I can not help confessing to a half sympathy with the murderers, though I am fully aware of the enormity of the crime. It would be a satisfaction to feel justified in conscience in calling for a bodily expiation of the false pretenses and ignorant mummeries that did one's wife to death. And I hear that the Indians in question, while acknowledging that they knew they were sinning against the laws that governed life on the reservation, yet evidently had no consciousness of intrinsic wrong.
However, they were arrested by the agent, and carried off to Fort Vancouver for detention and trial. Hence they escaped, but were pursued by the soldiers. One, being caught, refused to submit, and was shot by the corporal in charge of the party in the act of flight; the others were recaptured, and what their fate is or will be I do not yet know.
But, as one stands on the beach at Newport, and sees a long string of wagons and teams coming down from the reservation for supplies, each in charge of its owner, a respectable-looking Indian, it is impossible not to wish for them the separate life and property they themselves desire.
The number of Indians on the Siletz reserve is most variously stated; the estimates range between twenty-four hundred and four hundred. I should fancy the truth to be nearer the smaller than the larger figures. It is obvious that the conditions of life, the stage of civilization, the state of education, the desire or readiness to acquire or own separate and individual property, must vary in every reservation. It is impossible to apply the same rules to each, and I do not presume even to have an opinion regarding reservations other than the one in our immediate neighborhood.
POWERS AND DUTIES OF THE AGENT.I had no idea till lately of the overwhelming power held by the agent. No Indian can leave the reservation, however well established his good character, and for however temporary a purpose, without the pass of the agent. No one can enter the reservation, even to pass through it, or to stay a night with one of the Indians at his house, without the same leave. Work on the roads or in the fields of the reservation is at the absolute order of the agent; no corvée in ancient France could press more crushingly on the peasant than could the order of a harsh or stern agent on his charge. In the choice and erection of houses, in the furnishing and distribution of stores, in matters of internal police of all sorts, his word is law. If any one desires to study the working of an instructed despotism in a partly civilized community, he can see it carried to its logical extreme on an agency.
So long as the Indians possess the attributes of children it may be right so to treat them. But I presume it was intended by the framers of the existing system that at some date the pupils should put away childish things and emerge from the condition of tutelage. The question is, whether that time has not come already in many instances.
My observations have all had reference to a reservation honestly governed, as I believe, with the best intentions toward its inhabitants. But how the system would lend itself to dishonest measures and arbitrary, even cruel, treatment, it is not hard to imagine.
CHAPTER XII.
The Legislative Assembly—The Governor—His duties—Payment of the members—Aspect of the city; the Legislature in session—The lobbyist —How bills pass—How bills do not pass—Questions of the day—Common carriers—Woman's suffrage—Some of the acts of 1878—Judicial system of the State—Taxes—Assessments—County officers—The justice of the peace—Quick work.