Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/69

Rh watch below. Very few words were spoken, but I heard enough to know that the pioneers were not afraid to fight, but were afraid the Indians would set fire to the house. I must have fallen asleep as soon as the fretful child was quiet, for I can recall nothing more of that night. Shortly after sun-up next day the Kalapooyas prepared to follow the Molalla raiders, who had taken a number of ponies. About twenty warriors made up the party. I saw them march away in pursuit of the "Mesahche Molallas." War paint was smeared on their faces, and some had tied cords and red bandages around their heads from which feathers of many kinds and colors waved and fluttered in the morning breeze. Feathers also decorated the manes and tails of their ponies.

I had seen a great army of the Sioux on the war path against the Blackfeet when we crossed the Dakota plains on our way west the summer before, and I did not think very highly of this war party of Kalapooyas. They returned that same day, having no scalps to show us. They failed to overtake the raiders. A few days after the raid mentioned we heard of a fight at Tum-Chuck in which a Molalla was killed. A white man by the name of Lebreton was shot in the arm with a poisoned arrow and died of the wound. A number of others were struck by arrows but not seriously wounded. We decided that the same Indians made the attack at both places. The stream which flows into the Willamette River a short distance above Oregon City is now known as the "Molalla." In those days all the country round about the Molalla River and its branches, even to the great white mountain eastward, and far south of it, was the land of the Molallas.

I have said our first winter was mild. I can recall but one snow storm and this snow disappeared in a few hours. There was ice on a few mornings, but it was no thicker than window glass. I might have forgotten that little snow storm, had it not been necessary for me to gather sticks and chips for fuel; picking them out of the snow made my hands ache, and when I went to the fire to warm them the agony brought the tears to my eyes. We had no team nor wagon and could not borrow. The home of the man who lived on the mission farm