"I speak to-day," he said. "To-morrow I die. I am the oldest of the tribe, was high chief when Lewis and Clark came to this country. They visited me, honored me with their friendship. I showed my wounds received in bloody battle with the Snakes. They told me it was not good, it was better to be at peace, gave me a flag of truce. I held it up high. We met and talked, but never fought again. Clark pointed to this day. We have long waited. Sent our sons to Red River to school to prepare for it. Two of them sleep with their fathers. One is here, can be ears and mouth and pen for us. I say no more. I am quickly tired. I am glad I live to see you and this day. I shall soon be quiet in death."
He ceased. The Nez Perec's were moved as by a wind. The instructions of forty years were voiced by that old chief. The memory of Lewis and Clark was a potent spell. Distrust of the Americans gave place to confidence. Ellice, the old man's educated son, was that day elected High Chief of the Nez Perec's nation.
Among those who accompanied the subagent up from the Willamette valley was Baptiste Dorion, a halfbreed interpreter, the same Dorion that shot the Blackfoot chief and stole his painted robe. Dorion's mother, the heroine of Irving's "Astoria," had brought him as a child over the Blue Mountains to the camp of Piopio-mox-mox, the Yellow Serpent. He came now to visit his benefactor.
The Walla Walla-Cayuses were preparing the ground for winter wheat. Dorion's ever restless eye, "the lurking home of plots and conspiracies," fell upon their rude husbandry.
"Why do you make farms and build houses? It is no use," said Dorion. "Dr. Whitman will come in the summer and bring an army. Then the whites will
