"Weren't there plenty of Indians there?"
"Indians! I should think so; about two or three hundred Klick-i-tats were camped in that valley then. Good Indians they were, tall, and straight as a dart."
"Who was the chief?"
"A man they called Quarterly. When we came in and camped, that Indian came up to my father and said, 'What do you want here?' My father said, 'We have come here to settle down and farm and make homes for ourselves.' 'Well,' says the Indian, 'you can; if you don't meddle with us, we won't hurt you.' No more they did; we never had a cross word from them."
"Was the country theirs?"
"Well, no; it belonged properly to the Calapooyas, and these Klick-i-tats had rented it off them for some horses and cloths and things for a hunting-ground."
"Plenty of game?"
"Just lots of it; elk and deer plenty, and the bunch-grass waist-high. The Indian ponies were rolling fat; good ponies they were, too."
"What sort of houses had these Indians?"
INDIAN HOUSES AND CUSTOMS."The Klick-i-tats had regular lodges: sticks set in the ground in a circle and tied together at the top, and covered all over with the rush mats they used to make. Good workers they were, too. They and the Calapooyas fell out once. I mind very well one day the Klick-i-tats came running in to our camp to say there was ever such a lot of Calapooyas coming in to attack them. They sent off their women and children to the hills, and then drove all their horses down to our camp. Strange, wasn't it, they should think their stock safer with five or six white men? There must have been several hundred of those Calapooyas."