The Native Races (Complete 5 Part Edition). Hubert Howe Bancroft

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СКАЧАТЬ rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_019b40da-22a5-5ab0-847e-381b94a0a13d">146 a slit is made parallel with the mouth, and about half an inch below it.147 If the incision is made during infancy, it is only a small hole, into which a needle of copper, a bone, or a stick is inserted, the size being increased as the child grows. If the baptism is deferred until the period when the maiden merges into womanhood, the operation is necessarily upon a larger scale, and consequently more painful.148 When the incision is made, a copper wire, or a piece of shell or wood, is introduced, which keeps the wound open and the aperture extended; and by enlarging the object and keeping up a continuous but painful strain, an artificial opening in the face is made of the required dimensions. On attaining the age of maturity, this wire or other incumbrance is removed and a block of wood inserted. This block is oval or elliptical in shape, concaved or hollowed dish-like on the sides, and grooved like the wheel of a pulley on the edge in order to keep it in place.149 The dimensions of the block are from two to six inches in length, from one to four inches in width, and about half an inch thick round the edge, and highly polished.150 Old age has little terror in the eyes of a Thlinkeet belle, for larger lip-blocks are introduced as years advance, and each enlargement adds to the lady's social status, if not to her facial charms. When the block is withdrawn, the lip drops down upon the chin like a piece of leather, displaying the teeth, and presenting altogether a ghastly spectacle.151 This custom is evidently associated in their minds with womanly modesty, for when La Pérouse asked them to remove their block, some refused; those who complied manifesting the same embarrassment shown by a European woman who uncovers her bosom. The Yakutats alone of all the Thlinkeet nation have never adopted this fashion.

      DRESS OF THE THLINKEETS.

      Their dress, which is made from wolf, deer, bear, or other skin, extends from the shoulder to the knee, and consists of a mantle, or cape, with sleeves, which reaches down to the waist, and to which the women attach a skirt, or gown, and the men a belt and apron. A white blanket is made from the wool of the wild sheep, embroidered with figures, and fringed with furs, all of native work. This garment is most highly prized by the men. They wear it thrown over the shoulder so as to cover the whole body.

      Vancouver thus describes the dress of a chief at Lynn Canal. His "external robe was a very fine large garment, that reached from his neck down to his heels, made of wool from the mountain sheep, neatly variegated with several colors, and edged and otherwise decorated with little tufts or frogs of woolen yarn, dyed of various colors. His head-dress was made of wood, much resembling in its shape a crown, adorned with bright copper and brass plates, from whence hung a number of tails or streamers, composed of wool and fur, wrought together, dyed of various colors, and each terminating in a whole ermine skin. The whole exhibited a magnificent appearance, and indicated a taste for dress and ornament that we had not supposed the natives of these regions to possess."

The men make a wooden mask, which rests on a neckpiece, very ingeniously carved, and painted in colors, so as to represent the head of some bird or beast or mythological being. This was formerly worn in battle, probably, as La Pérouse suggests, in order to strike terror into the hearts of enemies, but is now used only on festive occasions.152

A small hat of roots and bark, woven in the shape of a truncated cone, ornamented with painted figures and pictures of animals, is worn by both sexes.153 Ordinarily, however, the men wear nothing on the head; their thick hair, greased and covered with ochre and birds' down, forming a sufficient covering. The hat is designed especially for rainy weather, as a protection to the elaborately dressed hair.154 Besides their every-day dress, they have a fantastic costume for tribal holidays.

For their winter habitations, a little back from the ocean, the Thlinkeets build substantial houses of plank or logs, sometimes of sufficient strength to serve as a fortress. They are six or eight feet in height, the base in the form of a square or parallelogram, the roof of poles placed at an angle of forty-five degrees and covered with bark. The entrance is by a small side door. The fire, which is usually kept burning night and day, occupies the centre of the room; over it is a smoke-hole of unusual size, and round the sides of the room are apartments or dens which are used as store-houses, sweat-houses, and private family rooms. The main room is very public and very filthy.155 Summer huts are light portable buildings, thrown up during hunting excursions in the interior, or on the sea-beach in the fishing-season. A frame is made of stakes driven into the ground, supporting a roof, and the whole covered with bark, or with green or dry branches, and skins or bark over all. The door is closed by bark or a curtain of skins. Each hut is the rendezvous for a small colony, frequently covering twenty or thirty persons, all under the direction of one chief.156

      FOOD OF THE THLINKEETS.

The food of the Thlinkeets is derived principally from the ocean, and consists of fish, mussels, sea-weeds, and in fact whatever is left upon the beach by the ebbing tide—which at Sitka rises and falls eighteen feet twice a day—or can be caught by artificial means. Holmberg says that all but the Yakutats hate whale as the Jews hate pork. Roots, grasses, berries, and snails are among their summer luxuries. They chew a certain plant as some chew tobacco, mixing with it lime to give it a stronger effect,157 and drink whale-oil as a European drinks beer. Preferring their food cooked, they put it in a tight wicker basket, pouring in water, and throwing in heated stones, until the food is boiled.158 For winter, they dry large quantities of herring, roes, and the flesh of animals.

For catching fish, they stake the rivers, and also use a hook and line; one fisherman casting from his canoe ten or fifteen lines, with bladders for floats. For herring, they fasten to the end of a pole four or five pointed bones, and with this instrument strike into a shoal, spearing a fish on every point. They sometimes make the same instrument in the shape of a rake, and transfix the fish with the teeth. The Sitkas catch halibut with large, wooden, bone-pointed hooks.159

The arms of the Thlinkeets denote a more warlike people than any we have hitherto encountered. Bows and arrows; hatchets of flint, and of a hard green stone which cuts wood so smoothly that no marks of notches are left; great lances, six or eight varas in length, if Bodega y Quadra may be trusted, hardened in the fire or pointed with copper, or later with iron; a large, broad, double-ended dagger, or knife—are their principal weapons. The knife is their chief implement and constant companion. The handle is nearer one end than the other, so that it has a long blade and a short blade, the latter being one quarter the length of the former. The handle is covered with leather, and a strap fastens it to the hand when fighting. Both blades have leathern sheaths, one of which is suspended from the neck by a strap.160

      THE THLINKEETS IN WAR.

They also encase almost the entire body in a wooden and leathern armor. Their helmets have curiously carved vizors, with grotesque representations of beings natural or supernatural, which, when brilliantly or dismally painted, and presented with proper yells, and brandishings of their ever-glittering knives, are supposed to strike terror into the heart of their enemies. They make a breast-plate of wood, and an arrow-proof coat of thin flexible strips, bound with strings like a woman's stays.161

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