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Rh and all the seven dropped on the instant to the ground and began wriggling on all fours between the legs of the astonished bystanders; the Oregon guard instantly attempted to shoot them which created a scene of strange and almost ludicrous excitement. Two were shot at once; two were shot after they left the crowd; the other two reached the river and began swimming away, and one of these was shot as he rose on the opposite side of the stream. What became of the seventh was not known.

The women and children were of course released, but with the warning that no Indian should again work on the bars. But this did not end the trouble. Another Oregonian was killed. The Oregonians again took the warpath, with the intention of killing all the savages they saw. One was soon found and dispatched. Eleven were next found and pursued to the cabin of an English rancher named Goff, who at first made no response to their summons at his door. But as the boys began picking the mud chinking out of the logs, and threatened to fire into the room, he opened the house and delivered the Indians, who were then immediately hanged. The tribe was then traced, and although taking refuge in the tules of a swamp of a marshy lake, were attacked by the guards on horseback, and all the men, and one woman, who was fighting with the men, were killed making in all seventy-six of the tribe that fell, the Oregonians having lost by secret murder thirty-three. The women and children were again brought back by the Oregonians to Coloma, and were furnished by them with provisions and pans, and were allowed to wash gold and support themselves. But they secretly took their leave, and were found at length in a distant canyon of the high mountains, at the limit of snow, nearly starved, but subsisting on pine nuts and the roots of wild clover, gathered by a few old men in a lower valley. It was a man named Smith who traced