Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/320

314 for us to be very cautious while we were passing through their country. They have their Villages in the small valleys and nooks, deep in the mountains, where they keep their women and children, and to which they fly as soon as they have committed any depredation. Among these fastnesses they enjoy their booty in quiet, the Spaniards not daring to follow them among the mountains. They subsist, principally, upon horse-flesh, some of which they procure from the wild bands which cover the Valley of the St. Wakine, but principally from the Spanish bands, from which they frequently drove off hundreds, and sometimes thousands of horses. Many of these Horse Thieves have been educated in the Catholic Missions, where they were comfortably fed and clothed, and promised homes during their lives; but when the Missions were broken up—by the avarice of the Spaniards, these Indians fled to the mountains, from whence they have since continued to commit depradations and destroy the lives and property of their own enemies and destroyers.

Traveling up the St. Wakine we frequently saw large herds of Elk and wild Horses. The Elk, which were often in herds of four and five hundred, were not very easily frightened, and seldom ran to a great distance; but the Horses, which were still more numerous and were scattered in large hands all along the river, after having satisfied themselves with approaching and examining us, would dash off across the valley at full speed, and, in their course, whatever bands they came near would join the flight, until frequently the plain would be covered with thousands and thousands flying in a living flood towards the hills. Huge masses of dust hung upon their rear, and marked their track across the plain; and even after they had passed entirely beyond the reach of vision, we could still see the dust which they were throwing in vast