covered with antelope and feathery tribes. No houses, fields, or barns marred then the beautiful valley of the mountain. Turning half around, he gazed at people and town, and sadly motioned to the mountain-sides, robbed of fir and pine, and seemed to drink in, what, to him, was desolation made complete. With eye half closed, he mused a moment, and then broke forth like some brave soul that had mastered self, and was reconciled to the inexorable destiny that his mind had seen in store, declared that he would be a man himself, with white man’s heart, and that his people would yet join with pride in the coming celebrations.
The triumph of civil hopes over savage mind was complete, and when the change was realized by the lookers-on, they gathered round the chieftain, and gave him welcome to a brotherhood born of a nation’s struggles to redeem mankind, when the white men were few and Homli’s people numerous as the stars that looked down on the rivers of this beautiful land. Who shall remember the mild reproof of Homli, when he, under the humane and enlightened policy of the Government, shall have made good this declaration to be a white man in heart and practice?
Little things sometimes move in harmony until they unite, and make up an aggregate of causes, whose combined power becomes irresistible for good or ill to peoples, tribes, and nations.
The chieftain of whom I write had, at various times, felt the thongs that bound him to his savage habits loosening, little by little, until at last, under the influence of the patriotic joy of freemen, he himself had stepped from under a shadow that was once
a benison, but had now, because of his enlightenment, become a barrier to his happiness.
The change was real, and the heart that had come laden with reproach to his neighbor, and felt the sting of slighted manhood, now exulted in the recognition he had found in the sunshine of American Independence, and the warm hands of freedom’s sons, who bade him welcome to a better life.
No human brain can correctly measure the influence of such events. Homli, as I have said, was a chief of the Walla-Wallas, who, in conjunction with the Umatillas and Cayuses, occupied the reservation spoken of as “Umatilla” (horse-heaven), it being the original home of the tribe bearing that name. In 1856, the three tribes above named united in treaty council with the Government, represented by the lamented J. I. Stevens and General Joel Palmer.
This treaty was conducted with firmness and on principles of justice, the Indians having, in this instance at least, half “the say.” By the terms agreed upon, a portion of country was reserved by the three tribes for a permanent home, to be held jointly by them. It is located on one of the tributaries of the Columbia, known as the Umatilla river. The out-boundaries measured one hundred and three miles, covering a country possessing many natural advantages, conducive to Indian life, and of great value in the transfer of these people from a barbarous to a civilized condition.
Its surface is diversified with rich prairie lands, producing an excellent quality of bunch grass,—so called because of its growing in tussocks,—covering not more than half the surface of the round, the
remainder being entirely devoid of vegetation, very nutritious and well adapted to grazing.