food, but not to the degree to demoralize the spirit of the army.[1]
The Oregon people, possessed of but scantiest resources and provided with but the flimsiest financial organization made shift to bring to successful issue the contingencies developed by the Cayuse outbreak. It was, however, some exceedingly effective diplomacy that prevented the crisis from developing its most ominous portendings. There was some danger that this affair might become the signal for a race conflict for the possession of this section of the country. An injudicious procedure, too, might have prevented the co-operation of the English and American dwellers in this land. It thus behooved the Provisional Government to have the other strong tribes of the Upper Columbia pledged to remain at peace, and to enlist the aid of the representatives of the Hudson Bay Company. It must divide the Indians and unite the whites. The first it did through a wisely selected peace commission that succeeded in dissuading the formidable tribes in the neighborhood of the offending Cayuses from casting their lot with those who were harboring assassins.
To appreciate the degree of merit due to winning at least the attitude of friendliness and co-operation on the part of the Hudson Bay Company people and in having that fact impressed upon the Indians it is necessary to note the conflict of interests with regard to relations with the Indians between the fur company and the agricultural settlers of the Willamette Valley. One prospered through the profit gained from traffic with the Indians, while it was the interest of the other to have them removed and to have the least contact possible with them. This contrast of interests as to relations with the Indians was paralleled and reinforced by the fact that the Catholic missionaries were affiliated with
- ↑ Letter of Jesse Applegate to S. F. Chadwick, dated November 8, 1877. Quoted by Brown in his History of the Provisional Government, p. 329. "We had no mutinies, sections [sic] or strikes in our little army, though both officers and men served without pay and frequently without food, lean horse meat being a luxury."
