American population was still so small that travelling courts were obliged to bring their own juries.
Judge Bryant provided for the decent administration of justice by the appointment of A. A. Skinner, district attorney, for the prosecution, and David Stone for the defence. The whole company proceeded by canoes and horses to Steilacoom carrying with them their provisions and camping utensils. Several Indians had been arrested, but two only, Quallawort, brother of Patkanim, head chief of the Snoqualimichs, and Kassas, another Snoqualimich chief, were found guilty. On the day following their conviction they were hanged in the presence of the troops and many of their own and other tribes, Bryant expressing himself satisfied with the finding of the jury, and also with the opinion that the attacking party of Snoqualimichs had designed to take Fort Nisqually, in which attempt, had they succeeded, many lives would have been lost.[1] The cost of this trial was $1,899.54, besides eighty blankets, the promised reward for the arrest and delivery of the guilty parties, which amounted to $480 more. Many of the jurymen were obliged to travel two hundred miles, and the attorneys also, each of whom received two hundred and fifty dollars for his services. Notwithstanding this expensive lesson the same savages made away in some mysterious manner with one of the artillerymen from Fort Steilacoom the following winter.[2]
- ↑ Bryant's Rept. to Gov. Lane in 31st Cong., 2d Sess., H. Ex. Doc., i. 166–7; Hayes' Scraps, 22; Or. Spectator, Oct. 18, 1849.
- ↑ Tolmie's Puget Sound, MS., 36.
against the Americans. Roberts says that when Lane was returning from the Sound in June, he, Roberts, being at the Cowlitz farm, rode out to meet him, and answered his inquiries concerning the best way of preserving the peace of the country, then changing from the old regime to the new. 'I was astonished,' says Roberts, 'to hear him remark "Damn them! (the Indians) it would do my soul good to be after them." This would never have escaped the lips of Dr McLoughlin or Douglas.' Recollections, MS., 15. There was always this rasping of the rude outspoken western sentiment on the feelings of the studiously trained Hudson's Bay Company. But an Indian to them was a different creature from the Indian toward whom the settlers were hostile. In the one case he was a means of making wealth; in the other of destroying property and life. Could the Hudson's Bay Company have changed places with the settlers they might have changed feelings too.
