Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/323

Rh immigrations to open new routes, with the usual amount of peril and suffering. The legislature of 1851–2 authorized a company of seven men, William Macey, John Diamond, W. T. Walker, William Tandy, Alexander King, Joseph Meadows, and J. Clarke, to explore an immigrant road from the upper part of the Willamette Valley to Fort Boisé, expending something over $,.000 in the enterprise. They proceeded by the middle branch of the river, by what is now known as the Diamond Peak pass, to the summit of the Cascade Mountains. They named the peak to the south of their route Macey, now called Scott peak; and that on the north Diamond peak. They followed down a small stream to its junction with Des Chutes River, naming the mountains which here cross the country from south-west to north-east the Walker Range, and down Des Chutes to Crooked River, from which they travelled east to the head of Malheur River, naming the butte which here seems to terminate the Blue Range, King peak. After passing this peak they were attacked by Indians, who wounded three of the party and captured their baggage, when they wandered for 8 days with only wild berries to eat, coming to the old immigrant road 60 miles from Boisé, and returning to the Willamette by this route. ''Or. Jour. Council'', 1852–3, app. 13–15. Another company was sent out in 1853 to improve the trail marked out by the first, which they did so hastily and imperfectly that about 1,500 people who took the new route were lost for five weeks among the mountains, marshes, and deserts of the region about the head waters of the Des Chutes, repeating the experiences in a great measure of the lost immigrants of 1845. No lives were lost, but many thousand dollars' worth of property was sacrificed. ''Or. Statesman, Nov. 1, 1853, May 16, 1854; Albany Register'', Aug. 21, 1869. I have before me a manuscript by Mrs Rowena Nichols, entitled Indian Affairs. It relates chiefly to the Indian wars of southern and eastern Oregon, though treating also of other matters. Mrs Nichols was but 2½ years old when with her mother and grandmother she passed through this experience. She, and one other child, a boy, lived on the milk of a cow which their elders managed to keep alive during about six weeks, being unable to eat the beef of starving oxen, like their elders. The immigration of this year amounted to 6,480 men, women, and children, much less than that of 1852. T. Mercer, in Washington Sketches, MS., 1; Hines' Or., 209; Olympia Columbian, Nov. 27, 1852; S. F. Alta, Aug. 16, Sept. 19, Oct. 7, 8, 24, and 25, and Nov. 21, 1853; S. F. D. Herald, Aug. 31, 1852; ''Or. Statesman, Oct. 4 and Nov. 1, 1853; Olympia Columbian'', Nov. 26, 1853.

Appropriations for military roads, which were asked for by the legislature of 1852–3, had already been urged by Lane at the first session of the 32d congress, and were obtained at the second session, to the amount of forty thousand dollars; twenty thousand to construct a military road from Steilacoom to Walla Walla, and twenty thousand for the improvement of the road from the Umpqua Valley to Rogue River.