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36 apologist for the hideous wrongs perpetrated upon the natives of the New World by the Spaniards, they at least protected their own people by sending out a garrison with every colony, which took good care that there were not enough of the native population left to be a menace to the settlers. It is often said the English did better than the Americans with the Indians, and had less trouble with them. This is only a partial truth. Until in comparatively recent years the English occupying the country west of the Canadas were there only as trappers and traders. They interfered but little with the Indians, and in fact gave them a market for their furs and peltries that had before been lacking. The lands over which the natives roamed at will were not sought for nor occupied by their white neighbors. It has been the "land greed" of the Americans that has caused most of the disturbances and wars between them and the Indians.

Prior to 1843 the population of Oregon increased slowly. At the beginning of 1842, there were only one hundred and thirty-seven American settlers. Of these twenty-one were Protestant ministers, fifteen lay members of Protestant churches, thirty-four white women, thirty-two white children, and thirty-four American settlers, twenty-five of whom had native wives. There were also three Jesuit priests, French or Belgians, as I remember. During 1842, the first immigration of American settlers, numbering about one hundred and forty, came across the plains under the leadership of Dr. Elijah White; in 1843 "early nine hundred immigrants were added to the little colony; in 1844 about seven hundred and fifty: in 1845 about three thousand; in 1846 about one thousand, and in 1847 about five thousand.

Each year poor fare, bad drinking water and long-continued exposure had caused a good deal of sickness among the immigrants, and this had been unavoidably communicated to the Indians, causing a good many deaths among them. This was particularly true of the immigration of the year 1847. It brought with it a virulent form of measles, accompanied by typhoid fever, and these diseases were as fatal among the Indians as the small-pox. The Indians hung about the immigrants most of the time, to the great annoyance of the latter, as they were inveterate beggars and pilferers, and it was not long before the disease was epidemic among the Cayuses, threatening that tribe with extinction, as the mortality was frightful. Missionary Spalding wrote: "It is distressing to go into a lodge of some ten or twenty fires, and count twenty or twenty-five, some in the midst of the measles, others