Page:The Conquest.djvu/250

 Percés.

Wat-ku-ese lay dying in her tent when she heard it. "White men, did you say? No, no, do not harm them. They are the crowned ones who were so good to me. Do not be afraid of them. Go near to them."

Cautiously the Nez Percés approached. The explorers shook their hands. This was to the Indians a new form of greeting.

Everywhere Indian women were digging the camas root, round like an onion, and little heaps lay piled here and there. They paused in their work to watch the strangers. Some screamed and ran and hid. Little girls hid their baby brothers in the brush. Others brought food.

So starved and famished were the men that they ate inordinately of the sweet camas and the kouse, the biscuit root. The sudden change to a warmer climate and laxative roots resulted in sickness, when the expedition might have been easily attacked but for those words of Wat-ku-ese, who now lay dead in her tent.

To this day the Nez Percés rehearse the story of Wat-ku-ese. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the whites, broken only when Chief Joseph fled over the Lolo trail. But even Chief Joseph found he must give up the vast areas over which he was wont to roam, and come under the laws of civilised life.

As fast as their weakness permitted councils were held, when the Captains told the Nez Percés of the Great Father at Washington, who had sent them to visit his children.

Twisted Hair, the Nez Percé Tewat, a great medicine man, dreamer and wizard and wise one, drew on a white elkskin a chart of the rivers. Admiring redmen put their hands over their mouths in amazement.

No one but Twisted Hair could do such things. He was a learned Indian, knew all the trails, even to the Falls of the Columbia.

"White men," said he, "live at the Tim-tim [falls]."

Thus into Idaho had penetrated the story of Ko-na-pe, the wrecked Spaniard, who with his son Soto had set out up the great river to find white people and tar