being aided in their .enterprise by the reports of government officials, who knew very little about the merits of the place which received their endorsement. Such influences were brought to bear upon the commander of the Pacific division, that, with Kearney's account of Indian affairs in Rogue-river valley, he was persuaded to with draw Lieutenant Kantz with his company of twenty men stationed at Astoria, where they were of no service, and send them to Port Orford, which was ignorantly supposed to be a proper location for a garrison to hold in check the Indians of the valley. It was even represented to General Hitchcock that the distance from Port Orford to Camp Stuart was only thirty-five miles, whereas it was more nearly eighty in a direct line, the necessary meanderings making it about one hundred.
So far, then, as Kantz's command could be of use to the miners, it was none; nor was it large enough to be of use anywhere in an Indian country, except as a sample of what might be sometime furnished in a larger quantity. By the steamer Seagull, which left Portland September twelfth, at which time T'Vault's party was wandering in the forest on the head waters of the Coquille, the superintendent of Indian affairs, with his agents, Parrish and Spalding, took passage for Port Orford with the intention of making a treaty with the coast tribes. They arrived on the fourteenth, the day on which the massacre on the Coquille river took place, and two days afterwards T Vault and Brush made their appearance with the story of their misfortunes and marvelous escape through the compassion of the Cape Blanco natives.
The superintendent found himself in an embarrassing position. He had come to treat for peace and friendship, to sue for which under the circumstances was to humiliate the people he represented. Nor was he able to appear in the role of an avenger, with only a squad of twenty men under a young lieutenant at his back. In this dilemma he found Parrish, who had a better knowledge of Indian
