Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/281



LOWNSDALE LETTER TO THURSTON 241

to avenge the blood of the innocent, and they in one short day's march. Thus the H. B. Co. held the cords of vengeance for the purpose of letting these murderers have time to run off their stock, women and children, and these alone knew our horses were not fleet enough to overtake them. After the ninth day had passed and they had ample time to clear with the stock and families, the commissioners proclaimed a treaty with the Nez Perce tribe and started home satisfied. The troop rallied and on marching to where they had camped during the 8 days while they drove off their stock, but behold they had departed and without any hope of overtaking them. In fol- lowing them to Snake river about sixty miles found they had crossed and left the side of the river we occupied in charge of a few Indians who professed friendship. They, as always had been the case when any of the Indians fell into our hands, professed friendship and through the interpreter they made the shift to get away and afterwards we could hear of these same being our most inveterate enemies. With but little success ended the campaign of '47 and '48 with the Cay- uses, but not with the Hudson's Bay Company and the Jesuits, not that I intend to make a crusade against them or any other denomination, but as the Doctor, the Scotch-English-Ameri- can, has called them to his aid, I just intend to speak of none who had kept hands off in the struggle between Americans and English, or Hudson's Bay interest in Oregon, but if they will put themselves in the way they must hear what an American Oregonian has to say in the cause of the free-born American principles. Shortly after the return of the commissioners from the Cayuse country, one of the Jesuit priests went to the Fort Vancouver and bought several boxes of guns and two thou- sand pounds of lead and one thousand pounds of powder and shipped them secretly, as they thought, up the Columbia in the direction of the Cayuse country, but our boatmen, being more honest than they suspected, instead of landing them as directed two miles below the fort at The Dalles, or Wascopum, where the priest had built a new station, carried the arms and ammuni- tion to the fort at Wascopum ; there gave information to the officers of the fort who immediately seized; them. It then ap- peared that the priests before described had continued to occupy the stations made among the Indians, notwithstanding the governor had ordered them not to remain among the Indians. The Doctor in the Free Press, a newspaper, published in Oregon City, informed the people that the ammunition was intended for the Flatheads and not the Cayuses, but it is