Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/409

 Peter Skene Ogden 377 to try the murderers, on the ground that the United States had not extended its laws over Oregon at the time of the Whitman massacre. But Judge Pratt decided that the Court had jurisdiction under the Act of Congress of June 30, 1834, regulating Indian tribes. If Judge Pratt had not ruled in favor of his jurisdiction, I fear that Judge Lynch would have exercised jurisdiction and these murderers would have paid the penalty, for about five hundred Oregon pioneers came to Oregon City to see that these Indians did not escape justice for the Whit- man massacre. These murderers had a fair and impar- tial trial. They were ably defended in court. The jury found them guilty. Judge Pratt sentenced them to be hung, at Oregon City, June 3, 1850. On that day they were hung by Joseph L. Meek, United States Marshal for Oregon Territory. Meek was a fearless man and was not afraid to perform what he thought was his duty. His daughter, Helen Marr Meek, was one of the captives taken by the Indians at Waiilatpu. She died soon after the Whitman massacre. I doubt not that Meek hung these murderers as a stern and disagreeable duty, but at the same time a kind of pleasurable duty. It was rumored that a rescue of the prisoners would be attempted by the Indians. But such an attempted rescue would have been unfortunate for the rescuers as well as for the prisoners, for several hundred pioneers came to Oregon City, with their rifles, hid at convenient places, to see that no rescue was made, and that these convicted Indians should die on the scaffold for their crimes. No rescue was attempted and justice was done to these murderers. This memorial stone, erected by Oregon's three pio- neer societies, shows that the Oregon pioneers and their descendants in seventy-six years have not forgotten, and that sixty-nine years after the death of Peter Skene Ogden, they have remembered and appreciate the bravery