Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/301

Rh them, for no sooner were the canoes run on to the sands than their occupants were surrounded and fighting for the possession of their arms and lives. Hundreds of naked warriors, armed with bows and arrows, war clubs, and long knives made of band iron from a wrecked vessel, assailed them on every side.

The assault was so sudden, and attended with such con fusion of sounds, yells, cries, and blows that defense was nearly impossible. T'Vault afterwards said that the first thing he was aware of was that he was in the river swimming. Not far from him was one of his men, Gilbert Brush, an Indian in a canoe standing over him, and beating his head with a paddle, the water about him being crimsoned with blood.

While he looked he saw a canoe shoot out from shore, in which stood an Indian boy who beat off Brush s tor m enter and assisted the wounded man into his boat; then picking up T'Vault, handed him his paddle, and flinging himself into the water, swam back to the village. T'Vault and Brush on landing divested themselves of their sodden clothing, and plunged into the forest. T'Vault was not badly wounded, but Brush was partly scalped and very much bruised. They were on the south side of the river, and their hope was in reaching Port Orford. By traveling all night along the beach they came to Cape Blanco, where the natives received them in a friendly manner, protecting and feeding them and conveying them in their canoes to Port Orford.

As to the remainder of the ill-fated party, five were mas sacred and three escaped. L. L. Williams of Vermont, a pioneer of Ashland; T. J. Davenport, then a young man from Massachusetts, and Cyrus Hedden from Newark, New Jersey, were the survivors. Patrick Murphy of New York, A. S. Dougherty of Texas, John P. Holland of New Hamp-