Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/266

 258, T. W. DAVENPORT. should not estrange us from the conviction that youth is the era of involuntary absorption, and that what we get then remains a part of us to the end. When I was seven years old, I committed to memory all the coarse print of Kirham's Grammar and Olney's Geography, and they are within call at the age of seventy-seven, while memory often refuses to yield up the burden committed to it in more mature years. A fine subject for study and experiment was a little Indian boy six or eight years of age that lived in my family during the years 1858 and 1859. He was a relic of the Rogue River Indian War of 1855 and 1856, having been wounded by a buckshot in the lag in "The Cabin Fight" and found in the cabin after the Indians had abandoned it. The Indians, being hotly pursued by the white settlers, took refuge in a log cabin from which they could command any approach and hold their assailants out of rifle range. To remedy this state of things, a mountain howitzer was being forwarded from the nearest fort, and the besieged Indians, guessing the cause of the apparent suspension of hostilities, awaited until dark, when they broke out, every fellow trusting to his heels, and escaped, it is said, without the loss of a man. A man by the name of Bozart claimed the boy as his prize, extracted the bullet, which had not done serious damage, named him Charley, and signified his intention of taking him to Missouri and selling him as a slave. Charley was a beautiful Indian boy with an admirable form and physical development, a good face and naturally shaped head, showing that he was not of the tribes addicted to the hideous custom of flattening their children's skulls while infants. My brother believed him to be a Modoc and was desirous of knowing what could be made of such a perfect specimen of the aborigine by education and rearing in a civilized community, and therefore got his release from Bozart. Being without a family, brother John took the boy to the Willamette and left him with mine for a season. At that time he could speak a little English, and young as he was, showed a very firm determination to hold fast the customs and habits of his tribe. His coal black hair was thick, matter!