Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/45

Rh where I met them talked about the Sohli Tyee, or God, though they still spoke of the spirit of things.

In either case he is not so far removed from civilized man and his religious habits as some suppose, and if logical perception is not sufﬁcient proof of this, the conversion of the savage to Christianity and the adoption by him of the Christian symbols with entire satisfaction of his inherited traits ought to be conclusive. Through such manifestations it is not hard to discover that the Indian is a religious being and given to worship. He and his white brother are alike in seeing God in the clouds and hearing him in the wind; the only difference is, the red man's "soul was never taught to stray far as the solar walk or milky way." In some respects, however, I have been inclined to think him equally esthetic and more in practical conformity with Christian teaching than his more progressed white brother.

In the eastern part of Marion County. Oregon, there stands an isolated and most strikingly regular and beautiful butte some three hundred feet in height and covering nearly a section of land. It was fringed about its base, at the time of which I write, with ﬁr groves, but its sides and well-rounded and spacious top were devoid of timber, except a few old and spreading oaks, and perhaps a half dozen gigantic ﬁrs, whose weighty limbs were drooping with age. A meridian section line passes over the middle of this butte, and four sections corner near its top. While running this line and establishing these corners in 1851, I observed many semi-circular walls of stone, each enclosing space enough for a comfortable seat, and as high as one's shoulders when in a sitting posture, upon cross-sticks as high as the knee. And what was the purpose of these stone chairs? I was determined to know, and the older white residents said the Indians made them, but for what purpose they could not say. I became a witness to the use, and was particularly impressed with the ﬁtness for what I saw. Indians from the. Noth and South traveling that way generally camped upon the banks of the Abiqua Creek, a rapid stream of pure, cold water, just issued from the mountains upon the plain. The butte was near, and this they ascended