THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN
23
for this purpose. They were unconscious poets, and some of their tales
seem to have been chanted in blank verse, the rhythm and swing of the
meter in their estimation giving an added delight to the story. When
the legends are told to the white men the delicate wordweave is seldom
revealed, and never if the legend is told in English. The translation robs
it of much of its intended charm and grace, for the Indian seems to think
that the pale invader may laugh at his metaphors or deride him for re
vealing that such fine emotion exist within a stoic's breast. Thus it is
that so many legends appear puerile and without pertinency which in the
vernacular are strong and full of meaning." Myths and Legends of the
New York Iroquois: State Museum Bulletin 125.
AGED INDIAN DEAD
From the Oregonian we reprint the following dipatch of a recen date
from Hoquiam, Wash.:
John Kettle, 105 years old, believed to have been the oldest Indian
in Western Washington, if not in the Northwest, a member of a Colum
bia River tribe probably long since extinct, died Thursday in his cabin
on the Humptulips River, west of this city. He was one of the two
survivors of the last great Indian battle fought on Grays Harbor, about
1845, and for years after that battle was a slave of the Humptulips
tribe.
Kettle was here when the first white settlers came. From the time
of the big battle, from which the old Indians of Grays Harbor now
date events, until the treaty with the Indians in 1855, he was a slave of
the Humptulips Indians. The treaty freed him, but he continued to
live near the mouth of the river and was known to all of the pioneers
of Grays Harbor and to all who had anything to do with Indians.
The exact date of the battle is unknown and the only story of the
event is that related by the old Indians and only one. Humptulips Pete,
himself 100 years old, knows the real story.
About 1845 a large war party of Indians from the Oregon side of the
Columbia River with a great flotilla of war canoes came to Grays Harbor
to attact the Chehalis and other tribes of Indians. The invaders landed
at James rock, about six miles from Hoquiam on the Grays Harbor
shore. They pulled their canoes up on the beach and camped for the
night.
During the night the Chehalis, Humptulips and other tribes fell upon
the invaders and a great number were slain. A few escaped in their
canoes, but a large number, among whom were John Kettle and his
mother, were captured and made slaves.