Winter Brothers by Ivan Doig Page B

Arhosetts were having their own problems of pride.
This forenoon Frank told me that he had just received news from his father, old Cedakanim of Clyoquot. It appears that the Arhosett Indians have been trying to induce the Clyoquots to join them in an attack on the Makahs....They offered 100 blanks and 20 Makah women as slaves provided they could catch them. Cedakanim and the other Clyoquot chief rejected this offer and demanded a steamboat, a sawmill and a barrel of gold. This difference of opinion came near resulting in a fight but at length old Cedakanim told them he would not fight the Makahs nor did he want any pay from the Arhosetts as he was much richer than they and to prove this he ordered 100 pieces of blubber to be given them....This, said Frank, made the Arhosetts so ashamed that the sweat ran out of their faces....
    Perhaps deciding that it would be easier to negotiate with enemies than allies of Cedakanim’s sort, the Arhosetts held back to see what might be forthcoming from Neah Bay. Agent Webster suggested to the Makahs that they offer the Arhosetts a peace settlement of, say, twenty blankets; the U.S. government would provide half the total.
    Given the prospect of getting out of a possible war at the cost of only ten blankets of their own, the dramatic Makahs took the chance to preen a bit, find out just how much pride had been sweated out of the Arhosetts. Swan was nominated the Neah Bay plenipotentiary
to go over to the Arhosetts and find out if they are willing to settle the affair by a payment to them of blankets, and if so the Arhosetts were to be invited to come over and get them, but we were not to carry anything at first to them but merely to find out the state of their feelings.
    As it turned out, the luckless Arhosetts did not even have the face-saving moment of receiving an envoy from the Makahs. Swan peremptorily sent word to them through Cedakanim, the Clyoquot chief who had faced them down with his wealth of blubber, and eventually two abashed Arhosetts arrived at Neah Bay to say they would settle for the blankets.
    Peace ensued for two weeks, until the Elwhas protested that a cousin of Peter had wounded with a knife the brother of Swell’s killer, Charlie. Peter responded that he was sorry. Sorry that Charlie’s brother only had been wounded instead of killed,
for he would do it himself if he could get a chance.
    Peter being Peter, the chance was got. This culminating entry by Swan:
    Tried to get Indians to go to Pt. Angeles for Mr. Webster but all are afraid as Peter on his trip down killed an Indian at Crescent Bay. The Indian was an Elwha and some years ago killed Dukwitsa’s father. Peter obtained a bottle and a half of whiskey from a white man at Crescent Bay and while under its influence was instigated by Duktvitsa to kill the Elwha which he did by stabbing him. Peter told me that after he had stabbed the man several times he broke the blade of the knife off in the man’s body.
    As might be expected, that stabbing invited battle. As might not be expected, the skirmish lines shaped themselves not be twcen the Makahs and the Elwhas, but the Makahs and the United States. These years at Cape Flattery had been passing with remarkable tranquility between the natives and the white newcomers, as Swan was quite thankfully aware:
I have been reading this evening the report of the Comr. of Indian Affairs and it seems singular to be able to sit here in peace and quiet on this the most remote frontier of the United States and read of the hostilities among the tribes between this Territory and the Eastern settlements.
Peter’s knife punctured that state of affairs. Swan’s daily narrative begins to show move, countermove, counter-countermove:
    Mr. Webster arrested Peter this evening and took him on board the sch.
A. J. Westen
to be taken to Steilacoom
, the territorial army headquarters.
    ...A canoe with a party of Indians followed the schooner and this evening it was reported