Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/251

CHAPTER VIII.

PLAUSIBLE PACIFICATION.

1851–1852.

Officers and Indian Agents at Port Orford—Attitude of the Coquilles—U. S. Troops Ordered out—Soldiers as Indian-fighters—The Savages too Much for Them—Something of Scarface and the Shastas—Steele Secures a Conference—Action of Superintendent Skinner—Much Ado about Nothing—Some Fighting—An Insecure Peace—More Troops Ordered to Vancouver.

 

General Hitchcock, commanding the Pacific division at Benicia, California, on hearing Kearny's account of affairs between the Indians and the miners, made a visit to Oregon; and having been persuaded that Port Orford was the proper point for a garrison, transferred Lieutenant Kautz and his company of twenty men from Astoria, where the governor had declared they were of no use, to Port Orford, where he afterward complained they were worth no more. At the same time the superintendent of Indian affairs, with agents Parrish and Spalding, repaired to the southern coast to treat if possible with its people. They took passage on the propeller Seagull, from Portland, on the 12th of September, 1851, T'Vault's party being at that time in the mountains looking for a road. The Seagull arrived at Port Orford on the 14th, two days before T'Vault and Brush were returned to that place, naked and stiff with wounds, by the charitable natives of Cape Blanco.

The twofold policy of the United States made it the duty of the superintendent to notice the murderous

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