Lower Columbia and in the Willamette Valley, between 1805 and 1845, and the decaying condition of those found here at the latter date, are facts which cannot be called in question. Those writers who are predisposed to blame the white man for all the results of the commercial and social contact between the races will see only the fearful and repulsive effects upon the ignorant native—supposed to be innocent—of drunkenness and debauchery, which the white man's avaricious trade and licentiousness ministered to. While, beyond question, these were destructive agencies, they, in my judgment, never were but a small moiety of the cause of the general decay of the race west of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges, from Alaska to Lower California. As to the licentious intercourse between the sexes, the natives were ready and sought opportunity to participate in the destructive commerce. And their customs, which were their only laws, left womanhood—especially widowhood—an outcast, where she was not held as a slave. It was a fact well known to pioneers yet living that a woman of bright, kindly disposition, of natural intelligence, which made her a natural leader of her sex, who was in 1840 the honored wife of the chief of one of the strongest coast tribes, and as such styled a queen by some writers, was in 1845 a leader and guide of native prostitutes, who watched and followed ships entering the Columbia from the time they crossed the bar in until they crossed out. And between opportunities of this kind, she went from camp to camp of white settlers on the Lower Columbia, thus seeking trade without the least sign of shame. The customs and usages of the race, for which the leading men were responsible, debar us of any just right to hold native womanhood responsible for a social system which deemed a female child the best trading property—valued high or low according to the status of the male portion
