Their arms were bows and arrows, spears, and war
clubs. Some wore a corselet of pieces of hard wood laced together with
bear grass, so as to form a light coat of mail, pliant to the body; and
a kind of casque of cedar bark, leather, and bear grass, sufficient to
protect the head from an arrow or war club. A more complete article of
defensive armor was a buff jerkin or shirt of great thickness, made of
doublings of elk skin, and reaching to the feet, holes being left for
the head and arms. This was perfectly arrowproof; add to which, it was
often endowed with charmed virtues, by the spells and mystic ceremonials
of the medicine man, or conjurer.
Of the peculiar custom, prevalent among these people, of flattening
the head, we have already spoken. It is one of those instances of human
caprice, like the crippling of the feet of females in China, which
are quite incomprehensible. This custom prevails principally among the
tribes on the sea-coast, and about the lower parts of the rivers. How
far it extends along the coast we are not able to ascertain. Some of the
tribes, both north and south of the Columbia, practice it; but they all
speak the Chinook language, and probably originated from the same stock.
As far as we can learn, the remoter tribes, which speak an entirely
different language, do not flatten the head.
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