Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/19



INDIAN WAR IN WASHINGTON 11

Tilton, the U. S. Surveyor General, and one of the Captains was Edward Lander, Chief Justice of the Territory. Nearly one-half of all the men in the Territory rendered military service during the war. With all these forces, on ship and land, organized equipped and provided for, the weak and scattered Indians were unable to contend, and after a few efforts fled into the timber and over the mountains to the east. Early in 1856 the war ended as far as attacks by the Indians were concerned, but not so far as attacks by the white men.

The only two considerable efforts made by the Indians in 1856 were attacks upon the town of Seattle and the block house and settlement at the Cascades. Led by Owhi, Leschi, Nelson and others, Seattle was attacked on the 26th of Jan- uary. Houses in the outskirts were burned and all day long, from dawn to dark, a musket fire was kept up by the Indians in the woods against the people in the village below. Reply was made by the men of the place, and by the men from the U. S. Ship Decatur on shore, as also by men on board, using the big guns of the war vessel for that purpose. Two white men in the town were killed. Three of the under officers of the Decatur Hughes, Middleton and Phelps in after years became Rear-Admirals of the U. S. Navy.

The west side hostiles were now approaching exhaustion and were quite in the throes of discouragement. They yielded from day to day, some retiring to places of hiding, and some coming into the settlements for food and mercy. While in this unhappy condition a number of small encounters with the soldiers occurred, but they were not of the Indians' seeking, and were generally disastrous to them. The chiefs, accom- panied by a few of their tribes-men, went over to their allies in Yakima.

One event occurred, however, that is worth here recording. For all previous time, as far as known, Indians from the far north five hundred to a thousand miles had been coming south in large parties and robbing, enslaving and killing the