AN INDIAN TRIAL. 137
There were dark and menacing looks among the mal contents; in the captive they saw personified their own loss of freedom and the hated domination of the Willamettes.
"Speak! You that were a chief, you whose people sleep in the dust, what have you to say in your defence? The tribes are met together, and the chiefs sit here to listen and to judge."
The rebel sachem drew himself up proudly and fixed his flashing eyes on Multnomah.
"The tongue of Multnomah is a trap. I am brought not to be tried but to be condemned and slain, that the tribes may see it and be afraid. No one knows this better that Multnomah. Yet I will speak while I still live, and stand here in the sun; for I go out into the darkness, and the earth will cover my face, and my voice shall be heard no more among men.
"Why should the Willamettes rule the other tribes? Are they better than we? The Great Spirit gave us freedom, and who may make himself master and take it away?
"I was chief of a tribe; we dwelt in the land the Great Spirit gave our fathers; their bones were in it; it was ours. But the Willamettes said to us, * We are your elder brethren, you must help us. Come, go with us to fight the Shoshones. Our young men went, for the Willamettes were strong and we could not refuse them. Many were slain, and the women wailed despairingly. The Willamettes hunted on our hunting-grounds and dug the camas on our prairies, so that there was not enough for us; and when winter came, our children cried for food. Then the run ners of the Willamettes came to us through the snow,
