nto thee that we
Indians anciently used not metals nor the money of you blanketeers.
Our circulating medium was shells,--wampum you would name it. Of
all wampum, the most precious is Hiaqua. Hiaqua comes from the far
north. It is a small, perforated shell, not unlike a very opaque
quill toothpick, tapering from the middle, and cut square at both
ends. We string it in many strands, and hang it around the neck
of one we love--namely, each man his own neck. We also buy with it
what our hearts desire. He who has most hiaqua is best and wisest
and happiest of all the northern Hiada and of all the people of
Whulge. The mountain horsemen value it; the braves of the terrible
Blackfeet have been known, in the good old days, to come over and
offer a horse or a wife for a bunch of fifty hiaqua.

"Now, once upon a time there dwelt where this fort of Nisqually now
stands a wise old man of the Squallyamish. He was a great fisherman
and a great hunter; and the wiser he grew, much the wiser he
thought himself. When he had grown very wise, he used to stay apart
from every other Siwash. Companionable salmon-boilings round a
common pot had no charms for him. 'Feasting was wasteful,' he said,
'and revelers would come to want,' and when they verified his
prophecy, and were full of hunger and empty of salmon, he came out
of his hermitage and had salmon to sell.

"Hiaqua was the pay he always demanded; and as he was a very wise
old man, and knew all the tideways of Whulge, and all the enticing
ripples and placid spots of repose in every river where fish might
dash or delay, he was sure to have salmon when others wanted, and
thus bagged largely of its precious equivalent, hiaqua.

"Not only a mighty fisher was the sage, but a mighty hunter, and
elk, the greatest animal of the woods, was the game he loved. Well
had he studied every trail where elk leave the print of their
hoofs, and where, tossing their heads, they bend the tender twigs.
Well had he searched through the broad forest, and found the
long-haired prairies where elk feed luxuriously; and there, from
behind palisade fir-trees, he had launched the fatal arrow.
Sometimes, also, he lay beside a pool of sweetest water, revealed
to him by gemmy reflections of sunshine gleaming through the woods,
until at noon