USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. II > Part 26
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
and give up the murderers for punishment. Leaving Fort Waters, with about two hundred men, he marched to the Tukanon, which was reached on the 18th, where his force was reduced to one hundred and fifty-eight, by the return of Captain English, with the worn-out horses and men, and the property of Dr. Whitman, brought in at that time by 'Sticcas. Information was here received that the Cayuses had divided, Tamsuky having gone eastward to the land of the Red Wolf, on the Snake, and Telau- ka-ikt was preparing to cross the Snake with his Palouse allies.
A plan was then formed to attack the latter at the crossing. Soon after daybreak the troops overtook the Indians, who were thrown into confusion, but at once adopted a ruse. An old man, with well-feigned sincerity, appeared and declared that these were not the hostiles, but the people of Peo Peo Mox Mox; that the Cayuses had gone on, leaving n their haste the cattle upon the hills. The troops were ordered not to fire upon these in the camp, who were assem- bled to the number of four hundred, armed and painted, but to capture the cattle. But on reaching the hills and overlooking the river, they saw the greater part of the stock already crossing, or else safely on the other side, with the Indian drivers urging them rapidly off; and at the same moment the four hundred painted Indians, just left at the camp as friends, were coming on in the rear of the scattered troops, with war whoops and the discharge of their fusees. About five hundred of the stock captured were hastily coralled on the creek, and the Indian fire returned. Some of the Indians were picked off, but most of them remained at a safe distance in the hills, where the bullets of the soldiers could not reach them.
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By this trick the Indians saved the greater part of their stock and drove it safely to the country of the Palouses.
As it was not practicable to cross this river in the presence of such a large hostile force it was decided to return with the cattle and horses captured at the Walla Walla. The retreat was therefore begun, a rear guard keeping up the fight with the pursuing Indians. Late in the afternoon camp was made on a small stream, but during the entire night a constant fire was kept up and the situation seemed very critical. The captured stock was turned loose, and at daybreak the retreat was resumed, the rear guard still fighting. It was necessary to cross the beautiful but swift Touchet, and as this stream was approached, the Indians formed the bold design of seiz- ing the crossing before the Americans arrived, and thus block- ing their retreat. By urging their horses to their utmost speed, a considerable force of the braves gained the brush at the fords before the Americans. This unexpected dash commanded the admiration even of the troops who were thus jeopardized, Captain Maxon reporting that the history of savage warfare furnished few instances of greater Indian prowess and daring. The Americans were at first thrown into confusion, all their fighting hitherto having been at the rear, and there was positive danger for a few moments of a general rout and massacre. But a few young men at the most vulnerable point, taking matters in their own hands, encountered the Indians, rolling them back, and causing a mêlée rather than a battle. For almost an hour the struggle lasted. The Indians, although having every advantage, were unable to concentrate, and fought in their old savage style, each for himself, relying rather on noise and threats, than careful marksmanship. Many of them were wounded, and a number were laid on the field, but quickly borne away.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
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359
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
The river was then crossed safely, and Walla Walla was reached on the 16th.
This retreat might have been turned into a defeat if the Indians had known how to take advantage of it. They were, however, repulsed with loss at the Touchet, and fled to the Snake. Telau-ka-ikt and his band were driven across that river, and the Palouses lost faith in him, when unable to hold his own country. From the large numbers of Indians present in this battle, it was manifest that many were Walla Wallas and Palouses. But these seem to have dwindled away after the fight. The effect therefore was that of a victory to the Americans. It has been said that there was a large band of Nez Perces in the vicinity, at the battle of the Tukanon, or Touchet; but they remained entirely friendly with the Americans. At this place, and in many others during the winter, if these Indians had decided to become hostile, it is hardly possible that Gilliam's small command could have survived.
After reaching Fort Waters, on the Walla Walla, a council of war was held, and it was decided that about one hundred and fifty men should move down the Columbia to Fort Was- copam, at the Dalles, replenish their provisions, and confer with the governor. Without more men, ammunition and equipment it was useless to follow the bands of the Cayuses, who might at any battle be strongly reënforced by renegades, who would at once become friendly if the Americans won, or hostile if they were defeated. On the way Colonel Gilliam met his death. This was entirely accidental, but was none the less to be lamented. In attempting to draw a lariat rope from a wagon, or as was said by some, while an aide, or teamster called "California" was removing some mats at the front, a loaded gun was discharged, the
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
bullet, or as some accounts say, the ramrod which had been carelessly left in the barrel, striking him in the forehead, causing instant death.
After this the struggle took the usual course of Indian wars. Troops were kept in the field under the general com- mand of Colonel Waters and Colonel Lee, the latter a very able and discreet officer. As spring opened, the Cayuses were chased from one section of country to another. One company followed their trail into the land of the Red Wolf, and the country of the Nez Perces, but found no hostiles. Some scattered parties were also pursued along the Snake River into the Grand Ronde country. Occasionally there was some skirmishing, but no severe fighting. The commis- sioners continued to make efforts to negotiate for the surrender of the murderers, but always without success, and the soldiers more and more blamed them for defeating their efforts to bring on a final and decisive battle. But the Cayuses were more nearly exhausted than the soldiers supposed. The mark of Cain was upon them. None of their old neighbors would give them aid, or lend them encouragement. Their own resources were exhausted. They were indeed no longer a tribe. Broken up into small bands, hunted by the soldiers, more and more coldly received by their old-time neighbors among whom they sought refuge, they finally ceased to offer any resistance that was worthy of the name of war. The other tribes began to understand that the murderers alone were wanted, and these wretches who had wantonly slaughtered those who had done so much for them, were left without either friends or defenders. They managed to retain their liberty nearly two years longer, but were finally surrendered to the government at Oregon City in the spring of 1850.
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
As the result of the massacre and the war which followed it, the Cayuse tribe ceased to be. From being what Dr. McLoughlin had described it to Whitman to be, the manliest and best of all the Indian tribes east of the mountains, it became in a few months, a handful of scattered fugitives, seeking shelter where none were willing to give it. Its crimes were abhorred even by savages. Its language ceased to be spoken, and even its very name ceased to be used, except to describe a very inferior kind of horse.
There was another result which was more to be regretted. The missionaries were compelled to leave that part of the country, and they were not able to return, nor were white settlers permitted to make their homes there until ten years later.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE BOUNDARY FIXED.
T HE Ashburton treaty was not received with much more favor in England than it had been in America. The English people did not yet take so much interest in the boundary question as those in America did, but English statesmen were keenly alive to the importance of it. There were two parties of them; one regarded the treaty as a capitulation, but Mr. Peel and the other members of his government were able to defend it as eminently fair and just, and reasonably satisfactory to British interests. They were disappointed at Lord Ash- burton's failure to settle the entire boundary dispute, though the fault was not his but that of the instructions which they had given him, and this fact made the situation all the more embarrassing, because it was evident that every hour that the settlement was postponed their difficulties would be increased, and further concessions on their part would more . certainly have to be made.
By the time the treaty reached London and was laid before Parliament it had been ratified by the Senate. The debates in that body had also been published; the restrictions of secrecy having been removed, and the debates on the Linn bill which had preceded and followed the considerations of the treaty, were also published; so that the British politi- cians of all classes were as well informed of the state of feeling in the United States, in regard to the boundary question, as the members of the cabinet themselves were. These debates did not escape comment while the treaty was under con- sideration in Parliament. Lord Palmerston, who had been secretary of foreign affairs in the preceding government, and was then leader of the opposition in the House of Com- mons, declared that if the Linn bill should pass, it would be equivalent to a declaration of war, as it would amount
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
to an invasion and seizure of the territory in dispute, by virtue of a decree made by one of the parties in its own favor. Mr. Blewitt said that one of the speeches made in the Senate must be regarded as an insult to the British nation, while Mr. Macaulay declared that the passage of the Linn bill showed a highly excited condition of the public mind in the United States.
But Mr. Peel was able to reassure the House, by asserting that if the bill had passed both houses of Congress, it would not have received the sanction of the executive, as the presi- dent had given assurance of his anxiety to settle the question by negotiation. This statement was confirmed by Presi- dent Tyler's message, sent to Congress at the opening of its session in the following December.
But Mr. Peel and his associates were admonished by their knowledge of what had been going on in the United States for several years previously, to make haste with their negotiations, if they did not desire to yield more than they had previously offered, or than the United States had yet demanded. They were aware that societies had been form- ing in various Eastern States for several years past, to en- courage emigration to Oregon; that petitions had been sent to Congress by these societies, and by numerous indi- viduals, and that resolutions had been passed by various State legislatures, urging Congress to give the required notice to terminate the joint occupation convention, and to make provision to take immediate possession of the disputed territory. They were aware also that very efficient means had been taken by the Tyler administration, and by that which preceded it, to collect information in regard to the value and importance of the disputed territory to the United States, and they were familiar with the information
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
contained in the reports of Mr. Slacum, Commodore Wilkes and Captain Fremont. They knew, too, that Congress had asked for and secured information as to the practicabil- ity of establishing fortified posts along the Oregon trail, and at the mouth of the Columbia River, and more than all they knew that the American people were rapidly becom- ing aroused, and that emigrants were now journeying to the Oregon country in steadily increasing numbers. They were doubtless informed that at the very time that the Ash- burton treaty was under consideration in Parliament, nearly a thousand settlers, the largest immigration that had ever crossed the plains, were then on their way from the Missouri to the Columbia. When these settlers should arrive in Oregon they would greatly strengthen the claim of the United States to that territory. They and those who would soon follow them, might not be contented, as some of them were not, to remain south of the Columbia River, as their pred- ecessors had done, and if they should be given time to invade the country northward, it might be difficult, in future nego- tiations, to get even as favorable a line as that of the 49th parallel, by negotiation.
As early as 1843, as Dr. McLoughlin has informed us, he notified the officers of his company in London that their interests on the Pacific were in need of protection from the British government. The government itself was doubtless already aware of this. Through that excellent establish- ment, the British Board of Trade, it had been kept thoroughly informed of all the conditions affecting British interests in that country as well as every other. There had always been a close relation between this branch of the government and the Hudson's Bay Company, and the colonial office was well informed, not only in regard to the arrival of American
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
emigrants on the Columbia, but of the chief factor's treat- ment of them. His conduct had not escaped criticism by some of the directors of the Company. It had possibly been viewed with some concern by the colonial office, since it was evident that the Company, under the chief factor's management, was no longer holding the country against all competitors as formerly-for the settlers, while not com- peting or intending to compete with the Company in the fur trade, were still its most dangerous competitors for possession of the country.
President Tyler noticed the increase of American citizens in Oregon in his message to Congress in December 1843, in which he renewed the assurance previously given, that every possibly means would be used to bring the negotiation of a boundary treaty to a speedy termination, and he strongly recommended the establishment of military posts at various points on the road to the Columbia. During that session of Congress more petitions and resolutions from State legis- latures were received than ever before, all urging the govern- ment to adopt measures for the immediate establishment of the right of the United States to the country beyond the Rocky Mountains, and several bills were introduced, all having the same object in view, though neither of them was passed by either house. Of these some were nearly identical with the Linn bill, while others provided that notice should be immediately given to the British government, of the intention of the United States to terminate the convention of 1827 in the manner provided by the instrument itself.
During this same session a treaty, which had been con- cluded between the president of the United States and the government of Texas, in April 1844, for the annexation of the latter republic to the United States, was sent to the Senate
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
where, after some debate, it was rejected. Its rejection caused a great deal of excitement throughout the Union, especially in the Southern States, where it was suspected that the rejection had been brought about by the influence of England and France, the former opposing it because of its determined resistance to the spread of slavery, and the latter in support of the theory of M. Guizot, that a balance of power, similar to that already existing in Europe, ought to be established in America.
It was while this treaty was under consideration in the Senate, and while the supposed interference of Great Britain in the Texas matter was receiving some attention both in Congress and out of it, that the democratic convention which nominated Mr. Polk for the presidency, met at Baltimore and declared that "our title to the whole of the territory of Oregon is clear and unquestionable; that no portion of the same ought to be ceded to England or any other power; and that the reoccupation of Oregon, and the reannexation of Texas* at the earliest practicable period, are great American measures which this convention recommends to the cordial support of the democracy of the Union."
Long before the Baltimore convention met, a new British plenipotentiary had been dispatched to the United States, to open negotiations for the settlement of the Oregon bound- ary. Mr. Pakenham arrived at Washington in February 1844, and the negotiations were begun, but were almost immediately interrupted by the death of Mr. A. P. Upshur, then secretary of state in Mr. Tyler's cabinet, who was killed
* It was claimed at this time that Texas had been carelessly yielded to Spain by the Monroe administration, through the Florida treaty of 1819; that all of that country, at least as far west as the Rio Bravo, belonged to the United States as a part of the Louisiana territory.
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by the explosion of a cannon on board the steam frigate Princeton, on the 28th of that month, during an excursion down the Potomac. Mr. John C. Calhoun was, in due course, appointed as Mr. Upshur's successor, and the negotia- tion was renewed in the following August. Mr. Pakenham again presented the proposition made by his govern- ment, to Mr. Gallatin in 1826, to make a partition of the territory in dispute by a line drawn from the Rocky Moun- tains along the 49th parallel, west to McGillivray's River, and thence down that stream and down the Columbia to the ocean; all south and east of which line, as well as a detached territory lying west of Hoods Canal and north of Gray's Harbor, were to belong to the United States, and the remainder to Great Britain, the navigation of the Columbia to be free to both parties. This proposition was immediately rejected. It was then proposed to render free to the United States any ports which their government might desire, either on the mainland or on Vancouver's Island, south of the 49th parallel. This proposition was also rejected. Mr. Calhoun then presented another statement in writing, of the claims of the United States to the whole territory drained by the Columbia River. These propositions were discussed by the plenipotentiaries, in several letters, in which each en- deavored to establish the correctness of his views by refer- ences to history, to treaties and to the general law of nations.
This correspondence Mr. Pakenham submitted to his government, by whose instructions he proposed, on the 15th of January 1845, that the whole matter might be submitted to arbitration, but this also was declined by the president, who expressed the hope that a more speedy and satisfactory adjustment might be attained by negotiation, and there the business rested for a time.
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
In his message to Congress in December of that year, President Tyler stated that negotiations had been formally begun, and were still pending, for the adjustment of the Oregon boundary. The report of the secretary of war, which accompanied the message, contained a recommenda- tion that a territorial government be established for all that region of territory traversed by the river Platte, between the States of Missouri and Arkansas on the east, and the Rocky Mountains on the west, and for the formation of military posts for the protection of a road between the States and Oregon and California. Agreeable to this recommen- dation bills were introduced in the House of Representatives, to establish a territorial government for the region which was to be called Nebraska, and for extending the jurisdic- tion of its courts over Oregon, but this bill was not debated during the session. Another bill for the immediate occupa- tion of Oregon, under a territorial government, and for abro- gating the convention of 1827 in the manner provided, passed the House of Representatives but was not considered by the Senate.
On the 19th of February 1845 the president informed Congress, by message, that favorable progress had been made in the negotiation with Great Britain, and that there was hope that it might be speedily terminated. On the night of March 3, 1845, during the last hours of the session, a joint resolution passed both houses, providing for the annexation of Texas. This the president immediately approved. The governments of Great Britain and France made no protest against this act, though much dissatis- faction with it was expressed in both countries.
In his inaugural address on March 4, 1845, President Polk declared that it would be his duty to maintain the title of
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the United States to the territory beyond the Rocky Moun- tains which, in the language of the Baltimore convention, he declared to be "clear and unquestionable," though he at the same time engaged sacredly to respect all obligations imposed by treaties. This declaration, modified as it was, soon caused him and his administration no little embarrass- ment. It was seized upon by the opposition to the Peel ministry in Parliament as a good basis for attack, and on the 4th of April Lord Clarendon in the House of Peers declared that the president, in his inaugural, had "evinced a studied neglect of that courtesy and deferential language usually observed by governments, in treating on international affairs," and he hoped that the ministers would not shrink from vindicating the honor of the nation. In the Commons both Lord John Russel and Lord Palmerston made speeches on the subject. The latter very severely arraigned the ministry for the settlement they had made of the northeast boundary, and he expressed his apprehension "that another Ashburton capitulation" was about to be concluded with regard to the Oregon boundary. Mr. Peel replied, declaring in unequivocal languagethe intention of his government to maintain the rights of Great Britain in Oregon, which he considered to be "clear and unquestionable."
This debate in Parliament aroused almost as much interest in Great Britain, on the Oregon question, as had for some time existed in America. Thousands of persons in both countries, who had never before paid very much attention to the matter, now began to inquire about it, and to inform themselves in particular with reference to the claims of both nations. In America the "clear and unquestionable" rights of the republic were declared to cover all the territory as far north as 54° 40', while in England the offer of the
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