glad to make peace on any terms, and keep it until driven again to desperation.[1]
Superintendent Palmer, in the spring of 1854, began a round of visits to his savage wards, going by the way of the Rogue River Valley and Crescent City, and proceeding up the coast to Yaquina Bay. Finding the Indians on the southern coast shy and unapproachable, he left at Port Orford Sub-agent Parrish with presents to effect a conciliation.[2]
Prominent among matters growing out of beach mining, next after the Indian difficulties, was the more perfect exploration of the Coos Bay country, which resulted from the passing back and forth of supply trains between the Umpqua and the Coquille rivers. In May 1853, Perry B. Marple,[3] after having examined the valley of the Coquille, and found what he believed to be a practicable route from Coos Bay to the interior,[4] formed an association of twenty men called the Coos Bay Company, with stock to be divided into one hundred shares, five shares to each joint proprietor,[5] and each proprietor being bound to
- ↑ Indian Agent F. M. Smith, after due investigation, pronounced the killing an unjustifiable massacre. U. S. H. Ex. Doc. 76, 268–71, 34th cong. 3d sess.
- ↑ See Parrish's Or. Anecdotes, MS., passim; Ind. Aff. Rept, 1854, 254–66.
- ↑ He was an eccentric genius, a great talker, of whom his comrades used to say that he 'came within an ace of being a Patrick Henry, but just missing it, missed it entirely.' He was a man of mark, however, in his county, which he represented in the constitutional convention—a bad mark, in some respects, judging from Deady's observations on disbarring him: 'I have long since ceased to regard anything you assert. All your acts show a degree of mental and moral obliquity which renders you incapable of discriminating between truth and falsehood or right and wrong. You have no capacity for the practice of law, and in that profession you will ever prove a curse to yourself and to the community. For these reasons, and altogether overlooking the present allegations of unprofessional conduct, it would be an act of mercy to strike your name from the roll of attorneys.' Marple went to the Florence mines in eastern Oregon on the outbreak of the excitement of 1861, and there died of consumption in the autumn of 1862. Or. Statesman, Dec. 8, 1862, and Jan. 12, 1868.
- ↑ The first settlement was made on Coos Bay in the summer of 1853, and a packer named Sherman took a provision train over the mountains from Grave Creek by a practicable route. He reported discoveries of coal. Or. Statesman, June 28, 1853.
- ↑ The proprietors were Perry B. Marple, James C. Tolman, Rollin L. Belknap, Solomon Bowermaster, Joseph H. McVay, J. A. J. McVay, Wm H.
