who did not arrive in Oregon until July, being removed in less than three months for trading with the Indians. A number of sub-agents were appointed for different parts of the territory, who either did not accept, or were inefficient. The one who really understood Indians, and was of use in going among the wild tribes, was J. L. Parrish of the dismembered Methodist mission.
The circumstances in which Dart found himself as superintendent of Indian affairs for the whole territory of Oregon, both north and south of the Columbia river, and east and west of the Cascade range, were anything but condusive to peace of mind or personal comfort, and it would appear that he accomplished as much as under the same conditions any man could have been expected to do. In his report he gave it as his opinion that with the exception of the Snake and Rogue-river tribes, the Indians of Oregon were remarkably well disposed; but that to keep these savages in subjection troops should be stationed at certain points, and particulary in the Snake-river country, through which the immigration must pass annually.
What it was that about 1850 developed the war spirit in these Indians, formerly not more ill-behaved than all savages, was a subject of conjecture. Doubtless the passage through their country of large bodies of people unarmed, and having with them much property, was a temptation to them to steal, and robbery sometimes provoked punishment. Blood once shed was the seed of a terrible harvest, as all Indian history proves.
Many persons believed they could see, in the sudden disaffection of the Snakes, the hand of the Latter-Day Saints, and certainly the evidence, though circumstantial, was strong against them. Others reasoned that the law forbidding the sale of ammunition to Indians in Oregon, which law the Hudson's Bay Company was compelled to respect, had destroyed that company's influence with the Indians, leaving them free to follow their own savage impulses. It might have been surmised that the Cayuse
