Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/772

Rh earnest of good faith on both sides, William Craig as agent should accompany and reside amongst them, with authority to settle all disputes. A school-teacher and a blacksmith were promised them as soon as peace should be restored, with the assurance that no other white man should settle on their lands without their consent; but they were warned not to interfere with the missionaries still at Chemakane, nor to molest immigrants or travellers as they passed through the country, or Americans coming among them to trade, to all of which they readily agreed. After addresses by other commissioners and Colonel Gilliam, tobacco was distributed and an American flag presented; this was followed by an entertainment in the evening, at which the Indians exhibited the war-dance.

All this talk was an irritation to Gilliam, who beheld the guilty Cayuses slipping through his fingers and moving off toward the Nez Percé country while he was forced to confer with their relatives, lingering only near enough to get news of what transpired at the council, but ready to elude him when he should move. On the 8th the Nez Percés were permitted to visit the Cayuse camp twenty-five miles away, in the hope that when, they learned the result of the council they might be induced to surrender the murderers, and on the 9th the army began to move in that direction. After advancing a few miles towards the crossing of the Touchet, they were met by Sticcas, coming from the Cayuse camp with several hundred dollars' worth of mission and emigrant property and money, which was given up in the hope of winning a favorable opinion for those who consented to its restoration.

Sticcas wished to hold a council, to which request Gilliam objected, believing it to be merely an artifice to gain time; but as two of the commissioners present