Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/99



sweat and the river-douse had been refused. Thrown out, the boy burned through the fever and lived.

"My legal primer says necessity knows no law," said the practical Ogden, lighting the funeral pyre. Men, now living, saw the grinning skulls of that Golgotha. Dr. McLoughlin adopted the little Indian slave and named him Benjamin Harrison, for a member of the London Board. He was a bright, attractive child, and became a favorite at the fort.

There was another chief, Maniquon, an old man bereft of his people. Sometimes they could hear him at night walking around the fort, singing a low sad song of death. Sometimes he would tell of other days, when he rode to the chase or fought in battle. "Eighty snows have chilled the earth since Maniquon was born. Maniquon has been a great warrior." The dim eye would glitter, the withered chief would leap and brandish an imaginary tomahawk, then sink back exhausted. " Maniquon is not a warrior now. He will never raise his axe again. His young men have deserted his lodge. His sons have gone down to their graves, and the squaws will not sing of their great deeds." Leaning toward the listener he would ask, "Who has made my people what they are?"

"The Great Spirit, Maniquon."

The old chief would leap like a fiend and fiercely whisper, "The white man did it; the white man did it." Fierce old Maniquon. To the end of his days he believed the Hudson's Bay Company poisoned the people of Wapato to get the beautiful island for a dairy farm. Long ago, in the ancient days of Wauna, the Multnomahs were a mighty people. All the tribes met them in council under the oaks and willows of Wapato. Now herds of cattle were sent to range where Indian