Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/67

 worthy navigator, when, on any trifling occurrence in the course of the voyage, quite commonplace in his eyes, he saw these young lands men running to record it in their journals;. . " Reference has been made to four important books by three of the most inveterate of these note-takers and journal-keepers.

It was in December, 1814, near the mouth of the Lewis River, after his party had just had a skirmish with the Indians, that Cox gives an admirable account of honor among them. While attempting to seize some of the goods of the white men, two Indians were killed. The relatives of the slain men demanded the lives of two white men to cover these deaths, particularly that of the red-haired chief, McDonald, who, on hearing it, "grinned horribly a ghastly smile." "Morning Star" interceded, "and the orators of Greece and Rome, when compared with him, dwindled in our estimation to insignificance." The oration is taken from Adventures on the Columbia River. The whole speech lasted two hours.

Friends and relations! Three snows have only passed over our heads since we were a poor miserable people. Our enemies the Shoshones, during the summer, stole our horses, by which we were prevented from hunting, and drove us from the banks of the river, so that we could not get fish. In winter, they burned our lodge... night; they killed our relations; they treated our wives and daughters like dogs, and left us either to die from cold or starvation, or become their slaves.

They were numerous and powerful; we were few, and weak. Our hearts were as the hearts of little children: we could not fight like warriors, and were driven like deer about the plains. When the thunders rolled, and the rains poured, we had no spot in which we could seek a shelter; no place, save the rocks, whereon we could lay our heads. Is such the case today? No, my relations! it is not. We have driven the Shoshones from our hunting-grounds, on which they dare not now appear, and have regained possession of the land our fathers, in which they and their fathers' fathers lie buried. We have horses and provisions in abundance, and can sleep unmolested with our wives and our children with out dreading the midnight attacks of our enemies. Our hearts are great within us, and we are now a nation!