Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/88



his people. This may have been the reason that before accepting the office of high chief he addressed the Cay uses, and inquired if they would lay aside their differences, and give him their cordial support, which they promised.

But, on the following day, the people being reassembled, he resigned his office, giving as a reason the difference between his religion and that of most of his nation an evidence of his good sense, seeing how little it tpok to stir up strife among them. 5

His brother, Five Crows, was proposed in his stead, when the Cayusss exclaimed, "our hearts go out towards him with a rush," and his election was nearly unanimous, a proof of popularity which affected him to tears.

A feast, at which all sat down, red men and white men, Mrs. WhitH&an and the Indian women, closed the proceed ings, and /law as well as religion had become engrafted upon barbarism. The Indians went their way and the white men theirs. Mrs. Whitman returned with the agent s party to the lower country, being offered a place in one of the Hudson's Bay Company s boats.

At The Dalles, Dr. White spent two months instructing the several tribes which resorted to this ancient trading center of the Columbia river Indians. "I begged money," he says, " and procured articles for clothing to the amount of a few hundred dollars, not to be given, but to be sold out to the industrious women for mats, baskets, and their various articles of manufacture, in order to get them clothed comfortably to appear at church; and enlisted the cheerful cooperation of the mission ladies in instructing them how to sew and make up their dresses." He also


 * &gt; White had to settle an account with the Cayuses, which reminds one of Bonne-

ville s narration of his experience with them. When Jason Lee first passed through the Cayuse country in 1834, he was presented with some horses, which he received as a token of friendship, not knowing that pay for presents was expected. As he had been in the country for nine years without making any return, during which time they had often reproached Dr. Whitman for the omission by his white brother to pay his debts, it was thought best to settle with the Cayuses at this time, which was done by agreeing to give tiiem a cow for each horse Lee had received. At the price cows were then bringing in the colony, this was magnificent pay.