CHAPTER IX.

QUESTIONING THE DEAD.

Then he said: "Cold lips and breast without breath,

Is there no voice, no language of death?"

EDWIN ARNOLD.

While Cecil was on his way that evening to seek Wallulah, a canoe with

but a single occupant was dropping down the Columbia toward one of the

many _mimaluse_, or death-islands, that are washed by its waters.

An Indian is always stealthy, but there was an almost more than Indian

stealthiness about this canoe-man's movements. Noiselessly, as the

twilight deepened into darkness, the canoe glided out of a secluded

cove not far from the camp; noiselessly the paddle dipped into the

water, and the canoe passed like a shadow into the night.

On the rocky _mimaluse_ island, some distance below the mouth of the

Willamette, the Indian landed and drew his boat up on the beach. He

looked around for a moment, glanced at the red glow that lit the

far-off crest of Mount Hood, then turned and went up the pathway to

the ancient burial hut.

Who was it that had dared to visit the island of the dead after dark?

The bravest warriors were not capable of such temerity. Old men told

how, away back in the past, some braves had ventured upon the island

after nightfall, and had paid the awful forfeit. They were struck by

unseen hands. Weapons that had lain for years beside the decaying

corpses of forgotten warriors wounded them in the dark. Fleeing to

their canoes in swiftest fear, they found the shadowy pursuit was

swifter still, and were overtaken and struck down, while the whole

island rung with mocking laughter. One only escaped, plunging all torn

and bruised into the river and swimming to the farther shore. When he

looked back, the island was covered with moving lights, and the shrill

echo of fiendish mirth came to him across the water. His companions

were never seen again. A little while afterward the dogs barked all

night around his lodge, and in the morning he was found lying dead

upon his couch, his face ghastly and drawn with fear, as if at some

frightful apparition.

"He disturbed the _mimaluse tillicums_ [dead people], and they came

for him," said the old medicine men, as they looked at him.

Since then, no one had been on the island except in the daytime.

Little bands of mourners had brought hither the swathed bodies of

their dead, laid them in the burial hut, lifted the wail over them,

and left upon the first approach of evening.

Who, then, was this,--the first for generations to set foot on the

_mimaluse illahee_ after dark?

It could be but one, the only one among all the tribes who would have

dared to come, and to come alone,--Multnomah, the war-chief, who knew

not what it was to fear the living or the dead.

Startled by the outburst of the great smoking mountains, which always

presaged woe to the Willamettes, perplexed by Tohomish's mysterious

hints of some impending calamity, weighed down by a dread

presentiment, he came that night on a strange and superstitious

errand.

On the upper part of the island, above reach of high water, the burial

hut loomed dark and still in the moonlight as the chief approached

it.

Some of the Willamettes, like the Chinooks, practised canoe burial,

but the greater part laid their dead in huts, as did also the

Klickitats and the Cascades.

The war-chief entered the hut. The rude boards that covered the roof

were broken and decayed. The moonlight shone through many openings,

lighting up the interior with a dim and ghostly radiance. There,

swathed in crumbling cerements, ghastly in shrunken flesh and

protruding bone, lay the dead of the line of Multnomah,--the chiefs of

the blood royal who had ruled the Willamettes for many generations.

The giant bones of warriors rested beside the more delicate skeletons

of their women, or the skeletons, slenderer still, of little children

of the ancient race. The warrior's bow lay beside him with rotting

string; the child's playthings were still clasped in fleshless

fingers; beside the squaw's skull the ear-pendants of _hiagua_ shells

lay where they had fallen from the crumbling flesh years before.

Near the door, and where the slanting moonbeams fell full upon it, was

the last who had been borne to the death hut, the mother of Wallulah.

Six years before Multnomah had brought her body,--brought it alone,

with no eye to behold his grief; and since then no human tread had

disturbed the royal burial-place.

He came now and looked down upon the body. It had been tightly

swathed, fold upon fold, in some oriental fabric; and the wrappings,

stiffened by time still showed what had once been a rare symmetry of

form. The face was covered with a linen cloth, yellow now through age

and fitting like a mask to the features. The chief knelt down and drew

away the face-cloth. The countenance, though shrunken, was almost

perfectly preserved. Indeed, so well preserved were many of the

corpses the first white settlers found on these _mimaluse_ islands as

to cause at one time a belief that the Indians had some secret process

of embalming their dead. There was no such process, however,--nothing

save the antiseptic properties of the ocean breeze which daily fanned

the burial islands of the lower Columbia.

Lovely indeed must the mother of Wallulah have been in her life.

Withered as her features were, there was a delicate beauty in them

still,--in the graceful brow, the regular profile, the exquisitely

chiselled chin. Around the shoulders and the small shapely head her

hair had grown in rich luxuriant masses.

The chief gazed long on the shrunken yet beautiful face. His iron

features grew soft, as none but Wallulah had ever seen them grow. He

touched gently the hair of his dead wife, and put it back from her

brow with a wistful, caressing tenderness. He had never understood

her; she had always been a mystery to him; the harsh savagery of his

nature had never been able to enter into or comprehend the refined

grace of hers; but he had loved her with all the fierce, tenacious,

secretive power of his being, a power that neither time nor death

could change. Now he spoke to her, his low tones sounding weird in

that house of the dead,--a strange place for words of love.

"My woman,--mine yet, for death itself cannot take from Multnomah that

which is his own; my bird that came from the sea and made its nest for

a little while in the heart of Multnomah and then flew away and left

it empty,--I have been hungry to see you, to touch your hair and look

upon your face again. Now I am here, and it is sweet to be with you,

but the heart of Multnomah listens to hear you speak."

He still went on stroking her hair softly, reverently. It seemed the

only caress of which he was capable, but it had in it a stern and

mournful tenderness.

"Speak to me! The dead talk to the _tomanowos_ men and the dreamers.

You are mine; talk to me; I am in need. The shadow of something

terrible to come is over the Willamette. The smoking mountains are

angry; the dreamers see only bad signs; there are black things before

Multnomah, and he cannot see what they are. Tell me,--the dead are

wise and know that which comes,--what is this unknown evil which

threatens me and mine?"

He looked down at her with intense craving, intense desire, as if his

imperious will could reanimate that silent clay and force to the mute

lips the words he so desired. But the still lips moved not, and the

face lay cold under his burning and commanding gaze. The chief leaned

closer over her; he called her name aloud,--something that the

Willamette Indians rarely did, for they believed that if the names of

the dead were spoken, even in conversation, it would bring them back;

so they alluded to their lost ones only indirectly, and always

reluctantly and with fear.

"Come back!" said he, repeating the name he had not spoken for six

years. "You are my own, you are my woman. Hear me, speak to me, you

whom I love; you who, living or dead, are still the wife of

Multnomah."

No expression flitted over the changeless calm of the face beneath

him: no sound came back to his straining ears except the low

intermittent roar of the far-off volcano.

A sorrowful look crossed his face. As has been said, there was an

indefinable something always between them, which perhaps must ever be

between those of diverse race. It had been the one mystery that

puzzled him while she was living, and it seemed to glide, viewless yet

impenetrable, between them now. He rose to his feet.

"It comes between us again," he thought, looking down at her

mournfully. "It pushed me back when she was living, and made me feel

that I stood outside her heart even while my arms were around her. It

comes between us now and will not let her speak. If it was only

something I could see and grapple with!"

And the fierce warrior felt his blood kindle within him, that not only

death but something still more mysterious and incomprehensible should

separate him from the one he loved. He turned sadly away and passed on

to the interior of the hut. As he gazed on the crumbling relics of

humanity around him, the wonted look of command came back to his brow.

These _should_ obey; by iron strength of will and mystic charm he

would sway them to his bidding. The withered lips of death, or spirit

voices, should tell him what he wished to know. Abjectly superstitious

as was the idea it involved, there was yet something grand in his

savage despotic grasp after power that, dominating all he knew of

earth, sought to bend to his will even the spirit-land.

The chief believed that the departed could talk to him if they would;

for did they not talk to the medicine men and the dreamers? If so, why

not to him, the great chief, the master of all the tribes of the

Wauna?

He knelt down, and began to sway his body back and forth after the

manner of the Nootka _shamans_, and to chant a long, low, monotonous

song, in which the names of the dead who lay there were repeated over

and over again.

"Kamyah, Tlesco, Che-aqah, come back! come back and tell me the

secret, the black secret, the death secret, the woe that is to come.

Winelah, Sic-mish, Tlaquatin, the land is dark with signs and omens;

the hearts of men are heavy with dread; the dreamers say that the end

is come for Multnomah and his race. Is it true? Come and tell me. I

wait, I listen, I speak your names; come back, come back!"

Tohomish himself would not have dared to repeat those names in the

charnel hut, lest those whom he invoked should spring upon him and

tear him to pieces. No more potent or more perilous charm was known to

the Indians.

Ever as Multnomah chanted, the sullen roar of the volcano came like an

undertone and filled the pauses of the wild incantation. And as he

went on, it seemed to the chief that the air grew thick with ghostly

presences. There was a sense of breathing life all around him. He felt

that others, many others, were with him; yet he saw nothing. When he

paused for some voice, some whisper of reply, this sense of

hyper-physical perception became so acute that he could almost _see_,

almost _hear_, in the thick blackness and the silence; yet no answer

came.

Again he resumed his mystic incantation, putting all the force of his

nature into the effort, until it seemed that even those shadowy things

of the night must yield to his blended entreaty and command. But there

came no response. Thick and thronging the viewless presences seemed to

gather, to look, and to listen; but no reply came to his ears, and no

sight met his eyes save the swathed corpses and the white-gleaming

bones on which the shifting moonbeams fell.

Multnomah rose to his feet, baffled, thwarted, all his soul glowing

with anger that he should be so scorned.

"Why is this?" said his stern voice in the silence. "You come, but you

give no reply; you look, you listen, but you make no sound. Answer me,

you who know the future; tell me this secret!"

Still no response. Yet the air seemed full of dense, magnetic life, of

muffled heart-beats, of voiceless, unresponsive, uncommunicative forms

that he could almost touch.

For perhaps the first time in his life the war-chief found himself set

at naught. His form grew erect; his eyes gleamed with the terrible

wrath which the tribes dreaded as they dreaded the wrath of the Great

Spirit.

[Illustration: "_Come back! Come back!_"]

"Do you mock Multnomah? Am I not war-chief of the Willamettes? Though

you dwell in shadow and your bodies are dust, you are Willamettes, and

I am still your chief. Give up your secret! If the Great Spirit has

sealed your lips so that you cannot speak, give me a sign that will

tell me. Answer by word or sign; I say it,--I, Multnomah, your chief

and master."

Silence again. The roar of the volcano had ceased; and an ominous

stillness brooded over Nature, as if all things held their breath,

anticipating some mighty and imminent catastrophe. Multnomah's hands

were clinched, and his strong face had on it now a fierceness of

command that no eye had ever seen before. His indomitable will reached

out to lay hold of those unseen presences and compel them to reply.

A moment of strained, commanding expectation: then the answer came;

the sign was given. The earth shook beneath him till he staggered,

almost fell; the hut creaked and swayed like a storm-driven wreck; and

through the crevices on the side toward Mount Hood came a blinding

burst of flame. Down from the great gap in the Cascade Range through

which flows the Columbia rolled the far-off thundering crash which had

so startled Cecil and appalled the tribes. Then, tenfold louder than

before, came again the roar of the volcano.

Too well Multnomah knew what had gone down in that crash; too well did

he read the sign that had been given. For a moment it seemed as if all

the strength of his heart had broken with that which had fallen; then

the proud dignity of his character reasserted itself, even in the face

of doom.

"It has come at last, as the wise men of old said it would. The end is

at hand; the Willamettes pass like a shadow from the earth. The Great

Spirit has forsaken us, our _tomanowos_ has failed us. But my own

heart fails me not, and my own arm is strong. Like a war-chief will I

meet that which is to come. Multnomah falls, but he falls as the

Bridge has fallen, with a crash that will shake the earth, with a ruin

that shall crush all beneath him even as he goes down."

Turning away, his eyes fell on the body of his wife as he passed

toward the door. Aroused and desperate as he was, he stopped an

instant and looked down at her with a long, lingering look, a look

that seemed to say, "I shall meet you ere many suns. Death and ruin

but give you back to me the sooner. There will be nothing between us

then; I shall understand you at last."

Then he drew his robe close around him, and went out into the night.

BOOK V.

_THE SHADOW OF THE END._

CHAPTER I.

THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT.

"We view as one who hath an evil sight,"

He answered, "plainly objects far remote."

CAREY: _Dante_.

The night came to an end at last,--a night not soon forgotten by the

Oregon Indians, and destined to be remembered in tale and _tomanowos_

lore long after that generation had passed away. The sky was thick

with clouds; the atmosphere was heavy with smoke, which, dense and

low-hanging in the still weather, shut out the entire horizon. The

volcano was invisible in the smoky air, but its low mutterings came to

them from time to time.

The chiefs met early in the grove of council. Multnomah's countenance

told nothing of the night before, but almost all the rest showed

something yet of superstitious fear. Mishlah's face was haggard, his

air startled and uneasy, like that of some forest animal that had been

terribly frightened; and even Snoqualmie looked worn. But the greatest

change of all was in Tohomish. His face was as ghastly as that of a

corpse, and he came into the council walking in a dull lifeless way,

as if hardly aware of what he was doing. Those nearest to him shrank

away, whispering to one another that the seer looked like a dead man.

Cecil came last. The severe mental conflict of the past night had told

almost fatally on a frame already worn out by years of toil and

sickness. His cheek was pale, his eye hollow, his step slow and

faltering like one whose flame of life is burning very low. The pain

at his heart, always worse in times of exhaustion, was sharp and

piercing.

He looked agitated and restless; he had tried hard to give Wallulah

into the hands of God and feel that she was safe, but he could not.

For himself he had no thought; but his whole soul was wrung with pain

for her. By virtue of his own keen sympathies, he anticipated and felt

all that the years had in store for her,--the loneliness, the

heartache, the trying to care for one she loathed; until he shrank

from her desolate and hopeless future as if it had been his own. All

his soul went out to her in yearning tenderness, in passionate desire

to shield her and to take away her burden.

But his resolution never wavered. Below the ebb and flow of feeling,

the decision to make their separation final was as unchanging as

granite. He could not bear to look upon her face again; he could not

bear to see her wedded to Snoqualmie. He intended to make one last

appeal to the Indians this morning to accept the gospel of peace; then

he would leave the council before Wallulah was brought to it. So he

sat there now, waiting for the "talk" to begin.

The bands gathered around the grove were smaller than usual. Many had

fled from the valley at dawn to escape from the dreaded vicinity of

the smoking mountains; many hundreds remained, but they were awed and

frightened. No war could have appalled them as they were appalled by

the shaking of the solid earth under their feet. All the abject,

superstition of their natures was roused. They looked like men who

felt themselves caught in the grasp of some supernatural power.

Multnomah opened the council by saying that two runners had arrived

with news that morning; the one from the sea-coast, the other from up

the Columbia. They would come before the council and tell the news

they had brought.

The runner from the upper Columbia spoke first. He had come thirty

miles since dawn. He seemed unnerved and fearful, like one about to

announce some unheard-of calamity. The most stoical bent forward

eagerly to hear.

"_The Great Spirit has shaken the earth, and the Bridge of the Gods

has fallen!_"

There was the silence of amazement; then through the tribes passed in

many tongues the wild and wondering murmur, "The Bridge of the Gods

has fallen! The Bridge of the Gods has fallen!" With it, too, went the

recollection of the ancient prophecy that when the Bridge fell the

power of the Willamettes would also fall. Now the Bridge was broken,

and the dominion of the Willamettes was broken forever with it. At

another time the slumbering jealousy of the tribes would have burst

forth in terrific vengeance on the doomed race. But they were dejected

and afraid. In the fall of the Bridge they saw the hand of the Great

Spirit, a visitation of God. And so Willamette and tributary alike

heard the news with fear and apprehension. Only Multnomah, who knew

the message before it was spoken, listened with his wonted composure.

"It is well," he said, with more than Indian duplicity; "the daughter

of Multnomah is to become the wife of Snoqualmie the Cayuse, and the

new line that commences with their children will give new chiefs to

head the confederacy of the Wauna. The old gives way to the new. That

is the sign that the Great Spirit gives in the fall of the Bridge.

Think you it means that the war-strength is gone from us, that we

shall no longer prevail in battle? No, no! who thinks it?"

The proud old sachem rose to his feet; his giant form towered over the

multitude, and every eye fell before the haughty and scornful glance

that swept council and audience like a challenge to battle.

"Is there a chief here that thinks it? Let him step out, let him

grapple with Multnomah in the death-grapple, and see. Is there a tribe

that thinks it? We reach out our arms to them; we are ready. Let them

meet us in battle now, to-day, and know if our hearts have become the

hearts of women. Will you come? We will give you dark and bloody proof

that our tomahawks are still sharp and our arms are strong."

He stood with outstretched arms, from which the robe of fur had fallen

back. A thrill of dread went through the assembly at the grim

defiance; then Snoqualmie spoke.

"The heart of all the tribes is as the heart of Multnomah. Let there

be peace."

The chief resumed his seat. His force of will had wrung one last

victory from fate itself. Instantly, and with consummate address,

Multnomah preoccupied the attention of the council before anything

could be said or done to impair the effect of his challenge. He bade

the other runner, the one from the sea-coast, deliver his message.

It was, in effect, this:--

A large canoe, with great white wings like a bird, had come gliding

over the waters to the coast near the mouth of the Wauna. Whence it

came no one could tell; but its crew were pale of skin like the great

white _shaman_ there in the council, and seemed of his race. Some of

them came ashore in a small canoe to trade with the Indians, but

trouble rose between them and there was a battle. The strangers slew

many Indians with their magic, darting fire at them from long black

tubes. Then they escaped to the great canoe, which spread its wings

and passed away from sight into the sea. Many of the Indians were

killed, but none of the pale-faced intruders. Now the band who had

suffered demanded that the white man of whom they had heard--the white

chief at the council--be put to death to pay the blood-debt.

All eyes turned on Cecil, and he felt that his hour was come. Weak,

exhausted in body and mind, wearied almost to death, a sudden and

awful peril was on him. For a moment his heart sank, his brain grew

dizzy. How _could_ he meet this emergency? All his soul went out to

God with a dumb prayer for help, with an overwhelming sense of

weakness. Then he heard Multnomah speaking to him in cold, hard

tones.

"The white man has heard the words of the runner. What has he to say

why his life should not pay the blood-debt?"

Cecil rose to his feet. With one last effort he put Wallulah, himself,

his mission, into the hands of God; with one last effort he forced

himself to speak.

Men of nervous temperament, like Cecil, can bring out of an exhausted

body an energy, an outburst of final and intense effort, of which

those of stronger physique do not seem capable. But it drains the

remaining vital forces, and the reaction is terrible. Was it this

flaming-up of the almost burned-out embers of life that animated Cecil

now? Or was it the Divine Strength coming to him in answer to prayer?

Be this as it may, when he opened his lips to speak, all the power of

his consecration came back; physical weakness and mental anxiety left

him; he felt that Wallulah was safe in the arms of the Infinite

Compassion; he felt his love for the Indians, his deep yearning to

help them, to bring them to God, rekindling within him; and never had

he been more grandly the Apostle to the Indians than now.

In passionate tenderness, in burning appeal, in living force and power

of delivery, it was the supreme effort of his life. He did not plead

for himself; he ignored, put aside, forgot his own personal danger;

but he set before his hearers the wickedness of their own system of

retaliation and revenge; he showed them how it overshadowed their

lives and lay like a deadening weight on their better natures. The

horror, the cruelty, the brute animalism of the blood-thirst, the

war-lust, was set over against the love and forgiveness to which the

Great Spirit called them.

The hearts of the Indians were shaken within them. The barbarism which

was the outcome of centuries of strife and revenge, the dark and

cumulative growth of ages, was stirred to its core by the strong and

tender eloquence of this one man. As he spoke, there came to all those

swarthy listeners, in dim beauty, a glimpse of a better life; there

came to them a moment's fleeting revelation of something above their

own vindictiveness and ferocity. That vague longing, that indefinable

wistfulness which he had so often seen on the faces of his savage

audiences was on nearly every face when he closed.

As he took his seat, the tide of inspiration went from him, and a

deadly faintness came over him. It seemed as if in that awful reaction

the last spark of vitality was dying out; but somehow, through it all,

he felt at peace with God and man. A great quiet was upon him; he was

anxious for nothing, he cared for nothing, he simply rested as on the

living presence of the Father.

Upon the sweet and lingering spell of his closing words came

Multnomah's tones in stern contrast.

"What is the word of the council? Shall the white man live or die?"

Snoqualmie was on his feet in an instant.

"Blood for blood. Let the white man die at the torture-stake."

One by one the chiefs gave their voice for death. Shaken for but a

moment, the ancient inherited barbarism which was their very life

reasserted itself, and they could decide no other way. One, two,

three of the sachems gave no answer, but sat in silence. They were men

whose hearts had been touched before by Cecil, and who were already

desiring the better life They could not condemn their teacher.

At length it came to Tohomish. He arose. His face, always repulsive,

was pallid now in the extreme. The swathed corpses on _mimaluse_

island looked not more sunken and ghastly.

He essayed to speak; thrice the words faltered on his lips; and when

at last he spoke, it was in a weary, lifeless way. His tones startled

the audience like an electric shock. The marvellous power and

sweetness were gone from his voice; its accents were discordant,

uncertain. Could the death's head before them be that of Tohomish?

Could those harsh and broken tones be those of the Pine Voice? He

seemed like a man whose animal life still survived, but whose soul was

dead.

What he said at first had no relation to the matter before the

council. Every Indian had his _tomanowos_ appointed him by the Great

Spirit from his birth, and that _tomanowos_ was the strength of his

life. Its influence grew with his growth; the roots of his being were

fed in it; it imparted its characteristics to him. But the name and

nature of his _tomanowos_ was the one secret that must go with him to

the grave. If it was told, the charm was lost and the _tomanowos_

deserted him.

Tohomish's _tomanowos_ was the Bridge and the foreknowledge of its

fall: a black secret that had darkened his whole life, and imparted

the strange and mournful mystery to his eloquence. Now that the Bridge

was fallen, the strength was gone from Tohomish's heart, the music

from his words.

"Tohomish has no voice now," he continued; "he is as one dead. He

desires to say only this, then his words shall be heard no more among

men. The fall of the Bridge is a sign that not only the Willamettes

but all the tribes of the Wauna shall fall and pass away. Another

people shall take our place, another race shall reign in our stead,

and the Indian shall be forgotten, or remembered only as a dim memory

of the past.

"And who are they who bring us our doom? Look on the face of the white

wanderer there; listen to the story of your brethren slain at the

sea-coast by the white men in the canoe, and you will know. They come;

they that are stronger, and push us out into the dark. The white

wanderer talks of peace; but the Great Spirit has put death between

the Indian and the white man, and where he has put death there can be

no peace.

"Slay the white man as the white race will slay your children in the

time that is to come. Peace? love? There can be only war and hate.

Striking back blow for blow like a wounded rattlesnake, shall the red

man pass; and when the bones of the last Indian of the Wauna lie

bleaching on the prairie far from the _mimaluse_ island of his

fathers, then there will be peace.

"Tohomish has spoken; his words are ended, and ended forever."

The harsh, disjointed tones ceased. All eyes fell again on Cecil, the

representative of the race by which the Willamettes were doomed. The

wrath of all those hundreds, the vengeance of all those gathered

tribes of the Wauna, the hatred of the whole people he had come to

save, seemed to rise up and fall upon him the frail invalid with the

sharp pain throbbing at his heart.

But that strange peace was on him still, and his eyes, dilated and

brilliant in the extremity of physical pain, met those lowering brows

with a look of exceeding pity.

Multnomah rose to pronounce sentence. For him there could be but one

decision, and he gave it,--the clinched hand, the downward gesture,

that said, "There is death between us. We will slay as we shall be

slain."

Cecil was on his feet, though it seemed as if he must fall within the

moment. He fought down the pain that pierced his heart like a knife;

he gathered the last resources of an exhausted frame for one more

effort. The executioners sprang forward with the covering for his eyes

that was to shut out the light forever. His glance, his gesture held

them back; they paused irresolutely, even in the presence of

Multnomah; weak as Cecil was, he was the great white _tomanowos_

still, and they dared not touch him. There was a pause, an intense

silence.

"I gave up all to come and tell you of God, and you have condemned me

to die at the torture-stake," said the soft, low voice, sending

through their stern hearts its thrill and pathos for the last time.

"But you shall not bring this blood-stain upon your souls. The hand of

the Great Spirit is on me; he takes me to himself. Remember--what I

have said. The Great Spirit loves you. Pray--forgive--be at peace.

Remember--"

The quiver of agonizing pain disturbed the gentleness of his look; he

reeled, and sank to the ground. For a moment the slight form shuddered

convulsively and the hands were clinched; then the struggle ceased and

a wonderful brightness shone upon his face. His lips murmured

something in his own tongue, something into which came the name of

Wallulah and the name of God. Then his eyes grew dim and he lay very

still. Only the expression of perfect peace still rested on the face.

Sachems and warriors gazed in awe upon the beauty, grand in death, of

the one whom the Great Spirit had taken from them. Perhaps the iron

heart of the war-chief was the only one that did not feel remorse and

self-reproach.

Ere the silence was broken, an old Indian woman came forward from the

crowd into the circle of chiefs. She looked neither to the right nor

to the left, but advanced among the warrior-sachems, into whose

presence no woman had dared intrude herself, and bent over the dead.

She lifted the wasted body in her arms and bore it away, with shut

lips and downcast eyes, asking no permission, saying no word. The

charm that had been around the white _shaman_ in life seemed to invest

her with its power; for grim chieftains made way, the crowd opened to

let her pass, and even Multnomah looked on in silence.

That afternoon, a little band of Indians were assembled in Cecil's

lodge. Some of them were already converts; some were only awakened and

impressed; but all were men who loved him.

They were gathered, men of huge frame, around a dead body that lay

upon a cougar skin. Their faces were sad, their manner was solemn. In

the corner sat an aged squaw, her face resting in her hands, her long

gray hair falling dishevelled about her shoulders. In that

heart-broken attitude she had sat ever since bringing Cecil to the

hut. She did not weep or sob but sat motionless, in stoical, dumb

despair.

Around the dead the Indians stood or sat in silence, each waiting for

the other to say what was in the hearts of all. At length the Shoshone

renegade who had so loved Cecil, spoke.

"Our white brother is gone from us, but the Great Spirit lives and

dies not. Let us turn from blood and sin and walk in the way our

brother showed us. He said, 'Remember;' and shall we forget? I choose

now, while he can hear me, before he is laid in the cold ground. I put

away from me the old heart of hate and revenge. I ask the Great Spirit

to give me the new heart of love and peace. I have chosen."

One by one each told his resolve, the swarthy faces lighting up, the

stern lips saying unwonted words of love. Dim and misty, the dawn had

come to them; reaching out in the dark, they had got hold of the hand

of God and felt that he was a Father. One would have said that their

dead teacher lying there heard their vows, so calm and full of peace

was the white still face.

That night the first beams of the rising moon fell on a new-made grave

under the cottonwoods, not far from the bank of the river. Beneath it,

silent in the last sleep, lay the student whose graceful presence had

been the pride of far-off Magdalen, the pastor whose memory still

lingered in New England, the evangelist whose burning words had

thrilled the tribes of the wilderness like the words of some prophet

of old.

Beside the grave crouched the old Indian woman, alone and forsaken in

her despair,--the one mourner out of all for whom his life had been

given.

No, not the only one; for a tall warrior enters the grove; the

Shoshone renegade bends over her and touches her gently on the

shoulder.

"Come," he says kindly, "our horses are saddled; we take the trail up

the Wauna to-night, I and my friends. We will fly from this fated

valley ere the wrath of the Great Spirit falls upon it. Beyond the

mountains I will seek a new home with the Spokanes or the Okanogans.

Come; my home shall be your home, because you cared for him that is

gone."

She shook her head and pointed to the grave.

"My heart is there; my life is buried with him. I cannot go."

Again he urged her.

"No, no," she replied, with Indian stubbornness; "I cannot leave him.

Was I not like his mother? How can I go and leave him for others? The

roots of the old tree grow not in new soil. If it is pulled up it

dies."

"Come with me," said the savage, with a gentleness born of his new

faith. "Be _my_ mother. We will talk of him; you shall tell me of him

and his God. Come, the horses wait."

Again she shook her head; then fell forward on the grave, her arms

thrown out, as if to clasp it in her embrace. He tried to lift her;

her head fell back, and she lay relaxed and motionless in his arms.

Another grave was made by Cecil's; and the little band rode through

the mountain pass that night, toward the country of the Okanogans,

without her.

And that same night, an English exploring vessel far out at sea sailed

southward, leaving behind the unknown shores of Oregon,--her crew

never dreaming how near they had been to finding the lost wanderer,

Cecil Grey.

CHAPTER II.

THE MARRIAGE AND THE BREAKING UP.

Remembering love and all the dead delight,

And all that time was sweet with for a space.

SWINBURNE.

After Cecil had been borne from the council-grove, the Indians,

rousing themselves from the spell of the strange scene they had just

witnessed, looked around for Tohomish the seer. He was gone. No one

could remember seeing him go, yet he was missing from his accustomed

place, and never was he seen or heard of more. Upon his fate, lost in

the common ruin that engulfed his race, the legend casts no ray of

light. It is certain that the fall of the Bridge, with which his life

was interwoven, had a disastrous effect upon him, and as he said, that

the strength of his life was broken. It is probable that the

orator-seer, feeling within himself that his power was gone, crept

away into the forest to die. Perhaps, had they searched for him, they

would have found him lying lifeless upon the leaves in some dense

thicket or at the foot of some lonely crag.

Whatever his fate, the Indians never looked upon his face again.

Multnomah made no comment on the death of Cecil, or on the prophecy of

Tohomish, so much at variance with his own interpretation of the fall

of the Bridge. Whatever he had to say was evidently held in reserve

for the closing talk with which he would soon dismiss the council.

"You shall see Multnomah's daughter given to Snoqualmie, and then

Multnomah will open his hand and make you rich."

So said the war-chief; and a runner was dispatched with a summons to

Wallulah. In a little while a band of Indian girls was seen

approaching the grove. Surrounded by the maidens, as if they were a

guard of honor, came Wallulah, all unconscious of the tragedy that had

just been enacted.

Among the chiefs they passed, and stopped before Multnomah. As they

paused, Wallulah looked around for Cecil in one quick glance; then,

not seeing him, she cast down her eyes despondingly. Multnomah rose

and beckoned Snoqualmie to him. He came forward and stood beside the

war-chief. The Indian girls stepped back a little, in involuntary awe

of the two great sachems, and left Wallulah standing alone before

them.

Her face wore a patient look, as of one who is very worn and weary,

tired of the burdens of life, yet going forward without hope, without

thought even, to other and still heavier burdens. She was clad in a

soft oriental fabric; her hair fell in luxuriant tresses upon her

shoulders; her flute hung at her belt by a slender chain of gold.

There was something unspeakably sad and heart-broken in her

appearance, as she stood there, a listless, dejected figure, before

those two grim warriors, awaiting her doom.

Multnomah took her hand; the fingers of the other were clasped around

her beloved flute, pressing it closely, as if seeking help from its

mute companionship. The chief gave her hand into Snoqualmie's; a

shudder passed through her as she felt his touch, and she trembled

from head to foot; then she controlled herself by a strong effort.

Snoqualmie's fierce black eyes searched her face, as if looking

through and through her, and she flushed faintly under their

penetrating gaze.

"She is yours," said the war-chief. "Be kind to her, for though she is

your wife she is the daughter of Multnomah." So much did the Indian

say for love of his child, wondering at her strange, sad look, and

feeling vaguely that she was unhappy. She tried to withdraw her

fingers from Snoqualmie's clasp the moment her father was done

speaking. He held them tightly, however, and bending over her, spoke

in a low tone.

"My band starts for home at mid-day. Be ready to go when I send for

you."

She looked up with startled, piteous eyes.

"To-day?" she asked in a choked voice.

"To-day," came the abrupt reply; too low for the others to hear, yet

harsh enough to sting her through and through. "Do you think

Snoqualmie goes back to his _illahee_ and leaves his woman behind?"

Her spirit kindled in resentment. Never had the chief's daughter been

spoken to so harshly; then all at once it came to her that he

_knew_,--that he must have followed Cecil and witnessed one of their

last interviews. Jealous, revengeful, the Indian was her master now.

She grew pale to the lips. He released her hand, and she shrank away

from him, and left the council with her maidens. No one had heard the

few half-whispered words that passed between them but those who stood

nearest noticed the deadly pallor that came over her face while

Snoqualmie was speaking. Multnomah saw it, and Snoqualmie caught from

him a glance that chilled even his haughty nature--a glance that said,

"Beware; she is the war-chief's daughter."

But even if he had known all, Multnomah would have sacrificed her. His

plans must be carried out even though her heart be crushed.

Now followed the _potlatch_,--the giving of gifts. At a signal from

the war-chief, his slaves appeared, laden with presents. Large heaps

of rich furs and skins were laid on the ground near the chiefs. The

finest of bows and arrows, with gaily decorated quivers and store of

bow-strings, were brought. Untold treasure of _hiagua_ shells, money

as well as ornament to the Oregon Indians, was poured out upon the

ground, and lay glistening in the sun in bright-colored masses. To the

Indians they represented vast and splendid wealth. Multnomah was the

richest of all the Indians of the Wauna; and the gifts displayed were

the spoil of many wars, treasures garnered during forty years of

sovereignty.

And now they were all given away. The chief kept back nothing, except

some cases of oriental fabrics that had been saved from the wreck when

Wallulah's mother was cast upon the shore. Well would it have been for

him and his race had they been given too; for, little as they dreamed

it, the fate of the Willamettes lay sealed up in those unopened cases

of silk and damask.

Again and again the slaves of Multnomah added their burdens to the

heaps, and went back for more, till a murmur of wonder rose among the

crowd. His riches seemed exhaustless. At length, however, all was

brought. The chief stood up, and, opening his hands to them in the

Indian gesture for giving, said,--

"There is all that was Multnomah's; it is yours; your hands are full

now and mine are empty."

The chiefs and warriors rose up gravely and went among the heaps of

treasure; each selecting from furs and skins, arms and _hiagua_

shells, that which he desired. There was no unseemly haste or

snatching; a quiet decorum prevailed among them. The women and

children were excluded from sharing in these gifts, but

provisions--dried meats and berries, and bread of _camas_ or Wappatto

root--were thrown among them on the outskirts of the crowd where they

were gathered. And unlike the men, they scrambled for it like hungry

animals; save where here and there the wife or daughter of a chief

stood looking disdainfully on the food and those who snatched at it.

Such giving of gifts, or _potlatches_, are still known among the

Indians. On Puget Sound and the Okanogan, one occasionally hears of

some rich Indian making a great _potlatch_,--giving away all his

possessions, and gaining nothing but a reputation for disdain of

wealth, a reputation which only Indian stoicism would crave.

Multnomah's object was not that so much as to make, before the

dispersal of the tribes, a last and most favorable impression.

When the presents were all divided, the chiefs resumed their places to

hear the last speech of Multnomah,--the speech that closed the

council.

It was a masterpiece of dignity, subtility, and command. The prophecy

of Tohomish was evaded, the fall of the Bridge wrested into an omen

propitious to the Willamettes; and at last his hearers found

themselves believing as he wished them to believe, without knowing how

or why, so strongly did the overmastering personality of Multnomah

penetrate and sway their lesser natures. He particularly dwelt on the

idea that they were all knit together now and were as one race. Yet

through the smooth words ran a latent threat, a covert warning of the

result of any revolt against his authority based on what plotting

dreamers might say of the fall of the Bridge,--a half-expressed

menace, like the gleam of a sword half drawn from the scabbard. And he

closed by announcing that ere another spring the young men of all the

tribes would go on the war-path against the Shoshones and come back

loaded with spoil. And so, kindling the hatred of the chiefs against

the common enemy, Multnomah closed the great council.

In a little while the camp was all astir with preparation for

departure. Lodges were being taken down, the mats that covered them

rolled up and packed on the backs of horses; all was bustle and

tumult. Troop after troop crossed the river and took the trail toward

the upper Columbia.

But when the bands passed from under the personal influence of

Multnomah, they talked of the ominous things that had just happened;

they said to each other that the Great Spirit had forsaken the

Willamettes, and that when they came into the valley again it would be

to plunder and to slay. Multnomah had stayed the tide but for a

moment. The fall of the ancient _tomanowos_ of the Willamettes had a

tremendous significance to the restless tributaries, and already the

confederacy of the Wauna was crumbling like a rope of sand. Those

tribes would meet no more in peace on the island of council.

CHAPTER III.

AT THE CASCADES.

Wails on the wind, fades out the sunset quite,

And in my heart and on the earth is night.

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

The main body of Snoqualmie's followers crossed to the north bank of

the Columbia and took the trail leading up the river toward the inland

prairies. But Snoqualmie and Wallulah went by canoe as far as the now

ruined Bridge of the Gods. There were three canoes in their train.

Snoqualmie and Wallulah occupied the first; the other two were laden

with the rich things that had once made her lodge so beautiful. It

stood all bare and deserted now, the splendor stripped from its rough

bark walls even as love and hope had been reft from the heart of its

mistress. Tapestries, divans, carpets, mirrors, were heaped in the

canoes like spoil torn from the enemy.

The farewell between Wallulah and her father had been sorrowful. It

was remembered afterward, by those who were witnesses of it, that the

war-chief had shown a tenderness unusual with him, that he had seemed

reluctant to part with his daughter, and that she had clung to him,

pale and tearful, as if he were her last hope on earth.

When Snoqualmie took her hand to lead her away, she shuddered,

withdrew her fingers from his clasp, and walked alone to the canoe.

He entered after her: the canoe-men dipped their paddles into the

water, and the vessel glided away from the island.

She sat reclining on a heap of furs, her elbows sunk in them, her

cheek resting on her hand, her eyes turned back toward her island

home. Between it and her the expanse of waters grew ever broader, and

the trail the canoe left behind it sparkled in a thousand silvery

ripples. The island, with its green prairies and its stately woods,

receded fast. She felt as she looked back as if everything was

slipping away from her. Lonely as her life had been before Cecil came

into it, she had still had her music and her beautiful rooms in the

bark lodge; and they seemed infinitely sweet and precious now as she

recalled them. Oh, if she could only have them back again! And those

interviews with Cecil. How love and grief shook the little figure as

she thought! How loathingly she shrunk from the presence of the

barbarian at her side! And all the time the island receded farther and

farther in the distance, and the canoe glided forward like a merciless

fate bearing her on and on toward the savagery of the inland desert.

Snoqualmie sat watching her with glittering, triumphant eyes. To him

she was no more than some lovely animal of which he had become the

owner; and ownership of course brought with it the right to tantalize

and to torture. A malicious smile crossed his lips as he saw how

sorrowfully her gaze rested on her old home.

"Look forward," he said, "not back; look forward to your life with

Snoqualmie and to the lodge that awaits you in the land of the

Cayuses."

She started, and her face flushed painfully; then without looking at

him she replied,--

"Wallulah loves her home, and leaving it saddens her."

A sparkle of vindictive delight came into his eyes.

"Do the women of the Willamette feel sad when they go to live with

their husbands? It is not so with the Cayuse women. They are glad;

_they_ care for the one they belong to. They love to sit in the sun at

the door of the wigwam and say to the other women, 'My man is brave;

he leads the war party; he has many scalps at his belt. Who is brave

like my man?'"

Wallulah shuddered. He saw it, and the sparkle of malice in his eyes

flashed into sudden anger.

"Does the young squaw tremble at these things? Then she must get used

to them. She must learn to bring wood and water for Snoqualmie's

lodge, too. She must learn to wait on him as an Indian's wife ought.

The old wrinkled squaws, who are good for nothing but to be beasts of

burden, shall teach her."

There came before her a picture of the ancient withered hags, the

burden-bearers, the human vampires of the Indian camps, the vile in

word and deed, the first to cry for the blood of captives, the most

eager to give taunts and blows to the helpless; were they to be her

associates, her teachers? Involuntarily she lifted her hand, as if to

push from her a future so dreadful.

"Wallulah will bring the wood and the water. Wallulah will work. The

old women need not teach her."

"That is well. But one thing more you must learn; and that is to hold

up your head and not look like a drooping captive. Smile, laugh, be

gay. Snoqualmie will have no clouded face, no bent head in his

lodge."

She looked at him imploringly. The huge form, the swarthy face, seemed

to dominate her, to crush her down with their barbarian strength and

ferocity. She dropped her eyes again, and lay there on the furs like

some frightened bird shrinking from the glance of a hawk.

"I will work; I will bear burdens," she repeated, in a trembling tone.

"But I cannot smile and laugh when my heart is heavy."

He watched her with a half angry, half malicious regard, a regard that

seemed ruthlessly probing into every secret of her nature.

She knew somehow that he was aware of her love for Cecil, and she

dreaded lest he should taunt her with it. Anything but that. He knew

it, and held it back as his last and most cruel blow. Over his bronzed

face flitted no expression of pity. She was to him like some delicate

wounded creature of the forest, that it was a pleasure to torture. So

he had often treated a maimed bird or fawn,--tantalizing it, delighted

by its fluttering and its pain, till the lust of torture was gratified

and the death-blow was given.

He sat regarding her with a sneering, malicious look for a little

while; then he said,--

"It is hard to smile on Snoqualmie; but the white man whom you met in

the wood, it was not so with him. It was easy to smile and look glad

at him, but it is hard to do so for Snoqualmie."

Wallulah shrunk as if he had struck her a blow; then she looked at him

desperately, pleadingly.

"Do not say such cruel things. I will be a faithful wife to you. I

will never see the white man again."

The sneering malice in his eyes gave way to the gleam of exultant

anger.

"Faithful! You knew you were to be my woman when you let him put his

arms around you and say soft things to you. Faithful! You would leave

Snoqualmie for him now, could it be so. But you say well that you will

never see him again."

She gazed at him in terror.

"What do you mean? Has anything happened to him? Have they harmed

him?"

Over the chief's face came the murderous expression that was there

when he slew the Bannock warrior at the torture stake.

"Harmed him! Do you think that he could meet you alone and say sweet

things to you and caress you,--you who were the same as my squaw,--and

I not harm him? He is dead; I slew him."

False though it was, in so far as Snoqualmie claimed to have himself

slain Cecil, it was thoroughly in keeping with Indian character. White

captives were often told, "I killed your brother," or, "This is your

husband's scalp," when perhaps the person spoken of was alive and

well.

"Dead!"

He threw his tomahawk at her feet.

"His blood is on it. You are Snoqualmie's squaw; wash it off."

Dead, dead, her lover was dead! That was all she could grasp.

Snoqualmie's insulting command passed unheeded. She sat looking at the

Indian with bright, dazed eyes that saw nothing. All the world seemed

blotted out.

"I tell you that he is dead, and I slew him. Are you asleep that you

stare at me so? Awaken and do as I bid you; wash your lover's blood

off my tomahawk."

At first she had been stunned by the terrible shock, and she could

realize only that Cecil was dead. Now it came to her, dimly at first,

then like a flash of fire, that Snoqualmie had slain him. All her

spirit leaped up in uncontrollable hatred. For once, she was the

war-chief's daughter. She drew her skirts away from the tomahawk in

unutterable horror; her eyes blazed into Snoqualmie's a defiance and

scorn before which his own sunk for the instant.

"You killed him! I hate you. I will never be your wife. You have

thrown the tomahawk between us; it shall be between us forever.

Murderer! You have killed the one I love. Yes, I loved him; and I hate

you and will hate you till I die."

The passion in her voice thrilled even the canoe-men, and their paddle

strokes fell confusedly for an instant, though they did not

understand; for both Wallulah and Snoqualmie had spoken in the royal

tongue of the Willamettes. He sat abashed for an instant, taken

utterly by surprise.

Then the wild impulse of defiance passed, and the awful sense of

bereavement came back like the falling of darkness over a sinking

flame. Cecil was gone from her, gone for all time. The world seemed

unreal, empty. She sunk among the furs like one stricken down.

Snoqualmie, recovering from his momentary rebuff, heaped bitter

epithets and scornful words upon her; but she neither saw nor heard,

and lay with wide, bright, staring eyes. Her seeming indifference

maddened him still more, and he hurled at her the fiercest abuse. She

looked at him vaguely. He saw that she did not even know what he was

saying, and relapsed into sullen silence. She lay mute and still, with

a strained expression of pain in her eyes. The canoe sped swiftly on.

One desolating thought repeated itself again and again,--the thought

of hopeless and irreparable loss. By it past and present were blotted

out. By and by, when she awoke from the stupor of despair and realized

her future, destined to be passed with the murderer of her lover, what

then? But now she was stunned with the shock of a grief that was mercy

compared with the awakening that must come.

They were in the heart of the Cascade Mountains, and a low deep roar

began to reach their ears, rousing and startling all but Wallulah. It

was the sound of the cascades, of the new cataract formed by the fall

of the Great Bridge. Rounding a bend in the river they came in sight

of it. The mighty arch, the long low mountain of stone, had fallen in,

damming up the waters of the Columbia, which were pouring over the

sunken mass in an ever-increasing volume. Above, the river, raised by

the enormous dam, had spread out like a lake, almost submerging the

trees that still stood along the former bank. Below the new falls the

river was comparatively shallow, its rocky bed half exposed by the

sudden stoppage of the waters.

The Indians gazed with superstitious awe on the vast barrier over

which the white and foaming waters were pouring. The unwonted roar of

the falls, a roar that seemed to increase every moment as the swelling

waters rushed over the rocks; the sight of the wreck of the mysterious

bridge, foreshadowing the direst calamities,--all this awed the wild

children of the desert. They approached the falls slowly and

cautiously.

A brief command from Snoqualmie, and they landed on the northern side

of the river, not far from the foot of the falls. There they must

disembark, and the canoes be carried around the falls on the shoulders

of Indians and launched above.

The roar of the Cascades roused Wallulah from her stupor. She stepped

ashore and looked in dazed wonder on the strange new world around her.

Snoqualmie told her briefly that she must walk up the bank to the

place where the canoe was to be launched again above the falls. She

listened mutely, and started to go. But the way was steep and rocky;

the bank was strewn with the débris of the ruined bridge; and she was

unused to such exertion. Snoqualmie saw her stumble and almost fall.

It moved him to a sudden and unwonted pity, and he sprang forward to

help her. She pushed his hand from her as if it had been the touch of

a serpent, and went on alone. His eyes flashed: for all this the

reckoning should come, and soon; woe unto her when it came.

The rough rocks bruised her delicately shod feet, the steep ascent

took away her breath. Again and again she felt as if she must fall;

but the bitter scorn and loathing that Snoqualmie's touch had kindled

gave her strength, and at last she completed the ascent.

Above the falls and close to them, she sat down upon a rock; a slight,

drooping figure, whose dejected pose told of a broken heart.

Before her, almost at her feet, the pent-up river was widened to a

vast flood. Here and there a half-submerged pine lifted its crown

above it; the surface was ruffled by the wind, and white-crested waves

were rolling among the green tree-tops. She looked with indifference

upon the scene. She had not heard that the Bridge had fallen, and was,

of course, ignorant of these new cascades; and they did not impress

her as being strange.

Her whole life was broken up; all the world appeared shattered by the

blow that had fallen on her, and nothing could startle her now. She

felt dimly that some stupendous catastrophe had taken place; yet it

did not appear unnatural. A strange sense of unreality possessed her;

everything seemed an illusion, as if she were a shadow in a land of

shadows. The thought came to her that she was dead, and that her

spirit was passing over the dim ghost trail to the shadow-land. She

tried to shake off the fancy, but all was so vague and dreamlike that

she hardly knew where or what she was; yet over it all brooded the

consciousness of dull, heavy, torturing pain, like the dumb agony that

comes to us in fevered sleep, burdening our dreams with a black

oppressing weight of horror.

Her hand, hanging listlessly at her side, touched her flute, which was

still suspended from her belt by the golden chain. She raised it to

her lips, but only a faint inharmonious note came from it. The music

seemed gone from the flute, as hope was gone from her heart. To her

overwrought nerves, it was the last omen of all. The flute dropped

from her fingers; she covered her face with her hands, and the hot

tears coursed slowly down her cheeks.

Some one spoke to her, not ungently, and she looked up. One of the

canoe-men stood beside her. He pointed to the canoe, now launched near

by. Snoqualmie was still below, at the foot of the falls,

superintending the removal of the other.

Slowly and wearily she entered the waiting canoe and resumed her seat.

The Indian paddlers took their places. They told her that the chief

Snoqualmie had bidden them take her on without him. He would follow in

the other canoe. It was a relief to be free from his presence, if only

for a little while; and the sadness on her face lightened for a moment

when they told her.

A few quick paddle-strokes, and the boat shot out into the current

above the cascades and then glided forward. No, _not_ forward. The

canoe-men, unfamiliar with the new cataract, had launched their vessel

too close to the falls; and the mighty current was drawing it back. A

cry of horror burst from their lips as they realized their danger, and

their paddles were dashed into the water with frenzied violence. The

canoe hung quivering through all its slender length between the

desperate strokes that impelled it forward and the tremendous suction

that drew it down. Had they been closer to the bank, they might have

saved themselves; but they were too far out in the current. They felt

the canoe slipping back in spite of their frantic efforts, slowly at

first, then more swiftly; and they knew there was no hope.

The paddles fell from their hands. One boatman leaped from the canoe

with the desperate idea of swimming ashore, but the current instantly

swept him under and out of sight; the other sat motionless in his

place, awaiting the end with Indian stolidity.

The canoe was swept like a leaf to the verge of the fall and downward

into a gulf of mist and spray. As it trembled on the edge of the

cataract, and its horrors opened beneath her, Wallulah realized her

doom for the first time; and in the moment she realised it, it was

upon her. There was a quick terror, a dreamlike glimpse of white

plunging waters, a deafening roar, a sudden terrible shock as the

canoe was splintered on the rocks at the foot of the fall; then all

things were swallowed up in blackness, a blackness that was death.

Below the falls, strong swimmers, leaping into the water, brought the

dead to land. Beneath a pine-tree that grew close by the great

Columbia trail and not far from the falls, the bodies were laid. The

daughter of Multnomah lay in rude state upon a fawn-skin; while at her

feet were extended the brawny forms of the two canoe-men who had died

with her, and who, according to Indian mythology, were to be her

slaves in the Land of the Hereafter. Her face was very lovely, but its

mournfulness remained. Her flute, broken in the shock that had killed

her, was still attached to her belt. The Indians had placed her hand

at her side, resting upon the flute; and they noticed in superstitious

wonder that the cold fingers seemed to half close around it, as if

they would clasp it lovingly, even in death. Indian women knelt beside

her, fanning her face with fragrant boughs of pine. Troop after

troop, returning over the trail to their homes, stopped to hear the

tale, and to gaze at the dead face that was so wonderfully beautiful

yet so sad.

All day long the bands gathered; each stopping, none passing

indifferently by. At length, when evening came and the shadow of the

wood fell long and cool, the burials began. A shallow grave was

scooped at Wallulah's feet for the bodies of the two canoe-men. Then

chiefs--for they only might bury Multnomah's daughter--entombed her in

a cairn; being Upper Columbia Indians, they buried her, after the

manner of their people, under a heap of stone. Rocks and bowlders were

built around and over her body, yet without touching it, until the sad

dead face was shut out from view. And still the stones were piled

above her; higher and higher rose the great rock-heap, till a mighty

cairn marked the last resting-place of Wallulah. And all the time the

women lifted the death-wail, and Snoqualmie stood looking on with

folded arms and sullen baffled brow. At length the work was done. The

wail ceased; the gathering broke up, and the sachems and their bands

rode away, Snoqualmie and his troop departing with them.

Only the roar of the cascades broke the silence, as night fell on the

wild forest and the lonely river. The pine-tree beside the trail

swayed its branches in the wind with a low soft murmur, as if lulling

the sorrow-worn sleeper beneath it into still deeper repose. And she

lay very still in the great cairn,--the sweet and beautiful

dead,--with the grim warriors stretched at her feet, stern guardians

of a slumber never to be broken.

CHAPTER IV.

MULTNOMAH'S DEATH-CANOE.

Gazing alone

To him are wild shadows shown.

Deep under deep unknown.

DANTE ROSSETTI.

If Multnomah was grieved at his daughter's death, if his heart sunk at

the unforeseen and terrible blow that left his empire without an heir

and withered all his hopes, no one knew it; no eye beheld his woe.

Silent he had ever been, and he was silent to the last. The grand,

strong face only grew grander, stronger, as the shadows darkened

around him; the unconquerable will only grew the fiercer and the more

unflinching. But ere the moon that shone first on Wallulah's new-made

cairn had rounded to the full, there was that upon him before which

even his will bowed and gave way,--death, swift and mysterious. And it

came in this wise.

We have told how at the great _potlatch_ he gave away his all, even to

the bear-skins from his couch, reserving only those cases of Asiatic

textures never yet opened,--all that now remained of the richly laden

ship of the Orient wrecked long ago upon his coast. They were opened

now. His bed was covered with the magnificent fabrics; they were

thrown carelessly over the rude walls and seats, half-trailing on the

floor; exquisite folds of velvet and damask swept the leaves and

dust,--so that all men might see how rich the chief still was, though

he had given away so much. And with his ostentation was mixed a secret

pride and tenderness that his dead wife had indirectly given him this

wealth. The war-chief's woman had brought him these treasures out of

the sea; and now that he had given away his all, even to the bare

poles of his lodge, she filled it with fine things and made him rich

again,--she who had been sleeping for years in the death-hut on

_mimaluse_ island. Those treasures, ere the vessel that carried them

was wrecked, had been sent as a present from one oriental prince to

another. Could it be that they had been purposely impregnated with

disease, so that while the prince that sent them seemed to bestow a

graceful gift, he was in reality taking a treacherous and terrible

revenge? Such things were not infrequent in Asiatic history; and even

the history of Europe, in the middle ages, tells us of poisoned masks,

of gloves and scarfs charged with disease.

Certain it is that shortly after the cases were opened, a strange and

fatal disease broke out among Multnomah's attendants. The howling of

medicine-men rang all day long in the royal lodge; each day saw

swathed corpses borne out to the funeral pyre or _mimaluse_ island.

And no concoction of herbs,--however skilfully compounded with stone

mortar and pestle,--no incantation of medicine-men or steaming

atmosphere of sweat-house, could stay the mortality.

At length Multnomah caught the disease. It seemed strange to the

Indians that the war-chief should sicken, that Multnomah should show

any of the weaknesses of common flesh and blood; yet so it was. But

while the body yielded to the inroad of disease, the spirit that for

almost half a century had bent beneath it the tribes of the Wauna

never faltered. He lay for days upon his couch, his system wasting

with the plague, his veins burning with fever, holding death off only

by might of will. He touched no remedies, for he felt them to be

useless; he refused the incantations of the medicine-men; alone and in

his own strength the war-chief contended with his last enemy.

All over the Willamette Valley, through camp and fishery, ran the

whisper that Multnomah was dying; and the hearts of the Indians sunk

within them. Beyond the mountains the whisper passed to the allied

tribes, once more ripe for revolt, and the news rang among them like a

trumpet call; it was of itself a signal for rebellion. The fall of the

magic Bridge, the death of Wallulah, and the fatal illness of

Multnomah had sealed the doom of the Willamettes. The chiefs stayed

their followers only till they knew that he was dead. But the grand

old war-chief seemed determined that he would not die. He struggled

with disease; he crushed down his sufferings; he fought death with the

same silent, indomitable tenacity with which he had overthrown the

obstacles of life.

In all his wasting agony he was the war-chief still, and held his

subjects in his grip. To the tribes that were about to rebel he sent

messages, short, abrupt, but terrible in their threat of

vengeance,--messages that shook and awed the chiefs and pushed back

invasion. To the last, the great chief overawed the tribes; the

generation that had grown up under the shadow of his tyranny, even

when they knew he was dying, still obeyed him.

At length, one summer evening a few weeks after the burial of

Wallulah, there burst forth from the war-chief's lodge that peculiar

wail which was lifted only for the death of one of the royal blood. No

need to ask who it was, for only _one_ remained of the ancient line

that had so long ruled the Willamettes; and for him, the last of his

race, was the wail lifted. It was re-echoed by the inmates of the

surrounding lodges; it rang, foreboding, mournful, through the

encampment on Wappatto Island.

Soon, runners were seen departing in every direction to bear the fatal

news throughout the valley. Twilight fell on them; the stars came out;

the moon rose and sunk; but the runners sped on, from camp to camp,

from village to village. Wherever there was a cluster of Willamette

lodges, by forest, river, or sea, the tale was told, the wail was

lifted. So all that night the death-wail passed through the valley of

the Willamette; and in the morning the trails were thronged with bands

of Indians journeying for the last time to the isle of council, to

attend the obsequies of their chief, and consult as to the choice of

one to take his place.

The pestilence that had so ravaged the household of Multnomah was

spread widely now; and every band as it departed from the camp left

death behind it,--aye, took death with it; for in each company were

those whose haggard, sickly faces told of disease, and in more than

one were those so weakened that they lagged behind and fell at last

beside the trail to die.

The weather was very murky. It was one of the smoky summers of Oregon,

like that of the memorable year 1849, when the smoke of wide-spread

forest fires hung dense and blinding over Western Oregon for days, and

it seemed to the white settlers as if they were never to breathe the

clear air or see the sky again. But even that, the historic "smoky

time" of the white pioneers, was scarcely equal to the smoky period of

more than a century and a half before. The forest fires were raging

with unusual fury; Mount Hood was still in course of eruption; and all

the valley was wrapped in settled cloud. Through the thick atmosphere

the tall firs loomed like spectres, while the far-off roar of flames

in the forest and the intermittent sounds of the volcano came weirdly

to the Indians as they passed on their mournful way. What wonder that

the distant sounds seemed to them wild voices in the air, prophecying

woe; and objects in the forest, half seen through the smoke, grotesque

forms attending them as they marched! And when the bands had all

gathered on the island, the shuddering Indians told of dim and shadowy

phantoms that had followed and preceded them all the way; and of

gigantic shapes in the likeness of men that had loomed through the

smoke, warning them back with outstretched arms. Ominous and unknown

cries had come to them through the gloom; and the spirits of the dead

had seemed to marshal them on their way, or to oppose their

coming,--they knew not which.

So, all day long, troop after troop crossed the river to the island,

emerging like shadows from the smoke that seemed to wrap the

world,--each with its sickly faces, showing the terrible spread of the

pestilence; each helping to swell the great horror that brooded over

all, with its tale of the sick and dead at home, and the wild things

seen on the way. Band after band the tribes gathered, and when the sun

went down the war-chief's obsequies took place.

[Illustration: _Multnomah's Death-canoe._]

It was a strange funeral that they gave Multnomah, yet it was in

keeping with the dark, grand life he had lived.

A large canoe was filled with pitch and with pine-knots,--the most

inflammable materials an Oregon forest could furnish. Upon them was

heaped all that was left of the chief's riches, all the silks and

velvets that remained of the cargo of the shipwrecked vessel lost upon

the coast long before. And finally, upon the splendid heap of

textures, upon the laces and the damasks of the East, was laid the

dead body of Multnomah, dressed in buckskin; his moccasins on his

feet, his tomahawk and his pipe by his side, as became a chief

starting on his last journey.

Then as night came on, and the smoky air darkened into deepest gloom,

the canoe was taken out into the main current of the Columbia, and

fire was set to the dry knots that made up the funeral pyre. In an

instant the contents of the canoe were in a blaze, and it was set

adrift in the current. Down the river it floated, lighting the night

with leaping flames. On the shore, the assembled tribe watched it in

silence, mute, dejected, as they saw their great chief borne from them

forever. Promontory and dusky fir, gleaming water and level beach,

were brought into startling relief against the background of night, as

the burning vessel neared them; then sank into shadow as it passed

onward. Overhead, the playing tongues of fire reddened the smoke that

hung dense over the water, and made it assume distorted and fantastic

shapes, which moved and writhed in the wavering light, and to the

Indians seemed spectres of the dead, hovering over the canoe, reaching

out their arms to receive the soul of Multnomah.

"It is the dead people come for him," the Willamettes whispered to one

another, as they stood upon the bank, watching the canoe drift farther

and farther from them, with the wild play of light and shadow over it.

Down the river, like some giant torch that was to light the war-chief

along the shadowy ways of death, passed the burning canoe. Rounding a

wooded point, it blazed a moment brilliantly beside it, and as it

drifted to the farther side, outlined the intervening trees with fire,

till every branch was clearly relieved against a flaming background;

then, passing slowly on beyond the point, the light waned gradually,

and at last faded quite away.

And not till then was a sound heard among the silent and impassive

throng on the river-bank. But when the burning canoe had vanished

utterly, when black and starless night fell again on wood and water,

the death-wail burst from the Indians with one impulse and one

voice,--a people's cry for its lost chief, a great tribe's lament for

the strength and glory that had drifted from it, never to return.

* * * * *

Among a superstitious race, every fact becomes mingled more or less

with fable; every occurrence, charged with fantastic meanings. And

there sprang up among the Indians, no one could tell how, a prophecy

that some night when the Willamettes were in their direst need, a

great light would be seen moving on the waters of the Columbia, and

the war-chief would come back in a canoe of fire to lead them to

victory as of old.

Dire and awful grew their need as the days went on; swift and sweeping

was the end. Long did the few survivors of his race watch and wait for

his return,--but never more came back Multnomah to his own.

CHAPTER V.

AS WAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FATE.

A land of old upheaven from the abyss

By fire, to sink into the abyss again,

Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt.

TENNYSON.

And now our tale draws to a close. There remains but to tell how the

last council was held on Wappatto Island; how Mishlah the Cougar,

chief of the Mollalies, died; and how the prophecy of the Bridge was

fulfilled.

The morning after the obsequies of Multnomah, the chiefs met in the

grove where the great council of the tribes had been held only a few

weeks before. The leaves, which had been green and glossy then, were

turning yellow and sickly now in the close hot weather. All Nature

seemed full of decay.

The chiefs were grouped before the vacant seat of Multnomah; and the

Willamette tribe, gathered from canyon and prairie and fishery, looked

on, sole spectators of the proceedings,--for none of the allies were

present. The ravages of the pestilence had been terrible. Many

warriors were missing from the spectators; many chiefs were absent

from the council. And there were some present from whom the others

shrunk away, whose hot breath and livid faces showed that they too

were stricken with the plague. There were emaciated Indians among the

audience, whose gaunt forms and hollow eyes told that they had dragged

themselves to the council-grove to die. The wailing of the women at

the camp, lamenting those just dead; the howling of the medicine-men

in the distance, performing their incantations over the sick; the

mysterious sounds that came from the burning forest and the

volcano,--all these were heard. Round the council the smoke folded

thick and dark, veiling the sun, and shutting out the light of heaven

and the mercy of the Great Spirit.

The chiefs sat long in silence, each waiting for the other to speak.

At length arose a stately warrior famous among the Willamettes for

wisdom and prudence.

"We perish," said the chief, "we melt away before the breath of the

pestilence, like snow before the breath of the warm spring wind. And

while we die of disease in our lodges, war gathers against us beyond

the ranges. Even now the bands of our enemies may be descending the

mountains, and the tomahawk may smite what the disease has spared.

What is to be done? What say the wise chiefs of the Willamettes?

Multnomah's seat is empty: shall we choose another war-chief?"

A pale and ghastly chief rose to reply. It was evident that he was in

the last extremity of disease.

"Shall we choose another war-chief to sit in Multnomah's place? We

may; but will he be Multnomah? The glory of the Willamettes is dead!

Talk no more of war, when our war-strength is gone from us. The Bridge

is fallen, the Great Spirit is against us. Let those who are to live

talk of war. It is time for us to learn how to die."

He sunk flushed and exhausted upon the ground. Then rose an aged

chief, so old that it seemed as if a century of time had passed over

him. His hair was a dirty gray, his eyes dull and sunken, his face

withered. He supported himself with tremulous bony hands upon his

staff. His voice was feeble, and seemed like an echo from the

long-perished past.

"I am old, the oldest of all the Willamettes. I have seen so many

winters that no man can count them. I knew Multnomah's father. I went

forth to battle with his father's father; and even before that I knew

others, warriors of a forgotten time. Or do I dream? I know not. The

weight of the time that I have lived is very heavy, and my mind sinks

under it. My form is bowed with the burden of winters. Warriors, I

have seen many councils, many troubles, but never a trouble like this.

Of what use is your council? Can the words of wise men stay disease?

Can the edge of the tomahawk turn back sickness? Can you fight against

the Great Spirit? He sent the white man to tell us of our sins and

warn us to be better, and you closed your ears and would not listen.

Nay, you would have slain him had not the Great Spirit taken him away.

These things would not have come upon us had you listened to the white

_shaman_. You have offended the Great Spirit, and he has broken the

Bridge and sent disease upon us; and all that your wisdom may devise

can avail naught to stay his wrath. You can but cover your faces in

silence, and die."

For a moment the council was very still. The memory of the white

wanderer, his strong and tender eloquence, his fearless denunciation,

his loving and passionate appeal, was on them all. _Was_ the Great

Spirit angry with them because they had rejected him?

"Who talks of dying?" said a fierce warrior, starting to his feet.

"Leave that to women and sick men! Shall we stay here to perish while

life is yet strong within us? The valley is shadowed with death; the

air is disease; an awful sickness wastes the people; our enemies rush

in upon us. Shall we then lie down like dogs and wait for death? No.

Let us leave this land; let us take our women and children, and fly.

Let us seek a new home beyond the Klamath and the Shasta, in the South

Land, where the sun is always warm, and the grass is always green, and

the cold never comes. The spirits are against us here, and to stay is

to perish. Let us seek a new home, where the spirits are not angry;

even as our fathers in the time that is far back left their old home

in the ice country of the Nootkas and came hither. I have spoken."

His daring words kindled a moment's animation in the despondent

audience; then the ceaseless wailing of the women and the panting of

the sick chiefs in the council filled the silence, and their hearts

sank within them again.

"My brother is brave," said the grave chief who had opened the

council, "but are his words wise? Many of our warriors are dead, many

are sick, and Multnomah is gone. The Willamettes are weak; it is

bitter to the lips to say it, but it is true. Our enemies are strong.

All the tribes who were once with us are against us. The passes are

kept by many warriors; and could we fight our way through them to

another land, the sickness would go with us. Why fly from the disease

here, to die with it in some far-off land?"

"We cannot leave our own land," said a dreamer, or medicine-man. "The

Great Spirit gave it to us, the bones of our fathers are in it. It is

_our_ land," he repeated with touching emphasis. "The Willamette

cannot leave his old home, though the world is breaking up all around

him. The bones of our people are here. Our brothers lie in the

death-huts on _mimaluse_ island;--how can we leave them? Here is the

place where we must live; here, if death comes, must we die!"

A murmur of assent came from the listeners. It voiced the decision of

the council. With stubborn Indian fatalism, they would await the end;

fighting the rebels if attacked, and sullenly facing the disease if

unmolested. Now a voice was heard that never had been heard in accents

of despair,--a voice that was still fierce and warlike in its

resentment of the course the council was taking. It was the voice of

Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Mollalies. He, too, had the plague,

and had just reached the grove, walking with slow and tottering steps,

unlike the Mishlah of other days. But his eyes glittered with all the

old ferocity that had given him the name of Cougar. Alas, he was but a

dying cougar now.

"Shall we stay here to die?" thundered the wild chief, as he stood

leaning on his stick, his sunken eyes sweeping the assembly with a

glance of fire. "Shall we stand and tremble till the pestilence slays

us all with its arrows, even as a herd of deer, driven into a deep

gulch and surrounded, stand till they are shot down by the hunters?

Shall we stay in our lodges, and die without lifting a hand? Shall

disease burn out the life of our warriors, when they might fall in

battle? No! Let us slay the women and children, cross the mountains,

and die fighting the rebels! Is it not better to fall in battle like

warriors than to perish of disease like dogs?"

The chief looked from face to face, but saw no responsive flash in the

eyes that met his own. The settled apathy of despair was on every

countenance. Then the medicine-man answered,--

"_You_ could never cross the mountains, even if we did this thing.

Your breath is hot with disease; the mark of death is on your face;

the snake of the pestilence has bitten you. If we went out to battle,

you would fall by the wayside to die. Your time is short. To-day you

die."

The grim Mollalie met the speaker's glance, and for a moment wavered.

He felt within himself that the words were true, that the plague had

sapped his life, that his hour was near at hand. Then his hesitation

passed, and he lifted his head with scornful defiance.

"So be it! Mishlah accepts his doom. Come, you that were once the

warriors of Multnomah, but whose hearts are become the hearts of

women; come and learn from a Mollalie how to die!"

Again his glance swept the circle of chiefs as if summoning them to

follow him,--then, with weak and staggering footsteps, he left the

grove; and it was as if the last hope of the Willamettes went with

him. The dense atmosphere of smoke soon shut his form from view.

Silence fell on the council. The hearts of the Indians were dead

within them. Amid their portentous surroundings,--the appalling signs

of the wrath of the Great Spirit,--the fatal apathy which is the curse

of their race crept over them.

Then rose the medicine-man, wild priest of a wild and debasing

superstition, reverenced as one through whom the dead spoke to the

living.

"Break up your council!" he said with fearful look and gesture.

"Councils are for those who expect to live! and you!--the dead call

you to them. Choose no chief, for who will be left for him to rule?

You talk of plans for the future. Would you know what that future will

be? I will show you; listen!" He flung up his hand as if imposing

silence; and, taken by surprise, they listened eagerly, expecting to

hear some supernatural voice or message prophetic of the future. On

their strained hearing fell only the labored breathing of the sick

chiefs in the council, the ominous muttering of the far-off volcano,

and loud and shrill above all the desolate cry of the women wailing

their dead.

"You hear it? That death-wail tells all the future holds for you.

Before yonder red shadow of a sun"--pointing to the sun, which shone

dimly through the smoke--"shall set, the bravest of the Mollalies will

be dead. Before the moon wanes to its close, the Willamette race will

have passed away. Think you Multnomah's seat is empty? The Pestilence

sits in Multnomah's place, and you will all wither in his hot and

poisonous breath. Break up your council. Go to your lodges. The sun of

the Willamettes is set, and the night is upon us. Our wars are done;

our glory is ended. We are but a tale that old men tell around the

camp-fire, a handful of red dust gathered from _mimaluse_

island,--dust that once was man. Go, you that are as the dead leaves

of autumn; go, whirled into everlasting darkness before the wind of

the wrath of the Great Spirit!"

He flung out his arms with a wild gesture, as if he held all their

lives and threw them forth like dead leaves to be scattered upon the

winds. Then he turned away and left the grove. The crowd of warriors

who had been looking on broke up and went away, and the chiefs began

to leave the council, each muffled in his blanket. The grave and

stately sachem who had opened the council tried for a little while to

stay the fatal breaking up, but in vain. And when he saw that he could

do nothing, he too left the grove, wrapped in stoical pride, sullenly

resigned to whatever was to come.

And so the last council ended, in hopeless apathy, in stubborn

indecision,--indecision in everything save the recognition that a doom

was on them against which it was useless to struggle.

And Mishlah? He returned to his lodge, painted his face as if he were

going to battle, and then went out to a grove near the place where the

war-dances of the tribe were held. His braves followed him; others

joined them; all watched eagerly, knowing that the end was close at

hand, and wondering how he would die.

He laid aside his blanket, exposing his stripped body; and with his

eagle plume, in his hair and his stone tomahawk in his hand, began to

dance the war-dance of his tribe and to chant the song of the battles

he had fought.

At first his utterance was broken and indistinct, his step feeble. But

as he went on his voice rang clearer and stronger; his step grew

quicker and firmer. Half reciting, half chanting, he continued the

wild tale of blood, dancing faster and faster, haranguing louder and

louder, until he became a flame of barbaric excitement, until he

leaped and whirled in the very madness of raging passion,--the Indian

war-frenzy.

But it could not last long. His breath came quick and short; his words

grew inarticulate; his eyes gleamed like coals of fire; his feet

faltered in the dance. With a final effort he brandished and flung his

tomahawk, uttering as he did so a last war-cry, which thrilled all who

heard it as of old when he led them in battle. The tomahawk sunk to

the head in a neighboring tree, the handle breaking off short with the

violence of the shock; and the chief fell back--dead.

Thus passed the soul of the fierce Mollalie. For years afterward, the

tomahawk remained where it had sunk in the tree, sole monument of

Mishlah. His bones lay unburied beneath, wasted by wind and rain, till

there was left only a narrow strip of red earth, with the grass

springing rankly around it, to show where the body had been. And the

few survivors of the tribe who lingered in the valley were wont to

point to the tomahawk imbedded in the tree, and tell the tale of the

warrior and how he died.

Why dwell longer on scenes so terrible? Besides, there is but little

more to tell. The faithless allies made a raid on the valley; but the

shrouding atmosphere of smoke and the frightful rumors they heard of

the great plague appalled them, and they retreated. The pestilence

protected the Willamettes. The Black Death that the medicine-men saw

sitting in Multnomah's place turned back the tide of invasion better

than the war-chief himself could have done.

Through the hot months of summer the mortality continued. The valley

was swept as with the besom of destruction, and the drama of a

people's death was enacted with a thousand variations of horror. When

spring came, the invaders entered the valley once more. They found it

deserted, with the exception of a few wretched bands, sole survivors

of a mighty race. They rode through villages where the decaying mats

hung in tatters from the half-bare skeleton-like wigwam poles, where

the ashes had been cold for months at the camp-fires; they rode by

fisheries where spear and net were rotting beside the canoe upon the

beach. And the dead--the dead lay everywhere: in the lodges, beside

the fisheries, along the trail where they had been stricken down while

trying to escape,--everywhere were the ghastly and repulsive forms.

The spirit of the few survivors was broken, and they made little

resistance to the invaders. Mongrel bands from the interior and the

coast settled in the valley after the lapse of years; and, mixing with

the surviving Willamettes, produced the degenerate race our own

pioneers found there at their coming. These hybrids were, within the

memory of the white man, overrun and conquered by the Yakimas, who

subjugated all the Indians upon Wappatto Island and around the mouth

of the Willamette in the early part of the present century. Later on,

the Yakimas were driven back by the whites; so that there have been

three conquests of the lower Willamette Valley since the fall of the

ancient race,--two Indian conquests before the white.

The once musical language of the Willamettes has degenerated into the

uncouth Chinook, and the blood of the ancient race flows mixed and

debased in the veins of abject and squalid descendants; but the story

of the mighty bridge that once spanned the Columbia at the Cascades is

still told by the Oregon Indians. Mingled with much of fable, overlaid

with myth and superstition, it is nevertheless one of the historic

legends of the Columbia, and as such will never be forgotten.

* * * * *

One word more of Cecil Gray, and our tale is done.

The Shoshone renegade, who resolved at Cecil's death to become a

Christian, found his way with a few followers to the Flat-Heads, and

settled among that tribe. He told them of what he had learned from

Cecil,--of the Way of Peace; and the wise men of the tribe pondered

his sayings in their hearts. The Shoshone lived and died among them;

but from generation to generation the tradition of the white man's God

was handed down, till in 1832 four Flat-Heads were sent by the tribe

to St. Louis, to ask that teachers be given them to tell them about

God.

Every student of history knows how that appeal stirred the heart of

the East, and caused the sending out of the first missionaries to

Oregon; and from the movement then inaugurated have since sprung all

the missions to the Indians of the West.

Thus he who gave his life for the Indians, and died seemingly in vain,

sowed seed that sprung up and bore a harvest long after his death. And

to-day, two centuries since his body was laid in the lonely grave on

Wappatto Island, thousands of Indians are the better for his having

lived. No true, noble life can be said to have been lived in vain.

Defeated and beaten though it may seem to have been, there has gone

out from it an influence for the better that has helped in some degree

to lighten the great heartache and bitterness of the world. Truth,

goodness, and self-sacrifice are never beaten,--no, not by death

itself. The example and the influence of such things is deathless, and

lives after the individual is gone, flowing on forever in the broad

life of humanity.

* * * * *

I write these last lines on Sauvie's Island--the Wappatto of the

Indians,--sitting upon the bank of the river, beneath the gnarled and

ancient cottonwood that still marks the spot where the old Columbia

trail led up from the water to the interior of the island. Stately and

beautiful are the far snow-peaks and the sweeping forests. The woods

are rich in the colors of an Oregon autumn. The white wappatto blooms

along the marshes, its roots ungathered, the dusky hands that once

reaped the harvest long crumbled into dust. Blue and majestic in the

sunlight flows the Columbia, river of many names,--the Wauna and

Wemath of the Indians, the St. Roque of the Spaniards, the Oregon of

poetry,--always vast and grand, always flowing placidly to the sea.

Steamboats of the present; batteaux of the fur traders; ships, Grey's

and Vancouver's, of discovery; Indian canoes of the old unknown

time,--the stately river has seen them all come and go, and yet holds

its way past forest and promontory, still beautiful and unchanging.

Generation after generation, daring hunter, ardent discoverer, silent

Indian,--all the shadowy peoples of the past have sailed its waters as

we sail them, have lived perplexed and haunted by mystery as we live,

have gone out into the Great Darkness with hearts full of wistful

doubt and questioning, as we go; and still the river holds its course,

bright, beautiful, inscrutable. It stays; _we go_. Is there anything

_beyond_ the darkness into which generation follows generation and

race follows race? Surely there is an after-life, where light and

peace shall come to all who, however defeated, have tried to be true

and loyal; where the burden shall be lifted and the heartache shall

cease; where all the love and hope that slipped away from us here

shall be given back to us again, and given back forever.

_Via crucis, via lucis._

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Variations in the spelling of the Molalla Indian tribe have been

retained.

Missing or extra quotation marks and minor inconsistencies of

punctuationwere silently corrected. However, punctuation has not

been changed to comply with modern standards. Inconsistency in

hyphenation also has been retained.

Footnotes have been renumbered consecutively and placed at the end

of each chapter.

Illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not

in the middle of a paragraph.

All missing page numbers were intentionally omitted in the original

publication.

Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved as printed in the

original book except for the following changes:

List of Illustrations: Multomah's changed to Multnomah's

(Multnomah's Death-canoe)

Page 137: that changed to than (No one knows this better than

Multnomah.)

Page 261: or changed to on (To the funeral pyre on _mimaluse_

island.)

Illustration facing page 264: Multomah's changed to Multnomah's

(Multnomah's Death-canoe)