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and carved oak bureaus, the relics of an ancestral time, were left to warp in the prairie sun. Sentinel wolves lay in wait to devour the lagging cattle; Indians hovered in front and rear and ambuscade. Killed by Pawnees, plundered by Dacotahs, scalped by Sioux, compelled by Cheyennes to pay tribute for passing through their country, corralled by Blackfeet, crossing the battle-ground of hostile Snakes, still on the immigrant pressed with the same restless spirit that inundated Europe and broke up the Roman Empire. The migration of races ebbs and flows like the waves of the sea. What if men's hearts died and women wept by the roadside? the tide swept on. Fever and cholera and Indian arrows decimated their ranks. The road to Oregon was strewn with graves. Some buried their loved ones at dead of night in the middle of the road, that no red man might discover and desecrate the tomb.
Guided at last into the Grande Ronde by Whitman's beacon, "the fiery banner of friendship," "the pillar of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night," the weary immigrants for the first time in months fell asleep without a guard, leaving their cattle to feed at will.
Five Crows camped close beside the trail. Here and there he peered into the wagons, offering, offering everywhere horses and robes and blankets to buy a white wife. And others besides Five Crows were looking for wives. Spruce young settlers dressed in their best, gray-beard widowers, and grizzly hunters all went out to look for wives.
Immigration broke up the peaceful life at Whitman's mission. The Indians grew excited and distrustful. " I have been over to the Willamette valley," said an old
