Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/91



the immigrants were forced to pay some article of clothing for having a stolen animal returned a transaction re peated every twenty-four hours the country along the Columbia river presented a fantastic show for months afterwards, of Indians dressed in the most incongruous and absurd combinations of savage and civilized costumes a spectacle witnessed more and more, with the passage of subsequent immigrant parties, for years.

As none of the new comers remained in the Cay use country, the jealous fears of the mission Indians appeared to be for the time allayed. They had been able in a few instances to exchange a fat bullock for a lean heifer, with a view to stock-raising, which gratified their ambition to become property holders, and furnished a reasonable motive in addition to the other, for the maintenance of peace in the region inhabited by the Indians under the charge of the Presbyterians.

At The Dalles the Methodists withdrew their missiona ries in the spring of 1844, leaving only H. B. Brewer in charge of the houses and other property at that place. Left to their own devices, and the temptations offered, these incorrigible rogues were not likely to improve in their manners, and did not. On the contrary, one of their chiefs, Cockstock by name, in November of this year came to the house of Dr. White in the Wallamet valley, intend ing to take his life; but finding him absent, wreaked his vengeance on the agent s house, breaking every window in it; the occasion for this display of wrath being the punishment of one of his relative for seizing Mr. Perkins in his own house, and attempting to tie, with the inten tion of flogging him, for some act displeasing to them.

Shortly after this visit of The Dalles chief, who, however, was not identified, a party of Klamaths and Molallas, painted and armed, rode down the valley seemingly bent on mischief, their proper countries lying from fifty to three hundred miles away. Dr. White, who was among the first to see them, determined to depend upon finesse rather