Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/382

 of Captain

Williams for the first position, and Major Martin for the second. On the seventh the several companies were ordered to different parts of the valley, where grass for their horses could be obtained (it being impossible to procure hay ), as well as to afford protection to those localities.

But the companies were not permitted to remain in quarters. During the absence of the volunteers early in December, some roving bands of Indians were devastating the settlements on the west side of the south Umpqua, destroying fifteen houses, whose inmates had been com pelled to take refuge in forts.

On the twenty-fourth, Captain Alcorn discovered and attacked a camp on the north branch of Little Butte creek, killing eight warriors and capturing some horses. At about the same date Captain Rice found another camp on the north bank of Rogue river, and attacked with thirty men, fighting six hours, killing the adult males, and taking captive the women and children, who were sent to Fort Lane to be guarded.

" These two fights," wrote a correspondent of the Oregon Statesman, "have blotted out Jake s band." That they had done so was a cause of congratulation to the white settlers, who could nevermore hope for security of life or property while they were alive and free. But General Wool in his official report stigmatized their proceedings as murder, and drew a pathetic picture of the women and children of the slaughtered Indians making their way to Fort Lane "for protection," with their limbs frozen. That some had frozen limbs was probably true, for the winter was an unusually cold one, a circumstance as injurious to the volunteers, many of whom were ill-clad, as to the Indians. But war is a trade, whose masters cannot show mercy, even to themselves, peace being obtained only through relentless strife.

About the last of December, 1855, Major Bruce, being informed by express from Stirling, that a party of Indians