The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-02-04
STICK. AND SIWOSH.

some unwritten law for them to go to
 the coast, or for the Siwosh or coast
 Indians to go to the interior But the
 two tribes trade together, meeting for
 that purpose at a certain line in the mountains. If the Siwosh Indians find
 a Stick Indian on their side of the line
 and capture him he becomes a slave to his captors. The same fate awaits a Siwosh captured in the Stick Indian
 country. The Siwosh looks upon a Stick as his inferior, and no greater in-
 dignity can be put on a Siwosh than to
 be called a Stick Indian.
 Me Siwosh; you Stick Indian,'" is
 a proud Siwosh boast.
 ''The Stick Indian holds himself to the Siwosh in the same manner, and re-
 gards it as a reproach to be called a Siwosh. When the first prospectors
 went into the Yukon region they found stones piled here and there in a pecu- liar manner, and wondered how they came to be there and why It was learned after a while that those stone
 piles indicated the boundaries of the Indian hunting grounds. Each family has its own area set apart for it's hunt
 ing ground, and the boundary lines are
 run out regularly and marked. No h.
 dian ever is known to cross the line of
 another family's ground to hunt.
 Each family or tribe has its medi-
 cine man, and that individual is the
 gentleman of the tribe He is what
 might be called a perfect gent and he
 knows how to be it' He never works
 nor makes a move to provide his own
 victuals, and as his son will be his sue
 cessor when the medicine man dies, the
 son takes life easy, too, and is looked up to by the rest of the Indians One
 of the duties of the medicine man is to make medicine to fetch the game
 around. To do this he lies in his tent
 and groans and grunts and growls all
 night. The pretty part of this act is,
 although the lay Indian doesn't seem to
 be able to see 1t, that the medicine man
 knows just the seasons when game ! may be expected and he never begins , to pass through the tribulations of making medicine to fetch it until those seasons are on. As soon as the groan- ing, grunting and growing cease the Indian hunters may go out and hunt; but the medicine man never hunts. They fetch him the best the chase af- lords, and he lies back and enjoys it. When the medicine man doctors sick Indian, if the Indian does not get well it is because he hasn't been good to the devil. To be good to the devil is the basis of the Siwosh's religion, for the devil is the only one that can make him trouble.
 "The fakirs were a never ending source of amazement to the Indians when they began to come into the camps with their tricks and perform ances. The Indians by and by called that gentry Chicago man. That came about in this wise: About the first of them that came along was a seight-of- hand performer who did many tricks, but nothing he did astonished the h. dians so much as his taking the hair all off his head and removing his teeth | from his mouth at will--the fakir. of | course, wearing wig and having false l teeth. At last an Indian asked a miner | who the wonderful person was.
 He Chicago man was the answer. |
 After that, if the word went around that a Chicago man was in the camp | the Indians would come by the dozen to find him. Whenever a steamer ar rived numbers of Indians would invari- ably be at the landing and eagerly ask of the first person that came off:
 Chicago man come?
 "A New York man or a Boston man had no interest for the Siwosh. 'Chica- go man was his idea of all that was wonderful in humanity for the outside world That is, such was the case after San Francisco ceased to be the only place on earth with the Alaska Indians. That was the first place they ever heard of as being full | of wonders, and the person who had been to Frisco and back became the greatest individual alive in the Siwosh estimation. It was the ambition of ev- cry Indian, particularly the young men, to go to Frisco. One time two mission i aries got into a quarrel at Nualato over some transaction, and one killed | the other. At that time criminals of that kind had to be taken to Frisco for court trial and this missionary was ar rested promptly and sent down there. | Among the witnesses who were taken along was an Indian When he came back, he of course, became the lion of Ill Indians in that district, and he made their eyes bulge, and aroused envy in I their breasts by his tales of what he | lad seen at Frisco. One young Indian became so enthusiastic and determined hat after thinking the matter over, he decided to go to Frisco himself.
 Me go to Frisco he took to say ng on every occasion.
 Not long after this Indian waylaid white man a short distance below Circle City and killed him. He made 10 secret of it, and a delegation of mil lers took him into custody
 "'You kill white man he was asked.
 "'Ob, yes, me kill white man. the ndian replied, eagerly.
 "'Why you kill white man?' he was sked.
 |" Me kill white man. me go to 'Fris- O.
 That was all. The missionary had - filed a man and they had taken him 0 Frisco, so the Indian had simply filed his man so that they would take i'm to Frisco, too. But they didn't