Indians built large and numerous fires along the bluffs, or high lands, some two miles in advance. The next day Colonel Gilliam moved on, and without incident worthy of note, reached Whitman's mission, the third day after the battle. The main body of Indians fell back towards Snake river, and a fruitless attempt followed to induce them to give up the parties who had committed the murders at Waiilatpu. Colonel Gilliam at last determined upon making a raid into the Snake river country, and in carrying out this programme surprised a camp of Cayuses near that stream, among whom were some of the murderers. The captured camp professed friendship, however, and pointed out the horses of Indians on the hill, which they said belonged to the parties whom the Colonel was anxious to kill or capture, stating that their owners were on the north side of the Snake river and beyond reach. So well was their part acted that the officers believed their statements, proceeded to drive off the stock indicated, and started on their return. They soon found that a grievous error had been made in releasing the village, whose male population was soon mounted upon war horses, and assailed the volunteers on all sides, forcing them to fight their way as they fell back to the Touchet river. Through the whole day and even into the night after their arrival at the latter stream the contest was maintained-a constant harrassing skirmish. The soldiers drove the Indians back again and again, but as soon as the retreat was resumed, the enemy were upon them once more. Finally, after going into camp on the Touchet, Colonel Gilliam ordered the captured stock turned loose; and when the Indians got possession of it, they returned to Snake river without molesting the command any further. In the struggle on the Touchet, when the retreating soldiers first reached that stream, William Taylor was mortally wounded by an Indian who sprang up in the bushes by the stream and fired with but a few yards between them. Nathan Olney, afterwards Indian agent, seeing the act, rushed upon the savage, snatched from his hand a war club in which was fastened a piece of iron, and dealt him a blow on the head with it with such force as to cause the iron to split the club, and yet failed to kill him. He then closed with his antagonist in a hand-to-hand struggle, and soon ended the contest with a knife. There were no other casualties reported. "Colonel Gilliam started from the Mission on the twentieth of March, with a small force destined to return from The Dalles with supplies, while he was to continue to the Willamette and report to the governor. While camped at Well Springs he was killed by an accidental discharge of a gun, and his remains were taken to his friends west of the Cascades by Major Lee. This officer soon returned to his regiment with a commission as Colonel, but finding Lieutenant-Colonel Waters had been elected by the regiment to that position in his absence, he resigned and filled a subordinate office, for the remainder of his term of enlistment. The attempt by commissioners, who had been sent with the volunteers, as requested by the Indians in a memorial to the Americans at the time the captives were ransomed, to negotiate a peaceful solution of the difficult problem, failed. They wanted the Indians to deliver up for execution all those who had imbued their hands in blood at Waiilatpu; they wished the Cayuses to pay all damages to imigrants caused by their being robbed or attacked while passing through the Cayuse country. The Indians wished nothing of the kind. They wanted peace and to be let alone; for the Americans to call the account balanced and drop the Vol. I-25 matter. The failure to agree had resulted in two or three skirmishes, one of them at least a severe test of strength, in which the Indians had received the worst of it, and in the other the volunteers had accomplished nothing that could be accounted a success. The Cayuses, finding that no compromise could be effected, abandoned their country, and most of them passed east of the Rocky mountains. Nothing was left for the volunteers but to leave the country also, which they did, and the Cayuse War had practically ended. "The Cayuses, as a tribe, had no heart in the war, Joe Lewis told them immediately after the massacre that now they must fight, and advised them to send him to Salt Lake with a band of horses, to trade for ammunition with the Mormons. He started with a select band of animals, accompanied by two young braves; and a few days later one of them returned with the intelligence that Joe Lewis had killed his companion and decamped with the horses; and this was the last the Cayuses saw of the scheming villain. Thus matters stood until the spring of 1850, when the Cayuses were given to understand that peace could be procured by delivering up the murderers for punishment. At that time Tam-su-ky and his supporters, including many relatives who had not in any manner participated in the massacre, were hiding in the mountains at the head of John Day river. The Indians who desired peace went after the murderers, and a fight ensued, ending in the capture of nearly all of the outlawed band. In this fight 'Cutmouth John,' an Indian well known in Umatilla, while endeavoring to capture one of the murderers, received the wound which gave rise to his peculiar appellation. Only one of the five actually engaged in the bloody work at Waiilatpu (so the Whitman Indians assert) was captured, and he was Ta-ma-has, and ugly villain whom his countrymen called 'The Murderer.' It was he who commenced the work of death at Waiilatpu by burying a hatchet in Dr. Whitman's brain. Taking him and four others, several of the older men and chiefs went to Oregon City to deliver them up as hostages. They were at once thrown into prison, condemned and executed at Oregon City on June 3, 1850; and even the ones who had escorted them, in view of this summary proceeding, congratulated themselves upon their safe return. They believed that Ta-ma-has should have been hanged, but not the others. So that it was the peaceful Indians that finally brought the murderers to trial and the hangman's rope." There have been recently rescued from dust and oblivion some of the documents which show the manner of furnishing the first army of Oregon. Yamhill county sent the following: Andrew Hembree, 600 lbs. pork, and 20 bushels of wheat; Eli Perkins, one horse, 2 lbs. powder, 2 boxes caps, 5 lbs. lead; William J. Martin, 1 horse loaded with provisions; Benj. Stewart, 2 boxes caps, 2 lbs. lead, 1 blanket; John Baker, 1 horse; Thomas McBride, $5.00 cash; James Ramsey, 3 lbs. powder, 8 lbs. lead; Samuel Tustin, $5.00 cash, 5 lbs. lead, 2 lbs. powder; Joel J. Hembree, 1 horse, 200 lbs. pork, 20 bu. wheat; James McGinnis, $3.00 in orders; James Johnson, $7.75 on Abernethy, 4 lbs. lead; T. J. Hubbard, 1 rifle, 1 pistol; Hiram Cooper, 1 rifle, 1 musket, 60 rounds ammunition; A. A. Skinner, 1 blanket, 1 lb. powder; Jas. Fenton, 3 pairs shoes; J. M. Cooper, 2 boxes caps, two guns; James Green, 2 boxes caps, 2 lbs. lead; C. Wood, 1 rifle; J. Rowland, 1 outfit; W. T. Newby, 1 horse; Carney Goodridge, 5 bu. wheat, 100 lbs. pork; John Manning, 1 pair shoes; John Richardson, 1 Spanish saddle-tree; Solomon Allen 6 bars lead; Felix Scott, 1 gray horse; O. Risley, 1 rifle, 3 boxes caps, 100 lbs. flour; M. Burton, 1 pair pants; Richard Miller, 1 horse, 6 boxes caps' Amos Harvey, 1 gun; James Burton, 1 sack and stirrups. Salem Mercury, in Albany State Rights Democrat, October 12, 1877. Says Abernethy to Lee, "We are now getting lots of pork and some wheat. Or., Archives, MSS., 103. Thomas Cox, who had brought a stock of goods across the plains the previous summer, had a considerable quantity of ammunition which was manufactured by himself in Illinois, and which he now freely furnished to the volunteers without charge. Or. Literary Vidette, April, 1879. The "Caps" mentioned in the above munitions of war were "percussion caps" to fire the guns. JOE MEEK'S MISSION TO WASHINGTON As a part and parcel of the whole country-wide uproar over the murder of Whitman, the Provisional Government decided to send a special messenger fara-way over the mountains to President Polk beseeching aid to the colony. All minds turned at once to one and the same man-Joseph L. Meek, for the dangerous mission. Meek's knowledge of the mountains, plains, Indians and dangers of every sort between Oregon and the Missouri river identified him as the man to undertake the hazardous trip; and besides all this, his cousin, James K. Polk, whom he had not seen since boyhood, had been elected President of the United States, and it was believed that the extraordinary trip of such a delegate over the Rocky mountains in the depth of winter would arouse the President and Congress to immediate action. Meek resigned his membership in the Provisional Government Legislature, accepted the commission to Washington and made speedy arrangements for his departure. For company and aid in trouble he took along with him as far as St. Louis his old mountaineer friends, John Owen and George W. Ebberts. They packed their pack horses and took saddle horses and left Oregon City for the east by the way of the Barlow road around Mt. Hood on January 4, 1848; Meek carrying with him authority from the legislature and governor to present Oregon's case to the President and Congress of the United States. And it must now be recorded here that by this commission to Meek, Oregon had so far as its governor had authority, put two delegates to Congress on the way to Washington City. After much consideration and advice from interested parties Governor Abernethy had on the 18th of October, 1847, appointed and commissioned J. Quinn Thornton to go to Washington City and advocate the cause of Oregon with the president and congress. Thornton was at the time Supreme Judge of the Provisional Government, a smooth, plausible man and popular with the Methodist mission. But his appointment by the governor was not relished by the legislature, which passed resolutions indirectly condemning the appointment as the "officiousness of secret actions." Thornton sailed from Portland October 18, 1847, on his mission to Washington by the ocean route on the bark Whitton, whose captain contracted in consideration of certain voluntary contributions of flour and very little money, to carry the Oregon delegate down to Panama. But on this ship and contract. Thornton got no farther than San Juan on the coast of Lower California, where the United States Sloop of War Portsmouth picked up the stranded Thornton and carried around Cape Horn and landed him at Boston on May 2, 1848. Returning now to the Meek party we find 'it delayed two weeks at the Dalles |