THE SMOKE-TALK.
One day in September Mrs. Woods was at work in her cabin, and Gretchen was
at school. Mrs. Woods was trying to sing. She had a hard, harsh voice
always, and the tune was a battle-cry. The hymn on which she was
exercising her limited gifts was not one of the happy tunes of Methodism,
which early settlers on the Columbia loved to sing. It was a very
censorious rhyme and took a very despondent view of the human heart:
"The pure testimony poured forth from the Spirit
Cuts like a two-edgèd sword;
And hypocrites now are most sorely tormented
Because they're condemnèd by the Word."
She made the word "hypocrites" ring through the solitary log-cabin--she
seemed to have the view that a large population of the world were of this
class of people. She paused in her singing and looked out of the door.
"There's one honest woman alive," she remarked to herself. "Thank Heaven,
_I_ never yet feared the face of clay!"
A tall, dark form met her eye--a great shadow in the scintillant sunlight.
It was an aged Indian, walking with a staff. He was coming toward the
cabin.
"Umatilla!" she said. "What can he want of me?"
The old chief approached, and bowed and sat down on a log that answered
for a door-step.
"I walk with a staff now," he said. "My bow has drifted away on the tide
of years--it will never come back again. I am old."
"You have been a good man," said Mrs. Woods, yielding to an impulse of her
better nature. She presently added, as though she had been too generous,
"And there aren't many good Injuns--nor white folks either for that
matter."
"I have come to have a smoke-talk with you," said the old chief, taking
out his pipe and asking Mrs. Woods to light it. "Listen! I want to go
home. When a child is weary, I take him by the hand and point him to the
smoke of his wigwam. He goes home and sleeps. I am weary. The Great Spirit
has taken me by the hand; he points to the smoke of the wigwam. There
comes a time when all want to go home. I want to go home. Umatilla is
going home. I have _not_ spoken."
The smoke from his pipe curled over his white head in the pure, clear
September air. He was eighty or more years of age. He had heard the
traditions of Juan de Fuca, the Greek pilot, who left his name on the
straits of the Puget Sea. He had heard of the coming of Vancouver in his
boyhood, the English explorer who named the seas and mountains for his
lieutenants and friends, Puget, Baker, Ranier, and Townsend. He had known
the forest lords of the Hudson Bay Company, and of Astoria; had seen the
sail of Gray as it entered the Columbia, and had heard the preaching of
Jason Lee. The murder of Whitman had caused him real sorrow. Umatilla was
a man of peace. He had loved to travel up and down the Columbia, and visit
the great bluffs of the Puget Sea. He lived for a generation at peace with
all the tribes, and now that he was old he was venerated by them all.
"You are a good old Injun," said Mrs. Woods, yielding to her better self
again. "I don't say it about many people. I do think you have done your
best--considering."
"I am not what I want to be," said Umatilla. "It is what we want to be
that we shall be one day; don't you think so? The Great Spirit is going to
make me what I want to be--he will make us all what we want to be. My
desires are better than I--I will be my desires by and by. My staff is in
my hand, and I am going home. The old warriors have gone home. They were
thick as the flowers of the field, thick as the stars of the night. My
boys are gone home--they were swift as the hawks in the air. Benjamin is
left to the Umatillas. He is no butcher-bird; no forked tongue--he will
remember the shade of his father. My heart is in his heart. I am going
home. I have _not_ spoken."
He puffed his pipe again, and watched an eagle skimming along on the great
over-sea of September gold. The Indian language is always picturesque, and
deals in symbols and figures of speech. It is picture-speaking. The
Indians are all poets in their imaginations, like children. This habit of
personification grows in the Indian mind with advancing years. Every old
Indian speaks in poetic figures. Umatilla had not yet "spoken," as he
said; he had been talking in figures, and merely approaching his subject.
There was a long pause. He then laid down his pipe. He was about to speak:
"Woman, open your ears. The Great Spirit lives in women, and old people,
and little children. He loves the smoke of the wigwam, and the green
fields of the flowers, and the blue gardens of stars. And he loves
music--it is his voice, the whisper of the soul.
"He spoke in the pine-tops, on the lips of the seas, in the shell, in the
reed and the war-drum. Then _she_ came. He speaks through _her_. I want
_her_ to speak for me. My people are angry. There are butcher-birds among
them. They hate you--they hate the cabin of the white man. The white men
take away their room, overthrow their forests, kill their deer. There is
danger in the air.
"The October moon will come. It will grow. It will turn into a sun on the
border of the night. Then come Potlatch. My people ask for the Dance of
the Evil One. I no consent--it means graves.
"Let me have _her_ a moon--she play on the air. She play at the Potlatch
for me. She stand by my side. The Great Spirit speak through her. Indians
listen. They will think of little ones, they will think of departed ones,
they will think of the hunt--they will see graves. Then the night will
pass. Then the smoke will rise again from white man's cabin. Then I die
in peace, and go home to the Great Spirit and rest. Will you let me have
her? I _have_ spoken."
Mrs. Woods comprehended the figurative speech. The old chief wished to
take Gretchen to his wigwam for a month, and have her play the violin on
the great night of the Potlatch. He hoped that the influence of the music
would aid him in preventing the Dance of the Evil Spirits, and a massacre
of the white settlers. What should she say?
"I will talk with Gretchen," she said. "You mean well. I can trust you. We
will see."
He rose slowly, leaning on his staff, and emptied his pipe. It required a
resolute will now to cause his withered limbs to move. But his steps
became free after a little walking, and he moved slowly away. Poor old
chief of the Cascades! It was something like another Sermon on the Mount
that he had spoken, but he knew not how closely his heart had caught the
spirit of the Divine Teacher.
When Gretchen came home from school, Mrs. Woods told her what had
happened, and what the old chief had asked.
Mr. Woods had returned from the block-houses. He said: "Gretchen, go!
Your _Traumerei_ will save the colony. Go!"
Gretchen sat in silence for a moment. She then said: "I can trust
Umatilla. I will go. I want to go. Something unseen is leading me--I feel
it. I do not know the way, but I can trust my guide. I have only one
desire, if I am young, and that is to do right. But is it right to leave
you, mother?"
"Mother!" how sweet that word sounded to poor Mrs. Woods! She had never
been a mother. Tears filled her eyes--she forced them back.
"Yes, Gretchen--go. I've always had to fight my way through the world, and
I can continue to do so. I've had some things to harden my heart; but, no
matter what you may do, Gretchen, I'll always be a mother to _you_. You'll
always find the latch-string on the outside. You ain't the wust girl that
ever was, if I did have a hand in bringing you up. Yes--go."
"Your heart is right now," said Gretchen; "and I want to speak to you
about Benjamin. He told me a few days ago that he hated you, but that no
one should ever harm you, because he loved the Master."
"He did, did he?" said Mrs. Woods, starting up. "Well, I hate him, and
I'll never forgive him for tellin' you such a thing as that."
"But, mother, don't you love _the_ Master, and won't you be friendly and
forgiving to Benjamin, for _his_ sake? I wish you would. It would give you
power; I want you to do so."
"I'll think about it, Gretchen. I don't feel quite right about these
things, and I'm goin' to have a good talk with Father Lee. The boy has
some good in him."
"I wish you would tell him that."
"Why?"
"Sympathy makes one grow so."
"That's so, Gretchen. Only praise a dog for his one good quality, and it
will make a good dog of him. I 'spect 'tis the same with folks. But my
nature don't break up easy. I shall come out right some time. I tell you
I'm goin' to have a talk with Father Lee. It is his preachin' that has
made me what I am, and may be I'll be better by and by."
Mrs. Woods, with all her affected courage, had good reason to fear an
Indian outbreak, and to use every influence to prevent it. The very
mention of the Potlatch filled her with recent terror. She well knew the
story of the destruction of Whitman and a part of his missionary colony.
_That_ was a terrible event, and it was a scene like that that the new
settlers feared, at the approaching Potlatch; and the thought of that
dreadful day almost weakened the faith of Mr. Mann in the Indians.
We must tell you the old-time history of the tragedy which was now revived
in the new settlement.
_THE CONJURED MELONS._
Most people who like history are familiar with the national story of
Marcus Whitman's "Ride for Oregon"[A]--that daring horseback trip across
the continent, from the Columbia to the Missouri, which enabled him to
convince the United States Government not only that Oregon could be
reached, but that it was worth possessing. Exact history has robbed this
story of some of its romance, but it is still one of the noblest
wonder-tales of our own or any nation. Monuments and poetry and art must
forever perpetuate it, for it is full of spiritual meaning.
Lovers of missionary lore have read with delight the ideal romance of the
two brides who agreed to cross the Rocky Mountains with their husbands,
Whitman and Spaulding; how one of them sang, in the little country church
on departing, the whole of the hymn--
"Yes, my native land, I love thee,"
when the voices of others failed from emotion. They have read how the
whole party knelt down on the Great Divide, beside the open Bible and
under the American flag, and took possession of the great empire of the
Northwest in faith and in imagination, and how history fulfilled the
dream.
At the time of the coming of the missionaries the Cayuse Indians and
Nez-Percés occupied the elbow of the Columbia, and the region of the
musical names of the Wallula, the Walla Walla, and Waülaptu. They were a
superstitious, fierce, and revengful race. They fully believed in
witchcraft or conjuring, and in the power to work evil through familiar
spirits. Everything to them and the neighboring tribes had its good or
evil spirit, or both--the mountains, the rivers, the forest, the sighing
cedars, and the whispering firs.
The great plague of the tribes on the middle Columbia was the measles. The
disease was commonly fatal among them, owing largely to the manner of
treatment. When an Indian began to show the fever which is characteristic
of the disease, he was put into and inclosed in a hot clay oven. As soon
as he was covered with a profuse perspiration he was let out, to leap into
the cold waters of the Columbia. Usually the plunge was followed by death.
There was a rule among these Indians, in early times, that if the
"medicine-man" undertook a case and failed to cure, he forfeited his own
life. The killing of the medicine-man was one of the dramatic and fearful
episodes of the Columbia.
Returning from the East after his famous ride, Whitman built up a noble
mission station at Waülaptu. He was a man of strong character, and of fine
tastes and ideals. The mission-house was an imposing structure for the
place and time. It had beautiful trees and gardens, and inspiring
surroundings.
Mrs. Whitman was a remarkable woman, as intelligent and sympathetic as she
was heroic. The colony became a prosperous one, and for a time occupied
the happy valley of the West.
One of the vices of the Cayuse Indians and their neighbors was stealing.
The mission station may have overawed them for a time into seeming
honesty, but they began to rob its gardens at last, and out of this
circumstance comes a story, related to me by an old Territorial officer,
which may be new to most readers. I do not vouch for it, but only say that
the narrator of the principal incidents is an old Territorial judge who
lives near the place of the Whitman tragedy, and who knew many of the
survivors, and has a large knowledge of the Indian races of the Columbia.
To his statements I add some incidents of another pioneer:
"The thieving Cayuses have made 'way with our melons again," said a young
farmer one morning, returning from the gardens of the station. "One theft
will be followed by another. I know the Cayuses. Is there no way to stop
them?"
One of the missionary fraternity was sitting quietly among the trees. It
was an August morning. The air was a living splendor, clear and warm, with
now and then a breeze that rippled the leaves like the waves of the sea.
He looked up from his book, and considered the question half-seriously,
half-humorously.
"I know how we used to prevent boys from stealing melons in the East,"
said he.
"How?"
"Put some tartar emetic in the biggest one. In the morning it would be
gone, but the boys would never come after any more melons."
The young farmer understood the remedy, and laughed.
"And," added he, "the boys didn't have much to say about melons after they
had eaten _that_ one. The subject no longer interested them. I guess the
Indians would not care for more than one melon of that kind."
"I would like to see a wah-wah of Indian thieves over a melon like that!"
said the gardener. "I declare, I and the boys will do it!"
He went to his work, laughing. That day he obtained some of the emetic
from the medical stores of the station, and plugged it into three or four
of the finest melons. Next morning he found that these melons were gone.
The following evening a tall Indian came slowly and solemnly to the
station. His face had a troubled look, and there was an air of mystery
about his gait and attitude. He stopped before one of the assistant
missionaries, drew together his blanket, and said:
"Some one here no goot. You keep a conjurer in the camp. Indian kill
conjurer. Conjurer ought die; him danger, him no goot."
The laborers gathered round the stately Indian. They all knew about the
nauseating melons, and guessed why he had come. All laughed as they heard
his solemn words. The ridicule incensed him.
"You one conjurer," he said, "he conjure melons. One moon, two moons, he
shall die."
The laborers laughed again.
"Half moon, more moons, he shall suffer--half moon, more moons," that is,
sooner or later.
The missionary's face grew serious. The tall Indian saw the change of
expression.
"Braves sick." He spread out his blanket and folded it again like wings.
"Braves double up _so_"--he bent over, opening and folding his blanket.
"Braves conjured; melon conjured--white man conjure. Indian kill him."
There was a puzzled look on all faces.
"Braves get well again," said the missionary, incautiously.
"Then you _know_," said the Indian. "You know--you conjure. Make
sick--make well!"
He drew his blanket again around him and strode away with an injured look
in his face, and vanished into the forests.
"I am sorry for this joke," said the missionary; "it bodes no good."
November came. The nights were long, and there was a perceptible coolness
in the air, even in this climate of April days.
Joe Stanfield, a half-breed Canadian and a member of Whitman's family, was
observed to spend many of the lengthening evenings with the Cayuses in
their lodges. He had been given a home by Whitman, to whom he had seemed
for a time devoted.
Joe Lewis, an Indian who had come to Whitman sick and half-clad, and had
received shelter and work from him, seems to have been on intimate terms
with Stanfield, and the two became bitter enemies to the mission and
sought to turn the Cayuses against it, contrary to all the traditions of
Indian gratitude.
In these bright autumn days of 1847 a great calamity fell upon the Indians
of the Columbia. It was the plague. This disease was the terror of the
Northwestern tribes. The Cayuses caught the infection. Many sickened and
died, and Whitman was appealed to by the leading Indians to stay the
disease. He undertook the treatment of a number of cases, but his patients
died.
The hunter's moon was now burning low in the sky. The gathering of rich
harvests of furs had begun, and British and American fur-traders were
seeking these treasures on every hand. But at the beginning of these
harvests the Cayuses were sickening and dying, and the mission was
powerless to stay the pestilence.
A secret council of Cayuses and half-breeds was held one night under the
hunter's moon near Walla Walla, or else on the Umatilla. Five Crows, the
warrior, was there with Joe Lewis, of Whitman's household, and Joe
Stanfield, alike suspicious and treacherous, and old Mungo, the
interpreter. Sitkas, a leading Indian, may have been present, as the story
I am to give came in part from him.
Joe Lewis was the principal speaker. Addressing the Cayuses, he said:
"The moon brightens; your tents fill with furs. But Death, the robber, is
among you. Who sends Death among you? The White Chief (Whitman). And why
does the White Chief send among you Death, the robber, with his poison?
That he may possess your furs."
"Then why do the white people themselves have the disease?" asked a
Cayuse.
None could answer. The question had turned Joe Lewis's word against him,
when a tall Indian arose and spread his blanket open like a wing. He stood
for a time silent, statuesque, and thoughtful. The men waited seriously
to hear what he would say.
It was the same Indian who had appeared at the mission after the joke of
the plugged melons.
"Brothers, listen. The missionaries are conjurers. They conjured the
melons at Waülaptu. They made the melons sick. I went to missionary chief.
He say, 'I make the melons well.' I leave the braves sick, with their
faces turned white, when I go to the chief. I return, and they are well
again. The missionaries conjure the melons, to save their gardens. They
conjure you now, to get your furs."
The evidence was conclusive to the Cayuse mind. The missionaries were
conjurers. The council resolved that all the medicine-men in the country
should be put to death, and among the first to perish should be Whitman,
the conjurer.
Such in effect was the result of the secret council or councils held
around Waülaptu.
Whitman felt the change that had come over the disposition of the tribes,
but he did not know what was hidden behind the dark curtain. His great
soul was full of patriotic fire, of love to all men, and zeal for the
gospel.
He was nothing to himself--the cause was everything. He rode hither and
thither on the autumn days and bright nights, engaged in his great work.
He went to Oregon City for supplies.
"Mr. McKinley," he said to a friend, "a Cayuse chief has told me that the
Indians are about to kill all the medicine-men, and myself among them. I
think he was jesting."
"Dr. Whitman," said McKinley, "a Cayuse chief never jests."
He was right. The fateful days wore on. The splendid nights glimmered over
Mount Hood, and glistened on the serrated mountain tents of eternal snow.
The Indians continued to sicken and die, and the universal suspicion of
the tribes fell upon Whitman.
Suddenly there was a war-cry! The mission ran with blood. Whitman and his
wife were the first to fall. Then horror succeeded horror, and many of the
heroic pioneers of the Columbia River perished.
"The Jesuits have been accused of causing the murder of Whitman," said one
historian of Washington to me. "They indignantly deny it. I have studied
the whole subject for years with this opinion, that the Indian outbreak
and its tragedies had its origin, and largely gathered its force, from
the terrible joke of the conjured melons.
"That was the evidence that must have served greatly to turn the Indian
mind against one of the bravest men that America has produced, and whose
name will stand immortal among the heroes of Washington and Oregon."
I give this account as a local story, and not as exact history; but this
tradition was believed by the old people in Washington.
When any one in the new settlement spoke of the Potlatch, this scene came
up like a shadow. Would it be repeated?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A: See Historical Notes.]