THE ROGUE RIVER WARS. 395
Umpqua valley, who had been engaged in the difficulties there last fall. We have succeeded in taking some four or five Umpquas, and twenty Coquilles of Washington s tribe ; also twenty-three of the north fork Indians. The company has been in actual service from the twenty-sixth of March to the thirtieth day of April, both days included. I have also stationed guards at Coquille, Sixes, and Elk river ferries, according to request of S. S. Mann, quartermaster of this place. These men are still on duty.
W. H. Harris of Coos bay was captain of a company, also raised immediately after the Gold Beach massacre, or about the twenty-eighth of February, and which was after wards " recognized" by the governor, and continued in the service under the new organization of recruits to the southern army. In his report to the adjutant-general, Harris wrote :
On the first day of March I set out with twenty men of my com mand from Empire City to Port Orford, in view of forcing open a communication between these two places. Every citizen on the coast between Empire City and Port Orford had fled to one or the other of these places, leaving their homes and property unprotected. From best information I was advised that a party of Indians on the Coquille were then preparing to make a descent upon this helpless section, thus forsaken of its inhabitants, in view of seizing the un protected property of our citizens as the spoils of the enemy. After cooperating with the forces at Port Orford in such a way as would best prevent a catastrophe thus fatal, I returned with my command to Empire City, where I arrived on the tenth of March.
Believing that a party of disaffected Umpquas were scouting between the waters of Coos and Coquille, in view of enlisting the Coos bay Indians, I set out from Empire City on the fourteenth of March with a detachment of twenty-one men. I proceeded with my command up Coos river, and thence southwardly to the north fork of the Coquille. At Burton prairie I saw the old camp of the Indians I was in search of, but they had taken the alarm some days previous, and had fled to the mountains. The exhausted state of my men and supplies would not admit of pursuit, and I returned with my command to Empire City on the twenty-fourth.
On the twenty-fifth of March I sent a detachment of ten men to the upper Coquille to act in concert with Captain Creighton s com pany in view of securing the friendly Indians in that quarter to the charge and control of the Indian agent. This detachment was under command of Lieutenant Foley, whom I joined in person at the scene of action on the twenty -sixth. Having secured the pledge
