Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/329

CHAPTER XII.

ROGUE RIVER WAR.

1853–1854.

Impositions and Retaliations—Outrages by White Men and Indians—The Military Called upon—War Declared—Suspension of Business—Roads Blockaded—Firing from Ambush—Alden at Table Rock—Lane in Command—Battle—The Savages Sue for Peace—Armistice—Preliminary Agreement—Hostages Given—Another Treaty with the Rogue River People—Stipulations—Other Treaties—Cost of the War.

 

Notwithstanding the treaty entered into, as I have related, by certain chiefs of Rogue River in the summer of 1852, hostilities had not altogether ceased, although conducted less openly than before. With such a rough element in their country as these miners and settlers, many of them bloody-minded and unprincipled men, and most of them holding the opinion that it was right and altogether proper that the natives should be killed, it was impossible to have peace. The white men, many of them, did not want peace. The quicker the country was rid of the red-skin vermin the better, they said. And in carrying out their determination, they often outdid the savage in savagery.

There was a sub-chief, called Taylor by white men, who ranged the country about Grave Creek, a northern tributary of Rogue River, who was specially hated, having killed a party of seven during a winter storm and reported them drowned. He committed other depredations upon small parties passing over

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