Valley, the Indians having shown a desire to open hostilities by driving off some of their horses. On meeting Lee, however, who had only a few of his men with him, the boats being scattered by the wind, Hinman determined to turn back and endeavor to save the mission property. Leaving his family to proceed to the Cascades, and there await his return, he accompanied Lee to the Dalles, where they arrived the 21st of December, and whence Lee's first report to the governor was dated the 26th.
Lee found the natives there friendly, Seletza, the head chief, whose men had been killing the mission cattle, declaring that his people should pay for the property destroyed.[1] The mission buildings were undisturbed, though the property belonging to emigrants, left at Barlow's Gate on the Barlow road, having arrived too late to cross the mountains, had been carried off. A little of it was brought in, but no confidence was entertained that the natives intended to do anything more than to divert suspicion. In the mean while they circulated reports of a combination and general council of the Nez Percés and Cayuses, and their determination to cut off the missionaries in the Nez Percé and Spokane country, as well as to murder all the captives then in their hands. Lee himself sent these reports to the governor, but qualified by the information of their origin.[2] Such was the uncertain and excited condition of the public mind
- ↑ 'Soletza professes friendship,' writes Lee, 'but I shall keep an eye on him.' Saffarans in a letter to Lee, dated at the Dalles Jan. 30th, says: I deem it necessary at this crisis to warn you against placing too much confidence in the fidelity and friendship of Homas,' another chief. The general feeling was one of distrust of all savages.
- ↑ Crawford's Nar., MS., 116
into the woods, making his way to the cabins on the portage, which a party had been sent to erect. Mortified at this error, he remained there for some time. The accounts he sent to Oregon City, by parties engaged in the transportation of supplies to this depot, represented that the Indians had driven off all the stock belonging to the mission, and had probably destroyed the buildings; a report which greatly disturbed the governor, who in his letters to Lee inquired anxiously concerning the safety of the mission property, and says it was this report which led him to meet the house in secret session, and determined him upon calling out 500 men.
