From the immigrants the Indians stole horses and cattle, and pillaged and vexed them in various ways, while knowing well enough that these offences were deemed worthy of punishment, and were against the laws they had themselves subscribed to. The immigrants, being advised, bore these depredations as well as they were able, seldom coming to blows or retaliation, trading with them for vegetables or grain, and sometimes selling them cattle which they coveted. There was, indeed, nothing of which they could justly complain, their hostility proceeding rather from envy and suspicion than from wickedness innate in the red man more than in the white.
They were angry with Whitman because he did not leave the country, because he raised grain on their land and sold it to the immigrants, because he had mills and comfortable houses, and every year added to his facilities for reaping greater profits from his residence among them. This had been their temper all along; but in 1847 it had seemed to take a more aggressive form, either because they had been told that the United States then claimed sovereignty, or because in their own minds their disaffection was fully ripe, and the sword, so long suspended, was ready to fall.
As soon as the immigrants entered the Cayuse country at the foot of the Blue Mountains they were informed by Spalding of the unfriendly disposition of the Cayuses, and advised not to travel in small companies.[1] That this was timely counsel subsequent events proved.
Whitman was at this time on a visit to the lower country to bring up machinery for his grist-mill, in order to make flour for the immigrants.[2] So convinced was he that an outbreak must occur before long, that, as I have said, he purchased of the Methodists their
