Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/435



THE ROGUE EIVER WARS 417

After a hospital was erected for them, they would not re main in it more than two or three days, but would return to their huts, and having nothing else to do, gamble away the clothing furnished them, take cold, and die. What ever the causes, out of the six hundred Rogue-river and Cow-creek Indians taken to the Siletz reservation in 1856, there remained in 1857 but three hundred and eighty-five.

John said to Ross Browne, appointed by the government in 1857 to examine into the affairs of the Indian reserva tions : " For my own part my heart is sick. Many of my people have died since they came here; many are still dying. There will soon be none left of us. Here the mountains are covered with great forests; it is hard to get through them. We have no game; we are sick at heart; we are sad when we look on the graves of our families. A long time ago we made a treaty with Palmer. There was a piece of land at Table Rock that was ours. He said it should remain ours, but that for the sake of peace, as the white settlers were bad, we should leave it for a while. When we signed the paper that was our understanding. We now want to go back to our country. During the war my heart was bad. Last winter, when the rain came and we were all starving, it was still bad. Now it is good. I will consent to live here one year more; after that I must go home."

John was quite in earnest in his determination to return to Table Rock, and by his incendiary councils kept up a spirit of unrest and rebellion among the chiefs, which caused the military authorities to send him and his son to San Francisco to be confined in Fort Alcatraz. When the steamship Columbia, which carried them, was off Hum- boldt bay, they made an attempt to take the vessel that they might escape to their beloved country. The sergeant, in whose charge they were, being asleep in his berth, about one o clock at night they attempted to take the revolver with which he was armed, but awoke him in the act. In the struggle which ensued, the chief throttling