In Fact, So Enthusiastic Is He In Their Praise, That He
Pronounces Them, All Ignorant And Barbarous As They Are By Their
Condition, One Of The Purest Hearted People On The Face Of The
Earth.
Some cures which Captain Bonneville had effected in simple cases,
among the Upper Nez Perces, had reached the ears
Of their cousins
here, and gained for him the reputation of a great medicine man.
He had not been long in the village, therefore, before his lodge
began to be the resort of the sick and the infirm. The captain
felt the value of the reputation thus accidentally and cheaply
acquired, and endeavored to sustain it. As he had arrived at that
age when every man is, experimentally, something of a physician,
he was enabled to turn to advantage the little knowledge in the
healing art which he had casually picked up; and was sufficiently
successful in two or three cases, to convince the simple Indians
that report had not exaggerated his medical talents. The only
patient that effectually baffled his skill, or rather discouraged
any attempt at relief, was an antiquated squaw with a churchyard
cough, and one leg in the grave; it being shrunk and rendered
useless by a rheumatic affection. This was a case beyond his
mark; however, he comforted the old woman with a promise that he
would endeavor to procure something to relieve her, at the fort
on the Wallah-Wallah, and would bring it on his return; with
which assurance her husband was so well satisfied, that he
presented the captain with a colt, to be killed as provisions for
the journey:
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