kings once trod. Hogs wallowed in the sloughs or fattened on acorns and wapato. Beneath the oaks of the ancient council grove the herdsman built his hut, and Sauvie, a French Canadian, was given charge of a dairy not far from the site of the deserted village.
An old woman, Waskema, wandered like an unquiet spirit in the valley. Here, long years before the white man came, Waskema was wedded to Canemah the arrow-maker. There he wrought the jewelled arrowheads of yellow jasper, red jasper, green jasper, and pale chalcedony, or wrought out knives of translucent obsidian carefully chipped down to a glassy edge. Canemah's arrows were famed from Des Chutes to Tillamook. Old Waskema had never forgiven the white man for bringing the fatal fever that carried off her husband and sons. Among the scrofula-stricken fragments of her race she strove to preserve the old superstitions and the old customs, preferring the necklace of claws and teeth and shells to even the gayest of Hudson's Bay beads. Each year as she went up to the fisheries, she tortured her heart with memories of the time when first she toiled with her arrow-maker gathering baskets of agate and jasper and carnelian along the quiet river sands.
In 1828 there was trouble with the Clatsops at the mouth of the Columbia. The "William and Ann," the company's ship from London, was wrecked one dark and stormy night on the Columbia bar. All on board were lost. Goods destined for Fort Vancouver were thrown out upon the beach. Dr. McLoughlin heard of the loss of the ship and sent to demand the cargo. An old broom was sent back in derisive answer. The surmise grew into a conviction that the Clatsops had murdered the crew as they tried to land that stormy night
