e Lower Columbia and the
Willamette met them, and bartered the _hiagua_ shells, the dried
berries, and _wappatto_ of their country for the bear claws and
buffalo robes of the interior. It was a rendezvous where buying,
selling, gambling, dancing, feasting took the place of war and the
chase; though the ever burning enmities of the tribes sometimes flamed
into deadly feuds and the fair-ground not infrequently became a field
of battle.

The houses of Wishram were built of logs, the walls low, the lower
half being below the surface of the ground, so that they were
virtually half cellar. At a distance, the log walls and arched roofs
gave them very much the appearance of a frontier town of the whites.

As they descended to the river-side, Cecil looked again and again at
the village, so different from the skin or bark lodges of the Rocky
Mountain tribes he had been with so long. But the broad and sweeping
river flowed between, and his gaze told him little more than his first
glance had done.

They were now approaching the camp. Some of the younger braves at the
head of the Cayuse train dashed toward it, yelling and whooping in the
wildest manner. Through the encampment rang an answering shout.

"The Cayuses! the Cayuses! and the white medicine-man!"

The news spread like wildfire, and men came running from all
directions to greet the latest arrivals. It was a scene of abject
squalor that met Cecil's eyes as he rode with the others into the
camp. Never had he seen among the Indian races aught so degraded as
those Columbia River tribes.

The air was putrid with decaying fish; the very skins and mats that
covered the lodge-poles were black with rancid salmon and filth. Many
of the men were nude; most of the women wore only a short garment of
skin or woven cedar bark about the waist, falling scarcely to the
knees. The heads of many had been artificially flattened; their faces
were brutal; their teeth worn to the gums with eating sanded salmon;
and here and there bleared and unsightly eyes showed the terrible
prevalence of ophthalmia. Salmon were drying in the sun on platforms
raised above the reach of dogs. Half-starved horses whose raw and
bleeding mouths showed the effect of the hair-rope bridles, and whose
projecting ribs showed their principal nutriment to be sage-brush and
whip-lash, were picketed among the lodges. Cayote-like dogs and unclad
children, shrill and impish, ran riot, fighting together for
half-dried, ha