Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/33

Rh W. W. Kone and J. H. Frost of the latest Methodist reenforcement were sent to the mouth of the Columbia, and settled on the Clatsop plains. Here the degradation of the natives was such that the spirits of the missionaries revolted. It was bad enough at The Dalles, where Mrs. Perkins had interfered to prevent an Indian boy slave from being bound to the corpse of his master, to die of horror, in order that he might accompany the chief to the spirit world memelose illahee. But at Clatsop the Indians were, in addition to the degradation of superstitions, utterly corrupted. Frost relates that the health of the people was destroyed by syphilis, and their number rapidly decreasing. In addition, infanticide was common. When Mrs. Frost asked the Indian women why they killed their children, they answered that they could not take care of them and perform besides all the labor exacted of them by their husbands, who beat them if they failed. Like the interior tribes, they were ready enough to be converted if there was anything to be gained by it, and their excitable natures found relief in the exercises of an animated prayer meeting, with singing, of which they were fond; as their ill-clad and ill-fed bodies found comfort in the forced hospitality of the mission house, the floor of which was often at night covered with the poor wretches.

These Indians were not much feared. It was true they sometimes committed a murder, but so do white men; and the crime was promptly punished in their case by the fur company. Had they not been held in dread of hanging, it might have been worse for their teachers.

In 1842 a mission site selected in the vicinity of Puget Sound and Fort Nisqualiy the previous year, was abandoned, and the missionary, J. P. Richmond, returned east. The Indians in the region were more warlike than those on the Columbia, but the reason given for leaving the country was that it was not fit for farming.

From all these facts, selected only to show the condition of Oregon west of the Cascades when the first immigration arrived, the following conclusions may be drawn:—