Page:Our First Indian War.djvu/4

Rh in the last stages of dysentery, in the midst of every kind of filth, of itself sufficient to cause sickness, with no means of alleviating their inconceivable sufferings, with perhaps one well person to look after the wants of two sick ones. They were dying every day; one, two, and sometimes five in a day, with the dysentery, which generally followed the measles."

There were Indians and half-breeds among the Cayuses, who had come from other tribes, notably Jo Lewis, who were not friendly to the Americans and who stirred up ill feeling among the natives by telling them that the whites would poison them and get rid of them as fast as they could so the valuable lands along the river bottoms could be turned into farms. Many matters of more or less importance had come up during the three or four years prior to 1847 that had lessened the influence of the missionaries over the Indians.

The first white women to cross the plains were Mesdames Whitman and Spalding, in 1836.

Doctor and Mrs. Whitman settled at Waiilatpu, in the Walla Walla valley, a few miles below the present city of Walla Walla. Mr. and Mrs. Spalding went up the Snake river to Lapwai, near the present city of Lewiston, Idaho. Mr. Gray assisted for a time at both places, but the next year he went back East to intercede with the Missionary Board to send out more missionaries. This errand was successful. Soon after he reached the Eastern States he married Mary A. Dix, and in 1838 Revs. A. B. Smith, Elkanah Walker and Cushing Eells, and Wm. H. Gray and their brides, and Cornelius Roger's made up this reinforcement. The trip across the continent was a wedding tour for the three newly-married couples. This was the second party of ladies to accomplish this arduous and perilous undertaking.

At this time Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona were foreign territory, and Oregon was so much foreign country that it was necessary for the missionaries to procure passports from the Secretary of War. That to Eells and party was dated February 27, 1838.

The houses were of logs or sun-dried bricks—adobes, with the earth for a floor and evergreen boughs or cedar bark for a roof. Cooking was done at an open fire—stoves were unknown. Daylight came in at the open door, or through small windows covered with cotton cloth or oiled deerskin. Tables, chairs, and all the scanty furniture, were of home manufacture from boards split from logs. There was but one saw mill, and that at Fort