topmost foot of the fir palisades. Shots from the loopholes of the bartizans dropped the assailants, and left them lying on the natural Macadam without. Whereupon the survivors retired, and consulted about fire; but that fatal foe was also defeated by the death of every incendiary as he approached. To visit such a place is to recall and illustrate all our early NewEngland history. Our forefathers fled, in King Philip’s6 time, to just such refuges. Personal contact with a similar state of facts makes their forgotten perils real. In that recent antiquity, pioneers exposed to the indiscriminate revenge of the savage flew from cabin and clearing to stockades far less defensible than this. Better its insecure shelter for wife and child than the terror of a forest forever seeming aglare with cruel eyes,—where the forester could never banish the curdling consciousness of an unseen presence, watching until the assassin moment came; where the silence might hear other sounds than the hum of insects or the music of birds,—might hear the scoffing yell of Indians, contemptuous victors over the race that scorned them. What wonder that the agonies of such suspense stirred up the settlers to cowardly slaughter of every savage, friend or foe? A frightened man becomes a barbarian and a brute. Fear is a miserable agent of civilization. We can hardly now connect ourselves with that period. No longer, when twigs crackle in the forest, do we shrink lest the parting leaves may reveal a new-comer, with whom we must race for life. Larceny is disgusting, burglary is unpleasant, arson is undesirable, murder is one of the foul arts; Indians were adepts in all of these trades at once. Any reminiscence of a condi- [3.238.254.78] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 09:35 GMT) Owhhigh 38 tion from which we have happily escaped is agreeable. This palisade fort was a monument of a past age to me. It made me two hundred years old at once. A monument, but not a cenotaph; on the contrary, it was full of bustling life. Rusty Indians, in all degrees of frowziness of person and costume, were trading at the shop for the three b’s of Indian desire,—blankets, beads, and ’baccy,—representatives of need, vanity, and luxury. The Klickatats had indeed arrived. To-morrow Owhhigh7 and the grandees were to come in from their camp to buy and sell. All the squaws purchasing to-day were hags beyond the age of coquetry in costume, yet they were buying beads and hanging them in hideous contrast about their baggy, wrinkled necks, and then glowering for admiration with dusky eyes. These were valued customers, since they knew the tariff, and never haggled, but paid cash or its equivalent, otter, beaver, and skunk skins, and similar treasures. The pretty girls would come afterward, as money failed, and try to make their winsome smiles a substitute for funds. In contrast to these unpleasant objects, a very handsome and gentlemanly young brave entered just after me, and came forward as I was greeting Mr. H. He was tall and loungingly graceful, and so fair that there must have been silver in the copper of his blood. This rather supercilious personage was...