Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/502

484 Indian department, the superintendencies of Oregon and Washington were united in one under J. W. Nesmith of Oregon, late colonel of volunteers. Another important change occurred in answer to a petition of the Oregon legislature, which was the recall of General Wool from the command of the department of the Pacific, his successor being General Newman S. Clarke, whose first visit to the Columbia river district was in June, 1857.

Nesmith recommended to the commissioner of Indian affairs at Washington City that the treaties of 1855 be ratified, as the best means of bringing about a settlement of the existing troubles, and upon the following grounds: that the land laws of congress permitted the occupation of the Oregon and Washington lands without regard to the rights of the Indians, thereby making the intercourse laws a nullity; that friendly relations with them could not be cultivated while their title to the soil was recognized by the government, which at the same time withheld payment for it and gave its subjects a right to settle in the country.

General Clarke distributed to the different posts in Oregon and Washington between fifteen hundred and two thousand troops, among which were three companies of the ninth infantry under Major R. S. Garnett at Fort Simcoe in the Yakima country; three companies of the same regiment at The Dalles under Wright; and one company each of the first dragoons, third artillery, fourth and ninth infantry at Walla Walla under Steptoe, who was joined in the autumn by Captain A. J. Smith with his troop from southern Oregon.

Clark's first measures were governed, visibly, by the prejudices fostered by the injurious reports previously circulated, concerning the management of Indian wars and affairs generally in Oregon. But when he came to know that in spite of the conciliatory policy of the regular army, and its efforts to cultivate friendly relations in the Walla Walla, from which settlers had been rigidly