Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/196



The account given by Mr. William M. Case of the troubles with Indians in the California mines in 1848 is of so much historical importance, and has so great a bearing upon the subsequent history of that state, that any confirmation of his recollections is very acceptable. This we find in the following account of Mrs. Fannie Clayton, now of Seaside, Oregon. As a girl of thirteen, just from across the plains, she was a witness of the attempted execution and actual shooting of the guilty Indians. The narrative is as follows:

Speaking of Mr. Benjamin Wood, who was one of the murdered Oregonians, she says: Mr. Wood boarded at my father's in New Lancaster, Illinois, and afterwards with us at Milford, Missouri. He was a well educated man from New England and New York, and we called him a Yankee. In 1843 he came to Oregon with my brother Ninian, joining the immigration at Saint Joseph, Missouri. He worked at Hunt's mill, and went to the California mines. He was a man of about thirty at that time, and was very ingenious he could make almost anything in the way of mechanical contrivance. He discovered gold on American River, at a place afterwards called Murderers' Bar. This was not Spanish Bar; that was another place. Murderers' Bar, about fifteen or sixteen miles from Coloma, on Middle Fork, was very rich, and he was making a rocker that would wash it more economically.