See the anxiety of each to be off first, and hear the driver of the mule teams talking in an undertone until the bells on the leaders strike a note that is in tune with the road, and then each mule settles to the collar and the wheels move. Anxious squaws are jabbering to their horses, children and dogs, lazy Indian men sitting unconcerned, astride the best horses. Stand still a little longer, and see the last man run to the fire for a coal to light his pipe, and then away to overtake his company.
The camp is now deserted, the fires are burned out,
and the places where tents and lodges stood look smooth, and where the weary limbs have lain the fresh broken trees tell who were there. And now our horse, with his impatient feet, bids a hasty “good-by” to a spot that was our home for a night; we leave it behind us to be seen no more.
Our charger, now more impatient, still hurries to join the departed throng, while we turn up our coat-collar to keep the frost from our ears. Soon we come upon the lame and lazy, and perhaps an old squaw, with her basket of household treasures that has been with her through her hard life, the basket suspended on her back by a strap around her forehead, and a stick in her hand, and her body bent forward. She plods along until the sound of approaching hoofs startle her, and instinctively she looks around and stops for us to pass. Poor, miserable old link of Darwin’s mystic chain, we pity you; for you are, at least, half human, and your sons, with no filial love and no shame, are on prancing horses just ahead of you, wearing red blankets and redder paints, with feathers flying, and thoughtless of their mother; your lot is hard, but you don’t know it, because in your youth you played Indian lady, while your mother wore the shoes of servitude that you are now wearing.
As we ride on, passing little squads of old people on foot, and women with baby baskets, ponies groaning under two or three great lazy boys, teams with jingling bells, we find, nearer the front of the train, the lords of this wild kind of creation, laughing and sporting as they ride, apparently unconscious of the fact that slavery and bondage have fettered old age, and compelled it to drag weary limbs over stony roads.
We arrive at Yai-nax, the future home of a war-chief, who has cost the Government much of blood and treasure, though docile now. A lone hut marks the spot, near a large spring that runs off in a northerly direction to Sprague’s river. A beautiful valley spreads out for miles, covered with grass and wild flax; snowy mountains lie south, west, and north, the valley ascending the mountain east so gradually that we can scarcely see where the one ends and the other begins. The cavalcade halts near the spring, and soon the throng becomes busy making preparations for the night.
The next morning’s sun finds a busy camp; every able-bodied man is ordered to work; trees are falling, axes plying, and log cabins rise in rows, and the new home of the Snake Indians begins to appear to the eye a real, tangible thing.
Six days pass, and the smokes from thirteen Indian houses join in procession and move off eastward, borne by the breeze that sings and sighs, or howls in anger among the trees around Yai-nax. A council is called, and O-che-o speaks: “My heart is good. I will stay on the land you have given me. This is my home. When you come again you will find O-che-o here.”
Since leaving Camp Harney nothing has been said until this evening about captives. O-che-o now raises the question again. We meet him with the assurance that all the captives that can be found shall have the privilege of returning to their people. I was not altogether prepared for the scene that was opening. O-che-o remarked, through an interpreter, that he believed me, and that he expected that
I would secure the return to him of his captured son, who was somewhere in the north; but, to make his heart easy on the subject, he would try me with a case now before us; referring to Ka-ko-na.