Messrs. Lee and Perkins were formerly connected with the mission on the Willamette. Eighteen months before I had the happiness of enjoying their hospitality, they came to this spot with axes on their shoulders, felled trees, ploughed, fenced, and planted twenty acres of land with their own hands, and erected these habitations of civilization and Christianity on the bosom of the howling wilderness. Their premises are situated on elevated ground, about a mile south-west from the river. Immediately back is a grove of small white oaks and yellow pines; a little north, is a sweet spring bursting from a ledge of rocks which supplies water for house use, and moistens about an acre of rich soil. About a mile to the south, are two or three hundred acres of fine land, with groves of oaks around, and an abundant supply of excellent water. Here it was the intention of the mission to open a farm under the care of a layman from the States.
A mile and a half to the north, is a tract of about two hundred acres, susceptible of being plentifully irrigated by a number of large streams that pour down upon it from {168} the western mountains. Here, too, they intended to locate laymen to open farms, and extract from the idle earth the means of feeding themselves, the Indians, and the wayworn white man from the burnt solitudes of the mountains. No location, not even the sacred precincts of St. Bernard, on the snows of the Alps, could be better chosen for the operations of a holy benevolence.
The Indians from many quarters flock to the Dalles and the Shutes in the spring, and autumn, and winter to purchase salmon; the commercial movements between the States and the Pacific will pass their door; and there in after-days, the sturdy emigrants from the States will stop, (as did the pilgrims on Plymouth rock,) to give grateful praise to Him who stood forth in their aid, not indeed while struggling on the foamy billow, but on the burning plain and the icy cliff, and in the deadly turmoil of Indian battles on the way, and will seek food and rest for their emaciated frames, before entering the woody glen and flowing everglades of Lower Oregon.
A saw-mill, a grist-mill, and other machinery necessary to carry out a liberal plan of operations, are in contemplation. The {169} fruit of the oak, it is supposed, will support 1,000 hogs from the middle of August to the middle of April; the products of the arable soil will suffice to make that number into marketable pork; and as the grass and other vegetation grow there during the winter months, twenty-five or thirty square miles of pasturage round about, will enable them to raise, at a trifling expense, immense numbers of sheep, horses and cattle. Five acres of ground cultivated in 1839, produced twenty-five bushels of the small grains, seventy-five bushels of potatoes, and considerable quantities of other vegetables. This was an experiment only on soil not irrigated. Gentlemen suppose it capable of producing double that amount, if irrigated. The season, too, was unusually dry.
Around about the mission are clusters of friable sand-stone rocks of remarkable form. Their height varies from ten to thirty feet; their basilar diameters from three to ten feet: their shape generally resembles that of the obelisk. These (fifteen or twenty in number) standing among the oaks and pines, often in clusters, and sometimes solitary, give a strange interest of antiquity to the spot. And this illusion is increased by a {170} rock of another form, an immense boulder resting upon a short, slender pedestal, and strikingly resembling the Egyptian sphynx. The Indian tradition in regard to them is, that they were formerly men, who, for some sin against the Great Spirit, were changed to stone.
At the Dalles is the upper village of the Chinooks. At the Shutes, five miles above, is the lower village of the Wallawallas. One of the missionaries, Mr. Lee, learns the Chinook language, and the other, Mr. Perkins, the Wallawalla; and their custom is to repair on Sabbath days each to his own people, and teach them the Christian religion. The Chinooks flatten their heads more, and are more stupid than any other tribe on the Columbia. There was one among the Dalles' band, who, it was said, resisted so obstinately the kind efforts of his parents to crush his skull into the aristocratic shape, that they abandoned him to the care of nature in this regard; and much to the scandal of his family, his head grew in the natural form. I saw him every day while I staid there. He was evidently the most intelligent one of the band. His name is Boston; so called, because the form of his head resembles that of Americans, {171} whom the Indians call "Boston," in order to distinguish them from "King George's men,"—the Hudson Bay Company gentlemen. Boston, although of mean origin, has, on account of his superior energy and intelligence, become the war chief of the Dalles.
On the morning of the 14th, I overhauled my baggage, preparatory to descending the river. In doing so, I was much vexed to find that the Indians had, in some manner, drawn my saddle to the window of the workshop in which it was deposited, and stripped it of stirrups, stirrup-straps, surcingle, girths, and crupper. They had also stolen my bridle.
The loss of these articles, in a region where they could not be purchased—articles so necessary to me in carrying out my designs of travelling over the lower country, roused in me the bitterest determination to regain them at all hazards. Without reflecting for a moment upon the disparity of numbers between my single self and forty or fifty able-bodied Indians, I armed myself completely, and marched my solitary battalion to the camp of the principal chief, and entered it. He was away. I explained to some persons there by signs {172} and a few words, the object of my search, and marched my army to an elevated position and halted.
I had been stationed but a short time, when the Indians began to collect in their chief's lodge, and whisper earnestly. Ten minutes passed thus, and Indians were constantly arriving and entering. I was supported in the rear by a lusty oak, and so far as I remember, was ready to exclaim with the renowned antagonist of Roderick Dhu,
"Come one, come all;" &c.