Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/209

Rh here and there, the dark green Pines arose to the height of two hundred feet.

Late in the evening about twenty of the Umpqua Indians came into our camp. At night several of them, being induced by a half-breed Frenchman of our party, who was always fond of witnessing and participating in all the games and amusements of his savage brethren, performed one of their War Dances. After equipping and painting themselves in the most hideous manner which their imaginations, almost perfect in such savage arts, could possibly invent: having their bows and arrows in their hands, with all their implements of war about them, and being arranged in a row on one side of the Camp fires, while we, who were looking on, occupied the other, they began dancing, singing at the same time in the wildest and most fiend-like strain, making the most hideous grimaces, and every variety of threatening gesture: some times throwing into their countenances a most intense gaze, and with lowering brows and eyes directed along their arrows, as if riveted upon some fated object upon which they were about to spring and transfix with a deadly weapon, they would suddenly bend their bows to the very arrow's head, as if in the act of shooting a foe; then recovering, with a dreadful smile of savage satisfaction, they would flourish their arms about their heads and throw into their song a tone of fiendish triumph, such as would compel the stoutest nerves to cringe. During the dance one of the number, who appeared to act the Chief, and to be bound to excel in the terrible, crouched to one half his natural stature, facing the rest, and if possible more hideously arrayed, kept moving by short, quick, patting steps from one end of the line to the other. At intervals, when they appeared to have finished one part, they would all straighten themselves up to their full height, and utter several loud, shrill, piercing yells, which thrilled through