the 11th, but there was not that unanimity for which the governor hoped, and no arrangement was effected. On the following day a compromise was made, the colonel allowing the commissioners to precede him, accompanied by Major Lee, captains McKay and Thompson, Meek's party, and men enough to make up a company of one hundred. Letters were written to be despatched by an Indian messenger to the Catholic mission on the Umatilla, to Fort Walla Walla, and to the Nez Percés, that they might be prepared for the advent of the army as well as of the peace commissioners. The latter were to proceed on the morning of the 14th. In the mean time the old frontier method of warfare prevailed, the innocent and the guilty being shot down indiscriminately.[1] News was received on the 13th that a combination had been consummated between the tribes east of the Dalles, which information determined Gilliam to delay no longer, but to march the next morning with three hundred men for Waiilatpu, leaving Captain Williams at Fort Lee with twenty-seven men, including several sick.[2]
Before the commissioners could start on the 14th they received a visit from two Yakimas who came as messengers from their chiefs to learn the intentions of the Americans; saying that the Cayuses wished them to join the murderers; but that they had had no quarrel with the white people, who did not pass through their country. If the Americans desired peace, so did they. In this friendly mood they
- ↑ I learn these things from a memorandum kept by Robert Newell during his journey to and from Waiilatpu. It was a strictly private diary, which his daughter, Mrs Wardwell, of Lewiston, Idaho, allowed me to copy in 1877. The following entry is touching the recklessness of the volunteers: 'An Indian was shot by one of our own people, H. English, while out hunting horses to-day, Feb. 13th, a most shameful thing.'
- ↑ Newell says in his Memoranda that Williams pulled down the mission barn to make pickets around the houses. Palmer, in a letter to Wait, says only 3 men were left at Fort Gilliam to protect the property, and 3 to run the boats from the Cascades to the Dalles. 'The men have volunteered to fight Indians, and not run boats'—so say the officers. Or. Archives, MS., 123. These bits of private information show the condition of the army more clearly than the reports of officers.
