Nez Percé chiefs, who had not yet returned to Lapwai, consented to go at once and bring Spalding and the others from that station, should they wish to come; the anxious desire to escape having been thus far carefully concealed from the Nez Percés. Ogden, in his letter to Spalding, which the young chiefs carried, advised the missionary to lose no time in joining him, and to make no promises to the Nez Percés, being unaware, perhaps, of the promise already given. He wrote immediately to Ogden that he should hasten his departure, and. all the more because the young chiefs had assured him that the Cayuses would exterminate them should they learn that the Americans were intending to call them to account. As nothing was more likely than that such a purpose was harbored by the Americans, he was aware of the value of Ogden's advice to hasten to Walla Walla.
A letter was also despatched from Walla Walla to the Chemakane mission, in which the purpose of Ogden to do nothing which might interfere with the future course of the United States in dealing with the Cayuse murderers was reiterated,[1] and in which he
ex-
- ↑ This letter was intended to be sent by J. M. Stanley, a young painter travelling in the Indian country to study savage faces, forms, and costumes; but he seems to have gone to Vancouver instead. Stanley was from Ohio and was at that time known chiefly in the Mississippi Valley. He travelled overland to California by the Santa Fe route, and thence to Oregon on the bark Whiton in July 1847. From Oregon City he wen up the Columbia, and visited the Spokane country. Happening to be coming down to Fort Walla Walla at the time of the massacre, he was intercepted by a Cayuse, who demanded, 'Are you a Hudson's Bay man?' 'No.' 'An American?' 'No.' 'What then?' 'A Buckeye!' This being a new nation to the Cayuse, and one with which he was not at war, the artist was permitted to proceed. When he arrived at the fort he learned the significance of the questions. After Ogden's arrangement with the Cayuses, Stanley returned to the Spokane country, where he remained till spring. He was afterward artist to the
encumbered with their families and property, though robbed and insulted, for he had been in California and seen that when it came to fighting every American was a man; and that if war with them were begun, they would all be killed off. Parrish's Or. Anecdotes, MS., 91-2. There is a similar statement in Rept. of Com. Ind. Aff., 1854, 223-4. But I am of a different opinion about the Walla Walla chief. If he had been against the Cayuses, way did they make his son's death to figure so prominently in their justification? Why did he not warn Whitman? Why did he answer Ogden that Americans were changeable, but that he would agree with Tauitau, one of the most bloody of the Cayuses? Peupeumoxmox was as wily as his name of Yellow Serpent suggested, as I shall be able to show.
