That was a terrible event, and it was a scene like that that the new settlers feared, at the approaching Potlatch; and the thought of that dreadful day almost weakened the faith of Mr. Mann in the Indians.

We must tell you the old-time history of the tragedy which was now revived in the new settlement.

THE CONJURED MELONS.

Most people who like history are familiar with the national story of Marcus Whitman’s “Ride for Oregon"[A]—­that daring horseback trip across the continent, from the Columbia to the Missouri, which enabled him to convince the United States Government not only that Oregon could be reached, but that it was worth possessing.  Exact history has robbed this story of some of its romance, but it is still one of the noblest wonder-tales of our own or any nation.  Monuments and poetry and art must forever perpetuate it, for it is full of spiritual meaning.

Lovers of missionary lore have read with delight the ideal romance of the two brides who agreed to cross the Rocky Mountains with 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.