ian.
Maybe it is the devotion of idolatry, the faith of superstition. But I
repeat, it is sincere. And let me further say, it seems to me whatever
is worth believing at all, is worth believing utterly and entirely--just
as these simple children of the wilderness believe, without doubt or
question.

I know nothing so beautiful--may I say picturesque?--as the Ummatilla
Indians of Oregon at worship on Sunday. Not a man, woman or child of all
the tribe absent. Not one voice silent when the hymns are given out, in
all that vast, gaily colored and singular assemblage.

This is the tribe of which the white settlers asked and received
protection last year when the Shoshonees ravaged the country, beat off
the soldiers, and slew some of the settlers. And yet there is a bill
before Congress to-day to take away the few remaining acres from this
tribe and open up the place to white settlers. Indeed, it seems that
every member of Congress from Oregon has just this one mission; for the
first, and almost the only thing he does while there, is to introduce
and urge the passage of this bill, whereby the red man is to be turned
out of his well-tilled fields, and the white man turned into them.

In truth, these very fields have long been staked off and claimed by
bold, bad white men, who hover about the borders of this Reservation,
waiting for the long-promised law which is to take this land from the
owners and give it to them. They nominate their members of Congress on
his pledge and bond, and constant promise, to take this land from the
Indian. They vote for and elect the only member of Congress from this
State on that promise, certain that their absolute ownership of this
graveyard of the Indian is only a question of time. Year by year the
graveyard grows broader; the fields grow narrower; they grow less in
number; for now and then an Indian is found wandering away from the
Reservation to his former hunting-grounds and ancient graves of his
fathers. He seldom comes back. Sometimes his murderers trouble
themselves to throw the body in the brush or some gorge or canyon. But
most frequently it is left where it falls. To say that all the people or
the best people of this brave young State approve of this, would be
unfair--untrue. Yet this does not save the Indian, who is doing his best
to fit into the new order of things around him. He is shot down, and
neither grand or petit jury can be found to punish his murderer.

But to the story.