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Performing Archive

List of Large Plates Supplementing Volume Seven

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Many of the elderly and middle-aged Yakima, especially those of what was formerly the ruling class, feel the same dislike and suspicion of the white man that moved their fathers, in the uprising of 1855, to attempt to expel the newcomers from their territory. The brooding expression of dissatisfaction on the face of this man seemingly represents inherent tribal antipathy to the white race, engendered by their aggression and greed.
Through the medium of their annual incursions into the buffalo plains east of the Rocky mountains, the Flatheads adopted much of the plains culture. Not only their domicile (the tipi), their garments, weapons, and articles of adornment, came from this source, but many of their dances were in imitation of similar ceremonies practised by the prairie tribes. Prominent features of the accoutrement of this Flathead chief are his war-club of the plains type, and an eagle-bone whistle, such as was used in the Sun Dance. The Flatheads however never acquired the sun rite
Spokane river, from a short distance below its head in Coeur d?Alene lake to its confluence with the Columbia, flows through the midst of what was the territory of the Spokan Indians. The character of the country through which the stream passes for some miles above its mouth is well shown in the picture. Northward from the stream lie the mountains among which the three Spokan tribes hunted deer and gathered their supplies of roots.
In the early years of the nineteenth century various explorers noted that the bands dwelling along the upper course of the Columbia, among which the Nespilim were included, wore practically no clothing. Excepting as the cold made some protection necessary. The hair of the women was arranged in two knots at the sides of the face ? a method of hairdressing still in vogue among the Salish on Fraser river. Prior to the middle of the century the use of deerskin garments had become common, and gradually other customs such as the style of hairdressing here illustrated, were borrowed from the tribes east of the Rocky mountains
The original of this portrait is a son Owhi (Ohai), who as chief of the Salishan band inhabiting Kittitas valley, Washington, at first appeared to favor the Stevens treaty of 1855, but a few months later was drawn into the Indian uprising by the act of another son, Qahlchun, in killing some prospectors. At the termination of hostilities Luqaiot made his permanent home among the Spokan, taking for his wife the daughter of a Spokan chief and widow of his executed brother Qahlchun. Luqaiot's recollections of the events of these times will be found scattered through the account of the Yakima war in Volume VII.
The Kutenai occupied portions of southeastern British Columbia, northern Idaho, and northwestern Montana. In this region of blue, mountain-girt lakes and majestic rivers they very naturally made use of canoes. The commoner form was the pine-bark craft still to be observed among the Kalispel (see plates 239, 240), but occasionally they made canoes of the form here illustrated, by stretching fresh elk-hides over a framework of fir strips or tough saplings. The one seen in the picture is a canvas-covered specimen found on the shore of Flathead lake in 1909.