# Bridge of the Gods (1902)/Book 5

BOOK V.
THE SHADOW OF THE END.
CHAPTER I.
THE HAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT.
Ci We view as one who hath an evil sight," He answered, "plainly objects far remote."
CAREY: Dante.
r "PHE night came to an end at last, a night not ^ soon forgotten by the Oregon Indians, and destined to be remembered in tale and tomanowos lore long after that generation had passed away. The sky was thick with clouds; the atmosphere was heavy with smoke, which, dense and low-hanging in the still weather, shut out the entire horizon. The volcano was invisible in the smoky air, but its low mutterings came to them from time to time.
The chiefs met early in the grove of council. Multnomah s countenance told nothing of the night before, but almost all the rest showed something yet of superstitious fear. Mishlah s face was haggard, his air startled and uneasy, like that of some forest animal that had been terribly frightened; and even Snoqualmie looked worn. But the greatest change of all was in Tohomish. His face was as ghastly as that ​
of a corpse, and he came into the council walking in a dull lifeless way, as if hardly aware of what he was doing. Those nearest to him shrank away, whisper ing to one another that the seer looked like a dead man.
Cecil came last. The severe mental conflict of the past night had told almost fatally on a frame already worn out by years of toil and sickness. His cheek was pale, his eye hollow, his step slow and faltering, like one whose flame of life is burning very low. The pain at his heart, always worse in times of exhaustion, was sharp and piercing.
He looked agitated and restless; he had tried hard to give Wallulah into the hands of God and feel that she was safe, but he could not. For himself he had no thought; but his whole soul was wrung with pain for her. By virtue of his own keen sympathies, he anticipated and felt all that the years had in store for her, the loneliness, the heartache, the trying to care for one she loathed; until he shrank from her desolate and hopeless future as if it had been his own. All his soul went out to her in yearning tender ness, in passionate desire to shield her and to take away her burden.
But his resolution never wavered. Below the ebb and flow of feeling, the decision to make their separa tion final was as unchanging as granite. He could not bear to look upon her face again; he could not bear to see her wedded to Snoqualmie. He intended to make one last appeal to the Indians this morning to accept the gospel of peace; then he would leave the council before Wallulah was brought to it. So he sat there now, waiting for the " talk " to ​begin.
The bands gathered around the grove were smaller than usual. Many had fled from the valley at dawn to escape from the dreaded vicinity of the smoking mountains; many hundreds remained, but they were awed and frightened. No war could have appalled them as they were appalled by the shaking of the solid earth under their feet. All the abject supersti tion of their natures was roused. They looked like men who felt themselves caught in the grasp of some supernatural power.
Multnomah opened the council by saying that two runners had arrived with news that morning; the one from the sea-coast, the other from up the Columbia. They would come before the council and tell the news they had brought.
The runner from the upper Columbia spoke first. He had come thirty miles since dawn. He seemed unnerved and fearful, like one about to announce some unheard-of calamity. The most stoical bent forward eagerly to hear.
"The Great Spirit has shaken the earthy and the Bridge of the Gods has fallen!"
There was the silence of amazement; then through the tribes passed in many tongues the wild and won dering murmur, "The Bridge of the Gods has fallen! The Bridge of the Gods has fallen!" With it, too, went the recollection of the ancient prophecy that when the Bridge fell the power of the Willamettes would also fall. Now the Bridge was broken, and the dominion of the Willamettes was broken forever with it. At another time the slumbering jealousy of the tribes would have burst forth in terrific vengeance on the doomed race. But they were dejected and ​
afraid. In the fall of the Bridge they saw the hand of the Great Spirit, a visitation of God. And so Willamette and tributary alike heard the news with fear and apprehension. Only Multnomah, who knew the message before it was spoken, listened with his wonted composure.
It is well," he said, with more than Indian dupli city; " the daughter of Multnomah is to become the wife of Snoqualmie the Cayuse, and the new line that commences with their children will give new chiefs to head the confederacy of the Wauna. The old gives way to the new. That is the sign that the Great Spirit gives in the fall of the Bridge. Think you it means that the war- strength is gone from us, that we shall no longer prevail in battle? No, no! who thinks it?"
The proud old sachem rose to his feet; his giant form towered over the multitude, and every eye fell before the haughty and scornful glance that swept council and audience like a challenge to battle.
"Is there a chief here that thinks it? Let him step out, let him grapple with Multnomah in the death-grapple, and see. Is there a tribe that thinks it? We reach out our arms to them; we are ready. Let them meet us in battle now, to-day, and know if our hearts have become the hearts of women. Will you come? We will give you dark and bloody proof that our tomahawks are still sharp and our arms are strong."
He stood with outstretched arms, from which the robe of fur had fallen back. A thrill of dread went through the assembly at the grim defiance; then Snoqualmie spoke. ​
"The heart of all the tribes is as the heart of Multnomah. Let there be peace."
The chief resumed his seat. His force of will had wrung one last victory from fate itself. Instantly, and with consummate address, Multnomah preoccupied the attention of the council before anything could be said or done to impair the effect of his challenge. He bade the other runner, the one from the sea-coast, deliver his message.
It was, in effect, this : -
A large canoe, with great white wings like a bird, had come gliding over the waters to the coast near the mouth of the Wauna. Whence it came no one could tell; but its crew were pale of skin like the great white shaman there in the council, and seemed of his race. Some of them came ashore in a small canoe to trade with the Indians, but trouble rose between them and there was a battle. The strangers slew many Indians with their magic, darting fire at them from long black tubes. Then they escaped to the great canoe, which spread its wings and passed away from sight into the sea. Many of the Indians were killed, but none of the pale-faced intruders. Now the band who had suffered demanded that the white man of whom they had heard the white chief at the council be put to death to pay the blood-debt.
All eyes turned on Cecil, and he felt that his hour was come. Weak, exhausted in body and mind, wea ried almost to death, a sudden and awful peril was on him. For a moment his heart sank, his brain grew dizzy. How could he meet this emergency? All his soul went out to God with a dumb prayer for help, with an overwhelming sense of weakness. Then he ​
heard Multnomah speaking to him in cold, hard tones.
"The white man has heard the words of the runner. What has he to say why his life should not pay the blood-debt?"
Cecil rose to his feet. With one last effort he put Wallulah, himself, his mission, into the hands of God; with one last effort he forced himself to speak.
Men of nervous temperament, like Cecil, can bring out of an exhausted body an energy, an outburst of final and intense effort, of which those of stronger physique do not seem capable. But it drains the remaining vital forces, and the reaction is terrible. Was it this flaming-up of the almost burned-out em bers of life that animated Cecil now? Or was it the Divine Strength coming to him in answer to prayer? Be this as it may, when he opened his lips to speak, all the power of his consecration came back; physical weakness and mental anxiety left him; he felt that Wallulah was safe in the arms of the Infinite Compas sion; he felt his love for the Indians, his deep yearn ing to help them, to bring them to God, rekindling within him; and never had he been more grandly the Apostle to the Indians than now.
In passionate tenderness, in burning appeal, in liv ing force and power of delivery, it was the supreme effort of his life. He did not plead for himself; he ig nored, put aside, forgot his own personal danger; but he set before his hearers the wickedness of their own system of retaliation and revenge; he showed them how it overshadowed their lives and lay like a dead ening weight on their better natures. The horror, the cruelty, the brute animalism of the blood- thi ​rst, the
war-lust, was set over against the love and forgiveness to which the Great Spirit called them.
The hearts of the Indians were shaken within them. The barbarism which was the outcome of centuries of strife and revenge, the dark and cumu lative growth of ages, was stirred to its core by the strong and tender eloquence of this one man. As he spoke, there came to all those swarthy list eners, in dim beauty, a glimpse of a better life; there came to them a moment s fleeting revelation of something above their own vindictiveness and ferocity. That vague longing, that indefinable wist- fulness which he had so often seen on the faces of his savage audiences was on nearly every face when he closed.
As he took his seat, the tide of inspiration went from him, and a deadly faintness came over him. It seemed as if in that awful reaction the last spark of vitality was dying out; but somehow, through it all, he felt at peace with God and man. A great quiet was upon him; he was anxious for nothing, he cared for nothing, he simply rested as on the living presence of the Father.
Upon the sweet and lingering spell of his closing words came Multnomah s tones in stern contrast.
"What is the word of the council? Shall the white man live or die? "
Snoqualmie was on his feet in an instant.
"Blood for blood. Let the white man die at the torture-stake."
One by one the chiefs gave their voice for death. Shaken for but a moment, the ancient inherited bar barism which was their very life reasserted itself, and ​
they could decide no other way. One, two, three of the sachems gave no answer, but sat in silence. They were men whose hearts had been touched before by Cecil, and who were already desiring the better life. They could not condemn their teacher.
At length it came to Tohomish. He arose. His face, always repulsive, was pallid now in the extreme. The swathed corpses on mimaluse island looked not more sunken and ghastly.
He essayed to speak; thrice the words faltered on his lips; and when at last he spoke, it was in a weary, lifeless way. His tones startled the audience like an electric shock. The marvellous power and sweetness were gone from his voice; its accents were discordant, uncertain. Could the death s head before them be that of Tohomish? Could those harsh and broken tones be those of the Pine Voice? He seemed like a man whose animal life still survived, but whose soul was dead.
What he said at first had no relation to the matter before the council. Every Indian had his tomano- wos appointed him by the Great Spirit from his birth, and that tomanowos was the strength of his life. Its influence grew with his growth; the roots of his being were fed in it; it imparted its characteristics to him. But the name and nature of his tomanowos was the one secret that must go with him to the grave. If it was told, the charm was lost and the tomanowos de serted him.
Tohomish s tomanowos was the Bridge and the fore knowledge of its fall : a black secret that had darkened his whole life, and imparted the strange and mournful mystery to his eloquence. Now that the Bridge was ​
fallen, the strength was gone from Tohomish s heart, the music from his words.
"Tohomish has no voice now," he continued; " he is as one dead. He desires to say only this, then his words shall be heard no more among men. The fall of the Bridge is a sign that not only the Willa- mettes but all the tribes of the Wauna shall fall and pass away. Another people shall take our place, another race shall reign in our stead, and the Indian shall be forgotten, or remembered only as a dim memory of the past.
"And who are they who bring us our doom? Look on the face of the white wanderer there; listen to the story of your brethren slain at the sea-coast by the white men in the canoe, and you will know. They come; they that are stronger, and push us out into the dark. The white wanderer talks of peace; but the Great Spirit has put death between the Indian and the white man, and where he has put death there can be no peace.
"Slay the white man as the white race will slay your children in the time that is to come. Peace? love? There can be only war and hate. Striking back blow for blow like a wounded rattlesnake, shall the red man pass; and when the bones of the last Indian of the Wauna lie bleaching on the prairie far from the mimaluse island of his fathers, then there will be peace.
"Tohomish has spoken; his words are ended, and ended forever."
The harsh, disjointed tones ceased. All eyes fell again on Cecil, the representative of the race by which the Willamettes were doomed. The wrath of all those hundreds, the vengeance of all those gathered tribes ​
of the Wauna, the hatred of the whole people he had come to save, seemed to rise up and fall upon him, the frail invalid with the sharp pain throbbing at his heart.
But that strange peace was on him still, and his eyes, dilated and brilliant in the extremity of physical pain, met those lowering brows with a look of exceed ing pity.
Multnomah rose to pronounce sentence. For him there could be but one decision, and he gave it, the clinched hand, the downward gesture, that said, "There is death between us. We will slay as we shall be slain."
Cecil was on his feet, though it seemed as if he must fall within the moment. He fought down the pain that pierced his heart like a knife; he gathered the last resources of an exhausted frame for one more effort. The executioners sprang forward with the covering for his eyes that was to shut out the light forever. His glance, his gesture held them back; they paused irresolutely, even in the presence of Mult nomah; weak as Cecil was, he was the great white tomanowos still, and they dared not touch him. There was a pause, an intense silence.
"I gave up all to come and tell you of God, and you have condemned me to die at the torture-stake," said the soft, low voice, sending through their stern hearts its thrill and pathos for the last time. "But you shall not bring this blood-stain upon your souls. The hand of the Great Spirit is on me; he takes me to himself. Remember what I have said. The Great Spirit loves you. Pray forgive be at peace. Re ​member "
The quiver of agonizing pain disturbed the gentle ness of his look; he reeled, and sank to the ground. For a moment the slight form shuddered convulsively and the hands were clinched; then the struggle ceased and a wonderful brightness shone upon his face. His lips murmured something in his own tongue, some thing into which came the name of Wallulah and the name of God. Then his eyes grew dim and he lay very still. Only the expression of perfect peace still rested on the face. Sachems and warriors gazed in awe upon the beauty, grand in death, of the one whom the Great Spirit had taken from them. Perhaps the iron heart of the war-chief was the only one that did not feel remorse and self-reproach.
Ere the silence was broken, an old Indian woman came forward from the crowd into the circle of chiefs. She looked neither to the right nor to the left, but ad vanced among the warrior-sachems, into whose pres ence no woman had dared intrude herself, and bent over the dead. She lifted the wasted body in her arms and bore it away, with shut lips and down cast eyes, asking no permission, saying no word. The charm that had been around the white shaman in life seemed to invest her with its power; for grim chieftains made way, the crowd opened to let her pass, and even Multnomah looked on in silence.
That afternoon, a little band of Indians were assem bled in Cecil s lodge. Some of them were already converts; some were only awakened and impressed; but all were men who loved him.
They were gathered, men of huge frame, around a dead body that lay upon a cougar skin. Their faces were sad, their manner was solemn. In the corner ​
sat an aged squaw, her face resting in her hands, her long gray hair falling dishevelled about her shoulders. In that heart-broken attitude she had sat ever since bringing Cecil to the hut. She did not weep or sob, but sat motionless, in stoical, dumb despair.
Around the dead the Indians stood or sat in silence, each waiting for the other to say what was in the hearts of all. At length the Shoshone renegade, who had so loved Cecil, spoke.
"Our white brother is gone from us, but the Great Spirit lives and dies not. Let us turn from blood and sin and walk in the way our brother showed us. He said, Remember; and shall we forget? I choose now, while he can hear me, before he is laid in the cold ground. I put away from me the old heart of hate and revenge. I ask the Great Spirit to give me the new heart of love and peace. I have chosen."
One by one each told his resolve, the swarthy faces lighting up, the stern lips saying unwonted words of love. Dim and misty, the dawn had come to them; reaching out in the dark, they had got hold of the hand of God and felt that he was a Father. One would have said that their dead teacher lying there heard their vows, so calm and full of peace was the white still face.
That night the first beams of the rising moon fell on a new-made grave under the cottonwoods, not far from the bank of the river. Beneath it, silent in the last sleep, lay the student whose graceful presence had been the pride of far-off Magdalen, the pastor whose memory still lingered in New England, the evangelist whose burning words had thrilled the tribes of the wilderness like the words of some prophet of old. ​
Beside the grave crouched the old Indian woman, alone and forsaken in her despair, the one mourner out of all for whom, his life had been given.
No, not the only one; for a tall warrior enters the grove; the Shoshone renegade bends over her and touches her gently on the shoulder.
"Come," he says kindly, "our horses are saddled; we take the trail up the Wauna to-night, I and my friends. We will fly from this fated valley ere the wrath of the Great Spirit falls upon it. Beyond the mountains I will seek a new home with the Spokanes or the Okanogans. Come; my home shall be your home, because you cared for him that is gone."
She shook her head and pointed to the grave.
"My heart is there; my life is buried with him. I cannot go."
Again he urged her.
"No, no," she replied, with Indian stubbornness; "I cannot leave him. Was I not like his mother? How can I go and leave him for others? The roots of the old tree grow not in new soil. If it is pulled up it dies."
"Come with me," said the savage, with a gentleness born of his new faith. "Be my mother. We will talk of him; you shall tell me of him and his God. Come, the horses wait."
Again she shook her head; then fell forward on the grave, her arms thrown out, as if to clasp it in her embrace. He tried to lift her; her head fell back, and she lay relaxed and motionless in his arms.
Another grave was made by Cecil s; and the little band rode through the mountain pass that night, toward the country of the Okanogans, without her. ​
And that same night, an English exploring vessel far out at sea sailed southward, leaving behind the unknown shores of Oregon, her crew never dream ing how near they had been to finding the lost wanderer, Cecil Grey. ​
CHAPTER II.
THE MARRIAGE AND THE BREAKING UP.
Remembering love and all the dead delight, And all that time was sweet with for a space.
SWINBURNE.
A FTER Cecil had been borne from the council-
spell of the strange scene they had just witnessed, looked around for Tohomish the seer. He was gone. No one could remember seeing him go, yet he was missing from his accustomed place, and never was he seen or heard of more. Upon his fate, lost in the common ruin that engulfed his race, the legend casts no ray of light. It is certain that the fall of the Bridge, with which his life was interwoven, had a disastrous effect upon him, and as he said, that the strength of his life was broken. It is probable that the orator-seer, feeling within himself that his power was gone, crept away into the forest to die. Perhaps, had they searched for him, they would have found him lying lifeless upon the leaves in some dense thicket or at the foot of some lonely crag.
Whatever his fate, the Indians never looked upon his face again.
Multnomah made no comment on the death of Cecil, or on the prophecy of Tohomish, so much at variance with his own interpretation of the fall of the ​16
Bridge. Whatever he had to say was evidently held in reserve for the closing talk with which he would soon dismiss the council.
"You shall see Multnomah s daughter given to Snoqualmie, and then Multnomah will open his hand and make you rich."
So said the war-chief; and a runner was dispatched with a summons to Wallulah. In a little while a band of Indian girls was seen approaching the grove. Sur rounded by the maidens, as if they were a guard of honor, came Wallulah, all unconscious of the tragedy that had just been enacted.
Among the chiefs they passed, and stopped before Multnomah. As they paused, Wallulah looked around for Cecil in one quick glance; then, not seeing him, she cast down her eyes despondingly. Multnomah rose and beckoned Snoqualmie to him. He came forward and stood beside the war- chief. The Indian girls stepped back a little, in involuntary awe of the two great sachems, and left Wallulah standing alone before them.
Her face wore a patient look, as of one who is very worn and weary, tired of the burdens of life, yet going forward without hope, without thought even, to other and still heavier burdens. She was clad in a soft oriental fabric; her hair fell in luxuriant tresses upon her shoulders; her flute hung at her belt by a slender chain of gold.
There was something unspeakably sad and heart broken in her appearance, as she stood there, a listless, dejected figure, before those two grim war riors, awaiting her doom.
Multnomah took her hand; the fingers of the other ​
were clasped around her beloved flute, pressing it closely, as if seeking help from its mute companion ship. The chief gave her hand into Snoqualmie s; a shudder passed through her as she felt his touch, and she trembled from head to foot; then she controlled herself by a strong effort. Snoqualmie s fierce black eyes searched her face, as if looking through and through her, and she flushed faintly under their penetrating gaze.
"She is yours," said the war-chief. "Be kind to her, for though she is your wife she is the daughter of Multnomah." So much did the Indian say for love of his child, wondering at her strange, sad look, and feeling vaguely that she was unhappy. She tried to withdraw her fingers from Snoqualmie s clasp the moment her father was done speaking. He held them tightly, however, and bending over her, spoke in a low tone.
"My band starts for home at mid-day. Be ready to go when I send for you."
She looked up with startled, piteous eyes.
"To-day?" she asked in a choked voice.
"To-day," came the abrupt reply; too low for the others to hear, yet harsh enough to sting her through and through. "Do you think Snoqualmie goes back to his illahee and leaves his woman behind?"
Her spirit kindled in resentment. Never had the chiefs daughter been spoken to so harshly; then all at once it came to her that he knew, that he must have followed Cecil and witnessed one of their last interviews. Jealous, revengeful, the Indian was her master now. She grew pale to the lips. He released her hand, and she shrank away from him, and left the ​
council with her maidens. No one had heard \be few half-whispered words that passed between them, but those who stood nearest noticed the deadly pallor that came over her face while Snoqualmie was speak ing. Multnomah saw it, and Snoqualmie caught from him a glance that chilled even his haughty nature, a glance that said, "Beware; she is the war-chiefs daughter."
But even if he had known all, Multnomah would have sacrificed her. His plans must be carried out, even though her heart be crushed.
Now followed the potlatch, the giving of gifts. At a signal from the war-chief, his slaves appeared, laden with presents. Large heaps of rich furs and skins were laid on the ground near the chiefs. The finest of bows and arrows, with gaily decorated quivers and store of bow-strings, were brought. Untold treas ure of hiagua shells, money as well as ornament to the Oregon Indians, was poured out upon the ground, and lay glistening in the sun in bright- colored masses. To the Indians they represented vast and splendid wealth. Multnomah was the richest of all the In dians of the Wauna; and the gifts displayed were the spoil of many wars, treasures garnered during forty years of sovereignty.
And now they were all given away. The chief kept back nothing, except some cases of oriental fabrics that had been saved from the wreck when Wallulah s mother was cast upon the shore. Well would it have been for him and his race had they been given too; for, little as they dreamed it, the fate of the Willamettes lay sealed up in those un opened cases of silk ​and damask.
Again and again the slaves of Multnomah added their burdens to the heaps, and went back for more, till a murmur of wonder rose among the crowd. His riches seemed exhaustless. At length, however, all was brought. The chief stood up, and, opening his hands to them in the Indian gesture for giving, said,
"There is all that was Multnomah s; it is yours; your hands are full now and mine are empty."
The chiefs and warriors rose up gravely and went among the heaps of treasure j each selecting from furs and skins, arms and hiagua shells, that which he desired. There was no unseemly haste or snatching; a quiet decorum prevailed among them. The women and children were excluded from sharing in these gifts, but provisions dried meats and berries, and bread of camas or Wappatto root were thrown among them on the outskirts of the crowd where they were gathered. And unlike the men, they scrambled for it like hungry animals; save where here and there the wife or daughter of a chief stood looking disdainfully on the food and those who snatched at it.
Such giving of gifts, or potlatches, are still known among the Indians. On Puget Sound and the Okan- ogan, one occasionally hears of some rich Indian making a great potlatch, giving away all his pos sessions, and gaining nothing but a reputation for disdain of wealth, a reputation which only Indian stoicism would crave. Multnomah s object was not that so much as to make, before the dispersal of the tribes, a last and most favorable impression.
When the presents were all divided, the chiefs re sumed their places to hear the last speech of Muitno- mah, the speech that closed the council. ​
It was a masterpiece of dignity, subtility, and com mand. The prophecy of Tohomish was evaded, the fall of the Bridge wrested into an omen propitious to the Willamettes; and at last his hearers found them selves believing as he wished them to believe, without knowing how or why, so strongly did the overmaster ing personality of Multnomah penetrate and sway their lesser natures. He particularly dwelt on the idea that they were all knit together now and were as one race. Yet through the smooth words ran a latent threat, a covert warning of the result of any revolt against his authority based on what plotting dreamers might say of the fall of the Bridge, a half-expressed menace, like the gleam of a sword half drawn from the scabbard. And he closed by announcing that ere another spring the young men of all the tribes would go on the war-path against the Shoshones and come back loaded with spoil. And so, kindling the hatred of the chiefs against the common enemy, Multnomah closed the great council.
In a little while the camp was all astir with prepa ration for departure. Lodges were being taken down, the mats that covered them rolled up and packed on the backs of horses; all was bustle and tumult. Troop after troop crossed the river and took the trail toward the upper Columbia.
But when the bands passed from under the personal influence of Multnomah, they talked of the ominous things that had just happened; they said to each other that the Great Spirit had forsaken the Wil lamettes, and that when they came into the valley again it would be to plunder and to slay. Multnomah had stayed the tide but for a moment. The fall of ​
the ancient tomanowos of the Willamettes had a tre mendous significance to the restless tributaries, and already the confederacy of the Wauna was crumbling like a rope of sand. Those tribes would meet no more in peace on the island of council. ​
THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS.
CHAPTER III.
AT THE CASCADES.
Wails on the wind, fades out the sunset quite, And in my heart and on the earth is night.
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.
THE main body of Snoqualmie s followers crossed to the north bank of the Columbia and took the trail leading up the river toward the inland prai ries. But Snoqualmie and Wallulah went by canoe as far as the now ruined Bridge of the Gods. There were three canoes in their train. Snoqualmie and Wallulah occupied the first; the other two were laden with the rich things that had once made her lodge so beautiful. It stood all bare and deserted now, the splendor stripped from its rough bark walls even as love and hope had been reft from the heart of its mistress. Tapestries, divans, carpets, mirrors, were heaped in the canoes like spoil torn from the enemy.
The farewell between Wallulah and her father had been sorrowful. It was remembered afterward, by those who were witnesses of it, that the war-chief had shown a tenderness unusual with him, that he had seemed reluctant to part with his daughter, and that she had clung to him, pale and tearful, as if he were her last hope on earth.
When Snoqualmie took her hand to lead her away, she shuddered, withdrew her fingers from his clasp, ​
AT THE CASCADES. .249
and walked alone to the canoe. He entered after her; the canoe-men dipped their paddles into the water, and the vessel glided away from the island.
She sat reclining on a heap of furs, her elbows sunk in them, her cheek resting on her hand, her eyes turned back toward her island home. Between it and her the expanse of waters grew ever broader, and the trail the canoe left behind it sparkled in a thousand silvery ripples. The island, with its green prairies and its stately woods, receded fast. She felt as she looked back as if everything was slipping away from her. Lonely as her life had been before Cecil came into it, she had still had her music and her beautiful rooms in the bark lodge; and they seemed infinitely sweet and precious now as she recalled them. Oh, if she could only have them back again! And those interviews with Cecil. How love and grief shook the little figure as she thought! How loath- ingly she shrunk from the presence of the barbarian at her side! And all the time the island receded farther and farther in the distance, and the canoe glided forward like a merciless fate bearing her on and on toward the savagery of the inland desert.
Snoqualmie sat watching her with glittering, trium phant eyes. To him she was no more than some lovely animal of which he had become the owner; and ownership of course brought with it the right to tantalize and to torture. A malicious smile crossed his lips as he saw how sorrowfully her gaze rested on her old home.
"Look forward," he said, "not back; look forward to your life with Snoqualmie and to the lodge that awaits you in the land of the Cayuses." ​
She started, and her face flushed painfully; then without looking at him she replied,
"Wallulah loves her home, and leaving it saddens her."
A sparkle of vindictive delight came into his eyes.
"Do the women of the Willamette feel sad when they go to live with their husbands? It is not so with the Cayuse women. They are glad; they care for the one they belong to. They love to sit in the sun at the door of the wigwam and say to the other women, My man is brave; he leads the war party; he has many scalps at his belt. Who is brave like my man? "
Wallulah shuddered. He saw it, and the sparkle of malice in his eyes flashed into sudden anger.
"Does the young squaw tremble at these things? Then she must get used to them. She must learn to bring wood and water for Snoqualmie s lodge, too. She must learn to wait on him as an Indian s wife ought. The old wrinkled squaws, who are good for nothing but to be beasts of burden, shall teach her."
There came before her a picture of the ancient withered hags, the burden-bearers, the human vampires of the Indian camps, the vile in word and deed, the first to cry for the blood of captives, the most eager to give taunts and blows to the helpless; were they to be her associates, her teachers? Involuntarily she lifted her hand, as if to push from her a future so dreadful.
"Wallulah will bring the wood and the water. Wallulah will work. The old women need not teach her."
"That is well. But one thing more y ​ou must
learn; and that is to hold up your head and not look like a drooping captive. Smile, laugh, be gay. Sno- qualmie will have no clouded face, no bent head in his lodge."
She looked at him imploringly. The huge form, the swarthy face, seemed to dominate her, to crush her down with their barbarian strength and ferocity. She dropped her eyes again, and lay there on the furs like some frightened bird shrinking from the glance of a hawk.
"I will work; I will bear burdens," she repeated, in a trembling tone. "But I cannot smile and laugh when my heart is heavy."
He watched her with a half angry, half malicious regard, a regard that seemed ruthlessly probing into every secret of her nature.
She knew somehow that he was aware of her love for Cecil, and she dreaded lest he should taunt her with it. Anything but that. He knew it, and held it back as his last and most cruel blow. Over his bronzed face flitted no expression of pity. She was to him like some delicate wounded creature of the forest, that it was a pleasure to torture. So he had often treated a maimed bird or fawn, tantalizing it, delighted by its fluttering and its pain, till the lust of torture was gratified and the death-blow was given.
He sat regarding her with a sneering, malicious look for a little while; then he said,
"It is hard to smile on Snoqualmie; but the white man whom you met in the wood, it was not so with him. It was easy to smile and look glad at him, but it is hard to do so for Snoq ​ualmie."
Wallulah shrunk as if he had struck her a blow; then she looked at him desperately, pleadingly.
"Do not say such cruel things. I will be a faith ful wife to you. I will never see the white man again."
The sneering malice in his eyes gave way to the gleam of exultant anger.
"Faithful! You knew you were to be my woman when you let him put his arms around you and say soft things to you. Faithful! You would leave Snoqualmie for him now, could it be so. But you say well that you will never see him again."
She gazed at him in terror.
"What do you mean? Has anything happened to him? Have they harmed him? "
Over the chiefs face came the murderous expres sion that was there when he slew the Bannock war rior at the torture stake.
"Harmed him! Do you think that he could meet you alone and say sweet things to you and caress you, you who were the same as my squaw, and I not harm him? He is dead; I slew him."
False though it was, in so far as Snoqualmie claimed to have himself slain Cecil, it was thoroughly in keep ing with Indian character. White captives were often told, "I killed your brother," or, "This is your hus band s scalp," when perhaps the person spoken of was alive and well.
"Dead!"
He threw his tomahawk at her feet.
"His blood is on it. You are Snoqualmie s squaw; wash it off."
Dead, dead, her lover was dead! That wa ​s all she
could grasp. Snoqualmie s insulting command passed unheeded. She sat looking at the Indian with bright, dazed eyes that saw nothing. All the world seemed blotted out.
"I tell you that he is dead, and I slew him. Are you asleep that you stare at me so? Awaken and do as I bid you; wash your lover s blood off my tomahawk."
At first she had been stunned by the terrible shock, and she could realize only that Cecil was dead. Now it came to her, dimly at first, then like a flash of fire, that Snoqualmie had slain him. All her spirit leaped up in uncontrollable hatred. For once, she was the war-chiefs daughter. She drew her skirts away from the tomahawk in unutterable horror; her eyes blazed into Snoqualmie s a defiance and scorn before which his own sunk for the instant.
"You killed him! I hate you. I will never be your wife. You have thrown the tomahawk between us; it shall be between us forever. Murderer! You have killed the one I love. Yes, I loved him; and I hate you and will hate you till I die."
The passion in her voice thrilled even the canoe-men, and their paddle strokes fell confusedly for an instant, though they did not understand; for both Wallulah and Snoqualmie had spoken in the royal tongue of the Willamettes. He sat abashed for an instant, taken utterly by surprise.
Then the wild impulse of defiance passed, and the awful sense of bereavement came back like the falling of darkness over a sinking flame. Cecil was gone from her, gone for all time. The world seemed unreal, empty. She sunk among the f ​urs like one
stricken down. Snoqualmie, recovering from his momentary rebuff, heaped bitter epithets and scornful words upon her; but she neither saw nor heard, and lay with wide, bright, staring eyes. Her seem ing indifference maddened him still more, and he hurled at her the fiercest abuse. She looked at him vaguely. He saw that she did not even know what he was saying, and relapsed into sullen silence. She lay mute and still, with a strained expression of pain in her eyes. The canoe sped swiftly on.
One desolating thought repeated itself again and again, the thought of hopeless and irreparable loss. By it past and present were blotted out. By and by, when she awoke from the stupor of despair and realized her future, destined to be passed with the murderer of her lover, what then? But now she was stunned with the shock of a grief that was mercy compared with the awakening that must come.
They were in the heart of the Cascade Mountains, and a low deep roar began to reach their ears, rousing and startling all but Wallulah. It was the sound of the cascades, of the new cataract formed by the fall of the Great Bridge. Rounding a bend in the river they came in sight of it. The mighty arch, the long low mountain of stone, had fallen in, damming up the waters of the Columbia, which were pouring over the sunken mass in an ever-increasing volume. Above, the river, raised by the enormous dam, had spread out like a lake, almost submerging the trees that still stood along the former bank. Below the new falls the river was comparatively shallow, its rocky bed half exposed by the sudden stoppage of the waters.
The Indians gazed with superstitious awe on the ​
vast barrier over which the white and foaming waters were pouring. The unwonted roar of the falls, a roar that seemed to increase every moment as the swell ing waters rushed over the rocks; the sight of the wreck of the mysterious bridge, foreshadowing the direst calamities, all this awed the wild children of the desert. They approached the falls slowly and cautiously.
A brief command from Snoqualmie, and they landed on the northern side of the river, not far from the foot of the falls. There they must disembark, and the canoes be carried around the falls on the shoulders of Indians and launched above.
The roar of the Cascades roused Wallulah from her stupor. She stepped ashore and looked in dazed wonder on the strange new world around her. Sno qualmie told her briefly that she must walk up the bank to the place where the canoe was to be launched again above the falls. She listened mutely, and started to go. But the way was steep and rocky; the bank was strewn with the debris of the ruined bridge; and she was unused to such exertion. Snoqualmie saw her stumble and almost fall. It moved him to a sudden and unwonted pity, and he sprang forward to help her. She pushed his hand from her as if it had been the touch of a serpent, and went on alone. His eyes flashed : for all this the reckoning should come, and soon; woe unto her when it came.
The rough rocks bruised her delicately shod feet, the steep ascent took away her breath. Again and again she felt as if she must fall; but the bitter scorn and loathing that Snoqualmie s touch had kindled gave her strength, and at last she complete ​d the ascent.
Above the falls and close to them, she sat down upon a rock; a slight, drooping figure, whose dejected pose told of a broken heart.
Before her, almost at her feet, the pent-up river was widened to a vast flood. Here and there a half- submerged pine lifted its crown above it; the surface was ruffled by the wind, and white-crested waves were rolling among the green tree-tops. She looked with indifference upon the scene. She had not heard that the Bridge had fallen, and was, of course, ignorant of these new cascades; and they did not impress her as being strange.
Her whole life was broken up; all the world ap peared shattered by the blow that had fallen on her, and nothing could startle her now. She felt dimly that some stupendous catastrophe had taken place; yet it did not appear unnatural. A strange sense of unreality possessed her; everything seemed an illu sion, as if she were a shadow in a land of shadows. The thought came to her that she was dead, and that her spirit was passing over the dim ghost trail to the shadow-land. She tried to shake off the fancy, but all was so vague and dreamlike that she hardly knew where or what she was; yet over it all brooded the consciousness of dull, heavy, torturing pain, like the dumb agony that comes to us in fevered sleep, burdening our dreams with a black oppressing weight of horror.
Her hand, hanging listlessly at her side, touched her flute, which was still suspended from her belt by the golden chain. She raised it to her lips, but only a faint inharmonious note came from it. The music seemed gone from the flute, as hope was gone from ​
her heart. To her overwrought nerves, it was the last omen of all. The flute dropped from her fin gers; she covered her face with her hands, and the hot tears coursed slowly down her cheeks.
Some one spoke to her, not ungently, and she looked up. One of the canoe-men stood beside her. He pointed to the canoe, now launched near by. Snoqualmie was still below, at the foot of the falls, superintending the removal of the other.
Slowly and wearily she entered the waiting canoe and resumed her seat. The Indian paddlers took their places. They told her that the chief Snoqual mie had bidden them take her on without him. He would follow in the other canoe. It was a relief to be free from his presence, if only for a little while; and the sadness on her face lightened for a moment when they told her.
A few quick paddle-strokes, and the boat shot out into the current above the cascades and then glided forward. No, not forward. The canoe-men, unfa miliar with the new cataract, had launched their vessel too close to the falls; and the mighty current was drawing it back. A cry of horror burst from their lips as they realized their danger, and their paddles were dashed into the water with frenzied violence. The canoe hung quivering through all its slender length between the desperate strokes that impelled it forward and the tremendous suction that drew it down. Had they been closer to the bank, they might have saved themselves; but they were too far out in the current. They felt the canoe slipping back in spite of their frantic efforts, slowly at first, then more swiftly; and they knew there was no hope. ​The paddles fell from their hands. One boatman leaped from the canoe with the desperate idea of swimming ashore, but the current instantly swept him under and out of sight; the other sat motionless in his place, awaiting the end with Indian stolidity.
The canoe was swept like a leaf to the verge of the fall and downward into a gulf of mist and spray. As it trembled on the edge of the cataract, and its horrors opened beneath her, Wallulah realized her doom for the first time; and in the moment she realized it, it was upon her. There was a quick terror, a dream like glimpse of white plunging waters, a deafening roar, a sudden terrible shock as the canoe was splintered on the rocks at the foot of the fall; then all things were swallowed up in blackness, a blackness that was death.
Below the falls, strong swimmers, leaping into the water, brought the dead to land. Beneath a pine-tree that grew close by the great Columbia trail and not far from the falls, the bodies were laid. The daughter of Multnomah lay in rude state upon a fawn-skin; while at her feet were extended the brawny forms of the two canoe-men who had died with her, and who, according to Indian mythology, were to be her slaves in the Land of the Hereafter. Her face was very lovely, but its mournfulness remained. Her flute, broken in the shock that had killed her, was still attached to her belt. The Indians had placed her hand at her side, resting upon the flute; and they noticed in superstitious wonder that the cold fingers seemed to half close around it, as if they would clasp it lovingly, even in death. Indian women knelt beside her, fanning her face with fra​grant boughs of pine. Troop after troop, returning over the trail to their homes, stopped to hear the tale, and to gaze at the dead face that was so wonder fully beautiful yet so sad.
All day long the bands gathered; each stopping, none passing indifferently by. At length, when evening came and the shadow of the wood fell long and cool, the burials began. A shallow grave was scooped at Wallulah's feet for the bodies of the two canoe-men. Then chiefs—for they only might bury Multnomah's daughter—entombed her in a cairn; being Upper Columbia Indians, they buried her, after the manner of their people, under a heap of stone. Rocks and bowlders were built around and over her body, yet without touching it, until the sad dead face was shut out from view. And still the stones were piled above her; higher and higher rose the great rock-heap, till a mighty cairn marked the last resting-place of Wallulah. And all the time the women lifted the death-wail, and Snoqualmie stood looking on with folded arms and sullen baffled brow. At length the work was done. The wail ceased; the gathering broke up, and the sachems and their bands rode away,
Snoqualmie and his troop departing with them. Only the roar of the cascades broke the silence, as night fell on the wild forest and the lonely river. The pine-tree beside the trail swayed its branches in the wind with a low soft murmur, as if lulling the sorrow-worn sleeper beneath it into still deeper repose. And she lay very still in the great cairn,—the sweet and beautiful dead,—with the grim warriors stretched at her feet, stern guardians of a slumber never to be broken.
CHAPTER IV.
MULTNOMAH S DEATH-CANOE.
Gazing alone
To him are wild shadows shown, Deep under deep unknown.
DANTE ROSSETTI.
T F Multnomah was grieved at his daughter s death, if his heart sunk at the unforeseen and terrible blow that left his empire without an heir and with ered all his hopes, no one knew it; no eye beheld his woe. Silent he had ever been, and he was silent to the last. The grand, strong face only grew grander, stronger, as the shadows darkened around him; the unconquerable will only grew the fiercer and the more unflinching. But ere the moon that shone first on Wallulah s new-made cairn had rounded to the full, there was that upon him before which even his will bowed and gave way, death, swift and mysterious. And it came in this wise.
We have told how at the great potlatch he gave away his all, even to the bear-skins from his couch, re serving only those cases of Asiatic textures never yet opened, all that now remained of the richly laden ship of the Orient wrecked long ago upon his coast. They were opened now. His bed was covered with the magnificent fabrics; they were thrown carelessly over the rude walls and seats, half-trailing on the ​
floor; exquisite folds of velvet and damask swept the leaves and dust, so that all men might see how rich the chief still was, though he had given away so much. And with his ostentation was mixed a secret pride and tenderness that his dead wife had indirectly given him this wealth. The war-chiefs woman had brought him these treasures out of the sea; and now that he had given away his all, even to the bare poles of his lodge, she filled it with fine things and made him rich again, she who had been sleeping for years in the death-hut on mimaluse island. Those treasures, ere the vessel that carried them was wrecked, had been sent as a present from one ori ental prince to another. Could it be that they had been purposely impregnated with disease, so that while the prince that sent them seemed to bestow a graceful gift, he was in reality taking a treacherous and terrible revenge? Such things were not infre quent in Asiatic history; and even the history of Europe, in the middle ages, tells us of poisoned masks, of gloves and scarfs charged with disease.
Certain it is that shortly after the cases were opened, a strange and fatal disease broke out among Multnomah s attendants. The howling of medicine men rang all day long in the royal lodge; each day saw swathed corpses borne out to the funeral pyre or mimaluse island. And no concoction of herbs, however skilfully compounded with stone mortar and pestle, no incantation of medicine-men or steaming atmosphere of sweat-house, could stay the mortality.
At length Multnomah caught the disease. It seemed strange to the Indians that the war-chief sh ​ould sicken,
that Multnomah should show any of the weaknesses of common flesh and blood; yet so it was. But while the body yielded to the inroad of disease, the spirit that for almost half a century had bent beneath it the tribes of the Wauna never faltered. He lay for days upon his couch, his system wasting with the plague, his veins burning with fever, holding death off only by might of will. He touched no remedies, for he felt them to be useless; he refused the incantations of the medicine-men; alone and in his own strength the war-chief contended with his last enemy.
All over the Willamette Valley, through camp and fishery, ran the whisper that Multnomah was dying; and the hearts of the Indians sunk within them. Be yond the mountains the whisper passed to the allied tribes, once more ripe for revolt, and the news rang among them like a trumpet call; it was of itself a signal for rebellion. The fall of the magic Bridge, the death of Wallulah, and the fatal illness of Multnomah had sealed the doom of the Willamettes. The chiefs stayed their followers only till they knew that he was dead. But the grand old war-chief seemed deter mined that he would not die. He struggled with disease; he crushed down his sufferings; he fought death with the same silent, indomitable tenacity with which he had overthrown the obstacles of life.
In all his wasting agony he was the war-chief still, and held his subjects in his grip. To the tribes that were about to rebel he sent messages, short, abrupt, but terrible in their threat of vengeance, messages that shook and awed the chiefs and pushed back invasion. To the last, the great chief overawed the tribes; the generation that had grown up under the ​
shadow of his tyranny, even when they knew he was dying, still obeyed him.
At length, one summer evening a few weeks after the burial of Wallulah, there burst forth from the war- chief s lodge that peculiar wail which was lifted only for the death of one of the royal blood. No need to ask who it was, for only one remained of the ancient line that had so long ruled the Willamettes; and for him, the last of his race, was the wail lifted. It was re-echoed by the inmates of the surrounding lodges; it rang, foreboding, mournful, through the encampment on Wappatto Island.
Soon, runners were seen departing in every direc tion to bear the fatal news throughout the valley. Twilight fell on them; the stars came out; the moon rose and sunk; but the runners sped on, from camp to camp, from village to village. Wherever there was a cluster of Willamette lodges, by forest, river, or sea, the tale was told, the wail was lifted. So all that night the death-wail passed through the valley of the Willa mette; and in the morning the trails were thronged with bands of Indians journeying for the last time to the isle of council, to attend the obsequies of their chief, and consult as to the choice of one to take his place.
The pestilence that had so ravaged the household of Multnomah was spread widely now; and every band as it departed from the camp left death behind it, aye, took death with it; for in each company were those whose haggard, sickly faces told of disease, and in more than one were those so weakened that they lagged behind and fell at last beside the trail to ​die.
The weather was very murky. It was one of the smoky summers of Oregon, like that of the mem orable year 1849, when the smoke of wide- spread forest fires hung dense and blinding over Western Oregon for days, and it seemed to the white settlers as if they were never to breathe the clear air or see the sky again. But even that, the historic "smoky time " of the white pioneers, was scarcely equal to the smoky period of more than a century and a half be fore. The forest fires were raging with unusual fury; Mount Hood was still in course of eruption j and all the valley was wrapped in settled cloud Through the thick atmosphere the tall firs loomed like spectres, while the far-off roar of flames in the forest and the in termittent sounds of the volcano came weirdly to the Indians as they passed on their mournful way. What wonder that the distant sounds seemed to them wild voices in the air, prophecying woe; and objects in the forest, half seen through the smoke, grotesque forms attending them as they marched! And when the bands had all gathered on the island, the shuddering Indians told of dim and shadowy phantoms that had followed and preceded them all the way; and of gigantic shapes in the likeness of men that had loomed through the smoke, warning them back with outstretched arms. Ominous and unknown cries had come to them through the gloom; and the spirits of the dead had seemed to marshal them on their way, or to oppose their coming, they knew not which.
So, all day long, troop after troop crossed the river to the island, emerging like shadows from the smoke that seemed to wrap the world, each with its sickly faces, showing the terrible spread of the pestilence;
each helping to swell the great horror that brooded over all, with its tale of the sick and dead at home, and the wild things seen on the way. Band after band the tribes gathered, and when the sun went down the war-chiefs obsequies took place.
It was a strange funeral that they gave Multnomah, yet it was in keeping with the dark, grand life he had lived. ​M VLTOMAH S Death- canoe. ​with pine- knots, the most inflammable materials an Oregon forest could furnish. Upon them was heaped all that was left of the chiefs riches, all the silks and velvets that remained of the cargo of the shipwrecked vessel lost upon the coast long before. And finally, upon the splendid heap of textures, upon the laces and the damasks of the East, was laid the dead body of Mult nomah, dressed in buckskin; his moccasins on his feet, his tomahawk and his pipe by his side, as be came a chief starting on his last journey.
Then as night came on, and the smoky air dark ened into deepest gloom, the canoe was taken out into the main current of the Columbia, and fire was set to the dry knots that made up the funeral pyre. In an instant the contents of the canoe were in a blaze, and it was set adrift in the current. Down the river it floated, lighting the night with leaping flames. On the shore, the assembled tribe watched it in si lence, mute, dejected, as they saw their great chief borne from them forever. Promontory and dusky fir. gleaming water and level beach, were brought into startling relief against the background of night, as the burning vessel neared them; then sank into shadow as it passed onward. Overhead, the playing tongues of ​
fire reddened the smoke that hung dense over the water, and made it assume distorted and fantastic shapes, which moved and writhed in the wavering light, and to the Indians seemed spectres of the dead, hovering over the canoe, reaching out their arms to receive the soul of Multnomah.
"It is the dead people come for him," the Willa- mettes whispered to one another, as they stood upon the bank, watching the canoe drift farther and farther from them, with the wild play of light and shadow over it. Down the river, like some giant torch that was to light the war-chief along the shadowy ways of death, passed the burning canoe. Rounding a wooded point, it blazed a moment brilliantly beside it, and as it drifted to the farther side, outlined the intervening trees with fire, till every branch was clearly relieved against a flaming background; then, passing slowly on beyond the point, the light waned gradually, and at last faded quite away.
And not till then was a sound heard among the silent and impassive throng on the river-bank. But when the burning canoe had vanished utterly, when black and starless night fell again on wood and water, the death-wail burst from the Indians with one im pulse and one voice, a people s cry for its lost chief, a great tribe s lament for the strength and glory that had drifted from it, never to return.
Among a superstitious race, every fact becomes mingled more or less with fable; every occurrence, charged with fantastic meanings. And there sprang up among the Indians, no one could tell how, a pro phecy that some night when the Willamettes were ​
in their direst need, a great light would be seen moving on the waters of the Columbia, and the war- chief would come back in a canoe of fire to lead them to victory as of old.
Dire and awful grew their need as the days went on; swift and sweeping was the end. Long did the few sur/ivors of his race watch and wait for his re turn, but never more came back Multnomah to his own. ​
CHAPTER V.
AS WAS WRIT IN THE BOOK OF FATE.
A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again, Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt.
TENNYSON.
A ND now our tale draws to a close. There re-
on Wappatto Island; how Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Mollalies, died; and how the prophecy of the Bridge was fulfilled.
The morning after the obsequies of Multnomah, the chiefs met in the grove where the great council of the tribes had been held only a few weeks before. The leaves, which had been green and glossy then, were turning yellow and sickly now in the close hot weather. All Nature seemed full of decay.
The chiefs were grouped before the vacant seat of Multnomah; and the Willamette tribe, gathered from canyon and prairie and fishery, looked on, sole spec tators of the proceedings, for none of the allies were present. The ravages of the pestilence had been terrible. Many warriors were missing from the spec tators; many chiefs were absent from the council. And there were some present from whom the others shrunk away, whose hot breath and livid f ​aces showed
that they too were stricken with the plague. There were emaciated Indians among the audience, whose gaunt forms and hollow eyes told that they had dragged themselves to the council-grove to die. The wailing of the women at the camp, lamenting those just dead; the howling of the medicine-men in the dis tance, performing their incantations over the sick; the mysterious sounds that came from the burning forest and the volcano, all these were heard. Round the council the smoke folded thick and dark, veiling the sun, and shutting out the light of heaven and the mercy of the Great Spirit.
The chiefs sat long in silence, each waiting for the other to speak. At length arose a stately war rior famous among the Willamettes for wisdom and prudence.
"We perish," said the chief, "we melt away before the breath of the pestilence, like snow before the breath of the warm spring wind. And while we die of disease in our lodges, war gathers against us be yond the ranges. Even now the bands of our en emies may be descending the mountains, and the tomahawk may smite what the disease has spared. What is to be done? What say the wise chiefs of the Willamettes? Multnomah s seat is empty : shall we choose another war-chief?"
A pale and ghastly chief rose to reply. It was evident that he was in the last extremity of disease.
"Shall we choose another war-chief to sit in Multnomah s place? We may; but will he be Multnomah? The glory of the Willamettes is dead! Talk no more of war, when our war- strength is gone from us. The Bridge is fallen, the Grea ​t Spirit is
against us. Let those who are to live talk of war. It is time for us to learn how to die."
He sunk flushed and exhausted upon the ground. Then rose an aged chief, so old that it seemed as if a century of time had passed over him. His hair was a dirty gray, his eyes dull and sunken, his face withered. He supported himself with tremulous bony hands upon his staff. His voice was feeble, and seemed like an echo from the long-perished past.
"I am old, the oldest of all the Willamettes. I have seen so many winters that no man can count them. I knew Multnomah s father. I went forth to battle with his father s father; and even before that I knew others, warriors of a forgotten time. Or do I dream? I know not. The weight of the time that I have lived is very heavy, and my mind sinks under it. My form is bowed with the burden of winters. Warriors, I have seen many councils, many troubles, but never a trouble like this. Of what use is your council? Can the words of wise men stay disease? Can the edge of the tomahawk turn back sickness? Can you fight against the Great Spirit? He sent the white man to tell us of our sins and warn us to be better, and you closed your ears and would not listen. Nay, you would have slain him had not the Great Spirit taken him away. These things would not have come upon us had you listened to the white shaman. You have offended the Great Spirit, and he has broken the Bridge and sent disease upon us; and all that your wisdom may devise can avail naught to stay his wrath. You can but cover your faces in silence, and die."
For a moment the council was very still. The ​
memory of the white wanderer, his strong and tender eloquence, his fearless denunciation, his loving and passionate appeal, was on them all. Was the Great Spirit angry with them because they had rejected him?
"Who talks of dying?" said a fierce warrior, start ing to his feet. "Leave that to women and sick men! Shall we stay here to perish while life is yet strong within us? The valley is shadowed with death; the air is disease; an awful sickness wastes the people; our enemies rush in upon us. Shall we then lie down like dogs and wait for death? No. Let us leave this land; let us take our women and chil dren, and fly. Let us seek a new home beyond the Klamath and the Shasta, in the South Land, where the sun is always warm, and the grass is always green, and the cold never comes. The spirits are against us here, and to stay is to perish. Let us seek a new home, where the spirits are not angry; even as our fathers in the time that is far back left their old home in the ice country of the Nootkas and came hither. I have spoken."
His daring words kindled a moment s animation in the despondent audience; then the ceaseless wailing of the women and the panting of the sick chiefs in the council filled the silence, and their hearts sank within them again.
"My brother is brave," said the grave chief who had opened the council, "but are his words wise? Many of our warriors are dead, many are sick, and Multnomah is gone. The Willamettes are weak; it is bitter to the lips to say it, but it is true. Our enemies are strong. All the tribes who were onc ​e with
us are against us. The passes are kept by many warriors; and could we fight our way through them to another land, the sickness would go with us. Why fly from the disease here, to die with it in some far-off land?"
"We cannot leave our own land," said a dreamer, or medicine-man. "The Great Spirit gave it to us, the bones of our fathers are in it. It is our land," he repeated with touching emphasis. "The Wil lamette cannot leave his old home, though the world is breaking up all around him. The bones of our people are here. Our brothers lie in the death-huts on mimaluse island; how can we leave them? Here is the place where we must live; here, if death comes, must we die!"
A murmur of assent came from the listeners. It voiced the decision of the council. With stubborn Indian fatalism, they would await the end; fighting the rebels if attacked, and sullenly facing the disease if unmolested. Now a voice was heard that never had been heard in accents of despair, a voice that was still fierce and warlike in its resentment of the course the council was taking. It was the voice of Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Mollalies. He, too, had the plague, and had just reached the grove, walking with slow and tottering steps, unlike the Mishlah of other days. But his eyes glittered with all the old ferocity that had given him the name of Cougar. Alas, he was but a dying cougar now.
"Shall we stay here to die?" thundered the wild chief, as he stood leaning on his stick, his sunken eyes sweeping the assembly with a glance of fire. "Shall we stand and tremble till the pestilence slay ​s us all
with its arrows, even as a herd of deer, driven into a deep gulch and surrounded, stand till they are shot down by the hunters? Shall we stay in our lodges, and die without lifting a hand? Shall disease burn out the life of our warriors, when they might fall in battle? No! Let us slay the women and children, cross the mountains, and die fighting the rebels! Is it not better to fall in battle like warriors than to perish of disease like dogs?"
The chief looked from face to face, but saw no responsive flash in the eyes that met his own. The settled apathy of despair was on every countenance. Then the medicine-man answered,
"You could never cross the mountains, even if we did this thing. Your breath is hot with disease; the mark of death is on your face; the snake of the pesti lence has bitten you. If we went out to battle, you would fall by the wayside to die. Your time is short. To-day you die."
The grim Mollalie met the speaker s glance, and for a moment wavered. He felt within himself that the words were true, that the plague had sapped his life, that his hour was near at hand. Then his hesi tation passed, and he lifted his head with scornful defiance.
"So be it! Mishlah accepts his doom. Come, you that were once the warriors of Multnomah, but whose hearts are become the hearts of women j come and learn from a Mollalie how to die!"
Again his glance swept the circle of chiefs as if summoning them to follow him, then, with weak and staggering footsteps, he left the grove; and it was as if the last hope of the Willamettes went wi ​th him. The
dense atmosphere of smoke soon shut his form from view. Silence fell on the council. The hearts of the Indians were dead within them. Amid their por tentous surroundings, the appalling signs of the wrath of the Great Spirit, the fatal apathy which is the curse of their race crept over them.
Then rose the medicine-man, wild priest of a wild and debasing superstition, reverenced as one through whom the dead spoke to the living.
"Break up your council!" he said with fearful look and gesture. "Councils are for those who expect to live! and you! the dead call you to them. Choose no chief, for who will be left for him to rule? You talk of plans for the future. Would you know what that future will be? I will show you; listen!" He flung up his hand as if imposing silence; and, taken by surprise, they listened eagerly, expecting to hear some supernatural voice or message prophetic of the future. On their strained hearing fell only the labored breathing of the sick chiefs in the council, the ominous muttering of the far-off volcano, and loud and shrill above all the desolate cry of the women wailing their dead.
"You hear it? That death- wail tells all the future holds for you. Before yonder red shadow of a sun " pointing to the sun, which shone dimly through the smoke " shall set, the bravest of the Mollalies will be dead. Before the moon wanes to its close, the Willamette race will have passed away. Think you Multnomah s seat is empty? The Pestilence sits in Multnomah s place, and you will all wither in his hot and poisonous breath. Break up your council. Go to your lodges. The sun of the Willamettes is set, ​
and the night is upon us. Our wars are done; our glory is ended. We are but a tale that old men tell around the camp-fire, a handful of red dust gathered from mimaluse island, dust that once was man. Go, you that are as the dead leaves of autumn; go, whirled into everlasting darkness before the wind of the wrath of the Great Spirit!"
He flung out his arms with a wild gesture, as if he held all their lives and threw them forth like dead leaves to be scattered upon the winds. Then he turned away and left the grove. The crowd of war riors who had been looking on broke up and went away, and the chiefs began to leave the council, each muffled in his blanket. The grave and stately sachem who had opened the council tried for a little while to stay the fatal breaking up, but in vain. And when he saw that he could do nothing, he too left the grove, wrapped in stoical pride, sullenly resigned to what ever was to come.
And so the last council ended, in hopeless apathy, in stubborn indecision, indecision in everything save the recognition that a doom was on them against which it was useless to struggle.
And Mishlah? He returned to his lodge, painted his face as if he were going to battle, and then went out to a grove near the place where the war-dances of the tribe were held. His braves followed him; others joined them; all watched eagerly, knowing that the end was close at hand, and wondering how he would die.
He laid aside his blanket, exposing his stripped body; and with his eagle plume in his hair and his stone tomahawk in his hand, began to dance th ​e war-
dance of his tribe and to chant the song of the battles he had fought.
At first his utterance was broken and indistinct, his step feeble. But as he went on his voice rang clearer and stronger; his step grew quicker and firmer. Half reciting, half chanting, he continued the wild tale of blood, dancing faster and faster, haranguing louder and louder, until he became a flame of barbaric excitement, until he leaped and whirled in the very madness of raging passion, the Indian war- frenzy.
But it could not last long. His breath came quick and short; his words grew inarticulate; his eyes gleamed like coals of fire; his feet faltered in the dance. With a final effort he brandished and flung his tomahawk, uttering as he did so a last war-cry, which thrilled all who heard it as of old when he led them in battle. The tomahawk sunk to the head in a neighboring tree, the handle breaking off short with the violence of the shock; and the chief fell back dead.
Thus passed the soul of the fierce Mollalie. For years afterward, the tomahawk remained where it had sunk in the tree, sole monument of Mishlah. His bones lay unburied beneath, wasted by wind and rain, till there was left only a narrow strip of red earth, with the grass springing rankly around it, to show where the body had been. And the few survivors of the tribe who lingered in the valley were wont to point to the tomahawk imbedded in the tree, and tell the tale of the warrior and how he died.
Why dwell longer on scenes so terrible? Besides, there is but little more to tell. The faithless allies made a raid on the valley; but the shroudin ​g atmo-
sphere of smoke and the frightful rumors they heard of the great plague appalled them, and they retreated. The pestilence protected the Willamettes. The Black Death that the medicine-men saw sitting in Multnr mah s place turned back the tide of invasion bette, than the war-chief himself could have done.
Through the hot months of summer the mortality continued. The valley was swept as with the besom of destruction, and the drama of a people s death was enacted with a thousand variations of horror. When spring came, the invaders entered the valley once more. They found it deserted, with the exception of a few wretched bands, sole survivors of a mighty race. They rode through villages where the decaying mats hung in tatters from the half-bare skeleton-like wigwam poles, where the ashes had been cold for months at the camp-fires; they rode by fisheries where spear and net were rotting beside the canoe upon the beach. And the dead the dead lay every where : in the lodges, beside the fisheries, along the trail where they had been stricken down while try ing to escape, everywhere were the ghastly and repulsive forms.
The spirit of the few survivors was broken, and they made little resistance to the invaders. Mongrel bands from the interior and the coast settled in the valley after the lapse of years; and, mixing with the surviving Willamettes, produced the degenerate race our own pioneers found there at their coming. These hybrids were, within the memory of the white man, overrun and conquered by the Yakimas, who sub jugated all the Indians upon Wappatto Island and around the mouth of the Willamette in the early ​
part of the present century. Later on, the Yakimas were driven back by the whites; so that there have been three conquests of the lower Willamette Valley since the fall of the ancient race, two Indian conquests before the white.
The once musical language of the Willamettes has degenerated into the uncouth Chinook, and the blood of the ancient race flows mixed and debased in the veins of abject and squalid descendants; but the story of the mighty bridge that once spanned the Columbia at the Cascades is still told by the Oregon Indians. Mingled with much of fable, overlaid with myth and superstition, it is nevertheless one of the historic legends of the Columbia, and as such will never be forgotten.
One word more of Cecil Gray, and our tale is done.
The Shoshone renegade, who resolved at Cecil s death to become a Christian, found his way with a few followers to the Flat- Heads, and settled among that tribe. He told them of what he had learned from Cecil, of the Way of Peace; and the wise men of the tribe pondered his sayings in their hearts. The Shoshone lived and died among them; but from generation to generation the tradition of the white man s God was handed down, till in 1832 four Flat- Heads were sent by the tribe to St. Louis, to ask that teachers be given them to tell them about God.
Every student of history knows how that appeal stirred the heart of the East, and caused the sending out of the first missionaries to Oregon; and from the movement then inaugurated have since sprung all the missions to the Indians of the West. ​
Thus he who gave his life for the Indians, and died seemingly in vain, sowed seed that sprung up and bore a harvest long after his death. And to-day, two centuries since his body was laid in the lonely grave on Wappatto Island, thousands of Indians are the better for his having lived. No true, noble life can be said to have been lived in vain. Defeated and beaten though it may seem to have been, there has gone out from it an influence for the better hat has helped in some degree to lighten the grer heartache and bitterness of the world. Truth, goodness, and self- sacrifice are never beaten, no, not by death itself. The example and the influence of such things is deathless, and lives after the individual is gone, flowing on forever in the broad life of humanity.
I write these last lines on Sauvie s Island the Wappatto of the Indians, sitting upon the bank of the river, beneath the gnarled and ancient cotton- wood that still marks the spot where the old Columbia trail led up from the water to the interior of the island. Stately and beautiful are the far snow-peaks and the sweeping forests. The woods are rich in the colors of an Oregon autumn. The white wappatto blooms along the marshes, it? roots ungathered, the dusky hands that once reaped the harvest long crumbled into dust. Blue and majestic in the sunlight flows the Columbia, river of many names, the Wauna and Wemath of the Indians, the St. Roque of the Spaniards, the Oregon of poetry, always vast and grand, always flowing placidly to the sea. Steam boats of the present; batteaux of the fur traders; ships, Grey's and Vancouver's, of discovery; Indian ​
canoes of the old unknown time, the stately river has seen them all come and go, and yet holds its way past forest and promontory, still beautiful and un changing. Generation after generation, daring hunter, ardent discoverer, silent Indian, all the shadowy peoples of the past have sailed its waters as we sail them, have lived perplexed and haunted by mystery as we live, have gone out into the Great Darkness with hearts full of wistful doubt and questioning, as we go; and still the river holds its course, bright, beauti ful, inscrutable. It stays; we go. Is there anything beyond the darkness into which generation follows generation and race follows race? Surely there is an after-life, where light and peace shall come to all who, however defeated, have tried to be true and loyal; where the burden shall be lifted and the heart ache shall cease; where all the love and hope that slipped away from us here shall be given back to us again, and given back forever.
Via crucis, via lucis.
THE END. ​
The Conquest
By EVA EMERY DYE. Being the True Story of Lewis and Clark. Third Edition, with frontispiece in full color by Charlotte Weber. I2mo, gilt top, 504 pages. $1.50.
No book published in recent years has more of tremendous import between its covers, and certainly no recent novel has in it more of the elements of a permanent success. A historical romance which tells with accuracy and inspiring style of the bravery of the pioneers in winning the western continent, should have a lasting place in the esteem of every American.
"No one who wishes to know the true story of the conquest of the greater part of this great nation can afford to pass by this book." Cleveland Leader.
"A vivid picture of the Indian wars preceding the Louisiana purchase, of the expedition of Lewis and Clark, and of events following the occupation of Oregon." The Congregationalist.
"It may not be the great American novel we have been waiting for so long, but it certainly looks as though it would be very near it." Rochester 7 imes.
"The characters that are assembled in The Conquest* belong to the history of the United States, their story is a national epic." Detroit Free Press.
A Short History of Oregon
By SIDONA V. JOHNSON. With seventeen illustrations from photographs, and a map of the Lewis and Clark route. i6mo, 320 pages, indexed. $1.00 net.
From HENRY E. DOSCH, Director of Exhibits at Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland:
"Every home in Oregon might well welcome this condensed, readable 1 History of Oregon, and, most important of all, the school children of the State are entitled to an opportunity to study it, to the end that the history of the State and the great and memorable achievement of Lewis and Clark may
n, woman, and child itennial Exposition."
be intelligently understood and appreciated by every man, woman, and child in Oregon before the opening of the Lewis and Clark Cent
Letters from an Oregon Ranch
By "KATHARINE." With twelve full-page illustrations from photographs. Square 8vo. $1.25 net.
The hours of delight, as well as those of trial, which fall to the lot of "Katharine," in creating a home out of the raw materials of nature, are chronicled with naive humor, and in a vein of hearty optimism which will make a universal appeal. This year the eyes of the entire country are on Oregon, and it is expected that a book of this kind, giving such an illuminating idea of the country, will be of great interest. The photographs which illustrate the volume are of remarkable beauty.
A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO ​
McLoughlin and Old Oregon
By EVA EMERY DYE. A Chronicle. Sixth Edition. I2mo, 381 pages. $1.50.
This is a most graphic and interesting chronicle of the move ment which added to the United States that vast territory, previously a British possession, of which Oregon formed a part, and how Dr. John McLoughlin, then chief factor of the Hudson s Bay Company for the Northwest, by his fatherly interest in the settlers, displeased the Hudson s Bay Company and aided in bringing this about. The author has gathered her facts at first hand, and as a result the work is vivid and picturesque and reads like a romance.
"A spirited narrative of what life in the wilderness meant in the early days, a record of heroism, self-sacrifice, and dogged persistence; a graphic page^of the story of the American pioneer." New York Mail.
Gass s Journal of the Lewis and Clark Ex pedition (McClurg Library Reprints of Americana)
Reprinted from the Edition of 1811. With an Introduc tion by DR. JAMES K. HOSMER, an analytical Index, fac similes of the original illustrations, and a rare portrait of Patrick Gass. In one square octavo volume, boxed, 35 P a g es > gilt to P- $3-5 n t Large-paper edition, on Brown s hand-made paper, illustrations on Japan paper, limited to 75 copies, boxed. $9.00 net.
The appearance of this volume in the period of Lewis and Clark celebrations is especially pertinent, as no practical library edition has been available of the "Journal of Patrick Gass." His narrative was for seven years the only source from which any authentic knowledge of the great enterprise could be obtained. When at last the work based on the diaries of the Captains was given to the world, the earlier book, so far from being set aside, was found to be most important as confirming and supplementing what had been set down by the leaders, and, in fact, has not ceased to be held in high estimation up to the present moment.
"Several picturesque details Dr. Hosmer mentions (in the Intro duction ) which had eluded the argus eyes of Coues through a lifetime of waiting and watching. Whatever he learns he sets forth with a vivacity which keeps our attention expectant and appetite growing by what it feeds on." New York Evening Post.
"It restores Gass s Journal to a common use. The portrait of Gass, which serves as a frontispiece, is a distinct addition." American Historical Review.
"No edition of Lewis and Clark is complete unless accompanied by the Journal of Patrick Gass. The work has been well edited, and the mechanics ere of a superior character." Baltimore Sun.
A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO ​
The Journals of Captains Lewis and Clark,
1804-5-6 (McClurg Library Reprints of Americana)
Reprinted from the Edition of 1814. With an Introduc tion by JAMES K. HOSMER, LL.D., an analytical Index, and photogravure portraits and maps. In two volumes, boxed, 1,083 pages, gilt top. $5.00 net. Large-paper edition, on Brown s hand-made paper, illustrations on Japan vellum, limited to 150 copies, boxed. $18.00 net.
"The republication of the complete narrative is both timely and invalu able. . . . Dr. Hosmer is well known as an authority on Western history; hence to see his name on the title-page is to know that the work has been well done." Portland Oregonian.
"The celebrated story of the expedition of Lewis and Clark has now been put in an easily accessible form." N. Y. Times Saturday Review.
"Of the several new editions of this valuable narrative, this is by far the best and most complete." Minneapolis Journal.
"We have nothing but praise for this clear and handsome reprint." The Nation.
McDonald of Oregon
By EVA EMERY DYE. A Tale of Two Shores. I2mo, 395 P a g es > w th six full-page pictures by Walter J. Enright. $1.50.
Mrs. Dye has now established her unequalled position as the historian-novelist of the Northwest. She has developed the possibili ties of history in fiction form farther than any other American writer.
Ranald McDonald was an impressive figure in a momentous period of our history. He was a prominent factor of the Hudson s Bay Company, and was identified with the early movements concern ing the accession of the Oregon Territory by the United States.
The chance casting away of a party of Japanese on the Oregon coast many years ago inspired McDonald to enact a similar drama in his own proper self with the characters and continents reversed. In Japan he was permitted to establish a school, and it was actually his pupils who acted as interpreters during the negotiations with Com modore Perry.
His sturdy life was itself a romance of extraordinary interest; that of a pioneer who had to make a way against obstacles unknown to-day.
Mrs. Dye learned her facts from McDonald s own lips, and only deferred publication until his papers finally reposed in her hands.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer expresses the general sentiment of the press, in the following estimate of this remarkable book :
"It is like the telling of some grand old epic, to show the spirit of those men who blazed the trail to an unknown wilderness."
A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO ​
The Iron Way
By SARAH PRATT CARR. A capital romance of the West and the Building of the Central Pacific. Fourth Edition, with four illustrations and cover design by J. W. Norton.
The " Iron Way " is the Central Pacific Railroad. The comple. tion of this great enterprise in 1867 provides the material for a story full of action and the power of big events. The author has made skil ful use of some of the giant promoters of that day Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker, upon whose initiative the railroad was planned and built. But the railroad sets the scene for a tale of thrilling interest. Alfred Vincent, son of a cultured Eastern family, throws in his lot with the new road as con fidential agent, standing guard over its interests against the wire- cutters, wreckers, and men of the most desperate character. Stella Anthony is the charming woman for whom two men risk all, and the bestowal of whose love upon one of them crowns a most fascinating romance. The secondary characters are admirably drawn, particularly Uncle Billy, who smothers love in life-long friendship, and Sally B., a dominant and true-hearted woman these two establish themselves firmly with the reader from the very start.
"The Iron Way is one of the strongest stories of the times of tha California growth that has ever been written." Fort Worth Telegram.
"The Iron Way is a lively, hustling story, full of action fitting the times, and blending fact and fiction dextrously." Detroit Free Press.
The Bridge of the Gods
By F. H. BALCH. A Romance of Indian Oregon. New (tenth) Edition, enlarged size. With eight full-page illus trations by Laurens Maynard Dixon. Cloth, I2mo, 280 pages, gilt top. $1.50. Paper edition, without illustra tions. 50 cents.
Encouraged by the steady demand for this powerful story, since its publication twelve years ago, the publishers felt justified in issuing this attractive illustrated edition. The book has fairly earned its last ing popularity, not only by the intense interest of the story, but by its faithful delineation of Indian character. From the legends of the Columbia River and the mystical "bridge of the gods," the author has derived a truthful and realistic picture of the powerful tribes that inhabited the Oregon country two centuries ago.
The Syracuse Herald calls the author of "The Bridge of the Gods"
A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS,CHICAGO