Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/402

 ing, kept

them at a distance, while they selected a position natur ally strong and erected an enclosure of logs, fifty feet square and about four feet high. In this were placed their provisions and water; the horses of the company being picketed in open ground under cover by their guns.

About four o clock in the afternoon of the seventeenth the Pistol-river Indians were reenforced by a body of Rogue-rivers, mounted and on foot. At sunset the main body began an approach from the mouth of Pistol river, protecting their persons by rolling logs in front of them, while smaller parties approached from the south along the sand hills bordering the beach, and from the east over the grassy flat where the animals were tethered.

The situation now appearing critical, Abbott threw out a party of skirmishers under cover of a sand hill, on the south, and leaving the horses to be defended by the fort, took another small party and stationed himself among the drift logs and sand drifts to oppose the main body of the enemy. Contrary to Indian usage, the action was con tinued after dark, the Indians charging the volunteers with the most desperate courage and confidence, but suf fering more losses than the white men, who as long as it was light enough fought with rifles, and at close quarters with revolvers, but in the darkness found double-barreled shotguns most effective. In this night s fight Kirby Mil ler, a recruit, was mortally wounded, dying in an hour after being carried into the fort, and a citizen named Sloan wounded slightly. During the night ten horses and twenty mules arid equipments were captured by the Indians.

Fighting continued with intermissions through the eighteenth, and until two o clock P. M. of the nineteenth, at which time Colonel Buchanan arrived, having moved as slowly as if he had not been called upon for aid, and saying in reply to suggestions, that he did not desire to engage the Indians at Pistol river. On the last day T. J. Sharp, an independent volunteer, was wounded, which