r.
Whitman. "I must do that myself, except as a white man helps me."
The Indians followed behind him, raking, binding, and bearing the shocks to the threshing yard. Crowds of Indians were trying to help. He could not keep them from working. They drove their ponies into the railfenced enclosure to trample out the wheat. They gathered up the grain, and women and girls with willow fans winnowed away the chaff. It was slow work, but Indians have infinite patience. A smart breeze comes down the Columbia after dark. All night the Indians stood there, pouring and repouring the yellow grains, winnowing in the wind. At last the wheat was in the granary. Every night Dr. Whitman paid them, shirts, ammunition, fish-hooks. The women wanted needles, thimbles, rings, beads. Some in the yard were sawing and splitting wood, pine and cedar logs that they had helped the doctor raft down from the mountains when the river was high. The women carried great arm-loads and piled them in the wood-house. That meant more needles and needles from Dr. Whitman.
Then came the corn-gathering.
"Hold up your hands," said Dr. Whitman; "count ten fingers. Now, for every ten bushels you husk and bring to the house I will give you one."
Then the corn-gathering began. It was done in one day. It would have been one day had there been ten times as much, such multitudes of men, women, and children flocked into the fields to pick and husk. Every lodge-pole along the Walla Walla was hung with ears of yellow corn.
Once the Walla Walla-Cayuses talked only of war; now they talked of corn and cattle. Once the squaws
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