They were a superstitious, fierce, and revengful race.

They fully believed in witchcraft or conjuring, and in the power to work evil through familiar spirits.

Everything to them and the neighboring tribes had its good or evil spirit, or both--the mountains, the rivers, the forest, the sighing cedars, and the whispering firs.
The great plague of the tribes on the middle Columbia was the measles.

The disease was commonly fatal among them, owing largely to the manner of treatment.

When an Indian began to show the fever which is characteristic of the disease, he was put into and inclosed in a hot clay oven.