Miss Bewley was sent for, and having no one to protect her, she was torn from the arms of sympathizing women, placed on a horse, and in the midst of a high fever of both mind and body, was carried through a November snow-storm to the arms of this brawny savage. Five Crows behaved in a manner becoming a gentlemanly and Christian savage. He made his captive as comfortable as possible, and observing her opposition to his wishes, gave her a few days in which to think of it, besides allowing her to spend a portion of her time at the house of the Catholic bishop. But this generous mood was not of long duration, and nightly she was dragged from Blanchet's presence to the lodge of her lord, the priests powerless to interfere.[1]
The position of the priests was made ground for serious accusation when the story became known; but it is difficult to see how they could have interfered without first having resolved to give up their mission and risk their lives. If the Americans at Waiilatpu could refuse to protest, and if Canfield could voluntarily seek to save his own life, leaving his wife and children in the hands of the natives, it was hardly to be expected that the power of the priests who had their own lives and purposes to be secured, and who were not allowed under ordinary circumstances to harbor women in their houses, should prove more efficacious.[2]
- ↑ Miss Bewley says in her deposition that she 'begged and cried to the bishop for protection; either at his house, or to be sent to Walla Walla,' but nothing availed. Gray's Hist. Or., 486–97. It is said that one of the priests, in a niece of injudicious pleasantry, asked her how she liked her new husband, an indiscretion which planted a thorn in his side that rankled longer, if we may judge by the wordy war which resulted from it, than the insult did in Miss Bewley's heart, which she said she 'thought would break. Brouillet's Authentic Account, 57.
- ↑ A glance at the depositions shows charges even more grave which the survivors made against each other, and against the dead. Crockett Bewley was accused of saying indiscreet things which brought on the massacre. Even Rogers was declared to have confessed before he died that he had poisoned Indians. This was one of the peculiar features of the affair; men and women were made so craven by their fears that they hesitated at nothing when by lying they could, as they thought, avert danger from themselves. If the half they said about each other were true, they deserved death.
