The arrest of the Cayuse murderers could not proceed until the arrival of the mounted rifle regiment then en route, under the command of Brevet-Colonel W. W. Loring.[1] This regiment which was provided expressly for service in Oregon and to garrison posts upon the emigrant road, by authority of a congressional act passed May 19, 1846, was not raised till the spring of 1847, and was then ordered to Mexico, although the secretary of war in his instructions to the governor of Missouri, in which state the regiment was formed, had said that a part if not the whole of it would be employed in establishing posts on the route to Oregon.[2] Its numbers being greatly reduced during the Mexican campaign, it was recruited at Fort Leavenworth, and at length set out upon its march to the Columbia in the spring of 1849. On the 10th of May the regiment left Fort Leavenworth with about 600 men, thirty-one commissioned officers, several women and children, the usual train agents, guides, and teamsters, 160 wagons, 1,200 mules, 700 horses, and subsistence for the march to the Pacific.[3]
Two posts were established on the way, one at Fort
- ↑ The command was first given to Frémont, who resigned.
- ↑ See letter of W. L. Marcy, secretary of war, in Or. Spectator, Nov. 11, 1847.
- ↑ The officers were Bvt. Lieut. Col. A. Porter, Col. Benj. S. Roberts, Bvt. Major C. F. Ruff, Major George B. Crittenden, Bvt. Major J. S. Simonson, Bvt. Major S. S. Tucker, Bvt. Lieut. Col. J. B. Backenstos, Bvt. Major Kearney, Captains M. E. Van Buren, George McLane, Noah Newton, Llewellyn Jones, Bvt. Captain J. P. Hatch, R. Ajt., Bvt. Captains Thos. Claiborne Jr., Gordon Granger, James Stuart, and Thos. G. Rhett; 1st Lieuts Charles L. Denman, A. J. Lindsay, Julian May, F. S. K. Russell; 2d Lieuts D. M. Frost, R. Q. M., I. N. Palmer, J. McL. Addison, W. B. Lane, W. E. Jones, George W. Howland, C. E. Ervine; surgeons I. Moses, Charles H. Smith, and W. F. Edgar. The following were persons travelling with the regiment in various capacities: George Gibbs, deputy collector at Astoria; Alden H. Steele, who settled in Oregon City, where he practised medicine till 1863, when he became a surgeon in the army, finally settling at Olympia in 1868, where in 1878 I met him, and he furnished a brief but pithy account in manuscript of the march of the Oregon Mounted Rifle Regiment; W. Frost, Prew, Wilcox, Leach, Bishop, Kitchen, Dudley, and Raymond. Present also was J. D. Haines, a native of Xenia, Ohio, born in 1828. After a residence in Portland, and removal to Jacksonville, he was elected to the house of representatives from Jackson county in 1862, and from Baker county in 1876, and to the state senate in 1878. He married in 1871 and has several children. Salem Statesman, Nov. 15, 1878; U. S. Off. Reg., 1849, 160, 167.
