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Updated: June 7, 2025
"To-morrow at dawn, while the light is yet young, the runners will go out. Let the chiefs meet here in the grove to hear the message given them to be carried to the tribes. The talk is ended." Cassandra's wild voice prophesying woe. The war-chief left the grove as soon as he had dismissed the council. Tohomish went with him.
From his place among the chiefs rose a small and emaciated figure; the blanket that had muffled his face was thrown aside, and the tribes looked on the mis-shapen and degraded features of Tohomish the Pine Voice. He stood silent at first, his eyes bent on the ground, like a man in a trance. For a moment the spectators forgot the wonderful eloquence of the man in his ignoble appearance.
Now that the Bridge was fallen, the strength was gone from Tohomish's heart, the music from his words. "Tohomish has no voice now," he continued; "he is as one dead. He desires to say only this, then his words shall be heard no more among men. The fall of the Bridge is a sign that not only the Willamettes but all the tribes of the Wauna shall fall and pass away.
Perhaps, had they searched for him, they would have found him lying lifeless upon the leaves in some dense thicket or at the foot of some lonely crag. Whatever his fate, the Indians never looked upon his face again. Multnomah made no comment on the death of Cecil, or on the prophecy of Tohomish, so much at variance with his own interpretation of the fall of the Bridge.
The passion that was burning within him made his words like pictures, so vivid they were, and thrilled his tones with electric power. As he went on, the sullen faces of his hearers grew animated; the superstitious fears that Tohomish had awakened fell from them. Again they were warriors, and their blood kindled and their pulses throbbed to the words of their invincible leader.
"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.
Lean not your hand on it, for it is as if you put it forth to lean it on a coiled rattlesnake." "Your sayings are dark," replied the chief impatiently. "Speak plainly." Tohomish shook his head, and the gloomy look habitual to him came back. "I cannot.
Would he declare for the council or against it; for peace or for war? He threw back the tangled locks that hung over his face, and spoke. "Chiefs and warriors, who dwell in lodges and talk with men, Tohomish, who dwells in caves and talks with the dead, says greeting, and by him the dead send greeting also."
Tohomish the seer, as the oldest chief and most renowned medicine-man present, came forward and lighted the pipe, a long, thin piece of carving in black stone, the workmanship of the Nootkas or Hydahs, who made the more elaborate pipes used by the Indians of the Columbia River.
What wonder that the thought of death should fill the air, when we have slain a whole people at a single blow! Do we not know too that their spirits would try to frighten our dreamers with omens and bad tomanowos? Was it not bad tomanowos that Tohomish saw?
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