Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/494

476 with a serious uprising of the Indians west of the Cascades, among whom the emissaries of Kamiakin had been disseminating hostile sentiments. The valleys on the east side of the sound had been depopulated; the town of Seattle besieged and only saved by the timely presence in the sound waters of United States gunboats; and murder had lurked everywhere, on land and water.

Stevens had met this calamitous condition of his territory with characteristic firmness, and been opposed in his course by the officers of the army under General Wool's influence. Having disposed of these matters at home, he proceeded to attend to his duties as superintendent of Indian affairs, first sending a battalion of Washington volunteers under Colonel Shaw to reënforce the Oregonians in that portion of his territory east of the mountains.

Shaw's command crossed the Cascades, by the Nachess pass, falling in with Wright on the river Nachess, with whom he offered to coöperate, but who declined his services, when he proceeded to the Walla Walla valley, where he arrived on the eighth of July with all his command, except a force of seventy-five men under Captain Goff, who had joined Major Layton of the Oregon rangers, with whom he was making a march through the John Day country, capturing Indians and taking many Indian horses.

This constant marching through their country, taking away their horses and supplies, gradually forced the needy and the neutral individuals and bands onto the reservation at Warm springs, and together with the somewhat similar policy of Wright, caused the surrender of over nine hundred Wascos, Tyghes, Des Chutes, and John Day Indians to the agents, thus lessening the numbers liable to commit depredations or act as go-betweens. There were, however, still the fighting forces of the Cayuses and Walla Wallas and a part of the Nez Percés to overcome either by arms or diplomacy.

In the discharge of his duties as superintendent of