Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/478

460 garrison the blockhouse, and repel any attack which might be made upon the government property at that place.

The cascade settlements were on the north bank of the river where a strip of bottom-land of no great width extends up and down for several miles. On the opposite side the mountains came down very close to the river, and there were no settlements. On Rock creek, at the upper end of the portage, was a sawmill, and a little below, on the river, was a cluster of houses and shops, and the store of Bradford & Company fronting the bay-like expanse of the Columbia which is here held back by the obstructions which form the dam of the cascades, until it appears to be a mountain lake. One of these obstructions is an island, which lay directly in front of Bradford's store, and which was being connected with the mainland by a bridge then in process of construction. Workmen were also hurrying forward the unfinished wooden railroad, where a bridge was building. In fact, the Indian war had given the Cascades, hitherto a mere trading post for immigrants, and for Indians, a strong impetus in the direction of growth; and on the morning of the twenty-sixth of March, two days after the removal of Captain Wallen's company, it presented a busy scene. The little steamer Mary lay at her moorings near the mill waiting for government freight, which it was too early, or too soon, owing to the unfinished state of the road, to have received. Her consort, the Wasco, lay on the opposite side of the river. The little town, hemmed in between the high bluffs back of it, and the turbulent river in front, had but fairly opened its eyes on this March morning, when there sounded on the bright mountain air that most horrifying and demoniacal of all human utterances—the Indian war whoop.

Following the fearful yells came the crack, crack, crack of many rifles, while puffs of blue smoke burst out from every clump of bushes, revealing the lurking places of the foe in a line extending from Rock creek to the head of the rapids, where the men had just begun their day's work on