the late campaign, J consider myself released from any further mili
tary connection with the regiment^ that connection having expired
by limitation on our return to Fort Waters. Consequently, 1 there
withdraw from the regiment.
On the road from that place to Fort Wascopam, I met a commis sion filled out for myself as lieutenant-colonel. This doubtless grew out of a misunderstanding of the consent I gave to act as such for the time. When I resigned my commission as colonel, I believe I was only yielding to another what I knew he considered his rights, and my consent to fill an office under him was purely from a wish to preserve peace, friendship, and good feeling in the regiment until a last effort should be made to punish the enemy, and not to gratify any ambition to fill an office. In resigning the former office, there was no sacrifice, but on the contrary a high degree of pleasure. In submitting to the latter, though temporarily, I confess there was a sacrifice required. It was made, as long as necessary to the success of the campaign. With the necessity my obligations expired. With high sense of obligation and duty to the community, and a sense of gratefulness to your excellency, I beg leave to decline the proffered honor. You are aware that no election in the regiment to fill that office could be legal, while there was no vacancy, even if the appointing power had been vested in the regiment. So that all I did in that capacity was by mutual consent, and not legal au thority.
I remain, yours truly, H. A. G. LEE.
The public mind was beginning to settle down to its ordinary composure, when a fresh excitement was spread through the settlements by the information furnished by Lieutenant Rodgers at The Dalles, that the Catholics at that place were inflaming the Indians, and that a large quantity of ammunition and arms were being taken into the Indian country by the Jesuit fathers. The amounts were so much larger than the Oregon army had at any time been able to command at one invoice that the alarm occasioned by it seems justifiable. 22 At all events the packages were seized by Lieutenant Rodgers, and sent to Oregon City to be taken charge of by the governor, while the superintendent of Indian affairs wrote to Rev. M.
- There were thirty-six guns, one thousand and five hundred pounds of balls, three hundred pounds of buckshot, and one thousand and eighty pounds of powder. The whole Oregon army had been able to obtain no more than five hundred pounds of powder : Oregon American, August 16, 1848 ; Oregon Spectator, Septembe
