It was midnight. A dim campfire accentuated the loneliness. Flickering shadows wrote weird lines on the [pg 60] cone-shaped walls of the tepee. The rain ceased not the beating of its soft tattoo on the frail roof above our heads. Old Tin-Tin-Meet-Sa, bent and tottering with his more than eighty years of life, his noble old face still wearing great dignity, his almost sightless eyes looking for the last flicker of life's sunset, presented a pathetic picture as he faced the firelight and told of his loneliness as he passed the deserted buffalo trails.

Tin-Tin-Meet-Sa, or Willouskin, is one of the notable chiefs of the Umatillas. He rendered valuable services to the Government as a scout during the Indian wars of 1855 and 1856. The heroic deeds of those faraway days have not been written down in history, and no doubt will be forgotten by future generations, but they have been written large on the character lines of this gigantic frame and Savonarola-like face—a poet, a dreamer, a warrior, and chieftain.

It is better to let Tin-Tin-Meet-Sa open the door himself upon that mighty past: “My days have been spent for many suns along the great rivers and high mountains of Oregon. It has been many years ago that I was selected by our agent as the head man of my tribe. In those days I was a very active man, but since I have become so old, although they look upon me as the head man of the tribe, I must [pg 61] leave the work for others to do. During my younger days I had a big herd of cattle and horses, but as the years have come over me, I am not able to look after my stock any more. I consider the greatest event in my life the assistance I rendered in the capture and killing of Chief Eagan, war chief of the Piutes, during the Bannock or Sheep-Eater war. These Bannock Indians created great destruction wherever they went; they burned my tepee and killed over seventy head of my cattle. I did not know at that time how many cattle I had, because there was not any one around to steal them. This led me to go on the warpath against the Bannocks.”

“This country all looks familiar to me because, in my younger days, I travelled all over these prairies fighting the Sioux Indians who had stolen horses from my tribe. Again I have travelled all over this country many times, long years ago, as we came here to hunt the buffalo. I had a number of fast horses, with which I could easily kill as many buffalo as I wanted, but I only killed as many as I needed to last for a few days. When I came here the other day to meet all these chiefs, and I looked at this country for the last time, I felt lonesome when I saw how it was all changed, and all of the buffalo gone out of the country, for I could still see traces of these large animals. It is easy for an old hunter to discover these buffalo trails, for they all walked in the [pg 62] same place, and now the rains of many moons have cut those trails deep, just as if a man had been irrigating some field. I can scarcely see, but my eyes could find the old trail. The buffalo has gone, and I am soon going.”