Page:Cathlamet On the Columbia.djvu/129

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

KEEPING THE PEACE


to stay in the wilderness with their wilderness people, and this was true of hundreds of others. Ties carelessly assumed at first, in the end held these men captives by a chain that they could not and would not break.

Already men and women are proud of the Indian blood in their veins, and more and more this feeling will grow, but at this early time the Indian wife could only be happy in her native land, and was unfitted for any other; and it speaks well for the great hearts of these noble men that they recognized this and gave themselves a willing sacrifice to a new country and a dying race. They had connected themselves with a changing time and were compelled to change and pass away with it.

The clinging arms of the wilderness women were about them and held them to their forest109