lting in the loss of a
good many lives--between the hostiles and a party of our troops under
Lieutenant George Crook. It finally ended in the establishment of a
military post in the vicinity of the battle-ground, for the permanent
occupation of the country.

A great load was lifted from my heart when I found myself so near
Williamson's camp, which I joined August 4, 1855, receiving a warm
welcome from the officers. During the afternoon I relieved
Lieutenant Hood of the command of the personal escort, and he was
ordered to return, with twelve of the mounted men, over the trail I
had followed. I pointed out to him on the map the spot where he
would find the two men left on the roadside, and he was directed to
take them into Fort Reading. They were found without difficulty, and
carried in to the post. The sick man--Duryea--whom I had expected
never to see again, afterward became the hospital steward at Fort
Yamhill, Oregon, when I was stationed there.

The Indians that I had passed at the ford came to the bluff above the
camp, and arranging themselves in a squatting posture, looked down
upon Williamson's party with longing eyes, in expectation of a feast.
They were a pitiable lot, almost naked, hungry and cadaverous.
Indians are always hungry, but these poor creatures were particularly
so, as their usual supply of food had grown very scarce from one
cause and another.

In prosperity they mainly subsisted on fish, or game killed with the
bow and arrow. When these sources failed they lived on grasshoppers,
and at this season the grasshopper was their principal food. In
former years salmon were very abundant in the streams of the
Sacramento Valley, and every fall they took great quantities of these
fish and dried them for winter use, but alluvial mining had of late
years defiled the water of the different streams and driven the fish
out. On this account the usual supply of salmon was very limited.
They got some trout high up on the rivers, above the sluices and
rockers of the miners, but this was a precarious source from which to
derive food, as their means of taking the trout were very primitive.
They had neither hooks nor lines, but depended entirely on a
contrivance made from long, slender branches of willow, which grew on
the banks of most of the streams. One of these branches would be
cut, and after sharpening the butt-end to a point, split a certain
distance, and by a wedge the prongs divided sufficiently t