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216 A History of the Pacific Northwest

troubles began, especially in the newly occupied territory of southern Oregon, where miners and travellers were occasionally murdered, and settlers driven from their lands. In some cases, it must be confessed, the whites were to blame as well as the red men. But the time soon came when the tribes of southern Oregon were ready to go on the war path, and then hundreds of innocent persons suffered the untold horrors which have always marked such savage outbreaks. Men were shot down on the highway or in the field; at dead of night unprotected families were besieged in their cabins, the men killed outright, the women and children enslaved, and homes burned to the ground; sometimes whole settlements were either massacred or driven away. This war, usually called, from the most terrible of the tribes concerned in it, the Rogue River War, began in 185 1. It lasted, with some intermissions, till 1856, when the Indians, being removed to reservations, the settlers were at last secure in the possession of their homes. ^

Other Indian wars. Southern Oregon was not the only section of the Northwest to suffer from the uprising of the natives during this period. On Puget Sound, too, the Indians began to murder white men as early as 1850, though no general outbreak occurred until several years later. In 1854-185 5 General Stevens, as superintendent of Indian affairs, made treaties with

1 In this war General Lane performed most important services for Oregon, both as warrior and peacemaker. The Indians stood in great awe of him.