the chiefs retired to * confer together. Tiloukaikt finally
said that as Tauitowe desired it, the bishop should send
one to visit his land, and select a site for a mission.
On the eighth of November Brouillet went by order of the bishop to Waiilatpu to look at Tiloukaikt s land, who, with Indian fickleness, had changed his mind, and refused to show any. He told the priest that he had no place he could give him but Whitman s, whom he intended to send away ; to which Brouillet replied that he would not have that place. Immediately afterwards he accepted Taui- towe s house on the Umatilla, which he, with Rev. Mr. Rosseau, set about repairing, and moved into on the twenty- seventh of November. In the meantime, Dr. Whitman had several times met Bishop Blanchet at the fort, and became somewhat softened in his sentiments towards him personally ; and on the day before the priests Brouillet and Rosseau left the fort for the Umatilla, Mr. Spalding, and Mr. Rogers the teacher, dined in their company, all seem ing mutually pleased with making the acquaintance.
We have now to consider, exclusive of old jealousies, late altercations, or sectarian influences, the immediate cause of the Oayuse outbreak. The large immigration of 1847, like most large migrations, had bred a pestilence, and when it reached the Cayuse country was suffering the most virulent form of measles, the fever being of a typhoid kind, and the disease often terminating fatally.
All new diseases, especially those of the skin, are quickly communicated to the dark complexioned races; and as the Indians continually hung about the trains pilfering, some times trading, or inviting the young American lads to a trial of strength in wrestling matches, it was inevitable that many should contract the disease, which rapidly spread among the Cayuses. For two months, or ever since the doctor s return from The Dalles, he had been kept busy attending to the sick among the Indians, and under his own roof. So great had been the mortality that it threatened the destruction of the Cayuse tribe, thirty of
