THE ROGUE RIVER WARS. 319
coast Indians, who had been driven in upon them fyy miners on the beach, who had previously suffered from murder and robbery. It being necessary to punish them, Lieutenant R. C. W. Radford of Fort Lane, was ordered to take a few men and chastise these Indians. But rind ing them too numerous to attack, he sent for reenforce- ments, which, arriving under Lieutenant Caster on the twenty-second, pursuit was begun, and after a chase of three days among the mountains a skirmish took place, in which about a dozen Indians and two troopers were killed, and four troopers wounded. Considerable property taken from the miners was recovered, and a treaty entered into between the miners and this branch of the Rogue-river nation, which was observed until January following, when a party from Sailor diggings in pursuit of unknown rob bers, by mistake attacked the treaty Indians, some of both sides being killed. Peace was restored when the Indian agent appeared and the affair was explained.
According to the report of the secretary of war, the Indian disturbances in southern Oregon in 1853 cost the lives of over one hundred white persons, and several hun dred Indians. In making his estimate the secretary must have included the northern portion o/ California, which by reason of the unsettled boundary line was at that time pretty generally spoken of as being in Oregon. The ex pense to the general government was said to be seven thou sand dollars a day, with only from two hundred to five hundred men in the field; and the hostilities in the short period of little over a month to have cost a total of two hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars.
The loss to settlers, computed by a commission consist ing of L. F. Grover, A. C. Gibbs, and G. H. Ambrose^ amounted to a little less than forty -six thousand- dollars, nearly eighteen thousand of which was deducted from the price paid by the government for the Rogue-river lands to cover losses and pay for improvements vacated. There fore it might be said that, after all, the United States
