volunteers, who cut off the ears and pieces of the scalp to keep as souvenirs. It is not the office of the historian to excuse the barbarities of either race. It is, however, true that retaliation is an important part of the spirit of war, and that the mutilation in a comparatively slight degree of the dead body of a noted chief was hardly a sufficient reprisal, in a retaliatory sense, for the horrible atrocities perpetrated upon living men, women, and children by the groundless hatred of his race.[1]
The evening of the seventh of December closed in upon a wearied and hungry as well as a saddened army, for the losses of the day had been heavy in killed and wounded. Camp fires were lighted whereat to prepare a scanty meal, with the cup of coffee, so reviving to exhausted energies; but the cheerful blaze served only to attract the fire of the watchful foe, and had to be extinguished. The whole camp was on guard until morning, when a hasty breakfast was prepared and only partly eaten before the Indians appeared in a greatly augmented force, retaking all the positions they had been driven from the previous day.
Companies A and H, under Lieutenants Pillow and Hanna, were directed to charge and drive the Indians from the cover of the brush and timber, and, if possible, hold these positions. Lieutenant Fellows, with F company, Lieutenant Jeffreys, with B company, Lieutenant Hand, with I company, and Captain Connoyer. with company K, were ordered to take possession of available points on the hills and assail the enemy wherever they could. The Indians fought with skill and bravery, as well as with fury, but were driven from their cover in the brush. All day the battle continued, and when night came both sides were glad of a respite. The war whoop ceased, and the Indians withdrew from the field. That night the colonel
- ↑ It might be remembered, in extenuation of the indignities perpetrated upon the body of Peu-peu-mox-mox, that the volunteers were almost upon the very ground where eight years before Dr. and Mrs. Whitman were, with other American men, brutally murdered, and American women ravished; and also that the Walla Walla chief could have prevented it, had he chosen to do so. They were still smarting,
