2 3 o McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
destroy everything, take your lands and kill you, or make you slaves/ Dorion returned to the valley, but the words of Dorion flew from lip to lip. The young men grew wild for war. "Let us rush to the Willamette," they cried.
"Be cautious," counselled the old men. "The season is late. The trail around Mt. Hood is deep with snow. Let us wait see. We do not wish to go to war, but if the Bostons come to take away our lands we will fight to the last drop of blood. Yellow Serpent is a wise and careful chief. Let us send him to talk with the WhiteHeaded Eagle at Fort Vancouver."
Directly after his return with the subagent, to the Willamette, Cornelius Rogers went up the valley to wed the daughter of David Leslie at the old Methodist mission. The bridal party came down the laughing river. A thousand rainbows danced that February morning, when the bride and groom were landing at Willamette Falls. And at that moment, while friends waited with congratulations, the boat veered into the current. Resistlessly it tore the rope away from the Indians on shore. Only inanimate rocks answered the despairing shriek, as Cornelius Rogers and his bride and her sisters swept over the Falls and into the yawning gulf together. The cruel waters whirled and hissed and curled, but the seething maelstrom never gave up its dead.
