Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/369



THE ROGUE RIVER WARS. 351

men being wounded, when they also were compelled to re treat. Captain Lewis was himself three times struck and severely wounded.

The Indians discovering that the weakest point in the volunteer position was on its left, made a bold attack in that quarter, but lost by it one of their most powerful Shasta warriors, which incident for a brief space operated as a check. Then, finding that the volunteers were not dis lodged with rifle balls, they shot lighted arrows into their camp, giving them much ado to prevent a conflagration. Indeed, during the fighting the mining town of Galice Creek was consumed, with the exception of one building, occupied as the company s headquarters. When night closed in, nearly one-third of company E were hors de combat. The killed were J. W. Pickett and Samuel Saun- ders; the mortally wounded, Benjamin Taft and Israel D. Adams; the severely wounded, Lieutenant Moore, Allen Evans, Milton Blackledge, Joseph Umpqua, John Ericson, and Captain Lewis. In his report to his colonel, Lewis boasted that he had "fought the hardest battle ever fought this side of the Rocky mountains." More than two thou sand five hundred shots had the enemy fired that day, but his men had not flinched. Two facts are brought to light by this report one, that the camp was ill chosen; the other, that the Indians possessed an abundance of am munition which they must have been a year in gathering.

Such was the facility with which the Indians, knowing every part of the country, could move undetected from point to point, that while the regulars under Captain Judah, and volunteers under Bruce and Harris, were in hot pursuit of, without finding the enemy, they were appearing and vanishing in a manner so illusory as to bewilder the military authorities, whether local or national. At the very time that Colonel Ross announced his opinion, upon evidence, that the main strength of the Indians was centered at "The Meadows," a narrow stretch of bottom land below Galice creek, where mountains rise on either