Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/375



REMINISCENCES OF MARTHA E. GILLIAM COLLINS 367

"The summer I was fourteen we were milking 24 cows. We didn't have the money to buy American cows, so we broke the half-wild Spanish cows to milk. Many and many is the time they would tree me while I was trying to break them to be milked. They were thin-flanked, long-legged and long- horned and wild as deer, but night and morning I milked my string of twelve of them. We sold the butter for 50 cents a pound and it was sent to the California mines. We got 50 cents a pound for all the bacon we cured. We saved from our butter and bacon that summer better than $800.

"My brother Marcus and I were chums. I thought any- thing he did was just right. We fought each other's battles and were very devoted to each other. When the Yakima Indian war came on they wanted recruits, so he volunteered. I didn't want him to go for father had been killed in the Cayuse war, and I thought our family had shown patriotism enough, but Mark felt that he should go, so I did all I could to help get him ready. The young folks came in to bid him good bye. I was feeling pretty bad about it, so he said 'Don't you feel bad, Lizzie, I'll bring you home an Indian's scalp.' Mark went and his company got into a pretty bad fight. A Klickitat warrior raised up from behind a rock and shot at Mark but missed him. The next time the Indian raised his head Mark put a bullet thro' it and then ran down to get his scalp. The other Indians tried to keep him from scalping the Indian he had killed and they all fired at Mark. My brother-in-law, Judge Collins, was there, and he said the gravel and dust was just fairly boiling around Mark as he stooped over and scalped the Indian. The bullets hit all 'round him, but nary a one hit him, and he brought the scalp back to me when he came back from the war. I kept it for years, but the moths got in it and the hair began shedding, so I burned it up.

"I have always liked Indians. One of the prettiest Indian girls I ever saw was Frances, the Indian girl Lieutenant Philip H. Sheridan lived with. She was a Rogue River Indian girl. She was as graceful as a deer and as slender as a fawn. She