Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/40

 32 T. W. DAVENPORT. those who could not be thus counted, I infer it is suscepti- ble of a double interpretation. He charged me, as we parted, to apprehend and deliver to him the Indians guilty of the crime. So, immediately upon my arrival home, the interpreter, with Alex McKay, a half breed, and some four full-blood Indians of the Umatilla and Walla Walla tribes were despatched on the hunt. Passing southwest to the Too-too-willa, where several familes of In- dians resided; thence to the Columbia, which they crossed, swimming their horses; thence up the river to an Indian village of "renegades," where they found them and set out for the agency, travelling that extensive circuit at the rate of sixty miles a day. As I put the handcuffs upon them I felt a conviction that they would not be tried and proven guilty before execution, and such was really the case. They had no semblance of a trial ; their guilt was presumed and that was sufficient, under the peculiar conditions then existing, to warrant an execution. They were taken to the fort, kept in confinement a month, when they escaped, were retaken, and after another month's confinement both were hanged. They made no confession, no denial. In fact they could not understand our language and no interpreter was provided for them, as any one knows. The case in a nutshell reads something like this. The miner was slightly wounded by a pistol bullet which if rightly aimed might have killed him. Whoever it was, intended to steal his blankets, but did not succeed. In the night time he could not be sure that his assailants were Indians ; he thought so, and so reported to the military authorities at Walla Walla. Two Indians came from that direction and when first observed were fifteen miles from the scene of the disaster. That was all. A white man would not have been held upon such evidence, but they were Indians and not in good standing with the more aristocratic agency Indians. Besides, it was war times, when enlightened white men were shot by the thousand. Of course. Matchkus and Tchukliyuh were as nothing while they sang