USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. IV > Part 3
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It was now so evident that Wool's policy was a failure, and that there would be no peace until the Indians were made to feel the power of the government, that reinforce- ments were hurried up from California as soon as possible, and Colonel Wright himself took the field. Wright was a capable soldier when fighting was to be done, and now that fighting could no longer be postponed or avoided, he inau- gurated a campaign that even Stevens himself would not have pushed with more vigor; it is even probable, if not absolutely certain, that he would have used the rope less frequently, upon those who fell into his hands after the actual fighting was over.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
General Clarke visited the Columbia in June, when it was arranged that Wright's force, now increased by a large reinforcement from the 3d artillery, should be divided, about 300 men being sent to Fort Simcoe, and the remainder to Walla Walla, whence they would move into the Indian country. By August 7th, the main body, composed of about 700 men, was ready to take the field, and the advance guard, consisting of one company of dragoons and six com- panies of artillery, with two twelve-pounder howitzers, and two six-pounder guns, under Major Keyes, started out in much the same direction that Steptoe had taken in May, though aiming to cross the Snake at the confluence of the Tucannon. At that point Fort Taylor, so named in honor of Captain Taylor, who was killed in Steptoe's battle, was built as a supply station. Here a Catholic priest, who had long lived among these Indians, was sent to inform them of the terms on which peace would be made with them, but they sent back the insulting reply that the soldiers were always talking of war, but never making it, and they warned Keyes that if his men ever crossed Snake River none of them would return. The old chiefs said they were now going to fight till they died; they had plenty of arms, ammunition and provisions; when their ammunition gave out they would poison their arrows and fight with them.
On the 18th Wright came up with the remainder of his command, the pack train, and about thirty friendly Nez Perce warriors, who were placed under command of Lieu- tenant Mullan. On the 25th the Snake River was crossed and the whole force marched northward. Near the close of the fifth day's march small bands of Indians were seen, but none attempted to molest the column. They were evidently scouting parties, and their movements indicated
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
that the main body of the hostiles was not very far away. The advance was continued on the day following, and more scouting parties were seen, with which shots were exchanged by the advance guard.
The command was now only about twenty miles south of the Spokane River, in a gently rolling country, with plenty of grass and but little timber. On the morning of September Ist, Indians were found to be watching the camp from the tops of the surrounding hills, in such numbers that the dragoons and four companies were ordered out to disperse them, while a strong guard was left to defend the 400 mules of the pack train, and the baggage. After advancing about a mile, and dislodging the Indians from a high ridge which they ascended, the soldiers found themselves overlooking four lakes, a large one just below them at the foot of the hill, and three smaller ones beyond, all bordered with rocky shores, which were fringed with stunted pines. Between these lakes, and beyond them to the northeast, was a wide plain, and beyond were grassy hills, one succeeding another for many miles, while in the distance a range of mountains could be dimly seen.
"On the plain below us," says Lieutenant Kip, "we saw the enemy. Every spot seemed alive with the wild warriors we had come so far to meet. They were in the pines, on the edge of the lakes, in the ravines and gullies, on the opposite hillsides, and swarming on the plains. They seemed to cover the country for some two miles. Mounted on their fleet, hardy horses, the crowd swayed back and forth, brandishing their weapons, shouting their cries, and keeping up a strong defiance. Most of them were armed with Hudson's Bay muskets, while others had bows and arrows, and long lances." All were in their war paint, and
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
gaily bedecked with feathers, and other articles of Indian finery. Many of their horses were painted also, and these they rode furiously over the prairie, sometimes as if intend- ing to make a charge on the troops, and again wheeling away over the plain as if they had no other object in view than to exhaust the poor animals, before the battle should begin.
The artillery and infantry companies were deployed and advanced down the hill, driving the Indians before them into the plains, where the dragoons could act against them. Ati the same time the howitzer battery, supported by an infantry company, was sent to the right to drive them out from their hiding places among the pines. A few shots from the howit- zers soon sent them skurrying toward the rear.
The soldiers of the main column moved down the hill in perfect order, and, when within about six hundred yards of the savages, began to make them acquainted, for the first time, with minnie bullets and long-range rifles. The rein- forcements sent up from California were armed with these weapons, something so superior to the guns heretofore used by our soldiers, as to make a marked improvement in their efficiency. The hostiles were astounded at their great range. As they would come charging forward, in full con- fidence, to what had formerly been a safe distance, first one and then another, and then half a dozen or more would fall from their horses. Then some of the riderless horses would dash wildly about the field, or fall dead or disabled, showing that the new bullets were taking effect on them as well as upon their riders. The soldiers advanced steadily, firing regularly as they advanced, and the whole frantic mass of savages soon turned and ran for the hills. This was the time for the dragoons to begin their work. They had
INDIAN BATTLEGROUNDS.
This map of western Washington is copied, by per- mission, from the life of General Isaac I. Stevens, by his son, Hazard Stevens.
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
advanced with the rest of the column, using their guns as the other soldiers had used theirs, their horses being led closely behind them. At the order of Major Grier each dragoon mounted his horse, and charged at a gallop. "Tay- lor's and Gaston's companies were there, burning for revenge," says Kip, "and soon they were upon them. We saw the flash of their sabers as they cut them down. Lieu- tenant Davidson shot one warrior from his saddle as they charged up, and Lieutenant Gregg clove the skull of another."
The Indians were soon driven from the plain, and took refuge in the clumps of timber on the hills. Here they were for a moment safe from the dragoons, whose horses had suffered too much on the march to be able to stand much hard riding. The infantry and the howitzers completed the matter, and the savages were soon in full retreat. From the crest of the hill, which in the beginning had formed the background of the battlefield, the soldiers saw only a few small parties, which had apparently been left behind to see how rapidly and by how many they would be followed, but a few well-timed shells soon dispersed these. At the end of four hours after the troops left their camp, not an Indian could be seen.
The plain was strewn with their guns, bows, arrows, lances and blankets, and many of their horses, too, had been left behind, which the soldiers lost no time in securing. But none of the Indians dead or wounded were left behind. The soldiers were confident, however, that seventeen had been killed, and that many more had been wounded. Later it was learned that a brother-in-law of Garry, the educated chief of the Spokanes, had been killed. Strange to say, not a soldier had been hurt, and not an animal had been lost, although one horse had been slightly wounded.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
The Indians made but one other stand after this battle of the Four Lakes. After resting three days, during which the friendly Nez Perces scouted the country in all directions, finding no hostiles, but having learned the direction they had taken, Wright again set his column in motion. On September 5th, when some fifteen or twenty miles below the falls of the Spokane River, Indians were seen hovering about the flanks of the little army, and their numbers rapidly increased. As the troops emerged upon a considerable stretch of prairie they found that the enemy had set the grass on fire, and, as the wind was blowing strongly in their faces, they were nearly blinded by the smoke as well as threatened by the flames. While struggling with this difficulty, the Indians opened fire on them. The pack train was now hurried up, and the soldiers, forming a line about it, prepared to defend it from both fire and the enemy. As at Four Lakes the Indians conducted themselves as if frantic. They are always hard riders, and show little mercy for their horses, but now they seemed determined to destroy them. Massing on a hill four or five hundred feet high, and sloping toward the troops at an angle of forty-five degrees, they forced their horses down it at a gallop, and then wheeled and raced up it again, yelling the while like so many furies, until their poor animals were exhausted. In all this they of course accomplished nothing except to maim and destroy the poor brutes which might have been of some service to them in the battle. But exhibitions of this kind seem always to have been an unfailing part of Indian warfare.
By a well-ordered charge, through the blazing grass, the soldiers easily drove the savages in their front to take refuge in the timber, from which a few shells from the howitzers in turn dislodged them. Then another charge was made.
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By this process they were driven from cover to cover, from behind trees and rocks, from ravines and depressions in the prairie, for a distance of three or four miles, until they finally emerged upon Spokane plain, where Major Grier and Lieu- tenant Pender, with the dragoons, swept them in masses before them. In this part of the battle a chief was killed, upon the saddle of whose horse was found a pistol used by Lieutenant Gaston when he was killed in Steptoe's fight.
So the battle continued, the Indians occasionally attempt- ing a rally, but always being put to flight, either by a charge of the infantry or the dragoons. A running fight was kept up for a distance of about fourteen miles. Finally the Indians were utterly routed, and the tired soldiers made their camp on the bank of the Spokane River, about six miles below the falls. They had marched twenty-five miles during the day, and had been fighting most of the time with- out water, save what they carried in their canteens. They now refreshed themselves at the river with a day's rest, during which they gathered some spoil from the enemy, which had been abandoned during the battle. But they found none of his killed or wounded. They knew however, that some had been killed, for some had been sabered by the dragoons, and others had been seen to fall before the well-aimed bullets of the foot-soldiers, and the shells from the howitzers.
On the 7th camp was moved up the river, over the site of the present city of Spokane, to a point a short distance above the falls. Here Garry came to see Colonel Wright, to say that he had always been opposed to fighting, but had been unable to control his people, as many of the other chiefs were against him. Wright told him he had not come to ask for peace, but to fight. He had now fought two battles, without losing a man, or an animal, and was prepared
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
to fight still longer if the Indians wished. "When you are tired of war, you must come with your arms, and your women and children, and lay them at my feet. I will then tell you the terms upon which peace will be made. If you do not do this, war will be made on you this year, and next year, until your nations shall be exterminated."*
If Wright had talked to the Indians in this way at the crossing of the Nachess two years earlier, and acted then as he had been acting for a week past, the war would have been ended with very little trouble, Steptoe's gallant men and officers would not have been slaughtered, as they were, and the lives of many Indians, who had since died on the battlefield, or been shot, or were still to be shot or hanged for the crime they had committed, would have been spared. Garnett had recently shot ten of the Yakimas, whom he had taken prisoners in the country, above Fort Simcoe, and two others had been shot while attempting to escape from the soldiers. Wright himself was about to begin a series of executions which was not to end until fifteen victims had ascended the gallows. One of these came into his camp on the evening of September 7th, with Chief Polotkin of the Spokanes, and several other Indians, to talk of peace. He was suspected of having recently been present at the murder of two miners on their way to Colvile. He was detained, and on the following evening was summarily tried and hanged.
On the 8th Wright moved a few miles further up the river, and during the day captured about 800 horses belonging to Chief Tilkoax of the Palouses. All these, together with about 100 others subsequently captured, except a few used to replace some disabled animals belonging to the command, were shot. Nothing disables the Indians in a hostile country
* Colonel Wright's report, dated September 9, 1858.
i
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
so much as to deprive them of their horses, and these were killed because it was impossible to care for them. The soldiers were nearly two whole days in completing their destruction. Sometimes shooting them singly, and some- times firing volleys into the corrals by which they were slaughtered by dozens.
On the 17th Wright held a council with the Cœur d'Alenes, in which he told them he would make peace only if they would deliver up to him those who had begun the attack on Steptoe, contrary to the orders of their chiefs; also all the property in their possession which they had captured from Steptoe's command, or from other white people; allow all white people to travel through their country unmolested in future, and give him one chief and four warriors, with their families, to be held as hostages for their good be- havior. To these terms the Indians consented. In re- porting this council to headquarters Wright wrote: "They know us; they have felt our power, and I have full faith that the Cœur d'Alenes will henceforth be our staunch friends."
On the 23d a council with the Spokanes was held, and in the evening Owhi presented himself at Wright's camp, and was immediately seized and put in irons. Wright had not seen him since that day in May, two years before, when he visited his camp on the Nachess, and promised to bring in all the Yakimas within a few days, and make a lasting peace. He now made sure that the old rascal would not again deceive him, and besides he was particularly anxious to get possession of his son, Kwalchen, the murderer of Bolon, and thought the surest way to do this was to detain the father, and send word to the son that he would be hanged if he did not forthwith appear.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
The next day, about 9 o'clock, two gaily dressed warriors and a squaw, followed by an Indian hunchback, rode boldly into the camp and directly to Colonel Wright's tent. All wore a great deal of scarlet, and the squaw was bedecked with two highly ornamental scarfs, passing over the left shoulder and under the right arm, while on the saddle in front she carried a long lance, the handle of which was wound with strings of many colored beads. The two braves carried rifles, and one had a highly ornamented tomahawk. This was Kwalchen the much-wanted, and he and those with him were immediately seized. "He came to me at 9 o'clock this morning," says Colonel Wright in his report, "and at 9:15 he was hung.' " So perished the murderer of Bolon.
The command was now in the neighborhood of the Palouse : River, and on the 24th the remains of those killed in Step- toe's fight were recovered; those of the soldiers were buried in the field, while the bones of Captain Taylor and Lieu- tenant Gaston were conveyed to Fort Walla Walla, where they were buried with military honors. On the evening of that day fifteen members of the Palouse tribe, found in the neighborhood of the camp, were seized, and six of them were ? promptly hanged.
A few days later, while the command, with its prisoners and hostages, was crossing a small stream south of Snake River, Owhi and Lieutenant Morgan, who were riding to- gether, became separated by a short distance from the com- mand, and the old warrior made a dash for liberty. Three shots from the officer's revolver brought him to the ground, and the rifle of a soldier ended his life.
On September 30th, Colonel Wright could report that the war was closed, as it now really was. After three years of fruitless maneuvering and proclaiming of peace, peace when
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
there was no peace, the regulars had made a vigorous cam- paign of little more than thirty days' duration, which had made the hostiles feel the power of the government, and compelled them to deliver up the murderers they were keep- ing in hiding, for the punishment they had deserved. All this Stevens had insisted upon from the first as necessary, before a lasting peace would ensue. It was now done, and at much greater cost to the government, to the settlers, to the army and to the Indians, than would have been necessary but for Wool's mistaken policy. Owhi and Kwalchen, Peo-peo-mox-mox, Kanasket, Leschi and Quiemuth, and many of their bravest warriors were dead; Kam-i-ah-kan and his brother Skloom had fled across the border into British Columbia never to return. The treaties which Stevens had made, which the Indians had broken, and the atification of which Wool, and subsequently Clarke, had pposed, were now confirmed, and time has demonstrated hat their faults, where they were at fault, were generally n favor of the Indians.
1
CHAPTER L. FRASER RIVER AND SAN JUAN.
1385638
T WO events turned the attention of the people of Washington Territory, and finally of the whole country, sharply toward the northwestern bound- ary, in 1858 and 1859-the discovery of gold in the Fraser River, and the killing of a pig on San Juan Island. Ordinarily the killing of a pig is not a matter of much consequence, but the killing of this one led to military and naval demonstrations on a considerable scale, and for a few weeks threatened to involve two great countries in war.
The first announcement that gold had been found on Fraser River appears to have been made in a proclamation by Governor Douglass, of Vancouver Island, warning all miners and prospectors to keep out of the district, or pay a fee of 21 shilling a month to the British crown. This proclamation was dated December 28, 1857, and it was published in the "Pioneer and Democrat" at Olympia, by order of Dr. Tolmie. For several weeks it attracted no attention. It was not until the issue of March 5th that the editor of that paper made any reference to it.
Then he informed his readers that it was reported that miners on the Fraser were making from $25 to $50 per day, and that Indian women were panning out $10 to $12. The next week he announced that two parties had started for the mines from Bellingham Bay, and the week following that many of the men employed in Colonel Fitzhugh's coal-mines had gone to hunt for gold. By the middle of April most of the lumber mills in the lower Sound were beginning to be crippled by the desertion of their men. The crews of several ships and fifteen soldiers from Fort Steilacoom had also left for the mines, and desertions from Forts Townsend and Bellingham were becoming frequent.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
None of these articles contained much information of value. There was indeed but little information to be had. The season was early; the rivers everywhere along the coast were at flood depth from the winter rains, and but little mining or prospecting was possible. Few if any Americans had yet gone to the new diggings, and all the information received from the new district had been brought out by the Hudson's Bay employees who had made the discovery.
But reports of a new gold discovery anywhere on the coast, in those days, was sure to be investigated very soon by some enterprising American prospector. News of his success, if he succeeded, was equally sure to find its way to the public promptly. Some of the earliest information of this kind from Fraser River found its way to the office of the Puget Sound "Herald," published at Steilacoom. Affleck and Gunn had established the Puget Sound "Courier" in that place in 1855, but it had suspended in 1857, and subsequently Lafayette Balch, while in San Francisco, had met Charles Prosch, and arranged with him to go to his town and try a new venture in the newspaper way. Prosch established the "Herald," and had scarcely got well started, when he was fortunate enough to get some news from the goldfields that put his paper in great demand. Copies sent to San Francisco sold on the wharf at $1 each. Those of succeed- ing weeks sold at $5 each, and when these were exhausted galley-proofs of the mining news, which had been sent because no more copies of the paper could be got off the press, sold as readily at the same price. The San Francisco "Herald" of April 25th said the excitement in California fully equaled that in the Atlantic States over the early news of gold dis- coveries in California. By the middle of May, steamers were bringing hundreds of goldhunters from California
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
and other coast points to Victoria and Whatcom. On May 20th, the steamer Panama landed 500 men at Whatcom. A month later 1,800 were landed within three days at the same place, besides 1,000 at Victoria. By the Ist of July four additional steamers had landed 3,000 more, and sailing ships were discharging whole cargoes of groceries, provisions, clothing and miners' tools, brought up from San Francisco by merchants who had now established themselves in tents on the shores of Bellingham Bay, where a city of ten thou- sand people, according to the estimates of the time, had sprung up as if by magic. On May 23d, there were eleven general stores, two butcher shops, three bakeries and two restaurants in the place, where three weeks earlier there had been nothing more than a saw mill, a coalmine and a few settlers' cabins. During the six weeks between May 19th and July Ist, as the records in the customhouse at Victoria show, 19 steamships, 9 sailing ships, and 14 other vessels entered at that port, with 6,133 passengers. Ships from various points also brought passengers to Port Town- send, Seattle and Olympia, who subsequently found their way by various routes to or toward the new El Dorado. Some crossed the mountains by the Nachess and Snoqual- mie passes. Some went up the Columbia from Portland, and then crossed the country northward. Many of these had trouble with the Indians, and the remainder encountered almost numberless difficulties in their attempts to penetrate through the unexplored passes of the mountains.
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