Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/246

206 half-breed known as Jo Lewis seems to have become possessed with the diabolical mania of massacre. He made the Indians think that Whitman was poisoning them. Istickus or Sticcus, a Umatilla Indian and a warm friend of Whitman, had formed some impression of the plot and suggested the danger. Whitman's intrepid spirit laughed at this, but Mrs. Whitman, though equally intrepid, seems to have felt some premonition of the swift coming doom, for the mission children found her in tears for the first time since the death of her beloved little girl eight years before. The Doctor tried to soothe her by declaring that he would arrange to go down the River at once. But on that very day, November 28, 1847, the picturesque little hill rising a hundred feet above the mission ground, now surmounted by the granite shaft of the Whitman monument, was observed to be black with Indians. It was evident from various sinister aspects that something was impending.

On the next day, November 29th, at about one o'clock, while Dr. Whitman sat reading, a number of Indians entered the room. Having gained his attention by the usual request for medicines, one of them, afterwards said by some to have been Tamahas, and by others have been Tamsaky, rushed suddenly upon the Doctor and struck his head with a tomahawk. Another wretch named Telaukait, to whom the Doctor had been the kindest friend, then cut and hacked the noble face of the philanthropist. The work of murder thus inaugurated went on with savage energy. The men about the mission were speedily slain, with the exception of a few who were in remote places and managed by special fortune to