Clarence Booth Bagley

“ While the actual loss in killed and wounded was not great, it required men of undaunted courage to penetrate the Indian country, surrounded as they were by hordes of Indians, who, had they combined, as there was always danger, could at any time have overwhelmed the Americans. ”

“ No one, with any knowledge of the facts, will deny that the Indians were oftimes wrongfully treated by the whites, but as General Sheridan wrote in 1870, "So far as the wild Indians are concerned, the problem to be decided is, 'Who shall be killed, the whites or the Indians?' Since 1862, at least eight hundred men, women and children have been murdered within the limits of my present command in the most fiendish manner, women ravished, and they and their little children horribly tortured, and then after suffering the pangs of a thousand deaths, killed and scalped." ”

“ It is distressing to go into a lodge of some ten or twenty fires, and count twenty or twenty-five, some in the midst of the measles, others in the last stages of dysentery, in the midst of every kind of filth, of itself sufficient to cause sickness, with no means of alleviating their inconceivable sufferings, with perhaps one well person to look after the wants of two sick ones. ”

“ Efforts were made by the Cayuses to bring about a general uprising. Had they been successful in this it would have resulted in the annihilation of all the Americans in the upper country, armed or unarmed. These delays and negotiations continued to the end of the campaign. "Blood is thicker than water," and even the Nez Perces, most of whom were always the friends of the whites and deplored the massacre at Waiilatpu, as well as other friendly Indians, did not hesitate to employ artifices to delay the troops and thus enable the Cayuses to move their families and stock out of danger. ”

“ The first Indian war began late in 1847, immediately following the massacre of the mission party at Waiilatpu, with Marcus Whitman at its head, and only a few of these murders occurred before that time, which at least doubled the annual number of fatalities after that time. As a matter of fact, the greater portion of the victims of Indian violence fell between the years 1850 and 1862, a period of twelve years, and during that time the annual loss was at least one hundred and fifty, a frightful drain upon a sparse population. ”

“ The Hudson's Bay people could have had no object in causing trouble between the whites and Indians at that late day. The treaty settling the northern boundary of Oregon at the 49th parallel had been signed more than a year; the region about Walla Walla was never of value for the gathering of peltries, so that if white settlers had begun to occupy the lands adjacent it was a matter of small importance to the company, whose rights had been abundantly safeguarded in the treaty mentioned above. ”

“ The lands over which the natives roamed at will were not sought for nor occupied by their white neighbors. It has been the "land greed" of the Americans that has caused most of the disturbances and wars between them and the Indians.
Prior to 1843 the population of Oregon increased slowly. At the beginning of 1842, there were only one hundred and thirty-seven American settlers. Of these twenty-one were Protestant ministers, fifteen lay members of Protestant churches, thirty-four white women, thirty-two white children, and thirty-four American settlers, twenty-five of whom had native wives. ”

“ Seventy men were lost on the way by death and desertion. They spent the winter at Oregon City.
In the meantime, Governor Lane had been carrying on negotiations with the Cayuse tribe for the surrender of those who participated in the massacre of Doctor Whitman and the others. The arrival of the soldiers of the regular army, which had long been threatened, and the increasing tide of immigration, opened the eyes of the Indians to the power of the Americans. ”

“ The great war period was a few years later, from 1855 to 1858. during which there was a general uprising of the confederated tribes of Oregon and Washington, in Eastern Oregon and Washington, in the Rogue River region of southern Oregon, and along the eastern shore of the upper Puget Sound.
Individual acts of violence and oppression on the part of white men, from time to time, induced acts of retaliation, but the criminal procrastination and indifference of the general government was responsible for most of the troubles between the settlers and the Indians. ”

“ The policy of the government was to encourage a vanguard of settlers to cross the constantly receding frontier. This began almost immediately after the close of the war of the Revolution. The government never provided protection for these people, but after most of them had been impoverished by frequent attacks from the Indians, accompanied by murder and outrage, an insufficient army would be sent out to overawe and perhaps punish the savages. ”

“ In Oregon, at the time of the coming of Jason Lee and Daniel Lee, his nephew, the first missionaries, there were probably about one hundred thousand Indians. Among these, small parties of white men were never entirely safe except among part of the Nez Perces tribe and the natives of the lower Willamette Valley and the upper Puget Sound region. ”

“ Most of those who suffered were men in the prime of life, who could ill be spared by the struggling young territories, though comprising all classes—travelers, prospectors, miners, ranchers, traders, freighters, and, lastly, volunteers, who left their homes and families to go to the Indian country in defense of the outlying settlers or to avenge the unprovoked and brutal crimes against them. ”

“ During 1842, the first immigration of American settlers, numbering about one hundred and forty, came across the plains under the leadership of Dr. Elijah White; in 1843 "early nine hundred immigrants were added to the little colony; in 1844 about seven hundred and fifty: in 1845 about three thousand; in 1846 about one thousand, and in 1847 about five thousand.
Each year poor fare, bad drinking water and long-continued exposure had caused a good deal of sickness among the immigrants, and this had been unavoidably communicated to the Indians, causing a good many deaths among them. ”

“ After a delay of a week the army of about two hundred and seventy men again advanced, and on the banks of the Tucannon were attacked by the Palouses, allies of the Cayuses. Advancing slowly, fighting all day, the troops had to camp at night without food or fire, under gun fire all the time, so that they were glad when the first streaks of dawn enabled them to again advance. The engagement was sharp, and at times critical, but victory rested with the whites, with several wounded, one mortally. The Indians lost four killed and fourteen wounded. ”

“ They were dying every day; one, two, and sometimes five in a day, with the dysentery, which generally followed the measles."
There were Indians and half-breeds among the Cayuses, who had come from other tribes, notably Jo Lewis, who were not friendly to the Americans and who stirred up ill feeling among the natives by telling them that the whites would poison them and get rid of them as fast as they could so the valuable lands along the river bottoms could be turned into farms. ”

“ It brought with it a virulent form of measles, accompanied by typhoid fever, and these diseases were as fatal among the Indians as the small-pox. The Indians hung about the immigrants most of the time, to the great annoyance of the latter, as they were inveterate beggars and pilferers, and it was not long before the disease was epidemic among the Cayuses, threatening that tribe with extinction, as the mortality was frightful. ”

“ Frances Fuller Victor was a careful historian, taking pains at all times to be sure of the facts and to understate rather than to magnify, yet she says the number of white persons killed and wounded within the above limits between the years 1824 and 1878 was eighteen hundred and ninety-six, an average of thirty-seven annually. ”

“ The proclamation discharging the first regiment of volunteers, except the men who remained to garrison the forts, was dated July 5. 1848. The volunteers in the Indian country were hardy and resourceful. The mill at Waiilatpu was repaired, and as considerable grain was discovered in Indian caches, they soon had plenty of flour. They also raised several hundred bushels of grain during the summer. Meat was abundant, and they lived well. ”

“ Old Oregonians know all the names that follow, and they are also household words with hundreds of our own pioneers, viz.: James W. Nesmith, Jo Meek, Robert Magone, James Force, H. A. G. Lee, Thomas McKay, Joel Palmer, William Burnett, A. L. Lovejoy, Robert Newell, H. J. G. Maxon, John Minto, W. T. Matlock, L. J. Rector, Wesley Shannon and Lewis M. Savage. A. M. Poe, one of the pioneer newspaper men of Washington, is also on the list. ”