“You are a good old Injun,” said Mrs. Woods, yielding to her better self again.  “I don’t say it about many people.  I do think you have done your best—­considering.”

“I am not what I want to be,” said Umatilla.  “It is what we want to be that we shall be one day; don’t you think so?  The Great Spirit is going to make me what I want to be—­he will make us all what we want to be.  My desires are better than I—­I will be my desires by and by.  My staff is in my hand, and I am going home.  The old warriors have gone home.  They were thick as the flowers of the field, thick as the stars of the night.  My boys are gone home—­they were swift as the hawks in the air.  Benjamin is left to the Umatillas.  He is no butcher-bird; no forked tongue—­he will remember the shade of his father.  My heart is in his heart.  I am going home.  I have not spoken.”

He puffed his pipe again, and watched an eagle skimming along on the great over-sea of September gold.  The Indian language is always picturesque, and deals in symbols and figures of speech.  It is picture-speaking.  The Indians are all poets in their imaginations, like children.  This habit of personification grows in the Indian mind with advancing years.  Every old Indian speaks in poetic figures.  Umatilla had not yet “spoken,” as he said; he had been talking in figures, and merely approaching his subject.

There was a long pause.  He then laid down his pipe.  He was about to speak: 

“Woman, open your ears.  The Great Spirit lives in women, and old people, and little children.  He loves the smoke of the wigwam, and the green fields of the flowers, and the blue gardens of stars.  And he loves music—­it is his voice, the whisper of the soul.

“He spoke in the pine-tops, on the lips of the seas, in the shell, in the reed and the war-drum.  Then she came.  He speaks through her.  I want her to speak for me.  My people are angry.  There are butcher-birds among them.  They hate you—­they hate the cabin of the white man.  The white men take away their room, overthrow their forests, kill their deer.  There is danger in the air.

“The October moon will come.  It will grow.  It will turn into a sun on the border of the night.  Then come Potlatch.  My people ask for the Dance of the Evil One.  I no consent—­it means graves.

“Let me have her a moon—­she play on the air.  She play at the Potlatch for me.  She stand by my side.  The Great Spirit speak through her.  Indians listen.  They will think of little ones, they will think of departed ones, they will think of the hunt—­they will see graves.  Then the night will pass.  Then the smoke will rise again from white man’s cabin.  Then I die in peace, and go home to the Great Spirit and rest.  Will you let me have her?  I have spoken.”

Mrs. Woods comprehended the figurative speech.  The old chief wished to take Gretchen to his wigwam for a month, and have her play the violin on the great night of the Potlatch.  He hoped that the influence of the music would aid him in preventing the Dance of the Evil Spirits, and a massacre of the white settlers.  What should she say?