Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/158



son's Bay man, who wanted nothing but the furry skins of dead animals. He understood that proposition. The Hudson's Bay man deprived him of nothing, but bought the pelt he had for sale, and that was a positive gain. But the Amer- ican was a different man. He came preaching peace and good will to all men, but he took up land, raised crops, built mills, bred domestic animals, sold the produce of the land for money to put in his pocket. There was no gain to the Indian in that, but a positive loss — the loss of land. And worse than this ; where there was one American in 1842, there were hundreds in 1843, and then hosts more coming. He had heard from the wandering Iroquois how the white man came as flocks of wild geese come and covered the prairies of Indiana, Illinois and other states. The Indian was terrified at the thought of losing his land, his home, his mother, and so he acted.

We are now able to give for the first time in history the first authentic account of the first great Indian council held west of the Rocky mountains by the Indians of Old Oregon. We print on another page the photograph of Timotsk, an aged Indian, a chief of the Klickitats, who was a member of that council. This coun- cil was held near where Fort Simcoe is located in the Yakima valley. Indian messengers had been sent out by the Cayuses to all other tribes in the Columbia river region and chiefs had come in from the Nez Perces, Spokanes, Shoshones, Walla Wallas, Waseoes, Umatillas, Cayuses, Klickitats and Yakimas. Timotsk says they were in council for ' ' a whole moon ; ' ' that is about a month ; and that there were about fifty chiefs in attendance. They talked from day to day as to what course they should pursue against the white men. The burden of all their fears and complaints were against the Americans; and was summed up in the belief that these white men would come more and more every year and finally take all their lands and hunting grounds from them; that they were even now killing and driving away all the deer, and that after a while the In- dians would have nothing to eat and must die. The Yakima, Cayuses, Walla Wallas, and some of the Spokanes advocated killing off all the Americans at once. The Nez Perces, Waseoes, Umatillas and Klickitats opposed this course, saying that the white men had good guns to fight with and would easily kill off the In- dians who had but a few guns and must fight mostly with bows and arrows.

After this council broke up, Timotsk came down to Vancouver and got em- ployment of Dr. McLoughlin as a boatman, in which work he continued for many years. He speaks of McLoughlin as a good man, a father to everybody, whites and Indians alike. As soon after this council had broken up and the measles broke out among the Indians at the Whitman mission. Dr. Whitman and family were massacred. Whitman would have been killed all the same if no sickness had occurred, as he was blamed by the Indians for going back over the moun- tains and bringing more white men out to Oregon. The Cayuses made it plain at the council that they would go on the war path and kill all the whites they could. And that is what they did do.

In some places the Indian population in the United States seems to be in- creasing slightly, but in other places it is decreasing.

In 1910 the Indian population of the United States was 265,683, as compared with 237,196 in 1900. According to these figures there was an increase in the Indian population from 1900 to 1910 of 28,487, or 12 per cent, as compared with