In the meantime, the very favorable view which was first held by the Presbyterians of the generous character of the Indians had faded out. We find Spalding saying that "I have no evidence to suppose but a vast majority of them would look on with indifference and see our dwelling burned to the ground, and our heads severed from our bodies." Smith at Kamiah, and Walker and Eells at Chemekane thought the natives professed religion to secure presents, which not being forthcoming they were hostile; and all agreed as to their untruthfulness.
In 1840 the Cayuses destroyed Dr. Whitman s irrigating ditches, and allowed their horses to damage the grain in the mission field. This was done out of malice, the Indians having been taught enough about farming to be perfectly aware of the mischief they were causing to the doctor s crops. When he angrily reproved them they threw mud upon him, plucked his beard, pulled his ears, threatened him with a gun, arid offered to strike him a blow with an axe, which he avoided.
These demonstrations alarmed the doctor s friend, McKinlay of Fort Walla Walla, who counseled him to leave the country for a time at least, saying that the Indians would repent when they no longer had him, and want him back again. But he feared to abandon his place, which would probably be destroyed; and the chief, Splitted Lip, who instigated the attack on him, dying that year, he hoped for relief from the persecutions he had suffered. Besides, he had determined, as he said, "never to show the white feather."
In 1841 W. H. Gray struck an Indian boy, probably a well-deserved blow, and his uncle, who was the chief on whose lands the mission of Waiilatpu was built,—Tiloukaikt,—a haughty and ill-tempered savage, struck Whit man in revenge, pulling his nose, and committing other outrages, which the doctor bore without any signs of fear. McKinlay, to punish them, refused to hire their horses as agreed, to take the Red-river immigrants to The Dalles,
