150 T. C. ELLIOTT
the Columbia again between Big Eddy and the present city of The Dalles ; the path along the river's edge below the Des Chutes river was not suitable for wagons, and was never so used.
The arrival of the pioneers marks the beginning of a period of transition in the use of this stretch of the river in that there was travel from the interior by land which did not pass over the river portage. The Hudson's Bay Company continued to use it and their trade assumed a more general character, but in 1846 the Treaty of Washington placed the Oregon boundary at the 49th parallel and left that company with only possessory rights instead of permanent ownership of their trading posts and business. This transition, broadly speaking, was from com- merce between white men and Indians to commerce between white men and white men ; and speaking specifically it was the transition from the monopoly or "big business" of the Hudson's Bay Company to the next monopoly or "big business" in the name of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company.
As a part of that transition period came the Indian war of 1855-6, known as the Yakima War because Kamaiakin of the Yakima tribe was the chief instigator of it. The influence of the Celilo Falls and the Dalles of the Columbia during this Indian war is best explained in the language of Isaac I. Stevens, first governor of the Territory of Washington. Gov. Stevens also held the office of Supt. of Indian Affairs in the Territory and in that capacity during the spring and summer of 1855 held a series of councils with various tribes and ob- tained treaties under which a large part of the Inland Empire was freed from any claim of the Indians and its settlement by white people made possible. But under the lead of the crafty and brave Kamaiakin the Indians soon repudiated their signatures to the treaties and in the fall began war upon the few whites already in the country. While making his way back to Olympia under the protection of a band of friendly Nez Perces and when seated in his tent on December 23rd, 1855, near the present city of Walla Walla, Gov. Stevens wrote
