th their husbands,
Whitman and Spaulding; how one of them sang, in the little country church
on departing, the whole of the hymn--

"Yes, my native land, I love thee,"

when the voices of others failed from emotion. They have read how the
whole party knelt down on the Great Divide, beside the open Bible and
under the American flag, and took possession of the great empire of the
Northwest in faith and in imagination, and how history fulfilled the
dream.

At the time of the coming of the missionaries the Cayuse Indians and
Nez-Perces occupied the elbow of the Columbia, and the region of the
musical names of the Wallula, the Walla Walla, and Wauelaptu. They were a
superstitious, fierce, and revengful race. They fully believed in
witchcraft or conjuring, and in the power to work evil through familiar
spirits. Everything to them and the neighboring tribes had its good or
evil spirit, or both--the mountains, the rivers, the forest, the sighing
cedars, and the whispering firs.

The great plague of the tribes on the middle Columbia was the measles. The
disease was commonly fatal among them, owing largely to the manner of
treatment. When an Indian began to show the fever which is characteristic
of the disease, he was put into and inclosed in a hot clay oven. As soon
as he was covered with a profuse perspiration he was let out, to leap into
the cold waters of the Columbia. Usually the plunge was followed by death.

There was a rule among these Indians, in early times, that if the
"medicine-man" undertook a case and failed to cure, he forfeited his own
life. The killing of the medicine-man was one of the dramatic and fearful
episodes of the Columbia.

Returning from the East after his famous ride, Whitman built up a noble
mission station at Wauelaptu. He was a man of strong character, and of fine
tastes and ideals. The mission-house was an imposing structure for the
place and time. It had beautiful trees and gardens, and inspiring
surroundings.

Mrs. Whitman was a remarkable woman, as intelligent and sympathetic as she
was heroic. The colony became a prosperous one, and for a time occupied
the happy valley of the West.

One of the vices of the Cayuse Indians and their neighbors was stealing.
The mission station may have overawed them for a time into seeming
honesty, but they began to rob its gardens at last, and out of this
circumstance comes a story, related to me by an old Territorial officer,
which may be new to m