and Christian plans advanced by which they may be
made a prosperous and contented people.
I am constantly asked : " Does not the Govern ment interfere? Does not the Government take charge of these Indians after having taken their lands, and lakes, and rivers?" Nonsense! The Government ! The Indian Bureau, Indian Agent, or whatever you choose to call that part of the North American Republic deputed to distribute red blankets and glass beads to the North- American Indian, had not yet put in an appearance on the Klamat. I doubt if he has reached that portion of the interior to this day.
When he does arrive he will find now only falling lodges with grass growing rank about the doorways ; he will find mounds all up and down the river that were made by a continual round of encampments reaching back to a time when the Chaldeans named the stars ; he will find perhaps an old woman or two, or a bent old warrior, sitting in rags and wretched ness, lamenting, looking back with dimmed eyes to another age, and that is all.
Twenty years ago the Indians of the Forks of the Willamette, rode by my father s cabin in bands, single file, a mile or two in length. They rode spotted horses, had gay clothes and garments of many colours. The squaws chanted songs of a monotonous kind, not without some melody, as they rode by astride,^with papooses swinging on boards from the saddle-bow, and were very happy.
