vations within the valley of tracts of land of a few miles in extent situated upon the lower slopes of the Cascade and Coast ranges, where game, roots, and berries could be procured with ease.[1]
As to the instructions of the commissioner at Washington, it was not possible to carry them out. Schools the Indians refused to have; and from their experience of them and their effects on the young I am quite sure the savages were right. Only a few of the Tualatin band would consent to receive farming utensils, not wishing to have habits of labor forced upon them with their annuities. They were anxious also to be paid in cash, consenting reluctantly to accept a portion of their annuities in clothing and provisions.
In May four other treaties were concluded with the Luckiamute, Calapooyas, and Molallas, the territory thus secured to civilization comprising about half the Willamette Valley.[2] The upper and lower Molallas received forty-two thousand dollars, payable in twenty annual instalments, about one third to be in cash and the remainder in goods, with a present on the ratification of the treaties of a few rifles and horses for the head men. Like the Calapooyas they steadily refused to devote any portion of their annuities to educational purposes, the general sentiment of these western Indians being that they had but a little time to live, and it was useless to trouble themselves about education, a sentiment not wholly Indian, since it kept Europe in darkness for a thousand years.[3]
- ↑ No mention is made of the price paid for these lands, nor have I seen these treaties in print.
- ↑ This is the report of the commissioners, though the description of the lands purchased is different in the Spectator of May 15, 1851, where it is said that the purchase included all the east side of the valley to the head-waters of the Willamette.
- ↑ The native eloquence, touched and made pathetic by the despondency of the natives, being quoted in public by the commissioners, subjected them to the ridicule of the anti-administration journal, as for instance: 'In this city Judge Skinner spent days, and for aught we know, weeks, in interpreting Slacum's jargon speeches, while Gaines, swelling with consequence, pronounced them more eloquent than the orations of Demosthenes or Cicero, and peddled
