Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/478

CHAPTER XIX.

WAR AND DEVELOPMENT.

1858–1862.

War Departments and Commanders—Military Administration of General Harney—Wallen's Road Expeditions—Troubles with the Shoshones—Emigration on the Northern and Southern Routes—Expeditions of Steen and Smith—Campaign against the Shoshones—Snake River Massacre—Action of the Legislature—Protection of the Southern Route—Discovery of the John Day and Powder River Mines—Floods and Cold of 1861–2—Progress of Eastern Oregon.

 

In the summer of 1857 General Wool, who was so much at variance with the civil authorities on the Pacific coast, was removed from this department, and the command given to General Newman S. Clarke. The reader will remember that Colonel George Wright had been left by Wool in command at Vancouver in the spring of 1856. Not long after, on account of the hostilities of those tribes which had taken part in the Walla Walla treaties of 1855, Wright was removed to The Dalles, and Colonel Thomas Morris took command at Vancouver. In the mean time two new posts were established north of the Columbia, one in the Yakima country, and another in the Walla Walla Valley; and for a period of two years Wright, embarrassed by the policy of the commanding generals, outnumbered and outwitted by the Indians, was engaged in a futile endeavor to subdue without fighting them. The Indians being emboldened by the apparent weakness of the army, in the spring of 1858 the troops under Colonel Steptoe, while marching to

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