HAL-HAL-TLOS-SOT: THE LAWYER
Head Chief of the Nez Perces
The council being completed, presents were made to all the assembled tribes, who began packing up and moving off. Eagle-from-the-Light, the Nez Perce chief, who was at first opposed to the treaty and refused to accept provisions, now presented a magnificent grizzly bear’s skin, with the teeth and claws intact, to Governor Stevens with the following speech: “This skin is my medicine. It came with me every day to council. It tells me everything. It says what has been done is right. Had anything been done wrong, it would have spoken out. I have now no use for it. I give it to you that you may know my heart is right.” Every day Eagle-from-the-Light had brought this skin to the council, and, placing it with the teeth and claws turned towards the commissioners, had used it as a seat, declining the roll of blankets offered him.
“Thus ended,” says the journal, “in the most satisfactory manner, this great council, prolonged through so many days,—a council which—in the number of Indians assembled and the different tribes, old difficulties and troubles between them and the whites, a deep-seated dislike to and determination against giving up their lands, and the great importance, nay, absolute necessity, of opening this land by treaty to occupation by the whites, that bloodshed and the enormous expense of Indian wars might be avoided, and in its general influence and difficulty—has never been equaled by any council held with the Indian tribes of the United States.
“It was so considered by all present, and a final relief from the intense anxiety and vexation of the last month was especially grateful to all concerned.”
The following day the Nez Perces celebrated the happy conclusion of the treaty, and the return of Looking Glass and his braves from the buffalo country, by a scalp-dance. The chiefs and braves, in full war-paint and adorned with all their savage finery, formed a large circle, standing several ranks deep. Within this arena a chosen body of warriors performed the war-dance, while the densely massed ranks of braves circled around them, keeping time in measured tread, and accompanying it with their wild and barbaric war-song. The ferocious and often hideous mien of these stalwart savages, their frenzied attitudes and shrill and startling yells, formed a subject worthy the pen of Dante and the pencil of Doré. The missionary still had work to do. Presently an old hag, the very picture of squalor and woe, burst into the circle, bearing aloft upon a pole one of the fresh scalps so recently taken by Looking Glass, and, dancing and jumping about with wild and extravagant action, heaped upon the poor relic of a fallen foe every mark of indignity and contempt. Shaking it aloft, she vociferously abused it; she beat it, she spat upon it, she bestrode the pole and rushed around the ring, trailing it in the dust, again and again; while the warriors, with grim satisfaction, kept up their measured tread, chanted their war-songs, and uttered if possible yet more ear-piercing yells. A softer and more pleasing scene succeeded. The old hag retired with her bedraggled trophy, and a long line of Indian maidens stepped within the circle, and, forming an inner rank, moved slowly round and round, chanting a mild and plaintive air. A number of the stylish young braves, real Indian beaux in the height of paint and feathers, next took post within the circle, near the rank of moving maidens, and each one, as the object of his adoration passed him, placed a gayly decorated token upon her shoulder. If she allowed it to remain, his affection was returned and he was accepted, but if she shook it off, he knew that he was a rejected suitor. Coquetry evidently is not confined to the civilized fair, for, without exception, the maidens, as if indignant at such public wooing, threw off the token with disdain, while every new victim of delusive hopes was greeted with shouts of laughter from the spectators.
The turning-point in the council was undoubtedly the discovery of the Cuyuse conspiracy by Lawyer, and his act of moving his lodge into Governor Stevens’s camp, thereby placing the whites under the protection of the Nez Perces. This was all that prevented the hostile chiefs and braves from striking the blow. They refrained because they knew that if Lawyer was killed in an attack on the camp, which was to be expected in the mêlée, the whole Nez Perce nation would avenge his slaughter in their blood. The real extent and imminence of the danger was known to but few, but the fact of the plot was soon generally bruited about.
