Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/336

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ROGUE RIVER WAR.

The armistice continued inviolate so far as concerned the volunteer army under Lane, and the Indians under Sam, Jo, and Jim. But hostilities were not suspended between independent companies ranging the country and the Grave Creek and Applegate Creek Indians, and a band of Shastas under Tipso, whose haunts were in the Siskiyou Mountains.[1]

A council, preliminary to a treaty, was held the 4th of September, when more hostages were given, and the next day Lane, with Smith, Palmer, Grover, and others, visited the Rogue River camp. The 8th was set for the treaty-making. On that day the white men presented themselves at the Indian encampment in good force and well armed. There had arrived, besides, the company from the Willamette, with Kautz and his howitzer,[2] all of which had its effect to obtain their consent to terms which, although hard, the condition of the white settlers made imperative,[3] placing

  1. R. Williams killed 12 Indians and lost one man, Thomas Philips. Owens, on Grave Creek, under pledge of peace, got the Indians into his camp and shot them all. U. S. H. Ex. Doc., 99, p. 4, 33d cong. 1st sess. Again Williams surprised a party of Indians on Applegate Creek, and after inducing them to lay down their arms shot 18 of them, etc.
  2. The Indians had news of the approach of the howitzer several days before it reached Rogue River. They said it was a hyas rifle, which took a hatful of powder for a load, and would shoot down a tree. It was an object of great terror to the Indians, and they begged not to have it fired. Or. Statesman, Sept. 27, 1853.
  3. The treaty bound the Indians to reside permanently in a place to be set aside for them; to give up their fire-arms to the agent put over them, except a few for hunting purposes, 17 guns in all; to pay out of the sum received for their lands indemnity for property destroyed by them; to forfeit all their annuities should they go to war again against the settlers; to notify the agent of other tribes entering the valley with warlike intent, and assist in expelling them; to apply to the agent for redress whenever they suffered any grievances at the hands of the white people; to give up, in short, their entire independence and become the wards of a government of which they knew nothing.

    The treaty of sale of their lands, concluded on the 10th, conveyed all the country claimed by them, which was bounded by a line beginning at a point near the mouth of Applegate Creek, running southerly to the summit of the Siskiyou Mountains, and along the summits of the Siskiyou and Cascade mountains to the head waters of Rogue River, and down that stream to Jump Off Joe Creek, thence down said creek to a point due north of, and thence to, the place of beginning—a temporary reservation being made of about 100 square miles on the north side of Rogue River, between Table and Evans Creek, embracing but ten or twelve square miles of arable