Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/209



pendent. Look at the Blackfeet, fleeing to the mountains to escape the contagion of white men." Slowly and yet more solemnly spoke the Delaware: "Disease will come to you and you will die, and they will take the land. I have warned you. Beware. Have nothing to do with white men. They scorn us. They kick us from their gates. We are but dogs."

Again the Delaware spoke: "They judge us by the border Indian degraded by the vices of white men. They call us drunken. Who brought the fire-water? We drank from the rill and the spring. They say the Indian fights. Has the white man never fought? The savage red man burns his enemy at the stake. Did the enlightened white man never burn his kindred, even helpless women, at the stake? I have read it."

Some one ventured to remark, "Dr. Whitman is good to Indians." The Delaware blazed. He leaped from the ground and strode back and forth, talking and gesticulating to the Indians that squatted before the camp-fire.

"A white man good to the Indian? Never. It is not in the race. Do I not know? Did they not come to my home on the Susquehanna? Did not the white man want a little land to till and we let him have it? And did not more white men come, and more and more, until the Delawares were driven west and west, and no longer had any home? Does not Whitman say this land belongs to the Americans? Is he not encouraging immigrants to come this way? In a little while they will come in a great tide, and the poor Indian may slink like a dog away."

The Delaware raised his hand "Never let the Americans settle on your lands."

"NEVER," said the Cayuses, "never, never."