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I write these last lines on Sauvie's Island the Wappatto of the Indians, sitting upon the bank of the river, beneath the gnarled and ancient cottonwood that still marks the spot where the old Columbia trail led up from the water to the interior of the island. Stately and beautiful are the far snow-peaks and the sweeping forests. The woods are rich in the colors of an Oregon autumn.
Over sixty or seventy petty tribes stretched the wild empire, welded together by the pressure of common foes and held in the grasp of the hereditary war-chief of the Willamettes. The chiefs of the Willamettes had gathered on Wappatto Island, from time immemorial the council-ground of the tribes. The white man has changed its name to "Sauvie's" Island; but its wonderful beauty is unchangeable.
There was no unseemly haste or snatching; a quiet decorum prevailed among them. The women and children were excluded from sharing in these gifts, but provisions dried meats and berries, and bread of camas or Wappatto root were thrown among them on the outskirts of the crowd where they were gathered.
It was re-echoed by the inmates of the surrounding lodges; it rang, foreboding, mournful, through the encampment on Wappatto Island. Soon, runners were seen departing in every direction to bear the fatal news throughout the valley. Twilight fell on them; the stars came out; the moon rose and sunk; but the runners sped on, from camp to camp, from village to village.
Perhaps ten of the petty inland tribes had assembled there as their starting-point for the great council at Wappatto Island. All had heard rumors of the white man who had appeared among the tribes to the south saying that the Great Spirit had sent him to warn the Indians to become better, and all were anxious to see him.
And to-day, two centuries since his body was laid in the lonely grave on Wappatto Island, thousands of Indians are the better for his having lived. No true, noble life can be said to have been lived in vain.
There remains but to tell how the last council was held on Wappatto Island; how Mishlah the Cougar, chief of the Mollalies, died; and how the prophecy of the Bridge was fulfilled. The morning after the obsequies of Multnomah, the chiefs met in the grove where the great council of the tribes had been held only a few weeks before.
"Wappatto Island," he added, indicating a magnificent prospect of wood and meadow that lay just below the mouth of the Willamette down along the Columbia. Cecil could not see the channel that separated it from the mainland on the other side, and to him it seemed, not an island, but a part of the opposite shore.
Like flame within the naked hand His body bore his burning heart. Wappatto Island had seen many gatherings of the tribes, but never before had it seen so large an assembly as on the opening day of the council. The great cottonwoods of the council-grove waved over an audience of sachems and warriors the like of which the oldest living Indian could not remember.
The white wappatto blooms along the marshes, its roots ungathered, the dusky hands that once reaped the harvest long crumbled into dust. Blue and majestic in the sunlight flows the Columbia, river of many names, the Wauna and Wemath of the Indians, the St. Roque of the Spaniards, the Oregon of poetry, always vast and grand, always flowing placidly to the sea.
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