Now followed the potlatch,—the giving of gifts. At a signal from the war-chief, his slaves appeared, laden with presents. Large heaps of rich furs and skins were laid on the ground near the chiefs. The finest of bows and arrows, with gaily decorated quivers and store of bow-strings, were brought. Untold treasure of hiagua shells, money as well as ornament to the Oregon Indians, was poured out upon the ground, and lay glistening in the sun in bright-colored masses. To the Indians they represented vast and splendid wealth. Multnomah was the richest of all the Indians of the Wauna; and the gifts displayed were the spoil of many wars, treasures garnered during forty years of sovereignty.
And now they were all given away. The chief kept back nothing, except some cases of oriental fabrics that had been saved from the wreck when Wallulah’s mother was cast upon the shore. Well would it have been for him and his race had they been given too; for, little as they dreamed it, the fate of the Willamettes lay sealed up in those unopened cases of silk and damask.
Again and again the slaves of Multnomah added their burdens to the heaps, and went back for more, till a murmur of wonder rose among the crowd. His riches seemed exhaustless. At length, however, all was brought. The chief stood up, and, opening his hands to them in the Indian gesture for giving, said,—
“There is all that was Multnomah’s; it is yours; your hands are full now and mine are empty.”
The chiefs and warriors rose up gravely and went among the heaps of treasure; each selecting from furs and skins, arms and hiagua shells, that which he desired. There was no unseemly haste or snatching; a quiet decorum prevailed among them. The women and children were excluded from sharing in these gifts, but provisions—dried meats and berries, and bread of camas or Wappatto root—were thrown among them on the outskirts of the crowd where they were gathered. And unlike the men, they scrambled for it like hungry animals; save where here and there the wife or daughter of a chief stood looking disdainfully on the food and those who snatched at it.
Such giving of gifts, or potlatches, are still known among the Indians. On Puget Sound and the Okanogan, one occasionally hears of some rich Indian making a great potlatch,—giving away all his possessions, and gaining nothing but a reputation for disdain of wealth, a reputation which only Indian stoicism would crave. Multnomah’s object was not that so much as to make, before the dispersal of the tribes, a last and most favorable impression.
When the presents were all divided, the chiefs resumed their places to hear the last speech of Multnomah,—the speech that closed the council.
It was a masterpiece of dignity, subtility, and command. The prophecy of Tohomish was evaded, the fall of the Bridge wrested into an omen propitious to the Willamettes; and at last his hearers found themselves believing as he wished them to believe, without knowing how or why, so strongly did the overmastering personality of Multnomah penetrate and sway their lesser natures. He particularly dwelt on the idea that they were all knit together now and were as one race. Yet through the smooth words ran a latent threat, a covert warning of the result of any revolt against his authority based on what plotting dreamers might say of the fall of the Bridge,—a half-expressed menace, like the gleam of a sword half drawn from the scabbard. And he closed by announcing that ere another spring the young men of all the tribes would go on the war-path against the Shoshones and come back loaded with spoil. And so, kindling the hatred of the chiefs against the common enemy, Multnomah closed the great council.