Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/791

740 which time he had no doubt the United States government would be extended over it.

By the same reasoning which permitted settlers to occupy and claim the Cayuse country, because the people had not given up certain individuals whom the law regarded as criminals, the lands of the Nez Percés, Walla Wallas, and Palouses could have been seized, for they too had sheltered the criminals; and settlement being once begun in the Indian territory east of the mountains, it would not stop at imaginary lines as Abernethy must have known. It was no secret that the real origin of the disorders in the upper country was the fear of the Indians that the white people who were every year coming from the east meant to take away their country by settlement, or that Whitman had latterly wished to prevent colonization until the United States should make treaties for that reason. In killing Whitman the savages had ignorantly broken down the wall between themselves and the Americans, bringing upon themselves the very thing they dreaded; the governor and the superintendent of Indian affairs, under the pretence of a military necessity, lending themselves to the confiscation of the Walla Walla Valley.

No sooner was the governors sanction obtained than the project was advertised by proclamation in the Spectator under the name "Forfeiture of the Cayuse Lands," with every eulogistic notice of the country calculated to promote immigration.

When it is remembered that a colonization scheme was on foot, the purpose of the volunteer officers in