CHAPTER I.

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THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS

[Illustration: "_What think you now, Tohomish?_"]

THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS

A Romance of Indian Oregon

by

F. H. BALCH

With eight full-page illustrations by L. Maynard Dixon

NINETEENTH EDITION

Chicago . A. C. McClurg & Co.

Nineteen Hundred & Fifteen

Copyright

A. C. McClurg & Co.

1890 and 1902

W. F. Hall Printing Company, Chicago

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

Encouraged by the steady demand for Mr. Balch's "The Bridge of the

Gods," since its publication twelve years ago, the publishers have

decided to issue a new edition beautified with drawings from the

pencil of Mr. L. Maynard Dixon. This tale of the Indians of the far

West has fairly earned its lasting popularity, not only by the intense

interest of the story, but by its faithful delineations of Indian

character.

In his boyhood Mr. Balch enjoyed exceptional opportunities to inform

himself regarding the character and manners of the Indians: he visited

them in their homes, watched their industries, heard their legends,

saw their gambling games, listened to their conversation; he

questioned the Indians and the white pioneers, and he read many books

for information on Indian history, traditions, and legends. By

personal inquiry among old natives he learned that the Bridge which

suggested the title of his romance was no fabric of the imagination,

but was a great natural bridge that in early days spanned the

Columbia, and later, according to tradition, was destroyed by an

earthquake.

Before his death the author had the satisfaction of knowing that his

work was stamped with the approval of the press and the public; his

satisfaction would have been more complete could he have foreseen that

that approval would be so lasting.

JULY 1, 1902.

PREFACE.

In attempting to present with romantic setting a truthful and

realistic picture of the powerful and picturesque Indian tribes that

inhabited the Oregon country two centuries ago, the author could not

be indifferent to the many serious difficulties inseparable from such

an enterprise. Of the literary success with which his work has been

accomplished, he must of course leave others to judge; but he may

without immodesty speak briefly of his preparation for his task, and

of the foundation of some of the facts and legends which form the

framework of his story. Indian life and character have long been a

favorite study with him, and in these pages he has attempted to

describe them, not from an ideal standpoint, but as he knew them in

his own boyhood on the Upper Columbia. Many of the incidents related

in the story have come under his personal observation; others have

been told him by aged pioneers, or gleaned from old books of

Northwestern travel. The every-day life of the Indians, their food,

their dress, their methods of making their mats, of building their

houses, of shaping their canoes, their gambling games, their religious

beliefs, their legends, their subjects of conversation, the sports and

pastimes of their children,--all these have been studied at first

hand, and with the advantages of familiar and friendly intercourse

with these people in their own homes. By constant questioning, many

facts have been gained regarding their ancestry, and the fragments of

history, tradition, and legend that have come down from them. Indian

antiquities have been studied through every available source of

information. All the antiquarian collections in Oregon and California

have been consulted, old trading-posts visited, and old pioneers and

early missionaries conversed with. Nothing has been discarded as

trivial or insignificant that could aid in the slightest degree in

affording an insight into Indian character and customs of a by-gone

age.

As to the great Confederacy of the Wauna, it may be said that Gray's

"History of Oregon" tells us of an alliance of several tribes on the

Upper Columbia for mutual protection and defence; and students of

Northwestern history will recall the great confederacy that the Yakima

war-chief Kamyakin formed against the whites in the war of 1856, when

the Indian tribes were in revolt from the British Possessions to the

California line. Signal-fires announcing war against the whites leaped

from hill to hill, flashing out in the night, till the line of fire

beginning at the wild Okanogan ended a thousand miles south, on the

foot-hills of Mount Shasta. Knowing such a confederacy as this to be

an historical fact, there seems nothing improbable in that part of the

legend which tells us that in ancient times the Indian tribes on

either side of the Cascade Range united under the great war-chief

Multnomah against their hereditary foes the Shoshones. Even this would

not be so extensive a confederacy as that which Kamyakin formed a

hundred and fifty years later.

It may be asked if there was ever a great natural bridge over the

Columbia,--a "Bridge of the Gods," such as the legend describes. The

answer is emphatically, "Yes." Everywhere along the mid-Columbia the

Indians tell of a great bridge that once spanned the river where the

cascades now are, but where at that time the placid current flowed

under an arch of stone; that this bridge was _tomanowos_, built by the

gods; that the Great Spirit shook the earth, and the bridge crashed

down into the river, forming the present obstruction of the cascades.

All of the Columbian tribes tell this story, in different versions and

in different dialects, but all agreeing upon its essential features as

one of the great facts of their past history.

"_Ancutta_ (long time back)," say the Tumwater Indians, "the salmon he

no pass Tumwater falls. It too much big leap. Snake Indian he no catch

um fish above falls. By and by great _tomanowos_ bridge at cascades he

fall in, dam up water, make river higher all way up to Tumwater; then

salmon he get over. Then Snake Indian all time catch um plenty."

"My father talk one time," said an old Klickitat to a pioneer at White

Salmon, Washington; "long time ago liddle boy, him in canoe, his

mother paddle, paddle up Columbia, then come to _tomanowos_ bridge.

Squaw paddle canoe under; all dark under bridge. He look up, all like

one big roof, shut out sky, no see um sun. Indian afraid, paddle

quick, get past soon, no good. Liddle boy no forget how bridge look."

Local proof also is not wanting. In the fall, when the freshets are

over and the waters of the Columbia are clear, one going out in a

small boat just above the cascades and looking down into the

transparent depths can see submerged forest trees beneath him, still

standing upright as they stood before the bridge fell in and the river

was raised above them. It is a strange, weird sight, this forest

beneath the river; the waters wash over the broken tree-tops, fish

swim among the leafless branches: it is desolate, spectre-like, beyond

all words. Scientific men who have examined the field with a view to

determining the credibility of the legend about the bridge are

convinced that it is essentially true. Believed in by many tribes,

attested by the appearance of the locality, and confirmed by

geological investigation, it is surely entitled to be received as a

historic fact.

The shipwreck of an Oriental vessel on the Oregon coast, which

furnishes one of the most romantic elements in our story, is an

altogether probable historic incident, as explained more fully in a

foot-note on page 75.

The spelling of Indian names, in which authorities differ so widely,

has been made as accurate as possible; and, as in the name "Wallulah,"

the oldest and most Indian-like form has been chosen. An exception has

been made in the case of the modernized and corrupted "Willamette,"

which is used instead of the original Indian name, "Wallamet." But the

meaningless "Willamette" has unfortunately passed into such general

use that one is almost compelled to accept it. Another verbal

irregularity should be noticed: Wauna, the name given by all the

Indians in the story to the Columbia, was only the Klickitat name for

it. The Indians had no general name for the Columbia, but each tribe

had a special name, if any, for it. Some had no name for it at all. It

was simply "the big water," "_the_ river," "the big salmon water."

What Wauna, the Klickitat name, or Wemath, the Wasco name, signifies,

the author has been unable to learn, even from the Indians who gave

him the names. They do not know; they say their fathers knew, but it

is forgotten now.

A rich and splendid treasure of legend and lore has passed away with

the old pioneers and the Indians of the earlier generation. All that

may be found interesting in this or any other book on the Indians,

compared to what has been lost, is like "a torn leaf from some old

romance."

F. H. B.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA,

September, 1890.

CONTENTS.

Book I.

_THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS._

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE NEW ENGLAND MEETING 13

II. THE MINISTER'S HOME 21

III. A DARKENED FIRESIDE 31

IV. THE COUNCIL OF ORDINATION 39

V. INTO TRACKLESS WILDS 47

Book II.

_THE OPENING OF THE DRAMA._

I. SHALL THE GREAT COUNCIL BE HELD? 53

II. THE WAR-CHIEF AND THE SEER 69

III. WALLULAH 74

IV. SENDING OUT THE RUNNERS 87

Book III.

_THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES._

I. THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE 91

II. ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL 103

III. THE GREAT CAMP ON THE ISLAND 120

IV. AN INDIAN TRIAL 131

V. SENTENCED TO THE WOLF-DEATH 142

Book IV.

_THE LOVE TALE._

I. THE INDIAN TOWN 151

II. THE WHITE WOMAN IN THE WOOD 159

III. CECIL AND THE WAR-CHIEF 169

IV. ARCHERY AND GAMBLING 176

V. A DEAD QUEEN'S JEWELS 181

VI. THE TWILIGHT TALE 191

VII. ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR 200

VIII. IN THE DARK 210

IX. QUESTIONING THE DEAD 217

Book V.

_THE SHADOW OF THE END._

I. THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT 227

II. THE MARRIAGE AND THE BREAKING UP 241

III. AT THE CASCADES 248

IV. MULTNOMAH'S DEATH-CANOE 260

V. AS WAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FATE 268

ILLUSTRATIONS.

"'What think you now, Tohomish?'" _Frontispiece_

"'I have spoken; I will not turn back from

my words'" _Facing page_ 50

"'The Earth hears us, the Sun sees us'" _Facing page_ 88

The Great "Witch Mountain" of the Indians _Facing page_ 108

"'I Will kill him!'" _Facing page_ 168

"It was the Death-song of the Willamettes" _Facing page_ 204

"'Come back! Come back!'" _Facing page_ 224

Multnomah's Death-canoe _Facing page_ 264

What tall and tawny men were these,

As sombre, silent, as the trees

They moved among! and sad some way

With tempered sadness, ever they,

Yet not with sorrow born of fear,

The shadows of their destinies

They saw approaching year by year,

And murmured not.

. . . . .

They turned to death as to a sleep,

And died with eager hands held out

To reaching hands beyond the deep;

And died with choicest bow at hand,

And quiver full and arrow drawn

For use, when sweet to-morrow's dawn

Should wake them in the Spirit Land.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS.

BOOK I.

_THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS._

CHAPTER I.

THE NEW ENGLAND MEETING.

Such as sit in darkness and the shadow of death.--_Bible_.

One Sabbath morning more than two hundred years ago, the dawn broke

clear and beautiful over New England. It was one of those lovely

mornings that seem like a benediction, a smile of God upon the earth,

so calm are they, so full of unutterable rest and quiet. Over the sea,

with its endless line of beach and promontory washed softly by the

ocean swells; over the towns of the coast,--Boston and Salem,--already

large, giving splendid promise of the future; over the farms and

hamlets of the interior, and into the rude clearings where the outer

limits of civilization mingled with the primeval forest, came a flood

of light as the sun rose above the blue line of eastern sea. And still

beyond, across the Alleghanies, into the depth of the wilderness,

passed the sweet, calm radiance, as if bearing a gleam of gospel

sunshine to the Indians of the forest.

Nowhere did the Sunday seem more peaceful than in a sheltered valley

in Massachusetts. Beautiful indeed were the thrifty orchards, the

rustic farmhouses, the meadows where the charred stumps that marked

the last clearing were festooned with running vines, the fields green

with Indian corn, and around all the sweep of hills dark with the

ancient wood. Even the grim unpainted meeting-house on the hill, which

was wont to look the very personification of the rigid Calvinistic

theology preached within it, seemed a little less bare and forbidding

on that sweet June Sabbath.

As the hour for morning service drew near, the drummer took his

accustomed stand before the church and began to thunder forth his

summons,--a summons not unfitting those stern Puritans whose idea of

religion was that of a life-long warfare against the world, the flesh,

and the devil.

Soon the people began to gather,--grave men and women, dressed in the

sober-colored garb of the day, and little children, clad in their

"Sunday best," undergoing the awful process of "going to meeting," yet

some of them, at least, looking at the cool shadowed wood as they

passed, and thinking how pleasant it would be to hunt berries or

birds' nests in those sylvan retreats instead of listening to a two

hours' sermon, under imminent danger of perdition if they went to

sleep,--for in such seductive guise did the Evil One tempt the souls

of these youthful Puritans. Solemn of visage and garb were the groups,

although here and there the gleam of a bit of ribbon at the throat of

some young maiden, or a bonnet tastefully adorned, showed that "the

world, the flesh, and the devil" were not yet wholly subdued among

them.

As the audience filed through the open door, the men and women

divided, the former taking one side of the house, the latter the

other,--the aisle forming a dividing line between them. The floor was

uncarpeted, the walls bare, the pulpit undraped, and upon it the

hour-glass stood beside the open Bible. Anything more stiff and barren

than the interior of the meeting-house it would be difficult to find.

An unwonted stir breaks the silence and solemnity of the waiting

congregation, as an official party enters. It is the Governor of the

colony and his staff, who are making a tour of the province, and have

stopped over Sunday in the little frontier settlement,--for although

the Governor is an august man, even he may not presume to travel on

the Sabbath in this land of the Puritans. The new-comers are richly

dressed. There is something heavy, massive, and splendid in their

garb, especially in the Governor's. He is a stately military-looking

man, and wears his ample vestments, his embroidered gloves, his lace

and ruffles, with a magisterial air.

A rustle goes through the audience as the distinguished visitors pass

up the aisle to the front seats assigned, as the custom was, to

dignitaries. Young people steal curious glances at them; children turn

around in their seats to stare, provoking divers shakes of the head

from their elders, and in one instance the boxing of an ear, at which

the culprit sets up a smothered howl, is ignominiously shaken, and

sits swelling and choking with indignant grief during the remainder of

the service.

At length the drum ceased, indicating both the arrival of the minister

and the time for service to begin.

The minister took his place in the pulpit. He was a young man, of

delicate mould, with a pale and intellectual face. Exquisite

sensitiveness was in the large gray eyes, the white brow, the delicate

lips, the long slender fingers; yet will and energy and command were

in them all. His was that rare union of extreme sensibility with

strong resolution that has given the world its religious leaders,--its

Savonarolas and Chrysostoms; men whose nerves shrank at a discord in

music, but when inspired by some grand cause, were like steel to

suffer and endure.

Something of this was in the minister's aspect, as he stood before the

people that morning. His eyes shone and dilated, and his slight figure

gathered dignity as his gaze met that of the assembly. There was no

organ, that instrument being deemed a device of the Prince of Darkness

to lead the hearts of the unwary off to popery; but the opening hymn

was heartily sung. Then came the Scripture reading,--usually a very

monotonous performance on the part of Puritan divines; but as given in

the young minister's thoughtfully modulated voice, nothing could have

been more expressive. Every word had its meaning, every metaphor was a

picture; the whole psalm seemed to breathe with life and power: "Lord,

thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations."

Majestic, mournful, yet thrilling with deathless hope, was the

minister's voice; and the people were deeply moved. The prayer

followed,--not the endless monologue of the average Puritan

clergyman, but pointed, significant, full of meaning. Again his face

was lifted before them as he rose to announce the text. It was paler

now; the eyes were glowing and luminous; the long, expressive fingers

were tremulous with excitement. It was evident to all that no common

subject was to be introduced, no common effort to be made. Always

composed, the audience grew more quiet still. The very children felt

the hush of expectation, and gazed wonderingly at the minister. Even

that great man, the Governor, lost his air of unbending grandeur, and

leaned expectantly forward.

The subject was Paul's vision of the man in Macedonia crying for help.

The speaker portrayed in burning words the condition of Macedonia, the

heathen gloom and utter hopelessness of her people, the vision that

came to Paul, and his going to preach to them. Then, passing to

England under the Druids, he described the dark paganism, the

blood-stained altars, the brutal priesthood of the age; and told of

the cry that went forth for light,--a cry that touched the heart of

the Roman Gregory into sending missionaries to show them the better

way.

Like some royal poem was the discourse, as it showed how, through the

storms and perils of more than a thousand years, amid the persecution

of popes, the wars of barons, and the tyranny of kings, England had

kept the torch burning, till in these latter times it had filled the

world with light. Beautiful was the tribute he paid to the more recent

defenders of the faith, and most intense the interest of the

listeners; for men sat there who had come over the seas because of

their loyalty to the faith,--old and grizzled men, whose youth had

known Cromwell and Charles Stuart, and who had in more recent years

fought for "King Monmouth" and shared the dark fortunes of Argyle.

The old Governor was roused like a veteran war-horse at the sound of

the trumpet; many faces were flushed with martial ardor. The young

minister paused reflectively at the enthusiasm he had kindled. A

sorrowful smile flitted around his lips, though the glow of

inspiration was still burning in his eyes. Would they be as

enthusiastic when he made the application of his discourse?

And yet England, yea, even New England, was false, disloyal. She had

but half kept the faith. When the cry of pagan England had gone forth

for light, it had been heard; the light had been given. But now in her

day of illumination, when the Macedonian cry came to her, she closed

her ears and listened not. On her skirts was the blood of the souls of

men; and at the last day the wail of the heathen as they went down

into the gulf of flame would bear witness against her.

Grave and impassioned, with an undertone of warning and sorrow, rang

the voice of the minister, and the hearts of the people were shaken as

though a prophet were speaking.

"Out from the forests around us come the cry of heathen folk, and ye

will not listen. Ye have the light, and they perish in darkness and go

down to the pit. Generation after generation has grown up here in

forest and mountain, and has lived and died without God and without

hope. Generation has followed generation, stumbling blindly downward

to the dust like the brutes that perish. And now their children,

bound in iron and sitting under the shadow of death, reach out their

hands from the wilderness with a blind cry to you for help. Will ye

hear?"

He lifted his hands to them as he spoke; there was infinite pathos in

his voice; for a moment it seemed as if all the wild people of the

wilderness were pleading through him for light. Tears were in many

eyes; yet in spite of the wonderful power of his oratory, there were

faces that grew stern as he spoke,--for only a few years had passed

since the Pequod war, and the feeling against the Indians was bitter.

The Governor now sat erect and indignant.

Strong and vehement was the minister's plea for missionaries to be

sent to the Indians; fearlessly was the colonial government arraigned

for its deficiencies in this regard; and the sands in the hour-glass

were almost run out when the sermon was concluded and the minister

sank flushed and exhausted into his seat.

The closing psalm was sung, and the audience was dismissed. Slow and

lingering were the words of the benediction, as if the preacher were

conscious of defeat and longed to plead still further with his people.

Then the gathering broke up, the congregation filing out with the same

solemnity that had marked the entrance. But when the open air was

reached, the pent-up excitement burst forth in a general murmur of

comment.

"A good man," remarked the Governor to his staff, "but young, quite

young." And they smiled approvingly at the grim irony of the tone.

"Our pastor is a fine speaker," said another, "but why will he bring

such unpleasant things into the pulpit? A good doctrinal sermon, now,

would have strengthened our faith and edified us all."

"Ay, a sermon on the errors of Episcopacy, for instance."

"Such talk makes me angry," growled a third. "Missionaries for the

Indians! when the bones of the good folk they have killed are yet

bleaching amid the ashes of their cabins! Missionaries for those red

demons! an' had it been powder and shot for them it had been a

righteous sermon."

So the murmur of disapprobation went on among those slowly dispersing

groups who dreaded and hated the Indian with an intensity such as we

now can hardly realize. And among them came the minister, pale and

downcast, realizing that he had dashed himself in vain against the

stern prejudice of his people and his age.

CHAPTER II.

THE MINISTER'S HOME.

Sore have I panted at the sun's decline,

To pass with him into the crimson West,

And see the peoples of the evening.

EDWIN ARNOLD.

The Reverend Cecil Grey,--for such was our young minister's

name,--proceeded immediately after the service to his home. Before we

cross its threshold with him, let us pause for a moment to look back

over his past life.

Born in New England, he first received from his father, who was a fine

scholar, a careful home training, and was then sent to England to

complete his education. At Magdalen College, Oxford, he spent six

years. Time passed very happily with him in the quiet cloisters of

that most beautiful of English colleges, with its memories of Pole and

Rupert, and the more courtly traditions of the state that Richard and

Edward had held there. But when, in 1687, James II. attempted to

trample on the privileges of the Fellows and force upon them a popish

president, Cecil was one of those who made the famous protest against

it; and when protests availed nothing, he left Oxford, as also did a

number of others. Returning to America, he was appointed pastor of a

New England church, becoming one of the many who carried the flower

of scholarship and eloquence into the bleak wilds of the New World.

Restless, sensitive, ardent, he was a man to whom a settled pastorate

was impossible. Daring enterprises, great undertakings of a religious

nature yet full of peril, were the things for which he was naturally

fitted; and amid the monotonous routine of parish duties he longed for

a greater activity. Two centuries later he might have become

distinguished as a revivalist or as a champion of new and startling

views of theology; earlier, he might have been a reformer, a follower

of Luther or Loyola; as it was, he was out of his sphere.

But for a time the Reverend Mr. Grey tried hard to mould himself to

his new work. He went with anxious fidelity through all the labors of

the country pastorate. He visited and prayed with the sick, he read

the Bible to the old and dim-sighted, he tried to reconcile petty

quarrels, he wrestled with his own discontent, and strove hard to

grind down all the aspirations of his nature and shut out the larger

horizon of life.

And for a time he was successful; but during it he was induced to take

a very fatal step. He was young, handsome, a clergyman, and unmarried.

Now a young unmarried minister is pre-eminently one of sorrows and

acquainted with grief. For that large body of well-meaning people who

are by nature incapacitated from attending to their own business take

him in hand without mercy. Innumerable are the ways in which he is

informed that he ought to be married. Subtle and past finding out are

the plots laid by all the old ladies and match-makers of his church

to promote that desired event. He is told that he can never succeed

in the ministry till he is married. The praises of Matilda Jane

Tompkins or Lucinda Brown are sounded in his ears till he almost

wishes that both were in a better world,--a world more worthy their

virtues. At length, wearily capitulating, he marries some wooden-faced

or angular saint, and is unhappy for life.

Now there was in Mr. Grey's church a good, gentle girl, narrow but not

wooden-faced, famous for her neatness and her housekeeping abilities,

who was supposed to be the pattern for a minister's wife. In time gone

by she had set her heart on a graceless sailor lad who was drowned at

sea, much to the relief of her parents. Ruth Anderson had mourned for

him quietly, shutting up her sorrow in her own breast and going about

her work as before; for hers was one of those subdued, practical

natures that seek relief from trouble in hard work.

She seemed in the judgment of all the old women in the church the

"very one" for Mr. Grey; and it likewise seemed that Mr. Grey was the

"very one" for her. So divers hints were dropped and divers things

were said, until each began to wonder if marriage were not a duty. The

Reverend Cecil Grey began to take unusual pains with his toilet, and

wended his way up the hill to Mr. Anderson's with very much the aspect

of a man who is going to be hanged. And his attempts at conversation

with the maiden were not at all what might have been expected from the

young minister whose graceful presence and fluent eloquence had been

the boast of Magdalen. On her part the embarrassment was equally

great. At length they were married,--a marriage based on a false idea

of duty on each side. But no idea of duty, however strong or however

false, could blind the eyes of this married pair to the terrible fact

that not only love but mental sympathy was wanting. Day by day Cecil

felt that his wife did not love him, that her thoughts were not for

him, that it was an effort for her to act the part of a wife toward

him. Day by day she felt that his interests lay beyond her reach, and

that all the tenderness in his manner toward her came from a sense of

duty, not from love.

But she strove in all ways to be a faithful wife, and he tried hard to

be a kind and devoted husband. He had been especially attentive to her

of late, for her health had been failing, and the old doctor had

shaken his head very gravely over her. For a week or more she had

grown steadily worse, and was now unable even to walk without help.

Her malady was one of those that sap away the life with a swift and

deadly power against which all human skill seems unavailing.

Mr. Grey on returning from church entered the living room. The invalid

sat at the window, a heavy shawl wrapped about her, her pale face

turned to the far blue line of sea, visible through a gap in the

hills. A pang wrenched his heart keenly at the sight. Why _would_ she

always sit at that window looking so sorrowfully, so abstractedly at

the sea, as if her heart was buried there with her dead lover?

She started as she heard his footstep, and turned her head quickly

toward him, a faint flush tinging her cheek and a forced smile

quivering around her lips. Her greeting was very gentle, and he saw

that her heart was reproaching her for being so disloyal to him as to

think of her lost lover; and yet he felt her fingers tremble and

shrink away from his as he took her hand.

"God forgive me!" he thought, with infinite self-accusation. "How

repugnant I must be to her,--an intruder, thrusting myself into the

heart that is sacred to the dead."

But he let her see nothing of this in his voice or manner as he

inquired how she had been. She replied wearily that she was no better,

that she longed to get well again and be at work.

"I missed your sermon to-day," she said, with that strained, pathetic

smile upon her lips again. "You must tell me about it now."

He drew his chair to her side and began to give an outline of the

sermon. She listened, but it was with forced attention, without

sympathy, without in the least entering into the spirit of what he was

saying. It pained him. He knew that her nature was so narrow, so

conventional, that it was impossible for her to comprehend his grand

scheme of Indian evangelization. But he checked his impatience, and

gave her a full synopsis of the discourse.

"It is useless, useless. They cannot understand. A whole race is

perishing around them, and they will not put forth a hand save to

mistreat a Quaker or throw a stone at a Churchman. Our Puritanism is

like iron to resist tyranny,--but alas! it is like iron, too, when one

tries to bend it to some generous undertaking."

He stopped, checking back other and more bitter words. All his soul

rose up in revolt against the prejudice by which he was surrounded.

Then Ruth spoke timidly.

"Seeing that it is so, would it not be best to let this missionary

subject go, and preach on practical every-day matters? I am not wise

in these things, I know; but would it not be better to preach on

common subjects, showing us how we ought to live from day to day, than

to discourse of those larger things that the people do not

understand?"

His face darkened, though not angrily. This was the same prejudice he

had just encountered in the meeting-house, though in a different form.

He arose and paced back and forth with quick, impatient steps. Then he

came and stood before her with folded arms and resolute face.

"Ruth, I have tried that so often, tried it with prayers and tears,

but it is utterly impossible. I cannot bring myself to it. You know

what the physicians say of my disease of the heart,--that my life may

be very short; and I want it to be noble. I want to live for the

greatest possibilities within my reach. I want to set some great work

in motion that will light up thousands of darkened lives,--yea, and

grow in might and power even after my lips are sealed in death."

The little figure on the chair moved uneasily under his animated

though kindly gaze.

"I do not quite comprehend you. I think the best work is to do what

God gives us to do, and to do it well. To me he has given to labor in

caring for the house,"--there was a patient weariness in her tone that

did not escape Cecil,--"to you he has given the duties of a pastor, to

strengthen the weak, cheer the sorrowing, comfort the old. Is it not

better to do those things faithfully than to spend our time longing

for some more ideal work not given us?"

"But suppose the ideal work is given? Suppose a man is called to

proclaim new truths, and be the leader in a new reform? For him the

quiet pastorate is impossible; nay, were it possible, it would be

wrong, for would he not be keeping back the message God had given him?

He would be one called to a work, yet entering not upon it; and upon

him would come the curse that fell on the unfaithful prophets of

old."

All the gloom of the theology of his age was on him as he spoke.

Refined and poetic as was his nature, it was thoroughly imbued with

the Calvinism of early New England.

She lifted her hand wearily and passed it over her aching brow.

"I do not know," she said; "I have never thought of such things, only

it seems to me that God knew best when he gave us our lots in life.

Surely wherever we find ourselves, there he intended us to be, and

there we should patiently work, leaving our higher aspirations to his

will. Is not the ideal life, after all, the one that is kindest and

humblest?"

"But, Ruth," replied the minister, sadly, "while the work you describe

is certainly noble, I have yet felt for a long time that it is not

what God calls me to. Day after day, night after night, I think of the

wild races that roam the forests to the west, of which no man knows

the end. Sometimes I think that I am called to stand before the rulers

of the colony and plead that missionaries be sent to the Indians.

Sometimes I feel that I am called to go and preach to them myself.

Often in my dreams I plead with dark-browed sachems or with mighty

gatherings of warriors to cast away their blood-stained weapons and

accept Christ, till I awake all trembling with the effort. And always

the deadly pain at my heart warns me that what is done must be done

quickly."

The burning ardor that had given such intensity to his sermon came

into his voice as he spoke. The invalid moved nervously on her chair,

and he saw that his enthusiasm merely jarred on her without awakening

any response.

"Forgive me," he said hurriedly, "I forgot that you were not well

enough to talk of those things. Sometime when you are better we will

speak of them again."

And then he talked of other and to her more interesting topics, while

a keen pang rankled in his breast to find her irresponsive to that

which was so dear to him.

But he was very kind to her; and when after a while the old Indian

woman, Cecil's nurse in childhood and their only servant now, came to

tell him that dinner was ready, he would not go until he had first

brought his wife her dinner and waited on her with his own hands.

After his own repast was finished he must hasten away to preach his

afternoon sermon. But he came to her first and bent over her; for

though love never had been, perhaps never could be, between them,

there was a deep domestic feeling in his nature.

"How good and patient you are in your sickness," he said, gazing down

into the quiet, wistful face that was so honest and true, yet so

thoroughly prosaic and commonplace. "What a sermon you have been

preaching me, sitting here so uncomplainingly."

"Do you think so?" she said, looking up gratefully. "I am glad. I so

want to do my duty by you."

He had meant to kiss her as he bent over her, though such caresses

were rare between them, but there was something in her tones that

chilled him, and he merely raised a tress of her hair to his lips

instead. At the door he bade her a pleasant farewell, but his

countenance grew sorrowful as he went down the path.

"Duty," he murmured, "always duty, never love. Well, the fault is my

own that we were ever married. God help me to be true and kind to her

always. She shall never know that I miss anything in her."

And he preached to his congregation that afternoon a sermon on

burden-bearing, showing how each should bear his own burden

patiently,--not darkening the lives of others by complaint, but always

saying loving words, no matter how much of heartache lay beneath them.

He told how near God is to us all, ready to heal and to strengthen;

and closed by showing how sweet and beautiful even a common life may

grow through brave and self-sacrificing endurance of trouble.

It was a helpful sermon, a sermon that brought the listeners nearer

God. More than one heart was touched by those earnest words that

seemed to breathe divine sympathy and compassion.

He went home feeling more at peace than he had done for many days. His

wife's room was still, as he entered it. She was in her easy-chair at

the window, lying back among the pillows asleep. Her face was flushed

and feverish, her long lashes wet with tears. The wraps had fallen

away from her, and he stooped over to replace them. As he did so her

lips moved in her half-delirious slumber, and she murmured some name

sounding like his own. A wild throb of joy thrilled through him, and

he bent closer to listen. Again she spoke the name, spoke it

sorrowfully, longingly. It was the name of her lover drowned at sea.

The long, nervous fingers that held the half-drawn wraps shook

convulsively as with acutest pain, then drew the coverings gently

around her.

"God help her, God help her!" he murmured, as he turned softly away,

his eyes filling with tears,--tears for her sorrow rather than his

own.

CHAPTER III.

A DARKENED FIRESIDE.

... Her way is parted from my way;

Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?

DANTE ROSSETTI.

Ruth was much worse in the evening, but at last, after Cecil had

watched at her side till a late hour, she sank into a troubled sleep.

Then the old Indian servant insisted on taking his place at the

sufferer's bedside, for she saw that he was much worn by the labors of

the day and by anxiety for his wife. At first he refused; but she was

a skilled nurse, and he knew that the invalid would fare better in her

hands than his own, so at last he consented on condition that she

would call him if his wife grew worse. The woman promised, and he

withdrew into the library, where a temporary bed had been made for

him. At the door he turned and looked back.

His wife lay with closed eyes and flushed face amid the white pillows.

The robe over her breast stirred with her difficult breathing, and her

head turned now and then from side to side while she uttered broken,

feverish words. By her sat the swarthy nurse, watching her every

movement and ready with observant eye and gentle touch to minister to

all her needs.

A yearning tenderness and pity came into his gaze. "Poor child, poor

child!" he thought. "If I could only make her well and happy! If I

could only bring her dead lover back to life, how gladly would I put

her in his arms and go away forever!" And it seemed to him in some dim

way that he had wronged the poor sufferer; that he was to blame for

her sorrow.

He went on into the library. A lamp was burning on the table; a Hebrew

Bible and a copy of Homer lay beside it. Along the walls were arranged

those heavy and ponderous tomes in which the theology of the age was

wont to clothe itself.

He seated himself at the table and took up his Homer; for he was too

agitated to sleep. But it was in vain that he tried to interest

himself in it. The rhythm had lost its music, the thought its power;

it was in vain that he tried to forget himself in the reply of

Achilles, or the struggle over the body of Patroclus.

Hawthorne tells us that a person of artistic temperament may at a time

of mental depression wander through the Roman galleries and see

nothing in the finest masterpieces of Raphael or Angelo. The grace is

gone from the picture, the inspiration from the marble; the one is a

meaningless collection of colors, the other a dull effigy carved in

stone.

Something of this mood was on Cecil to-night. Irresponsive to the

grand beauty of the poem he felt only its undertone of heartache and

woe.

"It is like human life," he thought, as he listlessly turned the

pages; "it is bright on the surface, but dark and terrible with pain

below. What a black mystery is life! what bitter irony of justice!

Hector is dragged at Achilles' chariot-wheel, and Paris goes free.

Helen returns to her home in triumph, while Andromache is left

desolate. Did Homer write in satire, and is the Iliad but a splendid

mockery of justice, human and divine? Or is life so sad that every

tale woven of it must needs become a tragedy?"

He pondered the gloomy puzzle of human existence long that night. At

length his brain grew over-weary, and he slept sitting in his chair,

his head resting on the pages of the open book.

How long he slept he knew not, but he awoke with a start to find a

hand laid on his shoulder and the tall figure of the Indian woman

standing beside him. He sprang up in sudden fear.

"Is she worse?" he cried. But the woman, with that light noiseless

step, that mute stolidity so characteristic of her race, had already

glided to the door; and there was no need for her to answer, for

already his own apprehensions had replied.

He was in the room almost as soon as she. His wife was much worse; and

hastening through the night to a neighboring farmhouse, he roused its

inmates, despatched a messenger for the physician, and returned,

accompanied by several members of the neighbor's family.

The slow moments dragged away like years as they watched around her.

It seemed as if the doctor would never come. To the end of his life

Cecil never forgot the long-drawn agony of that night.

At length their strained hearing caught the quick tread of horses'

hoofs on the turf without.

"The doctor, the doctor!" came simultaneously from the lips of Cecil

and the watchers. The doctor,--there was hope in the very name.

How eagerly they watched his face as he bent over the patient! It was

a calm, self-contained face, but they saw a shadow flit over it, a

sudden almost imperceptible change of expression that said "Death" as

plainly as if he had spoken it. They could do nothing, he

said,--nothing but wait for the end to come.

How the moments lingered! Sometimes Cecil bent over the sufferer with

every muscle quivering to her paroxysms; sometimes he could endure it

no longer and went out into the cool night air or into the library,

where with the mere mechanical instinct of a student he picked up a

book, reading a few lines in it, then throwing it aside. Yet wherever

he was he felt her sufferings as acutely as when standing by her side.

His whole frame was in keenest sympathy with hers, his whole being

full of pain. So sharp were his sensations that they imparted an

abnormal vigor to his mind. Every line his eyes met in reading stood

out on the page with wonderful distinctness. The words seemed

pictorial, and his mind grasped abstruse propositions or involved

expressions with marvellous facility.

He noted it, and remembered afterward that he thought at the time how

curious it was that his tortured sympathies should give him such

startling acuteness of perception.

The slow night waned, the slow dawn crept over the eastern hills.

Cecil stood with haggard eyes at the foot of the bed, watching the

sleeper's face. As the daylight brightened, blending with the light of

the still burning lamps, he saw a change come over her countenance;

the set face relaxed, the look lost its wildness. A great hope shone

in his hollow eyes.

"She is getting better, she is coming out of her sufferings," he

whispered to the doctor.

"She will be out of her sufferings very soon," he replied sadly; and

then Cecil knew that the end was at hand. Was it because the peace,

the profound serenity which sometimes is the prelude of death, filling

her being, penetrated his, that he grew so strangely calm? An

inexpressible solemnity came to him as he looked at her, and all his

agitation left him.

Her face grew very sweet and calm, and full of peace. Her eyes met

Cecil's, and there was in them something that seemed to thank him for

all his goodness and patience,--something that was both benediction

and farewell. Her lips moved, but she was past the power of speech,

and only her eyes thanked him in a tender, grateful glance.

The sun's edge flashed above the horizon, and its first rays fell

through the uncurtained window full upon her face. She turned toward

them, smiling faintly, and her face grew tenderly, radiantly

beautiful, as if on that beam of sunshine the spirit of her dead lover

had come to greet her from the sea. Then the sparkle died out of her

eyes and the smile faded from her lips. It was only a white, dead face

that lay there bathed in golden light.

A moment after, Cecil left the house with swift footsteps and plunged

into the adjacent wood. There under a spreading oak he flung himself

prone upon the earth, and buried his face in his hands. A seething

turmoil of thoughts swept his mind. The past rose before him like a

panorama. All his married life rushed back upon him, and every memory

was regret and accusation.

"I might have been kinder to her, I might have been better," he

murmured, while the hot tears gushed from his eyes. "I might have

been so much better to her," he repeated over and over,--he, whose

whole thought had been to shut up his sorrow in his own heart and show

her only tenderness and consideration.

By and by he grew calmer and sat up, leaning against the tree and

looking out into vacancy with dim eyes that saw nothing. His heart was

desolate, emptied of everything. What was he to do? What was he to set

before himself? He had not loved her, but still she had been a part of

his life; with what was he to fill it now?

As he sat there depressed and troubled, a strange thing happened.

He was looking, as has been said, blindly into vacancy. It may have

been an optical illusion, it may have been a mere vagary born of an

over-wrought brain; but a picture formed before him. In the distance,

toward the west, he saw something that looked like a great arch of

stone, a natural bridge, rugged with crags and dark with pine. Beneath

it swept a wide blue river, and on it wild horsemen were crossing and

recrossing, with plumed hair and rude lances. Their faces were Indian,

yet of a type different from any he had ever seen. The bridge was in

the heart of a mighty mountain-range. On either side rose sharp and

lofty peaks, their sides worn by the action of water in some remote

age.

These details he noted as in a dream; then the strangeness of it all

burst upon him. Even as it did so, the vision dissolved; the bridge

wavered and passed away, the mountain-peaks sank in shadow. He leaped

to his feet and gazed eagerly. A fine mist seemed passing before his

sight; then he saw only the reach of hill and woodland, with the

morning light resting upon it.

While the vision faded, he felt springing up within him an

irrepressible desire to follow it. A mysterious fascination seized

him, a wild desire to seek the phantom bridge. His whole being was

swayed as by a supernatural power toward the west whence the vision

had passed. He started forward eagerly, then checked himself in

bewilderment. What could it mean?

In the nineteenth century, one similarly affected would think it meant

a fevered, a disordered brain; but in the seventeenth, when statesmen

like Cromwell believed in dreams and omens, and _roués_ like Monmouth

carried charms in their pockets, these things were differently

regarded.

The Puritan ministry, whose minds were imbued with the gloomy

supernaturalism of the Old Testament on which they fed, were

especially men to whom anything resembling an apparition had a

prophetic significance. And Cecil Grey, though liberal beyond most New

England clergymen, was liable by the keenness of his susceptibilities

and the extreme sensitiveness of his organization to be influenced by

such delusions,--if delusions they be. So he stood awed and trembling,

questioning within himself, like some seer to whom a dark and

uncertain revelation has been made.

Suddenly the answer came.

"The Lord hath revealed his will unto me and shown me the path wherein

I am to walk," he murmured in a hushed and stricken tone. "Ruth was

taken from me that I might be free to go where he should send me. The

vision of the Indians and the bridge which faded into the west, and

the strange desire that was given me to follow it, show that the Lord

has another work for me to do. And when I find the land of the bridge

and of the wild people I saw upon it, then will I find the mission

that God has given me to do. 'Lord God of Israel, I thank Thee. Thou

hast shown me the way, and I will walk in it, though all its stones be

fire and its end be death.'"

He stood a moment with bowed head, communing with his God. Then he

returned to his lonely home.

The friends whose kindly sympathies had brought them to the house of

mourning wondered at the erect carriage, the rapt, exalted manner of

the man. His face was pale, almost as pale as that within the darkened

room; but his eyes shone, and his lips were closely, resolutely set.

A little while, and that determined face was all sorrowful and pitying

again, as he bent over the still, cold body of his dead.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COUNCIL OF ORDINATION.

Friends were assembled together; the Elder and Magistrate also

Graced the scene with their presence, and stood like the Law and

the Gospel....

After the Puritan way and the laudable custom of Holland.

_The Courtship of Miles Standish._

A few days after the funeral, letters missive from the little society

went out to all the neighboring churches, calling a council to ordain

the Reverend Cecil Grey a missionary to the Indians.

It was a novel thing, in spite of the noble example that Roger

Williams had set not many years before; and the summons met with a

general response.

All the churches, far and near, sent delegates. If one could only have

taken a peep, the day before the council, into the households of that

part of New England, what a glimpse he would have gotten of Puritan

domestic life! What a brushing up there was of black coats, what a

careful starching and ironing of bands; and above all, in Cecil's own

neighborhood, what a mighty cookery for the ordination dinner the next

day! For verily the capacity of the clerical stomach is marvellous,

and is in fact the one thing in theology that does not change. New

departures alter doctrines, creeds are modified, but the appetite of

the clergy is not subject to such mutations.

The morrow came, and with it the expected guests. The meeting house

was crowded. There were many ministers and lay delegates in the

council. In the chair sat a venerable preacher, not unknown in the

records of those days,--a portly man, with a shrewd and kindly face.

Sterner faces were there also. The council wore a grave aspect, more

like a court of judges before whom a criminal is cited to appear than

an assembly of clergymen about to ordain a missionary.

After some preliminaries, Cecil was called on to give a statement of

his reasons for wishing to go as an evangelist to the Indians. He rose

before them. There was a singular contrast between his slight form and

expressive features and the stout frames and grim countenances of the

others. But the graceful presence of the man had in it a quiet dignity

that commanded the respect of all.

In obedience to the command, he told how he had thought of the unknown

tribes beyond the Alleghanies, living in the gloom of paganism and

perishing in darkness, till an intangible sympathy inclined him toward

them,--till, as it seemed to him, their great desire for light had

entered into and possessed him, drawing him toward them by a

mysterious and irresistible attraction. He felt called of God to go

and minister to their spiritual needs, and that it was his duty to

leave everything and obey the call.

"Is this all?" he was asked.

He hesitated a moment, and then described his vision in the wood the

morning of his wife's death. It made a deep impression on his hearers.

There was scarcely a man in the assembly who was not tinged with the

superstition of the age; and all listened, not lightly or sceptically,

but in awe, as if it brought them to the threshold of the

supernatural.

When the narration was ended, the chairman requested him to retire,

pending the decision of the council; but first he was asked,--

"Are you willing to abide by the decision of this council, whatever it

may be?"

He raised his head confidently, and his reply came frank and

fearless.

"I shall respect the opinions of my brethren, no matter how they may

decide; but I shall abide by the will of God and my own convictions of

duty."

The grave Puritan bent his head, half in acknowledgment of the reply,

half in involuntary admiration of its brave manhood; then Cecil left

the room, the silent, watchful crowd that filled the aisles parting

respectfully to let him pass.

"Now, brethren," said the chairman, "the matter is before you. Let us

hear from each his judgment upon it."

Solemn and weighty were the opinions delivered. One brother thought

that Mr. Grey had plenty of work to do at home without going off on a

wild-goose chase after the heathen folk of the wilderness. His church

needed him; to leave it thus would be a shameful neglect of duty.

Another thought that the Indians were descendants of the ten lost

tribes of Israel, and as such should be left in the hands of God. To

attempt to evangelize them was to fly in the face of Providence.

Another thought the same; but then, how about that vision of Mr.

Grey? He couldn't get around that vision.

"I don't know, brethren, I don't know!" he concluded, shaking his

head.

Still another declared positively for Mr. Grey. The good people of the

colonies owed it to the savages to do something for their religious

enlightenment. It was wrong that so little had been done. They had

taken their land from them, they had pushed them back into the wilds

at the point of the sword; now let them try to save their souls. This

man had been plainly called of God to be an apostle to the Indians;

the least that they could do was to bid him Godspeed and let him go.

So it went on. At length the venerable chairman, who had twice turned

the hour-glass upon the table before him, rose to close the

discussion. His speech was a singular mixture of shrewdness,

benevolence, and superstition.

He said that, as Christians, they certainly owed a duty to the

Indians,--a duty that had not been performed. Mr. Grey wished to help

fulfil that neglected obligation, and would go at his own expense. It

would not cost the church a shilling. His vision was certainly a

revelation of the will of the Lord, and _he_ dared not stand in the

way.

A vote was taken, and the majority were found to be in favor of

ordination. The chairman pronounced himself pleased, and Mr. Grey was

recalled and informed of the result.

"I thank you," he said simply, with a glad and grateful smile.

"Now, brethren," said the worthy chairman with much unction, "the

hour of dinner is nigh at hand, and the good people of this place have

prepared entertainment for us; so we will e'en put off the ceremony of

ordination till the afternoon. Let us look to the Lord for his

blessing, and be dismissed."

And so with a murmur of talk and comment the council broke up, its

members going to the places where they were to be entertained. Happy

was the man who returned to his home accompanied by a minister, while

those not so fortunate were fain to be content with a lay delegate.

Indeed, the hospitality of the settlement was so bounteous that the

supply exceeded the demand. There were not enough visitors to go

around; and more than one good housewife who had baked, boiled, and

roasted all the day before was moved to righteous indignation at the

sight of the good man of the house returning guestless from the

meeting.

Early in the afternoon entertainers and entertained gathered again at

the meeting-house. Almost the entire country side was there,--old and

young alike. The house was packed, for never before had that part of

New England seen a man ordained to carry the gospel to the Indians. It

occurred, too, in that dreary interval between the persecution of the

Quakers and the persecution of the witches, and was therefore doubly

welcome.

When Cecil arrived, the throng made way reverently for him. Was he not

going, perchance like the martyrs of old, to the fagot and the stake?

To those who had long known him he seemed hardly like the same man. He

was lifted to a higher plane, surrounded by an atmosphere of sanctity

and heroism, and made sacred by the high mission given him of God, to

which was now to be added the sanction of holy men.

So they made way for him, as the Florentines had made way for "il

Frate" and as the people of God had made way for Francis Xavier when

he left them to stir the heart of the East with his eloquence, and,

alas! to die on the bleak sea-coast of China, clasping the crucifix to

his breast and praying for those who had cast him out.

Cecil's face, though pale, was calm and noble. All his nature

responded to the moral grandeur of the occasion. It would be difficult

to put into words the reverent and tender exaltation of feeling that

animated him that day. Perhaps only those upon whose own heads the

hands of ordination have been laid can enter into or understand it.

The charge was earnest, but it was not needed, for Cecil's ardent

enthusiasm went far beyond all that the speaker urged upon him. As he

listened, pausing as it were on the threshold of an unknown future, he

wondered if he should ever hear a sermon again,--he, so soon to be

swallowed by darkness, swept, self-yielded, into the abyss of

savagery.

Heartfelt and touching was the prayer of ordination,--that God might

accept and bless Cecil's consecration, that the divine presence might

always abide with him, that savage hearts might be touched and

softened, that savage lives might be lighted up through his

instrumentality, and that seed might be sown in the wilderness which

would spring up and cause the waste places to be glad and the desert

to blossom as the rose.

"And so," said the old minister, his voice faltering and his hands

trembling as they rested on Cecil's bowed head, "so we give him into

Thine own hand and send him forth into the wilderness. Thou only

knowest what is before him, whether it be a harvest of souls, or

torture and death. But we know that, for the Christian, persecutions

and trials are but stepping-stones leading to God; yea, and that death

itself is victory. And if he is faithful, we know that whatever his

lot may be it will be glorious; that whatever the end may be, it will

be but a door opening into the presence of the Most High."

Strong and triumphant rang the old man's tones, as he closed his

prayer committing Cecil into the hands of God. To him, as he listened,

it seemed as if the last tie that bound him to New England was

severed, and he stood consecrated and anointed for his mission. When

he raised his face, more than one of the onlookers thought of those

words of the Book where it speaks of Stephen,--"And they saw his face

as it had been the face of an angel."

A psalm was sung, the benediction given, and the solemn service was

over. It was long, however, before the people left the house. They

lingered around Cecil, bidding him farewell, for he was to go forth at

dawn the next day upon his mission. They pressed his hand, some with

warm words of sympathy, some silently and with wet eyes. Many

affectionate words were said, for they had never known before how much

they loved their pastor; and now he seemed no longer a pastor, but a

martyr and a saint. More than one mother brought him her child to

bless;--others strangers from a distance--lifted their children up,

so that they could see him above the press, while they whispered to

them that they must always remember that they had seen the good Mr.

Grey, who was going far off into the west to tell the Indians about

God.

Long afterward, when nearly all that generation had passed away and

the storm of the Revolution was beginning to gather over the colonies,

there were a few aged men still living who sometimes told how, when

they were children, they had seen Cecil Grey bidding the people

farewell at the old meeting-house; and through all the lapse of years

they remembered what a wonderful brightness was on his face, and how

sweet and kind were his words to each as he bade them good-by

forever.

CHAPTER V.

INTO TRACKLESS WILDS.

"I will depart," he said, "the hour is come,

And in the silence of yon sky I read

My fated message flashing."

EDWIN ARNOLD.

The next morning Cecil rose early after a sleepless night. On that day

he was to go out from all that was sweet and precious in life and take

the path into the wilderness. At first his heart sank within him; then

his strength of purpose revived, and he was resolute again.

He must go, and soon. The briefer the parting the briefer the pang. He

had already bidden his friends good-by; his parents were long since

dead; it only remained to part from the old Indian woman, his nurse in

childhood, now his faithful housekeeper and the only inmate of his

home.

He went to the kitchen,--for usually at this hour she was up and

preparing breakfast. She was not there, and the room looked cold and

cheerless in the gray dawn. He went to her door and knocked; there was

no response. He called her; the room was as still as death. Alarmed,

he opened the door; no one was within; she was gone,--had evidently

been gone all night, for the bed was untouched.

He was pained and bewildered at this desertion, for only the day

before he had given her a paper legally drawn up, securing to her the

little property he possessed and making her independent for the rest

of her life. She had taken it, listened in silence to the kindly

expressions that accompanied the gift, and turned away without a word.

Now she was gone; what could it mean?

Slowly he made the simple preparations that were needed for the

journey--putting a little food, his Bible, and other necessaries into

a kind of knapsack and strapping it upon his back. Then taking his

staff, he went out from his home, never to return.

The sun was rising, the air was fresh and dewy, but his heart was sad.

Yet through it ran a strange thrill of joy, a strange blending of pain

and gladness.

"The parting is bitter, bitter almost unto death, but He will keep

me," murmured the white lips, as he went down the walk.

The sound of voices fell on his ears, and he looked up. At the gate,

awaiting him, was a group of his parishioners, who had come to look

once more on the face of their pastor. One by whose bedside he had

prayed in the hour of sickness; another, whom his counsel had saved

when direly tempted; a little lame child, who loved him for his

kindness; and an aged, dim-sighted woman, to whom he had often read

the Scriptures.

He opened the gate and came out among them.

"God bless you, sir," said the old woman, "we wanted to see your bonny

face again before you left us."

The little lame boy said nothing, but came up to Cecil, took his hand,

and pressed it to his cheek in a manner more eloquent than words.

"Friends," said Cecil, in a faltering voice, "I thank you. It is very

sweet to know that you care for me thus."

One by one they came and clasped his hand in tearful farewell. For

each he had a loving word. It was an impressive scene,--the

sorrow-stricken group, the pastor with his pale spiritual face full of

calm resolve, and around them the solemn hush of morning.

When all had been spoken, the minister reverently uncovered his head;

the others did the same. "It is for the last time," he said; "let us

pray."

After a few earnest words commending them to the care of God, he drew

his hand gently from the lame boy's cheek and rested it on his head in

silent benediction. Then giving them one last look of unutterable

love, a look they never forgot,--

"Good-by," he said softly, "God bless you all."

"Good-by, God bless _you_, sir," came back in answer; and they saw his

face no more.

One more farewell was yet to be said. The winding path led close by

the country graveyard. He entered it and knelt by the side of the

new-made grave. Upon the wooden headboard was inscribed the name of

her who slept beneath,--"Ruth Grey."

He kissed the cold sod, his tears falling fast upon it.

"Forgive me," he whispered, as if the dull ear of death could hear.

"Forgive me for everything wherein I failed you. Forgive me,

and--Farewell."

Again he was on his way. At the entrance to the wood he saw a figure

sitting on a rock beside the path. As he drew nearer he observed it

was clad in Indian garb, and evidently awaited his coming. Who was

it? Might it not be some chief, who, having heard of his intended

mission, had come forth to meet him?

He hastened his steps. When he came nearer, he saw that it was only an

Indian woman; a little closer, and to his inexpressible astonishment

he recognized his old nurse.

"What does this mean?" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here, and in

Indian garb, too?"

She rose to her feet with simple, natural dignity.

"It means," she said, "that I go with you. Was I not your nurse in

childhood? Did I not carry you in my arms then, and has not your roof

sheltered me since? Can I forsake him who is as my own child? My heart

has twined around you too long to be torn away. Your path shall be my

path; we go together."

It was in vain that Cecil protested, reasoned, argued.

"I have spoken," she said. "I will not turn back from my words while

life is left me."

He would have pleaded longer, but she threw a light pack upon her back

and went on into the forest. She had made her decision, and he knew

she would adhere to it with the inflexible obstinacy of her race.

He could only follow her regretfully; and yet he could not but be

grateful for her loyalty.

[Illustration: "_I have spoken; I will not turn back from my

words._"]

At the edge of the wood he paused and looked back. Before him lay the

farms and orchards of the Puritans. Here and there a flock of sheep

was being driven from the fold into the pasture, and a girl, bucket in

hand, was taking her way to the milking shed. From each farmhouse a

column of smoke rose into the clear air. Over all shone the glory of

the morning sun. It was civilization; it was New England; it was

_home_.

For a moment, the scene seemed literally to lay hold of him and pull

him back. For a moment, all the domestic feelings, all the refinement

in his nature, rose up in revolt against the rude contact with

barbarism before him. It seemed as if he could not go on, as if he

must go back. He shook like a leaf with the mighty conflict.

"My God!" he cried out, throwing up his arms with a despairing

gesture, "must I give up everything, everything?"

He felt his resolution giving way; his gray eyes were dark and dilated

with excitement and pain; his long fingers twitched and quivered;

before he knew what he was doing, he was walking back toward the

settlement.

That brought him to himself; that re-awakened the latent energy and

decision of his character.

"What! shall I turn back from the very threshold of my work? God

forgive me--never!"

His delicate frame grew strong and hardy under the power of his

indomitable spirit. Again his dauntless enthusiasm came back; again he

was the Apostle to the Indians.

One long last look, and he disappeared in the shadows of the wood,

passing forever from the ken of the white man; for only vague rumors

floated back to the colonies from those mysterious wilds into which he

had plunged. The strange and wondrous tale of his after-life New

England never knew.

BOOK II.

_THE OPENING OF THE DRAMA._

CHAPTER I.

SHALL THE GREAT COUNCIL BE HELD?

The comet burns the wings of night,

And dazzles elements and spheres;

Then dies in beauty and a blaze of light

Blown far through other years.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

Two hundred years ago--as near as we can estimate the time from the

dim and shadowy legends that have come down to us--the confederacy of

the Wauna or Columbia was one of the most powerful the New World has

ever seen. It was apparently not inferior to that of the Six Nations,

or to the more transitory leagues with which Tecumseh or Pontiac

stayed for a moment the onward march of the white man. It was a union

of the Indian tribes of Oregon and Washington, with the Willamettes at

the head, against their great hereditary enemies, the Nootkas, the

Shoshones, and the Spokanes.

Sonorous and picturesque was the language of the old Oregon Indians in

telling the first white traders the story of the great alliance.

"Once, long before my father's time and before his father's time, all

the tribes were as one tribe and the Willamettes were _tyee_ [chief].

The Willamettes were strong and none could stand against them. The

heart of the Willamette was battle and his hand was blood. When he

lifted his arm in war, his enemy's lodge became ashes and his council

silence and death.

"The war-trails of the Willamette went north and south and east, and

there was no grass on them. He called the Chinook and Sound Indians,

who were weak, his children, and the Yakima, Cayuse, and Wasco, who

loved war, his brothers; but _he_ was elder brother. And the Spokanes

and the Shoshones might fast and cut themselves with thorns and

knives, and dance the medicine dance, and drink the blood of horses,

but nothing could make their hearts as strong as the hearts of the

Willamettes; for the One up in the sky had told the old men and the

dreamers that the Willamettes should be the strongest of all the

tribes as long as the Bridge of the Gods should stand. That was their

_tomanowos_."

But whenever the white listener asked about this superstition of the

bridge and the legend connected with it, the Indian would at once

become uncommunicative, and say, "You can't understand," or more

frequently, "I don't know." For the main difficulty in collecting

these ancient tales--"old-man talk," as the Siwashes call them--was,

that there was much superstition interwoven with them; and the Indians

were so reticent about their religious beliefs, that if one was not

exceedingly cautious, the lively, gesticulating talker of one moment

was liable to become the personification of sullen obstinacy the

next.

But if the listener was fortunate enough to strike the golden mean,

being neither too anxious nor too indifferent, and if above all he had

by the gift of bounteous _muck-a-muck_ [food] touched the chord to

which the savage heart always responds, the Indian might go on and

tell in broken English or crude Chinook the strange, dark legend of

the bridge, which is the subject of our tale.

At the time our story opens, this confederacy was at the height of its

power. It was a rough-hewn, barbarian realm, the most heterogeneous,

the most rudimentary of alliances. The exact manner of its union, its

laws, its extent, and its origin are all involved in the darkness

which everywhere covers the history of Indian Oregon,--a darkness into

which our legend casts but a ray of light that makes the shadows seem

the denser. It gives us, however, a glimpse of the diverse and squalid

tribes that made up the confederacy. This included the "Canoe Indians"

of the Sound and of the Oregon sea-coast, whose flat heads, greasy

squat bodies, and crooked legs were in marked contrast with their

skill and dexterity in managing their canoes and fish-spears; the

hardy Indians of the Willamette Valley and the Cascade Range; and the

bold, predatory riders of eastern Oregon and Washington,--buffalo

hunters and horse tamers, passionately fond, long before the advent of

the white man, of racing and gambling. It comprised also the

Okanogans, who disposed of their dead by tying them upright to a tree;

the Yakimas, who buried them under cairns of stone; the Klickitats,

who swathed them like mummies and laid them in low, rude huts on the

_mimaluse_, or "death islands" of the Columbia; the Chinooks, who

stretched them in canoes with paddles and fishing implements by their

side; and the Kalamaths, who burned them with the maddest saturnalia

of dancing, howling, and leaping through the flames of the funeral

pyre. Over sixty or seventy petty tribes stretched the wild empire,

welded together by the pressure of common foes and held in the grasp

of the hereditary war-chief of the Willamettes.

* * * * *

The chiefs of the Willamettes had gathered on Wappatto Island, from

time immemorial the council-ground of the tribes. The white man has

changed its name to "Sauvie's" Island; but its wonderful beauty is

unchangeable. Lying at the mouth of the Willamette River and extending

for many miles down the Columbia, rich in wide meadows and crystal

lakes, its interior dotted with majestic oaks and its shores fringed

with cottonwoods, around it the blue and sweeping rivers, the wooded

hills, and the far white snow peaks,--it is the most picturesque spot

in Oregon.

The chiefs were assembled in secret council, and only those of pure

Willamette blood were present, for the question to be considered was

not one to be known by even the most trusted ally.

All the confederated tribes beyond the Cascade Range were in a ferment

of rebellion. One of the petty tribes of eastern Oregon had recently

risen up against the Willamette supremacy; and after a short but

bloody struggle, the insurrection had been put down and the rebels

almost exterminated by the victorious Willamettes.

But it was known that the chief of the malcontents had passed from

tribe to tribe before the struggle commenced, inciting them to revolt,

and it was suspected that a secret league had been formed; though when

matters came to a crisis, the confederates, afraid to face openly the

fierce warriors of the Willamette, had stood sullenly back, giving

assistance to neither side. It was evident, however, that a spirit of

angry discontent was rife among them. Threatening language had been

used by the restless chiefs beyond the mountains; braves had talked

around the camp-fire of the freedom of the days before the yoke of the

confederacy was known; and the gray old dreamers, with whom the

_mimaluse tillicums_ [dead people] talked, had said that the fall of

the Willamettes was near at hand.

The sachems of the Willamettes, advised of everything, were met in

council in the soft Oregon spring-tide. They were gathered under the

cottonwood trees, not far from the bank of the Columbia. The air was

fresh with the scent of the waters, and the young leaves were just

putting forth on the "trees of council," whose branches swayed gently

in the breeze. Beneath them, their bronze faces more swarthy still as

the dancing sunbeams fell upon them through the moving boughs, thirty

sachems sat in close semi-circle before their great war-chief,

Multnomah.

It was a strange, a sombre assembly. The chiefs were for the most part

tall, well-built men, warriors and hunters from their youth up. There

was something fierce and haughty in their bearing, something menacing,

violent, and lawless in their saturnine faces and black, glittering

eyes. Most of them wore their hair long; some plaited, others flowing

loosely over their shoulders. Their ears were loaded with _hiagua_

shells; their dress was composed of buckskin leggings and moccasins,

and a short robe of dressed skin that came from the shoulders to the

knees, to which was added a kind of blanket woven of the wool of the

mountain sheep, or an outer robe of skins or furs, stained various

colors and always drawn close around the body when sitting or

standing. Seated on rude mats of rushes, wrapped each in his outer

blanket and doubly wrapped in Indian stoicism, the warriors were

ranged before their chief.

His garb did not differ from that of the others, except that his

blanket was of the richest fur known to the Indians, so doubled that

the fur showed on either side. His bare arms were clasped each with a

rough band of gold; his hair was cut short, in sign of mourning for

his favorite wife, and his neck was adorned with a collar of large

bear-claws, showing he had accomplished that proudest of all

achievements for the Indian,--the killing of a grizzly.

Until the last chief had entered the grove and taken his place in the

semi-circle, Multnomah sat like a statue of stone. He leaned forward

reclining on his bow, a fine unstrung weapon tipped with gold. He was

about sixty years old, his form tall and stately, his brow high, his

eyes black, overhung with shaggy gray eyebrows and piercing as an

eagle's. His dark, grandly impassive face, with its imposing

regularity of feature, showed a penetration that read everything, a

reserve that revealed nothing, a dominating power that gave strength

and command to every line. The lip, the brow, the very grip of the

hand on the bow told of a despotic temper and an indomitable will.

The glance that flashed out from this reserved and resolute

face--sharp, searching, and imperious--may complete the portrait of

Multnomah, the silent, the secret, the terrible.

When the last late-entering chief had taken his place, Multnomah rose

and began to speak, using the royal language; for like the Cayuses and

several other tribes of the Northwest, the Willamettes had two

languages,--the common, for every-day use, and the royal, spoken only

by the chiefs in council.

In grave, strong words he laid before them the troubles that

threatened to break up the confederacy and his plan for meeting them.

It was to send out runners calling a council of all the tribes,

including the doubtful allies, and to try before them and execute the

rebellious chief, who had been taken alive and was now reserved for

the torture. Such a council, with the terrible warning of the rebel's

death enacted before it, would awe the malcontents into submission or

drive them into open revolt. Long enough had the allies spoken with

two tongues; long enough had they smoked the peace-pipe with both the

Willamettes and their enemies. They must come now to peace that should

be peace, or to open war. The chief made no gestures, his voice did

not vary its stern, deliberate accents from first to last; but there

was an indefinable something in word and manner that told how his

warlike soul thirsted for battle, how the iron resolution, the

ferocity beneath his stoicism, burned with desire of vengeance.

There was perfect attention while he spoke,--not so much as a glance

or a whisper aside. When he had ceased and resumed his seat, silence

reigned for a little while. Then Tla-wau-wau, chief of the Klackamas,

a sub-tribe of the Willamette, rose. He laid aside his outer robe,

leaving bare his arms and shoulders, which were deeply scarred; for

Tla-wau-wau was a mighty warrior, and as such commanded. With measured

deliberation he spoke in the royal tongue.

"Tla-wau-wau has seen many winters, and his hair is very gray. Many

times has he watched the grass spring up and grow brown and wither,

and the snows come and go, and those things have brought him wisdom,

and what he has seen of life and death has given him strong thoughts.

It is not well to leap headlong into a muddy stream, lest there be

rocks under the black water. Shall we call the tribes to meet us here

on the island of council? When they are all gathered together they are

more numerous than we. Is it wise to call those that are stronger than

ourselves into our wigwam, when their hearts are bitter against us?

Who knows what plots they might lay, or how suddenly they might fall

on us at night or in the day when we were unprepared? Can we trust

them? Does not the Klickitat's name mean 'he that steals horses'? The

Yakima would smoke the peace-pipe with the knife that was to stab you

hid under his blanket. The Wasco's heart is a lie, and his tongue is a

trap.

"No, let us wait. The tribes talk great swelling words now and their

hearts are hot, but if we wait, the fire will die down and the words

grow small. Then we can have a council and be knit together again. Let

us wait till another winter has come and gone; then let us meet in

council, and the tribes will listen.

"Tla-wau-wau says, 'wait, and all will be well.'"

His earnest, emphatic words ended, the chief took his seat and resumed

his former look of stolid indifference. A moment before he had been

all animation, every glance and gesture eloquent with meaning; now he

sat seemingly impassive and unconcerned.

There was another pause. It was so still that the rustling of the

boughs overhead was startlingly distinct. Saving the restless glitter

of black eyes, it was a tableau of stoicism. Then another spoke,

advising caution, setting forth the danger of plunging into a contest

with the allies. Speaker followed speaker in the same strain.

As they uttered the words counselling delay, the glance of the

war-chief grew ever brighter, and his grip upon the bow on which he

leaned grew harder. But the cold face did not relax a muscle. At

length rose Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Mollalies. His was one of

the most singular faces there. His tangled hair fell around a

sinister, bestial countenance, all scarred and seamed by wounds

received in battle. His head was almost flat, running back from his

eyebrows so obliquely that when he stood erect he seemed to have no

forehead at all; while the back and lower part of his head showed an

enormous development,--a development that was all animal. He knew

nothing but battle, and was one of the most dreaded warriors of the

Willamettes.

He spoke,--not in the royal language, as did the others, but in the

common dialect, the only one of which he was master.

"My heart is as the heart of Multnomah. Mishlah is hungry for war. If

the tribes that are our younger brothers are faithful, they will come

to the council and smoke the pipe of peace with us; if they are not,

let us know it. Mishlah knows not what it is to wait. You all talk

words, words, words; and the tribes laugh and say, 'The Willamettes

have become women and sit in the lodge sewing moccasins and are afraid

to fight.' Send out the runners. Call the council. Let us find who are

our enemies; then let us strike!"

The hands of the chief closed involuntarily as if they clutched a

weapon, and his voice rang harsh and grating. The eyes of Multnomah

flashed fire, and the war-lust kindled for a moment on the dark faces

of the listeners.

Then rose the grotesque figure of an Indian, ancient, withered, with

matted locks and haggard face, who had just joined the council,

gliding in noiselessly from the neighboring wood. His cheek-bones were

unusually high, his lower lip thick and protruding, his eyes deeply

sunken, his face drawn, austere, and dismal beyond description. The

mis-shapen, degraded features repelled at first sight; but a second

glance revealed a great dim sadness in the eyes, a gloomy foreboding

on brow and lip that were weirdly fascinating, so sombre were they, so

full of woe. There was a wild dignity in his mien; and he wore the

robe of furs, though soiled and torn, that only the richest chiefs

were able to wear. Such was Tohomish, or Pine Voice, chief of the

Santiam tribe of the Willamettes, the most eloquent orator and potent

medicine or _tomanowos_ man in the confederacy.

There was a perceptible movement of expectation, a lighting up of

faces as he arose, and a shadow of anxiety swept over Multnomah's

impassive features. For this man's eloquence was wonderful, and his

soft magnetic tones could sway the passions of his hearers to his will

with a power that seemed more than human to the superstitious Indians.

Would he declare for the council or against it; for peace or for war?

He threw back the tangled locks that hung over his face, and spoke.

"Chiefs and warriors, who dwell in lodges and talk with men, Tohomish,

who dwells in caves and talks with the dead, says greeting, and by him

the dead send greeting also."

His voice was wonderfully musical, thrilling, and pathetic; and as he

spoke the salutation from the dead, a shudder went through the wild

audience before him,--through all but Multnomah, who did not shrink

nor drop his searching eyes from the speaker's face. What cared he for

the salutation of the living or the dead? Would this man whose

influence was so powerful declare for action or delay?

"It has been long since Tohomish has stood in the light of the sun and

looked on the faces of his brothers or heard their voices. Other faces

has he looked upon and other voices has he heard. He has learned the

language of the birds and the trees, and has talked with the People of

Old who dwell in the serpent and the cayote; and they have taught him

their secrets. But of late terrible things have come to Tohomish."

He paused, and the silence was breathless, for the Indians looked on

this man as a seer to whom the future was as luminous as the past. But

Multnomah's brow darkened; he felt that Tohomish also was against

him, and the soul of the warrior rose up stern and resentful against

the prophet.

"A few suns ago, as I wandered in the forest by the Santiam, I heard

the death-wail in the distance. I said, 'Some one is dead, and that is

the cry of the mourners. I will go and lift up my voice with them.'

But as I sought them up the hill and through the thickets the cry grew

fainter and farther, till at last it died out amid distant rocks and

crags. And then I knew that I had heard no human voice lamenting the

dead, but that it was the Spirit Indian-of-the-Wood wailing for the

living whose feet go down to the darkness and whose faces the sun

shall soon see no more. Then my heart grew heavy and bitter, for I

knew that woe had come to the Willamettes.

"I went to my den in the mountains, and sought to know of those that

dwell in the night the meaning of this. I built the medicine-fire, I

fasted, I refused to sleep. Day and night I kept the fire burning; day

and night I danced the _tomanowos_ dance around the flames, or leaped

through them, singing the song that brings the _Spee-ough_, till at

last the life went from my limbs and my head grew sick and everything

was a whirl of fire. Then I knew that the power was on me, and I fell,

and all grew black.

"I dreamed a dream.

"I stood by the death-trail that leads to the spirit-land. The souls

of those who had just died were passing; and as I gazed, the wail I

had heard in the forest came back, but nearer than before. And as the

wail sounded, the throng on the death-trail grew thicker and their

tread swifter. The warrior passed with his bow in his hand and his

quiver swinging from his shoulder; the squaw followed with his food

upon her back; the old tottered by. It was a whole people on the way

to the spirit-land. But when I tried to see their faces, to know them,

if they were Willamette or Shoshone or our brother tribes, I could

not. But the wail grew ever louder and the dead grew ever thicker as

they passed. Then it all faded out, and I slept. When I awoke, it was

night; the fire had burned into ashes and the medicine wolf was

howling on the hills. The voices that are in the air came to me and

said, 'Go to the council and tell what you have seen;' but I refused,

and went far into the wood to avoid them. But the voices would not let

me rest, and my spirit burned within me, and I came. Beware of the

great council. Send out no runners. Call not the tribes together.

Voices and omens and dreams tell Tohomish of something terrible to

come. The trees whisper it; it is in the air, in the waters. It has

made my spirit bitter and heavy until my drink seems blood and my food

has the taste of death. Warriors, Tohomish has shown his heart. His

words are ended."

He resumed his seat and drew his robe about him, muffling the lower

part of his face. The matted hair fell once more over his drooping

brow and repulsive countenance, from which the light faded the moment

he ceased to speak. Again the silence was profound. The Indians sat

spell-bound, charmed by the mournful music of the prophet's voice and

awed by the dread vision he had revealed. All the superstition within

them was aroused. When Tohomish took his seat, every Indian was ready

to oppose the calling of the council with all his might. Even Mishlah,

as superstitious as blood-thirsty, was startled and perplexed. The

war-chief stood alone.

He knew it, but it only made his despotic will the stronger. Against

the opposition of the council and the warning of Tohomish, against

_tomanowos_ and _Spee-ough_, ominous as they were even to him, rose up

the instinct which was as much a part of him as life itself,--the

instinct to battle and to conquer. He was resolved with all the grand

strength of his nature to bend the council to his will, and with more

than Indian subtility saw how it might be done.

He rose to his feet and stood for a moment in silence, sweeping with

his glance the circle of chiefs. As he did so, the mere personality of

the man began to produce a reaction. For forty years he had been the

great war-chief of the tribes of the Wauna, and had never known

defeat. The ancient enemies of his race dreaded him; the wandering

bands of the prairies had carried his name far and wide; and even

beyond the Rockies, Sioux and Pawnee had heard rumors of the powerful

chief by the Big River of the West. He stood before them a huge, stern

warrior, himself a living assurance of victory and dominion.

As was customary with Indian orators in preparing the way for a

special appeal, he began to recount the deeds of the fathers, the

valor of the ancient heroes of the race. His stoicism fell from him as

he half spoke, half chanted the harangue. The passion that was burning

within him made his words like pictures, so vivid they were, and

thrilled his tones with electric power. As he went on, the sullen

faces of his hearers grew animated; the superstitious fears that

Tohomish had awakened fell from them. Again they were warriors, and

their blood kindled and their pulses throbbed to the words of their

invincible leader. He saw it, and began to speak of the battles they

themselves had fought and the victories they had gained. More than one

dark cheek flushed darker and more than one hand moved unconsciously

to the knife. He alluded to the recent war and to the rebellious tribe

that had been destroyed.

"_That_," said he, "was the people Tohomish saw passing over the

death-trail in his dream. What wonder that the thought of death should

fill the air, when we have slain a whole people at a single blow! Do

we not know too that their spirits would try to frighten our dreamers

with omens and bad _tomanowos_? Was it not bad _tomanowos_ that

Tohomish saw? It could not have come from the Great Spirit, for he

spoke to our fathers and said that we should be strongest of all the

tribes as long as the Bridge of the Gods should stand. Have the stones

of that bridge begun to crumble, that our hearts should grow weak?"

He then described the natural bridge which, as tradition and geology

alike tell us, spanned at that time the Columbia at the Cascades. The

Great Spirit, he declared, had spoken; and as he had said, so it would

be. Dreams and omens were mist and shadow, but the bridge was rock,

and the word of the Great Spirit stood forever. On this tradition the

chief dwelt with tremendous force, setting against the superstition

that Tohomish had roused the still more powerful superstition of the

bridge,--a superstition so interwoven with every thought and hope of

the Willamettes that it had become a part of their character as a

tribe.

And now when their martial enthusiasm and fatalistic courage were all

aglow, when the recital of their fathers' deeds had stirred their

blood and the portrayal of their own victories filled them again with

the fierce joy of conflict, when the mountain of stone that arched the

Columbia had risen before them in assurance of dominion as eternal as

itself,--now, when in every eye gleamed desire of battle and every

heart was aflame, the chief made (and it was characteristic of him) in

one terse sentence his crowning appeal,--

"Chiefs, speak your heart. Shall the runners be sent out to call the

council?"

There was a moment of intense silence. Then a low, deep murmur of

consent came from the excited listeners: a half-smothered war-cry

burst from the lips of Mishlah, and the victory was won.

One only sat silent and apart, his robe drawn close, his head bent

down, seemingly oblivious of all around him, as if resigned to

inevitable doom.

"To-morrow at dawn, while the light is yet young, the runners will go

out. Let the chiefs meet here in the grove to hear the message given

them to be carried to the tribes. The talk is ended."

CHAPTER II.

THE WAR-CHIEF AND THE SEER.

Cassandra's wild voice prophesying woe.

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

The war-chief left the grove as soon as he had dismissed the council.

Tohomish went with him. For some distance they walked together, the

one erect and majestic, the other gliding like a shadow by his side.

At length Multnomah stopped under a giant cottonwood and looked

sternly at Tohomish.

"You frightened the council to-day with bad _mimaluse_ [death] talk.

Why did you do it? Why did you bring into a council of warriors dreams

fit only for old men that lie sleeping in the sun by the door of the

wigwam?"

"I said what my eyes saw and my ears heard, and it was true."

"It cannot be true, for the Great Spirit has said that the Willamettes

shall rule the tribes as long as the bridge shall stand; and how can

it fall when it is a mountain of stone?"

A strange expression crossed Tohomish's sullen face.

"Multnomah, beware how you rest on the prophecy of the bridge. Lean

not your hand on it, for it is as if you put it forth to lean it on a

coiled rattlesnake."

"Your sayings are dark," replied the chief impatiently. "Speak

plainly."

Tohomish shook his head, and the gloomy look habitual to him came

back.

"I cannot. Dreams and omens I can tell, but the secret of the bridge

is the secret of the Great Spirit; and I cannot tell it lest he become

angry and take from me my power of moving men with burning words."

"The secret of the Great Spirit! What black thing is it you are hiding

and covering up with words? Bring it forth into the light, that I may

see it."

"No, it is my _tomanowos_. Were I to tell it the gift of eloquence

would go from me, the fire would die from my heart and the words from

my lips, and my life would wither up within me."

Multnomah was silent. Massive and commanding as was his character he

was still an Indian, and the words of the seer had touched the latent

superstition in his nature. They referred to that strongest and most

powerful of all the strange beliefs of the Oregon savages,--the spirit

possession or devil worship of the _tomanowos_.

As soon as an Oregon Indian was old enough to aspire to a place among

the braves, he was sent into the hills alone. There he fasted, prayed,

and danced, chanted the medicine-chant, and cut himself with knife or

thorn till he fell exhausted to the ground. Whatever he saw then, in

waking delirium or feverish sleep, was the charm that was to control

his future. Be it bird or beast, dream or mystic revelation, it was

his _totem_ or _tomanowos_, and gave him strength, cunning, or

swiftness, sometimes knowledge of the future, imparting to him its own

characteristics. But _what_ it was, its name or nature, was the one

secret that must go with him to his grave. Woe unto him if he told the

name of his _totem_. In that moment it would desert him, taking from

him all strength and power, leaving him a shattered wreck, an outcast

from camp and war-party.

"Multnomah says well that it is a black secret, but it is my _totem_

and may not be told. For many winters Tohomish has carried it in his

breast, till its poisoned sap has filled his heart with bitterness,

till for him gladness and warmth have gone out of the light, laughter

has grown a sob of pain, and sorrow and death have become what the

feast, the battle, and the chase are to other men. It is the black

secret, the secret of the coming trouble, that makes Tohomish's voice

like the voice of a pine; so that men say it has in it sweetness and

mystery and haunting woe, moving the heart as no other can. And if he

tells the secret, eloquence and life go with it. Shall Tohomish tell

it? Will Multnomah listen while Tohomish shows what is to befall the

bridge and the Willamettes in the time that is to come?"

The war-chief gazed at him earnestly. In that troubled, determined

look, superstition struggled for a moment and then gave way to the

invincible obstinacy of his resolve.

"No. Multnomah knows that his own heart is strong and will not fail

him, come what may; and that is all he cares to know. If you told me,

the _tomanowos_ would be angry, and drain your spirit from you and

cast you aside as the serpent casts its skin. And you must be the most

eloquent of all at the great council; for there the arm of Multnomah

and the voice of Tohomish must bend the bad chiefs before them."

His accents had the same undertone of arbitrary will, of inflexible

determination, that had been in them when he spoke in the council.

Though the shadows fell more and more ominous and threatening across

his path, to turn back did not occur to him. The stubborn tenacity of

the man could not let go his settled purpose.

"Tohomish will be at the council and speak for his chief and his

tribe?" asked Multnomah, in a tone that was half inquiry, half

command; for the seer whose mysterious power as an orator gave him so

strong an influence over the Indians must be there.

Tohomish's haggard and repulsive face had settled back into the look

of mournful apathy habitual to him. He had not, since the council,

attempted to change the chief's decision by a single word, but seemed

to have resigned himself with true Indian fatalism to that which was

to come.

"Tohomish will go to the council," he said in those soft and lingering

accents, indescribably sweet and sad, with which his degraded face

contrasted so strongly. "Yes, he will go to the council, and his voice

shall bend and turn the hearts of men as never before. Strong will be

the words that he shall say, for with him it will be sunset and his

voice will be heard no more."

"Where will you go when the council is ended, that we shall see you no

more?" asked Multnomah.

"On the death-trail to the spirit-land,--nor will I go alone," was the

startling reply; and the seer glided noiselessly away and disappeared

among the trees.

CHAPTER III.

WALLULAH.

Ne'er was seen

In art or nature, aught so passing sweet

As was the form that in its beauteous frame

Inclosed her, and is scattered now in dust.

CAREY: _Dante_.

Multnomah passed on to seek the lodge of his daughter Wallulah, a half

Asiatic, and the most beautiful woman in all the land of the Wauna.

Reader, would you know the tale of the fair oriental of whom was born

the sweet beauty of Wallulah?

Eighteen years before the time of our story, an East Indian ship was

wrecked on the Columbia bar, the crew and cargo falling into the hands

of the Indians. Among the rescued was a young and exceedingly lovely

woman, who was hospitably entertained by the chief of the tribe. He

and his people were deeply impressed by the grace of the fair

stranger, whose dainty beauty won for her the name of "Sea-Flower,"

because the sea, that is ever drifting weeds, had for once wafted a

flower to the shore.

As she sat on the mat in the rude bark lodge, the stern chief softened

his voice, trying to talk with her; the uncouth women gently stroked

her long soft hair, and some of the bolder and more curious touched

her white hands wonderingly, while the throng of dusky faces pressed

close round the pale, sweet creature whose eyes looked at them with a

deep, dumb woe they could not understand.

When she had become familiar with the Willamette tongue, she told them

that she was the daughter of a chief far away across the great water,

who ruled a country as broad as the land of the Wauna and far richer.

He had sent her as a bride to the ruler of another land, with a

fabulous dowry of jewels and a thousand gifts besides. But the ship

that bore her and her splendid treasures had been turned from its

course by a terrible storm. Day after day it was driven through a

waste of blackness and foam,--the sails rent, the masts swept away,

the shattered hulk hurled onward like a straw by the fury of the wind.

When the tempest had spent itself, they found themselves in a strange

sea under strange stars. Compass and chart were gone; they knew not

where they were, and caught in some unknown current, they could only

drift blindly on and on. Never sighting land, seeing naught but the

everlasting sweep of wave and sky, it began to be whispered in terror

that this ocean had no further shore, that they might sail on forever,

seeing nothing but the boundless waters. At length, when the

superstitious sailors began to talk of throwing their fair charge

overboard as an offering to the gods, the blue peaks of the Coast

Range rose out of the water, and the ever rain-freshened green of the

Oregon forests dawned upon them. Then came the attempt to enter the

Columbia, and the wreck on the bar.[1]

Multnomah made the lovely princess his wife, and Sea-Flower showed the

spirit of a queen. She tried to introduce among the Indians something

of the refinement of her oriental home. From her the degraded

medicine-men and dreamers caught a gleam of the majestic lore of

Buddha; to the chiefs-in-council she taught something of the grave,

inexorable justice of the East, that seemed like a higher development

of their own grim unwritten code. Her influence was very great, for

she was naturally eloquent and of noble presence. More than one sachem

felt the inspiration of better, purer thoughts than he had ever known

before when the "war-chief's woman" spoke in council. Strange

gatherings were those: blood-stained chiefs and savage warriors

listening all intent to the sweetest of Indian tongues spoken in

modulations that were music; the wild heart of the empire stirred by

the perfumed breath of a woman!

She had died three years before the events we have been narrating, and

had left to her daughter the heritage of her refinement and her

beauty. Wallulah was the only child of the war-chief and his Asiatic

wife, the sole heir of her father's sovereignty.

Two miles from the council grove, in the interior of the island, was

Wallulah's lodge. The path that Multnomah took led through a pleasant

sylvan lawn. The grass was green, and the air full of the scent of

buds and flowers. Here and there a butterfly floated like a sunbeam

through the woodland shadows, and a humming-bird darted in winged

beauty from bloom to bloom. The lark's song came vibrating through the

air, and in the more open spaces innumerable birds flew twittering in

the sun. The dewy freshness, the exquisite softness of spring, was

everywhere.

In the golden weather, through shadowed wood and sunny opening, the

war-chief sought his daughter's lodge.

Suddenly a familiar sound attracted his attention, and he turned

toward it. A few steps, and he came to the margin of a small lake.

Several snow-white swans were floating on it; and near the edge of the

water, but concealed from the swans by the tall reeds that grew along

the shore, was his daughter, watching them.

She was attired in a simple dress of some oriental fabric. Her form

was small and delicately moulded; her long black hair fell in rich

masses about her shoulders; and her profile, turned toward him, was

sweetly feminine. The Indian type showed plainly, but was softened

with her mother's grace. Her face was sad, with large appealing eyes

and mournful lips, and full of haunting loveliness; a face whose

strange mournfulness was deepened by the splendor of its beauty; a

face the like of which is rarely seen, but once seen can never be

forgotten.

There was something despondent even in her pose, as she sat with her

shoulders drooping slightly forward and her dark eyes fixed absently

on the swans, watching them through the bending reeds. Now one uttered

its note, and she listened, seeming to vibrate to the deep, plaintive

cry; then she raised to her lips a flute that she held in her hands,

and answered it with a perfect intonation,--an intonation that

breathed the very spirit of the swan. So successful was the mimicry

that the swans replied, thinking it the cry of a hidden mate; and

again she softly, rhythmically responded.

"Wallulah!" said the chief.

She sprang to her feet and turned toward him. Her dark face lighted

with an expressive flash, her black eyes shone, her features glowed

with joy and surprise. It was like the breaking forth of an inner

illumination. There was now nothing of the Indian in her face.

"My father!" she exclaimed, springing to him and kissing his hand,

greeting him as her mother had taught her to do from childhood.

"Welcome! Were you searching for me?"

"Yes, you were well hidden, but Multnomah is a good hunter and can

always track the fawn to its covert," replied the chief, with the

faint semblance of a smile. All that there was of gentleness in his

nature came out when talking with his daughter.

"You have come from the council? Are you not weary and hungry? Come to

the lodge, and let Wallulah give you food, and spread a mat for you

to rest upon."

"No, I am hungry only to see Wallulah and hear her talk. Sit down on

the log again." She seated herself, and her father stood beside her

with an abstracted gaze, his hand stroking her long, soft tresses. He

was thinking of the darker, richer tresses of another, whose proud,

sad face and mournful eyes with their wistful meaning, so like

Wallulah's own, he, a barbarian prince, could never understand.

Although, according to the superstitious custom of the Willamettes, he

never spoke the name of Sea-Flower or alluded to her in any way, he

loved his lost wife with a deep and unchanging affection. She had been

a fair frail thing whose grace and refinement perplexed and fascinated

him, moving him to unwonted tenderness and yearning. He had brought to

her the spoils of the chase and of battle. The finest mat was braided

for her lodge, the choicest skins and furs spread for her bed, and the

chieftainess's string of _hiagua_ shells and grizzly bear's claws had

been put around her white neck by Multnomah's own hand. In spite of

all this, she drooped and saddened year by year; the very hands that

sought to cherish her seemed but to bruise; and she sickened and died,

the delicate woman, in the arms of the iron war-chief, like a flower

in the grasp of a mailed hand.

Why did she die? Why did she always seem so sad? Why did she so often

steal away to weep over her child? Was not the best food hers, and the

warm place by the lodge fire, and the softest bearskin to rest on; and

was she not the wife of Multnomah,--the big chief's woman? Why then

should she droop and die like a winged bird that one tries to tame by

tying it to the wigwam stake and tossing it food?

Often the old chief brooded over these questions, but it was unknown

to all, even to Wallulah. Only his raven tresses, cut close year by

year in sign of perpetual mourning, told that he had not forgotten,

could never forget.

The swans had taken flight, and their long lingering note sounded

faint in the distance.

"You have frightened away my swans," said Wallulah, looking up at him

smilingly.

A shadow crossed his brow.

"Wallulah," he said, and his voice had now the stern ring habitual to

it, "you waste your life with the birds and trees and that thing of

sweet sounds,"--pointing to the flute. "Better be learning to think on

the things a war-chief's daughter should care for,--the feast and the

council, the war-parties and the welcome to the braves when they come

back to the camp with the spoil."

The bright look died out of her face.

"You say those words so often," she replied sorrowfully, "and I try to

obey, but cannot. War is terrible to me."

His countenance grew harsher, his hand ceased to stroke her hair.

"And has Multnomah, chief of the Willamettes and war-chief of the

Wauna, lived to hear his daughter say that war is terrible to her?

Have you nothing of your father in you? Remember the tales of the

brave women of Multnomah's race,--the women whose blood is in your

veins. Remember that they spoke burning words in the council, and went

forth with the men to battle, and came back with their own garments

stained with blood. You shudder! Is it at the thought of blood?"

The old wistful look came back, the old sadness was on the beautiful

face again. One could see now why it was there.

"My father," she said sorrowfully, "Wallulah has tried to love those

things, but she cannot. She cannot change the heart the Great Spirit

has given her. She cannot bring herself to be a woman of battle any

more than she can sound a war-cry on her flute," and she lifted it as

she spoke.

He took it into his own hands.

"It is this," he said, breaking down the sensitive girl in the same

despotic way in which he bent the wills of warriors; "it is this that

makes you weak. Is it a charm that draws the life from your heart? If

so, it can be broken."

Another moment and the flute would have been broken in his ruthless

hands and its fragments flung into the lake; but Wallulah, startled,

caught it from him with a plaintive cry.

"It was my mother's. If you break it you will break my heart!"

The chief's angry features quivered at the mention of her mother, and

he instantly released the flute. Wallulah clasped it to her bosom as

if it represented in some way the mother she had lost, and her eyes

filled with tears. Again her father's hand rested on her head, and she

knew that he too was thinking of her mother. Her nature rose up in

revolt against the Indian custom which forbade talking of the dead.

Oh, if she might only talk with her father about her mother, though it

were but a few brief words! Never since her mother's death had her

name been mentioned between them. She lifted her eyes, pathetic with

three years' hunger, to his. As their glances met, it seemed as if the

veil that had been between their diverse natures was for a moment

lifted, and they understood each other better than they ever had

before. While his look imposed silence and sealed her lips as with a

spoken command, there was a gleam of tenderness in it that said, "I

understand, I too remember; but it must not be spoken."

There came to her a sense of getting closer to her father's heart,

even while his eyes held her back and bade her be silent.

At length the chief spoke, this time very gently.

"Now I shall talk to you not as to a girl but as to a woman. You are

Multnomah's only child. When he dies there will be no one but you to

take his place. Are your shoulders strong enough to bear the weight of

power, the weight that crushes men? Can you break down revolt and read

the hearts of plotters,--yes, and detect conspiracy when it is but a

whisper in the air? Can you sway council and battle to your will as

the warrior bends his bow? No; it takes men, men strong of heart, to

rule the races of the Wauna. Therefore there is but one way left me

whereby the line of Multnomah may still be head of the confederacy

when he is gone. I must wed you to a great warrior who can take my

place when I am dead and shelter you with his strength. Then the name

and the power of Multnomah will still live among the tribes, though

Multnomah himself be crumbled into dust."

She made no reply, but sat looking confused and pained, by no means

elated at the future he had described.

"Have you never thought of this,--that some time I must give you to a

warrior?"

Her head drooped lower and her cheek faintly flushed.

"Sometimes."

"But you have chosen no one?"

"I do not know," she faltered.

Her father's hand still rested on her head, but there was an

expression on his face that showed he would not hesitate to sacrifice

her happiness to his ambition.

"You have chosen, then? Is he a chief? No, I will not ask that; the

daughter of Multnomah could love no one but a chief. I have already

selected a husband for you. Tear this other love from your heart and

cast it aside."

The flush died out of her cheek, leaving it cold and ashen; and her

fingers worked nervously with the flute in her lap.

He continued coldly,--

"The fame of your beauty has gone out through all the land. The chief

of the Chopponish[2] has offered many horses for you, and the chief of

the Spokanes, our ancient foes, has said there would be peace between

us if I gave you to him. But I have promised you to another. Your

marriage to him will knit the bravest tribe of the confederacy to us;

he will take my place when I am dead, and our people will still be

strong."

She made no reply. What could she do against her father's granite

will? All the grace and mobility were gone from her face, and it was

drooping and dull almost to impassiveness. She was only an Indian girl

now, waiting to learn the name of him who was to be her master.

"What is the name of the one you love? Speak it once, then never speak

it again."

"Snoqualmie, chief of the Cayuses," faltered her tremulous lips.

A quick change of expression came into the gaze that was bent on her.

"Now lift your head and meet your fate like the daughter of a chief.

Do not let me see your face change while I tell you whom I have

chosen."

She lifted her face in a tumult of fear and dread, and her eyes

fastened pathetically on the chief.

"His name is--" she clasped her hands and her whole soul went out to

her father in the mute supplication of her gaze--"the chief

Snoqualmie, him of whom you have thought."

Her face was bewilderment itself for an instant; the next, the sudden

light, the quick flash of expression which transfigured it in a moment

of joy or surprise, came to her, and she raised his hand and kissed

it. Was that all? Remember she had in her the deep, mute Indian nature

that meets joy or anguish alike in silence. She had early learned to

repress and control her emotions. Perhaps that was why she was so sad

and brooding now.

"Where have you seen Snoqualmie?" asked Multnomah. "Not in your

father's lodge, surely, for when strange chiefs came to him you always

fled like a frightened bird."

"Once only have I seen him," she replied, flushing and confused. "He

had come here alone to tell you that some of the tribes were plotting

against you. I saw him as he went back through the wood to the place

where his canoe was drawn up on the bank of the river. He was tall;

his black hair fell below his shoulders; and his look was very proud

and strong. His back was to the setting sun, and it shone around him

robing him with fire, and I thought he looked like the Indian

sun-god."

"I am glad it is pleasant for you to obey me. Now, listen while I tell

you what you must do as the wife of Snoqualmie."

Stilling the sweet tumult in her breast, she tried hard to listen

while he told her of the plans, the treaties, the friendships, and the

enmities she must urge on her husband, when he became war-chief and

was carrying on her father's work; and in part she understood, for her

imagination was captivated by the splendid though barbarian dream of

empire he set before her.

At length, as the sun was setting, one came to tell Multnomah that a

runner from a tribe beyond the mountains had come to see him. Then her

father left her; but Wallulah still sat on the mossy log, while all

the woodland was golden in the glory of sunset.

Her beloved flute was pressed close to her cheek, and her face was

bright and joyous; she was thinking of Snoqualmie, the handsome

stately chief whom she had seen but once, but whose appearance, as

she saw him then, had filled her girlish heart.

And all the time she knew not that this Snoqualmie, to whom she was to

be given, was one of the most cruel and inhuman of men, terrible even

to the grim warriors of the Wauna for his deeds of blood.

-----

[1] Shipwrecks of Asiatic vessels are not uncommon on the

Pacific Coast, several having occurred during the present

century,--notably that of a Japanese junk in 1833, from which

three passengers were saved at the hands of the Indians; while

the cases of beeswax that have been disinterred on the sea-coast,

the oriental words that are found ingrafted in the native

languages, and the Asiatic type of countenance shown by many of

the natives, prove such wrecks to have been frequent in

prehistoric times. One of the most romantic stories of the Oregon

coast is that which the Indians tell of a buried treasure at

Mount Nehalem, left there generations ago by shipwrecked men of

strange garb and curious arms,--treasure which, like that of

Captain Kidd, has been often sought but never found. There is

also an Indian legend of a shipwrecked white man named Soto, and

his comrades (See Mrs. Victor's "Oregon and Washington"), who

lived long with the mid-Columbia Indians and then left them to

seek some settlement of their own people in the south. All of

these legends point to the not infrequent occurrence of such a

wreck as our story describes.

[2] Indian name of the Nez Percés.

CHAPTER IV.

SENDING OUT THE RUNNERS.

Speed, Malise, speed; the dun deer's hide

On fleeter foot was never tied;

Herald of battle, fate and fear

Stretch around thy fleet career.

SCOTT.

At early morning, the sachems had gathered in the council-grove,

Multnomah on the seat of the war-chief, and twenty runners before him.

They were the flower of the Willamette youth, every one of royal

birth, handsome in shape and limb, fleet-footed as the deer. They were

slender and sinewy in build, with aquiline features and sharp

searching eyes.

Their garb was light. Leggins and moccasins had been laid aside; even

the _hiagua_ shells were stripped from their ears. All stood nerved

and eager for the race, waiting for the word that was to scatter them

throughout the Indian empire, living thunderbolts bearing the summons

of Multnomah.

The message had been given them, and they waited only to pledge

themselves to its faithful delivery.

"You promise," said the chief, while his flashing glance read every

messenger to the heart, "you promise that neither cougar nor cataract

nor ambuscade shall deter you from the delivery of this summons; that

you will not turn back, though the spears of the enemy are thicker in

your path than ferns along the Santiam? You promise that though you

fall in death, the summons shall go on?"

The spokesman of the runners, the runner to the Chopponish, stepped

forward. With gestures of perfect grace, and in a voice that rang

like a silver trumpet, he repeated the ancient oath of the

Willamettes,--the oath used by the Shoshones to-day.

"The earth hears us, the sun sees us. Shall we fail in fidelity to our

chief?"

There was a pause. The distant cry of swans came from the river; the

great trees of council rustled in the breeze. Multnomah rose from his

seat, gripping the bow on which he leaned. Into that one moment he

seemed gathering yet repressing all the fierceness of his passion, all

the grandeur of his will. Far in the shade he saw Tohomish raise his

hand imploringly, but the eyes of the orator sank once more under the

glance of the war-chief.

"Go!"

An electric shock passed through all who heard; and except for the

chiefs standing on its outskirts like sombre shadows, the grove was

empty in a moment.

Beyond the waters that girdled the island, one runner took the trail

to Puyallup, one the trail to Umatilla, one the path to Chelon, and

one the path to Shasta; another departed toward the volcano-rent

desert of Klamath, and still another toward the sea-washed shores of

Puget Sound.

The irrevocable summons had gone forth; the council was

inevitable,--the crisis must come.

[Illustration: "_The Earth hears us, the Sun sees us._"]

Long did Multnomah and his chiefs sit in council that day. Resolute

were the speeches that came from all, though many secretly regretted

that they had allowed Multnomah's oratory to persuade them into

declaring for the council: but there was no retreat.

Across hills and canyons sped the fleet runners, on to the huge bark

lodges of Puget Sound, the fisheries of the Columbia, and the crowded

race-courses of the Yakima. Into camps of wandering prairie tribes,

where the lodges stood like a city to-day and were rolled up and

strapped on the backs of horses to-morrow; into councils where

sinister chiefs were talking low of war against the Willamettes; into

wild midnight dances of plotting dreamers and medicine-men,--they came

with the brief stern summons, and passed on to speak it to the tribes

beyond.

BOOK III.

_THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES._

CHAPTER I.

THE BROKEN PEACE-PIPE.

My full defiance, hate, and scorn.

SCOTT.

It is the day after the departure of the runners to call the great

council,--eight years since Cecil Grey went out into the wilderness.

Smoke is curling slowly upward from an Indian camp on the prairie not

far from the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. Fifteen or twenty

cone-shaped lodges, each made of mats stretched on a frame-work of

poles, compose the village. It swarms with wolfish-looking dogs and

dirty, unclad children. Heaps of refuse, heads and feet of game, lie

decaying among the wigwams, tainting the air with their disgusting

odor. Here and there an ancient withered specimen of humanity sits in

the sun, absorbing its rays with a dull animal-like sense of

enjoyment, and a group of warriors lie idly talking. Some of the

squaws are preparing food, boiling it in water-tight willow baskets by

filling them with water and putting in hot stones.[3] Horses are

tethered near the lodges, and others are running loose on the

prairie.

There are not many of them. The Indians have only scores now where a

century later Lewis and Clark found thousands; and there are old men

in the camp who can recall the time when the first horses ever seen

among them were bought or stolen from the tribes to the south.

On every side the prairie sweeps away in long grassy swells and

hollows, rolling off to the base of the Blue Mountains.

The camp has the sluggish aspect that an Indian camp always presents

at noonday.

Suddenly a keen-sighted warrior points to a dim speck far over the

prairie toward the land of the Bannocks. A white man would have

scarcely noticed it; or if he had, would have thought it only some

wandering deer or antelope. But the Indians, glancing at the moving

object, have already recognized it as a horseman coming straight

toward the camp.

Some messenger it is, doubtless, from the Bannocks. Once the whole

camp would have rushed to arms at the approach of a rider from that

direction, for the two tribes had been at bitter enmity; but of late

the peace-pipe has been smoked between them, and the old feud is at an

end. Still, the sight arouses considerable curiosity and much

speculation as to the object of the visitor.

He is a good rider, his horse is fleet, and in less time than would

have been thought possible reaches the camp. He gallops up, stops near

the lodges that are farthest out, and springs lightly to the ground.

He does not go on into the camp, but stands beside his horse till

advances are made on the other side.

The dogs bark at him; his steed, a fiery black, tosses its head and

paws the ground; he stands beside it immovably, and to all appearance

is ready so to stand till sunset. Some of the warriors recognize him

as one of the bravest of the Bannocks. He looks like a daring,

resolute man, yet wary and self-contained.

After a while one of the Cayuse warriors (for this was a camp of the

Cayuses) advanced toward him, and a grave salutation was exchanged.

Then the Bannock said that he wanted to see the Cayuse chief,

Snoqualmie, in the council-lodge, for the chief of the Bannocks had

sent a "talk" to the Cayuses.

The warrior left him to speak with Snoqualmie. In a short time he

returned, saying that the chief and the warriors had gone to the

council-lodge and were ready to hear the "talk" that their brother,

the chief of the Bannocks, had sent them. The messenger tied his horse

by its lariat, or long hair-rope, to a bush, and followed the brave to

the lodge.

It was a large wigwam in the centre of the village. A crowd of old

men, women, and children had already gathered around the door. Within,

on one side of the room, sat in three rows a semi-circle of braves,

facing the chief, who sat on the opposite side. Near the door was a

clear space where the messenger was to stand while speaking.

He entered, and the doorway behind him was immediately blocked up by

the motley crowd excluded from the interior. Not a warrior in the

council looked at him; even the chief, Snoqualmie, did not turn his

head. The messenger advanced a few paces into the room, stopped, and

stood as impassive as the rest. Then, when the demands of Indian

stoicism had been satisfied, Snoqualmie turned his face, a handsome

but treacherous and cruel face, upon the messenger.

"The warrior comes to speak the words of our brother, the chief of the

Bannocks; he is welcome. Shall we smoke the pipe of peace before we

hear our brother's words?"

The Bannock gazed steadily at Snoqualmie. In that fierce and proud

regard was something the Cayuse could not fathom.

"Why should the peace-pipe be smoked?" he asked. "Was it not smoked in

the great council a moon ago? Did not Snoqualmie say then that the two

tribes should henceforth be as one tribe, and that the Bannocks should

be the brethren of the Cayuses forever?"

"Those were the words," replied the chief with dignity. "Snoqualmie

has not forgotten them."

All eyes were now turned on the messenger; they saw that something

unexpected was coming. The Bannock drew his form up to its full

height, and his resolute features expressed the bitterest scorn.

"Nor have the Bannocks forgotten. At the council you talked 'peace,

peace.' Last night some of your young men surprised a little camp of

Bannocks,--a few old men and boys who were watching horses,--and slew

them and ran off the horses. Is that your peace? The Bannocks will

have no such peace. _This_ is the word the chief of the Bannocks sends

you!"

Holding up the peace-pipe that had been smoked at the great council

and afterward given to the medicine-men of the Bannocks as a pledge of

Cayuse sincerity, he broke the long slender stem twice, thrice,

crushed the bowl in his fingers, and dashed the pieces at Snoqualmie's

feet. It was a defiance, a contemptuous rejection of peace, a

declaration of war more disdainful than any words could have made it.

Then, before they could recover from their astonishment, the Bannock

turned and leaped through the crowd at the door,--for an instant's

stay was death. Even as he leaped, Snoqualmie's tomahawk whizzed after

him, and a dozen warriors were on their feet, weapon in hand. But the

swift, wild drama had been played like lightning, and he was gone.

Only, a brave who had tried to intercept his passage lay on the ground

outside the lodge, stabbed to the heart. They rushed to the door in

time to see him throw himself on his horse and dash off, looking back

to give a yell of triumph and defiance.

In less time than it takes to describe it, the horses tethered near

the lodges were mounted and twenty riders were in pursuit. But the

Bannock was considerably in advance now, and the fine black horse he

rode held its own nobly. Out over the prairie flew the pursuing

Cayuses, yelling like demons, the fugitive turning now and then to

utter a shout of derision.

Back at the lodges, the crowd of spectators looked on with excited

comments.

"His horse is tired, ours are fresh!" "They gain on him!" "No, he is

getting farther from them!" "See, he throws away his blanket!" "They

are closer, closer!" "No, no, his horse goes like a deer."

Out over the prairies, fleeting like the shadow of a hurrying cloud,

passed the race, the black horse leading, the Cayuse riders close

behind, their long hair outstreaming, their moccasins pressed against

their horses' sides, their whips falling without mercy. Down a canyon

they swept in pursuit and passed from the ken of the watchers at the

camp, the black horse still in the van.

But it could not cope with the fresh horses of the Cayuses, and they

gained steadily. At last the pursuers came within bowshot, but they

did not shoot; the fugitive knew too well the reason why. Woe unto him

if he fell alive into their hands! He leaned low along his horse's

neck, chanting a weird refrain as if charming it to its utmost speed,

and ever and anon looked back with that heart-shaking shout of

defiance. But steadily his pursuers gained on him; and one,

outstripping the rest, rode alongside and reached out to seize his

rein. Even as he touched it, the Bannock's war-club swung in air and

the Cayuse reeled dead from his saddle. A howl of rage burst from the

others, a whoop of exultation from the fugitive.

But at length his horse's breath grew short and broken, he felt its

body tremble as it ran, and his enemies closed in around him.

Thrice the war-club rose and fell, thrice was a saddle emptied; but

all in vain. Quickly his horse was caught, he was dragged from the

saddle and bound hand and foot.

He was thrown across a horse and brought back to the village. What a

chorus of triumph went up from the camp, when it was seen that they

were bringing him back! It was an ominous sound, with something of

wolfish ferocity in it. But the Bannock only smiled grimly.

He is bound to a post,--a charred, bloodstained post to which others

of his race have been bound before him. The women and children taunt

him, jeer at him, strike him even. The warriors do not. They will

presently do more than that. Some busy themselves building a fire near

by; others bring pieces of flint, spear points, jagged fragments of

rock, and heat them in it. The prisoner, dusty, torn, parched with

thirst, and bleeding from many wounds, looks on with perfect

indifference. Snoqualmie comes and gazes at him; the prisoner does not

notice him, is seemingly unconscious of his presence.

By and by a band of hunters ride up from a long excursion. They have

heard nothing of the trouble. With them is a young Bannock who is

visiting the tribe. He rides up with his Cayuse comrades, laughing,

gesticulating in a lively way. The jest dies on his lips when he

recognizes the Bannock who is tied to the stake. Before he can even

think of flight, he is dragged from his horse and bound,--his whilom

comrades, as soon as they understand the situation, becoming his

bitterest assailants.

For it is war again, war to the death between the tribes, until, two

centuries later, both shall alike be crushed by the white man.

At length the preparations are complete, and the women and children,

who have been swarming around and taunting the captives, are brushed

aside like so many flies by the stern warriors. First, the young

Bannock who has just come in is put where he must have a full view of

the other. Neither speaks, but a glance passes between them that is

like a mutual charge to die bravely. Snoqualmie comes and stands

close by the prisoner and gives directions for the torture to begin.

The Bannock is stripped. The stone blades that have been in the fire

are brought, all red and glowing with heat, and pressed against his

bare flesh. It burns and hisses under the fiery torture, but the

warrior only sneers.

"It doesn't hurt; you can't hurt me. You are fools. You don't know how

to torture."[4]

No refinement of cruelty could wring a complaint from him. It was in

vain that they burned him, cut the flesh from his fingers, branded his

cheek with the heated bowl of the pipe he had broken.

"Try it again," he said mockingly, while his flesh smoked. "I feel no

pain. We torture your people a great deal better, for we make them cry

out like little children."

More and more murderous and terrible grew the wrath of his tormentors,

as this stream of vituperation fell on their ears. Again and again

weapons were lifted to slay him, but Snoqualmie put them back.

"He can suffer more yet," he said; and the words were like a glimpse

into the cold, merciless heart of the man. Other and fiercer tortures

were devised by the chief, who stood over him, pointing out where and

how the keenest pain could be given, the bitterest pang inflicted on

that burned and broken body. At last it seemed no longer a man, but a

bleeding, scorched, mutilated mass of flesh that hung to the stake;

only the lips still breathed defiance and the eyes gleamed deathless

hate. Looking upon one and another, he boasted of how he had slain

their friends and relatives. Many of his boasts were undoubtedly

false, but they were very bitter.

"It was by my arrow that you lost your eye," he said to one; "I

scalped your father," to another; and every taunt provoked

counter-taunts accompanied with blows.

At length he looked at Snoqualmie,--a look so ghastly, so disfigured,

that it was like something seen in a horrible dream.

"I took your sister prisoner last winter; you never knew,--you thought

she had wandered from home and was lost in a storm. We put out her

eyes, we tore out her tongue, and then we told her to go out in the

snow and find food. Ah-h-h! you should have seen her tears as she went

out into the storm, and----"

The sentence was never finished. While the last word lingered on his

lips, his body sunk into a lifeless heap under a terrific blow, and

Snoqualmie put back his blood-stained tomahawk into his belt.

"Shall we kill the other?" demanded the warriors, gathering around the

surviving Bannock, who had been a stoical spectator of his companion's

sufferings. A ferocious clamor from the women and children hailed the

suggestion of new torture; they thronged around the captive, the

children struck him, the women abused him, spat upon him even, but not

a muscle of his face quivered; he merely looked at them with stolid

indifference.

"Kill him, kill him!" "Stretch him on red hot stones!" "We will make

_him_ cry!"

Snoqualmie hesitated. He wished to save this man for another purpose,

and yet the Indian blood-thirst was on him; chief and warrior alike

were drunken with fury, mad with the lust of cruelty.

As he hesitated, a white man clad in the garb of an Indian hunter

pushed his way through the crowd. Silence fell upon the throng; the

clamor of the women, the fierce questioning of the warriors ceased.

The personality of this man was so full of tenderness and sympathy, so

strong and commanding, that it impressed the most savage nature. Amid

the silence, he came and looked first at the dead body that yet hung

motionless from the stake, then sorrowfully, reproachfully, at the

circle of faces around. An expression half of sullen shame, half of

defiance, crossed more than one countenance as his glance fell upon

it.

"Friends," said he, sadly, pointing at the dead, "is this your peace

with the Bannocks,--the peace you prayed the Great Spirit to bless,

the peace that was to last forever?"

"The Bannocks sent back the peace-pipe by this man, and he broke it

and cast the pieces in our teeth," answered one, stubbornly.

"And you slew him for it? Why not have sent runners to his tribe

asking why it was returned, and demanding to know what wrong you had

done, that you might right it? Now there will be war. When you lie

down to sleep at night, the surprise may be on you and massacre come

while your eyes are heavy with slumber; when you are gone on the

buffalo trail the tomahawk may fall on the women and children at home.

Death will lurk for you in every thicket and creep round every

encampment. The Great Spirit is angry because you have stained your

hands in blood without cause."

There was no reply. This white man, coming from far eastern lands

lying they knew not where, who told them God had sent him to warn them

to be better, had a singular influence over them. There was none of

his hearers who did not dimly feel that he had done wrong in burning

and scarring the poor mass of humanity before him, and that the Great

Spirit was angry with him for it.

Back in the crowd, some of the children, young demons hungering for

blood, began to clamor again for the death of the surviving Bannock.

Cecil Grey looked at him pityingly.

"At least you can let him go."

There was no answer. Better impulses, better desires, were struggling

in their degraded minds; but cruelty was deeply rooted within them,

the vague shame and misgiving his words had roused was not so strong

as the dark animalism of their natures.

Cecil turned to Snoqualmie.

"I saved your life once, will you not give me his?"

The chief regarded him coldly.

"Take it," he said after a pause. Cecil stooped over and untied the

thongs that bound the captive, who rose to his feet amid a low angry

murmur from those around. Snoqualmie silenced it with an imperious

gesture. Then he turned to the young Bannock.

"Dog, one of a race of dogs! go back to your people and tell them what

you have seen to-day. Tell them how we burned and tortured their

messenger, and that we let you go only to tell the tale. Tell them,

too, that Snoqualmie knows his sister died by their hand last winter,

and that for every hair upon her head he will burn a Bannock warrior

at the stake. Go, and be quick, lest my war-party overtake you on the

trail."

The Bannock left without a word, taking the trail across the prairie

toward the land of his tribe.

"The gift was given, but there was that given with it that made it

bitter. And now may I bury this dead body?"

"It is only a Bannock; who cares what is done with it?" replied

Snoqualmie. "But remember, my debt is paid. Ask of me no more gifts,"

and the chief turned abruptly away.

"Who will help me bury this man?" asked Cecil. No one replied; and he

went alone and cut the thongs that bound the body to the stake. But as

he stooped to raise it, a tall fine-looking man, a renegade from the

Shoshones, who had taken no part in the torture, came forward to help

him. Together they bore the corpse away from the camp to the hillside;

together they hollowed out a shallow grave and stretched the body in

it, covering it with earth and heaping stones on top, that the cayote

might not disturb the last sleep of the dead.

When they returned to the camp, they found a war-party already in the

saddle, with Snoqualmie at their head, ready to take the Bannock

trail. But before they left the camp, a runner entered it with a

summons from Multnomah calling them to the great council of the tribes

on Wappatto Island, for which they must start on the morrow.

-----

[3] See Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. i., p. 270.

[4] See Ross Cox's "Adventures on the Columbia River" for a

description of torture among the Columbia tribes.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE WAY TO THE COUNCIL.

They arrived at the village of Wishram.

IRVING: _Astoria_.

The camp was all astir at dawn, for sunset must see them far on the

way. They must first cross the prairies to the northward till they

struck the Columbia, then take the great trail leading down it to the

Willamette valley. It was a two days' journey at the least.

Squaws were preparing a hurried meal; lodge-poles were being taken

down and the mats that covered them rolled up and strapped on the

backs of horses; Indians, yelling and vociferating, were driving up

bands of horses from which pack and riding ponies were to be selected;

unbroken animals were rearing and plunging beneath their first

burdens, while mongrel curs ran barking at their heels. Here and there

unskilful hands were throwing the lasso amid the jeers and laughter of

the spectators. All was tumult and excitement.

At length they were under way. First rode the squaws, driving before

them pack-horses and ponies, for the herds and entire movable property

of the tribe accompanied it in all its marches. The squaws rode

astride, like men, in the rude wooden saddles that one yet sees used

by the wilder Indians of eastern Oregon and Idaho,--very high, both

before and behind, looking like exaggerated pack-saddles. A hair rope,

tied around the lower jaw of the horse, answered for a bridle. To this

must be added the quirt, a short double-lashed whip fastened into a

hollow and curiously carved handle. The application of this whip was

so constant as to keep the right arm in continual motion; so that even

to-day on the frontier an Indian rider can be distinguished from a

white man, at a distance, by the constant rising and falling of the

whip arm. With the squaws were the children, some of whom, not over

four, five, and six years of age, rode alone on horseback, tied in the

high saddles; managing their steeds with instinctive skill, and when

the journey became fatiguing, going to sleep, secured by their

fastenings from falling off.

Next came the men, on the best horses, unencumbered by weight of any

kind and armed with bow and arrow. Here and there a lance pointed with

flint, a stone knife or hatchet, or a heavy war-club, hung at the

saddle; but the bow and arrow constituted their chief weapon.

The men formed a kind of rear-guard, protecting the migrating tribe

from any sudden assault on the part of the Bannocks. There were

perhaps two hundred fighting-men in all. Snoqualmie was at their head,

and beside him rode the young Willamette runner who had brought the

summons from Multnomah the day before. The Willamette was on horseback

for the first time in his life. The inland or prairie tribes of

eastern Oregon, coming as they did in contact with tribes whose

neighbors bordered on Mexico, had owned horses for perhaps a

generation; but the sea-board tribes owned very few, and there were

tribes on Puget Sound and at the mouth of the Columbia who had never

seen them. Even the Willamettes, sovereign tribe of the confederacy

though they were, had but few horses.

This morning the young Willamette had bought a colt, giving for it a

whole string of _hiagua_ shells. It was a pretty, delicate thing, and

he was proud of it, and had shown his pride by slitting its ears and

cutting off its tail, as was the barbarous custom with many of the

Indians. He sat on the little creature now; and loaded as it was with

the double weight of himself and the heavy wooden saddle, it could

hardly keep pace with the older and stronger horses.

In the rear of all rode Cecil Grey and the Shoshone renegade who had

helped him bury the dead Bannock the evening before. Cecil's form was

as slight and graceful in its Indian garb as in days gone by, and his

face was still the handsome, sensitive face it had been eight years

before. It was stronger now, more resolute and mature, and from long

intercourse with the Indians there had come into it something grave

and Indian-like; but it only gave more of dignity to his mien. His

brown beard swept his breast, and his face was bronzed; but the lips

quivered under the beard, and the cheek flushed and paled under the

bronze.

What had he been doing in the eight years that had elapsed since he

left his New England home? Let us listen to his story in his own words

as he tells it to the Shoshone renegade by his side.

"I lived in a land far to the east, beside a great water. My people

were white like myself. I was one of an order of men whom the Great

Spirit had appointed to preach of goodness, mercy, and truth, and to

explain to the people the sayings of a mighty book which he had given

to the fathers,--a book that told how men should live in this world,

and said that a beautiful place in the next would be given those who

are good and true in this. But by and by the Great Spirit began to

whisper to me of the Indians in the wilderness who knew nothing of the

book or the hope within it, and a longing rose within me to go and

tell them; but there were ties that held me to my own people, and I

knew not what to do. Death cut those ties; and in my hour of grief

there came to me a vision of a great bridge far in the west, and of

Indians passing over it, and a voice spoke to me and bade me go and

seek the land of the bridge, for the Great Spirit had a mission for me

there; and I went forth into the wilderness. I met many tribes and

tarried with them, telling them of God. Many were evil and treated me

harshly, others were kind and listened. Some loved me and wished me to

abide always in their lodges and be one of them. But even while they

spoke the Great Spirit whispered to me to go on, and an unrest rose

within me, and I could not stay.

"So the years went by, and I wandered farther and farther to the west,

across rivers and deserts, till I reached this tribe; and they said

that farther on, toward the land of the Willamettes, a great river

flowed through the mountains, and across it was a bridge of stone

built by the gods when the world was young. Then I knew that it was

the bridge of my vision, and the unrest came back and I arose to go.

But the tribe kept me, half as guest and half as prisoner, and would

not let me depart; until last night the runner came summoning them to

the council. Now they go, taking me with them. I shall see the land of

the bridge and perform the work the Great Spirit has given me to do."

The old grand enthusiasm shone in his look as he closed. The Shoshone

regarded him with grave attention.

"What became of the book that told of God?" he asked earnestly.

"A chief took it from me and burned it; but its words were written on

my heart, and they could not be destroyed."

They rode on for a time in silence. The way was rugged, the country a

succession of canyons and ridges covered with green and waving grass

but bare of trees. Behind them, the Blue Mountains were receding in

the distance. To the west, Mt. Hood, the great white "Witch Mountain"

of the Indians, towered over the prairie, streaking the sky with a

long floating wreath of volcanic smoke. Before them, as they journeyed

northward toward the Columbia, stretched out the endless prairie. Now

they descended into a deep ravine, now they toiled up a steep

hillside. The country literally rolled, undulating in immense ridges

around and over which the long file of squaws and warriors, herds and

pack-horses, wound like a serpent. From the bands ahead came shouts

and outcries,--the sounds of rude merriment; and above all the

long-drawn intonation so familiar to those who have been much with

Indian horsemen,--the endlessly repeated "ho-ha, ho-ha, ho-ha," a kind

of crude riding-song.

After a while Cecil said, "I have told you the story of my life, will

you not tell me the story of yours?"

"Yes," said the renegade, after a moment's thought; "you have shown me

your heart as if you were my brother. Now I will show you mine.

"I was a Shoshone warrior.[5] There was a girl in our village whom I

had loved from childhood. We played together; we talked of how, when I

became a man and a warrior, she should become my wife; she should keep

my wigwam; we would always love one another. She grew up, and the

chief offered many horses for her. Her father took them. She became

the chief's wife, and all my heart withered up. Everything grew dark.

I sat in my wigwam or wandered in the forest, caring for nothing.

"When I met her, she turned her face aside, for was she not the wife

of another? Yet I knew her heart hungered for me. The chief knew it

too, and when he spoke to her a cloud was ever on his brow and sharp

lightning on his tongue. But she was true. Whose lodge was as clean as

his? The wood was always carried, the water at hand, the meat cooked.

She searched the very thought that was in his heart to save him the

trouble of speaking. He could never say, 'Why is it not done?' But her

heart was mine, and he knew it; and he treated her like a dog and not

like a wife.

"Me too he tried to tread under foot. One day we assembled to hunt the

buffalo. Our horses were all collected. Mine stood before my tent, and

he came and took them away, saying that they were his. What could I

do? He was a chief.

[Illustration: _The Great "Witch Mountain" of the Indians._]

"I came no more to the council, I shared no more in the hunt and the

war-dance. I was unhorsed, degraded, dishonored. He told his wife what

he had done, and when she wept he beat her.

"One evening I stood on a knoll overlooking the meadow where the

horses were feeding; the chief's horses were there, and mine with

them. I saw _him_ walking among them. The sight maddened me; my blood

burned; I leaped on him; with two blows I laid him dead at my feet. I

covered him with earth and strewed leaves over the place. Then I went

to _her_ and told her what I had done, and urged her to fly with me.

She answered only with tears. I reminded her of all she had suffered,

and told her I had done only what was just. I urged her again to fly.

She only wept the more, and bade me go. My heart was heavy but my eyes

were dry.

"'It is well,' I said, 'I will go alone to the desert. None but the

wild beasts of the wilderness will be with me. The seekers of blood

will follow on my trail; they may come on me while I am asleep and

slay me, but you will be safe. I will go alone.'

"I turned to go. She sprang after me. 'No,' she cried, 'you shall not

go alone. Wherever you go I will go: you shall never part from me.'

"While we were talking, one who had seen me slay the chief and had

roused the camp, came with others. We heard their steps approaching

the door, and knew that death came with them. We escaped at the back

of the lodge, but they saw us and their arrows flew. She fell, and I

caught her in my arms and fled into the wood. When we were safe I

looked at her I carried, and she was dead. An arrow had pierced her

heart. I buried her that night beneath a heap of stones, and fled to

the Cayuses. That is my story."

"What will you do now?" asked Cecil, deeply touched.

"I shall live a man's life. I shall hunt and go on the war-trail, and

say strong words in the council. And when my life is ended, when the

sunset and the night come to me and I go forth into the darkness, I

know I shall find her I love waiting for me beside the death-trail

that leads to the spirit-land."

The tears came into Cecil's eyes.

"I too have known sorrow," he said, "and like you I am a wanderer from

my own people. We are going together into an unknown land, knowing not

what may befall us. Let us be friends."

And he held out his hand. The Indian took it,--awkwardly, as an Indian

always takes the hand of a white man, but warmly, heartily.

"We are brothers," he said simply. And as Cecil rode on with the wild

troop into the unknown world before him, he felt that there was one

beside him who would be faithful, no matter what befell.

The long day wore on; the sun rose to the zenith and sunk, and still

the Indians pushed forward. It was a long, forced march, and Cecil was

terribly fatigued when at last one of the Indians told him that they

were near a big river where they would camp for the night.

"One sun more," said the Indian, pointing to the sun now sinking in

the west, "and you will see the Bridge of the Gods."

The news re-animated Cecil, and he hurried on. A shout rose from the

Indians in advance. He saw the head of the long train of horses and

riders pause and look downward and the Indians at the rear gallop

forward. Cecil and his friend followed and joined them.

"The river! the river!" cried the Indians, as they rode up. The scene

below was one of gloomy but magnificent beauty. Beneath them opened an

immense canyon, stupendous even in that land of canyons,--the great

canyon of the Columbia. The walls were brown, destitute of verdure,

sinking downward from their feet in yawning precipices or steep

slopes. At the bottom, more than a thousand feet below, wound a wide

blue river, the gathered waters of half a continent. Beneath them, the

river plunged over a long low precipice with a roar that filled the

canyon for miles. Farther on, the flat banks encroached upon the

stream till it seemed narrowed to a silver thread among the jutting

rocks. Still farther, it widened again, swept grandly around a bend in

the distance, and passed from sight.

"_Tuum, tuum_," said the Indians to Cecil, in tones that imitated the

roar of the cataract. It was the "Tum" of Lewis and Clark, the

"Tumwater" of more recent times; and the place below, where the

compressed river wound like a silver thread among the flat black

rocks, was the far-famed Dalles of the Columbia. It was superb, and

yet there was something profoundly lonely and desolate about it,--the

majestic river flowing on forever among barren rocks and crags, shut

in by mountain and desert, wrapped in an awful solitude where from age

to age scarce a sound was heard save the cry of wild beasts or wilder

men.

"It is the very river of death and of desolation," thought Cecil. "It

looks lonely, forsaken, as if no eye had beheld it from the day of

creation until now."

Looking again at the falls, he saw, what he had not before noticed, a

large camp of Indians on the side nearest them. Glancing across the

river, he descried on a knoll on the opposite bank--what? Houses! He

could not believe his eyes; could it be possible? Yes, they certainly

were long, low houses, roofed as the white man roofs his. A sudden

wild hope thrilled him; his brain grew dizzy. He turned to one of the

Indians.

"Who built those houses?" he exclaimed; "white men like me?"

The other shook his head.

"No, Indians."

Cecil's heart died within him. "After all," he murmured, "it was

absurd to expect to find a settlement of white men here. How could I

think that any but Indians had built those houses?"

Still, as they descended the steep zigzag pathway leading down to the

river, he could not help gazing again and again at the buildings that

so reminded him of home.

It was Wishram, the ancient village of the falls, whose brave and

insolent inhabitants, more than a century later, were the dread of the

early explorers and fur traders of the Columbia. It was built at the

last and highest fishery on the Columbia, for the salmon could not at

that time ascend the river above the falls. All the wandering tribes

of the Upper Columbia came there to fish or to buy salmon of the

Wishram fishers. There too the Indians of the Lower Columbia and the

Willamette met them, and bartered the _hiagua_ shells, the dried

berries, and _wappatto_ of their country for the bear claws and

buffalo robes of the interior. It was a rendezvous where buying,

selling, gambling, dancing, feasting took the place of war and the

chase; though the ever burning enmities of the tribes sometimes flamed

into deadly feuds and the fair-ground not infrequently became a field

of battle.

The houses of Wishram were built of logs, the walls low, the lower

half being below the surface of the ground, so that they were

virtually half cellar. At a distance, the log walls and arched roofs

gave them very much the appearance of a frontier town of the whites.

As they descended to the river-side, Cecil looked again and again at

the village, so different from the skin or bark lodges of the Rocky

Mountain tribes he had been with so long. But the broad and sweeping

river flowed between, and his gaze told him little more than his first

glance had done.

They were now approaching the camp. Some of the younger braves at the

head of the Cayuse train dashed toward it, yelling and whooping in the

wildest manner. Through the encampment rang an answering shout.

"The Cayuses! the Cayuses! and the white medicine-man!"

The news spread like wildfire, and men came running from all

directions to greet the latest arrivals. It was a scene of abject

squalor that met Cecil's eyes as he rode with the others into the

camp. Never had he seen among the Indian races aught so degraded as

those Columbia River tribes.

The air was putrid with decaying fish; the very skins and mats that

covered the lodge-poles were black with rancid salmon and filth. Many

of the men were nude; most of the women wore only a short garment of

skin or woven cedar bark about the waist, falling scarcely to the

knees. The heads of many had been artificially flattened; their faces

were brutal; their teeth worn to the gums with eating sanded salmon;

and here and there bleared and unsightly eyes showed the terrible

prevalence of ophthalmia. Salmon were drying in the sun on platforms

raised above the reach of dogs. Half-starved horses whose raw and

bleeding mouths showed the effect of the hair-rope bridles, and whose

projecting ribs showed their principal nutriment to be sage-brush and

whip-lash, were picketed among the lodges. Cayote-like dogs and unclad

children, shrill and impish, ran riot, fighting together for

half-dried, half-decayed pieces of salmon. Prevailing over everything

was the stench which is unique and unparalleled among the stenches of

the earth,--the stench of an Indian camp at a Columbia fishery.[6]

Perhaps ten of the petty inland tribes had assembled there as their

starting-point for the great council at Wappatto Island. All had heard

rumors of the white man who had appeared among the tribes to the south

saying that the Great Spirit had sent him to warn the Indians to

become better, and all were anxious to see him. They pointed him out

to one another as he rode up,--the man of graceful presence and

delicate build; they thronged around him, naked men and half-clad

women, squalid, fierce as wild beasts, and gazed wonderingly.

"It is he, the white man," they whispered among themselves. "See the

long beard." "See the white hands." "Stand back, the Great Spirit sent

him; he is strong _tomanowos_; beware his anger."

Now the horses were unpacked and the lodges pitched, under the eyes of

the larger part of the encampment, who watched everything with

insatiable curiosity, and stole all that they could lay their hands

on. Especially did they hang on every motion of Cecil; and he sank

very much in their estimation when they found that he helped his

servant, the old Indian woman, put up his lodge.

"Ugh, he does squaw's work," was the ungracious comment. After awhile,

when the lodge was up and Cecil lay weary and exhausted upon his mat

within it, a messenger entered and told him that the Indians were all

collected near the river bank and wished him to come and give them the

"talk" he had brought from the Great Spirit.

Worn as he was, Cecil arose and went. It was in the interval between

sunset and dark. The sun still shone on the cliffs above the great

canyon, but in the spaces below the shadows were deepening. On the

flat rocks near the bank of the river, and close by the falls of

Tumwater, the Indians were gathered to the number of several hundred,

awaiting him,--some squatting, Indian fashion, on the ground, others

standing upright, looking taller than human in the dusky light.

Mingled with the debased tribes that made up the larger part of the

gathering, Cecil saw here and there warriors of a bolder and superior

race,--Yakimas and Klickitats, clad in skins or wrapped in blankets

woven of the wool of the mountain sheep.

Cecil stood before them and spoke, using the Willamette tongue, the

language of common intercourse between the tribes, all of whom had

different dialects. The audience listened in silence while he told

them of the goodness and compassion of the Great Spirit; how it

grieved him to see his children at war among themselves, and how he,

Cecil, had been sent to warn them to forsake their sins and live

better lives. Long familiarity with the Indians had imparted to him

somewhat of their manner of thinking and speaking; his language had

become picturesque with Indian imagery, and his style of oratory had

acquired a tinge of Indian gravity. But the intense and vivid

spirituality that had ever been the charm of his eloquence was in it

still. There was something in his words that for the moment, and

unconsciously to them, lifted his hearers to a higher plane. When he

closed there was upon them that vague remorse, that dim desire to be

better, that indefinable wistfulness, which his earnest, tender words

never failed to arouse in his hearers.

When he lifted his hands at the close of his "talk," and prayed that

the Great Spirit might pity them, that he might take away from them

the black and wicked heart of war and hate and give them the new heart

of peace and love, the silence was almost breathless, broken only by

the unceasing roar of the falls and the solemn pleading of the

missionary's voice.

He left them and returned through the deepening shadows to his lodge.

There he flung himself on the couch of furs the old Indian woman had

spread for him. Fatigued with the long ride of the day and the heavy

draught his address had made on an overtaxed frame, he tried to

sleep.

But he could not. The buildings of the town of Wishram across the

river, so like the buildings of the white man, had awakened a thousand

memories of home. Vivid pictures of his life in New England and in the

cloisters of Magdalen came before his sleepless eyes. The longing for

the refined and pleasant things that had filled his life rose strong

and irrepressible within him. Such thoughts were never entirely absent

from his mind, but at times they seemed to dominate him completely,

driving him into a perfect fever of unrest and discontent. After

tossing for hours on his couch, he arose and went out into the open

air.

The stars were bright; the moon flooded the wide canyon with lustre;

the towering walls rose dim and shadowy on either side of the river

whose waters gleamed white in the moonlight; the solemn roar of the

falls filled the silence of the night.

Around him was the barbarian encampment, with here and there a fire

burning and a group of warriors talking beside it. He walked forth

among the lodges. Some were silent, save for the heavy breathing of

the sleepers; others were lighted up within, and he could hear the

murmur of voices.

At one place he found around a large fire a crowd who were feasting,

late as was the hour, and boasting of their exploits. He stood in the

shadow a moment and listened. One of them concluded his tale by

springing to his feet, advancing a few paces from the circle of

firelight, and making a fierce speech to invisible foes. Looking

toward the land of the Shoshones, he denounced them with the utmost

fury, dared them to face him, scorned them because they did not

appear, and ended by shaking his tomahawk in their direction, amid the

applause of his comrades.

Cecil passed on and reached the outer limit of the camp. There, amid

some large bowlders, he almost stumbled on a band of Indians engaged

in some grisly ceremony. He saw them, however, in time to escape

observation and screen himself behind one of the rocks.

One of the Indians held a rattlesnake pinned to the ground with a

forked stick. Another held out a piece of liver to the snake and was

provoking him to bite it. Again and again the snake, quivering with

fury and rattling savagely, plunged his fangs into the liver. Several

Indians stood looking on, with arrows in their hands. At length, when

the meat was thoroughly impregnated with the virus, the snake was

released and allowed to crawl away. Then they all dipped the points of

their arrows in the poisoned liver,[7] carefully marking the shaft of

each in order to distinguish it from those not poisoned. None of them

saw Cecil, and he left without being discovered.

Why did they wish to go to the council with poisoned arrows?

Further on, among the rocks and remote from the camp, he saw a great

light and heard a loud hallooing. He went cautiously toward it. He

found a large fire in an open space, and perhaps thirty savages,

stripped and painted, dancing around it, brandishing their weapons

and chanting a kind of war-chant. On every face, as the firelight fell

on it, was mad ferocity and lust of war. Near them lay the freshly

killed body of a horse whose blood they had been drinking. Drunk with

frenzy, drunk with blood, they danced and whirled in that wild

saturnalia till Cecil grew dizzy with the sight.[8]

He made his way back to the camp and sought his lodge. He heard the

wolves howling on the hills, and a dark presentiment of evil crept

over him.

"It is not to council that these men are going, but to war," he

murmured, as he threw himself on his couch. "God help me to be

faithful, whatever comes! God help me to keep my life and my words

filled with his spirit, so that these savage men may be drawn to him

and made better, and my mission be fulfilled! I can never hope to see

the face of white man again, but I can live and die faithful to the

last."

So thinking, a sweet and restful peace came to him, and he fell

asleep. And even while he thought how impossible it was for him ever

to reach the land of the white man again, an English exploring-ship

lay at anchor at Yaquina Bay, only two days' ride distant; and on it

were some who had known and loved him in times gone by, but who had

long since thought him lost in the wilderness forever.

-----

[5] See Bonneville's Adventures, chapters xiii, and xlviii.

[6] See Townsend's Narrative, pages 137, 138. Both Lewis and

Clark and Ross Cox substantiate his description; indeed, very

much the same thing can be seen at the Tumwater Fishery to-day.

[7] See Bancroft's _Native Races_, article "Columbians." A bunch

of arrows so poisoned is in the Museum of the Oregon State

University at Eugene.

[8] Irving's "Astoria," chap. xli.

CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT CAMP ON THE ISLAND.

Of different language, form and face,

A various race of men.

SCOTT.

"You say that we shall see the Bridge of the Gods to-day?" asked Cecil

of the young Willamette runner the next morning. "Tell me about it; is

it high?"

The young Willamette rose to his full height, arched his right hand

above his eyes, looked skyward with a strained expression as if gazing

up at an immense height, and emitted a prolonged "ah-h-h!"

That was all, but it was enough to bring the light to Cecil's eyes and

a sudden triumphant gladness to his heart. At last he approached the

land of his vision, at last he should find the bridge whose wraith had

faded before him into the west eight years before!

The Cayuse band had started early that morning. The chief Snoqualmie

was impatient of delay, and wished to be one of the earliest at the

council; he wanted to signalize himself in the approaching struggle by

his loyalty to Multnomah, whose daughter he was to marry and whom he

was to succeed as war-chief.

The women were in advance, driving the pack-horses; Cecil rode behind

them with the Shoshone renegade and the young Willamette runner;

while Snoqualmie brought up the rear, looking sharply after

stragglers,--for some of his young men were very much inclined to

linger at the rendezvous and indulge in a little gambling and

horse-racing with the other bands, who were not to start till later in

the day.

The young Willamette still rode the pretty little pony whose ears and

tail he had so barbarously mutilated. It reeled under him from sheer

weakness, so young was it and so worn by the journey of the day

before. In vain did Cecil expostulate. With true Indian obtuseness and

brutality, the Willamette refused to see why he should be merciful to

a horse.

"Suppose he rode me, what would _he_ care? Now I ride him, what do I

care? Suppose he die, plenty more _hiagua_ shells, plenty more

horses."

After which logical answer he plied the whip harder than ever, making

the pony keep up with the stronger and abler horses of the other

riders. The long train of squaws and warriors wound on down the trail

by the river-side. In a little while Wishram and Tumwater passed from

sight. The wind began to blow; the ever drifting sand of the Columbia

came sifting in their faces. They passed the Dalles of the Columbia;

and the river that, as seen from the heights the evening before, wound

like a silver thread among the rocks, was found to be a compressed

torrent that rushed foaming along the narrow passage,--literally, as

it has been described, "a river turned on edge."

There too they passed the camp of the Wascos, who were preparing to

start, but suspended their preparations at the approach of the

cavalcade and stood along the path eager to see the white man. Cecil

noticed that as they descended the river the language of the local

tribes became more gutteral, and the custom of flattening the head

prevailed more and more.[9]

Below, the scenery was less barren; the river entered the Cascade

Range, and the steep banks, along which wound the trail, grew dark

with pines, relieved here and there with brighter verdure. They saw

bands of Indians on the opposite shore, descending the trail along

that side on the way to the council. Many were on foot, though some

horses were among them. They were Indians of the nine tribes of the

Klickitat, and as yet had but few horses. A century later they owned

thousands. Indian women never accompanied war-parties; and Cecil

noticed that some of the bands were composed entirely of men, which

gave them the appearance of going to war. It had an ominous and

doubtful look.

At the Wau-coma (place of cottonwoods), the modern Hood River, they

found the tribe that inhabited that beautiful valley already on the

march, and the two bands mingled and went on together. The Wau-comas

seemed to be peaceably inclined, for their women were with them.

A short distance below the Wau-coma, the young Willamette's horse,

urged till it could go no farther, fell beneath him. The blood gushed

from its nostrils; in a few moments it was dead. The Willamette

extricated himself from it. "A bad horse, _cultus_ [no good]!" he

said, beating it with his whip. After venting his anger on it in that

way, he strode forward on foot.

And now Cecil was all expectation, on the alert for the first sight of

the bridge.

"Shall we see it soon?" he asked the young Willamette.

"When the sun is there, we shall see it," replied the Indian, pointing

to the zenith. The sun still lacked several hours of noon, and Cecil

had to restrain his impatience as best he could.

Just then an incident occurred that for the time effectually

obliterated all thought of the bridge, and made him a powerful enemy

where he least desired one.

At a narrow place in the trail, the loose horses that were being

driven at the head of the column became frightened and ran back upon

their drivers. In a moment, squaws, pack-horses, and ponies were all

mingled together. The squaws tried in vain to restore order; it seemed

as if there was going to be a general stampede. The men dashed up from

the rear, Snoqualmie and Cecil among them. Cecil's old nurse happened

to be in Snoqualmie's way. The horse she rode was slow and obstinate;

and when she attempted to turn aside to let Snoqualmie pass he would

not obey the rein, and the chief's way was blocked. To Snoqualmie an

old Indian woman was little more than a dog, and he raised his whip

and struck her across the face.

Like a flash, Cecil caught the chief's rein and lifted his own whip.

An instant more, and the lash would have fallen across the Indian's

face; but he remembered that he was a missionary, that he was

violating his own precepts of forgiveness in the presence of those

whom he hoped to convert.

The blow did not fall; he grappled with his anger and held it back;

but Snoqualmie received from him a look of scorn so withering, that it

seemed when Cecil's flashing eyes met his own as if he had been

struck, and he grasped his tomahawk. Cecil released the rein and

turned away without a word. Snoqualmie seemed for a moment to

deliberate within himself; then he let go his weapon and passed on.

Order was restored and the march resumed.

"You are strong," said the Shoshone renegade to Cecil. He had seen the

whole of the little drama. "You are strong; you held your anger down,

but your eyes struck him as if he were a dog."

Cecil made no reply, but rode on thinking that he had made an enemy.

He regretted what had happened; and yet, when he recalled the insult,

his blood burned and he half regretted that the blow had not been

given. So, absorbed in painful thought, he rode on, till a murmur

passing down the line roused him.

"The bridge! The bridge!"

He looked up hastily, his whole frame responding to the cry. There it

was before him, and only a short distance away,--a great natural

bridge, a rugged ridge of stone, pierced with a wide arched tunnel

through which the waters flowed, extending across the river. It was

covered with stunted pine and underbrush growing in every nook and

crevice; and on it were Indian horsemen with plumed hair and rude

lances. It was the bridge of the Wauna, the Bridge of the Gods, the

bridge he had seen in his vision eight years before.

For a moment his brain reeled, everything seemed shadowy and unreal,

and he half expected to see the bridge melt, like the vision, into

mist before his eyes.

Like one in a dream, he rode with the others to the place where the

path turned abruptly and led over the bridge to the northern bank of

the Columbia. Like one in a dream he listened, while the young

Willamette told him in a low tone that this bridge had been built by

the gods when the world was young, that it was the _tomanowos_ of the

Willamettes, that while it stood they would be strongest of all the

tribes, and that if it fell they would fall with it. As they crossed

it, he noted how the great arch rung to his horse's hoofs; he noted

the bushes growing low down to the tunnel's edge; he noted how

majestic was the current as it swept into the vast dark opening below,

how stately the trees on either bank. Then the trail turned down the

river-bank again toward the Willamette, and the dense fir forest shut

out the mysterious bridge from Cecil's backward gaze.

Solemnity and awe came to him. He had seen the bridge of his vision;

he had in truth been divinely called to his work. He felt that the

sight of the bridge was both the visible seal of God upon his mission

and a sign that its accomplishment was close at hand. He bowed his

head involuntarily, as in the presence of the Most High. He felt that

he rode to his destiny, that for him all things converged and

culminated at the great council.

They had not advanced far into the wood ere the whole train came to a

sudden halt. Riding forward, Cecil found a band of horsemen awaiting

them. They were Klickitats, mounted on good ponies; neither women nor

pack-horses were with them; they were armed and painted, and their

stern and menacing aspect was more like that of men who were on the

war-trail than of men who were riding to a "peace-talk."

The Cayuses halted a short distance away. Snoqualmie rode forward and

met the Klickitat chief in the space between the two bands. A few

words passed, fierce and questioning on the part of the Klickitat,

guarded and reserved on the part of the Cayuse. Then the Klickitat

seemed to suggest something at which the Cayuse shook his head

indignantly. The other instantly wheeled his horse, rode back to his

band, and apparently reported what Snoqualmie had said; for they all

set up a taunting shout, and after flinging derisive words and

gestures at the Cayuses, turned around and dashed at full gallop down

the trail, leaving the Cayuses covered with a cloud of dust.

And then Cecil knew that the spectacle meant war.

The air grew softer and more moist as they descended the western slope

of the Cascade Range. The pines gave way to forests of fir, the

underwood became denser, and ferns grew thick along the trail. It had

rained the night before, and the boughs and bushes hung heavy with

pendant drops. Now and then an Indian rider, brushing against some

vine or maple or low swaying bough, brought down upon himself a

drenching shower. The disgusted "ugh!" of the victim and the laughter

of the others would bring a smile to even Cecil's lips.

And so approaching the sea, they entered the great, wooded, rainy

valley of the lower Columbia. It was like a different world from the

desert sands and prairies of the upper Columbia. It seemed as if they

were entering a land of perpetual spring. They passed through groves

of spreading oaks; they skirted lowlands purple with blooming _camas_;

they crossed prairies where the grass waved rank and high, and sunny

banks where the strawberries were ripening in scarlet masses. And ever

and anon they caught sight of a far snow peak lifted above the endless

reach of forest, and through openings in the trees caught glimpses of

the Columbia spreading wide and beautiful between densely wooded

shores whose bending foliage was literally washed by the waters.

At length, as the sun was setting, they emerged from the wood upon a

wide and level beach. Before them swept the Columbia, broader and

grander than at any previous view, steadily widening as it neared the

sea. Opposite them, another river, not as large as the Columbia, but

still a great river, flowed into it.

"Willamette," said the young runner, pointing to this new river.

"Wappatto Island," he added, indicating a magnificent prospect of wood

and meadow that lay just below the mouth of the Willamette down along

the Columbia. Cecil could not see the channel that separated it from

the mainland on the other side, and to him it seemed, not an island,

but a part of the opposite shore.

Around them on the beach were groups of Indians, representatives of

various petty tribes who had not yet passed to the island of council.

Horses were tethered to the driftwood strewed along the beach; packs

and saddles were heaped on the banks awaiting the canoes that were to

carry them over. Across the river, Cecil could see upon the island

scattered bands of ponies feeding and many Indians passing to and fro.

Innumerable lodges showed among the trees. The river was dotted with

canoes. Never before had he beheld so large an encampment, not even

among the Six Nations or the Sioux. It seemed as if all the tribes of

Puget Sound and the Columbia were there.

As they halted on the bank, a little canoe came skimming over the

water like a bird. It bore a messenger from Multnomah, who had seen

the Cayuses as soon as they emerged on the beach.

"Send your packs over in canoes, swim your horses, camp on the

island," was the laconic message. Evidently, in view of the coming

struggle, Multnomah wanted the loyal Cayuses close at hand.

In a little while the horses were stripped of their packs, which were

heaped in the canoes that had followed the messenger, and the crossing

began. A hair rope was put around the neck of a horse, and the end

given to a man in a canoe. The canoe was then paddled out into the

stream, and the horse partly pulled, partly pushed into the river. The

others after much beating followed their leader; and in a little while

a long line of half submerged horses and riders was struggling across

the river, while the loaded canoes brought up the rear. The rapid

current swept them downward, and they landed on the opposite bank at a

point far below that from which they started.

On the bank of the Columbia, near Morgan's Lake, an old gnarled

cottonwood still marks the ancient landing-place; and traces remain of

the historic trail which led up from the river-bank into the interior

of the island,--a trail traversed perhaps for centuries,--the great

Indian road from the upper Columbia to the Willamette valley.

The bank was black with people crowding out to see the latest

arrivals. It was a thronging multitude of dusky faces and diverse

costumes. The Nootka with his tattooed face was there, clad in his

woollen blanket, his gigantic form pushing aside the short Chinook of

the lower Columbia, with his crooked legs, his half-naked body

glistening with grease, his slit nose and ears loaded with _hiagua_

shells. Choppunish women, clad in garments of buckskin carefully

whitened with clay, looked with scorn on the women of the Cowlitz and

Clatsop tribes, whose only dress was a fringe of cedar bark hanging

from the waist. The abject Siawash of Puget Sound, attired in a scanty

patch-work of rabbit and woodrat skin, stood beside the lordly Yakima,

who wore deerskin robe and leggins. And among them all, conscious of

his supremacy, moved the keen and imperious Willamette.

They all gazed wonderingly at Cecil, "the white man," the "long

beard," the "man that came from the Great Spirit," the "_shaman_ of

strong magic,"--for rumors of Cecil and his mission had spread from

tribe to tribe.

Though accustomed to savage sights, this seemed to Cecil the most

savage of all. Flat heads and round heads; faces scarred, tattooed,

and painted; faces as wild as beasts'; faces proud and haughty,

degraded and debased; hair cut close to the head, tangled, matted,

clogged with filth, carefully smoothed and braided,--every phase of

barbarism in its most bloodthirsty ferocity, its most abject squalor,

met his glance as he looked around him. It seemed like some wild

phantasmagoria, some weird and wondrous dream; and the discord of

tongues, the confusion of dialects, completed the bewildering scene.

Through the surging crowd they found their way to the place where

their lodges were to be pitched.

On the morrow the great council was to begin,--the council that to the

passions of that mob of savages might be as the torch to dry

brushwood. On the morrow Multnomah would try and would condemn to

death a rebel chief in the presence of the very ones who were in

secret league with him; and the setting sun would see the Willamette

power supreme and undisputed, or the confederacy would be broken

forever in the death-grapple of the tribes.

-----

[9] Lewis and Clark. See also Irving's "Astoria."

CHAPTER IV.

AN INDIAN TRIAL.

Like flame within the naked hand

His body bore his burning heart.

DANTE ROSSETTI.

Wappatto Island had seen many gatherings of the tribes, but never

before had it seen so large an assembly as on the opening day of the

council. The great cottonwoods of the council-grove waved over an

audience of sachems and warriors the like of which the oldest living

Indian could not remember.

No weapons were to be seen, for Multnomah had commanded that all arms

be left that day in the lodges. But the dissatisfied Indians had come

with weapons hidden under their robes of deer or wolf skin, which no

one should have known better than Multnomah. Had he taken any

precautions against surprise? Evidently not. A large body of

Willamette warriors, muffled in their blankets, lounged carelessly

around the grove, with not a weapon visible among them; behind them

thronged the vast and motley assemblage of doubtful allies; and back

of them, on the outskirts of the crowd, were the faithful Cayuses,

unarmed like the Willamettes. Had Multnomah's wonderful astuteness

failed him now when it was never needed more?

He was on the council-seat, a stone covered with furs; the Willamette

sachems sat in their places facing him; and mats were spread for the

chiefs of the tributaries. On a bearskin before the stern war-chief

lay a peace-pipe and a tomahawk; and to the Indians, accustomed to

signs and symbols, the two had a grim significance.

One by one the chiefs entered the circle and took their seats on the

mats provided for them. Those who were friendly to Multnomah first

laid presents before him; those who were not, took their places

without offering him either gift or salutation. Multnomah, however,

seemed unconscious of any neglect.

The chief of a Klamath tribe offered him a brilliantly dyed blanket;

another, a finely fringed quiver, full of arrows; another, a long and

massive string of _hiagua_ shells. Each laid his gift before Multnomah

and took his seat in silence.

The chief of the Chopponish presented him with a fine horse, the best

belonging to his tribe. Multnomah accepted it, and a slave led it

away. Then came Snoqualmie, bringing with him Cecil Grey. The chief's

hour of vengeance was at hand.

"Behold the white man from the land where the sun rises, the white

_shaman_ of whom all the tribes have heard. He is thine. Let him be

the white slave of Multnomah. All the chiefs have slaves, but who will

have a white slave like Multnomah?"

Cecil saw the abyss of slavery yawning before him, and grew pale to

the lips. His heart sank within him; then the resolute purpose that

never failed him in time of peril returned; he lifted his head and met

Multnomah's gaze with dignity. The war-chief bent on him the glance

which read men to the heart.

"The white stranger has been a chief among his own people," he said to

Cecil, more in the manner of one asserting a fact than asking a

question.

"I have often spoken to my people in the gatherings to hear the word

of the Great Spirit."

Again the keen, inscrutable gaze of the great chief seemed to probe

his being to its core; again the calm, grave stranger met it without

shrinking. The instinct, so common among savage races, of in some way

_knowing_ what a man is, of intuitively grasping his true merit, was

possessed by Multnomah in a large degree; and the royalty in his

nature instinctively recognized the royalty in Cecil's.

"The white guest who comes into the land of Multnomah shall be to him

as a guest; the chief should still be chief in any land. White

stranger, Multnomah gives you welcome; sit down among the chiefs."

Cecil took his place among them with all the composure he could

command, well knowing that he who would be influential among the

Indians must seem to be unmoved by any change of fortune. He felt,

however, not only the joy of personal deliverance, but mingled with it

came the glad, triumphant thought that he had now a voice in the

deliberations of the chiefs; it was a grand door opened for Indian

evangelization. As for Snoqualmie, his face was as impassive as

granite. One would have said that Cecil's victory was to him a matter

of no moment at all. But under the guise of indifference his anger

burned fierce and deadly,--not against Multnomah but against Cecil.

The last chief had taken his place in the council. There was a long,

ceremonious pause. Then Multnomah arose. He looked over the council,

upon the stern faces of the Willamettes and the loyal tributaries,

upon the sullen faces of the malcontents, upon the fierce and lowering

multitude beyond. Over the throng he looked, and felt as one feels who

stands on the brink of a volcano; yet his strong voice never rang

stronger, the grand old chief never looked more a chief than then.

"He is every inch a king," thought Cecil. The chief spoke in the

common Willamette language, at that time the medium of intercourse

between the tribes as the Chinook is now. The royal tongue was not

used in a mixed council.

"Warriors and chiefs, Multnomah gives you welcome. He spreads the

buffalo-robe." He made the Indian gesture of welcome, opening his

hands to them with a backward and downward gesture, as of one

spreading a robe. "To the warriors Multnomah says, 'The grass upon my

prairies is green for your horses; behold the wood, the water, the

game; they are yours.' To the chiefs he says, 'The mat is spread for

you in my own lodge and the meat is cooked.' The hearts of the

Willamettes change not as the winters go by, and your welcome is the

same as of old. Word came to us that the tribes were angry and had

spoken bitter things against the Willamettes; yes, that they longed

for the confederacy to be broken and the old days to come again when

tribe was divided against tribe and the Shoshones and Spokanes

trampled upon you all. But Multnomah trusted his allies; for had they

not smoked the peace-pipe with him and gone with him on the

war-trail? So he stopped his ears and would not listen, but let those

rumors go past him like thistle-down upon the wind.

"Warriors, Multnomah has shown his heart. What say you? Shall the

peace-pipe be lighted and the talk begin?"

He resumed his seat. All eyes turned to where the peace-pipe and the

tomahawk lay side by side before the council. Multnomah seemed waiting

for them to choose between the two.

Then Snoqualmie, the bravest and most loyal of the tributaries,

spoke.

"Let the peace-pipe be lighted; we come not for strife, but to be knit

together."

The angry malcontents in the council only frowned and drew their

blankets closer around them. Tohomish the seer, as the oldest chief

and most renowned medicine-man present, came forward and lighted the

pipe,--a long, thin piece of carving in black stone, the workmanship

of the Nootkas or Hydahs, who made the more elaborate pipes used by

the Indians of the Columbia River.

Muttering some mystical incantation, he waved it to the east and the

west, to the north and the south; and when the charm was complete,

gave it to Multnomah, who smoked it and passed it to Snoqualmie. From

chief to chief it circled around the whole council, but among them

were those who sat with eyes fixed moodily on the ground and would not

so much as touch or look at it. As the pipe passed round there was a

subdued murmur and movement in the multitude, a low threatening

clamor, as yet held in check by awe of Multnomah and dread of the

Willamette warriors. But the war-chief seemed unconscious that any had

refused the pipe. He now arose and said,--

"The pipe is smoked. Are not our hearts as one? Is there not perfect

trust between us? Now let us talk. First of all, Multnomah desires

wise words from his brethren. Last winter one of the tribes rose up

against Multnomah, saying that he should no longer be elder brother

and war-chief of the tribes. But the rebels were beaten and all of

them slain save the chief, who was reserved to be tried before you.

You in your wisdom shall decide what shall be done with the warrior

who has rebelled against his chief and stained his hands with the

blood of his brethren."

Two Willamette braves then entered the circle, bringing with them one

whose hands were tied behind him, whose form was emaciated with hunger

and disease, but whose carriage was erect and haughty. Behind came a

squaw, following him into the very presence of Multnomah, as if

resolved to share his fortunes to the last. It was his wife. She was

instantly thrust back and driven with brutal blows from the council.

But she lingered on the outskirts of the crowd, watching and waiting

with mute, sullen fidelity the outcome of the trial. No one looked at

her, no one cared for her; even her husband's sympathizers jostled the

poor shrinking form aside,--for she was only a squaw, while he was a

great brave.

He looked a great brave, standing there before Multnomah and the

chiefs with a dignity in his mien that no reverse could crush, no

torture could destroy. Haggard, starved, bound, his eyes gleamed

deathless and unconquerable hate on council and war-chief alike.

There were dark and menacing looks among the malcontents; in the

captive they saw personified their own loss of freedom and the hated

domination of the Willamettes.

"Speak! You that were a chief, you whose people sleep in the

dust,--what have you to say in your defence? The tribes are met

together, and the chiefs sit here to listen and to judge."

The rebel sachem drew himself up proudly and fixed his flashing eyes

on Multnomah.

"The tongue of Multnomah is a trap. I am brought not to be tried but

to be condemned and slain, that the tribes may see it and be afraid.

No one knows this better than Multnomah. Yet I will speak while I

still live, and stand here in the sun; for I go out into the darkness,

and the earth will cover my face, and my voice shall be heard no more

among men.

"Why should the Willamettes rule the other tribes? Are they better

than we? The Great Spirit gave us freedom, and who may make himself

master and take it away?

"I was chief of a tribe; we dwelt in the land the Great Spirit gave

our fathers; their bones were in it; it was ours. But the Willamettes

said to us, 'We are your elder brethren, you must help us. Come, go

with us to fight the Shoshones.' Our young men went, for the

Willamettes were strong and we could not refuse them. Many were slain,

and the women wailed despairingly. The Willamettes hunted on our

hunting-grounds and dug the _camas_ on our prairies, so that there was

not enough for us; and when winter came, our children cried for food.

Then the runners of the Willamettes came to us through the snow,

saying, 'Come and join the war-party that goes to fight the

Bannocks.'

"But our hearts burned within us and we replied, 'Our hunting-grounds

and our food you have taken; will you have our lives also? Go back and

tell your chief that if we must fight, we will fight him and not the

Bannocks.' Then the Willamettes came upon us and we fought them, for

their tyranny was so heavy that we could not breathe under it and

death had become better than life. But they were the stronger, and

when did the heart of a Willamette feel pity? To-day I only am left,

to say these words for my race.

"Who made the Willamettes masters over us? The Great Spirit gave us

freedom, and none may take it away. Was it not well to fight? Yes;

free my hands and give me back my people from the cairns and the

death-huts, and we will fight again! I go to my death, but the words I

have spoken will live. The hearts of those listening here will

treasure them up; they will be told around the lodge-fires and

repeated in the war-dance. The words I speak will go out among the

tribes, and no man can destroy them. Yes, they go out words, but they

will come back arrows and war in the day of vengeance when the tribes

shall rise against the oppressor.

"I have spoken, my words are done."

He stood erect and motionless. The wrath and disdain passed from his

features, and stoicism settled over them like a mask of stone.

Multnomah's cold regard had not faltered a moment under the chief's

invective. No denunciation could shake that iron self-control.

The rebellious chiefs interchanged meaning glances; the throng of

malcontents outside the grove pressed closer upon the ring of

Willamette warriors, who were still standing or squatting idly around

it. More than one weapon could be seen among them in defiance of the

war-chief's prohibition; and the presage of a terrible storm darkened

on those grim, wild faces. The more peaceably disposed bands began to

draw themselves apart. An ominous silence crept through the crowd as

they felt the crisis approaching.

But Multnomah saw nothing, and the circle of Willamette warriors were

stolidly indifferent.

"Can they not see that the tribes are on the verge of revolt?" thought

Cecil, anxiously, fearing a bloody massacre.

"You have heard the words of the rebel. What have you to say? Let the

white man speak first, as he was the last to join us."

Cecil rose and pictured in the common Willamette tongue, with which he

had familiarized himself during his long stay with the Cayuses, the

terrible results of disunion, the desolating consequences of

war,--tribe clashing against tribe and their common enemies trampling

on them all. Even those who were on the verge of insurrection listened

reverently to the "white wizard," who had drawn wisdom from the Great

Spirit; but it did not shake their purpose. Their own dreamers had

talked with the Great Spirit too, in trance and vision, and had

promised them victory over the Willamettes.

Tohomish followed; and Cecil, who had known some of the finest orators

in Europe, listened in amazement to a voice the most musical he had

ever heard. He looked in wonder on the repulsive features that seemed

so much at variance with those melodious intonations. Tohomish pleaded

for union and for the death of the rebel. It seemed for a moment as if

his soft, persuasive accents would win the day, but it was only for a

moment; the spell was broken the instant he ceased. Then Snoqualmie

spoke. One by one, the great sachems of the Willamettes gave their

voices for death. Many of the friendly allies did not give their

decision at all, but said to Multnomah,--

"You speak for us; your word shall be our word."

When the dissatisfied chiefs were asked for their counsel, the sullen

reply was given,--

"I have no tongue to-day;" or "I do not know."

Multnomah seemed not to notice their answers. Only those who knew him

best saw a gleam kindling in his eyes that told of a terrible

vengeance drawing near. The captive waited passively, seeming neither

to see nor hear.

At length all had spoken or had an opportunity to speak, and Multnomah

rose to give the final decision. Beyond the circle of Willamettes, who

were still indifferent and unconcerned, the discontented bands had

thrown aside all concealment, and stood with bared weapons in their

hands; all murmurs had ceased; there was a deathlike silence in the

dense mob, which seemed gathering itself together for a forward

rush,--the commencement of a fearful massacre.

Behind it were the friendly Cayuses, but not a weapon could be seen

among them. The chief saw all; saw too that his enemies only waited

for him to pronounce sentence upon the captive,--that that was the

preconcerted signal for attack. Now among some of the tribes sentence

was pronounced not by word but by gesture; there was the gesture for

acquittal, the gesture for condemnation.

Multnomah lifted his right hand. There was breathless suspense. What

would it be? Fixing his eyes on the armed malcontents who were waiting

to spring, he clinched his hand and made a downward gesture, as if

striking a blow. It was the death-signal, the death-sentence.

In an instant a deafening shout rang through the grove, and the

bloodthirsty mob surged forward to the massacre.

Then, so suddenly that it blended with and seemed a part of the same

shout, the dreaded Willamette war-cry shook the earth. Quick as

thought, the Willamettes who had been lounging so idly around the

grove were on their feet, their blankets thrown aside, the weapons

that had been concealed under them ready in their hands. A wall of

indomitable warriors had leaped up around the grove. At the same

moment, the Cayuses in the rear bared their weapons and shouted back

the Willamette war-cry.

The rebels were staggered. The trap was sprung on them before they

knew that there was a trap. Those in front shrank back from the iron

warriors of Multnomah, those in the rear wavered before the fierce

Cayuses. They paused, a swaying flood of humanity, caught between two

lines of rock.

CHAPTER V.

SENTENCED TO THE WOLF-DEATH.

The other, great of soul, changed not

Countenance stern.

DANTE.

In that momentary pause Multnomah did something that showed the cold

disdainfulness of his character as nothing else could have done. He

had given the death-sign; he had not yet told how or when death was to

be inflicted. He gave the sentence _now_, as if in utter scorn of the

battle-cloud that hung quivering, ready to burst.

"He would have torn the confederacy to pieces; let him be left bound

in the wood of the wolves, and torn limb from limb by them as he would

have rent the tribes asunder."

The two warriors who had brought the criminal into the council came

forward, flung a covering over his head and face, and led him away.

Perhaps no custom of the northwestern Indians was more sombre than

this,--the covering of the culprit's eyes from the time of his

sentence till his death. Never again were those eyes to behold the

sun.

Then, and not till then, did Multnomah turn his gaze on the

malcontents, who stood, desperate but hesitating, hemmed in by the

Willamettes and the Cayuses.

"You have chosen the tomahawk instead of the peace-pipe. Shall

Multnomah choose the tomahawk also? Know you not that Multnomah holds

your lives in his hand, and that he can crush you like an eggshell if

he chooses?"

The war-chief lifted his arm as he spoke, and slowly closed his

fingers till his hand was clinched. The eyes of Willamette and

tributary alike hung on those slowly closing fingers, with their own

strained on their tomahawks. That was half the death-signal! Would he

give the other half,--the downward gesture? The baffled rebels tasted

all the bitterness of death in that agonizing suspense. They felt that

their lives were literally in his grasp; and so the stern autocrat

wished them to feel, for he knew it was a lesson they would never

forget.

At length he spoke.

"Drop your weapons and Multnomah will forget what he has seen, and all

will be well. Strike but a blow, and not one of you will ever go back

over the trail to his home."

Then he turned to the chiefs, and there was that in his tones which

told them to expect no mercy.

"How comes it that your braves lift their tomahawks against Multnomah

in his own council and on his own land? Speak! chiefs must answer for

their people."

There was sullen silence for a little time; then one of them muttered

that it was the young men; their blood was hot, they were rash, and

the chiefs could not control them.

"Can you not control your young men? Then you are not fit to be

chiefs, and are chiefs no longer." He gave a signal to certain of the

Willamettes who had come up behind the rebellious leaders, as they

stood confused and hesitating in the council. They were seized and

their hands bound ere they could defend themselves; indeed, they made

no effort to do so, but submitted doggedly.

"Take them down the Wauna in the sea-canoes and sell them as slaves to

the Nootkas who hunt seal along the coast. Their people shall see

their faces no more. Slaves in the ice-land of the North shall they

live and die."

The swarthy cheeks of the captives grew ashen, and a shudder went

through that trapped and surrounded mob of malcontents. Indian slavery

was always terrible; but to be slaves to the brutal Indians of the

north, starved, beaten, mutilated, chilled, and benumbed in a land of

perpetual frost; to perish at last in the bleak snow and winter of

almost arctic coasts,--that was a fate worse than the torture-stake.

Dreadful as it was, not a chief asked for mercy. Silently they went

with their captors out of the grove and down the bank to the river's

edge. A large sea-canoe, manned by Chinook paddlers, was floating at

the beach. They quickly embarked, the paddles dipped, the canoe glided

out into the current and down the stream. In a few moments the

cottonwood along the river's edge hid it from sight, and the rebels

were forever beyond the hope of rescue.

Swift and merciless had the vengeance of Multnomah fallen, and the

insurrection had been crushed at a blow. It had taken but a moment,

and it had all passed under the eyes of the malcontents, who were

still surrounded by the loyal warriors.

When the canoe had disappeared and the gaze of that startled and awed

multitude came back to Multnomah, he made a gesture of dismissal. The

lines drew aside and the rebels were free.

While they were still bewildered and uncertain what to do, Multnomah

instantly and with consummate address called the attention of the

council to other things, thereby apparently assuming that the trouble

was ended and giving the malcontents to understand that no further

punishment was intended. Sullenly, reluctantly, they seemed to accept

the situation, and no further indications of revolt were seen that

day.

Popular young men, the bravest of their several tribes, were appointed

by Multnomah to fill the vacant chieftainships; and that did much

toward allaying the discontent. Moreover, some troubles between

different tribes of the confederacy, which had been referred to him

for arbitration, were decided with rare sagacity. At length the

council ended for the day, the star of the Willamettes still in the

ascendant, the revolt seemingly subdued.

So the first great crisis passed.

* * * * *

That evening a little band of Willamette warriors led the rebel

sachem, still bound and blindfolded, down to the river's bank, where a

canoe lay waiting them. His wife followed and tried to enter it with

him, as if determined to share his fortunes to the very last; but the

guard thrust her rudely away, and started the canoe. As it moved away

she caught the prow wildly, despairingly, as if she could not let her

warrior go. One of the guards struck her hands brutally with his

paddle, and she released her hold. The boat glided out into the river.

Not a word of farewell had passed between the condemned man and his

wife, for each disdained to show emotion in the presence of the enemy.

She remained on the bank looking after him, mute and despondent,--a

forlorn creature clothed in rags and emaciated with hunger, an outcast

from all the tribes. She might have been regarded as a symbolic figure

representing woman among the Indians, as she stood there with her

bruised hands, throbbing with pain where the cruel blow had fallen,

hanging, in sullen scorn of pain, uncared for by her side. So she

stood watching the canoe glide down the river, till it was swallowed

up in the gathering shadows of evening.

The canoe dropped down the river to a lonely point on the northern

shore, a place much frequented by wolves. There, many miles below the

encampment on the island, they disembarked and took the captive into

the wood. He walked among them with a firm and even tread; there was

no sign of flinching, though he must have known that his hour was

close at hand. They bound him prostrate at the foot of an oak, tying

him to the hard, tough roots that ran over the ground like a network,

and from which the earth had been washed away, so that thongs could be

passed around them.

Head and foot they bound him, drawing the rawhide thongs so tight that

they sank into the flesh, and knotting them, till no effort possible

to him could have disentangled him. It was on his lips to ask them to

leave one arm free, so that he might at least die fighting, though it

were with but one naked hand. But he hated them too much to ask even

that small favor, and so submitted in disdainful silence.

The warriors all went back to the canoe, except one, an old hunter,

famed for his skill in imitating every cry of bird or beast. Standing

beside the bound and prostrate man, he sent forth into the forest the

cry of a wolf. It rang in a thousand echoes and died away, evoking no

response. He listened a moment with bated breath, but could hear

nothing but the deep heart-beat of the man at his feet. Another cry,

with its myriad echoes, was followed by the oppressive sense of

stillness that succeeds an outcry in a lonely wood. Then came a faint,

a far-off sound, the answer of a wolf to a supposed mate. The Indian

replied, and the answer sounded nearer; then another blended with it,

as the pack began to gather. Again the Indian gave the cry, wild and

wolfish, as only a barbarian, half-beast by virtue of his own nature,

could have uttered it. An awful chorus of barking and howling burst

through the forest as the wolves came on, eager for blood.

The Indian turned and rejoined his comrades at the canoe. They pushed

out into the river, but held the boat in the current by an occasional

paddle-stroke, and waited listening. Back at the foot of the tree the

captive strained every nerve and muscle in one mighty effort to break

the cords that bound him; but it was useless, and he lay back with set

teeth and rigid muscles, while his eyes sought in vain through their

thick covering to see the approach of his foes. Presently a fierce

outburst of howls and snarls told the listeners that the wolves had

found their prey. They lingered and listened a little longer, but no

sound or cry was heard to tell of the last agony under those rending

fangs; the chief died in silence. Then the paddles were dipped again

in the water, and the canoe glided up the river to the camp.

When they reached the shore they found the rebel's wife awaiting them

in the place where they had left her. She asked no questions; she only

came close and looked at their faces in the dusk, and read there the

thing she sought to know. Then she went silently away. In a little

while the Indian wail for the dead was sounding through the forest.

"What is that?" asked the groups around the camp fires.

"The rebel chief's wife wailing the death-wail for her husband," was

the low reply; and in that way the tribes knew that the sentence had

been carried out. Many bands were there, of many languages, but all

knew what that death-wail meant the instant it fell upon their ears.

Multnomah heard it as he sat in council with his chiefs, and there was

something in it that shook even his iron heart; for all the wilder,

more superstitious elements of the Indians thrilled to two

things,--the war-cry and the death-wail. He dismissed his chiefs and

went to his lodge. On the way he encountered Tohomish, lurking, as was

his wont, under the shadow of the trees.

"What think you now, Tohomish, you who love darkness and shadow, what

think you? Is not the arm of the Willamette strong? Has it not put

down revolt to-day, and held the tribes together?"

The Pine Voice looked at him sorrowfully.

"The vision I told in the council has come back to me again. The cry

of woe I heard far off then is nearer now, and the throng on the

death-trail passes thicker and swifter. That which covered their faces

is lifted, and their faces are the faces of Willamettes, and Multnomah

is among them. The time is close at hand."

"Say this before our enemies, and, strong _tomanowos_ though you are,

you die!" said the chief, laying his hand on his tomahawk. But the

seer was gone, and Multnomah stood alone among the trees.

* * * * *

Every evening at dusk, the widow of the rebel sachem went out into the

woods near the camp and wailed her dead. Every night that wild,

desolate lament was lifted and rang through the great encampment,--a

cry that was accusation, defiance, and lament; and even Multnomah

dared not silence her, for among the Indians a woman lamenting her

dead was sacred. So, while Multnomah labored and plotted for union by

day, that mournful cry raised the spirit of wrath and rebellion by

night. And thus the dead liberator was half avenged.

BOOK IV.

_THE LOVE TALE._

CHAPTER I.

THE INDIAN TOWN.

The bare ground with hoarie mosse bestrowed

Must be their bed, their pillow was unsowed

And the frutes of the forrest was their feast.

_The Faërie Queene._

Never before had there come to Cecil so grand an opportunity for

disseminating gospel truth. The work of half a lifetime might be done

in a few days.

"The tribes are all gathered together in one encampment, and I can

talk with them all, tell them of God, of the beauty of heaven and of

the only Way. Then, when they disperse, they will carry my teaching in

every direction, and so it will be scattered throughout all this wild

land."

This was the thought that came to Cecil when he awoke on the morning

after the trial. Now was the time to work! Now was the time for every

element of argument, persuasion, and enthusiasm to be exerted to the

utmost.

Earnestly did he pray that morning, kneeling in his lodge beside his

couch of furs, that God would be with and help him. And as he prayed,

warm and glowing was the love and tenderness that filled his heart.

When the day was a little more advanced, he entered upon his work. The

camp was astir with life; nearly all had finished their morning meal,

and the various employments and diversions of the day were begun. Each

tribe or band had pitched its lodges apart, though not far from the

others. It was not so much an encampment as a group of many

encampments, and the whole made up a scattered town of huts and

wigwams.

A precarious and uncertain quiet had succeeded the agitation of the

day before. Multnomah's energy had awed the malcontents into temporary

submission, and the different bands were mingling freely with one

another; though here and there a chief or warrior looked on

contemptuously, standing moodily apart, wrapped in his blanket. Now

and then when a Willamette passed a group who were talking and

gesticulating animatedly they would become silent all at once till the

representative of the dreaded race was out of hearing, when a storm of

indignant gutterals would burst forth; but there were no other

indications of hostility.

Groups were strolling from place to place observing curiously the

habits and customs of other tribes; the common Willamette tongue,

precursor of the more modern Chinook jargon, furnishing a means of

intercourse. Everywhere Cecil found talk, barter, diversion. It was a

rude caricature of civilization, the picture of society in its

infancy, the rough dramatization of that phase through which every

race passes in its evolution from barbarism.

At one place, a hunter from the interior was bartering furs for

_hiagua_ shells to a native of the sea-coast. At another, a brave

skilled in wood-work had his stock of bows and arrows spread out

before him, and an admiring crowd were standing around looking on. But

the taciturn brave sat coolly polishing and staining his arrows as if

he were totally unconscious of spectators, until the magical word

"buy" was mentioned, when he at once awoke to life and drove a bargain

in bow and quiver _versus_ dried berries and "ickters" that would have

done credit to a Yankee.

At one place sat an old warrior from the upper Columbia, making

arrow-heads, chipping off the little scales of flint with infinite

patience, literally _wearing_ the stone into the requisite shape.

Beside him lay a small pack of flints brought from beyond the

mountains, for such stone was rarely found along the lower Columbia.

Squaws sat in front of their wigwams sewing mats,--carefully sorting

the rushes, putting big ends with little ends, piercing each with a

bodkin, and sewing them all together with a long bone needle threaded

with buckskin or sinew. Others were weaving that water-tight

wickerwork which was, perhaps, the highest art to which the Oregon

Indians ever attained. Here a band of Indians were cooking, feasting,

laughing, shouting around a huge sturgeon captured the night before.

There a circle of gamblers were playing "hand,"--passing a small stick

secretly from hand to hand and guessing whose hand contained

it,--singing as they played that monotonous "ho-ha, ho-ha, ho-ha,"

which was the inseparable accompaniment of dancing, gambling, and

horseback riding.

Among them all Cecil moved with the calm dignity he had acquired from

long intercourse with the Indians. Wherever he went there was silence

and respect, for was he not the great white medicine-man? Gambling

circles paused in the swift passage of the stick and the monotone of

the chant to look and to comment; buyers and sellers stopped to gaze

and to question; children who had been building miniature wigwams of

sticks or floating bark canoes in the puddles, ran away at his

approach and took shelter in the thickets, watching him with twinkling

black eyes.

Wherever there was opportunity, he stopped and talked, scattering

seed-thoughts in the dark minds of the Indians. Wherever he paused a

crowd would gather; whenever he entered a wigwam a throng collected at

the door.

Let us glance for a moment into the domestic life of the Indians as

Cecil saw it that morning.

He enters one of the large bark huts of the Willamette Indians, a

long, low building, capable of sheltering sixty or seventy persons.

The part around the door is painted to represent a man's face, and the

entrance is through the mouth. Within, he finds a spacious room

perhaps eighty or a hundred feet long by twenty wide, with rows of

rude bunks rising tier above tier on either side. In the centre are

the stones and ashes of the hearth; above is an aperture in the roof

for the escape of smoke; around the hearth mats are spread to sit

upon; the bare ground, hard and trodden, forms the only floor, and the

roof is made of boards that have been split out with mallet and

wedges.

Cecil enters and stands a moment in silence; then the head of the

house advances and welcomes him. The best mat is spread for him to sit

upon; food is brought,--pounded fish, nuts, and berries, and a kind of

bread made of roots cooked, crushed together, and cut in slices when

cold. All this is served on a wooden platter, and he must eat whether

hungry or not; for to refuse would be the grossest affront that could

be offered a Willamette host, especially if it were presented by his

own hands. The highest honor that a western Oregon Indian could do his

guest was to wait on him instead of letting his squaw do it. The

Indian host stands beside Cecil and says, in good-humored hospitality,

"Eat, eat much," nor is he quite pleased if he thinks that his visitor

slights the offered food. When the guest can be no longer persuaded to

eat more, the food is removed, the platter is washed in water, and

dried with a wisp of twisted grass; a small treasure of tobacco is

produced from a little buckskin pocket and a part of it carefully

mixed with dried leaves;[10] the pipe is filled and smoked. Then, and

not till then, may the Indian host listen to the talk of the white

man.

So it was in lodge after lodge; he must first eat, be it ever so

little. Two centuries later, the Methodist and Congregational

missionaries found themselves confronted with the same oppressive

hospitality among the Rocky Mountain Indians.[11] Nay, they need not

visit a wigwam; let them but stroll abroad through the village, and if

they were popular and the camp was well supplied with buffalo-meat,

messengers would come with appalling frequency, bearing the laconic

invitation, "Come and eat;" and the missionary must go, or give

offence, even though he had already gone to half a dozen wigwams on

the same errand. There is a grim humor in a missionary's eating fresh

buffalo-meat in the cause of religion until he is like to burst, and

yet heroically going forth to choke down a few mouthfuls more, lest he

offend some dusky convert.

At one house Cecil witnessed a painful yet comical scene. The

Willamettes were polygamists, each brave having as many wives as he

was able to buy; and Cecil was in a lodge where the brother of the

head man of that lodge brought home his second wife. At the entrance

of the second wife, all gay in Indian finery, the first did not

manifest the sisterly spirit proper for the occasion. After sitting

awhile in sullen silence, she arose and began to kick the fire about,

accompanying that performance with gutteral exclamations addressed to

no one in particular; she struck the dog, which chanced to be in the

way, sending it yelping from the wigwam; and then, having worked

herself into a rage, began to scold her husband, who listened grimly

but said nothing. At last she turned on her new-found sister, struck

her, and began to lay rending hands on the finery that their mutual

husband had given her. That was instantly resented; and in a few

moments the squaws were rolling on the floor, biting, scratching, and

pulling each other's hair with the fury of devils incarnate. The dogs,

attracted by the tumult, ran in and began to bark at them; the Indians

outside the hut gathered at the door, looking in and laughing; the

husband contemplated them as they rolled fighting at his feet, and

then looked at Cecil. It was undoubtedly trying to Indian dignity but

the warrior sustained his admirably. "Bad, very bad," was the only

comment he allowed himself to make. Cecil took his leave, and the

brave kept up his air of indifference until the white man had gone.

Then he quietly selected a cudgel from the heap of fire-wood by the

doorway, and in a short time peace reigned in the wigwam.

In a lodge not far away, Cecil witnessed another scene yet more

barbarous than this. He found a little blind boy sitting on the ground

near the fire, surrounded by a quantity of fish-bones which he had

been picking. He was made a subject for the taunting jibes and

laughter of a number of men and women squatting around him. His mother

sat by in the most cruel apathy and unconcern, and only smiled when

Cecil expressed commiseration for her unfortunate and peculiarly

unhappy child. It had been neglected and seemed almost starved. Those

around apparently took pleasure in tormenting it and rendering it

miserable, and vied with each other in applying to it insulting and

degrading epithets. The little articles that Cecil gave to it, in the

hope that the Indians seeing him manifest an interest in it would

treat it more tenderly, it put to its mouth eagerly; but not finding

them eatable, it threw them aside in disgust. Cecil turned away sick

at heart. Worn, already weary, this last sight was intolerable; and he

went out into the woods, away from the camp.

But as he walked along he seemed to see the child again, so vividly

had it impressed his imagination. It rose before him in the wood, when

the noise of the camp lay far behind; it seemed to turn its sightless

eyes upon him and reach out its emaciated arms as if appealing for

help.[12]

Out in the wood he came across an Indian sitting on a log, his face

buried in his hands, his attitude indicating sickness or despondency.

He looked up as Cecil approached. It was the young Willamette runner

who had been his companion on the journey down the Columbia. His face

was haggard; he was evidently very sick. The missionary stopped and

tried to talk with him, but could evoke little response, except that

he did not want to talk, and that he wanted to be left alone. He

seemed so moody and irritable that Cecil thought it best to leave him.

His experience was that talking with a sick Indian was very much like

stirring up a wounded rattlesnake. So he left the runner and went on

into the forest, seeking the solitude without which he could scarcely

have lived amid the degrading barbarism around him. His spirit

required frequent communion with God and Nature, else he would have

died of weariness and sickness of heart.

Wandering listlessly, he went on further and further from the camp,

never dreaming of what lay before him, or of the wild sweet destiny to

which that dim Indian trail was leading him through the shadowy wood.

-----

[10] Lewis and Clark.

[11] See Parkman's "Oregon Trail," also, Parker's work on

Oregon.

[12] See Townsend's Narrative, pages 182-183.