Certain it is that shortly after the cases were opened, a strange and fatal disease broke out among Multnomah's attendants. The howling of medicine-men rang all day long in the royal lodge; each day saw swathed corpses borne out to the funeral pyre or _mimaluse_ island. And no concoction of herbs,--however skilfully compounded with stone mortar and pestle,--no incantation of medicine-men or steaming atmosphere of sweat-house, could stay the mortality.
At length Multnomah caught the disease. It seemed strange to the Indians that the war-chief should sicken, that Multnomah should show any of the weaknesses of common flesh and blood; yet so it was. But while the body yielded to the inroad of disease, the spirit that for almost half a century had bent beneath it the tribes of the Wauna never faltered. He lay for days upon his couch, his system wasting with the plague, his veins burning with fever, holding death off only by might of will. He touched no remedies, for he felt them to be useless; he refused the incantations of the medicine-men; alone and in his own strength the war-chief contended with his last enemy.
All over the Willamette Valley, through camp and fishery, ran the whisper that Multnomah was dying; and the hearts of the Indians sunk within them. Beyond the mountains the whisper passed to the allied tribes, once more ripe for revolt, and the news rang among them like a trumpet call; it was of itself a signal for rebellion. The fall of the magic Bridge, the death of Wallulah, and the fatal illness of Multnomah had sealed the doom of the Willamettes. The chiefs stayed their followers only till they knew that he was dead. But the grand old war-chief seemed determined that he would not die. He struggled with disease; he crushed down his sufferings; he fought death with the same silent, indomitable tenacity with which he had overthrown the obstacles of life.
In all his wasting agony he was the war-chief still, and held his subjects in his grip. To the tribes that were about to rebel he sent messages, short, abrupt, but terrible in their threat of vengeance,--messages that shook and awed the chiefs and pushed back invasion. To the last, the great chief overawed the tribes; the generation that had grown up under the shadow of his tyranny, even when they knew he was dying, still obeyed him.