OREGON BOUND 1853 155
ably well. The native plurn grows on a dwarf bush, perhaps 10 to 18 inches high, and has the flavor of the peach. Apple trees for sitting are packed over from the Willamet and sold here for $1.00 each.
This valley is about 75 miles long and perhaps 8 wide, be- side the valleys of the creeks. The lower part of the vaBey, half of it, or thereabouts, is reserved for the present for the Indians. They attempted last summer to drive out the whites, and after a war of three months, during which about 40 white and 100 Indians were killed, peace was concluded by the sur- render of the best half of the valley to the whites. These Indians are a wild fierce tribe, of kin to the Diggers on the Humboldt, and about the lakes this side of there, and the Snakes of Snake river. They are degraded and cruel beyond measure. It is said that they murder for pastime. They will any of them shoot a man to get his hat. We saw the body of an emigrant that had been dragged from its grave, to be stripped, and left to the ravens. The whole country from the head of the Humboldt to this place, and indeed to the ocean, except the "desert," sixty miles, is infested by them to such an extent that no place is safe. I wrote you what we heard of the Humboldt Indians the Diggers of their extinction by the small pox. We found it partially so and no one comes over the plains without wishing it were so of all these tribes. At the western junction of the Bear river and Salt Lake roads, we heard of the war of the Utahs and Mormons, the particulars of which you probably had long ago. The opinion of the most intelligent men I saw who came that way, was, that the war was got up by the Mormons as a pretext for consolidating their military establishment and fortifying the passes to the city. Bad as the Utahs are, all who came that way agree that the Mormons are worse that they are more adept at theft and more reckless at robbery. Much trouble is yet to be experi- enced with that community. The cattle trains that came by Salt Lake sustained more loss within striking distance of that city than those by the Bear river road on the whole trip.
