CHAPTER VII.
ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR.
The gravity, fixed attention, and decorum of these sons of the forest was calculated to make for them a most favorable impression. GRAY : History of Oregon.
THE next day all the Indians were gathered around
- the council grove. Multnomah presided, and
every sachem was in his place.
There was to be a trial of eloquence, a tourney of orators, to see which tribe had the best. Only one, the most eloquent of each tribe, was to speak; and Multnomah was to decide who was victor. The mother of Wallulah had introduced the custom, and it had become popular among the Indians.
Cecil was in his place among the chiefs, with worn face and abstracted air; Snoqualmie was present, with hawk-like glance and imperious mien; there was Mish- lah, with his sullen and brutal features; there, too, wrapped closely in his robe of fur, sat Tohomish, brooding, gloomy, the wild empire s mightiest mas ter of eloquence, and yet the most repulsive figure of them all.
The Indians were strangely quiet that morning; the hush of a superstitious awe was upon them. The smoking mountains, Hood and Adams as the white man calls them, Au-poo-tah and Au-ka-ken in the Indian tongue, were becoming active of late. The
