The Oregon Indians moved with the seasons. When the wapato lay ripe under the last drip of winter rain, the women went waist deep into the marshes to dig this Indian potato. When the summer sun killed the stem of the star-flowered camas down to the ground, they dug in the prairies. Before the spring freshet subsided the salmon came sliding up the streams; while yet their opaline hues were glancing on the wave, the ripening berries called the squaw-mothers to the hills and the hunter to the buffalo beyond the Snake. September brought the salmon back to the sea, roots again filled the smoky October. So the Indian had his fishing trip to the Columbia, his summer residence in the mountain, his autumn camp on the prairie, and his winter home in some sheltered hollow contiguous to water, fuel, and winter pasture. For a time these roving habits threatened to render nugatory every effort of Dr. Whitman to settle the Indians on farms of their own, where he could superintend their education.
"Come, Narcissa," said the doctor one day, "let us go a little while and live with the Indians in their own lodges. It will give us better access to their language and more opportunities for instruction."
So one January morning the doctor and Mrs. Whitman mounted their horses, and taking little Alice before them, rode fifty miles over the sun-dried plain to the Cayuse camp on the Tucannon. The Indians received them with delight and entertained them in the best lodge. Mrs. Whitman conversed with the women, the doctor mingled with the warriors. The little children lay around on the ground, with their elfin locks in their eyes, listening to every word and drinking in the beauty of the flossy-haired little Alice. Every morning at dawn, every evening at twilight, the song of worship
