Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/73



DEDICATION GRAND RONDE MILITARY BLOCK HOUSE 65

government had sent the first troops to this station under com- mand of Lieut. Wm. B. Hazen, afterwards Gen. Hazen of the Signal Corps. Sheridan says that he, along with a detach- ment of Dragoons, came to relieve Lieut. Hazen. Sheridan came to Oregon in October, 1855, and had actively participated in the Yakima War of '55 and '56. With a detachment of troops from Fort Vancouver in March, 1856, he aided in the rescue of 47 men, women and children beseiged in the Middle Block House at the Cascades, and in the repulse there of the Yakimas and Klickitats, and also in the final capture of old Chief Chenoweth and others who afterwards were tried by a military commission and hanged for the massacre of whites at The Cascades Portage. Sheridan arrived at Hazen's camp April 25, '56. It appears that Hazen and Sheridan each aided in the completion of this Block House on the hills beyond the present townsite of Sheridan. Gen. Sheridan says that Hazen had begun the erection of post buildings and that he continued the work.

It may be of interest to you Dayton citizens to note that Phil. Sheridan in his Memoirs says that the Reserve is about 25 miles south west of Dayton, Oregon. He evidently re- garded Dayton as the center of the Universe, and measured things from it. He probably had noted, as doubtless have each of you, that the Heavens appear to come down in even distances all around Dayton as a center. In July, 1856, Lieut. Sheridan was superseded by Capt. David A. Russell and soon after was transferred from Grand Ronde over to the Siletz, where he aided in building Fort Hoskins and also in starting a Block House on the Yaquina. Wm. M. Hilleary, who served in Capt. A. W. Waters' Co. F, 1st Oregon Inft. Vol. informs me that old Fort Hoskins, where Hilleary was stationed about '61 or '62, was located on the Little Luckiamute at the head of King's Valley in Benton County. He visited the site several years ago and says no vestige remains of the old fort except the eternal hills on which it stood.

Gen. Sheridan writes that he spent many happy days at Fort Hoskins. After remaining there nearly a year he was again