holding them until the property was restored. The Indians attacked in consequence; there was a skirmish, a white man and a chief were killed, and several on both sides wounded; while four white men fled to the mountains in a panic, and were lost for several days, endeavoring to discover the trail to the Willamette Valley.[1]
So alarmed was Waller that he sent for Abernethy, superintendent of Indian affairs, to quiet matters, and then hastened to overtake a company which had passed a few miles west of the Dalles, and request, them to return and protect his family and the wounded men.[2]
A party did return, and Abernethy also came, who succeeded in procuring an audience with the principal chiefs, whom he induced, by paying them for the dead native, called Equator, to restore the property of the immigrants, and promise better behavior. But whether by these, or by the Walla Wallas and Cayuses, small parties of strangers continued to be plundered, and the property cached in the hills far away from the travelled road.[3]
Whitman made a visit to the Dalles during the two months the companies were passing between the Blue and Cascade mountains. On his return from this journey, which Peter W. Crawford, to whom I
- ↑ The young man killed was named Sheppard; he was from St Louis County, Missouri. A Mr Parker was seriously wounded, and a Mr Aram less seriously. Or. Spectator, Sept. 2, 1847.
- ↑ T'Vault, in Or. Spectator, Sept. 2, 1847. T'Vault, Barlow, and Foster were on their way to the Dalles when they met this company of 16 wagons August 28th, under the command of Bowman, some of whose men returned to the relief of Waller.
- ↑ James Henry Brown, an immigrant of 1847, and author of several manuscripts in my collection, in his Autobiography, MS., 20–5, a work from which I am able to gather much excellent information, gives an account similar to that by Ross, of the treatment of his train by the Cayuses. Geer, in his Waldo Hills, MS., 2, mentions that his wife nearly lost her life by an Indian at the crossing of Des Chutes River. Grim, in his Emigrant Anecdotes, MS., 5, says that the Indians were extremely insolent to the immigrants, and behaved in a belligerent manner on the Umatilla; and that Whitman, who met a large body of the immigrants there, asked them to tarry for a day, and delivered an address to them, prophesying an Indian war, and giving them advice. It is certain that he was aware of the danger. It is also certain, considering the numbers and mixed character of those who here sought a new home, that they were forbearing toward the Indians in an extraordinary degree.
