In 1851 the writer of this book was purser upon the steamer Lot Whitcomb, which ran between Milwaukee and Astoria, Oregon. One beautiful morning I wandered a mile or more down the beach and was seated upon the sand, watching the great combers as they rolled in from the Pacific, which, after a storm, is an especially grand sight; when suddenly, as if he had arisen from the ground, an Indian appeared near by and accosted me. He was a fine specimen of a savage, clean and well dressed. He evidently knew who I was and my position on the steamer and had followed me to make his plea. With a toss of his arm and a motion of his body he threw the fold of his blanket across his left shoulder as gracefully as a Roman Senator could have done, and began his speech. "Hy-iu hyas kloshe Boston, Boston hy-iu steamboat hy-iu cuitan. Indian halo steamboat, halo cuitan." It was a rare mixture of English words with the Chinook, which I easily understood. The burthen of his speech was, the greatness and richness and goodness of white men; (they called all white men Boston men); they owned all the steamboats and horses; that the Indians were very poor; that his squaw and pappoose were away up the Willamette river, so far away that his moccasins would be worn out before he could reach their wigwam; that he had no money and wanted to ride. I have heard the great orators of the nation in the pulpit and halls of legislation, but I never listened to a more eloquent plea, or saw gestures more graceful than were those of that wild Wasco Indian, of which I alone was the audience. Another interesting historical scrap of the romantic history of these Flathead chiefs is furnished in the fact that the celebrated Indian artist, George Catlin, was on one of his tours in the West taking sketches in the spring of 1833. Soon after their leaving St. Louis he dropped in with the two Indians on their return journey and traveled with them for some days, taking pictures of both, and they are now numbers 207 and 208 in his great collection. Upon his return east he read the Indian speech, and of the excitement it had caused, and not having been told by the Indians of the cause of their journey, and wishing to be assured that he had accidentally struck a great historic prize in securing the pictures, he sat down and wrote Gen. Clarke at St. Louis, asking him if the speech was true and the story correct. Gen. Clarke promptly replied, "The story is true; that was the only object of their visit." Taken in connection with the after history, no two pictures in any collection have a deeper or grander significance. [Illustration: THE LOT WHITCOMB. The first Steamboat built in Oregon.] We may add here that within a month after leaving St. Louis, one of the Indians was taken sick and died, and but one reached his home in safety.