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CHAPTER XXIII.

DOWN IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH.

SPOKE to the chief about the affair; I told him it meant a bloody war ; that the Indians of the valleys, wherever the Americans could reach, would be overthrown, and asked him what he would do.

He thought over the matter a day or two, then said he should keep his men together and out of the way as far as he could, and then, if attacked, would defend himself; that the Pit River Indians were not his Indians, that they had a chief of their own, and lived quite another life from his, and he could not be held responsible for their acts.

He urged, however, that they were right, that they had his sympathy, and that to assist them in the coming war would be the best and speediest way to establish the union of the three tribes, and get a recognition of rights from the Government of the United States. I knew very well, however, that it would not do