The morning of the 24th opened in the loveliest hues of the sky. Still none of the beauty of the harvest field—none of the fragrance of the ripened fruits of autumn were there. The wild horses were frolicking on the plains; but the plains smoked with dust and dearth. The green woods and the streams sent up their harmonies with the breeze; but it was like a dirge over the remains of the departed glories of the year. And yet when the smoking vegetables, the hissing steak, bread white as snow, and the newly-churned golden butter graced the breakfast table, and the happy countenances of countrymen and countrywomen shone around, I could with difficulty believe myself in a country so far distant from, and so unlike my native land, in all its features. But during breakfast, this pleasant illusion was dispelled by one of the causes which induced it.
{136} Our steak was of horse-flesh! On such meat this poor family subsist most of the time. They do not complain. It enables them to exist to do the Indian good, and thus satisfies them.[218] But can it satisfy those who give money for the support of missionaries, that the allowance made by their agents for the support of those who abandon parents and freedom and home, and surrender not only themselves to the mercy of the savages, but their offspring also, should be so meagre, as to compel them to eat horse-flesh! This necessity existed in 1839, at the mission on the Wallawalla, and I doubt not exists in 1843.
The breakfast being over, the doctor invited me to a stroll over his premises. The garden was first examined; its location, on the curving bank of the Wallawalla; the apple trees, growing thriftily on its western border; the beautiful tomato and other vegetables, burdening the grounds. Next to the fields. The doctor's views of the soil, and its mode of receiving moisture from the river, were such as I have previously expressed. "For," said he, "in those places where you perceive the stratum of gravel to be raised so as to interrupt the capillary attraction of the superincumbent earth, the {137} crop failed." Then to the new house. The adobie walls had been erected a year. These were about forty feet by twenty, and one and a half stories high. The interior area consisted of two parlours of the ordinary size, separated by an adobie portion. The outer door opened into one of them; and from this a door in the partition led to the other. Above were to be sleeping apartments. To the main building was attached another of equal height designed for a kitchen, with chambers above for servants. Mr. Monger and a Sandwich Islander were laying the floors, making the doors, &c.
The lumber used was a very superior quality of yellow pine plank, which Dr. Whitman had cut with a whip saw among the blue mountains, fifteen miles distant. Next to the "caral." A fine yoke of oxen, two cows, an American bull, and the beginning of a stock of hogs were thereabout. And last to the grist-mill on the other side of the river. It consisted of a spherical wrought iron burr four or five inches in diameter, surrounded by a counter-burred surface of the same material. The spherical burr was permanently attached to the shaft of a horizontal water-wheel. The surrounding burred surface was firmly fastened to {138} timbers, in such a position that when the water-wheel was put in motion, the operation of the mill was similar to that of a coffee-mill. It was a crazy thing, but for it the doctor was grateful.
It would, with the help of himself and an Indian, grind enough in a day to feed his family a week, and that was better than to beat it with a pestle and mortar. It appeared to me quite remarkable that the doctor could have made so many improvements since the year 1834. But the industry which crowded every hour of the day, his untiring energy of character, and the very efficient aid of his wife in relieving him in a great degree from the labours of the school, are, perhaps, circumstances which will render possibility probable, that in five years one man without funds for such purposes, without other aid in that business than that of a fellow missionary at short intervals, should fence, plough, build, plant an orchard, and do all the other laborious acts of opening a plantation on the face of that distant wilderness; learn an Indian language and do the duties, meanwhile, of a physician to the associate stations on the Clear Water and Spokan.[219]
In the afternoon, Dr. Whitman and his {139} lady assembled the Indians for instruction in reading. Forty or fifty children between the ages of seven and eighteen, and several other people gathered on the shady side of the new mission-house at the ringing of a hand-bell, and seated themselves in an orderly manner on wooden benches. The doctor then wrote monosyllables, words, and instructive sentences in the Nez Percés language, on a large blackboard suspended on the wall, and proceeded first to teach the nature and power of the letters in representing the simple sounds of the language, and then the construction of words and their uses in forming sentences expressive of thought. The sentences written during these operations were at last read, syllable by syllable, and word after word, and explained until the sentiments contained in them were comprehended; and it was delightful to notice the undisguised avidity with which these people would devour a new idea. It seemed to produce a thrill of delight that kindled up the countenance and animated the whole frame. A hymn in the Nez Percés language, learned by rote from their teachers, was then sung, and the exercises closed with prayer by Dr. Whitman in the same tongue.
{140} 25th. I was awakened at early dawn by the merry sounds of clapping boards, the hammer, the axe and the plane; the sweet melodies of the parent of virtue, at this cradle of civilization. When I rose everything was in motion. Dr. Whitman's little herd was lowing in the river; the wild horses were neighing at the morning breeze; the birds were caroling in the groves. I said, every thing was alive. Nay, not so. The Skyuse village was in the deepest slumber, save a few solitary individuals who were stalking with slow and stately tread up a neighbouring bute, to descry the retreat of their animals. Their conical skin lodges dotted the valley above the mission, and imparted to the morning landscape a peculiar wildness. As the sun rose, the inmates began to emerge from them.
It was a chilly hour; and their buffalo robes were drawn over their shoulders, with the hair next the body. The snow-white flesh side was fringed with the dark fur that crept in sight around the edges, and their own long black glistening tresses fell over it far down the back. The children were out in all the buoyancy of young life, shouting to the prancing steed, or betting gravel stones that the arrows upon their little {141} bows would be the first to clip the sturdy thistle head upon which they were waging mimic war. The women were busy at their fires, weaving mats from the flag; or sewing moccasins, leggings, or hunting shirts. Crickie was giving meat to his friends, who the past winter had fed him, and taken care of him, while lying sick.
This is the imperial tribe of Oregon. They formerly claimed a prescriptive right to exercise jurisdiction over the country down the Columbia to its mouth; and up the North and South Forks to their sources. In the reign of the late high Chief, the brother of him who now holds that station, this claim was acceded to by all the tribes within those districts. But that talented and brave man left at his death but one son, who, after receiving a thorough education at the Selkirk settlement on Red River of Lake Winnipeg, also died—and with him the imperial dignity of the Skyuse tribe.[220]
The person in charge at Fort Wallawalla, indeed dressed the present incumbent in better style than his fellows; proclaimed him high chief, and by treating him with the formality usually tendered to his deceased brother, has obtained for him the {142} name, but not the respect and influence belonging to the office. He is a man of considerable mental power, but has none of the fire and energy attributed to his predecessor. The Wallawallas and Upper Chinooks are the only tribes that continue to recognise the Skyuse supremacy.