Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/400



guard, and after a single attack on the twenty-fifth, the Indians seldom approached within rifle shot, although the rolling sand hills in the vicinity favored by sheltering them from observation. Under cover of darkness, milk for the children was sometimes obtained from the cows feeding near the fort. Once an attempt was made to gather potatoes from a field in daylight, but soon the men employed discovered the wary foe creeping upon them under the shelter of the sand dunes, and were forced to retreat in haste to the fort, one man being killed and four wounded before they reached cover. Whenever after this an Indian s head was discovered peering over the edge of a ridge it was shot at, and the marksmen took true aim.

Ten, twenty, thirty days passed, during which the silence of death brooded over the country. Port Orford was the only place in Oregon to which the news of the massacre had been carried, and to send it to the governor at the capital, or to San Francisco to the military authorities, took time, when steamers made only monthly or bi-monthly trips along the coast. The Indians, always well informed of the movements of the volunteers, had seized upon that period when the disbandment of companies, and the slow recruiting of them rendered the state soldiery practically useless, so that even after the news of the tragedy had filtered through the Indians lines and reached the volun teer camps, it found them unprepared to act.

Thus time wore on while the Indians waited for famine and despair to place a hundred victims in their bloody hands.

On the thirty-first day, ah ! what sound breaks the pain ful silence of this tragic solitude? Fife and drum, and the tramp of many feet! To the straining eyes of the im prisoned inmates of the fort was revealed the ravishing sight of two companies of the United States troops march ing up from Fort Humboldt to their relief. Instantly the Indians fled to the hills, and the people rushed out into the free air with shouts of gladness.