know, his people were anything but friendly, safely to the vicinity of the mission.[1] For this service many were ungrateful, for two reasons: it took them forty-five miles out of their course; and exposed them to the annoying peculations of the natives, who not only intruded into their camps by day, but stole their horses at night in order to obtain a reward for returning them—a practice which was repeated every twenty-four hours.
The great ambition of the natives along the Columbia, as elsewhere, was to secure the clothing worn by white men. Lewis and Clarke mention seeing odd garments, evidently obtained from trading-vessels on the coast, in the possession of these natives as early as in 1805, and which must have been purchased from the Indians of the Lower Columbia. After the Oregon immigration began they were to be seen arrayed in cast-off wearing apparel of every description, presenting a motley and fantastic appearance. They gladly sold whatever they had for shirts, dresses, or hats; but as stealing and selling back a horse to its owner was a more productive plan, it was greatly affected by the Cayuses.
Kaiser in his narrative complains of these practices, and says that at the mission he called a council of chiefs, and told them that he had paid his last shirt for having his horses returned by the thieves, and that hereafter when he found one of them about his camp after dark he should shoot him. This warning was not without its effect. Burnett also speaks of paying a shirt for several successive mornings to get back the same animal; and Waldo, in his cynical style, remarks that the immigrants had no trouble with the natives until they encountered the mission Indians.[2]
- ↑ Nesmith says Sticcas was the only Indian he ever knew who had any conception of or who practised Christianity. Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1875, 48.
- ↑ Critiques, MS., 2. Daniel Waldo was born in Virginia in 1800. At the age of 19 he emigrated to Missouri, where he resided in St Clair County till 1843, and was a neighbor of the Applegates, and of Joseph B. Chiles. His
