d the river without finding any sign of
Spencer's family, until about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when we
discovered them between the upper and lower landing, in a small open
space about a mile from the road, all dead--strangled to death with
bits of rope. The party consisted of the mother, two youths, three
girls, and a baby. They had all been killed by white men, who had
probably met the innocent creatures somewhere near the blockhouse,
driven them from the road into the timber, where the cruel murders
were committed without provocation, and for no other purpose than the
gratification of the inordinate hatred of the Indian that has often
existed on the frontier, and which on more than one occasion has
failed to distinguish friend from foe. The bodies lay in a
semicircle, and the bits of rope with which the poor wretches had
been strangled to death were still around their necks. Each piece of
rope--the unwound strand of a heavier piece--was about two feet long,
and encircled the neck of its victim with a single knot, that must
have been drawn tight by the murderers pulling at the ends. As there
had not been quite enough rope to answer for all, the babe was
strangled by means of a red silk handkerchief, taken, doubtless, from
the neck of its mother. It was a distressing sight. A most cruel
outrage had been committed upon unarmed people--our friends and
allies--in a spirit of aimless revenge. The perpetrators were
citizens living near the middle block-house, whose wives and children
had been killed a few days before by the hostiles, but who well knew
that these unoffending creatures had had nothing to do with those
murders.

In my experience I have been obliged to look upon many cruel scenes
in connection with Indian warfare on the Plains since that day, but
the effect of this dastardly and revolting crime has never been
effaced from my memory. Greater and more atrocious massacres have
been committed often by Indians; their savage nature modifies one's
ideas, however, as to the inhumanity of their acts, but when such
wholesale murder as this is done by whites, and the victims not only
innocent, but helpless, no defense can be made for those who
perpetrated the crime, if they claim to be civilized beings. It is
true the people at the Cascades had suffered much, and that their
wives and children had been murdered before their eyes, but to wreak
vengeance on Spencer's unoffending family, who had walked into their