Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/346

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cretary.


Thus was checked, for the time being, an outbreak in this direction. Whether or not the presence of troops and a howitzer in the Rogue-river valley had the effect to restrain the rising discontent among the Indians, it is certain that in spite of it there were fewer murders by them in the summer of 1854 than for three } 7 ears previous. Edward Phillips, a miner on Applegate creek, was mur dered in his own house April fifteenth. Daniel Gage was killed on June fifteenth in the Siskiyou mountains. A man named McAmy was killed near DeWitt ferry, on the Klamath river, June twenty-fourth, and Thomas O Neal about the same time. Some time during the same month, or a little later, John Crittenden, John Badger, Alexander Sawyer, and a man named Wood, were murdered by the Modocs or Pit-river Indians on the southern immigrant road, at Gravelly ford, in the Humboldt valley; and in September, a Mr. Stewart of Corvallis, Oregon, was killed on the same road. On the second of November, Alfred French, formerly connected with the Chronicle newspaper at Independence, Missouri, was murdered by Indians near Crescent City.

The murderers in every case escaped punishment, and so far as the officers of the regular army stationed in the country were concerned, were defended rather than chas tised, owing to a prejudiced and arbitrary sentiment towards civilians entertained by General Wool, at this time in command of the division of the Pacific. Whoever has read his correspondence with Adjutant-General Thomas must have Percéived his strong bias against the people as distinguished from the army, from governor s down to the humblest citizen, and his especial dislike of volunteer organizations. The reports of the officers in command of posts in Oregon, California, and Washington, were colored by this feeling exhibited by the general of division, and their correspondence was too often distorted by their sense of what was expected of them by their chief.

The murder of the persons named on the southern im-