Father Joseph was their interpreter in the negotiations between them and the United States Government. They attacked Col. Steptoe, while he was passing through their territory, because they had heard that the white men were going to build a road which would drive away the deer and the buffalo. It was explained to them, that, although this was so, other advantages would more than compensate for it. This was beyond their comprehension. To them, the advantages of civilization bore no comparison to the charm of their free, roving life. When the army officers entered the Cœur d'Alêne country, they declared that no conception of heaven could surpass the beauty of its exquisite lakes, embosomed in the forest. This tribe held firm against all propositions of the government to treat with them, until Donati's comet appeared in 1858; when, supposing it to be a great fiery broom sent to sweep them from the earth, they accepted a treaty.
The "Battle of Four Lakes" was fought in this country. An old man whom we met at the fort in Walla Walla, who saw this battle, gave us some account of it. The lakes are surrounded with rocks covered with pine. Beyond them is a great rolling country of grassy hills. For about two miles, he said, this open ground was all alive with the wildest, most fantastic figures of mounted Indians, with painted horses, having eagle-feathers braided into their tails and manes; each Indian fighting separately on his own account. He described to us the appearance of the war chief as he rode to battle, his own head hidden by a wolf's head, with stiff, sharp ears standing erect, ornamented with bears' claws, and under it a circlet of feathers. From this head depended a long train of feathers that floated down his back; the loss of which would be the loss of his honor, and as great a disaster to him as, to a Chinaman, the loss of his cue. His war-horse was painted, as well as his own person, and also profusely decorated with feathers on head and tail. The Indians have such a fancy for feathers, that, in some of their medicine ceremonies, they smear their heads with a sticky substance, and cover them all over with swan's-down.
Lieut. Mullan's surveying expedition roused many of the tribes to desperation. Owhi, the Yakima chief, when urged to give up his land,—or, what amounted to the same thing, to allow free passage to the surveying party and the road-makers,—argued that he could not give away the home of his people; saying, "It is not mine to give. The Great Spirit has measured it to my people." Not being successful in his arguments, he organized the outbreak of the following winter. The army destroyed the caches filled with dried berries, and the pressed cake which the Indians prepare from roots for their winter food, many lodges filled with grain, and hundreds of horses; the officers mentioning in their report, that it would insure the Indians a winter of great suffering, and concluding in these words: "Seldom has an expedition been undertaken, the recollection of which is invested with so much that is agreeable, as that against the Northern Indians."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] To the Canadian voyageur, the word alêne (awl) meant any sharp-pointed instrument.
VI.
Colville to Seattle.—"Red."—"Ferrins."—"Broke Miners."—A Rare Fellow-Traveller.—The Bell-Mare.—Pelouse Fall.—Red-Fox Road.—Early Californians.—Frying-Pan Incense.—Dragon-Flies.—Death of the Chief Seattle.