Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/80

Rh pooya code. Though well acquainted with the patriarch I was not so with his family, and can now recall hut one of his children, a daughter who had reached the age of young womanhood. This girl wore an ornament thrust through her nose and resting on her upper lip. The ornament looked like ivory, was about four inches long and tapered to a point at each end. All agreed in calling it a spindle, and so this ornament won for her the name she was proud of, Spindle. I frequently saw shells, various in size and color, worn by the natives in this manner, but this ornament worn by "Spindle" was unusual in shape and size. Dickydowdow, with his family and relatives, had permanent quarters on the Rickreol. Here he had his winter house, and some of his relatives had a fish trap. There was a tradition that a long time ago, even before the patriarch had reached years of wisdom, the Cleopatra of the northwest coast lived at this old village. She was said to have been the child of Kalapooya and Mexican parents and very beautiful. She became known as La Creole. At this place the Indians built their best houses; and moving from place to place during the dry season, returned to them as winter approached.

Father built his first cabin on the point of a ridge a hundred and fifty feet above the valley. He said that in the river bottom where we lived in Missouri we had chills and fever. He wanted to build where we could get plenty of fresh air. In this he was not disappointed, for the sea breeze kept the hoards on the roof rattling all through the autumn season, and the first storm of winter blew the roof off. I awoke that night to find the rain pouring down into my face. I could see nothing overhead but darkness. The wind was blowing a gale while the rain poured down in torrents. The house being no longer a shelter or protection, we left it and retreated down the eastern slope of the hill to a big black stump. This place was not so much exposed to the fury of the gale and a fire was kindled against the stump. There was an abundance of wood, logs, tree tops and broken branches, and we soon had a roaring bonfire which lighted and dried the ground more than fifty feet around and made us so comfortable we children laughed in the face of the furious storm. Darkness gave way before the blaze and stood like a black wall around our brilliant fire.