Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/363

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THE ROGUE RIVER WARS. 345

and actions he shot one, and wounded another from his doorway, where he was himself shot down a few moments later, leaving his wife and little daughter to defend them selves, which they did for twenty-four hours, before help arrived.

Dragging her husband s body inside and barring the door, Mrs. Harris instructed her daughter how to make bullets, while she stood guard and prevented the Indians from approaching too near the house by firing through cracks in the walls at every one detected in the attempt to reach it. In this painfully solicitous manner she kept off the enemy until dark, when they withdrew. Alone with her husband s dead body, and her weary and frightened child, she spent the long night. Fearing that the Indians would return with reinforcements in the morning, towards dawn she stole forth, locking the house behind her, and concealed herself and daughter under a pile of brush at no great distance away, where she was found, blackened with powder and stained with blood, many hours later by a detachment of troops under Major Fitzgerald. 13

The other victims of the outbreak of the ninth of Octo ber were: Mr. and Mrs. Haines and two children, Frank A. Reed, William Given, James W. Cartwright, Powell, Bunch, Hamilton, Fox, White, and others, on the road between Evans ferry and Grave creek; two young women, Miss Hudson and Miss Wilson, on the road between Indian creek and Crescent City; and three men on Grave creek? below the road. It was altogether the bloodiest day the valley had ever seen.

When the news that the settlements were attacked reached Jacksonville, a company of twenty men quickly armed and took the trail of the Indians. They were over taken and joined by Major Fitzgerald with fifty-five troop ers from Fort Lane. On arriving at Wagoner s place they found thirty Indians engaged in plundering the premises,

13 Mrs. Harris afterwards married Aaron Chambers. She died in Jackson county in 1869, highly respected by the