Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/133

 ''Doctor" Robert Newell: Pioneer. 115 a delegation of three persons be appointed by this House to proceed inmiediately to Walla Walla and hold a council with the chiefs and principal men of the various tribes on the Col- umbia to prevent, if possible, their coalition with the Cayuse tribe in the present difficulties." It will be remembered that Craig and Spalding, then near Lapwai together, sent word urging that soldiers be not sent, and that Father Blanchet who was then on the Umatilla with the Cayuses themselves sent similar word, and that Peter Skeen Ogden and others of the sagacious Hudson's Bay Company officers did not favor in- vasion ; though all this was unknown at Oregon City when the resolution was passed. But the appointing power was finally left with Governor Abernethy and he either did not sympathize with the idea or was otherwise advised, for the three commissioners were not appointed for some weeks; they were Joel Palmer, Robert Newell and H. A. G. Lee. The first named then already had more than his hands full with his duties as Commissary- General and the last named was in active service at The Dalles in command of those volunteers who had already gone there ; and it ended with the peace commissioners— so called— going forward in company with the Rifler— so called— when they marched from The Dalles in force in February. Looking back at the situation from the present time, a careful student of the history of our early Indian wars can, with reasonable certainty, say that had the advice and suggestions of Dr. Robert Newell and a few others then been followed and the Indians treated with pacific firmness instead of war methods, there would have been no Cayuse war with its attendant ex- penses, exposure and loss of life, that the murderers of Dr. Whitman would have been surrendered by their own people, and that the settlement of the interior would have been ad- vanced ten years in point of time. Dr. Newell, however, did not sulk; and in January he assisted in the organization in his own county of Company "D" of the Rifles under Cap- tain McKay, and accompanied them as one of the peace com- missioners. For this position he was peculiarly well fitted be-