CHAPTER II
THE NATIVE RACES OF OLD WALLA WALLA COUNTY
Any history of any part of America would be incomplete without some view of the aborigines. Such a view is due to them, as well as to the accuracy of statement and the philosophical perspectives of history. Such a view is required also by justice to the natives themselves. The ever westward movement of American settlement has been marked by trails of blood and fire. Warfare has set its red stains upon nearly every region wrested from barbarism to civilization. This has been in many cases due to flagrant wrong, greed, and lust by the civilized man. It has been due also to savage cruelty by the barbarian. Perhaps more than to wrong by either party, it has been due to that great, unexplained and unexplainable tragedy of human history, the inability of either party to comprehend the viewpoint of the other. And yet, most of all, it has been due to that inevitable and remorseless evolution of all life by which one race of plants, animals, and human beings progresses by the extermination of others. Perhaps the philosophical mind, while viewing with pity the sufferings and with reprobation the crimes and irrational treatment forced upon the natives by the civilized race, and while viewing with equal horror the atrocities by which the losers in the inevitable struggle sought to maintain themselves—if to such a philosophical mind comes the question who was to blame for all this seemingly needless woe—must answer that the universe is mainly to blame, and we have not yet reached the point to explain the universe.
We have found in the preceding chapter and shall find in succeeding chapters frequent occasion to refer to events in connection with Indians. Our aim in this chapter is rather to give an outline of locations of different tribes, to sketch briefly some of their traits as illustrated in their myths and customs, and to state the chief published sources of our knowledge in regard to these myths and customs. The history of Indian wars, which also includes other incidental matter about them, will be found in the last chapter of Part One of this volume.
The literature of Indian life is voluminous. Practically all the early explorers from Lewis and Clark down devoted large space to the natives. The pioneer settlers knew them individually and some of them derived much matter of general value which has been preserved in brief newspaper articles or handed down in story and tradition. Out of this vast mass a few writers have formed groups of topics which serve well for those generalizations which a bird's-eye view like this must be content to take. Foremost among the writers dealing with the subject in a large way is Hubert Howe Bancroft. Although his great work on the history of the Pacific Coast has been severely and sometimes justly censured, yet it must be granted that, as a vast compendium of matter dealing with the subject, it is monumental and can be turned to with confidence in the authenticity of its sources and in the general accuracy of its statements of fact, even if not always in the breadth of its opinions or the reliability of its judgments.
HUMISHUMA, OR MORNING DOVE, A WOMAN OF THE OKANOGAN TRIBE
Her deerskin robe, decorated with beads, elk teeth and grizzly-bear claws, is worth over one thousand dollars