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Updated: June 21, 2025
Should he himself become a suitor for her hand? He knew full well that Multnomah would reject him with disdain; or, were he to consent, it would involve the Willamettes in a war with the haughty and vindictive Cayuse. Finally, should he attempt to fly with her to some other land? Impossible. All the tribes of the northwest were held in the iron grip of Multnomah.
Besides, there is but little more to tell. The faithless allies made a raid on the valley; but the shrouding atmosphere of smoke and the frightful rumors they heard of the great plague appalled them, and they retreated. The pestilence protected the Willamettes.
Startled by the outburst of the great smoking mountains, which always presaged woe to the Willamettes, perplexed by Tohomish's mysterious hints of some impending calamity, weighed down by a dread presentiment, he came that night on a strange and superstitious errand.
"But our hearts burned within us and we replied, 'Our hunting-grounds and our food you have taken; will you have our lives also? Go back and tell your chief that if we must fight, we will fight him and not the Bannocks. Then the Willamettes came upon us and we fought them, for their tyranny was so heavy that we could not breathe under it and death had become better than life.
And there sprang up among the Indians, no one could tell how, a prophecy that some night when the Willamettes were in their direst need, a great light would be seen moving on the waters of the Columbia, and the war-chief would come back in a canoe of fire to lead them to victory as of old. Dire and awful grew their need as the days went on; swift and sweeping was the end.
Like one in a dream he listened, while the young Willamette told him in a low tone that this bridge had been built by the gods when the world was young, that it was the tomanowos of the Willamettes, that while it stood they would be strongest of all the tribes, and that if it fell they would fall with it.
He gave a signal to certain of the Willamettes who had come up behind the rebellious leaders, as they stood confused and hesitating in the council. They were seized and their hands bound ere they could defend themselves; indeed, they made no effort to do so, but submitted doggedly. "Take them down the Wauna in the sea-canoes and sell them as slaves to the Nootkas who hunt seal along the coast.
On the upper part of the island, above reach of high water, the burial hut loomed dark and still in the moonlight as the chief approached it. Some of the Willamettes, like the Chinooks, practised canoe burial, but the greater part laid their dead in huts, as did also the Klickitats and the Cascades. The war-chief entered the hut. The rude boards that covered the roof were broken and decayed.
But when the bands passed from under the personal influence of Multnomah, they talked of the ominous things that had just happened; they said to each other that the Great Spirit had forsaken the Willamettes, and that when they came into the valley again it would be to plunder and to slay. Multnomah had stayed the tide but for a moment.
"It has come at last, as the wise men of old said it would. The end is at hand; the Willamettes pass like a shadow from the earth. The Great Spirit has forsaken us, our tomanowos has failed us. But my own heart fails me not, and my own arm is strong. Like a war-chief will I meet that which is to come.
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