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had taught them to read and write; had taught them to farm on a small scale; had built a mill to grind their grain; had introduced cattle, sheep, hogs and fowls among them. The Doctor showed his wisdom in trying to anchor them to fixed habitations as a preliminary step to civilizing them. But the Doctor's Cayuse Indians bathed their hands in his blood, and as a retribution the place that knew them as a powerful nation knows them no more. Only a handful remains, and although beads and crosses have been bestowed on them freely by the same religious organization that the Doctor dreaded, Mrs. Victor would probably hesitate to say that they have been benefited by the change from the influence of the Doctor to that of those who now have their spiritual welfare in charge.
The Lapwai Mission, under charge of Mr. Spalding, in the Nez Perce country, as well as that of Messrs. Eells and Walker, among the Spokanes, were further off the line of travel and further removed from opposing influences, either religious or otherwise. These Indians did not murder their missionaries, but protected them, and to this day may be seen springing up some of the good seed sown by the missionaries among them forty years ago. It is not a month since I talked with a lady who is one of the children who survived the Whitman massacre. She had just returned from the old Lapwai Mission—her birthplace. She there found many of the old mission Indians who still held to the teachings of the mis sionaries. Among them was one old Indian who still lives in what is left of the old mission building, which he has occupied for thirty-seven years—ever since the missionaries were compelled to abandon the field of their labor. He told her that he intended to die in that house. The benefits of the missionary work are not all obliterated there, although so many years have passed.
As to conciliation, there would have been nothing to conciliate, neither would the massacre have followed, but for the interference of outside parties who poisoned the minds of the Indians against their best friends, the missionaries. About the time of the Doctor's departure for Washington, a report was circulated among the Indians that the whites from the Willamette valley intended to come up next spring and kill off all the Indians. A French and Indian half-breed— Dorion —interpreter to the Hudson's Bay Company, was busy with this story, and to those who know how much more readily an Indian will believe a lie than the truth, it will not be a matter of surprise that this story was credited by them. At whose instance this story was put in circulation we will leave Mrs. Victor
