THE INDIANS OF CAPE FLATTERY. 31 



ruption of occasional feuds and rivalries between the different tribes, when the 

 intercourse would be suspended, or carried on by means of intermediate bands ; for 

 instance, the Chinooks would venture up as far as Chihalis, or perhaps Kwinaiult ; 

 they would go as far as the Kwilleyute, and these last in turn to Cape Flattery. After 

 a while peace would be restored, and the long voyages again resumed. The Makahs 

 took down canoes, oil, dried halibut, and hai-kwa, or dentalium shells. The 

 large canoes were almost invariably made on Vancouver Island; for, although 

 craft of this model are called " Chinook" canoes, very few in reality, except small 

 ones, were made at Chinook, the cedar there not being of suitable size or quality for 

 the largest sizes, and the best trees being found on the Island. The Makahs in return 

 received sea-otter skins from Kwinaiult ; vermilion or cinnabar from the Chinooks, 

 which they in turn had procured from the more southern tribes of Oregon ; and such 

 articles of Indian value as might be manufactured or produced by the tribes living 

 south of the cape. Their trade with the northern Indians was for dentalium, 

 dried cedar bark for making mats, canoes, and dried salmon ; paying for the same 

 with dried halibut, blubber, and whale oil. Slaves also constituted an important 

 article of traffic ; they were purchased by the Makahs from the Vancouver Island 

 Indians, and sold to the coast Indians south. 



The northern Indians did not formerly, nor do they now, care to go further south 

 on their trading excursions than Cape Flattery; and the Columbia River and other 

 coast tribes seem to have extended their excursions no further north than that 

 point. Isolated excursions are attributed to certain chiefs. Comcomly, for in- 

 stance, the celebrated Chinook chief, would occasionally go north as far as Nootka; 

 while Maquinna, Klallakum, and Tatooshatticus, of the Clyoquots, made visits to 

 Chinook ; but, as a general practice, the Makahs at Cape Flattery conducted the 

 trade from north to south. In those early days, when so many more Indians were 

 in every tribe than at present, and when they were so often at variance with each 

 other, it is not probable that the trade conducted by the coast tribes was of any 

 great value. But when the white traders began to settle at the mouth of the Co- 

 lumbia, the desire to obtain their goods, which had been awakened by the early fur 

 traders at Nootka, caused a more active traffic to spring up, the Makahs wishing 

 to get from Chinook the blankets, beads, brass kettles, and other commodities 

 obtained at the trading post at Astoria. The entire supply was drawn from that 

 settlement, until the Hudson's Bay Company established a trading post at Victoria, 

 and, as trade could be conducted so much more readily at that place than at 

 Astoria, the coast traffic was nearly stopped, or confined to the summer excursions 

 of those Indians who had intermarried with the Kwinaiults or Chihalis. The coast 

 trade south at present is confined to the exchange of a few canoes for the sea- 

 otter skins of the Kwinaiults, but the amount is very small. Their trade with the 

 Vancouver Island Indians is to exchange whale oil and dried halibut, for dog- 

 fish oil, which is procured in large quantities by the Nittinat and Clyoquot tribes. 

 The dog-fish oil is sold by the Makahs to the white traders. Formerly it went to 

 those who traded with them at Neeah Bay ; but of late years the greater portion 

 is carried either to Victoria, or else to the difi'erent lumber mills on the Sound, where 

 it finds a ready sale at prices averaging about fifty cents per gallon. They also trade 



