THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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what is now the thriving modern city of Missoula. From this point they made frequent excursions, and by ascending Lou Lou fork discovered the now famous Lolo trail through the otherwise formidable Bitter Root Mountains. After having suffered severely from cold and hunger the party reached a Nez Perce village in the early spring, situated on an open plain contiguous to the south fork of the Clearwater, an important tributary to the Snake River.
In passing down the Clearwater the party noted three creeks, the most famous of these being now known as the Potlatch, which fructifies the beautiful and extensive Paradise Valley of Idaho, in the midst of which sits Moscow.
The journey of Lewis and Clarke was a series of exciting, laborious and often perilous adventures. But they reached the coast in safety and erected a rude fortification for winter quarters, which they named Fort Clatsop. They started on their return after a stay of some time, and after 5 . leisurely voyage up the Columbia they reached the Willamette River, called by the natives Multnomah, which was discovered by Captain Clark on the second day of April, 1806.
Continuing their journey up the Columbia, they found the Dalles and Deschutes Indians very hostile and inhospitable. Doubtless the premonition of their forthcoming fate had dawned upon the tribes, and the instinct of self-preservation, powerful even when hopeless, had been awakened by rumors of a dreaded invasion of which these explorers were indeed forerunners.
But Yellept, the head chief of the Walla Wallas, inspired no doubt by the same premonitions, although they affected him differently, received the party with savage demonstrations of joy. He begged them to partake of his hospitality, and urged them to invite all nations to treat the Indians kindly. Setting an example himself, he brought them an armful of wood and a platter of roasted mullets with his own hands, a most peculiar service from the hands of an Indian chieftain, since it is a well-known part of the Indian’s unwritten code to delegate every kind of domestic duties to women, including every burden of the camp and fire incident to their primitive modes of life.
Colonel Gilbert, in the “ Historic Sketches,” tells us that Yellept had five sons, who were all slain in battle, or perished miserably from white men’s diseases. A number of years after Lewis and Clarke had partaken of his hospitality this noble chieftain saw the last one of them die. Heart-broken, the old man called his tribe together, and, lying down upon the body of his son in the grave, he sternly commanded them to cover him up with his dead.
A wail of lamentation went up from his people, but they buried him alive as he had ordered, and the glory and greatness of the Walla Wallas had departed.
The modern psychic tells us, upon evidence that to him is demonstration, that the Indians’ heaven is located within the earth’s aura, and directly above the earth and beneath the American pale faces’ “ Devochan;” that in this heaven all genuinely “good” Indians find their happy hunting-grounds restored to them in duplicate, with all the modern improvements added. In these Elysian shades the pale face cannot enter to rob them of their homes, or possess their squaws or maidens, or spread among them the diseases and disasters of civilization and death.
The swaying pines of the lands the pioneers loved, and left to us as a heritage, chant their eternal requiem. The mighty mountains wear white crowns of everlasting snow in their honor, and the broad prairies adorn their lowly graves with regularly returning flowers, as the seasons come and go. The iron horse wakes shrillest echoes now, where erst the bellowing of the belabored ox was heard. Steam and lightning have out-distanced time and conquered space in the years that have flown since they fell asleep. The echoes of the mountains and the rocks are answering back to new conditions, and the sons and daughters of the pioneers are confronted by new problems of which their parents scarcely dreamed. These pioneers, in goodly numbers, found their way to Oregon early in the “ forties ” and “ fifties,” making their way across the continent in the dim wake of Lewis and Clarke. The four-wheeled ship of the desert was their vehicle and the rough-ribbed ox their motive'power. In peril often,