Behind it were the friendly Cayuses, but not a weapon could be seen among them. The chief saw all; saw too that his enemies only waited for him to pronounce sentence upon the captive,—that that was the preconcerted signal for attack. Now among some of the tribes sentence was pronounced not by word but by gesture; there was the gesture for acquittal, the gesture for condemnation.
Multnomah lifted his right hand. There was breathless suspense. What would it be? Fixing his eyes on the armed malcontents who were waiting to spring, he clinched his hand and made a downward gesture, as if striking a blow. It was the death-signal, the death-sentence.
In an instant a deafening shout rang through the grove, and the bloodthirsty mob surged forward to the massacre.
Then, so suddenly that it blended with and seemed a part of the same shout, the dreaded Willamette war-cry shook the earth. Quick as thought, the Willamettes who had been lounging so idly around the grove were on their feet, their blankets thrown aside, the weapons that had been concealed under them ready in their hands. A wall of indomitable warriors had leaped up around the grove. At the same moment, the Cayuses in the rear bared their weapons and shouted back the Willamette war-cry.
The rebels were staggered. The trap was sprung on them before they knew that there was a trap. Those in front shrank back from the iron warriors of Multnomah, those in the rear wavered before the fierce Cayuses. They paused, a swaying flood of humanity, caught between two lines of rock.
Chapter 5 SENTENCED TO THE WOLF-DEATH.
The other, great of soul, changed not
Countenance stern.
Dante.
In that momentary pause Multnomah did something that showed the cold disdainfulness of his character as nothing else could have done. He had given the death-sign; he had not yet told how or when death was to be inflicted. He gave the sentence now, as if in utter scorn of the battle-cloud that hung quivering, ready to burst.
“He would have torn the confederacy to pieces; let him be left bound in the wood of the wolves, and torn limb from limb by them as he would have rent the tribes asunder.”
The two warriors who had brought the criminal into the council came forward, flung a covering over his head and face, and led him away. Perhaps no custom of the northwestern Indians was more sombre than this,—the covering of the culprit’s eyes from the time of his sentence till his death. Never again were those eyes to behold the sun.
Then, and not till then, did Multnomah turn his gaze on the malcontents, who stood, desperate but hesitating, hemmed in by the Willamettes and the Cayuses.
“You have chosen the tomahawk instead of the peace-pipe. Shall Multnomah choose the tomahawk also? Know you not that Multnomah holds your lives in his hand, and that he can crush you like an eggshell if he chooses?”
The war-chief lifted his arm as he spoke, and slowly closed his fingers till his hand was clinched. The eyes of Willamette and tributary alike hung on those slowly closing fingers, with their own strained on their tomahawks. That was half the death-signal! Would he give the other half,—the downward gesture? The baffled rebels tasted all the bitterness of death in that agonizing suspense. They felt that their lives were literally in his grasp; and so the stern autocrat wished them to feel, for he knew it was a lesson they would never forget.
At length he spoke.
“Drop your weapons and Multnomah will forget what he has seen, and all will be well. Strike but a blow, and not one of you will ever go back over the trail to his home.”
Then he turned to the chiefs, and there was that in his tones which told them to expect no mercy.
“How comes it that your braves lift their tomahawks against Multnomah in his own council and on his own land? Speak! chiefs must answer for their people.”
There was sullen silence for a little time; then one of them muttered that it was the young men; their blood was hot, they were rash, and the chiefs could not control them.
“Can you not control your young men? Then you are not fit to be chiefs, and are chiefs no longer.” He gave a signal to certain of the Willamettes who had come up behind the rebellious leaders, as they stood confused and hesitating in the council. They were seized and their hands bound ere they could defend themselves; indeed, they made no effort to do so, but submitted doggedly.
“Take them down the Wauna in the sea-canoes and sell them as slaves to the Nootkas who hunt seal along the coast. Their people shall see their faces no more. Slaves in the ice-land of the North shall they live and die.”
The swarthy cheeks of the captives grew ashen, and a shudder went through that trapped and surrounded mob of malcontents. Indian slavery was always terrible; but to be slaves to the brutal Indians of the north, starved, beaten, mutilated, chilled, and benumbed in a land of perpetual frost; to perish at last in the bleak snow and winter of almost arctic coasts,—that was a fate worse than the torture-stake.
Dreadful as it was, not a chief asked for mercy. Silently they went with their captors out of the grove and down the bank to the river’s edge. A large sea-canoe, manned by Chinook paddlers, was floating at the beach. They quickly embarked, the paddles dipped, the canoe glided out into the current and down the stream. In a few moments the cottonwood along the river’s edge hid it from sight, and the rebels were forever beyond the hope of rescue.
Swift and merciless had the vengeance of Multnomah fallen, and the insurrection had been crushed at a blow. It had taken but a moment, and it had all passed under the eyes of the malcontents, who were still surrounded by the loyal warriors.
When the canoe had disappeared and the gaze of that startled and awed multitude came back to Multnomah, he made a gesture of dismissal. The lines drew aside and the rebels were free.
While they were still bewildered and uncertain what to do, Multnomah instantly and with consummate address called the attention of the council to other things, thereby apparently assuming that the trouble was ended and giving the malcontents to understand that no further punishment was intended. Sullenly, reluctantly, they seemed to accept the situation, and no further indications of revolt were seen that day.
Popular young men, the bravest of their several tribes, were appointed by Multnomah to fill the vacant chieftainships; and that did much toward allaying the discontent. Moreover, some troubles between different tribes of the confederacy, which had been referred to him for arbitration, were decided with rare sagacity. At length the council ended for the day, the star of the Willamettes still in the ascendant, the revolt seemingly subdued.
So the first great crisis passed.
That evening a little band of Willamette warriors led the rebel sachem, still bound and blindfolded, down to the river’s bank, where a canoe lay waiting them. His wife followed and tried to enter it with him, as if determined to share his fortunes to the very last; but the guard thrust her rudely away, and started the canoe. As it moved away she caught the prow wildly, despairingly, as if she could not let her warrior go. One of the guards struck her hands brutally with his paddle, and she released her hold. The boat glided out into the river. Not a word of farewell had passed between the condemned man and his wife, for each disdained to show emotion in the presence of the enemy. She remained on the bank looking after him, mute and despondent,—a forlorn creature clothed in rags and emaciated with hunger, an outcast from all the tribes. She might have been regarded as a symbolic figure representing woman among the Indians, as she stood there with her bruised hands, throbbing with pain where the cruel blow had fallen, hanging, in sullen scorn of pain, uncared for by her side. So she stood watching the canoe glide down the river, till it was swallowed up in the gathering shadows of evening.
The canoe dropped down the river to a lonely point on the northern shore, a place much