The Log School-House on the Columbia Part 3

The old chief drew his blanket round him proudly.

"Boston tilic.u.m," said he, "if ever the day of trouble comes, I will protect you and the log school-house. You may trust my word. Indian speak true."

The tall schoolmaster bowed.

"Nika atte cepa" (I like you much), said the chief. "Potlatch shall no harm you. Klahyam klahhye--am!" (Good-by).

Mrs. Woods hurried homeward and tried to calm her excited mind by singing a very heroic old hymn:

"Come on, my partners in distress, My comrades in the wilderness, Who still your bodies feel."

The blue skies gleamed before her, and overhead wheeled a golden eagle. To her it was an emblem, a good omen, and her spirit became quiet and happy amid all the contradictions of her rough life. She sat down at last on the log before her door, with the somewhat strange remark:

"I do hate Injuns; _nevertheless_--"

Mrs. Woods was accustomed to correct the wrong tendencies of her heart and tongue by this word "nevertheless," which she used as an incomplete sentence. This "nevertheless" seemed to express her better self; to correct the rude tendencies of her nature. Had she been educated in her early days, this tendency to self-correction would have made her an ideal woman, but she owed nearly all her intellectual training to the sermons of the Rev. Jason Lee, which she had heard in some obscure corner of a room, or in Methodist chapel, or under the trees.

Her early experience with the Indians had not made her a friend to the native races, notwithstanding the missionary labors of the Rev. Jason Lee.

The first Indian that made her a visit on the donation claim did not leave a favorable impression on her mind.

This Indian had come to her door while she was engaged in the very hard work of sawing wood. He had never seen a saw before, and, as it seemed to him to be a part of the woman herself, he approached her with awe and wonder. That the saw should eat through the wood appeared to him a veritable miracle.

Mrs. Woods, unaware of her visitor, paused to take breath, looked up, beheld the tall form with staring eyes, and started back.

"Medicine-woman--conjure!" said the Indian, in Chinook.

Mrs. Woods was filled with terror, but a moment's thought recalled her resolution. She lifted her hand, and, pointing to the saw in the wood, she said, with a commanding tone:

"Saw!"

The Indian obeyed awkwardly, and wondering at the progress of the teeth of the saw through the wood. It was a hot day; the poor Indian soon became tired, and stopped work with a beating heart and bursting veins.

"Saw--saw!" said Mrs. Woods, with a sweep of her hands, as though some mysterious fate depended upon the order.

The saw went very hard now, for he did not know how to use it, and the wood was hard, and the Indian's only thought seemed to be how to escape.

Mrs. Woods held him in her power by a kind of mental magnetism, like that which Queen Margaret exercised over the robber.

"Water!" at last gasped the Indian.

"Saw--saw!" said Mrs. Woods; then turned away to bring him water.

When she looked around again, an unexpected sight met her eyes. The Indian was flying away, taking the saw with him. She never beheld either again, and it was a long time before any Indian appeared at the clearing after this odd event, though Mrs. Woods ultimately had many adventures among the wandering Siwashes.

A saw was no common loss in these times of but few mechanical implements in Oregon, and Mrs. Woods did not soon forgive the Indian for taking away what he probably regarded as an instrument of torture.

"I do hate Injuns!" she would often say; but quite likely would soon after be heard singing one of the hymns of the missionaries at the Dalles:

"O'er Columbia's wide-spread forests Haste, ye heralds of the Lamb; Teach the red man, wildly roaming, Faith in Immanuel's name,"

which, if poor poetry, was very inspiring.

CHAPTER III.

BOSTON TILIc.u.m.

Marlowe Mann--"Boston tilic.u.m," as the Siwashes called all the missionaries, teachers, and traders from the East--sat down upon a bench of split log and leaned upon his desk, which consisted of two split logs in a rough frame. A curious school confronted him. His pupils numbered fifteen, representing Germany, England, Sweden, New England, and the Indian race.

"The world will some day come to the Yankee schoolmaster," he used to say to the bowery halls of old Cambridge; and this prophecy, which had come to him on the banks of the Charles, seemed indeed to be beginning to be fulfilled on the Columbia.

He opened the school in the same serene and scholarly manner as he would have done in a school in Cambridge.

"He is not a true gentleman who is not one under all conditions and circ.u.mstances," was one of his views of a well-clothed character; and this morning he addressed the school with the courtesy of an old college professor.

"I have come here," he said, "with but one purpose, and that is to try to teach you things which will do you the most good in life. That is always the best which will do the most good; all else is inferior. I shall first teach you to obey your sense of right in all things. This is the first principle of a true education. You will always know the way of life if you have this principle for your guide.

"Conscience is the first education. A man's spiritual nature is his highest nature, and his spiritual concerns transcend all others. If a man is spiritually right, he is the master of all things. I would impress these truths on your minds, and teach them at the beginning. I have become willing to be poor, and to walk life's ways alone. The pilot of the Argo never returned from Colchis, but the Argo itself returned with the Golden Fleece. It may be so with my work; if so, I will be content. I have selected for our Scripture lesson the 'incorruptible seed.'"

He rose and spoke like one before an august a.s.sembly; and so it was to him, with his views of the future of the great empire of the Northwest. A part of the pupils could not comprehend all that he said any more than they had understood the allusion to the pilot of the Argo; but his manner was so gracious, so earnest, so inspired, that they all felt the spirit of it, and some had come to regard themselves as the students of some great destiny.

"Older domes than the pyramids are looking down upon you," he said, "and you are born to a higher destiny than were ever the children of the Pharaohs."

"With the exception of Gretchen, not one of the pupils fully understood the picturesque allusion. Like the reference to the pilot of the Argo, it was poetic mystery to them; and yet it filled them with a n.o.ble curiosity to know much and a desire to study hard, and to live hopefully and worthily. Like the outline of some unknown mountain range, it allured them to higher outlooks and wider distances.

"He talked to us so grandly," said Gretchen to Mrs. Woods one evening, "that I did not know half that he was saying; but it made me feel that I might be somebody, and I do intend to be. It is a good thing to have a teacher with great expectations."

"Yes," said Mrs. Woods, "when there is so little to expect. People don't take a lot of nothing and make a heap of something in this world. It is all like a lot of feathers thrown against the wind. _Nevertheless_ it makes one happier to have prospects, if they are far away. I used to; but they never came to nothing, unless it was to bring me way out here."

The log school-house was a curious place. The children's benches consisted of split logs on pegs, without backs. The sides of the building were logs and sods, and the roof was constructed of logs and pine boughs. All of the children were barefooted, and several had but poor and scanty clothing.

Yet the very simplicity of the place had a charm.

Benjamin sat alone, apart from the rest. It was plain to be seen that he was brooding over the painful event of the morning. Gretchen had grown cheerful again, but the bitter expression on the young Indian's face seemed to deepen in intensity. Mr. Mann saw it. To quiet his agitation, he began his teaching by going to him and sitting down beside him on the rude bench and opening to him the primer.

"You understand English?" said Mr. Mann.

"A little. I can talk Chinook."

In the Chinook vocabulary, which was originally the trade language of all the tribes employed by the Hudson Bay Company in collecting furs, most of the words resemble in sound the objects they represent. For example, a wagon in Chinook is chick-chick, a clock is ding-ding, a crow is kaw-kaw, a duck, quack-quack, a laugh, tee-hee; the heart is tum-tum, and a talk or speech or sermon, wah-wah. The language was of English invention; it took its name from the Chinook tribes, and became common in the Northwest.

Nearly all of the old English and American traders in the Northwest learned to talk Chinook, and to teach Chinook was one of the purposes of the school.

"Can you tell me what that is?" asked Mr. Mann, pointing to the letter A in the primer.

"Fox-trap."

"No; that is the letter A."