CHAPTER XIV

THE POTLATCH.

A potlatch among the tribes of the Northwest means a feast at which some wealthy Indian gives away to his own people or to a friendly tribe all that he has.  For this generosity he becomes a councilor or wise man, or judge, an attendant on the chief in public affairs, and is held in especial honor during the rest of his life.

To attain this honor of chief man or councilor, many an ambitious young Indian labors for years to amass wampum, blankets, and canoes.  The feast at which he exchanges these for political honors is very dramatic and picturesque.  It is usually held at the time of the full moon, and lasts for several days and nights.  One of the principal features is the Tamanous, or Spirit-dance, which takes place at night amid blazing torches and deafening drums.

A chief rarely gives a Potlatch; he has no need of honors.  But Umatilla desired to close his long and beneficent chieftainship with a gift-feast.  He loved his people, and there seemed to him something noble in giving away all his private possessions to them, and trusting the care of his old age to their hearts.  His chief men had done this, and had gained by it an influence which neither power nor riches can attain.  This supreme influence over the hearts of his people he desired to possess.  The gift-feast was held to be the noblest service that an Indian could render his race.

At the great Potlatch he would not only give away his private goods, but would take leave of the chieftainship which he had held for half a century.  It was his cherished desire to see Benjamin made chief.  His heart had gone into the young heart of the boy, and he longed to see The Light of the Eagle’s Plume, sitting in his place amid the councilors of the nation and so beginning a new history of the ancient people.

[Illustration:  At the Cascades of the Columbia.]

The full moon of October is a night sun in the empires of the Columbia and the Puget Sea.  No nights in the world can be more clear, lustrous, and splendid than those of the mellowing autumn in the valleys of Mount Saint Helens, Mount Hood, and the Columbia.  The moon rises over the crystal peaks and domes like a living glory, and mounts the deep sky amid the pale stars like a royal torch-bearer of the sun.  The Columbia is a rolling flood of silver, and the gigantic trees of the centuries become a ghostly and shadowy splendor.  There is a deep and reverent silence everywhere, save the cry of the water-fowl in the high air and the plash of the Cascades.  Even the Chinook winds cease to blow, and the pine-tops to murmur.

It was such a night that the Potlatch began.  On an open plateau overlooking the Columbia the old chief had caused a large platform to be built, and on this were piled all his canoes, his stores of blankets, his wampum, and his regal ornaments and implements of war.  Around the plateau were high heaps of pine-boughs to be lighted during the Spirit-dance so as to roll a dark cloud of smoke under the bright light of the high moon, and cause a weird and dusky atmosphere.