Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/550

532 the satisfaction of everybody." General Crook was a man of quiet determination, and the people of Oregon and Idaho expected great things of him. Nor were they disappointed, for to him is due the credit of subduing the hostile tribes on the Oregon and California frontier, and in Idaho. When the war began, eastern Oregon was for the most part a terra incognita, and the Oregon cavalry had spent four years in exploring it and tracking the Indians to their hitherto unknown haunts. And now the most efficient officers decided that the Indians must be fought in the winter, and Steele, after brief observation, adopted the theory. Then Governor Woods had thrown into the field the best possible aids to the troops in his two companies of Indian allies.

When Crook assumed command in the Boisé district the Indians were already hemmed in by a cordon of camps and posts, with detachments continually in the field harassing and reducing them. About the middle of December Crook took the field with forty soldiers and a dozen Warm Spring allies. On the Owyhee he found a body of about eighty warriors prepared for battle. Leaving ten men to guard camp, he attacked with the remainder, fighting for several hours, when the savages fled, leaving some women and children and thirty horses in his hands.