Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/262

 254 T. W. DAVENPORT. The Indians of the West Coast were given to amulets or charms and generally kept them secreted. They believed, too, in a multiplicity of spirits distributed among the objects of nature; such as the spirit of the mountain, the stream and smaller things. That is the mountain had a ' ' ta-man-a-was, ' ' that was the name given by many. They also believed in a great spirit, but whether that idea was obtained from the mis- sionaries, I cannot tell. When I arrived in Oregon in 1851, the Indians everywhere I met them talked about the Sohli Tyee or Gk>d, though they still spoke of the spirit of things. In either case he is not so far removed from civilized man and his religious habits as some suppose, and if logical percep- tion is not sufficient proof of this, the conversion of the savage to Christianity and the adoption by him of the Christian sym- bols, with entire satisfaction of his inherited traits, ought to be conclusive. Through such manifestations it is not hard to discover that the Indian is a religious being and given to worship. He and his white brother are alike in seeing God in the clouds and hearing him in the wind, the only difference is, the red man's soul was never taught to s^ay ar as the Solar walk or Milky Way. In some respects, however, I have been inclined to think him equally esthetic and more in practical conformity with Christian teaching than his more progressed white brother. In the eastern part of Marion County, Oregon, there stands an isolated and most strikingly regular and beautiful butte some three hundred feet in height and covering nearly a sec- tiontion of land. It was fringed about its base, at the time of which I write, with fir groves, but its side and well-rounded and spacious top were devoid of timber, except a few old and spreading oaks and perhaps a half dozen gigantic firs whose weighty .limbs were drooping with age. A meridian section line passes over the middle of this butte and four sections corner near its top. While running this line and establishing these corners in 1851, I observed many semicircular walls of stone enclosing space enough for a comfortable seat and as high as one's shoulders when in a sitting posture, upon cross