“‘Now are we grown weak,’ we said; ’and the Pellys will fall upon us, and our bounds be overthrown.’  But as it fared with us, so had it fared with the Pellys, and they were too weak to come against us.

“My father, Otsbaok, a strong man, was now old and very wise.  And he spoke to the chief, saying:  ’Behold, our dogs be worthless.  No longer are they thick-furred and strong, and they die in the frost and harness.  Let us go into the village and kill them, saving only the wolf ones, and these let us tie out in the night that they may mate with the wild wolves of the forest.  Thus shall we have dogs warm and strong again.’

“And his word was harkened to, and we Whitefish became known for our dogs, which were the best in the land.  But known we were not for ourselves.  The best of our young men and women had gone away with the white men to wander on trail and river to far places.  And the young women came back old and broken, as Noda had come, or they came not at all.  And the young men came back to sit by our fires for a time, full of ill speech and rough ways, drinking evil drinks and gambling through long nights and days, with a great unrest always in their hearts, till the call of the white men came to them and they went away again to the unknown places.  And they were without honor and respect, jeering the old-time customs and laughing in the faces of chief and shamans.

“As I say, we were become a weak breed, we Whitefish.  We sold our warm skins and furs for tobacco and whiskey and thin cotton things that left us shivering in the cold.  And the coughing sickness came upon us, and men and women coughed and sweated through the long nights, and the hunters on trail spat blood upon the snow.  And now one, and now another, bled swiftly from the mouth and died.  And the women bore few children, and those they bore were weak and given to sickness.  And other sicknesses came to us from the white men, the like of which we had never known and could not understand.  Smallpox, likewise measles, have I heard these sicknesses named, and we died of them as die the salmon in the still eddies when in the fall their eggs are spawned and there is no longer need for them to live.

“And yet, and here be the strangeness of it, the white men come as the breath of death; all their ways lead to death, their nostrils are filled with it; and yet they do not die.  Theirs the whiskey, and tobacco, and short-haired dogs; theirs the many sicknesses, the smallpox and measles, the coughing and mouth-bleeding; theirs the white skin, and softness to the frost and storm; and theirs the pistols that shoot six times very swift and are worthless.  And yet they grow fat on their many ills, and prosper, and lay a heavy hand over all the world and tread mightily upon its peoples.  And their women, too, are soft as little babes, most breakable and never broken, the mothers of men.  And out of all this softness, and sickness, and weakness, come strength, and power, and authority.  They be gods, or devils, as the case may be.  I do not know.  What do I know, I, old Imber of the Whitefish?  Only do I know that they are past understanding, these white men, far-wanderers and fighters over the earth that they be.