them, ‘Friends, we have come to talk to you. Now tell us what our sub-chief, Egan, has done to you that you should kill him, and have him cooked in the way you did. Was he good to eat? Oh, my dear friends, some of you will suffer the same as Egan did at your hands. If we had made war with you, and had taken prisoners in battle, we would not say anything; but you helped the thing along, and for four years you have come on the Malheur Reservation, and told Egan and Oytes to make war against the whites. You have called them fools for staying on the reservation to starve; and another thing you have helped the Bannocks to fight the soldiers. You are nothing but cowards; nothing but barking coyotes; you are neither persons nor men. We were never your enemies, for we have let you come to our country and always welcomed you. We have never been to your country. Now we cease to be friends, and after the soldiers quit fighting with the Bannocks and with Oytes’ men, we will make war with you for the wrong you have done us, if you do not return our women and girls whom you have taken as prisoners. As soon as the war with the Bannocks is over, we want you Umatillas to bring us our women and children. We will then show you what fighting is. My friends, it must be a beautiful sensation to cut a man or a woman to pieces, and then skin their heads and fasten them on a pole, and dance round them as if you were indeed very happy. Do you know there is not money enough in the world to make me go and fight a people who have not done me any harm? You have done this year after year against your own people. Are you never going to stop? You and the Snake-headed Indians, who are called the Wascoe Indians, and the Columbia River Indians and the Nez Pérces, are about alike: you are always ready to take up your arms against your own people. And what do you gain by it?
