438 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 5, 1903. 
The Story of a Stump. 
I STABTED from a little town on the Fi'aser River to 
look for Indians, pines, cedars, firs, balsams, moun- 
tains and, incidentally, for goats and sheep. For the 
first time in historj^ the salmon run on the Fraser had 
failed. The great Government hatchery, just erected 
below the lower Seaton Lake, had not been able to 
get enough fish at its weir to begin operations. A 
few, a very few, sock-eyes were drying on sticks along 
the river bank, but the king salmon and the humpies 
were not. 
Major and Aleck, my two Indians, were glad to get 
their ponies together for a turn in the hills, and the 
first night out we spent at the Short Portage. 
This was a native settlement of about sixty souls. 
The patriarch patted me on the back saying, "Good 
man! Shoot mowitch." The children came out of 
their cabins at unusual hours to hammer a church bell 
installed on a stump, while awaiting its sacred edifice, 
and the population would take to prayer. They are 
good Catholics, strenuous and observant, and they do 
their full duties, though the times and seasons may be 
a little mixed. 
Nor do they seem to be inclined to race-suicide. 
Major's wife stood on the bank as we rode b}', with a 
six-inch smile on her comely face and many infant 
Majors by her side. As General Scott said of the 
Seventh, "It was a regiment of ollficers." 
It is easy to understand that, in early days, during 
the interchange of barbarities called frontier war, some 
currency should be given to the saying that "There is 
no good Indian but a dead Indian." Time has worn 
the gloss oft from this epigram. From a byword it has 
become a bore. 
Three of my associates on the trip I am writing 
about, are living refutations of the slanderous proverb. 
When we started from upper Seaton Lake, beyond 
the Portage, Aleck's wife was also of the party, under 
her husband's escort, until we reached a spot on Mc- 
Gilvray creek, where "many womans" were picking 
berries. There she left us. I had asked her name, but 
as she only answered by a shy giggle, I called her Car- 
rie. A week afterward I found that her name really 
was "Keetee," so I hadn't been so far wrong. 
I am told that the Seaton Lake district is an arid 
region with an average annual rainfall of twelve inches. 
We got about that in September alone. We were m 
the very spill-way of the clouds. It rained or snowed 
on more than halt the days of my expedition, and was 
cloudy on some other days. So, when the rain had 
turned to snow, on the afternoon of our march from 
Seaton Lake, and we were all wet tlirough with ice 
water, it was a comfort to find that Major could start 
a fire with a branch of dead pine needles in less time 
than most people could light a candle, and as soon as 
we got the packs off and began thawing, I took a lesson 
in Lillooet language and customs. 
These Indians are progressive in the sense that they 
live in houses, wear modern clothes and work. They 
think httle of the ways of their ancestors, the "old 
people," but withal, they have retained traits of sim- 
plicity and an honesty which is a real delight. You 
may leave your furnishings stowed in a tree beside the 
trail for safe keeping, and be absent many days, sure 
that no human despoiler will have injured or taken 
your property. I asked Major whether the Indians of 
old had used dogs for packing before the coming of 
the horse, and he denied it, but there is a suspicious 
feature in their language. The word for dog is 
"skakbah," and the naine for horse is the same with 
a syllable that resembles a grunt prefixed. Among the 
Piegans the pony supplanted the dog as a beast of bur- 
den, and was called an "elk dog," or big dog, and it 
seems Hkely that the etymology of the word horse u:i 
Lillooet points to a similar connection of ideas. 
When the men chattered away in their native tongue, 
the general effect, to a person ignorant of both lan- 
guages, was somewhat like South German; but there 
were times when a succession of coughs, clicks and 
gulps broke in, giving a notion that the speaker's utter- 
ance had become inarticulate through pain. 
In the flats near the short Portage and at other 
places in the district one finds circular mounds sur- 
rounding excavations about thirty feet across. These 
are called by the whites "keekoly holes." The word 
keekoly merely means "down" in the Chinook jargon, 
but this name is always appHed to the hollows that 
mark the sites of the old communal houses. There 
may be one or two of these houses still left in some 
remote spot. Thirty years ago when miners began to 
stream into the Caribou these were the ordinary win- 
ter domiciles. The method of construction was to dig 
down from three to five feet below the surface, and 
in this cellar erect a rectangular frame with six stout 
posts and connecting beams on top. Then strong 
poles were laid radially for the roof so that the outer 
ends came to the ground and the inner ends abutted 
on a hole in the middle of the roof, which answered 
both for door and chimney. The poles were covered 
with bark, grass and earth; the excavated dirt was piled 
around the outside, a notched log was propped in the 
central hole for a ladder, and the mansion was ready. 
Of course everyone had to walk over the roof and 
climb down through the smoke to enter. The great 
virtue of these houses was that they were very warm 
in the severest weather, only a little fire of sticks was 
made in the center, but often the dwellers would climb 
out at nightfall to plunge in the icy lake in order to 
get cool enough to sleep. Each of the several families 
that lived in the house would have its special division 
allotted, and the winter was passed in making soup 
in a cooking basket, wherein the water was kept boil- 
ing by the addition of hot stones. Salmon dried in the 
sun, and shockingly ill-preserved, was the staple, with 
steelheads, rainbows and mountain trout fresh from 
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THE STOKY ON TTIK STUMP. 
the water; while canias and kimwood roots afforded 
the vegetables, and dried berries gave the fruit. 
Rather a domestic people were the Lillooets. Fight- 
ing sometimes, either because they had to or else to 
keep in touch with the prevailing fashion, but in the 
main seeking a peaceful sustenance, housemakers, 
bridge builders and capable of carrying huge burdens 
on their backs. Not all of them even were successful 
hunters, and some, instead of buckskin garments, had 
to weave themselves shirts of the inner bark of the 
willow, twisted and pounded to clear the fiber from 
the trash. 
Now we started on our trip with the picnic element 
definitely eliminated, as I have shown, and packing over 
the divide at the head of McGilvray creek, we dropped 
down about 2,000 feet into the valley of the Cadwala- 
der, the main tributary of the south fork of Bridge 
River, and no mean stream. The bordering mountains 
are not very lofty in absolute elevation from the sea 
level, but they rise sharply from the low land, and a 
hunter may have to climb 3,000 or 4,000 feet through 
old burnt lands thick with brush or opener, but still 
Yt\-y steep forested slopes, before he gets to the rocks 
of the goats or the snow sw^ept slopes with short, curl- 
ing grasses and patches of low moss amid the shingle, 
beloved of the herds of the Flighland Pan. 
The restriction of the game ranges is very marked. 
The great belts of the lower timber and slides are 
practically untenanted. A few deer haunts known to 
the Indians are the only exception to this rule. In 
the upper regions goats can often be seen; usually, on 
account of their conspicuous coats and exposed sta- 
tions, at great distances. A sportsman of repute gave 
an account some years ago of hunting goats with 
horses and dogs, but as far as my observation goes 
their habitat is ill adapted to equitation. 
For good climbers, however, the capture of goats 
is an easy thing, though the labor of the approach and 
of the packing out of the spoils is almost always con- 
siderable. But it seemed strange that among hundreds 
of high, cool ridges, where the ozone of the summit 
fills the air and the crisp, scanty herbage seems made 
lor sheep, only a few places should harbor the bighorn. 
For instance, on the mountains south of Cadwala- 
der creek, the bighorn is not found. On the north, but 
one mountain side near the glacier that forms the 
source of a little stream known as John Bull creek, 
has the history of a single band of sheep now seldom 
seen. 
In going up this valley a little incident happened 
which seemed to indicate that Major had a feeling for 
locality that amounted almost to a special sense. In 
the morning we passed a little snake torpid with cold. 
Major thought him dead, but by stirring him with a 
stick I elicited a faint wiggle, and we passed on. Some 
hours afterward, when we had gone, several devious 
miles, Major said to me, "Dat snake move." Lie had 
recognized the spot, to me quite undistinguishable from 
the rest of the tangle, and noticed the absence of the 
snake. 
And here I heard of a fact, if fact it was, that had 
never been brought to my attention. In the edge of 
a lofty snow bank I discovered a labyrinth of tracks. 
When we got near they proved to be bear tracks a 
day or two old, and the long claw marks showed a 
grizzlj' bear. 
Now Major had killed bears, some of them in con- 
tests that may be described as hand to mouth struggles, 
and he maintained that it was a custom of these ani- 
mals to tramp around in a snow bank after they had 
made a kill and gorged themselves on meat, in order 
to clean their paws. 
As the grizzly is a fast vanishing creature, his habits 
are getting to have the interest of an early myth, and 
I give this on Major's authority. 
To be sure, the scarcity of bears in the autumn is 
hardly an index to their true numbers, for they are then 
quite undiscoverable in the brush. 
A¥hen the snow melts in the spring, say from April 
to June, according to the earliness or lateness of the 
season, the bears come out on the open slides to dig 
for roots to satisfy the hunger that they have earned 
by a winter's fasting. At these times they can be seen 
a long way off with a field glass, and the hunters have 
little trouble in coming up to leeward and securing 
their victim. Aleck alone killed nine bears last spring, 
but he might try for ninety autumns without bagging 
a single one. And as for the grizzly, it seems as if the 
hunters had taken the short census and marked the 
favored resort of every survivor of the species. 
After a short and rather barren experience near the 
John Bull glacier, we moved down the Cadwalader 
bottom and camped where a long, steep ravine car- 
ried the waters of the higher snow banks to the creek. 
It was an inviting spot. We saw a goat miles away 
and marked him for the morrow, and Aleck started to 
make a supply of his unrivaled bread. It was good, 
and as his method differs a little from .those I knew, I 
will give the details: He first gathered a lot of earth 
and gravel around his fire and got this stuff hot and 
well mixed with embers. A large tin pan was greased, 
the dough was put in, then water was poured around 
it to prevent burning. A gold pan, bottom up, was 
used as a cover. The whole was buried and covered 
with the hot earth and ashes. In a few minutes steam 
came puffing out of the pile, and in three-quarters of 
an hour the bread was done. It was not boiled, either. 
It was baked and well baked, and there was not a fea- 
ture of a dumpling about it. 
While Aleck was cooking I examined the neighbor- 
hood, and found a small stump with one side faced 
down with the ax for a couple of feet, and on this 
tablet there was an inscription in characters strange 
to me, which turned out to be Chinook writing. For 
it seems that a special syllabary has been invented 
to fit the jargon; and, in a way, it does fit it. It looks 
quite as the jargon sounds: ridiculous. 
Both my men were Chinook scholars, though Aleck 
was far the better, and where their translations differed 
I took Aleck's, but I confess that I reflected with a 
certain pang on the time wasted over learning this 
class of literature when the student might have made 
great strides in knowledge by the same application to 
the pursuit, say of Latin or even English. 
The inscription rendered so as to bring out its true 
intent, avoiding the bald vagueness of the jargon with 
its "wa-wa" and its "sick tum-tum" ran as follows: 
Sept. 13, 1902. Cadwalader Creek. 
Well, we had a hard time here. 
Here we got low .spirited. 
It was like that all the time. 
There was no good cause for misfortune. 
We did nothing for three days. 
We lay in bed. 
Afterwards we killed lots of game. 
We ate lots of game. 
We have a camp a little above — about fifty yards from 
this stump. 
We are si.K camping there. 
This is one story if anybody passes on this trail. 
We had been traveling in another quarter. 
