pointed at their breasts. She often heard the cry, "Shall we shoot?" and her blood became cold, she says, and she fell upon the floor. But now the order was given, "Do not shoot the children," as the settee passed by the children, over the bleeding, dying body of John.
"Fatal moment! The settee advanced about its length from the door, when the guns were discharged from without and within, the powder actually burning the faces of the children. Brother Rogers raised his hand and cried, "My God," and fell upon his face, pierced with many balls. But he fell not alone. An equal number of the deadly weapons were leveled at the settee and the discharge had been deadly. She groaned, and lingered for some time in great agony.
"Two of the humane Indians threw their blankets over the little children huddled together in the corner of the room, and shut out the sight as they beat their dying victims with whips, and cut their faces with knives. It was Joe Lewis, the Canadian half-breed, that first shot Mrs. Whitman, but it was Tamtsaky who took her scalp as a trophy."
An old Oregon friend of the author, Samuel 230 Campbell, now living in Moscow, Idaho, spent the Winter of '46 and '47 at the Whitman Mission, and never wearied in telling of the grandly Christian character of Mrs. Whitman, of her