Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/699

648 of them having been detained by sickness, and some by the lateness of the season. All who remained were employed, as far as possible, by Whitman, who, notwithstanding the threatening circumstances, was making improvements on his mill. The doctor was a man of affairs; he loved work, and he liked to see others work. Thus absorbed, it was little wonder he failed to perceive the black shadow approaching.

As is usual with armies, large migrations, or any great bodies of people moving together without the ordinary comforts of life, disease broke out among the immigrants of 1847. A severe illness known as mountain fever, and apparently occasioned by the extremes of temperature encountered in the mountains during the latter part of the summer—hot days and cold nights—prostrated many of the adults, and measles attacked the younger portion of the people. This disease, usually considered simple and manageable, became malignant under the new conditions in which it was developed. It seems to have been at its height when the trains, all having some sick, were passing through the Cayuse country. What was malignant among the strangers, when it was imparted to the natives became fatal, whether from ignorance of proper modes of treatment, or from the character of the disease itself. The measles of 1847, like the intermittent fever of 1829–30 and 1834–7, became a scourge to the natives. The white men who introduced it could not be held to blame, but the natives made them responsible, not