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This morning the young Willamette had bought a colt, giving for it a whole string of hiagua shells. It was a pretty, delicate thing, and he was proud of it, and had shown his pride by slitting its ears and cutting off its tail, as was the barbarous custom with many of the Indians.
The chief of a Klamath tribe offered him a brilliantly dyed blanket; another, a finely fringed quiver, full of arrows; another, a long and massive string of hiagua shells. Each laid his gift before Multnomah and took his seat in silence. The chief of the Chopponish presented him with a fine horse, the best belonging to his tribe. Multnomah accepted it, and a slave led it away.
The finest mat was braided for her lodge, the choicest skins and furs spread for her bed, and the chieftainess's string of hiagua shells and grizzly bear's claws had been put around her white neck by Multnomah's own hand.
All the wandering tribes of the Upper Columbia came there to fish or to buy salmon of the Wishram fishers. There too the Indians of the Lower Columbia and the Willamette met them, and bartered the hiagua shells, the dried berries, and wappatto of their country for the bear claws and buffalo robes of the interior.
They were the flower of the Willamette youth, every one of royal birth, handsome in shape and limb, fleet-footed as the deer. They were slender and sinewy in build, with aquiline features and sharp searching eyes. Their garb was light. Leggins and moccasins had been laid aside; even the hiagua shells were stripped from their ears.
The finest of bows and arrows, with gaily decorated quivers and store of bow-strings, were brought. Untold treasure of hiagua shells, money as well as ornament to the Oregon Indians, was poured out upon the ground, and lay glistening in the sun in bright-colored masses. To the Indians they represented vast and splendid wealth.
The Nootka with his tattooed face was there, clad in his woollen blanket, his gigantic form pushing aside the short Chinook of the lower Columbia, with his crooked legs, his half-naked body glistening with grease, his slit nose and ears loaded with hiagua shells.
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.
Now I ride him, what do I care? Suppose he die, plenty more hiagua shells, plenty more horses." After which logical answer he plied the whip harder than ever, making the pony keep up with the stronger and abler horses of the other riders. The long train of squaws and warriors wound on down the trail by the river-side. In a little while Wishram and Tumwater passed from sight.
The warrior's bow lay beside him with rotting string; the child's playthings were still clasped in fleshless fingers; beside the squaw's skull the ear-pendants of hiagua shells lay where they had fallen from the crumbling flesh years before. Near the door, and where the slanting moonbeams fell full upon it, was the last who had been borne to the death hut, the mother of Wallulah.
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