Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/366

 358 T. W. DAVENPORT. without such sympathies people do not become acquainted; they cannot weigh each other. How many times conflicts and wars could have been averted by a mutual understanding, by putting ourselves in the Indian's place. And here I must narrate an incident that occurred on the plains in the year 1850. Our train of fifteen wagons and as many men was passing through the Otoe Indian country, some fifty miles west of the Missouri River, when descending into a hollow we came unexpectedly upon a hundred Indians sit- ting in a semi-circle facing the road. One of them arose and approached, evidently with the desire to say something. The train halted and this man said that his brethren sitting there were Otoe Indians, that they had depended in times past upon hunting and fishing for a living, but since the travel through their country to Sante Fe, Salt Lake, California and Oregon had become so constant during the hunting season, there was no longer any game for them. They could not go north or west without meeting with their enemies, the Pawnees and Sioux, or to the south without coming in contact with the more dreaded Comanches, and they thought it not out of the proper way to ask travelers through their country to contribute some- thing for their support. This was said in good English and with a respectful manner. At that, one of our men, Mr. Ephraim Cranston, from Ohio, began what I should call a Fourth of July oration, in which he informed the Indian speaker in grandiloquent style that we were American citizens, entitled to travel anywhere in Uncle Sam's dominions and that we came prepared to resist any encroachments upon our rights. At the close of that peroration, the Indians, if they had been inclined to ridicule, should have given liberal applause, for we had no guns in sight and probably could not have presented a loaded rifle in 15 minutes by the watch, while there sat 100 Indians with their guns, every one presumably ready for instant service. The Indian, like a sensible man, made no reply and my father asked him how much they had been requesting travellers to contribute. He answered, $1