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Sierra Club Bulletin 



and Indian canoe-men with their squaws and children. Here 

 we held our circus to the great delight of our brown-skinned 

 visitors. 



Thirty-five miles away, across Lake Queniult and down 

 where the Queniult River met the Pacific, stood the Indian 

 village, Tahola, whither we were to journey in canoes. In our 

 honor the Indians had hewn and blasted a way through log 

 jams around which portages had hitherto been made, and for 

 the first time in twelve years the whole river was open. Most 

 of the twenty-three canoes that awaited us were manned by 

 two paddlers, in bow and stern. In some a squaw occupied the 

 bow, as skilful and untiring as her husband. Some brought 

 their children along, and one canoe held the entire family, in- 

 cluding the dog and cat. Their paddles were rather unusual 

 in design, short-handled, and with a pointed blade. Among 

 rapids or log jams a pole was used. Our canoe was a cedar 

 dugout, twenty-eight feet long, paddled by one man and con- 

 taining seven grown people and a three-year-old Indian boy. 



Only two hundred and fifty members remain of the Queniult 

 tribe. Another small tribe on the extreme northwestern point 

 of the peninsula, near Neah Bay, alone of all the tribes of the 

 Northwest, speaks the Queniult language. The Queniult peo- 

 ple are an interesting tribe, with unexpected depths of intel- 

 lectuality beneath their characteristic Indian boastfulness. Even 

 our canoe-man, an acknowledged buffoon, could seriously dis- 

 cuss conditions among his tribesmen, their longing to hold the 

 reservation lands in fee simple, their losing fight against drink. 

 In another moment his wonderfully resonant voice would sound 

 over river and forest in a wild chant that bespoke nothing but 

 the aboriginal. 



What a picture they made, these dark, graceful people, and 

 what a wonderful experience their strength and skill brought 

 us ! Beautiful though Lake Queniult was in the silvery 

 morning mist, it was not until we were across it and the in- 

 congruous launch that towed us so far had cast our long line 

 of canoes adrift that the true charm of the day began. The 

 river below the lake flowed through Queniult Indian Reserva- 

 tion. Here and there on a beach stood a wickyup with salmon 

 nets hung in the sun, or on a low bluff a clearing held an Indian 



