To the recent and valuable historical description of those tribes, including the natives in what is now Western Washington, I am indebted to the life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, by his son, Hazard Stevens, for the number of natives west, as well as east, of the Cascades treated with by Governor Stevens in 1855, just before the natural leaders of the native race made their only united effort to stem the tide of inflow of the white race.
| ⎧Total number found west of the Cascades | 9,712 |
| ⎩Total number with whom treaties were made | 8,597 |
| ⎧Total number east of the Cascade Mountains | 12,000 |
| ⎩Total number treated with | 8,900 |
| ⎧Total number found in Washington Territory | 21,000 |
| ⎩Total number treated with | 17,497 |
For Governor Stevens’ success in getting the eastern section of the native race into treaty relations he was indebted solely to the steadiness and good faith of the Nez Perces, the tribe which was always conspicuous for its care of its womanhood.
JOHN MINTO.
[1]. This custom of purchasing wives seems to have extended through many of the interior tribes, and amongst some the privilege seems not to have been confined to the men. It is related of a large war party of Sioux who, near Independence Rock, in 1842, found Messrs. Hastings and Lovejoy, and good humoredly gave them up to their fellow travelers, taking a small present of tobacco as ransom; that, seeing a grown daughter of one of the few white families of the Oregon immigrants, they came repeatedly in increased numbers to look at her, until her father was annoyed and indignant at their visits, and wrathful and threatening when he learned that the brawny braves desired to purchase the girl to give her as a present to their war chief. These grown up children of nature went off like gentlemen when informed by one who knew their customs that it was not a custom of white fathers, or the white people, to sell their daughters. [Matthieu’s Reminiscences, Vol. I, No. 1, Quarterly of the Ore. Hist. Soc.] In 1844, while Gilliam’s train lay over one day at Fort Laramie, for trade purposes, in close neighborhood to the tepees of a considerable camp of Sioux, three female members of the tribe visited the camp of R. W. Morrison, captain of one of the companies into which the train of eighty-four wagons was divided. The captain had two assistants, and the Sioux women seemed to conclude that Mrs. Morrison was blessed with three husbands. Their proposition, made by signs by the two elder women, was that the third, apparently a widow, though young, was willing to give six horses for one of the younger men. It took Mrs. Morrison and the choice of the young widow some time to convince her two friends that they had made a mistake, and they departed with all outward signs of sadness over the failure of their mission. These proposals to secure connubial happiness by purchase were made, one four and the other two years, before Francis Parkman, Jr., arrived at Laramie to join a Sioux camp in order to get material for his Oregon and California Trail.
[2]. Late in 1844, Katata, Chief of the Clatsop Tribe, murdered his youngest wife, then but recently espoused from a leading family of the Chinooks. The latter made war upon him for the act. J. L. Parrish, in charge of the Methodist mission at the time, refused Katata his hand after learning of his deed. The brutal chief made an effort to be revenged for what he deemed an insult, but failed in his attempt.
[3]. The kind of chivalry the system bred was illustrated by Chief Chenowith, supposed instigator of the Cascades massacre in 1855, who was tried and condemned for fighting with the Klickitats and Yakimas. “He offered ten horses, two squaws, and a little something to every tyee, of (for) his life, boasting that he was not afraid of death, but was afraid of the grave in the ground.”—[L. W. Coe in Native Son Magazine for February, 1900. Mr. Coe acted as interpreter at the execution].
[4]. In 1844 the Chief of the Wascopams died at The Dalles, and was succeeded by his brother, who was somewhat under the influence of Rev. Alvan Waller, of the Methodist Episcopal mission there. A young slave boy was bound and secured in the dead house with the body of the dead chief, in accordance with the customs of the tribe. Mr. Waller continued pleading for the release of the boy for three days and got the new chief’s consent to take the boy out of his horrible situation on condition that it be done secretly and the boy taken away, so that the people of the tribe would never see him. He was taken to Mr. J. L. Parrish, at Clatsop mission, and remained a member of his family till, in 1849, he went to the California gold mines.
[5]. The writer has observed this instinct manifested one season by wild ducks. The oak trees in the vicinity of his residence south of Salem, of which there were considerable areas, bore a heavy crop of acorns. The wild ducks by some means found it out, and must have by some means informed each other, as the flocks of them passing over my farm from a large beaver dam pond, where they rested at night, to their feeding grounds daily rapidly increased from day to day, and as rapidly decreased when the supply of acorns was consumed.