Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/259



1894.]

Minnie- Wah- Wah.

MINNIE- WAH-WAH.

195

ON THE side of a large rock, in a nook of the Argentian hills, in the State of Washington, is cut the name, " Minnie- Wah-Wah." Perhaps not one of the readers of the OVERLAND knows who Minnie- Wah-Wah was ; yet our people might to remember her kindly, for she gave up home and happiness, and gained the enmity so far as she knew of her tribe, for the sake of the whites. She was a Spokane Indian girl, daughter of an Indian named Coyote Chief : he was not the chief of the tribe, but simply chanced to bear that name. She was one of the converts of the old Whitman Mission at Waitipeii,and an exceedingly devoted one, completely absorbed in trying to carry out the precepts and example of Doctor Whitman. Her borne was on the northern waters of the hamokane Creek, near the old Fort olville road, which has been traveled
 * or more than a hundred years, and is
 * oday more traveled than all the other

Stevens County roads put together. She is said to have been a very pretty girl, Df unusually amiable and happy dispo- sition, and an especial favorite in her pwn tribe. She was about sixteen years pld, and had been promised in marriage to a wealthy son of the Montana Flat- pead tribe. It was thought that this marriage would effect an exceedingly iesirable alliance between the tribes, md the prospect of it had already Drought them into closer relations. Minnie-Wah-Wah herself was happy in icr approaching marriage, but mainly Because she hoped to be able through it
 * o extend the influence of her new re-

igion among the Flatheads. I It was only a few days before the time set for the wedding, and prepara- tions were already under way, when the news reached the Spokanes that the

Mission had been attacked, and the Whitmans brutally murdered by the Flatheads. It affected the girl so in- tensely that no influence on earth could persuade her to go on with the marriage. She said : " No ; I have begged of him as I have begged of all the people of my nation to be good to Father Whitman, who is the son of the Great Spirit ; but instead you have let him be killed as you would kill a coyote. None of you even cry when he and his good wife are mur- dered. No, I cannot marry this man. His heart is bad. The Indian nation is like a band of wolves after one poor lamb. I will not let poor Minnie-Wah- Wah be the wife of the red man whose heart is so cruel ; my skin is red like that of the Siwash, but my heart is white like the white hearts of the good Whitmans."

The tribe was dismayed when it proved that she could not be shaken, for great trouble was sure to follow with the Flatheads ; and finally her father and all the tribe became very angry, and decided that arrangements should proceed, and she should be married by force. The girl in desperation, seeing no way to escape, determined to end her own life. There is a large bluff near the Spokane River, over which the Indians used in the springtime to force large numbers of deer, which they had previously corralled for the purpose. Minnie-Wah-Wah threw herself over this bluff.

The Indians of both tribes mourned this event bitterly : the chiefs are said to have cried like children, and blamed each other for driving the girl to such a deed. They held elaborate funeral ceremonies over her body, and lowered it into a grave on the spot where it fell.