Eva Emery Dye

“ An instinct, a relic, an inheritance of long ago was upon them, when their ancestors roved the earth untrammelled by cities and civilisation, when the rock was man's pillow and the cave his home, when the arrow in his strong hand brought the fruits of the chase, when garments of skin clad his limbs, and God spoke to the white savage under the old Phœnician stars.
In their dreams they felt the rain and wind beat on their leather tent. Sacajawea's baby cried, Spring nodded with the rosy clarkia, screamed with Clark's crow, and tapped with Lewis's woodpecker. ”

“ Far away in the dim recesses of the Oregon woods an altar was reared that Christmas night. Before a green bower lit with candles and hung with garlands stood the Jesuit Father, De Smet, among the Flatheads. A hundred lodge-fires burned, a thousand red men slept. At a signal gun the Indians rose. The midnight mass, the mystery, the swinging censers, the decorated altar, the solemn ceremonial awed the savage heart. Indian voices chanted the Kyrie Eleison and the Te Deum, Indian fingers signed the cross and took the beads. ”

“ Where beautiful scenery abounds, there legends usually cluster. This is true of the Rhine, of the Scottish Highlands, of the Hudson River, and of Oregon. Already every bold peak and smiling glen of the coast and the Columbia has its legend waiting for an artist to give it setting. Like a faint perfume this whole emerald Northwest is redolent of song and story. ”

“ The day was fine and crowds of Indians came to watch proceedings as Clark's men began to cut the tall cottonwoods and roll up the cabins.
Every day the Indians came in crowds to watch the wonderful building of the white men's fort, the deer-skin windows and mud-plastered chimneys. Turning loose their horses, all day long the red men lay on the grass watching the details of this curious architecture. At night, gathering an armful of cottonwood boughs stripped from the fort timber, each fed his horse and meandered thoughtfully homeward in the red sunset. ”

“ The shores guide our canoes. The green leaves tell us when it is spring; the yellow, when to pitch our winter teepees. White men have the locomotive what need, when our own fleet feet out-travel the horse? The missionary teaches you to weave cloth. Has not the buffalo spun a robe for you? The white man tears up the soil, it becomes full of worms and weeds. He makes a garden. Are not your meadows full of camas, your rivers full of fish, your father's hillsides stocked with game? Who would obstruct the streams with bridges? Does not the beaver build bridges enough for you? ”

“ Lewis and Clark had frequent occasion to admire their skill in managing these little boats, often out-riding the waves in the most tumultuous seas.
Ashore, these canoe-Indians waddled and rolled like tipsy sailors. Afloat, straight and trim as horse-Indians of the prairie, each deft Chinook glided to his seat along the unrocking boats, and striking up the paddlers' "Ho-ha-ho-ha-ho-ha-" went rowing all their lives, until their arms grew long and strong, their legs shrunk short and crooked, and their heads became abnormally intelligent. ”

“ The horse brigades were gay with brilliant housings; a multitude of tiny bells tinkled at saddle skirt and bridle-rein, bright dresses stiff with beads adorned the trappers' Indian wives, and at the head of this barbaric pageant often sat Eloise and the stately governor, with his long white locks blowing over the cloak of Hudson's Bay blue. As such cavalcades would wind up the valley in the October sun the whole little world turned out to gaze. You would hardly have supposed there were so many Indians in the country until you saw them trooping in to witness the autumn brigade to California. ”

“ If the missionary-brides instructed the ladies of Fort Vancouver, they, too, were taught in the lore of lustrous sables, silky sea-otter, thick brown mink, and soft black beaver. Eloise could tell them that the fiery fox was a prize in China, that the Russian would give a hundred silver rubles for the sea-otter that the Chinook slid down and speared as it slept on the shore, that the dappled bearskin would line the coach of an English noble, that the blue fox went to the czar for a royal cloak, and the silver gray to an Indian rajah. ”

“ Louis. But I am not a warrior," said Wabasha. "My people can prosper only at peace with one another and the whites. Against my advice some of my young men went into the war."
The fiery eyes of Little Crow flashed, the aquiline curve of his nose lifted, like the beak of an eagle. He had come down from his bark-covered cabin near St. Paul.
"I am a war chief!" said Little Crow. "But I am willing to conclude a peace."
"I alone was an American," said Rising Moose, "when all my people fought with the British." ”

“ Of fine physical presence and remarkable stature, very black and very woolly, York was viewed as superhuman.
"Where you come from?" whispered the awe-struck savages.
Grinning until every ivory tooth glistened, and rolling up the whites of his eyes, he would answer, "I was running wild in the wood, and was caught and tamed by my mastah." Then assuming an air of ferocity, York would exhibit feats of strength that to the Indians seemed really terrible.
"If you kill white men we make you chief," the Arikaras whispered in his ear. York withstood great temptation,—he fought more battles than Clark. ”

“ You must not civilize our Indians. Away! away! Your mills, your ploughs and schools and shops must not frighten our beaver."
Silence brooded over Oregon, the silence of the grave. England looked upon the great fur preserve as a waste, a desert where a few wild beasts gained a scanty living. As the fur-traders tramped the forest they knew of coal, but they never told it; they knew of marble and iron, but they kept it secret; voyageurs discovered ledges of gold, but were enjoined to silence; the Indian was not more quiescent. ”

“ IDAHO
"We are going through your country to the far ocean," said Captain Lewis. "We are making a trail for the traders who will bring you guns."
"This delights me," answered Cameahwait, with his fierce eyes, and his lank jaws grown meagre for want of food. "We are driven into the mountains, when if we had guns we could meet our enemies in the plains."
All the Shoshone talk was of war, war, war. Their great terror was the roving Indians of the Saskatchewan, who, with guns from the British traders, came down like wolves on the fold. ”

“ Sentinel wolves lay in wait to devour the lagging cattle; Indians hovered in front and rear and ambuscade. Killed by Pawnees, plundered by Dacotahs, scalped by Sioux, compelled by Cheyennes to pay tribute for passing through their country, corralled by Blackfeet, crossing the battle-ground of hostile Snakes, still on the immigrant pressed with the same restless spirit that inundated Europe and broke up the Roman Empire. The migration of races ebbs and flows like the waves of the sea. ”

“ The Indians were amazed. "The Great Chief of the Long Knives has come," the rumour flew. For five hundred miles the chiefs came to see the victorious Americans.
"I will not give them presents. I will not court them. Never will I seem to fear them. Let them beg for peace." And with martial front Clark bore himself as if about to exterminate the entire Indian population. The ruse was successful; the Indians flocked to the Council of the Great Chief as if drawn by a magnet.
Eagerly they leaned and listened.
"Men and warriors: I am a warrior, not a counsellor." ”

“ A courier rode post to Fort Vancouver.
"They come," said Dr. McLoughlin, "not as rivals, not as traders, but as allies, to teach our Indians peace and industry."
Seated in the fur-traders' boats with Chief Factor Pambrun and his voyageurs, the Americans glided down the Columbia, beyond the drifting sand, past the log huts of the Walla Walla fishermen, who from point to point stood sweeping their nets in the foaming waters, on into the high dark dikes that shut in the tortuous river. Here they entered an elder, grander Hudson, lacking only castles on the cliffs to give a human touch. ”

“ The Arikara village greeted the passing boats. Lewis, still lame, requested Clark to go up to the village. Like children confessing their misdeeds the Arikaras began:
"We cannot keep the peace! Our young men follow the Sioux!"
The wild Cheyennes, with their dogs and horses and handsome leathern lodges, were here on a trading visit, to exchange with the Arikaras meat and robes for corn and beans. They were a noble race, of straight limbs and Roman noses, unaccustomed to the whites, shy and cautious.
"We war against none but the Sioux, with whom we have battled for ever," they said. ”

“ All day the Indian fusees picked off the volunteers in their march to the upper country. At night for miles ahead the Cayuse signal-fires burned like sleepless red eyes on the hilltops. Without water, almost without food, without tents, and half clad, in the dead of winter, the little army hurried on toward Waiilatpu. Exhausted, famished, chilled, the Americans reached the camp of Pio-pio-mox-mox. The old chief came out to meet them. At his belt hung Siskadee's shot-pouch.
"We are not one with the Cayuses," he said. "We have no part in the war." ”

“ Washington, Jefferson, the whole country impatiently watched for news of Wayne on the Ohio.
Drill, drill, drill,—keeping out a cloud of scouts that no peering Indian might discover his preparations, Wayne exercised daily now with rifle, sabre, and bayonet until no grizzly frontiersman surpassed his men at the target, no fox-hunter could leap more wildly, no swordsman more surely swing the sharp steel home. At the sight young Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, Virginians of the border and Pennsylvanians of lifetime battle, were eager for the fray. ”

“ Down the steep and ragged rocks that overhung the sea, they clambered to a Tillamook village, where lay the great whale, stranded on the shore. Nothing was left but a skeleton, for from every Indian village within travelling distance, men and women were working like bees upon the huge carcass. Then home they went, trailing over the mountains, every squaw with a load of whale blubber on her back, to be for many a month the dainty of an Indian lodge.
These Indian lodges or houses were a source of great interest to Lewis and Clark. ”

“ No wonder the Sioux were never still. The ozone of the Arctic was in their veins, the sweeping winds drove them, the balsamic prairie was their bed, the sky their canopy. They never shut themselves up in stuffy mud huts, as did the Mandans; they lived in tents. Unrestrained, unregenerate, there was in them the fire of the Six Nations, of King Philip and of Pontiac. Tall, handsome, finely formed, agile, revengeful, intelligent, capable,—they loved their country and they hated strangers. ”

“ Brother to the Comanche, the Shoshone rode his horse over rocks and ravines, up declivitous ways and almost impossible passes. Every warrior had one or two tied to a stake near his willow hut, night and day, ready for action.
"My horse is my friend. He knows my voice. He hears me speak. He warns me of the enemy." Little children played with them, squaws fed them, braves painted them and decorated their manes and tails with eagle-plumes, insignia of the Rocky Mountain Indian. Such horses were a boon to Lewis and Clark, for they were tractable, sure-footed, inured to the saddle and the pack. ”

“ In this, the feudal age of North America, every man became a captain and fought his own battles. Like knights of old, each borderer, from Ticonderoga to Wheeling and Boonsboro, sharpened his knife, primed his flintlock, and started. No martial music or gaudy banner, no drum or bugle, heralded the border foray. Silent as the red man the stark hunter issued from his wooden fort and slid among the leaves. ”