USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 69
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" In haste, yours respectfully, "JAMES DOUGLAS."
In Douglas' letter, written in the excitement and haste of the reception of the unhappy company of the rescued, there was an error concerning the fact of three murders which occurred after the 29th,30 and under no circumstances was an error of a Hudson's Bay officer or a Catholic priest allowed to be anything but intentional by the Protestant American writers who have dealt with the subject of the Waiilatpu massacre; the infallibility imputed to them extending only to their knowledge of the truth, but not to their disposition to tell it. The error in this case was really immaterial, while the on dit of the last sentence of Douglas' letter was of the greatest consequence.
The courier bearing the despatch to Governor Abernethy arrived at Oregon City on Sunday morn-
30 See Brouillet's Authentic Account, 57; Deposition of Elam Young, in Gray's Hist. Or., 482.
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OGDEN'S SUCCESS.
ing, finding the executive at church. Even the usual decorum of the sanctuary was forced to give way. The letter was read to the congregation, and the greatest excitement prevailed, of mingled gladness, gratitude, and sorrow.
On the following day the ransomed captives 31 were delivered to the governor in Oregon City. As the boats passed Portland a salute was fired, as also on their arrival at the Falls; the compliment being in- tended to express the general gratitude of the people to the gallant man who had effected their release. On the 17th the governor indicted a letter of thanks as follows :
"SIR: I feel it a duty as well as a pleasure to tender you my sincere thanks, and the thanks of this com- munity, for your exertions in behalf of the widows and orphans that were left in the hands of the Cayuse Indians. Their state was a deplorable one, subject to the caprice of savages, exposed to their insults, com- pelled to labor for them, and remaining constantly in dread lest they should be butchered as their husbands and fathers had been. From this state I am fully satisfied we could not relieve them. A small party of Americans would have been looked upon with con- tempt; a large party would have been a signal for a general massacre. Your immediate departure from Vancouver on receipt of the intelligence from Waii- latpu enabling you to arrive at Walla Walla before the news of the American party having started from this reached them, together with your influence over the Indians, accomplished the desirable object of relieving the distressed. Your exertions in behalf of the prisoners will no doubt cause a feeling of pleasure to you through life, but this does not relieve them nor us from the obligations we are under to you. You
31 The price paid for the prisoners was 62 three-point blankets, 63 cotton shirts, 12 guns, 600 loads of ammunition, 37 pounds of tobacco, and 12 flints. Seven oxen and 16 bags of coarse flour, obtained from Tiloukaikt, for the use of the captives, had also to be accounted for. Or. Spectator, Jan. 20, 1848.
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have also laid the American government under obli- gation to you, for their citizens were the subjects of the massacre, and their widows and orphans are the re- lieved ones. With a sincere prayer that the widow's God and the Father of the fatherless may reward you for your kindness, I have the honor to remain, your obedient servant, GEORGE ABERNETHY,
"Governor of Oregon Territory.
"To Peter Skeen Ogden, Esq., Chief Factor Honor- able H. B. Company, Vancouver." 32
To which Ogden replied on the 26th :
"George Abernethy, Esq., Governor of Oregon Ter- ritory.
"SIR: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your highly flattering letter of 19th inst., and the high value you lay upon my services in rescuing so many fellow-creatures from captivity, but the meed of praise is not due to me alone. I was the mere acting agent of the Hudson's Bay Company ; for without its power- ful aid and influence nothing could have been effected, and to them the praise is due. And permit me to add, should unfortunately, which God avert, our ser- vices be again required under similar circumstances, I trust you will not find us wanting in going to their relief. I have the honor to remain,
"Yours, most respectfully, "PETER SKEEN OGDEN."
Ogden's letter appeared in the Spectator, prefaced by the remark that "the act of rescuing so many defenceless women and children from the bloody and cruel grasp of savages merits, and we believe receives, the universal thanks and gratitude of the people of Oregon. Such an act is the legitimate offspring of a noble, generous, and manly heart." 33
When Ogden left Vancouver his purpose was to stop the murders, and rescue the families before any
32 Or. Spectator, Jan. 30, 1848.
33 Or. Spectator, Feb. 16, 1848.
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HOW IT WAS DONE.
measures their countrymen might adopt could furnish the Cayuses with a motive for further atrocities. Taking sixteen men, he left Vancouver on the 7th of December, within twenty-four hours after McBean's messenger arrived. Hinman accompanied him; and on arriving at the Dalles, finding that the natives there had the previous day taken four horses from the mission enclosure, an act which could signify nothing less than hostilities, he advised Hinman to remove his family, and all the Americans at the Dalles, to the Willamette, leaving only a trusty Indian in charge of the mission property, advice which was immediately adopted.
Ogden arrived with his party at Fort Walla Walla on the evening of the 19th of December,3ª and found that none of the captive women or children had been killed, though they had narrowly escaped, having been 'decreed against,' but saved by the interposition of McBean, who, hearing of the intention of the Cayuses, sent his interpreter to them with a message warning them that "they had already gone too far" in what they had done,33 and requesting them to withhold their hands from further crimes. Ogden's first effort was to call the chiefs together and hold a council to learn the plan with regard to their prisoners. For this purpose couriers were immediately despatched to the Cayuses, and on the 23d the council was assembled.
34 There is a disagreement of dates here. In Ogden's letter to Mr Walker he says he reached Walla Walla on the 12th, at least so it is printed in the Spectator; but five days was too little time to get to that post in the winter; and 12 days was rather a long time, but many things might occur to delay him, and as the other authorities agree on the 19th, I think it the true date. 35 ' When my messenger,' he says, 'arrived, Indian women, armed with knives and other implements of war, were already assembled near the house where the captives were, awaiting the order of the Chief Tiloukaikt, who was present. On being informed of my request, he hung down his head and paused, then with a wave of his hand peremptorily ordered the women away, who abusing him, called him a coward.' Letter of McBean, in Walla Walla States- man, March 16, 1866. Mrs Mary Saunders, later Mrs Husted, disputes with McBean the honor of having saved the lives of the women and children by getting on her knees to Tiloukaikt; but I think the savage more likely to have considered McBean's threat than her prayer. Mrs Husted, who long resided in San Francisco, became, like many others who were of adult years at that time, a nervous wreck, incapable of reasoning upon the events which destroyed her mental and bodily health.
HIST. OR., VOL. I. 44
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RESCUE OF THE CAPTIVES.
Some indications of the temper of the Nez Percés had been received before Ogden's arrival, through a letter from Spalding to the bishop of Walla Walla, and also through the intercourse of the chiefs on the Umatilla with the same person. From Spalding, the bishop, who was addressed as "Reverend and Dear Friend," had information that the Nez Percés wished the Americans to be upon friendly terms with the Cay- uses, and not to come into their country to avenge the massacre at Waiilatpu, giving as a reason that the natives had overlooked the death of the son of Peu- peumoxmox in California, for which the slaughter of thirteen Americans was no unreasonable offset. He was, in fact, remaining with his family in the Indian country as hostages of peace, and hoped to be able to send the same two young chiefs who carried his letter to the bishop, to Governor Abernethy, to prevent volunteers coming into the Cayuse country, lest by doing so they should precipitate him in ruin; and of this effort on his part to avert their punishment, the bishop was to inform the Cayuses. He also wished the Hudson's Bay Company to be informed of his situation with the Nez Percés; and that they had pledged themselves to protect him only by his pledg- ing himself to prevent the Americans seeking revenge on the Cayuses.36 A similar letter was sent to Mc- Bean at Fort Walla Walla.
This letter of Spalding's reached the Umatilla about the middle of December, and must be taken into account in considering what followed. The bishop was asked to impress upon the minds of the Cayuses that Spalding would do all that he could to prevent war, and to inform the governor of Oregon that his life and the lives of the other Americans at Lapwai depended on this promise to the Indians. The young chiefs who brought this message repeated the wish that the bishop would request Governor Abernethy not to send fighting men, but to come
36 Letter of H. If. Spalding, in Or. Spectator, Jan. 20, 1848.
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EXCUSES FOR THE MURDER.
himself in the spring and make a treaty of peace with the Cayuses, who would then release the captives. To this petition the bishop replied that before writing to the governor it would be necessary to learn from the principal Cayuse chiefs whether this was their desire also; and for the purpose of learning their minds pro- posed a council on the 20th.
Before the 20th came round there were signs that the Cayuses were beginning to realize that the crime they had committed was one which the Americans might not be brought to overlook even by promises of friendship in the future. Camaspelo, a chief of high rank, sought an interview with the bishop, in which he declared his reluctance from the first to con- sent to the murder of Whitman, and his subsequent regret, and his present intention of killing his horses and quitting the country forever. To this Blanchet replied that peace, he thought, might be hoped for, and counselled that the chiefs should all be brought together to settle upon their course on the day ap- pointed. Accordingly, when the day arrived the bishop's house was crowded, Tiloukaikt, Camaspelo, Five Crows, Tauitau, and a number of sub-chiefs being present. The contents of Spalding's letter was made known to them by the bishop in presence of his clergy.
The first to speak upon the propositions of the Nez Percés was Camaspelo, who, after admitting the ignorance and blindness which had caused him to despair of the life of his people, professed now to see a way out of the darkness, and approved of the plan of the Nez Percés. Tiloukaikt confessed that the missionaries had given them instructions for their good; but reverted to the death of the chief who accompanied Gray in 1837, and to the death of Elijah in California, endeavoring to show cause for what had been done, and hoping the Americans would pardon him as he was willing to pardon them. Edward, the son of Tiloukaikt brought forward the accusation of
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RESCUE OF THE CAPTIVES.
poisoning, as made by Joe Lewis, and the pretended confession of the dying Rogers to the same effect, at the same time exhibiting a blood-stained Catholic ladder, which he declared had been shown to the Cayuses by Whitman with the remark, "You see this blood ! it is to show you that now, because you have the priests among you, the country is going to be covered with blood;" thus placing the responsibility on the Catholics, where the Protestants were willing to believe it belonged. Edward even drew a touch- ing picture of the distress and bereavement of the captive families, and recounted freely all the circum- stances attending the massacre, only concealing the names of the guilty.
At length all agreed to the propositions of the Nez Percés, if they might be allowed to add a mani- festo setting forth the reasons which influenced them in committing the murders. To this the bishop con- sented. They then stated what we already know, ask- ing, first, "that the Americans may not go to war with the Cayuses; second, that they may forget the lately committed murders, as the Cayuses will forget the murder of the son of the great chief of Walla Walla, committed in California; third, that two or three great men may come up to conclude peace; fourth, that as soon as these great men have arrived and con- cluded peace, they may take with them all the women and children; fifth, they give assurance that they will not harm the Americans before the arrival of these two or three great men; sixth, they ask that Ameri- cans may not travel any more through their country, as their young men might do them harm." 37
This being settled, the bishop wrote his letter to Abernethy, saying that in a moment of despair the Cayuses had committed acts of atrocity grievous to the writer as well as to him. Yet he felt forced to say that by going to war with this tribe, he would without doubt have all the savages in the country
37 Brouliet's Authentic Account, 60-3.
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OGDEN'S ADDRESS.
against him. And would it be for the interest of a young colony to so expose itself? Advice he had none to offer; he simply enclosed Mr. Spalding's letter to himself.
The Cayuses, having been prepared by the council on the Umatilla to treat with the governor of Oregon on the terms laid down above, were not prepared to receive Ogden with the ready consent with which they usually listened to any proposition coming from the fur company. They could see plainly that their hope of securing peace with the Americans depended on retaining Spalding and the captive families as hostages. Nor were they encouraged to hope for peace, as Spalding and Blanchet caused them to believe.
"We have been among you for thirty years," said Ogden, "without the shedding of blood ; we are traders, and of a different nation from the Americans; but recollect, we supply you with ammunition, not to kill Americans, who are of the same color, speak the same " language, and worship the same God as ourselves, and whose cruel fate causes our hearts to bleed. Why do we make you chiefs, if you cannot control your young men ? Besides this wholesale butchery, you have robbed the Americans passing through your country, and have insulted their women. If you allow your young men to govern you, I say you are not men or chiefs, but hermaphrodites who do not deserve the name. Your hot-headed young men plume themselves on their bravery; but let them not deceive themselves. If the Americans begin war, they will have cause to re- pent their rashness; for the war will not end until every man of you is cut off from the face of the earth ! I am aware that many of your people have died; but so have others. It was not Dr Whitman who poisoned them; but God who has commanded that they should die. You have the opportunity to make some repara- tion. I give you only advice, and promise you nothing, should war be declared against you. The company have nothing to do with your quarrel. If you wish
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RESCUE OF THE CAPTIVES.
it, on my return I will see what can be done for you ; but I do not promise to prevent war. Deliver me the prisoners to return to their friends, and I will pay you a ransom, that is all." 38
Such was Ogden's address to the chiefs, contem- plating, as he truthfully said, only the rescue of the prisoners, without altering the relations of the com- pany toward the Indians, whose friendship they had long possessed and did not mean to lose. Neither did he intend to anticipate the action of the American government or people.
The Indian impulse, shifting as the sands of the sea, gave way to Ogden's superior will. With some weak efforts to excuse the disposition to yield, Taui- tau consented to the ransom of the captives. The Hudson's Bay Company's men were married to In- dian women, and were therefore his brothers; he could not refuse.his brother's request. Tiloukaikt, besides the tie of blood, recognized the claim of the company upon him made by allowing their dead to be buried side by side. "Chief!" he cried, "your words are weighty-your hairs are gray. We have known you a long time. You have had an unpleasant journey to this place. I cannot, therefore, keep the families back. I make them over to you, which I would not do to another younger than yourself." Peupeumox- mox remarked that he had nothing to say: the Americans were changeable; but he agreed with Tauitau that the captives should be given up.39 The
38 Or., Spectator, Jan. 20, 1848. Brouillet, in Authentic Account, materially alters the matter and the meaning of Ogden's address, which was published in the Or. Spectator, less than a month after it was delivered, and which I take to be correct in substance and spirit. The amount of falsifying which the clergy on both sides thought necessary in order to avenge sectarian affronts is something astounding to the secular mind.
39 Contradictory opinions have prevailed concerning the complicity of Peu- peumoxmox. Tolmie, in Puget Sound, MS., 28, tells an anecdote that is in his favor. A messenger from Waiilatpu, coming with the news of the massa- cre, was asked by the chief what part he had in it. On his answering that he had killed certain persons, 'Take that fellow,' said Peupeumoxmox, 'and hang him to the nearest tree.' Another statement is, that when the Cayuses. proposed going to war the chief warned them not to make the mistake of considering the Americans cowards because they would not fight when
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NONE TOO SOON.
Nez Percé chiefs, who had not yet returned to Lap- wai, consented to go at once and bring Spalding and the others from that station, should they wish to come; the anxious desire to escape having been thus far carefully concealed from the Nez Percés. Ogden, in his letter to Spalding, which the young chiefs car- ried, advised the missionary to lose no time in join- ing him, and to make no promises to the Nez Percés, being unaware, perhaps, of the promise already given. He wrote immediately to Ogden that he should hasten his departure, and all the more because the young chiefs had assured him that the Cayuses would exterminate them should they learn that the Ameri- cans were intending to call them to account. As nothing was more likely than that such a purpose was harbored by the Americans, he was aware of the value of Ogden's advice to hasten to Walla Walla.
A letter was also despatched from Walla Walla to the Chemakane mission, in which the purpose of Ogden to do nothing which might interfere with the future course of the United States in dealing with the Cay- use murderers was reiterated,40 and in which he ex-
encumbered with their families and property, though robbed and insulted, for he had been in California and seen that when it came to fighting every American was a man; and that if war with them were begun, they would all be killed off. Parrish's Or. Anecdotes, MS., 91-2. There is a similar statement in Rept. of Com. Ind. Aff., 1854, 223-4. But I am of a different opinion about the Walla Walla chief. If he had been against the Cayuses, why did they make his son's death to figure so prominently in their justification ? Why did he not warn Whitman ? Why did he answer Ogden that Americans were changeable, but that he would agree with Tauitau, one of the most bloody of the Cayuses ? Peupeumoxmox was a's wily as his name of Yellow Serpent suggested, as I shall be able to show.
40 This letter was intended to be sent by J. M. Stanley, a young painter travelling in the Indian country to study savage faces, forms, and costumes; but he seems to have gone to Vancouver instead. Stanley was from Ohio, and was at that time known chiefly in the Mississippi Valley. He travelled overland to California by the Santa Fé route, and thence to Oregon on the bark Whiton in July 1847. From Oregon City he went up the Columbia, and visited the Spokane country. Happening to be coming down to Fort Walla Walla at the time of the massacre, he was intercepted by a Cayuse, who de- manded, 'Are you a Hudson's Bay man ?' 'No.' 'An American ?' 'No.' ' What then ?' 'A Buckeye !' This being a new nation to the Cayuse, and one with which he was not at war, the artist was permitted to proceed. When he arrived at the fort he learned the significance of the questions. After Ogden's arrangement with the Cayuses, Stanley returned to the Spo- kane country, where he remained till spring. He was afterward artist to the
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RESCUE OF THE CAPTIVES.
pressed his great anxiety, which had not permitted him to sleep for two nights. This letter was not written until the 31st of December, and the alarm from which Ogden was suffering was occasioned by the fact that he had no sooner received the captives at Walla Walla, by agreement, on the 29th, than rumors were received by the natives of the arrival of the first company of the volunteer riflemen at Walla Walla. The excitement occasioned by this intelli- gence it was feared might cause Spalding's company, which had not yet arrived, to be cut off, and any such resumption of hostilities would certainly be fatal to the success of his efforts for the rescue of even the Waiilatpu captives; for the rage of the savages would permit them to stop at nothing. But to his great relief Spalding arrived on the first of January, accom- panied by a large force of Nez Percés. After spending another night in earnest council with these natives, always more friendly and more tractable than their relatives the Cayuses, Ogden embarked the ransomed company for Vancouver,41 thankful to be able to do so. Nor was he gone a moment to soon. A few hours after his departure fifty Cayuses arrived at the fort with the purpose of taking and killing Spalding, as they had all along declared their intention of doing, should they learn that any but peace commissioners were on the way to their country. It was this deter-
Pacific railway expedition in 1853. Many of his Indian portraits were placed in the Smithsonian Institution, and were destroyed by fire some time later.
41 Repugnant as was the idea of what the white women and girls had suf- fered at the hands of their captors, there were certain touches of feeling exhib- ited. When Miss Bewley was sent for it was yet early morning. According to her testimony, Five Crows prepared a good breakfast for her, with tea, and placed a new blanket and buffalo-robe on the saddle of her horse to make her comfortable, bidding her good-by in a kind manner. Spalding in his his lectures makes Miss Bewley say of her arrival at the fort: 'As we rode up, Governor Ogden and Mr McBean, with several Catholic priests, came out. Mr Ogden took me gently from the horse, as a father, and said, " Thank God, I have got you safe at last ! I had to pay the Indians more for you than for all the other captives, and I feared they would never give you up."' State Rights Democrat, Jan 18, 1868. Stanley relates that a Cayuse who took to wife a girl of 14 years, after murdering her brother and gaining her submission by threats against the lives of her mother and sister, offered Ogden a large price for her, or to forsake his own people and live among the white people. Rept. Com. Ind. Aff., 1854, 219.
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HATEFUL INGRATITUDE.
mination, well understood by all, that decided William Craig to quit his claim on the Clearwater, though on the best of terms with the Nez Percés. Bishop Blan- chet also accompanied Ogden to the Willamette Valley, but Brouillet and Leclaire remained at the Umatilla until the 20th of February, when they too abandoned the country ; and their property left among the Cayuses was destroyed.
The recipients of Ogden's favors were scarcely dis- tributed among the homes of sympathizing friends in the Willamette Valley before the Presbyterians, with Spalding at their head, made an attack on the Hud- son's Bay Company and the Catholic clergy, openly accusing them of conspiring with the Indians to de- stroy the Protestant missions in the interior; every act and word of either being turned into the acts and words of conspirators plotting death and ruin to Amer- words of conspirators plotting death and ruin to Amer- icans and Protestants. All were termed Jesuits, whether Jesuit, secular, or Oblate; and fertile imagi- nations, half crazed by horrors, were sown with sus- picions the foulest and most unnatural. The Spectator being by its by-laws prohibited from entering into sectarian discussions, the Oregon American devoted its columns almost exclusively to the publication of the matter.42 The results of its few weeks of existence continue to appear in the frequent assertions published and uttered even now that the fur company and the Catholic priesthood in Oregon were responsible for the tragedy of Waiilatpu, notwithstanding the facts. The lack of motive on the part of the company,
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