Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/492

474 indeed, to show themselves, and thus helped on the catastrophe, the indirect cause of which was their dread of soldiers. Young Trimble had been in the habit of visiting the Indian camp before mentioned, and one day on returning to the immigrant camp brought with him some Indians having salmon to sell. As Trimble was about to accompany them back to their village, he was asked by Myers to describe the trail, "for," said he, "if the soldiers come to our relief we shall want to send for you." It was an unfortunate utterance. At the word soldiers the Indians betrayed curiosity and fear. They never returned to the white camp; but when sought they had fled, leaving the body of the boy, whom they murdered, to the wolves.

At length, in their awful extremity, the living were compelled to eat the bodies of the dead. This determination, says Myers, was unanimous, and was arrived at after consultation and prayer. The bodies of four children were first consumed, and eaten of sparingly, to make the hated food last as long as it might. But the time came when the body of Mr Chase was exhumed and prepared for eating. Before it had been tasted, succor arrived, the relief parties of the Indian agency and Captain Dent reaching the Owyhee, forty-five days after the attack on Snake River. When the troops came into this camp of misery, they threw themselves down on their faces and wept, and thought it a cruelty that Captain Dent would not permit them to scatter food without stint among the half-naked living skeletons stretched upon the ground, or that he should resist the cries of the wailing and emaciated children.

The family of Myers, Mrs Chase and one child, and Miss Trimble were all left alive at the camp on the Owyhee. Munson and Chaffey were also rescued, making twelve brought in by the troops. These with the three men who first reached the Columbia River were all that survived of a company of fifty-four