t, Brouillet
indignities and brutalities that they wondered to find themselves alive, among. Christian people; children who had lost the happy innocence of childhood, whom suffer ing had made old before their time; men who had become craven through fear an avalanche of such misery poured into the lap of a small community, still struggling with the hardships of pioneer settlement, upheaved it from its very foundations.
Governor Abernethy, eleven days after the delivery to him of his rescued fellow countrymen, penned the follow ing letter to Mr. Ogden :
OREGON CITY, January 19, 1848.
SIR : I feel it a duty as well as a pleasure to tender you my sin cere thanks, and the thanks of this community, for your exertions in behalf of the widows and orphans that were left in the hands of the Cayuse Indians. Their state was a deplorable one, subject to the caprice of savages, exposed to their insults, compelled to labor for them, and remaining constantly in dread lest they should be butchered as their husbands and fathers had been. From this state I am fully satisfied we could not have rescued them ; a small party of Americans would have been looked upon by them with contempt; a larger party would have been a signal for a general massacre. Your immediate departure from Vancouver on the receipt of the intelligence from Waiilatpu, enabling you to arrive at Walla Walla before the news of the American party having started from this place reached them, together with your influence over the Indians, accomplished the desirable object of relieving the distressed. Your exertions in behalf of the prisoners will, no doubt, cause a feeling of pleasure to you throughout life, but this does not relieve them nor us from the obligations we are under to you. You have also laid the American government under obligations to you, for their citi zens were the subjects of this massacre, and their widows and or-
says they exercised by advising the Cayuses who attended the council at the bishop s house to immediately give up the girls whom they had taken. "And then," he says, " all entreated Five Crows to give up the one he had taken, but to no purpose." Up to this time Miss Bewley had been permitted to remain at the bishop s house during the day time, but after Five Crows refusal to give her up, Brouillet advised her to insist upon being allowed to remain altogether at the bishop s house until definite news came from below ; but if Five Crows would not consent she should stay with him at his lodge. She came back, however, and was received and comforted as best they could under circumstances so peculiar, and continued to share their bachelor house with them until relief caine. The years that have elapsed have softened preju- dices, and it is time to write impartially of a most interesting period of the state s
