Here upon a scaffolding a half-dozen swung their nets and
baskets in the swift river, hauling up with their very long poles thirty
or forty splendid fish in an hour; there at a small cascade, in great
baskets sunk into the water, a couple of Indians caught and killed the
salmon that, in trying to leap the fall, plumped into the wicker cage;
beyond, others, more idle and less enterprising, speared the finny
travellers, thus five hundred miles from home--the brave Pacific.
Upon the banks the cleaning and curing went on, the women and children
assisting, and as the Indians and half-breeds worked they sang either the
wild Indian melodies, snatches of brave old songs of the 'voyageurs' of a
past century, or hymns taught by the Jesuit missionaries in the persons
of such noble men as Pere Lacombe and Pere Durieu, who have wandered up
and down the vast plains of both sides of the Rockies telling an old
story in a picturesque, heroic way. These old hymns were written in
Chinook, that strange language,--French, English, Spanish, Indian,
arranged by the Hudson's Bay Company, which is, like the wampum-belt, a
common tongue for tribes and peoples not speaking any language but their
own.
Pages:
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348