field in southern Oregon with one company June 27th, and proceed to the Klamath Lake country to quiet disturbances there, occasioned by the generally hostile attitude of the Indians of northern California, Nevada, and southern Oregon at this time. Piper encamped at a point seventy-five miles west of Jacksonville, which he called Camp Day. In September a train of thirty-two wagons arrived there, which had escaped with no further molestation than the loss of some stock. Another train being behind, and it becoming known that a hundred Snake Indians were in the vicinity of Klamath Lake, under a chief named Howlack, sixty-five men were sent forward to their protection. They thus escaped evils intended for them, but which fell on others.
Successes such as had attended the hostile movements of the Snake Indians during the years of 1859–60 were likely to transform them from a cowardly and thieving into a warlike and murderous foe. The property obtained by them in that time amounted to many thousands of dollars, and being in arms, ammunition, horses, and cattle, placed them upon a war footing, which with their nomadic habits and knowledge of the country rendered them no despicable foe, as the officers and troops of the United States were yet to be compelled to acknowledge.[1]
- ↑ In the summer of 1858 G. H. Abbott, Indian agent, went into the Indian country, afterward known to military men as the Lake District, with a view to make treaties with the Snakes, Bannocks, Klamaths, and Modocs, the only tribes capable of making war, who had neither been conquered nor treated with, and selected a place for an agency north of the Klamath Lakes, and about 75 miles from Jacksonville in a north-easterly direction. On his return his party discovered the remains of five men, prospectors, who had been murdered, as it was believed, by Klamaths, on the head waters of Butte creek, the middle fork of Rogue River. They were Eli Tedford, whose body was burned, Robert Probst, James Crow, S. F. Conger, and James Brown. Ind. Aff. Rept, 1859, 391–2. A company of volunteers at once went in search of the murderers, three of whom, chiefly by the assistance of the agent, were apprehended, and whom the Klamaths voluntarily killed to prevent trouble; that tribe being now desirous of standing well with the U. S. government. Five other renegades from the conquered tribes of the Rogue River mountains were not captured. In June 1859 a prospecting party from Lane county was attacked on the head waters of the Malheur River, and two of the men wounded. They escaped with a loss of $7,000 or $8,000 worth of property. Sac. Union, July 7, 1860. Of the emigrants of 1859 who
