Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/363

Rh peace, owing to the increase of immigration and the encroachments of the white people upon the Indians, which deprived them of their improvements, was continually increasing. There were, he said, less than a thousand men to guard California, Oregon, Washington, and Utah, and more were wanted. The request was referred by Scott to the secretary of war, and refused.

In May, Wool sent Inspector-general J. K. F. Mansfield to make a tour of the Pacific department, and see if the posts established there should be made permanent; but expressed the opinion that those in northern California could be dispensed with, notwithstanding that the commanders of forts Reading and Jones were every few weeks sending reports filled with accounts of collisions between the white population and the Indians.

At this point I observe certain anomalies. Congress had invited settlers to the Pacific coast for political reasons. These settlers had been promised protection from the savages. That protection had never to any practical extent been rendered; but gradually the usual race conflict had begun and strengthened until it assumed alarming proportions. The few officers of the military department of the government, sent here ostensibly to protect its citizens, had found it necessary to devote themselves to protecting the Indians. Over and over they asserted that the white men were alone to blame for the disturbances.

Writing to the head of the department at New York, General Wool said that the emigration to California and Oregon would soon render unnecessary a number of posts which had been established at a great expense, and that if it were left to his discretion, he should abolish forts Reading and Miller in California, and establish a temporary post in the Pit River country; also break up one or two posts in northern California and Oregon, which could only mean forts Jones and Lane, and establish another on Puget Sound,