Part 5 (1/2)

CHAPTER I

SHALL THE GREAT COUNCIL BE HELD?

The coht, And dazzles eleht Blown far through other years

JOAQUIN MILLER

Two hundred years ago--as near as we can estiends that have come down to us--the confederacy of the Wauna or Columbia was one of the most powerful the New World has ever seen It was apparently not inferior to that of the Six Nations, or to the ues hich Tecumseh or Pontiac stayed for a moment the onward march of the white on and Washi+ngton, with the Willareat hereditary enemies, the Nootkas, the Shoshones, and the Spokanes

Sonorous and picturesque was the language of the old Oregon Indians in telling the first white traders the story of the great alliance

”Once, long before my father's time and before his father's time, all the tribes were as one tribe and the Willa and none could stand against them The heart of the Willamette was battle and his hand was blood When he lifted his are became ashes and his council silence and death

”The war-trails of the Willarass on them He called the Chinook and Sound Indians, eak, his children, and the Yakima, Cayuse, and Wasco, who loved war, his brothers; but _he_ was elder brother And the Spokanes and the Shoshones ht fast and cut themselves with thorns and knives, and dance thecouldas the hearts of the Willamettes; for the One up in the sky had told the old est of all the tribes as long as the Bridge of the Gods should stand That was their _tomanowos_”

But whenever the white listener asked about this superstition of the bridge and the legend connected with it, the Indian would at once become uncommunicative, and say, ”You can't understand,” or more frequently, ”I don't know” For thethese ancient tales--”old-man talk,” as the Siwashes call them--was, that there was much superstition interwoven with theious beliefs, that if one was not exceedingly cautious, the lively, gesticulating talker of one moment was liable to become the personification of sullen obstinacy the next

But if the listener was fortunate enough to strike the goldenneither too anxious nor too indifferent, and if above all he had by the gift of bounteous _e heart always responds, the Indian lish or crude Chinook the strange, dark legend of the bridge, which is the subject of our tale

At the tiht of its power It was a rough-hewn, barbarian realeneous, the most rudimentary of alliances The exact in are all involved in the darkness which everywhere covers the history of Indian Oregon,--a darkness into which our legend casts but a ray of light that limpse of the diverse and squalid tribes that made up the confederacy This included the ”Canoe Indians”

of the Sound and of the Oregon sea-coast, whose flat heads, greasy squat bodies, and crooked legs were intheir canoes and fish-spears; the hardy Indians of the Willae; and the bold, predatory riders of eastern Oregon and Washi+ngton,--buffalo hunters and horse ta before the advent of the white ans, who disposed of their dead by tying theht to a tree; the Yakimas, who buried them under cairns of stone; the Klickitats, athed them like mummies and laid them in low, rude huts on the _mimaluse_, or ”death islands” of the Columbia; the Chinooks, who stretched the implements by their side; and the Kala, howling, and leaping through the flames of the funeral pyre Over sixty or seventy petty tribes stretched the wild eether by the pressure of corasp of the hereditary war-chief of the Willaathered on Wappatto Island, froround of the tribes The white ed its naeable Lying at thefor many miles down the Columbia, rich in wide meadows and crystal lakes, its interior dotted with ed with cottonwoods, around it the blue and sweeping rivers, the wooded hills, and the far white snow peaks,--it is the on

The chiefs were assembled in secret council, and only those of pure Willamette blood were present, for the question to be considered was not one to be known by even the most trusted ally

All the confederated tribes beyond the Cascade Range were in a feron had recently risen up against the Willale, the insurrection had been put down and the rebels almost exterminated by the victorious Willamettes

But it was known that the chief of the le co theue had been forh when matters came to a crisis, the confederates, afraid to face openly the fierce warriors of the Willa assistance to neither side It was evident, however, that a spirit of angry discontent was rife ae had been used by the restless chiefs beyond the mountains; braves had talked around the camp-fire of the freedom of the days before the yoke of the confederacy was known; and the gray old dreamers, hom the _mimaluse tillicums_ [dead people] talked, had said that the fall of the Willamettes was near at hand

The sache, were athered under the cottonwood trees, not far from the bank of the Columbia The air was fresh with the scent of the waters, and the young leaves were just putting forth on the ”trees of council,” whose branches swayed gently in the breeze Beneath the sunbeahs, thirty sachereat war-chief, Multnoe, a sombre assembly The chiefs were for the most part tall, well-built men, warriors and hunters frohty in their bearing, so, violent, and lawless in their saturnine faces and black, glittering eyes Most of the loosely over their shoulders Their ears were loaded with _hiagua_ shells; their dress was cos and moccasins, and a short robe of dressed skin that came from the shoulders to the knees, to which was added a kind of blanket woven of the wool of the mountain sheep, or an outer robe of skins or furs, stained various colors and always drawn close around the body when sitting or standing Seated on rude mats of rushes, wrapped each in his outer blanket and doubly wrapped in Indian stoicisarb did not differ from that of the others, except that his blanket was of the richest fur known to the Indians, so doubled that the fur showed on either side His bare arold; his hair was cut short, in sign offor his favorite wife, and his neck was adorned with a collar of large bear-claws, showing he had accomplished that proudest of all achieverizzly

Until the last chief had entered the grove and taken his place in the semi-circle, Multno on his bow, a fine unstrung weapon tipped with gold He was about sixty years old, his for with shaggy gray eyebrows and piercing as an eagle's His dark, grandly iularity of feature, showed a penetration that read everything, a reserve that revealed nothing, a doth and corip of the hand on the bow told of a despotic telance that flashed out fro, and imperious--may complete the portrait of Multnomah, the silent, the secret, the terrible

When the last late-entering chief had taken his place, Multnoe; for like the Cayuses and several other tribes of the Northwest, the Willaes,--the common, for every-day use, and the royal, spoken only by the chiefs in council

In grave, strong words he laid before them the troubles that threatened to break up the confederacy and his plan fora council of all the tribes, including the doubtful allies, and to try before them and execute the rebellious chief, who had been taken alive and was now reserved for the torture Such a council, with the terrible warning of the rebel's death enacted before it, would awe the malcontents into subh had the allies spoken with two tongues; long enough had they smoked the peace-pipe with both the Willamettes and their enemies They must come now to peace that should be peace, or to open war The chief estures, his voice did not vary its stern, deliberate accents fro in word and manner that told how his warlike soul thirsted for battle, how the iron resolution, the ferocity beneath his stoiciseance

There was perfect attention while he spoke,--not so lance or a whisper aside When he had ceased and resuned for a little while Then Tla-au, chief of the Klackamas, a sub-tribe of the Willa bare his arms and shoulders, which were deeply scarred; for Tla-as a hty warrior, and as such coue

”Tla-au has seen ray Many tiron and wither, and the snows coht hiiven hi into a muddy stream, lest there be rocks under the black water Shall we call the tribes to athered together they are more nuer than ourselves into our hen their hearts are bitter against us?