wigwams."
The Indians felt all this bitterly. Month by month the game grew more scarce, shy, and difficult to take ; the fish failed to come up from the sea, through the winding waters of the Sacramento, now made thick with mud by the miners, and starvation stared them in the face. They wanted, needed ammunition. They needed it to take game now, they wanted it to defend themselves; they were beginning to want it to go to war. Any man who attempted to furnish them with arms and ammunition was liable to the severest penalties, and likely to be shot down by any one who chose to do so, with impunity. I resolved to undertake to furnish them with arms and ammuni tion.
I visited the Indians in Pit Eiver, and found that they were determined to fight rather than be taken to the Reservation, some hundreds of miles away. I knew this would involve them in war. I knew that this Avar would drive the Shastas into difficulties ; for the whites make but little distinction between what they call tribes of wild Indians. Every Indian camp taken adds to the laurels of the officers of the campaigns ; there is no one to tell to the world, or report to head-quarters, the other side, and they have it pretty much their own way in the invasion, un less checked by cold lead, which says, u Don t come this way, this is our ground, and we purpose to de fend it."
I saw but two paths before me. One was to abandon the Indians, after all my plans and
