"You are as bad as Pete
Walker, who thought one sister must be as good as another, because
they looked so much alike."
And then, as we loitered about in the bays, the old man told me the
story of Walker's honeymoon, which was a sad and a short one. This is
the story.
Near that wild rapid of the Columbia River known as the "Dalles,"
there was, years ago, a Jesuit mission, established in a small fort,
built, like that at Nez-Perces, of mud. The labors of the holy men
composing the mission involved no inconsiderable amount of danger,
devoted as they were to the hopeless task of reforming such sinners as
the Sioux, the Blackfeet, the Gros-Ventres, the Flat-Heads, the
Assiniboines, the Nez-Perces, and a few other such.
Some of these missionaries had sojourned for a long time with a branch
of the Blackfoot tribe, among whom they found two young white girls,
remarkable for their exact resemblance to each other, and therefore
supposed to be twins. I say _supposed_, because of their origin there
was no trace. All that was known about them was, that they were the
sole survivors of a train of emigrants, attacked and murdered by the
Nez-Perces, who, actuated by one of those whims characteristic of the
red men, spared the lives of the two children, and adopted them into
the tribe. Subsequently, in a skirmish with the Blackfeet, they fell
into the hands of the latter, among whom they had lived for some time,
when they were ransomed by the missionaries, at the price of certain
trading-privileges negotiated by the latter for the tribe.
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