The general relations between the husband and wife among the native races in Western Oregon were that the husband should kill the game or catch the fish, as the subsistence was from game or fish. The dressing of skins for clothing, the weaving of rush mats for camp covers or for beds, the preparation of cedar bark for clothing, nets and ropes, and the digging of roots, gathering of berries, etc., were all left to the wife and the slaves at her command, if there were any. The husband and wife seemed to have separate property rights as to themselves, and on the death of either the most valuable of it, and often all of it, was sacrificed to the manes of the dead. Sometimes living slaves were bound and placed near the dead body of a person of importance in the tribe.[1]
Under this custom, when a leading man like Chenamus, Chief of the Chinooks, died, the body was carefully swathed in cedar bark wrappings; his war canoe or barge of state was used as his coffin, and his second best canoe, if he had two, was inverted and placed over the body as a defense against the weather or wild beasts; a small hole was made in the lower canoe and it was placed in a slanting position to facilitate complete drainage. No money reward would induce an Indian of the Lower Columbia to enter and labor in a canoe that had been thus used for the dead. Thus the best and generally all the property worth notice was rendered useless to the living. The wife in such a case might be owner of slaves in her own right, or of a business canoe, and in
- ↑ In 1844 the Chief of the Wascopams died at The Dalles, and was succeeded by his brother, who was somewhat under the influence of Rev. Alvan Waller, of the Methodist Episcopal mission there. A young slave boy was bound and secured in the dead house with the body of the dead chief, in accordance with the customs of the tribe. Mr. Waller continued pleading for the release of the boy for three days and got the new chief's consent to take the boy out of his horrible situation on condition that it be done secretly and the boy taken away, so that the people of the tribe would never see him. He was taken to Mr. J. L. Parrish, at Clatsop mission, and remained a member of his family till, in 1849, he went to the California gold mines.
