Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/162

 gon City. The memorial stone erected at his grave in 1923 contains no conjugal reference.

The eligibility of Indian maidens as wives began to decline with the coming of white girls across the plains and still more so when they became indigenous by birth. The record of marriages in the 40's and 50's by Reverend J. S. Griffin, pastor of church and congregation of Tualatin Plains, has been preserved in the Library of Pacific University. In a list of 29 marriages only three of the brides were native women. For the red maidens in the tepees and lodges the times were changing. They could no longer dream in the old way that by the completeness and unselfishness and tender compulsion of their own devotion they could gradually become enveloped in the enduring affection of the white men they coveted. And so disconsolately the chief's daughter herself might stand by the roaring waterfall, might sit pensively on a mossy log along a forest trail, might look out from cliffs upon an immensity of geography that was glad and upon an immensity of life that was sad, because some Anglo-Saxon face she cherished in her visions was unobtainable and out of reach. She might know that her love was stronger, that her womanly capacity to give was greater, that she could more certainly uncage the spirit of happiness. These qualifications and the beauty of her face and slender body reflected in the pools, benefitted her but seldom, and mostly left her bereft, in the covered wagon days—because her face was dark and the face of her rival was pale.

It was the kind of melancholy felt by all losers of delightful monopolies. The Indian girls had had it all