while a detachment was hurried up, with a volunteer company from mining camps and settlements, when two engagements of several hours duration each were fought, the Indians losing heavily, and the riflemen having several men wounded beside losing one officer Capt. James Stuart. This was the beginning of a long series of outrages and a protracted Indian war which was ended only by the final conquest of the southern tribes of western Oregon in 1856.
From 1851, when the territory was left with only two skeleton companies of artillerymen, and they on Puget Sound, for a period of fifteen years there was a succession of "wars," with a continually disturbed condition in some part of the country. The "wars" after 1855 were chiefly north of the Columbia, and thus in the territory of Washington; but the governors of the two divisions of old Oregon chose to make a common interest of Indian affairs, and did so. Military affairs, which formerly were managed by the commander of the department of the Pacific, were in 1858 transferred to the department of Oregon under command of General Harney, whose ideas of Indian affairs in any department were more in consonance with the popular view than those of any general yet assigned to the Columbia region. By his order the country closed to settlement or occupation east of the Cascade Mountains was opened, exploration for roads was carried on, and settlement encouraged. Immigration began again to flow along the Oregon trail. Murders and outrages increased. Incursions of Indians from Nevada preyed upon the growing cattle industry of Eastern Oregon, and miners were compelled to go armed at all times.
Such was the situation in Oregon and Washington when civil war threatened the republic, and the
govern-
