was grossly insulted, and compelled to take refuge for the winter at the Dalles. A few days later the mission mill, with the grain stored in it, was destroyed, and a general warlike attitude assumed by the Cayuses,[1] which was only overcome by the united efforts of an authorized agent of the United States government and the British fur company, as before narrated. Owing to this intervention, order had been restored, and the savages were once more apparently friendly, receiving him with demonstrations of pleasure.
Yet there were present many disappointments. When he left the east, where, contrary to his expectations, not a single family had been obtained for settlement near the missions, he indulged the hope that some of the immigrants might yet be induced to take locations in his neighborhood; but we find him writing, shortly after his return, that all the help received by the mission was one man, hired by Mr Spalding, a Scotch school-teacher, and one family selected from the emigrants, all of whom he had sent to Spalding's assistance at Lapwai, none being found to go to the help of Walker and Eells. He also added a hope that the board would send one minister, fitted to preach to western men, to meet the Catholics, and to instruct the natives. "It is asking but little," he wrote, "to request two ministers for this [the Indian] language; as in the case of the death of Mr Spalding or myself, the knowledge of the language would be limited to so few that little could be done." He also referred to his project of encouraging teachers to come out as
- ↑ It was about this time that McKinlay had his famous adventure with Peupeumoxmox of the Walla Walla branch of the Cayuses, who, on account of his son being seized by a clerk at the fort for a slight theft, was about to do violence to the chief trader, when McKinlay placed a keg of powder in the midst of the apartment, and stood over it ready to touch it off at the first hostile movement. Not wishing to be blown up, Peupeumoxmox became cooler, and was induced to listen to reason. White says, in one of his reports, that the insolence of the Cayuses had been growing ever since the visit of Bonneville, who paid them more for furs than the Hudson's Bay Company. This caused them to make similar demands on Pambrun, and these not being complied with, they seized him, stamped violently on his breast, beat him, and retained him prisoner, until they gained to some extent their object. Ten Years in Or., 175.
