Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/22

 14 T. W. DAVENPOKT. apparently with the purpose of erecting a flouring mill the first agent, a Mr. Abbott, purchased of a military officer the running gear of an overshot mill located below The Dalles, for an immoderate sum, reported to be forty thousand dollars. He transported the same, at extravagant cost, overland to the Umatilla River, and to a site as foolishly selected as the mill had been. Instead of hauling lumber from Walla Walla, as practical men of sense would have done, Government camps were established in the Blue Mountains, eight or ten miles away, and lumber manufactured by the abandoned process of whip-sawing, in this instance from pitchy pine logs. The result was plainly visible in the fall of 1862, and whatever amount was paid for the overshot, or expended for work in the mountains, was a total loss to the Government of every dollar thus invested. And this costly fraud was perpetrated before there was any wheat to be ground. There were to be expended the first two years, sixty-six thousand dollars, not including the two mills, but any one looking over the premises and taking a bird's-eye view would ask, how ? where ? Two log houses, a half dozen log huts, an open shed for wagons and plows, about a hundred acres of loamy, river bottom fenced and in cultivation, a set of car- penter's and blacksmith's tools, and farming implements in- sufficient for an ordinary half section farm, would hardly satisfy his reasonable expectations. For the rest he must enquire at the Indian Department in Washington, where the most incredulous might be satisfied, if vouchers would satisfy him. For the objects declared in the treaty, the money was no doubt injudiciously, if not fraudulently expended, and there was scarcely a beginning to any rational and methodical system of bringing those people into the way of sustaining: themselves. With but few exceptions, the whites employed there had done the work, and the Indians, wrapped in their blankets, had been lazily looking on whenever they chanced to be pres- ent. For the most part, they were away, fishing along the Columbia, hunting in the Blue Mountains, digging camas in