of December.[1] This expedition cost the government some twenty-five thousand dollars,[2] and resulted in killing a dozen or more Indians, which coming after the late friendly professions of Indian Agent Parrish, did not tend to confidence in the promises of the government, or increase the safety of the settlers.[3]
I have told how Stanton returned to Oregon with troops to garrison Fort Orford, being shipwrecked and detained four months at Coos Bay. He had orders to explore for a road to the interior, in connection with Williamson, who had already begun this survey. The work was prosecuted with energy, and finished in the autumn of 1852.
The presents distributed by Skinner had not the virtue to preserve lasting tranquillity in the mining region. In the latter part of April 1852, a citizen of Marion county returning from the mines was robbed of his horse and other property in the Grave Creek hills by Rogue River Indians. This act was followed by other interruption of travellers, and demand for pay for passing fords.[4] Growing bolder, robbery was followed by murder, and then came war.[5]
On the 8th of July, a Shasta, named Scarface, a
- ↑ Cal. Courier, Dec. 13, 1851.
- ↑ Report of Major Robert Allen, in U. S. H. Ex. Doc. 2, vol. ii. part 1, p. 150, 32d cong. 1st sess.
- ↑ 'The commanders went without an interpreter to the Coquille village, and just banged away until they gratified themselves, and then went to Port Orford and back to San Francisco.' Parrish's Or. Anecdotes, MS., 66. See also Alta California, Dec. 14, 1851.
- ↑ Hearne's Cal. Sketches, MS., 2.
- ↑ In the early spring of 1852 a party of five men, led by James Coy, left Jacksonville to look for mining ground toward the coast. Having discovered some good diggings on a tributary of Illinois River, now called Josephine Creek, they were following up the right branch, when they discovered, three miles above the junction, the remains of two white men, evidently murdered by the Indians. Being few in number, they determined to return and reënforce. Camping at night at the mouth of Josephine Creek, they were attacked by a large force. They kept the enemy at bay until the next night, when one of the men crowded through their lines, and hastened to Jacksonville for aid. All that day, and the next, and until about ten o'clock on the third, the besieged defended their little fortress, when a party of 35 came down the mountain to their relief; and finding the country rich in mines, took up claims, and made the first permanent settlement in Illinois Valley. Scraps Southern Or. Hist., in Ashland Tidings, Sept. 20, 1878.
