Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/609

Rh the whites. But nature was against them as well as their own want of training and discipline. The wide spread arid plains of Eastern Oregon and Washington kept them separated in the summer season, and the snowy heights of the Cascade Mountains held them back from any attack on the Willamette valley in the winter season save by the Columbia Pass. But so profound was the danger supposed to be that preparations were made throughout the Willamette Valley for defense against possible Indian raids. It is said that the Methodists on Tualatin Plains, of Washington County, constructed a stockade around their church and prepared for defense of their families inside of the pickets. That there were good grounds for alarm there can be no doubt. There were during the years of 1854–5 and 6 at different times as many as four thousand Indians on the war path in different parts of the country at the same time. To have so controlled that large force of Indian desperadoes so they could do no harm would have required a military force of ten thousand soldiers so distributed that they could intercept or strike a marauding band of Indians in any part of Oregon, Washington or Idaho. But as the entire military forces of volunteers and regulars in the entire Oregon country never exceeded fifteen hundred men in actual service, the result was the abandonment of the outlying settlements and concentrating the settlers at points where they could be protected. Running battles between white and Indians were frequent events in the Eastern Oregon Country, some of them covering four days. This was possible in the open and level regions of Eastern Oregon, Washington and Idaho, and wholly impossible in the mountainous regions of Southern Oregon. And to show how completely the Indians had possession of the whole country east of the Cascade mountains, the attack on the people at the Cascades, where the towns of Stephenson and Cascades Locks are now located, within forty miles of the City of Portland, the following account of that attack is here by Lawrence W. Coe, who was an eye witness of the exciting scenes. In a letter to Putnam Bradford, who was at that time constructing the first portage railroad at the Cascades, Mr. Coe writes:

"On Wednesday, March 26, 1856, at about 8:30 A. M. the men had gone to their work on the two bridges of the new railway, mostly on the bridge near Bush's house, the Yakimas came down on us. There was a line of them from Mill Creek above us to the big point at the head of the falls, firing simultaneously on the men ; and the first notice we had of them was the bullets and the crack of their guns. Of our men, at the first fire, one was killed, and several wounded. Our men on seeing the Indians all ran for our store, through a shower of bullets, except three who stalled down stream for the middle blockhouse, distant one and a half miles. Bush and his family also ran into our store, leaving his house vacant. The Watkins family came to the store after a Dutch boy, who was lame from a cut in the foot,—had been shot in their house. Watkins, Finlay and Baily were at work on the new warehouse on the island, around which the water was now high enough to run about three feet deep under the bridges. There was grand confusion in the store at first; and Sinclair, of Walla Walla, going to the railroad door to look out, was shot from the bank above the store and instantly killed. Some of us commenced getting the guns and rifles, which were ready loaded and behind the counter. Fortunately, about an hour before, there had been left with us for transportation below, nine United States gov-