THE INDIAN'S BRIDE. 663

Miss Bewley was sent for, and having no one to pro- tect her, she was torn from the arms of sympathizing women, placed on a horse, and in the midst of a high fever of both mind and body, was carried through a November snow-storm to the arms of this brawny savage. Five Crows behaved in a manner becoming a gentlemanly and Christian savage. He made his cap- tive as comfortable as possible, and observing her op- position to his wishes, gave her a few days in which to think of it, besides allowing her to spend a portion of her time at the house of the Catholic bishop. But this generous mood was not of long duration, and nightly she was dragged from Blanchet's presence to the lodge of her lord, the priests powerless to inter-

fere.

The position of the priests was made ground for serious accusation wheD the story became known; but it is difficult to see how they could have interfered without first having resolved to give up their mission and risk their lives. If the Americans at Wanlatpu could refuse to protest, and if Canfield could volun- tarily seek to save his own life, leaving his wife and children in the hands of the natives, it was hardly to be expected that the power of the priests who had their own lives and purposes to be secured, and who were not allowed under ordinary circumstances to harbor women in their houses, should prove more efficacious. 42

"Miss Bewley says in her deposition that she 'begged and cried to the bishop or protection; either at his house, or to be sent to Walla Walla, but othing availed. Gray's Hist. Or., 486-97. It is said that one of the pnests, n a niece of injudicious pleasantry, asked her how she liked her new husband, an iSreti^n which planted a thorn in his side that rankled longer, if we mayiudg by the wordy war which resulted from it, than the insult did in Miss Bewley 's heart, which she said she 'thought would break. Bromllet ,

^^lir^'the depositions shows charges even more grave which ^the survivors made against each other, and against the dead Crockett Bewley was accused of saving indiscreet things which brought on the massacre^ Even Rogers was declared to have confessed before he died that he had poisoned fndTans This was one of the peculiar features of the affair; men and women were made so craven by their fears that they hesitated at nothing when by lying they could, as they thought, avert danger from themselves. If the half they said about each other were true, they deserved death.