was a great slaughter of immigrants by the Indians about Tule Lake, and, a company being raised to go to the assistance of a beleaguered train the handsome and popular Philadelphian was chosen captain. The immigrants were relieved, and the volunteers under Wright patrolled the dangerous part of the road for several weeks until all had passed. Many harrowing incidents were connected with the murder and captivity of women, which stirred the manly blood of Wright and his comrades, and doubtless the quality of their mercy would have been rather strained had it been appealed to. But it was not. The Modocs had laid a trap to catch the volunteers and prevent their getting out of the country, which being discovered, Wright turned the tables on his would-be slayers, and prevented their getting back to their fastnesses in the Lava Beds.
But this had nothing whatever to do with his death a few years later. The government had appointed him to act as its agent with the Chetcoe and other coast tribes, and he was doing all any agent could do for them when they killed him. The settlers who escaped the massacre at the mouth of Rogue River took refuge in a block-house erected a short time before, except a fugitive who escaped to Port Orford, where a corporal’s guard of troops were stationed, whom the Port Orford people would not permit to leave had they so wished. Word had to be sent to San Francisco, where troops were arriving on their way to protect the interior of Rogue River Talley. In the month which intervened between the commencement of the siege of the block-house and the arrival of the troops, great privation and suffering were endured, and several lives were lost in making sorties to procure potatoes from a field, or milk from a cow for the starving children.
In the mean time and before the army reached Crescent City, a part of the few inhabitants of that place, commiserating the condition of the Rogue River men, if living, determined to discover their needs, and reinforce them, if possible. They proceeded up the coast as far as Pistol River, where they were attacked by the Pistol Indians and forced to defend themselves in a hastily-constructed log-pen, where Colonel Buchanan found them when he came marching up the same trail, and soundly berated them for meddling in military matters, of
