The very mention of the Potlatch filled her with recent terror.

She well knew the story of the destruction of Whitman and a part of his missionary colony.
_That_ was a terrible event, and it was a scene like that that the new settlers feared, at the approaching Potlatch; and the thought of that dreadful day almost weakened the faith of Mr.Mann in the Indians.
We must tell you the old-time history of the tragedy which was now revived in the new settlement.
_THE CONJURED MELONS._ Most people who like history are familiar with the national story of Marcus Whitman's "Ride for Oregon"[A]--that daring horseback trip across the continent, from the Columbia to the Missouri, which enabled him to convince the United States Government not only that Oregon could be reached, but that it was worth possessing.

Exact history has robbed this story of some of its romance, but it is still one of the noblest wonder-tales of our own or any nation.

Monuments and poetry and art must forever perpetuate it, for it is full of spiritual meaning.
Lovers of missionary lore have read with delight the ideal romance of the two brides who agreed to cross the Rocky Mountains with their husbands, Whitman and Spaulding; how one of them sang, in the little country church on departing, the whole of the hymn-- "Yes, my native land, I love thee," when the voices of others failed from emotion.

They have read how the whole party knelt down on the Great Divide, beside the open Bible and under the American flag, and took possession of the great empire of the Northwest in faith and in imagination, and how history fulfilled the dream.
At the time of the coming of the missionaries the Cayuse Indians and Nez-Perces occupied the elbow of the Columbia, and the region of the musical names of the Wallula, the Walla Walla, and Wauelaptu.