Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/119

 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGKNT. Ill Late in January of the year 1863 a very virulent type of measles was somehow introduced among the Indians of the Umatilla Reservation and carried off in the next three months a great part of the children under six years of age. The agency physician seemed to have no success in treating it, and laid his failure to the nursing or co-operative treatment which parents insisted upon in every case. The Indian's venerated custom of a hot steam bath, followed by a cold douche or plunge into the ice cold water of the river, was followed by a speedy collapse of the vital powers of the infant. Almost every day a funeral procession passed on its way to the bury- ing ground upon the bluff, and though unattended by the outward signs of woe, common to enlightened people, the sight was inexpressibly sad. More doleful, in truth, than the hearse with its sable plumes and the slow-moving funeral procession indicative of civilization's grief, was the little squad of half-clad mourners bearing a-foot to the grave a rude pine box containing the body of one whose loss to them was as sore a trial, perhaps, as the Anglo-Saxon feels when death enters his household. To those accustomed to the comforts of highly progressive society, the destitution of bar- baric tribes seems to deepen the mournful feeling occasioned by death, and I frequently queried whether the pangs of separation were as sharp and poignant to the Indian as to us. Answering from all outward appearances, I should say yes. They do not forget their places of interment, and they ener- getically refuse to leave the country where their loved ones are buried. I had been a witness to many scenes of mourning and had heard, as I supposed, all the agonizing tones of which the human voice is capable in times of grief, but the saddest and most heart-rending wail I ever heard came from an Indian woman kneeling by the side of her dead husband. It seemed as though every human aspiration and hope had been utterly extinguished. What effect religion may have in ameliorating the pains of. the bereaved, I know not, for, unlike his white brother, there