Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/31

Rh entered their camp, and threatened another one, a mere boy.

The only justification offered was that they had before suffered by allowing Indians to approach them in camp. But the act was none the less imprudent as it was immoral; for it invited retaliation, and compelled Young to double the guard and to use extreme caution in passing points where an ambush was possible. On reaching the locality made memorable by the attack on their party in 1835, they were assailed by a cloud of arrows discharged upon them with deafening yells. Young s horse was shot twice, and Gay was again wounded. The guns of the white men were, however, more than a match for Indian arrows; and after a skirmish the savages retired to trouble them no more. The truth of history requires that the brutal act, of the superior race shall be recorded as well as those of the inferior, as by them we are able to form our judgment of both.

In March, 1838, Jason Lee and Gustavus Hines made an excursion to the Umpqua valley in the vicinity of one of the forts of the Hudson s Bay Company in charge of one Gagnier, with a view to a mission in that quarter; but found the natives so wild and threatening in their disposition that despite the attractions of the country for colonization they gave an adverse report. Mr. Hines, in his History of Oregon, relates that Mr. Lee had brought a fowling-piece with him, and a patent shot pouch. This latter thing alarmed the chief, who happened to be at the fort, and he informed his people that Lee had brought medicine in a bag which he wore around his neck with which he intended to kill them all off. Gagnier sent his Umpqua wife with the missionaries to explain matters to the Indians, who with customary readiness avowed their intention to become Christians at once. Appearances were, however, so much against them that no efforts were made in that direction; and subsequent events justified this unfavorable judgment.