Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/46

 38 T. W. DAVENPORT. straining punishment upon the transgressors was more of an undertaking. While it is the habit of white men to denounce Indians gen- erally, and suffer the war spirit to rise upon every fresh occasion of an irritating nature, I have found from experi- ence that only a few of them are implacable when they have the whole truth laid fairly before them. To judge the Indian according to his deserts, his grievances must be contemplated also, but white men, as the result of education and selfish im- pulse, are hardly ever in the mood for weighing them. Only a little while before the occurrence above narrated, some bad white men, returning from the "mines," had driven off forty horses belonging to the Cayuse Indians, on the road towards Lewiston. To retake them 'by force meant open war; to get them by legal process was slow, doubtful and expensive; so the Indians, without informing me, followed unobserved and recaptured their property during the night while the thieves were sleeping. One of the most exasperating incidents occurred in Novem- ber, 1862. A farmer Indian of the Walla Walla tribe, whose name I do not recall, went to the Walla Walla flouring mill with a wagon load of wheat to exchange for his winter supply of flour, and while his horses were feeding from his wagon a gambler issued from a nearby saloon, took one of the horses, and leading it into a livery stable instructed the keeper to "let no one have it without an order from me." And this outrage was perpetrated in broad daylight, before several white persons and in spite of the earnest protest of the angry but discreet owner, who, thus deprived of half his team, be- strode his remaining horse and returned to the agency. I re- ported the case to the United States District Attorney, a Mr. McGilvrey stationed at Walla Walla, who instructed me to bring: two white witnesses and the Indian could obtain his horse. Both Mr. Flippin and Dr. Roland had positive knowl- edge as to the ownership of the horse, but neither was willing to become a witness against the gambler, so much at that timo were people under the sway of the desperadoes of the gambling