Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/352

 324 T. W. Davenport. suit the palates of the multitude. These dreaded radicals (to the conservatives) have their uses; indeed, without them the pole-star of truth would suffer entire obscuration, and the timid conservatives become "abject and lost, covering the flood." There also was John Beeson, another radical, who added to that offense by being a friend and protector of the aborigines whose cause he pleaded so earnestly as to give him a national reputation and a vote of local ostracism. Un- doubtedly he committed a tactical blunder in trying to stop the Indian war in 1855 and '56 by ad-hominem arguments leveled against the white depredators ; not that his allegations were not more than justified and admittedly so by the great majority of the Rogue River people, but that when our red brothers go upon the warpath, driven to it in nine cases out of ten by the predatory few hanging about the margin of civilization and claiming to be white, there is no avoidance of the conflict which in the nature of things is racial, and no permanent peace practicable until the United States has taken the red men under its protection and out of the way of the greedy pale faces. General Wool, in his report to the War Department, corroborated John Beeson as to the exciting causes of the war, but he too was in error in supposing peace possible, except in the way above indicated. All our experi- ence is to the effect that the two races cannot live peaceably as joint occupants, but those two good men had not rightly weighed that experience. That was their error, and almost a virtue. An anecdote of that time may not be out of place here. The Indians, under the command of their two chiefs, Sam and John, were posted in a very strong position on Table Rock at the lower end of Bear Creek Valley, and their scouting parties were out committing depredations and making travel unsafe, when John Beeson visited Hiram Colver at his home half a mile from Phoenix. Mr. Colver was well known to all the Indians thereabout and enjoyed their confidence to a high degree. So Mr. Beeson had come to him to get his assistance in suspending hostilities. He wanted Mr. Colver