Some distance from the encampment he met an Indian funeral procession. The young Willamette runner had died that morning, and now they were bearing him to the river, down which a canoe was to waft the body and the mourners to the nearest mimaluse island. The corpse was swathed in skins and tied around with thongs; the father bore it on his shoulder, for the dead had been but a slender lad. Behind them came the mother and a few Indian women. As they passed, the father chanted a rude lament.
“Oh, Mox-mox, my son, why did you go away and 194 leave our wigwam empty? You were not weak nor sickly, and your life was young. Why did you go? Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!”
Then the women took up the doleful refrain,—
“Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!”
Then the old man again,—
“Oh, Mox-mox, the sun was warm and food was plenty, yet you went away; and when we reach out for you, you are not there. Oh Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!”
Then the women again,—
“Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!”
And so it went on, till they were embarked and the canoe bore them from sight and hearing. Down on some mimaluse island or rocky point, they would stretch the corpse out in a canoe, with the bow and arrows and fishing spear used in life beside it; then turn over it another canoe like a cover, and so leave the dead to his long sleep.
The sight gave an added bitterness to Cecil’s meditations.