part of the present century. Later on, the Yakimas
were driven back by the whites; so that there have
been three conquests of the lower Willamette Valley
since the fall of the ancient race, two Indian
conquests before the white.
The once musical language of the Willamettes has degenerated into the uncouth Chinook, and the blood of the ancient race flows mixed and debased in the veins of abject and squalid descendants; but the story of the mighty bridge that once spanned the Columbia at the Cascades is still told by the Oregon Indians. Mingled with much of fable, overlaid with myth and superstition, it is nevertheless one of the historic legends of the Columbia, and as such will never be forgotten.
One word more of Cecil Gray, and our tale is done.
The Shoshone renegade, who resolved at Cecil s death to become a Christian, found his way with a few followers to the Flat- Heads, and settled among that tribe. He told them of what he had learned from Cecil, of the Way of Peace; and the wise men of the tribe pondered his sayings in their hearts. The Shoshone lived and died among them; but from generation to generation the tradition of the white man s God was handed down, till in 1832 four Flat- Heads were sent by the tribe to St. Louis, to ask that teachers be given them to tell them about God.
Every student of history knows how that appeal stirred the heart of the East, and caused the sending out of the first missionaries to Oregon; and from the movement then inaugurated have since sprung all the missions to the Indians of the West.
