Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/201

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He had returned and told Spalding all he knew about it, and Spalding had said he would go to the Wallamet, tell the governor the Nez Percés had saved his life, and that theirs must tie saved.

Timothy preferred not to talk. He said: "You hear these chiefs; they speak for all. I am as one in the air; I do not meddle with these things; the chiefs speak; we are all of one mind."

Richard, who accompanied Dr. Whitman to the states in 1835, was glad the governor had spoken so kindly. His people did not wish to go to war. They had been taught by their old chief, Cut-nose, to take no bad advice, but to adhere to the good. As for Ellis, he was in the buffalo country, but he was confident he would be for peace.

Kentuck, the Nez Percé who had conducted Dr. Parker through the Salmon river country in 1835, next spoke, saying that he had been much with the Americans and the French, and nothing could be said injurious of him. He had fought with the Americans against the Blackfoot people. He had been with Fremont in California the year previous, not for pay, but from regard for the Americans. It had been falsely said that he was with the Cayuses in these murders. His people had never shed the blood of Americans, and he was glad that only the really guilty were to be punished.

Camaspelo, the only Cayuse chief present, confessed that his nation had two hearts. Tamsucky had consulted him on the subject of the massacre, but he had refused to have anything to do with it, giving as a reason that his child was sick and he had no heart for murder; but Tamsucky had returned to the other chiefs and told them he con sented.

Such was the talk of these chiefs. Camaspelo might have further said that at the very time he was being con sulted about Dr. Whitman s murder, the doctor had ridden many miles to visit his sick child, and had not been told of the danger that at that moment overhung hi