Not long after this event Panina presented himself at Fort Klamath, having received a message sent him from the council ground, that he would be permitted to come and go unharmed, and wished Captain Kelly of Fort Klamath to assure the superintendent that he was tired of war, and would willingly make peace could he be protected.[1] To this offer of submission, answer was returned that the superintendent would visit him the following summer with a view to making a treaty. This closed operations against the Indians of southern Oregon for the year, and afforded a prospect of permanent peace, so far as the country adjacent to the Rogue River Valley was concerned, a portion of which had been subject to invasions from the Klamath country. Even the Umpqua Valley had not been quite free from occasional mysterious visitations, from which henceforward it was to be delivered.
With the close of the campaigns of the First Oregon Cavalry for 1864, the term of actual service of the original six companies expired. They had performed hard service, though not of the kind they would have chosen. Small was the pay, and trifling the reward of glory. It was known as the 'puritan regiment,' from habits of temperance and morality, and was largely composed of the sons of well-to-do farmers. Out of fifty-one desertions occurring in three years, but three were from this class, the rest being recruits from the floating population of the country. No regiment in the regular army had stood the same tests so heroically.
When the legislature met in 1864 a bounty act was passed to encourage future, not to reward past, volunteering. It gave to every soldier who should enlist for three years or during the war, as part of the state's
- ↑ A treaty was made with Panina in the following year, but badly observed by him, as the history of the Snake wars will show.
