Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/443



THE CENTENNIAL IIISTOllY OF OKECOX 285

Clackiinias, t'alapooia.s, IMolallas and other tribes, wliose names in some instances si ill pertaiu to the land they lived in. These Indians, like most of their race, had no fixed dwelling place. When the camas or wapato or berries were ready i'or gathering or digging, they migrated in bands to places where these things were to be had. When salmon were plenty at the Falls or do\^^l the Columbia, the men would be off fishing. In the fall there was game in abundance, par- ticularly wild fowl, and the tribes followed these necessary ob.iects of their lives from place to place over large tracts, from the river to the mountains, from the mountains to the sea. The aborigines had been rapidly decreasing in number for half a century or more. Their traditions tell of terrible pestilence among them, even before the first contact with the white race on the Pacific, half a century before Lee's coming. The year after Lee established the mission llie ^lultnomahs living on Wapato Island and the ad.joiuing low lands, died by hundreds from measles, having been infected from a trading vessel in the river. 'I'iie disease contracted from the whites had greatly reduced the population of the Willamette, and soon after the establishment of the mission sickness of a dangerous sort prevailed among the Indian children, who had, up to that lime been received in considerable numbei's, and begun their new duties as proselytes of the mission with encouraging zeal and interest. The sickness seemed to cling about the place for years. It was a fever, and is explained by some as malarial, due to the cultivation of the moist lowlands. Jason Lee and his two assistants gave the utmost care possible to the sick, and Daniel Lee was compelled to seek relief from labor and sickness by a voyage to the Sand- wich Islands the following winter.

Like certain Asiatics, our Indians held the medicine man responsible when the patient died; this spirit of vengeance nearly cost Lee and his companions their lives more than once. Some other Indians, grateful for kindnesses shown them, gave Lee warning.

The Indians of 1834, in the western Oregon countrj^ were half savage only, the nobler traits of the ancient race being supplanted by the white man's vices. The remoter tribes maintained the tribal customs and manner of living, but from Astoria to Wai-il-at-pu, and for a hundred miles up the Willamette, the tools, trinkets, arms and cast off clothing of the whites were common enough. The Indians of this locality attempted to imitate the trapper and voyageur. Many hovered about the trading posts, more ready to eat the scraps and offal than follow the ancient hardy habits of their race. Exceptional Indians foresaw this new order, and were anxious that their children should get the wisdom of the white man, or even his religion. Manj^ such children came under the care of the Willamette mission.

The children of French Prairie were more hopeful subjects for instruction. Their fathers were mostly Canadian trappers and voyaguers, formerly servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had taken Indian women to wife in their days of wandering; and now domesticated in the heart of the valley, released from service, they were glad to have the mission and school available for their children.

The settlement on the "Prairie" now included in the old Catholic parishes of St. Louis and St. Paul, was begun in 1829. Dr. McLoughlin advised the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company who had served their enlistmen