Among the craft of the fishermen glided a long, airy canoe, with swift paddles.
It contained an old Umatilla Indian, his daughter, and a young warrior.
The party were going to the young chief's funeral.
[Illustration: _Multnomah Falls._] As the canoe glided on amid the still fishermen of other tribes, the Indian maiden began to sing.

It was a strange song, of immortality, and of spiritual horizons beyond the visible life.

The Umatillas have poetic minds.

To them white Tacoma with her gushing streams means a mother's breast, and the streams themselves, like the Falls of the distant Shoshone, were "falling splendors." She sang in Chinook, and the burden of her song was that horizons will lift forever in the unknown future.

The Chinook word _tamala_ means "to-morrow"; and to-morrow, to the Indian mind, was eternal life.
The young warrior joined in the refrain, and the old Indian listened.