Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/79



which hung in ringlets down his neck. Mr. Geiger, who was a small man, was mounted on a donkey, also very small and very antic, which gave the Indians much cause for laughter. Mrs. Whitman accompanied them on horse back, as did Mr. Perkins, whose legs were as long as Geiger s were short. Two Indian women in calico dresses, riding astride, one with a child before her, and three Indian men, with Hines and White, completed the party.

The Indians were pleased to show their farms. They realized that their condition as to food was vastly improved over what it was when the first Americans visited them. It was found that sixty Cay uses were cultivating each a small piece of ground in wheat, corn, pease, and potatoes; arid they were pleased to be commended for their industry.

Rather late in the day Mr. Perkins left the party to go to the camps of Tauitowe and Five Crows, and also that of Peu-peu-mox-mox, to invite them to a conference at Waiilatpu. He spent the night at the lodge of the latter dignitary, whose son Elijah Hedding had been for a time in the Methodist mission school in the Wallamet valley. The chief and the missionary had evening prayers together, all the family joining in the exercises; and in the morning Perkins was so early in the saddle that he surprised Tauitowe in the act of calling his people together for the daily religious service by ringing a bell. His prayer, according to the report of Perkins, was, as he slipped his beads, "We are poor, we are poor, we are poor," ten times, closing with "Good Father, good son, good spirit," until the beads were all counted a petition which meant as much to the Indian as the long orations addressed to the Infinite in thousands of enlightened pulpits.

The chiefs invited by Perkins declined to meet for the purpose of considering the laws without the presence of Ellis, whose approbation of any course they might pursue appeared to be by them considered of the highest im portance. Finding them immovable, White finally relin quished the effort to have the Cayuses committed to the