USA > Oregon > Pioneer days of Oregon history, Vol. I > Part 9
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Yainax was a convenient meeting place for tribes within hundreds of miles in all directions. The mountain wilder- ness filled the west for many and many a weary mile. At times the natives came en masse, much as Ross found them at Yainax. When they came thus, such feasting, dancing and orgies took place as were seen nowhere in all the west- save under the shadows of Yainax. Klamaths, Modocs, Summer Lake Snakes, to the east; Warm Springs people,
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from the north; Shastas and Pitt Rivers, from Northern California ; all those fraternized, and each October, when the earth had yielded its fruits at command of the summer sun, they met here in grand conclave, with the Nez Percés and Cayuses, and others of the Columbia River tribes. All came, from the Cascades to the Rockies; from California to the Columbia River.
And each brought here the trophies of the year's wars and raids ; scalps were proudly exhibited ; the heart of some fierce Blackfoot, or hitherto invincible Pi Ute, was exhibited with commendable pride. It might be dried like a mummy, cased in deer skin cover, embroidered with bead work and "quills of the fretful porcupine." Here, also, was the great slave mart of the mid-mountain region.
The Warm Springs braves invaded the country of their enemies, the Snakes, beyond Goose Lake, and the Klamaths were their allies to assist; they joined forces when on a slave hunting raid. The Yahooskin-or Summer Lake- Snakes did not hesitate to take part in these gatherings, for, though neutral as to their fellow Snakes, they liked to take a hand in the games, make good trades, and swap horses -when they could do so to advantage. There was pleasure and honor, as well as plenty of business, here at Yainax on those gala days in October. Trials of archery were had; the best bow shot of the tribes wore a champion belt until next season ; they ran races, not only with their best spotted horses, but foot races, and each tribe bet heavily on its fast runners ; there were games of strength and skill on which they recklessly gambled, and when the day's sports were ended they had games of chance by the lodge fires. Then, they lighted up the night with torches made of pitch pine,
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around which the erstwhile warriors gambled the livelong night. Fortunes were made and lost at Yainax, quite as often as they are at Baden Baden, or at Monaco in later time -or probably at the same time. Then whole droves of ponies, that had been stolen or captured, changed hands on the mere catching of a stick, for the universal game was to guess which hand of the operator held the "little joker"- some small bit of bone or hard wood he manipulated before their eyes; holding up both hands occasionally to let the gamester guess which hand held it.
And all the while the game went on the Indian drum was beat and a monotonous song was chanted-until the dealer held up his hand to let the others choose : and when his choice was made a derisive laugh followed the moment's silence- at expense of the loser. Wait a moment and you will see some desperate gambler bring up his last stake, hoping to retrieve his losses-a beautiful captive woman, perhaps, taken in some hostile raid, intended for his private harem, but to win his horses back he pledges this squaw. Perhaps his own wife is the stake, for wife and children, and even his own body, limb by limb, the fanatic gambler would at times venture, to leave himself a slave in the hands of the winner. Thus the games were exciting and often ended in bad blood.
But gambling is low and ignoble: Come with me and see where a huge circle has been fenced in with willows, where fires blaze by night on hundreds of actors, and see a sight as grand as Indian life can afford. It is the great scalp dance. Around the circle are raised canopies of boughs under which the leading men of each tribe assemble. Inside the circle there is a solid mass of Indian life: warriors, women in their various garbs, clad in skins trimmed with furs or plumage,
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embroidered and made fanciful by every Indian device. Their features, too, are embellished by every shade and pat- tern of paint ; all wear the ornamental garbs known to bar- baric life. Diamonds and pearls they had not, but they wore gay ornaments, rings of bone or ivory artistically carved on their limbs, or hanging from nose or ear or lip ; a porcupine quill through the nose was not a bad thing.
While the lookers on are thus gotten up, regardless of ex- pense, in the centre is a space where the most accomplished warriors go through evolutions of battle. They are sur- rounded by a circle of drummers ; another circle of warriors hold poles loaded with scalps and war trophies, that sway as they dance to the barbaric beating of drums. Around the fire, in the very centre, the choicest warriors go through their evolutions, utter horrid war cries, aim their arrows, hurl javalins, wield tomahawks, or perform the pantomime of scalping their victims. Thus the crowded assemblage moves to the drum beat and the dance of the central actors, so it is a moving, swaying mass-only the chiefs, in their elevated canopies, look on with dignified appreciation and neither move nor join the chorus of sound. If some chief rises to speak, then an instant hush falls, the saturnalia-or rather pandemonium-ceases. In an instant that crowd is hushed to hear his words. The transition seems like dream work-so sudden is the change to stillness and silence. When the chief closes his oration-for an Indian chief is naturally an orator, if not a poet-such a yell goes up as only Yainax ever heard, and Bedlam is loose again.
Those Indian princes of old had as much trouble to pair off the young ones as European princelings yet have. It was matter for diplomacy to provide suitable wives for com-
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ing chiefs, and strengthen tribal influence as much as possi- ble by favoring alliances. There came to Yainax the thor- oughbred tribal aristocracy ; beauty had to be adorned, and no expense was spared to outfit with feathers, beads and paint candidates for matrimony of both sexes. The belles had rings on ankles, fingers and wrists, and bells on their toes, with nose quills to make up the tout ensemble. The young buck of that aforetime, who went prospecting among those fair ones, no doubt had feelings akin to what are en- tertained by the young men of our day who interview the belles of the period.
Such was Yainax in the delightful Indian festival time that came with successive Octobers ; and when Octobers were gone, then the silences that ruled the region returned and possessed all nature until another autumn should come and another carnival time dawn on the sombre brown that in October clothes hill and plain at Yainax.
THE DALLES RENDEZVOUS
Another autumn rendezvous of the tribes was at The Dalles of the Columbia, a few miles east of the entrance to the Cas- cades ; a place where the vast flood of the Columbia seemed to foam and boil, in places, for fifteen miles, so that portages were necessary. This is not a description of the river, so I will only allude to this part of its course as a famous fishing ground for salmon, where various tribes had their several rights and the lava shores in the fishing season were crowded with Indian life in active labor to catch and save the immense run of fish that summer and autumn gave their winter food.
In his "Astoria," Washington Irving fully describes the rapids of Celilo, 180 miles from the ocean, and the fearful
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cataclysm of the lesser and greater dalles to the eastward. The dalles are swift passages through narrow defiles of the lava bed rock, so swift that no human power has ever been able to sound the depth ; so narrow that I have easily thrown a stone across and struck the opposite lava cliff much higher than where I stood. The river is turned on edge as it cuts through the narrow chasm, and such passes are termed by the Canadians "dalles," while the river widens to a mile where Dalles City smiles upon it not far below.
When the spring and early summer floods come down, the raving waters overflow the lava shores and follow crevices cut therein ; the ascending salmon follow these crevices to avoid the swift force of the main river's channel. The In- dians used to take them in these channels with net or spear as they came up. Along the course of the river for fifteen miles were notable fisheries where various bands, who lived south and north, had their respective rights. It was when autumn came and the fishing and hunting season was over, the berries and roots gathered, that the tribes had their an- nual gathering.
To The Dalles rendezvous came also Indians from the Lower Columbia, who brought their various products and work of their hands ; even their cedar canoes were in demand, as there was no such wood east of the Cascades. Seasons were so different in different sections-the west being very rainy and the east semi-arid-that products varied and there was room for exchange.
Each tribe had its specialty ; all to the east had their greatest wealth in horses and made their journeys and raids on horseback. The country there was open and bunch grass offered unlimited pasturage for their herds.
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The Klickitats were the universal Yankees of the aborigi- nal period, and were traders and horse jockies by nature. Their young men wandered as far as California on their trading excursions to the south, and at times went as far east to hunt buffalo beyond the Rockies. The Nez Percés, who lived in northern Idaho, made regular hunts across the Rocky Mountains and brought to The Dalles rendezvous buf- falo robes and dried meat, spoil of their prowess and skill. The western tribes made cloth of the wild hemp, baskets of all kinds, and much embroidered work ; the eastern natives drove bands of horses loaded with spoils of the chase. The Klickitats were especially famous for their make of weapons for the chase or for war; their skill in this line was so well established that they had great trade in such work.
CHAPTER XVII
STORY OF THE MULTNOMAHS
WE have told how the Multnomahs occupied the river shores and islands of the Columbia and Willamette near their confluence, and how prosperous and contented they were. It seems that they spoke a different language from that of the natives on the Lower Columbia, or of the Willa- mette valley above the falls, but tradition has it that of old they occupied the beautiful valley to its head, a hundred and fifty miles to the south, and led delightful lives, separated from all the world by mountains on every side. How long ago this was there is no veritable history to explain, but the Calipooias came as an invading force from the south, a warrior race which evidently came to spy the promised land and found it the most delightful region of all the farthest west. I can imagine them passing through the country, en- joying the generous hospitality of the Multnomahs and probably bearing away sample products of the region, even as did the spies Joshua sent to prospect the lovely Canaan of old, who bore away those grapes of Eschol that are pic- tured in Sunday-school books.
Where the Calipooias originated no one knows. They came, saw and conquered the not very warlike Multnomahs, and usurped the beautiful and widespread valley, where na- ture's flocks and herds roamed as free as did their human associates. They came from the south, but whether from the sun-burnt regions east of the Cascades, or the valleys west
MULTNOMAH FALLS, COLUMBIA RIVER, NEAR 1000 FEET
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of the range, no one can tell. The Multnomahs did not will- ingly resign their lovely country, but mustered their forces to resist the invaders. Many battles were fought and the Calipooias steadily drove them from one section to another, until, at last, they made a bitter contest at the falls of the Willamette.
Here, at the falls, hill ranges close in on all sides to make a northern barrier, but the invincible power of the floods had worn a gorge through these crests and found an outlet to the Columbia. Here the river makes a plunge that creates the beautiful falls of the Willamette and the immense water power, now utilized to light the metropolis below and for various manufacturing purposes.
The falls were a striking object in the early time, before human ingenuity and effort hemmed them in with factories and surrounded them with the growing progress of Oregon City. To the Indians, who loved and worshipped nature, they were a manifestation of divine power, and were held in esteem as the great fishery of their country. The natives of Clatsop and Chinook went in canoes and with seines to fish in the open river, but those of the upper river fished from the rocky shores; caught the salmon as they tried to sur- mount the ripples or leap the falls, when they were at disad- vantage, or caught them on subsidiary streams. The falls at Oregon City were a rendezvous for the Willamette Indians, as were the Cascades and The Dalles of the Columbia for the eastern tribes. Here the Multnomahs, and Calipooias after them, had their villages, or rather towns, and when, after a long warfare, the Calipooias drove them from the beautiful regions of the Upper Willamette, where their ancestors before them for untold ages had their homes, the.
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unhappy Multnomahs made their last and most desperate defence for their "altars and their fires, God and their native land."
No doubt they fortified the narrow pass, for it is very narrow from the rocky precipices on either side of the foam- ing torrent, but they were vanquished and almost destroyed. The Calipooias were triumphant and possessed the land-the wonderful valley, shrined among ranges, that consisted of broad spread prairies and interlacing hills, watered for 150 miles by the greater Willamette's flow and tributaries from the ranges that encircle it, all this and the fishery at the falls they had now by their prowess and possessed as their right.
Tradition says there was yet a later battle fought for possession of Sauvie's Island, that lies twenty miles long where the Columbia and the Willamette meet. That was where Keisno lived and ruled the Wakanississe nation, in the time of the Hudson's Bay Company, and that people were Multnomahs. They occupied the Lower Willamette and the shores of the Columbia from the Cowlitz to Cape Horn, a distance of about fifty miles. I can see no object in the Calipooias wishing the country below the falls, as the upper valley is to-day the most beautiful and fertile region of all the North Pacific, and its extent was enough for their needs.
There are no reliable accounts as to how the rest of the vast territory known as Oregon was originally settled. The natives had wild legends and strange myths as to their ori- gin, that have no reliability or force, are not in many in- stances even worth one's curiosity, as they are so unreason- ing. There was a vein of romance in them that found ex-
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pression in such mythical lore, as is the case with all na- ture's children who roam the wilds and catch inspiration from communion with Nature itself.
FATE OF THE MULTNOMAHS
Along in those early years, at the very time when all the great nations we have described were rich and prosperous as we have pictured, when their villages, numbering thou- sands by their population, occupied the shores of the Lower Willamette and the adjacent Columbia, their canoes con- stituting a great and active fleet gliding swiftly over the friendly waters, there came up from the ocean a trading vessel of American nationality, loaded with goods desirable for the Indian trade. It was named the Convoy, com- manded by Captain Dominus ; it anchored at St. Helen's and commenced to trade with the natives, who brought skins and furs, game and meats, from far and near. During this time some of the sailors aboard the brig gave or bartered to the Indians of a village on Sauvie's Island some second-hand clothing that was probably infected with the measles. The brig went on its way and never returned to know how death and destruction followed in her wake. One Sunday morning there was a prosperous people living along the shores in their summer villages. They saw the great ship come up and greeted it with perfect welcome. The whites had ever been their friends, and these were also white men! They traf- ficked, and bartered, and witnessed the brig's departure with unfeigned regret. Alas! that it had ever come !
The measles broke out among them and their medicine men told them how to treat it. They were put in their sweat
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houses naked, and having endured all the steaming heat the human man was capable of, they then threw themselves head- long into the river, whose floods were gathered from glaciers and snows whose sources are eternal. Often congestion seized them, and they died then and there, their corpses floating downward on the tide. It was terrible-it is even now terrible to know that once on a time these peaceful shores were all throbbing with life and hope, and before the new moon had grown old, that life and hope were swept from the face of the green earth.
There was a beautiful village on the shore of Sauvie's Isl- and whose inhabitants used to come to Vancouver every day on some pretext or errand. Somehow, they did not come there as they used to do. There were other villages whose canoes made frequent journeys along the shores, but very few of them now went to and fro. One day some person connected with the fort was going down the Columbia and concluded to stop at this Multnomah, or Wakanississe village, to learn how they got on. They had no idea at Vancouver that pes- tilence had fallen on all those happy people. The lodges stood in place and there was no sign of evil, save that no person, or child even, came to see them land. The village and many of the villagers were there but it was a city of the dead. They lay as they had fallen and died, with no one to close the eye, fold the hands, or smooth the tangled locks. There was a tiny babe trying to nurse its clay cold mother. One woman was alive and told, before she died, the story of the rest. There were two little boys found alive, and all pains were taken to save them, but the only one of all the hundreds of that fair village who survived was a slave boy they had captured in a distant foray into the Umpqua.
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There were three villages on Sauvie's Island that shared the same untimely end. Of the entire Wakanississe nation but a few hundred remained where there had yesterday been thousands. Old Keisno, their chief, was less super- stitious than the rest. When he felt the disease upon him he was carried to the fort and treated by Dr. Bailey. The good chief recovered, and lived many a day, but the glory of his reign was no longer, for his braves were gone on before.
That terrible pestilence did not at that time spread east of the Cascades, but it went far and near wherever Indians were camped on the waters of Western Oregon. Up the Willamette was a place thereafter to become the capital of a great State, where a beautiful city was within half a century to shelter homes of thousands ; even then, when no white man lived there or near there, it was claimed as Chemeketa, The Old Home, by a large band of Calipooias, who went else- where during the summer and autumn months, to hunt and fish and gather roots and nuts, acorns and berries for their winter sustenances. The Chemeketas were a happy people, and the last of the old race died only lately, Quinaby by name. He has told me that many years ago they made their homes, as by all tradition had their fathers before them, along the shore below the present town of Salem. One win- ter the measles broke out among them and they died off so that only a small remnant was left of the hundreds who once wintered there. So the fatal pest, and the as fatalistic treat- ment, prevailed over a wide region and swept the Indian race from the face of the earth.
Among the traditions handed down by the remaining In- dians, is the following. In early times their fathers saw a great canoe, with immense wings, that had many men on
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board, come over the bar and sail up the river. At evening this great creature sent from its sides a loud roar that went rolling and rattling among the hills and mountains, and its echoes went up and down all the great streams. From its side came a black smoke, or vapor, that fell on the adjacent waters. It went up all the streams, great and small, and wherever that smoke went it carried death and disease to all the Indian tribes, and the red man died from off the face of the earth where he had once been numerous, prosperous and happy. But the story of the Convoy may be received as true history.
As to the name Multnomah. Mr. John Minto says he never saw an Indian who called himself a Multnomah. When going down the Willamette, in 1844, with the Morri- son family, they landed and camped at night where the last of the Multnomah villages had been, but it was then a city of the dead. Cedar boards had been split wide and were set up endwise, and several shelves made and mortised between, on which were laid the bodies of the dead, held in place by twisted cedar bark. These were arranged in lines and laid off in streets. The Multnomahs as a race were then no longer known.
As for the number of Indians left in the country in 1845, Minto says they found not more than 350 left on the Colum- bia River, from the mouth of the Willamette to the ocean, and in same proportion for the Tillamooks, while Lewis and Clark had counted 320 houses along the Columbia, with 8,330 people, and 50 houses and 1,000 of the Tillamooks.
CHAPTER XVIII
STORY OF THE MOLALLAS
For all their extent of thousands of miles, the great Sierras and Cascade ranges of the Pacific rise abruptly from the east, while their long spurs reach west for many miles, leaving regions of foothills where people make homes to-day, and where the Molallas made their homes before the white men came. Only within a comparatively few years has the story been known as to their region. This was when there was investigation made to find a railroad pass over to Middle Oregon. After considerable effort it was discovered that the best pass of all is situated a little south of Mount Jefferson ; that this was once travelled by the Indians but had for a long time been abandoned. Even the old trail was found, but it seemed strange that when it offered such advantages it should have been thus neglected.
Investigation with ancient dwellers soon discovered that they had a tradition accounting for this, that forms one of the most striking incidents handed down of the past.
In the long ago (so reads the story told to the early pioncers ) there was civil strife among the Cayuses, and after bitter fighting a band of seceders, with their families and possessions, took the way westward from the bunch grass region of the Upper Columbia, prospecting for a new home. They found all the territory east of the Cascade Mountains occupied by warlike tribes that would stand no interference, but allowed them to pass on and enter the Cascade Range on
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their way westward. So they left the fierce Wascos, the fiercer Warm Springs, and the Teninos, for the promised land they had heard of as the Wah-lam-ut.
In the olden time there used to be a trail that led across the Cascades south of and close to Mount Jefferson, the same that was rediscovered some years ago and is known to- day as the Minto Pass. This route was long used, in fact must have been in use from immemorial time for communi- cation between the east and west, and was, by far, the most convenient way to cross the great range; but it was, after a time, abandoned in respect to superstition peculiar to the aboriginal race, which tradition forms the basis on which my story is founded.
As the Western tribes showed them this trail and bade them good speed, the seceding Cayuses followed it one sum- mer time until they found themselves in the beautiful Wah- lam-ut Valley ; but they found this valley full of villages and towns of the all-pervading Calipooia race and felt it im- possible to conquer them and establish themselves among a people so powerful and populous. The fact is, the Calipoo- ias had then but recently conquered and occupied this beau- tiful valley, and had driven out the Multnomahs at the point of their arrows. This was long before white men were heard of, so long that the tribes of half a century and more ago had only a tradition of these facts.
The Molallas were hunters, and the Cascades were then full of game of all classes. Elk roamed from the Willamette River to the summits of the range ; deer and bear were plenti- ful; grouse, pheasants and quail flew up on every side and everywhere, and salmon climbed the falls, while mountain streams and lakes were abounding in beautiful trout. So
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