When Yantis and his men returned to the camp after their vain effort to rescue the women and children of the unfortunate party, they heard a child's voice calling them feebly from the bushes near by. On going to the spot they found a nine-year-old boy, named Newton Ward, who had been badly wounded and left for dead. He said he had held his breath when the Indians came to look at him, hoping they would think him dead. Taking the wounded boy in their arms they returned to the train, though the pain from his wound was such that he begged to be put down and left to die. He subsequently recovered and came safely through to Oregon, where he grew to manhood. His brother, a few years older, had a much more miraculous escape. He was shot through the right lung with an arrow, which passed so near through his body that the point could be felt under the skin of his back. Thus wounded he managed to make his way to Fort Boise, a distance of nearly thirty miles, living meanwhile for several days on roots and berries, and suffering terribly from his wound. There the arrow was extracted by cutting through the flesh to its point and drawing it through his body. He also recovered. These brothers were the only survivors of the Ward party.

When news of this massacre reached the Dalles, Major Rains, then in command of the military post which had been established there, dispatched Captain Haller, Lieutenant McFeely and Dr. Suckle, with twenty-six enlisted men, to punish the murderers if possible, and provide protection for any belated emigrants who might still be on the trail. On the march they were overtaken by Captain Olney, a brother of Judge Olney of Oregon, who had started out in command of a party of thirty volunteers, and the number had been increased by several emigrants who had joined them on the march.

As rations had not been provided for so great a number, and the supply train which followed them was delayed on the way, both regulars and volunteers were compelled to subsist for some days upon smoked salmon, and the horses captured from the Indians. Upon arriving at the scene of the massacre, or near it, the command arrested four Indians who were pointed out as having taken part in it. They were examined before a court of inquiry, organized for the purpose, where they explained what had taken place and the share that each had taken in the massacre. All were found guilty. One of them tried to escape, and was shot by the guard, and the other three were taken to the spot where their bloody work had been done, and hanged on a gallows erected close to the melancholy mound that covered the charred and blackened bones of their victims. Later a small party of the hostiles were captured and two of them were shot while trying to escape. All the others fled on the approach of the troops to their camp, abandoning their lodges, in which a large part of the goods of the murdered party, including clothing and camp outfits, were found. They were pursued with vigor by Captain Olney's volunteers, but managed to hide their trail so effectually by following the beds of shallow streams for long distances, that pursuit was fruitless, and the main body of the murderers escaped.

The train with which Mary Hagar, afterwards Mrs. George Wanch, came was attacked and eight of the party killed and scalped. Among the number was Margaretta Kiel, a cousin of Mrs. Wanch, whose father was captain of the train. She had very long and beautiful hair. A few days after the massacre, a party of Indians came up with the train, and one of them had this girl's scalp fastened to his shoulder,

with the long and beautiful hair wound about his neck. Capt. Keil was one of the first to recognize the bloody trophy. He shot the Indian and recovered it, but was himself wounded in the encounter, and a brother of Mrs. Wanch was killed. This party was almost wholly composed of Germans, who had crossed the ocean only a few years earlier and settled in Missouri. Some of the company were musicians and they brought their instruments with them. This was perhaps the first brass band to cross the plains. One of their wagons also brought a strange burden. A brother of Mrs. Wanch was taken sick and died while the party were preparing for their long trip. As a dying request he begged the family not to bury him and leave him alone in the country they were leaving, and the father promised that he should not be left there. So a metallic coffin was procured and the body carefully sealed up in it. It was brought through safely and buried in the Willapa Valley, where the family spent the first year after their arrival. They afterwards removed to Oregon.*

After crossing the Missouri the travelers were beyond the reach of the law and its protection. It became necessary that they should be a law unto themselves. Each train made its own regulations, and appointed those who were to enforce them. In this way good order in most cases was maintained throughout the journey. the journey. Property and life were protected, and offenders both of the lesser and greater sort, promptly punished. The "vile outcasts" of whom Parkman speaks, and some others whose characters and habits were not of the best, intruded themselves among those to whom their company was not wholly agreeable, but they were usually promptly disposed of. If they were * Sept. 23, 1892.

simply lazy, if their habits were filthy, or if they became abusive or disagreeable, they were given notice to quit the train, and if they did not go promptly a few rifles were produced, and the exact number of minutes was fixed beyond which their presence would not be tolerated. They rarely exceeded the time limit in getting out of range. If they insulted the women, the ox whips of the party were applied with excellent effect. If the offence was a particularly grievous one the offender was first tied to a wagon wheel, where every whip in the train was applied to his back and shoulders, after which he was turned loose and as many more lashes were laid on as could be administered without too great effort, before he got out of reach. All capital offences came strictly under the jurisdiction of Judge Lynch, but so far as known trials were always orderly and conducted with due decorum. A jury was impaneled, the accused was heard in his own defence, or by counsel, if any could be found to defend him. The jury then deliberated and returned its verdict. If unfavorable, the guilty party was promptly shot or hanged. J. W. McCarty saw one of these executions at Council Bluffs.* An unmarried man had murdered and robbed his employer of a considerable sum of money. The money, in bank bills, was found on the accused when arrested, and was identified by the dead man's partner. The trial took place the evening after the murder, and execution followed immediately. C. B. Talbot says one man in his train was burned at the stake in 1849,* but what his offence was he does not say. Mrs. Nancy Thomas says the people in her train in 1852 were surprised one day, when on the upper waters of the Sweetwater, to find a white child, with flaxen hair and very light blue eyes, in the keeping of some * "Tacoma Ledger," Oct. 16, 1892.

Indians who were camped near the trail. A little farther on they found more Indians who had four other white children, all very small, and which had apparently all belonged to the same family. Upon investigation they found that a man and his wife had been murdered by a man they had employed to drive one of their teams, who had robbed them of their money and given their goods, or most of them, and their little children to the Indians. A search for the murderer, among the trains in advance, was immediately organized. The older children were able to give such a description of him that he was easily identified. Within a few days he was captured and hanged. The executioners did not wait to give the body burial, or even to take it down from the gibbet, but placing a card near it indicating the enormity of his crime, they left it to the crows and the elements.*

Edward Hanford's family found a man on the trail one day who claimed to have been abandoned by the people he had been traveling with, because he was sick and no longer able to work. He was a woe-begone creature, and was evidently in distress. Mrs. Hanford had for three or four weeks previously been nursing a woman who had typhoid fever, but she had then so far recovered that she could be taken to another wagon. A bed had been fitted up for her, by suspending it from the bows which supported the wagon cover, in such a way that it swung back and forth as the wagon rocked, but without hitting its sides. The sick woman had found it very comfortable. Now that she no longer required it, it was given to this sick stranger, who had no claim of any sort on the family, except that he was a human being in sore need. Mrs. Hanford and her husband nursed * "Tacoma Ledger," Nov. 13, 1892.