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XXXIX

THE WHITMAN MASSACRE 1847

STILL the procession was on the plains. Still echoed the crack of the ox-whip and the captain's call "Close up! close up! Why don't you keep close together? The Indians could kill all in the forward wagons before you 'd know it, and then come back and scalp the last one of you fellows here behind."

In the morning they milked the cows and put the milk in the churns. Up hill and down dale they went, jiggety-jog, all day long, until at night the butter was come.

And the Indians on the plains? At first they watched the invading whites. Still there were buffalo, still they were rich. But scant and scanter grew the pastures under the tread of immigrant cattle. Farther and farther retreated the buffalo. The timber by the streams disappeared. Bare and more barren grew the land. Unrest, distrust, collisions came. The Indians on the plains began to scalp the invading whites. More and more the march from the Black Hills to the Dalles became a rout, a retreat, a flight from pursuing famine. The measureless plains stretched under the brazen sun. The stony mountains, the grandest and most desolate on the continent, rimmed in the distant sky. The sand scorched, the dust suffocated, the wagons went to pieces. Furniture was thrown overboard; claw-footed