He was ing slowly about the dock, first with a pair of crutches and then with a cane. never a man again, after his encounter with the hootz. But although the hootz was so strong and so fierce there was in almost every Indian tribe one who would attack and kill him. In the Stickeen tribe this man's name was Snook. Tilly, our star pupil and my interpreter, proudly pointed him out, one day when I was down in the Indian village, as her granduncle and the head of the family. I had never before seen Snook. He never came to church or to my house. He must have been sixty or sixty-five years old-a great, stalwart, big-boned savage with a huge head and a tremendous jaw. He was almost always absent from Fort Wrangell, hunting in the mountains or fishing among the islands. "My gran'fader, the greatest hootz-hunter in the world," was Tilly's introduction. It was on the occasion of a visit with Tilly to the community house of her family. As she spoke she went behind the carved totemic corner post which supported the roof, and brought forth old Snook's most valuable and proudest possession. It was a beautiful spear. The shaft was of crabapple wood and eight feet long, thick enough for a good grip, and polished until it shone like brown granite. It was carved all over with the totemic images of the eagle and the brown bear, the totems of Snook's family. The head was made of a large steel rasp and was a foot and a half long, five inches across in the widest place, finely pointed, the edges sharp as a razor. The handle of the spear-head was let into the end of the shaft in a very ingenious way, and secured by many tightly wrapped turns of a cord of deer-sinew. It was a most perfect and ferocious weapon. I learned that the chief of another tribe had offered a slave, whose value was five hundred blankets, for the spear, and his offer had been refused. All efforts to get Snook to talk about his hunting exploits were unavailing. He only grunted and went on with some carving with which he was occupied. But Sam Tahtain, a member of Snook's family, who was noted for his powers of oratory, described most graphically, in a mixture of Chinook, Thlinget and bad English, Snook's way of killing the big bears. He acted it so perfectly that even if I had not understood a word, the scene would have stood out very vividly before my mental vision. He showed the hootz grubbing among mossy logs and flirting the salmon out of a swift mountain stream; then Snook came in sight, creeping stealthily through the forest, a flintlock musket in one hand, his spear in the other. From that point the story grew more animated and the gestures more rapid to the climax. I can best tell it in the present tense: The bear hears a stick snap and catches a faint human odor; he stands up on his hind feet to investigate. His lips are drawn back from his big teeth, and he snarls a question. The man dodges behind a tree; creeps closer-cautiously flits from tree to treemoves slowly out from a sheltering trunksinks on one knee-raises his gun-aims. "Bang!" from the gun,-"wah-a-ah-gr-r-r!" from the bear. The bear whirls round and round, biting his wound; then he charges straight for the man, his teeth champing, his jaws slavering. The man throws away the gun and takes his spear in both hands. He steps boldly out in the open and stands still, his left foot |