Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/184

178 cause to discourage an intercourse which would otherwise have been commenced, and carried on, to the great advantage of both. This character, which has been and still is so extremely detrimental, is in a great degree, unmerited and incorrect.

The coast South from Cape Look Out, (twenty miles South of the mouth of the Columbia,) to the Umpqua, is generally rugged and mountainous. There are some small valleys on the intermediate streams; but none of sufficient extent to demand attention. At Cape Look Out, which is a lofty and frowning rock extending into the sea, there are extensive sands and a vast rock rising out of the water, called Kilamoox Head, upon which, when the wind is high from the West, the Ocean waves dash and break in such fury, that the roaring may be distinctly heard in the Willammette Valley.

The Indians, West of the Cascade Mountains, are divided into numerous small bands, and many of them without any acknowledged head. There were once, on the waters of the Columbia, the Willammette, and along the shores of the Ocean, powerful tribes, but pestilence and disease, since the coming of the white man, have swept them rapidly away, until but a few poor, wretched, degraded beings, beyond the reach of charity, remain. Once Chenamus, a proud, intelligent, and influential Chief of the Chenooks, held sway over all the tribes between the shores of the Pacific and the Cascades and between the Umpqua and Puget's Sound, and extended his influence beyond the Mountains. But, after his death, his place was never filled; and now, the bones of his people are scattered upon the rock and hills, and their dwelling places are their graves. The bones of hundreds, perhaps thousands, lay heaped up promiscuously together. And