I assented to the first proposition. Faithful to the promise, he made up the deficiency with a larger animal next time, and even then made it good.
Another circumstance occurred which asserted the honesty of these Indians. After we had corralled a small lot of cows purchased from them, one escaped and returned to the Indian band of cattle, from which
she had been driven. Three or four years after, we were notified by the owner of the band that we had four head of cattle with his herd. True, it was but simple honesty, and no more than any honest man would have done; but there are so many who would have marked and branded the calves of that little herd, in their own interest, that I felt it worthy of mention here to the credit of a people who have few friends to speak in their behalf. Notwithstanding their lives furnish many evidences of high and honorable character, yet they, very much like white men, exhibit many varieties.
In pressing need for a supply of beef for hotel use, I called on “Tin-tin-mit-si,” once chief of the Walla-Wallas (a man of extraordinary shrewdness, and possessed of great wealth, probably thirty thousand dollars in stock and money), to make a purchase. He, silently, half in pantomime, ordered his horse, that he might accompany me to the herds. Taking with us his son-in-law, John McBerne, as interpreter, we soon found one animal that would answer our purpose. The keen-eyed old chief, with his blanket drawn over his head, faced about, and said, “How much that cow weigh?”—“About four hundred and fifty pounds,” I answered. “How much you charge for a dinner?”—“One dollar,” I responded. “How much a white man eat?” said “Tin-tin-mit-si.” I read his mind, and knew that he was thinking how to take advantage of my necessity, and, also, that he was not accustomed to the white man’s dinner. I replied, “Sometimes one pound.”—“All right,” quoth Indian; “you pay me four hundred dollars, then what is over will pay you for cooking.”—“But who will pay me
for the coffee, sugar, butter, potatoes, eggs, cheese, and other things?” I replied.
While Johnny was repeating this speech the old chief moved up closer, and let his blanket slip off his ears, and demanded a repetition of the varieties composing a Christian dinner; and, while this was being done, he looked first at the interpreter, then at me, and said, in a surly, dry tone, “No wonder a white man is a fool, if he eat all those things at once; an Indian would be satisfied with beef alone.”
After some mathematical calculations had been explained, he agreed to accept forty-five dollars, a good, round price for the cow. And I drove away the beast, while “Tin-tin-mit-si” returned to his lodge to bury the money I had paid him along with several thousand dollars he had saved for his sons-in-law to quarrel over; for the old chief soon after sent for his favorite horse to be tied near the door of his lodge, ready to accompany him to the happy hunting-grounds, where, according to Indian theology, he has been telling his father of the strange people he had seen.