without paying the usual visit of ceremony to Governor Stevens. They had but recently captured a pack train loaded with provisions for Shaw's command, and were correspondingly elated. To show in what mood they were, they fired the grass of the country traveled over, making it impossible to subsist a mounted force on that route.
The council opened on the eleventh, and lasted one week, Stevens in the mean time moving his camp to near Steptoe's position on Mill creek, six miles from its junction with the Walla Walla, fearing an outbreak. The only terms to which the war chiefs would assent were to be left in possession of their respective territories as before the treaty. It was the frequently expressed opinion of the officers of the regular army, including Colonel Wright and General Wool, that the former treaties should not be confirmed. It was, nevertheless, the duty of the superintendent to execute, if possible, a treaty made, until congress had rejected it; and it was the duty of the army of the United States to assist him. But this obligation was ignored by Colonel Wright, with the approval of General Wool, who, in his turn, by representations often wide of the facts, secured for himself the approval of those still higher in the service.
Nothing was accomplished by the council, and Stevens set out to return to The Dalles with his train of Indian goods, escorted by Shaw's command under Captain Goff, which was attacked several times on the nineteenth and twentieth, and would have been taken but for the assistance of Colonel Steptoe, who lost two soldiers in the fight, and who was reproved by General Wool for acting as an escort to volunteers.
Stevens returned to his capital, and General Wool wrote to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas, then assistant adjutant-general of the army at New York: "Governor Stevens has returned to Puget sound, where it is hoped he will remain, although it is apprehended he will attempt the renewal of the war in that region. By his efforts to cause
