Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/21

 SNAKE RIVER IN HISTORY wounded and a Mr. Jackson

killed.

It

13

was here that Mr. Hud-

son Clark, of Scott county, Illinois, while driving his carriage too far in advance of his train, was attacked, his mother and brother murdered and his sister, a beautiful young lady of 22 ravished years, after being dangerously wounded, was brutally by most of the Indians in the party. It was here, also, that the

Harpool train of 20 wagons was attacked 1

in 1851,

and

after

a fearful battle lasting two hours the Indians were repulsed. Standing on the summit of this old rock today, looking to the north and west, a great panorama greets the eye. Scenes of

commerce and husbandry are everywhere in evidence, but the Snake river, as known by the pioneers, is no more. The great Minidoka power plant has transformed it into a most beautiful lake fully 25 miles in length. As I stood there and feasted eyes upon the magnificent landscape I could not avoid the thought of the numerous graves below and of the intense suffering of the brave pioneers who have made these scenes

my

possible.

From is it

here to the

Twin

Falls district

most of the old

trail

yet to be seen but when one arrives at an irrigation canal The Salmon Falls have not changed is lost, forever lost.

day the Stuart party arrived there and gave them name, neither have the adjacent camping grounds been molested. From this place to Pilgrim Springs, where Mrs. Whitman, August 12th, 1836, wrote her beautiful tribute to the abandoned trunk, and where the doctor discarded the bed of his wagon, the trail in most part is still to be seen. It was over this section that Mrs. Sager, in 1844, suffered the agonies of a most pitiful death which relieved her a few hours after the train reached Pilgrim Springs where her dust is since the

their present

mingled with that of the desert.

The

three islands

where the

trail

crossed the Snake river are

down

the mountain from Pilgrim Springs and no change has taken place since the pioneers ceased to brave the As I sat on the bank with one of the rapid current here.

twelve miles

i David Baxter Gray, afterwards, beginning in '78, was widely known in the Willamette Valley and The Dalles, crossed the plains with the Harpool train.

George H. Himes.