Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/156

 When I come to understand your propositions, I will take hold. I do not know when. This is all I have to say."

General Palmer: "I would enquire whether Pe-pe-mox-mox or Young Chief has spoken for the Umatillas? I wish to know farther, whether the Umatillas are of the same heart?

Owhi, Umatilla Chief: "We are together and the Great Spirit hears all that we say today. The Great Spirit gave us the land and measured the land to us; this is the reason why I am afraid to say anything about the land. I am afraid of the laws of the Great Spirit. This is the reason of my heart being sad. This is the reason I cannot give you an ansM'er. I am afraid of the Great Spirit. Shall I steal this land and sell it, or what shall I do ? This is the reason why my heart is sad. The Great Spirit made our friends, but the Great Spirit made our bodies from the earth, as if they were different from the whites. What shall I do? Shall I give the land which is a part of my body and leave myself poor and des- titute? Shall I say I will give you my land? I cannot say so. I am afraid of the Great Spirit. I love my life. The reason why I do not give my land away is, I am afraid I will be sent to hell. I love my friends. I love my life. This is the reason why I do not give my land away. I have one more word to say. My people are far away. They do not know your words. This is the reason I cannot give you an answer. I show you my heart. This is all I have to say."

As explanatory of the trouble which led to the Whitman massacre, and to the wars with the Oregon Indians, Mrs. Victor in her history of the Indian wars of Oregon says, page 29 : " The real cause of ill feeling between the Indians and their Protestant teachers was the continued misunderstanding concerning the ownership of land and the accumulation of property. No one appeared to purchase the lands occupied by the missions; nor had any ships arrived with Indian goods and farming implements for their benefit, as had been promised."

Both the missionaries and the settlers had located in the Indian country and proceeded to build houses and cultivate the land as if the Indian had no title. That, indeed, was the way the white man had viewed the question from the first settlement in America. They who came from civilized Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries found the American continent peopled by tribes with- out cultivation, literature and refinement, or fixed habitations. They considered the Indians mere savages, having no rightful claim to the country of which they were in possession. Every European nation had deemed it had secured a lawful and just claim to any part of the American continent which any of its subjects had discovered, without any regard to the prior occupation and claims of the Indians. And even in much later times, and by the highest court, this view was affirmed as good law by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1810, delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States (Cranch's Reports, vol. 6, page 142) held, that the Indian title to the soil is not of such a character or validity as to interfere with the possession in fee, of the disposal of the land as the state may see fit.

It takes a long time to correct an erroneous principle of fundamental law, and a still longer time to beat down a race prejudice. The nation has had to spend billions of dollars and sacrifice almost millions of lives to extinguish the heresy that neither the black man nor the red man had any rights the white man was bound to respect. And while our nation has finally arrived at the full stand- ard of giving justice and equity to all men, without respect of persons, the great