Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/329



the treaty entered into, as I have related, by certain chiefs of Rogue River in the summer of 1852, hostilities had not altogether ceased, although conducted less openly than before. With such a rough element in their country as these miners and settlers, many of them bloody-minded and unprincipled men, and most of them holding the opinion that it was right and altogether proper that the natives should be killed, it was impossible to have peace. The white men, many of them, did not want peace. The quicker the country was rid of the red-skin vermin the better, they said. And in carrying out their determination, they often outdid the savage in savagery.

There was a sub-chief, called Taylor by white men, who ranged the country about Grave Creek, a northern tributary of Rogue River, who was specially hated, having killed a party of seven during a winter storm and reported them drowned. He committed other depredations upon small parties passing over