Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/125



THE RED MEN. Ill

Even the ocean has a bottom.

These rude red men love their lands and their homes. The homes for which their fathers fought for a thousand generations, where their fathers lie buried with their deeds of daring written all over the land, every mountain pass a page of history ; every mountain peak a monument to some departed hero; every mountain stream a story and a tradi tion. They love and cherish these as no other people can, for their lands, their leafy homes, are all they have to love.

I know very well they have never received so much as a red blanket for all the matchless and magnificent Willamette valley; and, I may add, that the whites never took that in war, and so cannot claim it as a conquest. No white man s blood ever stained that great and fertile valley at the hands of an Indian.

True, there are Reservations over on the sea, forty and fifty miles away from the valley ; but the interior Indian had as soon descend silently to his grave as go there to live. Hundreds have so chosen and acted on the c^^e. The sea-coast Indians are u fish-eatexo. stink! " say the valley Indians,

u while we of the interior eat venison and acorns."

Their feuds and wars were fierce, and reached farther back than their traditions. Fancy these val ley Indians being induced to go over there on their enemies lands to make a home. Their own sense of justice revolted at it. Besides, they knew they would