Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/120

118 Cayuse War was important chiefly for the reaaon that for a time it seemed as if the Indians might exteiminate all the white setders of Oregon. Ill feeling had existed among the Indians toward the white people but the war was precipitated by the Whitman massacre.

A Regiment of Volunteers Organized. In accordance with the Legislative Acts of Dec. 8, 1847, a regiment of fourteen companies volunteered for the purpose of suppressing the troubles with the Cayuse Indians and their allies. Colonel Cornelius Gilliam was placed in command, and with fifty men reached The Dalles on the 23d of January, 1846, followed three days later by the remainder of the regiment. On the 27th Colonel Gilliam moved eastward toward Walla Walla.

March to the Enemy's Country. "Colonel Gilliam desired to press forward as rapidly as possible; for it was plainly evident that if the war was not carried to the Umatilla, the Willamette Valley might soon be molested. Also it was equally evident that to permit the murd^ets to escape would give the Cayuses confidence to commit further crimes. On February 25, the Cayuses and their allies from die north side of the river, fdt strong enough to force a battle. Their position was on the elevated sage-brush plains west of the Umatilla River; and their boast was *that the whites should never drink of its waters',"—H. S. Lyman.

Cayuse Chiefs Profess Wizard Powers. But the Cayuse Indians, who seemed imbued with some kind of sorcery, were deluded into the belief that the white man's gun could not kill their Chief Five Crows; and War Eagle, another chief of that tribe, stated that he could swallow all the bullets the whites might shoot at him. To prove that they were invulnerable, the medicine chiefs rode into open view of the volunteers and shot a little dog that ran to meet them. A well-aimed bullet from the rifle of Captain Thomas McKay crashed through the brain of War Eagle, while a load of buckshot from the gun of Lieutenant Charies McKay dis-