Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/198

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164
Whitman's Ride

that terrible day and that she was then but a little child the remembrance had never left her, nor could she see an Indian without a shudder. The Indians went at their work leisurely, and seemed anxious to prolong the torture. They knew it was two hundred and fifty miles to Vancouver, and they had no fear of molestation from any other source. For five days they kept up their orgies, guarding against escape of their victims. At the end of that time they began to be anxious for their own safety, and gathering the women and children, forty in number, they started for a friendly tribe to wait for developments.

Runners were sent in haste to Fort Vancouver telling of the disaster, and Chief Factor Ogden of the Hudson Bay Company lost no time in starting for the scene with twenty picked men, boats and provisions. Upon reaching Waiilatpui they found everything in ruins, the houses wrecked, the mill burned, and the dead bodies of eleven men, one boy, besides the bodies of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. These were all tenderly gathered and buried together, in what has been called ever since "the Great Grave." In the mean time Chief Ogden had sent runners after the Indians, with a peremptory order to return all the captive women and children to him at once, to Fort Walla Walla. For many years the Indians had been accustomed