I see before me old gray headed mothers who will also share with you this recognition of the Nation's gratitude. It is well, and to my comrades of the Civil war, who are here, and who have been the promotors of this reunion of veterans, let me say that no women of any war, in which the American people have ever been engaged, are more deserving of the Nation's bounty than these old, feeble, pioneer mothers of southern Oregon. When their fathers, brothers, and husbands went out to meet their savage foes, these women were not left in well protected cities, villages, and homes, but often in rude cabins, situated in close proximity to the conflict; and unlike the chances of civilized warfare, no mercy could be expected from the enemy--surrender meant not only death, but torture and heartless cruelty. In every hour of those dark days these women proved themselves to be fit helpmates to a race of daring men--and worthy all honors that are accorded the brave. MINTO PASS: ITS HISTORY, AND AN INDIAN TRADITION. By JOHN MINTO. There was a tradition among the Indians of the central portion of the Willamette Valley at the time when the missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Church attempted christianization from 1834 to 1840, that a trail or thoroughfare through this natural pass had formerly been much used by their people and that its use was abandoned after, and as one of the results of, a bloody battle between the Mollalas (who claimed the western slopes of the Cascades from the Clackamas River south to the Calapooia Mountains,) and the Cayuses who were originally of the same tribe, but who had become alienated by family feuds, of which the battle or massacre of their tradition was the end. The superstitious belief of the Indians in the transmigration of the souls of dead warriors into the bodies of beasts of prey, like panthers, bears, and wolves, would of itself go far to cause the Indians to abandon the use of such a trail, but the formation of the gorge by which the river cuts its way through the roughest portion of the range is such as to give great numbers of opportunities for ambuscades--a common resort of Indian warfare. Certain is it that for some cause the Indians of Chemeketa, Chemawa, and Willamette spoke with dread of going up that river. They did, however, have trails on each side of this natural pass,--that to the south being first used by a pioneer settler named Wyley. It became known as the Wyley Trail, and subsequently was adopted as a general route over which the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Military Wagon Road was located. The other to the north comes into the Willamette Valley via the Table Rock and down the Abiqua. Both these trails were used exclusively by the Indians of the east side of the range as means of coming into the Willamette Valley with the exception of the Mollalas, who were intermarried with the Warm Springs Indians and the Klamaths when the settlement by the whites began.