r
farms, building up more comfortable homes and surrounding their families
with some comforts and conveniences of civilization. Yet even these
years were not free from alarms and stampedes. Time and again swift
riders spread the news that the redskins had dug up the tomahawk and had
gone on the war path. These scares arose from isolated murders by the
Indians, whose cupidity could not withstand the temptations of the white
man's property. It was not, therefore, until midsummer of 1855 that
hostilities began in earnest. A federation had been formed among all the
tribes of Northern California, Southern and Eastern Oregon and
Washington. The great leaders of this insurrection were Tyee John and
his brother "Limpy," Rogue River Indians, and John was one of the
greatest, bravest and most resourceful warriors this continent has
produced. Another was Pe-mox-mox, who ruled over the Cayouses and the
Columbias, and was killed early in the war while attempting to lead the
white troops into ambush.

The outbreak was sudden and fierce, lighting up the frontier with the
burning cabins of the settlers. Travelers were waylaid, prospectors
murdered and in many instances entire families wiped out, their homes
becoming their funeral pyres. Neither age nor sex was spared. Little
children were seized by the heels and their brains dashed out against
the corner of the cabin. One entire family perished amid the flames of
their burning home. Women were butchered under circumstances of peculiar
and diabolical atrocity. A man named Harris, attacked by Indians on the
Rogue River, defended himself until killed. His wife then took up the
defense of her home and little daughter, and with a heroism that has
rendered her name immortal in the annals of Oregon, held the savages at
bay until relief came twenty-four hours later.

Mock sentimentalists and fake humanitarians have walled their eyes to
heaven in holy horror at the "barbarities" practiced by white men upon
the "poor persecuted red man." Yet had they witnessed scenes like those
I have so faintly portrayed, they too, would have preached a war of
extermination. You and I, reader, have an exceedingly thin veneering of
civilization, and in the presence of such scenes of diabolical atrocity
would slip it off as a snake sheds his skin. I have seen men as kind and
gentle,--as humane--as yourself transformed into almost savages in the
presence of such scenes.

For a year previous to the great outbrea