Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/617

 for the sum of $200,000, and $500 a year for their head man for twenty years, Fifty-eight Chiefs signed this treaty. The Flatheads, Kootenais, and Upper Pend d'Oreilles, constituting that Flathead Nation, made a treaty cediiiji: twenty thousand s(|uaiH' miles, reserving a large tract for their exehisive use, and for which they were to reeeive $200,000 and $500 a year for twenty years to their head man. After making all these treaties, buying over fifty million acres of land for less than two cents an acre. Gen. Joel Palmer, who had negotiated all these treaties returned to The Dalles, Oregon, and there induced the Wascoes, Des Chutes, and John Day river Indians on June 25, 1855, to cede their lands amounting to sixteen thousand square miles, for the sum of $150,000. This was the best bargain of all, including as it did all the rich wheat lauds, of Wasco, Sherman, Morrow, Crook, and Wheeler Counties at one cent per acre, and re- serving to the Indians the beautiful Warm Springs Reservation at the east base of Mt. Jefferson. After making these treaties for the acquisition of all these millions of acres of Indian land. General Palmer published a notice in which Governor Isaac I. Stevens of Washington Territory concurred, telling the people that all the country east of the summit of the Cascade Mountains, except the Reservations, was opened to settlement. But the Indians did not so understand it. The great body of the Indians did not approve of what their Chiefs had done. They could not understand how for a sum of money they knew not the value of, the Chiefs could barter away their ancient hunting grounds. And so when the first breath of resistance came they were all ready to repudiate what the Chiefs had done and rush into a wide spread relentless war. So far as money considerations were concerned the exhausted and impoverished Rogue Rivers fared worse than all the other Indians, receiving only about $125,000 in trust for all of their Southern Oregon country.

But they fared better in Reservations; their homes being cast in the mild climate of Lincoln and Yamhill Counties, with very good hunting and trapping grounds and an abundance of fish, with friendly white neighbors with whom they could visit and trade.

In the prosecution of the Yakima war, many Oregonians rendered distin- guished and valuable services; among whom should be named Col. T. R. Cor- nelius, Col. James K. Kelly, Col. Gilliam, Col. James W. Nesmith, Major Sowall Truax, and many others.

This Chapter will be closed with a brief account of the most bitter and sen- sational Indian war in the whole history of the United States, the leader of which was the youngest Chief among all the fighting Indians; and who for mental ability, quick perception, cunning and dare-devil courage was more than equal to any military officer sent out to capture or kill him. Bancroft's account of the Modoc war covers 183 pages of his history of Oregon, and its great length of detail forbids its inclusion in a single volume of the State.

The word "Modoc" means "a stranger" or "hostile stranger;" and that is what in fact and truth the Modoc Indians proved to be to the people of South- east Oregon. From the time some of Fremont's men were killed on Klamath Lake in 1843. down to the making of the first treaty with them in 1864, the Mo- docs were the implacable enemies of the white race. They lived on the border land between California and Oregon, but mostly in Oregon, on Sprague River