Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/450

432 company wounded. Snow had fallen on the mountains to a depth of two or three feet, and the Indians being scattered, Rains returned to The Dalles, and thence, on the twenty-fourth of November, to Vancouver, to report to General Wool, while Colonel Nesmith proceeded with the Oregon volunteers to Walla Walla.

General Wool, in his letter to the National Intelligencer, speaking of the Yakima campaign, said that Rains had ample force, without the volunteers, to have defeated all the Indians in the country, but that the major "partaking somewhat of the alarm pervading the country, increased and stimulated by political demagogues," called for two companies from Washington, and four from Oregon, but that Governor Curry called for a regiment which was not, nor any part of it, "in any sense of the term, necessary to defend the inhabitants of Oregon." Having arraigned the major and Oregon's governor in these very positive terms, he explained and justified his own course, saying that as soon as he was informed of Major Haller's defeat, which "created great excitement and alarm throughout Oregon and Washington, lest all the Indian tribes in the territories should at once combine and come down upon the settlement," he had ordered all the disposable troops at his command to the seat of war, and had followed in person, at the same time calling upon the United States government "for at least an additional regiment."

In this connection the logical reader is prone to inquire why it was proper for the army to believe in the threatened danger to such an extent as to need another regiment, and not the governor of Oregon? Months must pass before the regiment from the east could be placed in the field, while Oregon could place one there in ten days time.

The general further related that he arrived at Vancouver on the seventeenth of November, having been detained on the passage from San Francisco eleven days by gales, storms, and a fire, which crippled the steamer on which