Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/114

96 a terrible alternative, did not make a moral hero, or present an example equivalent to the average christian self-sacrifice?

The trial was set for the 22d of May. The prisoners in the meantime were confined on Abernethy island, in the midst of the falls, the bridge connecting it with the mainland being guarded by Lieutenant Lane, of the rifles, who was assigned to that duty. The prosecution was conducted by Amory Holbrook, district attorney, who had arrived in the territory in March previous, and the defense by Secretary Pritchett, R. B. Reynolds, of Tennessee, paymaster of the rifle regiment, and Captain Claiborne, also of the rifle, whom Judge Pratt assigned to this duty.

On arraignment, the defendants, through Knitzing Pritchett, secretary of the territory, one of their counsel, entered a special plea to the jurisdiction of the court, alleging that at the date of the massacre the laws of the United States had not been extended over Oregon. The ruling of the court was that the act of congress, June 30, 1834, regulating trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes and to preserve peace on the frontiers, having declared all the territory of the United States west of the Mississippi and not within any state, to be within the Indian country; and the treaty of June 15, 1846, with Great Britain having settled that, all of Oregon south of the 49th parallel belonged exclusively to the United States, it followed that offenses committed therein, after such treaty, against the laws of the United States, were triable and punishable in the proper United States courts irrespective of the date of their establishment. The indictment stated facts sufficient to show that a crime had been committed under the laws in force at the place of its commission, and therefore the subsequent creation of a court in which a determination of the question of the defendant's guilt or innocence could