The Bridge of the Gods

That evening a little band of Willamette warriors led the rebel sachem, still bound and blindfolded, down to the river’s bank, where a canoe lay waiting them. His wife followed and tried to enter it with him, as if determined to share his fortunes to the very last; but the guard thrust her rudely away, and started the canoe. As it moved away she caught the prow wildly, despairingly, as if she could not let her warrior go. One of the guards struck her hands brutally with his paddle, and she released her hold. The boat glided out into the river. Not a word of farewell had passed between the condemned man and his wife, for each disdained to show emotion in the presence of the enemy. She remained on the bank looking after him, mute and despondent, – a forlorn creature clothed in rags and emaciated with hunger, an outcast from all the tribes. She might have been regarded as a symbolic figure representing woman among the Indians, as she stood there with her bruised hands, throbbing with pain where the cruel blow had fallen, hanging, in sullen scorn of pain, uncared for by her side. So she stood watching the canoe glide down the river, till it was swallowed up in the gathering shadows of evening.

The canoe dropped down the river to a lonely point on the northern shore, a place much frequented by wolves. There, many miles below the encampment on the island, they disembarked and took the captive into the wood. He walked among them with a firm and even tread; there was no sign of flinching, though he must have known that his hour was close at hand. They bound him prostrate at the foot of an oak, tying him to the hard, tough roots that ran over the ground like a network, and from which the earth had been washed away, so that thongs could be passed around them.

Head and foot they bound him, drawing the rawhide thongs so tight that they sank into the flesh, and knotting them, till no effort possible to him could have disentangled him. It was on his lips to ask them to leave one arm free, so that he might at least die fighting, though it were with but one naked hand. But he hated them too much to ask even that small favor, and so submitted in disdainful silence.

The warriors all went back to the canoe, except one, an old hunter, famed for his skill in imitating every cry of bird or beast. Standing beside the bound and prostrate man, he sent forth into the forest the cry of a wolf. It rang in a thousand echoes and died away, evoking no response. He listened a moment with bated breath, but could hear nothing but the deep heart-beat of the man at his feet. Another cry, with its myriad echoes, was followed by the oppressive sense of stillness that succeeds an outcry in a lonely wood. Then came a faint, a far-off sound, the answer of a wolf to a supposed mate. The Indian replied, and the answer sounded nearer; then another blended with it, as the pack began to gather. Again the Indian gave the cry, wild and wolfish, as only a barbarian, half-beast by virtue of his own nature, could have uttered it. An awful chorus of barking and howling burst through the forest as the wolves came on, eager for blood.

The Indian turned and rejoined his comrades at the canoe. They pushed out into the river, but held the boat in the current by an occasional paddle-stroke, and waited listening. Back at the foot of the tree the captive strained every nerve and muscle in one mighty effort to break the cords that bound him; but it was useless, and he lay back with set teeth and rigid muscles, while his eyes sought in vain through their thick covering to see the approach of his foes. Presently a fierce outburst of howls and snarls told the listeners that the wolves had found their prey. They lingered and listened a little longer, but no sound or cry was heard to tell of the last agony under those rending fangs; the chief died in silence. Then the paddles were dipped again in the water, and the canoe glided up the river to the camp.

When they reached the shore they found the rebel’s wife awaiting them in the place where they had left her. She asked no questions; she only came close and looked at their faces in the dusk, and read there the thing she sought to know. Then she went silently away. In a little while the Indian wail for the dead was sounding through the forest.

“What is that?” asked the groups around the camp fires.

“The rebel chief’s wife wailing the death-wail for her husband,” was the low reply; and in that way the tribes knew that the sentence had been carried out. Many bands were there, of many languages, but all knew what that death-wail meant the instant it fell upon their ears. Multnomah heard it as he sat in council with his chiefs, and there was something in it that shook even his iron heart; for all the wilder, more superstitious elements of the Indians thrilled to two things, – the war-cry and the death-wail. He dismissed his chiefs and went to his lodge. On the way he encountered Tohomish, lurking, as was his wont, under the shadow of the trees.

“What think you now, Tohomish, you who love darkness and shadow, what think you? Is not the arm of the Willamette strong? Has it not put down revolt to-day, and held the tribes together?”

The Pine Voice looked at him sorrowfully.

“The vision I told in the council has come back to me again. The cry of woe I heard far off then is nearer now, and the throng on the death-trail passes thicker and swifter. That which covered their faces is lifted, and their faces are the faces of Willamettes, and Multnomah is among them. The time is close at hand.”

“Say this before our enemies, and, strong tomanowos though you are, you die!” said the chief, laying his hand on his tomahawk. But the seer was gone, and Multnomah stood alone among the trees.

Every evening at dusk, the widow of the rebel sachem went out into the woods near the camp and wailed her dead. Every night that wild, desolate lament was lifted and rang through the great encampment, – a cry that was accusation, defiance, and lament; and even Multnomah dared not silence her, for among the Indians a woman lamenting her dead was sacred. So, while Multnomah labored and plotted for union by day, that mournful cry raised the spirit of wrath and rebellion by night. And thus the dead liberator was half avenged.

BOOK IV

THE LOVE TALE

CHAPTER I

THE INDIAN TOWN

The bare ground with hoarie mosse bestrowedMust be their bed, their pillow was unsowedAnd the frutes of the forrest was their feast.The Faërie Queene.

Never before had there come to Cecil so grand an opportunity for disseminating gospel truth. The work of half a lifetime might be done in a few days.

“The tribes are all gathered together in one encampment, and I can talk with them all, tell them of God, of the beauty of heaven and of the only Way. Then, when they disperse, they will carry my teaching in every direction, and so it will be scattered throughout all this wild land.”

This was the thought that came to Cecil when he awoke on the morning after the trial. Now was the time to work! Now was the time for every element of argument, persuasion, and enthusiasm to be exerted to the utmost.

Earnestly did he pray that morning, kneeling in his lodge beside his couch of furs, that God would be with and help him. And as he prayed, warm and glowing was the love and tenderness that filled his heart. When the day was a little more advanced, he entered upon his work. The camp was astir with life; nearly all had finished their morning meal, and the various employments and diversions of the day were begun. Each tribe or band had pitched its lodges apart, though not far from the others. It was not so much an encampment as a group of many encampments, and the whole made up a scattered town of huts and wigwams.

A precarious and uncertain quiet had succeeded the agitation of the day before. Multnomah’s energy had awed the malcontents into temporary submission, and the different bands were mingling freely with one another; though here and there a chief or warrior looked on contemptuously, standing moodily apart, wrapped in his blanket. Now and then when a Willamette passed a group who were talking and gesticulating animatedly they would become silent all at once till the representative of the dreaded race was out of hearing, when a storm of indignant gutterals would burst forth; but there were no other indications of hostility.

Groups were strolling from place to place observing curiously the habits and customs of other tribes; the common Willamette tongue, precursor of the more modern Chinook jargon, furnishing a means of intercourse. Everywhere Cecil found talk, barter, diversion. It was a rude caricature of civilization, the picture of society in its infancy, the rough dramatization of that phase through which every race passes in its evolution from barbarism.

At one place, a hunter from the interior was bartering furs for hiagua shells to a native of the sea-coast. At another, a brave skilled in wood-work had his stock of bows and arrows spread out before him, and an admiring crowd were standing around looking on. But the taciturn brave sat coolly polishing and staining his arrows as if he were totally unconscious of spectators, until the magical word “buy” was mentioned, when he at once awoke to life and drove a bargain in bow and quiver versus dried berries and “ickters” that would have done credit to a Yankee.

At one place sat an old warrior from the upper Columbia, making arrow-heads, chipping off the little scales of flint with infinite patience, literally wearing the stone into the requisite shape. Beside him lay a small pack of flints brought from beyond the mountains, for such stone was rarely found along the lower Columbia. Squaws sat in front of their wigwams sewing mats, – carefully sorting the rushes, putting big ends with little ends, piercing each with a bodkin, and sewing them all together with a long bone needle threaded with buckskin or sinew. Others were weaving that water-tight wickerwork which was, perhaps, the highest art to which the Oregon Indians ever attained. Here a band of Indians were cooking, feasting, laughing, shouting around a huge sturgeon captured the night before. There a circle of gamblers were playing “hand,” – passing a small stick secretly from hand to hand and guessing whose hand contained it, – singing as they played that monotonous “ho-ha, ho-ha, ho-ha,” which was the inseparable accompaniment of dancing, gambling, and horseback riding.

Among them all Cecil moved with the calm dignity he had acquired from long intercourse with the Indians. Wherever he went there was silence and respect, for was he not the great white medicine-man? Gambling circles paused in the swift passage of the stick and the monotone of the chant to look and to comment; buyers and sellers stopped to gaze and to question; children who had been building miniature wigwams of sticks or floating bark canoes in the puddles, ran away at his approach and took shelter in the thickets, watching him with twinkling black eyes.

Wherever there was opportunity, he stopped and talked, scattering seed-thoughts in the dark minds of the Indians. Wherever he paused a crowd would gather; whenever he entered a wigwam a throng collected at the door.

Let us glance for a moment into the domestic life of the Indians as Cecil saw it that morning.

He enters one of the large bark huts of the Willamette Indians, a long, low building, capable of sheltering sixty or seventy persons. The part around the door is painted to represent a man’s face, and the entrance is through the mouth. Within, he finds a spacious room perhaps eighty or a hundred feet long by twenty wide, with rows of rude bunks rising tier above tier on either side. In the centre are the stones and ashes of the hearth; above is an aperture in the roof for the escape of smoke; around the hearth mats are spread to sit upon; the bare ground, hard and trodden, forms the only floor, and the roof is made of boards that have been split out with mallet and wedges.

Cecil enters and stands a moment in silence; then the head of the house advances and welcomes him. The best mat is spread for him to sit upon; food is brought, – pounded fish, nuts, and berries, and a kind of bread made of roots cooked, crushed together, and cut in slices when cold. All this is served on a wooden platter, and he must eat whether hungry or not; for to refuse would be the grossest affront that could be offered a Willamette host, especially if it were presented by his own hands. The highest honor that a western Oregon Indian could do his guest was to wait on him instead of letting his squaw do it. The Indian host stands beside Cecil and says, in good-humored hospitality, “Eat, eat much,” nor is he quite pleased if he thinks that his visitor slights the offered food. When the guest can be no longer persuaded to eat more, the food is removed, the platter is washed in water, and dried with a wisp of twisted grass; a small treasure of tobacco is produced from a little buckskin pocket and a part of it carefully mixed with dried leaves;10 the pipe is filled and smoked. Then, and not till then, may the Indian host listen to the talk of the white man.

So it was in lodge after lodge; he must first eat, be it ever so little. Two centuries later, the Methodist and Congregational missionaries found themselves confronted with the same oppressive hospitality among the Rocky Mountain Indians.11 Nay, they need not visit a wigwam; let them but stroll abroad through the village, and if they were popular and the camp was well supplied with buffalo-meat, messengers would come with appalling frequency, bearing the laconic invitation, “Come and eat;” and the missionary must go, or give offence, even though he had already gone to half a dozen wigwams on the same errand. There is a grim humor in a missionary’s eating fresh buffalo-meat in the cause of religion until he is like to burst, and yet heroically going forth to choke down a few mouthfuls more, lest he offend some dusky convert.

At one house Cecil witnessed a painful yet comical scene. The Willamettes were polygamists, each brave having as many wives as he was able to buy; and Cecil was in a lodge where the brother of the head man of that lodge brought home his second wife. At the entrance of the second wife, all gay in Indian finery, the first did not manifest the sisterly spirit proper for the occasion. After sitting awhile in sullen silence, she arose and began to kick the fire about, accompanying that performance with gutteral exclamations addressed to no one in particular; she struck the dog, which chanced to be in the way, sending it yelping from the wigwam; and then, having worked herself into a rage, began to scold her husband, who listened grimly but said nothing. At last she turned on her new-found sister, struck her, and began to lay rending hands on the finery that their mutual husband had given her. That was instantly resented; and in a few moments the squaws were rolling on the floor, biting, scratching, and pulling each other’s hair with the fury of devils incarnate. The dogs, attracted by the tumult, ran in and began to bark at them; the Indians outside the hut gathered at the door, looking in and laughing; the husband contemplated them as they rolled fighting at his feet, and then looked at Cecil. It was undoubtedly trying to Indian dignity but the warrior sustained his admirably. “Bad, very bad,” was the only comment he allowed himself to make. Cecil took his leave, and the brave kept up his air of indifference until the white man had gone. Then he quietly selected a cudgel from the heap of fire-wood by the doorway, and in a short time peace reigned in the wigwam.

In a lodge not far away, Cecil witnessed another scene yet more barbarous than this. He found a little blind boy sitting on the ground near the fire, surrounded by a quantity of fish-bones which he had been picking. He was made a subject for the taunting jibes and laughter of a number of men and women squatting around him. His mother sat by in the most cruel apathy and unconcern, and only smiled when Cecil expressed commiseration for her unfortunate and peculiarly unhappy child. It had been neglected and seemed almost starved. Those around apparently took pleasure in tormenting it and rendering it miserable, and vied with each other in applying to it insulting and degrading epithets. The little articles that Cecil gave to it, in the hope that the Indians seeing him manifest an interest in it would treat it more tenderly, it put to its mouth eagerly; but not finding them eatable, it threw them aside in disgust. Cecil turned away sick at heart. Worn, already weary, this last sight was intolerable; and he went out into the woods, away from the camp.

But as he walked along he seemed to see the child again, so vividly had it impressed his imagination. It rose before him in the wood, when the noise of the camp lay far behind; it seemed to turn its sightless eyes upon him and reach out its emaciated arms as if appealing for help.12

Out in the wood he came across an Indian sitting on a log, his face buried in his hands, his attitude indicating sickness or despondency. He looked up as Cecil approached. It was the young Willamette runner who had been his companion on the journey down the Columbia. His face was haggard; he was evidently very sick. The missionary stopped and tried to talk with him, but could evoke little response, except that he did not want to talk, and that he wanted to be left alone. He seemed so moody and irritable that Cecil thought it best to leave him. His experience was that talking with a sick Indian was very much like stirring up a wounded rattlesnake. So he left the runner and went on into the forest, seeking the solitude without which he could scarcely have lived amid the degrading barbarism around him. His spirit required frequent communion with God and Nature, else he would have died of weariness and sickness of heart.

Wandering listlessly, he went on further and further from the camp, never dreaming of what lay before him, or of the wild sweet destiny to which that dim Indian trail was leading him through the shadowy wood.

CHAPTER II

THE WHITE WOMAN IN THE WOOD

I seek a sail that never looms from out the purple hazeAt rosy dawn, or fading eve, or in the noontide’s blaze.Celia Thaxter.

Cecil walked listlessly on through the wood. He was worn out by the day’s efforts, though it was as yet but the middle of the afternoon. There was a feeling of exhaustion in his lungs, a fluttering pain about his heart, the result of years of over-work upon a delicate frame. With this feeling of physical weakness came always the fear that his strength might give way ere his work was done. Nor was this all. In these times of depression, the longing to see again the faces of his friends, to have again the sweet graceful things of the life that was forever closed to him, rushed over him in a bitter flood.

The trail led him to the bank of the Columbia, some distance below the encampment. He looked out over the blue river sweeping majestically on, the white snow-peaks, the canyons deep in the shadows of afternoon, the dense forest beyond the river extending away to the unknown and silent North as far as his eyes could reach.

“It is wonderful, wonderful!” he thought. “But I would give it all to look upon one white face.”

So musing, he passed on down the bank of the river. He was now perhaps two miles from the camp and seemingly in complete solitude. After a little the path turned away from the beach and led toward the interior. As he entered the woodland he came upon several Indian sentinels who lay, bow in hand, beside the path. They sprang up, as if to intercept his passage; but seeing that it was the white shaman whom Multnomah had honored, and who had sat at the council with the great sachems, they let him go on. Cecil indistinctly remembered having heard from some of the Indians that this part of the island was strictly guarded; he had forgotten why. So absorbed was he in his gloomy reflections that he did not stop to question the sentinels, but went on, not thinking that he might be treading on forbidden ground. By and by the path emerged from the wood upon a little prairie; the cottonwoods shut out the Indians from him, and he was again alone. The sunshine lay warm and golden on the little meadow, and he strolled forward mechanically, thinking how like it was to some of the sylvan lawns of his own New England forests. Again the shade of trees fell over the path. He looked up, his mind full of New England memories, and saw something that made his heart stand still. For there, not far from him, stood a girl clad in soft flowing drapery, the dress of a white woman. In Massachusetts a woman’s dress would have been the last thing Cecil would have noticed. Now, so long accustomed to the Indian squaws’ rough garments of skin or plaited bark, the sight of that graceful woven cloth sent through him an indescribable thrill.

He went on, his eager eyes drinking in the welcome sight, yet scarcely believing what he saw.

She had not yet observed him. The profile of her half-averted face was very sweet and feminine; her form was rounded, and her hair fell in long black ringlets to the shoulders. He was in the presence of a young and beautiful woman, – a white woman! All this he noted at a glance; noted, too, the drooping lashes, the wistful lines about the lips, the mournful expression that shadowed the beauty of her face.

Who was she? Where could she have come from?

She heard the approaching footsteps and turned toward him. Absolute bewilderment was on her face for a moment, and then it glowed with light and joy. Her dark, sad eyes sparkled. She was radiant, as if some great, long-looked for happiness had come to her. She came eagerly toward him, holding out her hands in impetuous welcome; saying something in a language he did not understand, but which he felt could not be Indian, so refined and pleasing were the tones.

He answered he knew not what, in his own tongue, and she paused perplexed. Then he spoke again, this time in Willamette.

She shrank back involuntarily.

“That language?” she replied in the same tongue, but with a tremor of disappointment in her voice. “I thought you were of my mother’s race and spoke her language. But you are white, like her people?”

She had given him both her hands, and he stood holding them; looking down into her eager, lifted face, where a great hope and a great doubt in mingled light and shadow strove together.

“I am a white man. I came from a land far to the East. But who are you, and how came you here?”

She did not seem to hear the last words, only the first.

“No, no,” she protested eagerly, “you came not from the East but from the West, the land across the sea that my mother came from in the ship that was wrecked.” And she withdrew one hand and pointed toward the wooded range beyond which lay the Pacific.

He shook his head. “No, there are white people in those lands too, but I never saw them. I came from the East,” he said, beginning to surmise that she must be an Asiatic. She drew away the hand that he still held in his, and her eyes filled with tears.

“I thought you were one of my mother’s people,” she murmured; and he felt that the pang of an exceeding disappointment was rilling her heart.

“Who are you?” he asked gently.

“The daughter of Multnomah.”

Cecil remembered now what he had heard of the dead white wife of Multnomah, and of her daughter, who, it was understood among the tribes, was to be given to Snoqualmie. He noticed, too, for the first time the trace of the Indian in her expression, as the light faded from it and it settled back into the despondent look habitual to it. All that was chivalrous in his nature went out to the fair young creature; all his being responded to the sting of her disappointment.

“I am not what you hoped I was, but your face is like the face of the women of my own land. Shall we not be friends?”

She looked up wistfully at the handsome and noble countenance above her, so different from the stolid visages she had known so long.

“Yes; you are not Indian.”

In that one expression she unconsciously told Cecil how her sensitive nature shrank from the barbarism around her; how the tastes and aspirations she had inherited from her mother reached out for better and higher things.

In a little while they were seated on a grassy bank in the shade of the trees, talking together. She bade him tell her of his people. She listened intently; the bright, beautiful look came back as she heard the tale.