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Updated: June 21, 2025
All eyes fell again on Cecil, the representative of the race by which the Willamettes were doomed. The wrath of all those hundreds, the vengeance of all those gathered tribes of the Wauna, the hatred of the whole people he had come to save, seemed to rise up and fall upon him the frail invalid with the sharp pain throbbing at his heart.
The prophecy of Tohomish was evaded, the fall of the Bridge wrested into an omen propitious to the Willamettes; and at last his hearers found themselves believing as he wished them to believe, without knowing how or why, so strongly did the overmastering personality of Multnomah penetrate and sway their lesser natures.
Into camps of wandering prairie tribes, where the lodges stood like a city to-day and were rolled up and strapped on the backs of horses to-morrow; into councils where sinister chiefs were talking low of war against the Willamettes; into wild midnight dances of plotting dreamers and medicine-men, they came with the brief stern summons, and passed on to speak it to the tribes beyond.
At length, one summer evening a few weeks after the burial of Wallulah, there burst forth from the war-chief's lodge that peculiar wail which was lifted only for the death of one of the royal blood. No need to ask who it was, for only one remained of the ancient line that had so long ruled the Willamettes; and for him, the last of his race, was the wail lifted.
The once musical language of the Willamettes has degenerated into the uncouth Chinook, and the blood of the ancient race flows mixed and debased in the veins of abject and squalid descendants; but the story of the mighty bridge that once spanned the Columbia at the Cascades is still told by the Oregon Indians.
Will Multnomah listen while Tohomish shows what is to befall the bridge and the Willamettes in the time that is to come?" The war-chief gazed at him earnestly. In that troubled, determined look, superstition struggled for a moment and then gave way to the invincible obstinacy of his resolve. "No.
On this tradition the chief dwelt with tremendous force, setting against the superstition that Tohomish had roused the still more powerful superstition of the bridge, a superstition so interwoven with every thought and hope of the Willamettes that it had become a part of their character as a tribe. "Chiefs, speak your heart. Shall the runners be sent out to call the council?"
The moonlight shone through many openings, lighting up the interior with a dim and ghostly radiance. There, swathed in crumbling cerements, ghastly in shrunken flesh and protruding bone, lay the dead of the line of Multnomah, the chiefs of the blood royal who had ruled the Willamettes for many generations.
A large body of Willamette warriors, muffled in their blankets, lounged carelessly around the grove, with not a weapon visible among them; behind them thronged the vast and motley assemblage of doubtful allies; and back of them, on the outskirts of the crowd, were the faithful Cayuses, unarmed like the Willamettes. Had Multnomah's wonderful astuteness failed him now when it was never needed more?
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.
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