INDIANS OF WASHINGTON TERRITORY. 621 



west. The articles from these distant tribes are, however, limited in 

 number, but there is considerable traffic among Indians who live inside 

 these limits. The distances spoken of above are in a direct line; the 

 way by which the articles come is much farther. 



The traffic with the northern nations is by water, and therefore over 

 a more circuitous route than the traffic with other tribes, which is by 

 land. 



CULTURE, 



Means of subsistence. — Food formerly consisted solely of fish, roots, 

 berries, and game, the spontaneous products of land and water. 



The fish and marine mammals formerly used are still eaten, and are 

 of at least nineteen kinds, namely, two varieties of cod fish, two of floun- 

 ders, five of salmon, the silver, dog-, red, black, and humpbacked, and 

 one each of dog-fish, smelt, skates, hair-seal, trout, whale, halibut, her- 

 ring, porpoise, and cuttle-fish. The dog-fish is used only occasionally 

 when other food is scarce. The salmon, halibut, herring, and smelt are 

 dried as well as eaten fresh, the salmon being split open and the back- 

 bone being taken out. The halibut is cut into strips, and the herring 

 and smelt are dried whole. Salmon are now also sometimes salted. 

 Besides the flesh of the dog-fish, porpoise, seal, and whale,, the oil was 

 formerly eaten. The eggs of the cod-fish and salmon are a luxury. The 

 porpoise, from its resemblance to pork, is called Indian pork. 



Ten kinds of shell-fish are used for food, four of them being different 

 varieties of clams, two of crabs, and one each of oysters, mussels, sea 

 eggs, and scallops, the latter two being found only in the Klallam waters. 

 Clams alone are dried. In drying them the Indians first build a large 

 fire, in which they heat a number of stones, and when the fire has nearly 

 burned down, they remove the coals, pour on the clams, perhaps bushels 

 of them, and cover the whole with several thicknesses of mats. They 

 are thus steamed until they are cooked and opened, when they are 

 taken from the shell, spitted on slender sticks 2 or 3 feet long, and put 

 over fires in their houses to dry. 



Fish eggs are dried by being placed on small wooden frames, a foot or 

 two square, an<l placed over the tire. Salmon was formerly their staft' 

 of life, and their chief business in the summer was to dry it for winter. 

 There are some kinds of fish in their waters all the year round, though 

 some varieties they do not eat unless food is scarce. 



Roots and branches. — The kamass was formerly the most prized, but 

 as it does not grow in their land, having been imported from quite a 

 distance, they seldom use it now. 



The root of the skunk cabbage, steamed, the Indian onion, a kind of 

 rush root, that of an uuknown plant, and of fern were also eaten. The 

 fcrn roots were dried, laid on a rock, beaten with a bone club into a 

 kind of flour, which was mixed with fish eggs and made into a cake 

 called by the Klallams sUive-u. 



