510 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



berries, greatly amused his guide, who explained that the Kootenays 

 did not like these berries half as well as did the Shuswap Indians, for 

 they ' tasted like bad whiskey.' It may be said here that the Kootenays 

 have many names, but little use for whiskey, both on account of their 

 own inclination against it, and by reason of the stringent laws and 

 the good influence of the Catholic missionaries — the miners also, as a 

 mere matter of self-defense, aid in the thorough enforcement of the 

 law. The story is told of a Kootenay who, when sick, was told by a 

 priest to take a little whiskey as medicine. He sturdily refused, with 

 the emphatic declaration : ' You say whiskey bad. Bad one time, bad 

 all time.' Poetic justice was satisfied by the recovery of the patient. 

 The Indians are very skilful in their mimicry of the drunken white 

 man. Among the Kootenay names for whiskey are the following: 

 wild (water, liquor), suyapi wild (white man's water), nip'ik' a wild 

 (spirit water), ndtlukine wuo (strange, foreign water). 



After the tasting of the berries was over, Amelu took pleasure in 

 crushing some of them between the palms of his hands and showing 

 how ' soap ' could be made. The leaves of the shrub he then used as 

 a very primitive towel. Other experiences of the writer on this ex- 

 cursion convinced him that the Kootenays are not without a sense of 

 humor. On the Mooyai trail the writer ran into a group of nettles, 

 and Amelu hugely enjoyed his surprise at being stung. 



This humorous reaction to the surprise, embarrassment, awkward 

 predicament, accidental discomfiture, etc., of a fellow man is common 

 among these Indians, both with reference to their own tribesmen and to 

 individuals of other races, such as whites and Chinese, with whom they 

 come into contact. In the region of the Columbia lakes, there are a 

 cold spring and a warm spring (not steaming so as to be noticed) close 

 beside each other, and a common trick of the Indians is to induce an 

 unsuspecting stranger (red or white) to step into one immediately after 

 the other. The writer, upon the suggestion of Amelu, once took a 

 plunge in the Kootenay at Ft. Steele, but did not stay in more than a 

 moment. The water was almost icy cold, as the Indian knew, by his 

 own confession, and the haste with which his white friend got out of 

 the water stirred deeply his sense of the ridiculous. Similarly, when- 

 ever the Indian horse threw him off into the pine-brush or cast him 

 over its head into a creek, his guide would feel bound to laugh more 

 or less heartily. Another fertile source of amusement was the em- 

 barrassment caused the writer by his first acquaintance with the snap- 

 ping and snarling, no less than thieving, Indian dogs, who were the 

 pest of the camp. One of these curs actually seized hold of a can of 

 corned beef and was running off with it, when the use of another can 

 as a missile caused him to give up his plunder. This action must 

 have seemed very funny to Amelu. 



