Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/115

 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 107 you poor. But there was not always an abundance ; sometimes there was a shortage in nature's productions. You could not depend, even then, upon getting a bear or deer when you needed it and were reduced nearly to starvation sometimes. With a house and barn and stock, a cow giving milk, some pigs in the pen, some chickens about the premises, potatoes in the cellar and wheat in the bin, you would not be subject to any such pinches, if there was not a deer in the mountains, a camas root in the swale or a fish in the river. Let me say to you that the troubles which you lay to the coming of the white man are not so many or so bad as those you had before the whites came. I cannot refer you to your history for proof of what I say, for you have no history, but tribal wars were common then, whereas now there is peace between the tribes and very seldom any trouble between the two races. And do you know that tribes of men who try to live upon the spontaneous productions of the earth, must be at war with each other a great part of the time, if they are ever so well disposed and peaceable, for they must be continually striving against each other for subsistence. They cannot increase much in numbers, for there is not game enough to feed them. Just think of it in a practical way. A short time ago one of your best hunters, Ta-cotus-eeno-wit, borrowed my fine rifle to go hunting in the Blue Mountains. He was gone a week and did not get a single deer or anything larger than a grouse. That week's work on an acre of the Umatilla bottom would produce enough to last his family a year. A great part of this reservation is the best land in the country and is capable of supporting ten thousand people. You number about a thousand and can live with the help you get from the Govern- ment, better than your white neighbors. " Owing to delay in forwarding blankets bought of the Wil- lamette Woolen Mill Company in Salem, the issue of annuity goods to the three tribes did not take place until late in De- cember, when fortunately the weather was quite mild for this climate. Most of the goods, which were of excellent quality,