Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/143

 It is Bannock Jack’s band. They have brought us very sad news from there. They say that all their ponies have been taken from them, and all their guns too, for something two of their men had done. They got drunk and went and shot two white men. One of the Indians had a sister out digging some roots, and these white men went to the women who were digging, and caught this poor girl, and used her shamefully. The other women ran away and left this girl to the mercy of those white men, and it was on her account that her brother went and shot them. They are the cause of all our trouble, and caused us all to lose our horses and everything we had, and we all left there thinking your good agent was with you yet. We have come to make us a home with you, but we see that your new agent is very bad indeed, for not giving you anything to live on. He knows you have not got anything and can get nothing, unless you steal it somehow.”

This is what the Bannocks told my people, and they brought it to me in St. John Day’s valley, and asked me to go with them. I told them I could not go just then, but I would go about the last of the month.

They said, “We ourselves have lost some of our horses, and we would like to have you write us a letter that we can show to some of the whites who live round here. Maybe they could tell us something about it. But we think the Columbia River Indians have stolen them, or the Umatilla Indians, we don’t know which, for a party of both of them were at the agency.”

Very late in the fall my people came again while I was living with Mrs. Courly, and once more they asked me to talk for them. I then told them I would do what I could. “If it was in my power I would be too happy to do so for you, but I am powerless, being a woman, and yet you come to me for help. You have your interpreter; why