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The Bridge of the Gods: A Romance of Indian Oregon, a novel by Frederic Homer Balch |
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Book 4. The Love Tale - Chapter 4. Archery And Gambling |
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_ BOOK IV. THE LOVE TALE CHAPTER IV. ARCHERY AND GAMBLING To gambling they are no less passionately addicted in the interior than on the coast.--BANCROFT: Native Races. The next morning came the archery games. The best marksmen of each tribe contended together under the eyes of Multnomah, and Snoqualmie the Cayuse won the day. These diversions were beginning to produce the result that the politic chief had intended they should. Better feeling was springing up. The spirit of discontent that had been rife was disappearing. Every day good-fellowship grew more and more between the Willamettes and their allies. Every day Snoqualmie the Cayuse became more popular among the tribes, and already he was second in influence to none but Multnomah himself. The great war-chief had triumphed over every obstacle; and he waited now only for the last day of the council, when his daughter should be given to Snoqualmie and the chiefs should recognize him as the future head of the confederacy. Knowing this, the sight of Snoqualmie's successful archery was almost intolerable to Cecil, and he turned away from the place where the games were held. "I will seek the young Willamette who is sick," he said to himself. "Then this evening I will go and visit Wallulah." The thought sent the blood coursing warmly through his veins, but he chided himself for it. "It is but duty, I go to her only as a missionary," he repeated to himself over and over again. He went to the lodge of the young Willamette and asked for him. "He is not here," the father of the youth told him. "He is in the sweat-house. He is sick this morning, hieu sick." And the old man emphasized the hieu [much], with a prolonged intonation and a comprehensive gesture as if the young man were very sick indeed. To the sweat-house went Cecil forthwith. He found it to be a little arched hut, made by sticking the ends of bent willow-wands into the ground and covering them over with skins, leaving only a small opening for entrance. When a sick person wished to take one of those "sweat baths" so common among the Indians, stones were heated red hot and put within the hut, and water was poured on them. The invalid, stripped to the skin, entered, the opening was closed behind him, and he was left to steam in the vapors. When Cecil came up, the steam was pouring between the overlapping edges of the skins, and he could hear the young Willamette inside, chanting a low monotonous song, an endlessly repeated invocation to his totem to make him well. How he could sing or even breathe in that stifling atmosphere was a mystery to Cecil. By and by the Willamette raised the flap that hung over the entrance and crawled out, hot, steaming, perspiring at every pore. He rushed with unsteady footsteps down to the river, only a few yards away, and plunged into the cold water. After repeatedly immersing himself, he waded back to the shore and lay down to dry in the sun. The shock to his nervous system of plunging from a hot steam-bath into ice-cold water fresh from the snow peaks of the north had roused all his latent vitality. He had recovered enough to be sullen and resentful to Cecil when he came up; and after vainly trying to talk with or help him, the missionary left him. It is characteristic of the Indian, perhaps of most half-animal races, that their moral conduct depends on physical feeling. Like the animal, they are good-humored, even sportive, when all is well; like the animal, they are sluggish and unreasoning in time of sickness. Cecil went back to the camp. He found that the archery games were over, and that a great day of gambling had begun. He was astonished at the eagerness with which all the Indians flung themselves into it. Multnomah alone took no part, and Tohomish, visible only at the council, was not there. But with those two exceptions, chiefs, warriors, all flung themselves headlong into the game. First, some of the leading chiefs played at "hand," and each tribe backed its chief. Furs, skins, weapons, all manner of Indian wealth was heaped in piles behind the gamblers, constituting the stakes; and they were divided among the tribes of the winners,--each player representing a tribe, and his winnings going, not to himself, but to his people. This rule applied, of course, only to the great public games; in private games of "hand" each successful player kept his own spoils. Amid the monotonous chant that always accompanied gambling, the two polished bits of bone (the winning one marked, the other not) were passed secretly from hand to hand. The bets were made as to who held the marked stick and in which hand, then a show of hands was made and the game was lost and won. From "hand" they passed to ahikia, a game like that of dice, played with figured beaver teeth or disks of ivory, which were tossed up, everything depending on the combination of figures presented in their fall. It was played recklessly. The Indians were carried away by excitement. They bet anything and everything they had. Wealthy chiefs staked their all on the turn of the ivory disks, and some were beggared, some enriched. Cecil noticed in particular Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Molallies. He was like a man intoxicated. His huge bestial face was all ablaze with excitement, his eyes were glowing like coals. He had scarcely enough intellect to understand the game, but enough combativeness to fling himself into it body and soul. He bet his horses and lost them; he bet his slaves and lost again; he bet his lodges, with their rude furnishings of mat and fur, and lost once more. Maddened, furious, like a lion in the toils, the desperate savage staked his wives and children on the throw of the ahikia, and they were swept from him into perpetual slavery. Then he rose up and glared upon his opponents, with his tomahawk clinched in his hand,--as if feeling dimly that he had been wronged, thirsting for vengeance, ready to strike, yet not knowing upon whom the blow should fall. There was death in his look, and the chiefs shrunk from him, when his eyes met Multnomah's, who was looking on; and the war-chief checked and awed him with his cold glance, as a tamer of beasts might subdue a rebellious tiger. Then the Molallie turned and went away, raging, desperate, a chief still, but a chief without lodge or wife or slave. The sight was painful to Cecil, and he too went away while the game was at its height. Drawn by an influence that he could not resist, he took the trail that led down the bank of the river to the retreat of Wallulah. _ |
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