Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/368



3

Whole Indian villages lay prostrate. Old Waskema in distress flitted from camp to camp; she squatted by every fire. With her knotted cane in hand she stood on the edge of the forest and pointed toward the settlements "Skookum turn-turn gone. Squaw man stay. Quick in the night, quick, cut down the Boston people," hoarsely she whispered to Koosta, chief of the Molallas.

In old time Waskema told the fortunes of chase and of battle. Could she still divine? Koosta sat in his smoky hut and watched her with the luminous eyes of a hunted deer. But he made no move. The moans of his children filled the hut. Waskema flew wild, stamping her feet and tearing her hair. "Shame! shame! shame! "she cried. "Sick, all die. No medicine, no food, no powder. Boston take land, take game, poison us, starve us." Her frenzy was fearful to look upon. A sick baby stretched its thin hand for a wee little muskrat toasting on the coals. A skinny old man came in with a sack of bread, begged at Champoeg.

Old Waskema's tamanowas (spirit) had a strange charm for the young men. Down in the damp marsh grew the Oregon yew; they were shaping it into arrows. She sanctioned what they desired bloodshed and plunder.

Eighty Klamaths came over the southern mountains, and camped at the head of Abiqua creek, a branch of the Willamette, near Koosta's camp. Another force camped in the passes of the Callapooias waiting. The Warm Spring Indians hung like a cloud at the foot of Mt. Jefferson. The Klickitats were riding down the zigzag mountain passes ready to join them.

It was March, raw and windy and squally with sno