Benton County, Oregon - Chapter 21: The Early Explorers Attacked, 1885

Chapter 21: The Early Explorers Attacked

accords to Smith the distinction of having led the first white men into Southern Oregon, there is much left to conjecture in regard to numerous important details of his passage. The exact spot where his camp was destroyed by Indians is not known, nor its approximate situation. Certain manuscripts ascribe an island in [or near] the Umpqua as the place of the tragedy ; while others mention Cape Arago as the locality in question. The fact that an important tributary of the Umpqua has been named Smith river does not settle the question, while from certain facts the presumption is in favor of Cape Arago. At any rate the Umpqua Indians (who are well known to have inhabited the vicinity of the mouth of that river) are characterized by au indisposition to acts of violence, while the natives of Coos bay, and more particularly of the Coquille country, achieved quite a reputation as murderers of stray parties of whites, as will appear in another part of this book. These considerations render it likely that Smith's party was attacked at some point further south than the generally accepted locality, though the question - an interesting one - deserves and should receive full investigation.

Under such circumstances Southern Oregon began to become known to the world, and for a long series of years remained unsettled by civilized men, the only objects of the few white persons who entered its bounds being the pursuit of fur-bearing animals or else urged through these dangerous solitudes by the exigencies of travel. The Hudson's Bay Company's agents were quick to take advantage of the information brought by Smith, and parties of hunters and trappers were sent forth to systematically explore and in some sense occupy the country. This occupation extended no farther than the construction of a permanent post at the junction of Elk creek and the Umpqua river, where Elkton is now situated. This post, called Fort Umpqua, served as the headquarters of the company's employees throughout the section embracing the Umpqua, Rogue, Klamath and Upper Sacramento rivers.

In June, 1836, as is credibly told, a party of whites, including George Gay, well known in Oregon's early history, Daniel Miller, Edward Barnes, Dr. Bailey, J. Turner, were attacked near the mouth of Foot's creek (below Rock Point) on Rogue river, and Miller, Sanders, Barnes and Irish Tom were killed, while the others, badly wounded, made their escape. As narrated by J. W. Nesmith, in Transactions of Oregon Pioneers, 1882, the circumstances were as follows : " The party was under the leadership of Turner and was on a trapping expedition. About the middle of June they were encamped at the Point of Rocks [Rock Point] on the south bank of Rogue river. Several hundred Indians dropped into camp, but Turner thinking there was no danger took no precautions, and the natives most unexpectedly attacked the party with clubs, bows and knives. They got possession of three of the eight guns with which the whites were armed, and for a time the trappers fought them with fire-brands, clubbed guns and whatever came handy. Turner, a big Kentucky giant, seized a fir limb from the fire and fought lustily. He released Gay who was held down by the savages, and finally the assailants were driven from the camp. Dan Miller and another trapper were killed on the spot, while the six survivors were all more or less wounded. The latter took to the brush, and without horses and deprived of all the guns but two, traveled, fighting Indians by day and walking by night, making their way northward.

Indian Wars

Dr. Bailey was wounded by a tomahawk blow which had cleft his shin. Sanders' wounds disabled him from traveling, and he was left on the South Umpqua, while " Big Tom " [Irish Tom] was left on the North Umpqua. The] Indians reported to Dr. McLaughlin, of the Hudson's Bay Company, that both men soon died of their wounds where they were left. Turner, Gay, Woodworth and Dr. Bailey ultimately reached the settlement on the Willamette.

Two years later, or in 1837, a party of Oregonians proceeded to California to buy cattle to drive to the Willamette. They secured a drove, and returning passed through the Umpqua and Rogue river valleys. The party was composed in part of Ewing Young, the leader ; P. L. Edwards, who kept a diary of the trip ; Hawchurst, Carmichael, Bailey, Erequette, DesPau, B. Williams, Tibbetts, Gay, Wood, Camp, and about eight others, all frontiersmen of experience. While encamped at the Klamath, on the fourteenth of September, 1837, Gay and Bailey shot an Indian who had come peaceably into camp. This act was in revenge for the affair at Foot's creek, but that locality had not by any means been reached, and the Indians' crime of 1835 was revenged on an individual who, perhaps, had not heard of the event. The act was deeply resented by the Indians throughout the whole section, and the party met with the greatest difficulty in continuing their course. On the seventeenth of the same month they encamped at Foot's creek, and on the next morning sustained a serious attack of the savages, narrated thus in the diary of Edwards :

September 18. - Moved about sunrise. Indians were soon observed running along the mountain on our right. There could be no doubt but that they were intending to attack us at some difficult pass. Our braves occasionally fired on them when there was a mere possibility of doing any execution. About twelve o'clock, while we were in a stony and brushy pass between the river [Rogue river] on our right, and a mountain covered with wood on our left, firing and yelling in front announced an attack. Mr. Young, apprehensive of an attack at this pass, had gone in advance to examine the brush and ravine, and returned without seeing Indians. In making further search he found them posted on each side of the road. After firing of four guns, the forward cattle having halted, and myself having: arrived with the rear, I started forward, but orders met me from Mr. Young that no one should leave the cattle, he feeling able, with the two or three men already with him, to rout the Indians. In the struggle Gay was wounded in the back by an arrow. Two arrows were shot into the riding horse of Mr. Young, while he was snapping his gun at an Indian not more than ten yards off. To save his horse, he had dismounted and beat him on the head, but he refused to go off, and received two arrows, probably shot at his master. Having another brushy place to pass, four or five of us went in advance, but were not molested. Camped at the spot where Turner and party were attacked two years ago. Soon after the men on day guard said they had seen three Indians in a small grove about three hundred yards from camp. About half of the party went, surrounded the grove, some of them fired into it, others passed through it, but could find no Indians. At night all the horses nearly famished as they were tied up. Night set in dark, cloudy and threatening rain, so that the guard could herdly have seen an Indian ten paces off, until the moon rose, about ten o'clock. I was on watch the first half of the night.

Here Mr. Edwards' diary breaks off, leaving untold much of interest to the general reader. As regards the skirmish at Foot's creek, just narrated, there is a doubt of it were it not succeeded by still more severe ones, inasmuch as the record of Wilkes' exploring expedition suggests further calamities to Young's company. Lieutenant Emmons, U. S. N., commanded a detachment of Wilkes' expedition, which left Vancouver for Yerba Buena, in September, 1841, J. D. Dana, the great scientist, being of the party, as well as Tibbetts, who was with the Young party. This man informed his new associates that the Young expedition was defeated by the Indians who killed one white, and wounded two others who died when they reached the Umpqua. " He showed great anxiety to take his revenge on them, but no opportunity offered, for our party had no other difficulty than scrambling up steep paths and through thick shrubbery/'

In the work just referred to the natives about the Oregon-California line are spoken of as " bad Indiaus" - as if that were their common designation. Hence, we infer that they had, even at that date, acquired a sustained reputation for hostility to the whites. Such a name does not afford any clue to their real character, however, but only suggests a spirit of opposition to the whites with whom they came in contact. This opposition probably in most cases took the form of hostility. On other and more occasions it may not have exceeded that form of independence known to the early settlers as " insolence." This, be it remarked, was a favorite word with certain whites and infinitely recurs in the accounts of the early contests. It is only by the context that one can judge what the expression really signifies. To characterize an Indian as insolent, in certain cases meant that he was on the point of murder , at others that he had refused to allow white men to outrage his family. Such expression of independence or freedom or even of self-defense were all included in the then comprehensive term, insolence. Concerning the years preceding 1850 there is a dearth of information, whence not only are we unable to array many facts, but the power ot drawing inferences pertaining to what is known is lost, whereby a discussion of the aboriginal character in the light of the earlier events is impossible.

In May, 1845, J. C. Fremont, with his exploring expedition, arrived in Southern Oregon, having come up the Sacramento and Pit river valleys, and traveled by way of Goose, Clear, and Tule lakes to the west shore of Klamath lake, where he camped for a few days. His force consisted of about fifty men. On the ninth of May, Samuel Neal and M. Sighler rode into camp with the information that a United States officer was on their trail with dispatches, and would fall a victim to savages if not rescued, the two messengers having escaped only by the fleetness of their horses. Taking five trappers, four friendly Indians and the two messengers, Fremont hastened to the rescue, and at sun-down met Lieutenant Gillespie, guided by Peter Lassen and bearing dispatches from the United States government to Fremont. The place of meeting was sixty miles from Fremont's camp on the lake, which they had left in the morning. They camped that night in the Modoc country, near Klamath lake, and then it was that the savage Modocs committed the first of the long series of hostile acts which have marked their dealings with the whites. Exhausted as they were, the men lay down to sleep without setting a guard. The Modocs were not slow to take advantage of the opportunity. Late in the night, the watchful Kit Carson heard a dull, heavy thud as of a falling blow, and called to Basil La Jeunesse, who was sleeping on the other side of the camp-fire, to know what was the matter. Getting no answer, and seeing moving figures he cried, " Indians, Indians !" and seized his rifle. Quickly, the trappers, Lucian Maxwell, Richard Owens, Alex. Godey and Steppenfelt, with Carson rushed to the aid of the man attacked. The Indian chief was killed and his followers fled, but La Jeunesse, Denne, an Iroquois and Crain, a Delaware, were dead. This camp was on Hot creek, in Siskiyou county, California.

An examination of the trail in the morning showed that the attacking party numbered about twenty, and Lieutenant Gillespie recognized the dead chief as an Indian who had on the preceding morning given him a fine fish, the first food he had tasted for forty hours. On the eleventh of May Fremont left his main camp and started for California, to begin the war of independence which resulted in its conquest by the United States. A detachment of about fifteen men was left at the scene of the midnight attack to punish the perpetrators should they return to it. Two Modocs were killed and scalped there, and the men rejoined the main party. Ten men of the advance guard, under Kit Carson, came suddenly upon an Indian village on the east bank of Klamath lake, and charged into it at once, killing many braves and burning the rancheria, but sparing the women and children. Years afterward a Modoc chief related these occurrences to Lindsay Applegate, and in response to questions, said the Indians made the attack on Fremont because these were the first white men who came into the country, and they wanted to kill them to deter others from coming.

Even prior to the Fremont explorations considerable migration to and from California began to take place through Southern Oregon. As yet there were few people settled south of the Willamette valley, whence came the greater number of the travelers, and the route was a very dangerous and difficult one. Time and distance had even magnified the sufficiently dangerous character of the Indians, and it required a considerable degree of daring to venture upon the journey. However, no dangers could have daunted such travelers as in 1848-9-50 set out for California, intent upon mining, although their passage through this region was usually attended with fighting and many times with loss of life. Tradition relates the murders of several men near Foot's creek and the robbery of their camp wherein was gold to the value of many thousand dollars ; but the time, place and names are inextricably confused. Of course all travelers went heavily armed, and as far as possible in strong numbers. J. W. Nesmith in a letter to the compiler of this account, says : " I first saw Southern Oregon in 1848, when, with thirty-two companions, I set out from Polk county to go through to California. The Indians were all hostile from the Umpqua mountains to the valley of the Sacramento, and there was not a day during our march between these two points that we did not exchange shots with them, though we had no engagement with them that could be called a battle."

In August, 1850, two packers, Cushing and Prink, were killed on the banks of the Klamath river near where the ferry was afterwards established. Their train was taken and their cargo destroyed by Shasta Indians.

In January, 1851, a conflict occurred at Blackburn's ferry on the Klamath, in which James Sloan, Jenalshan and Bender were killed by savages presumably Klamaths. Blackburn and his wife defended their house until help arrived and the Indians fled. On examining the neighborhood of the ferry, the body of Blackburn's father was most unexpectedly found, he having come in the evening to visit his son whom he had not seen for years, and met his death almost at the threshold, at the hands of the besiegers. Some two weeks later a party of white men from the ferry went in pursuit of the hostiles and shot two Indians, one, a squaw, being killed by mistake while in a canoe. The same party, being in the vicinity of Happy Camp, attacked a rancheria of Eurocs (down-river Klamaths) and killed every male inhabitant and two females. One of the attacking party was killed. This action is called the Lowden's ferry fight. During the following May, four miners were killed on Grave creek and Rogue river, whose names are unknown. Mosin and McKee (otherwise called Reaves) were at about the same date killed on the Klamath.