istian
Indians. The trouble was not settled yet, and although the two tribes
had exchanged some pledges and promised to fight no more, I feared a
fresh outbreak, and so thought it wise to pay another visit to the
Hootz-noos. As we approached Angoon, however, I heard the war-drums
beating with their peculiar cadence, "tum-tum"--a beat off--"tum-tum,
tum-tum." As we came up to the beach I saw what was seemingly the whole
tribe dancing their war-dances, arrayed in their war-paint with their
fantastic war-gear on. So earnestly engaged were they in their dance
that they at first paid no attention whatever to me. My heart sank into
my boots. "They are going back to Wrangell to attack the Stickeens," I
thought, "and there will be another bloody war."

Driving our canoe ashore, we hurried up to the head chief of the
Hootz-noos, who was alternately haranguing his people and directing the
dances.

"Anatlask," I called, "what does this mean? You are going on the
warpath. Tell me what you are about. Are you going back to Stickeen?"

He looked at me vacantly a little while, and then a grin spread from ear
to ear. It was the same chief in whose house I had seen the idiot boy a
year before.

"Come with me," he said.

He led us into his house and across the room to where in state,
surrounded by all kinds of chieftain's gear, Chilcat blankets, totemic
carvings and paintings, chieftain's hats and cunningly woven baskets,
there lay the body of a stalwart young man wrapped in a
button-embroidered blanket. The chief silently removed the blanket from
the face of the dead. The skull was completely crushed on one side as
by a heavy blow. Then the story came out.

The hootz, or big brown bear of that country, is as large and savage as
the grizzly bear of the Rockies. At certain seasons he is, as the
natives say, "_quonsum-sollex_" (always mad). The natives seldom attack
these bears, confining their attention to the more timid and easily
killed black bears. But this young man with a companion, hunting on
Baranof Island across the Strait, found himself suddenly confronted by
an enormous hootz. The young man rashly shot him with his musket,
wounding him sufficiently to make him furious. The tremendous brute
hurled his thousand pounds of ferocity at the hunter, and one little tap
of that huge paw crushed his skull like an egg-shell. His companion
brought his body home; and now the whole tribe had formally declared
war on that bear, and all