This “Snake war” afforded abundant opportunity for frontiersmen to learn the manly art of killing Indians; and they did learn it, and learned it well. Volunteer companies were enlisted to stand between the white settlers and the Snake Indians, while the regular army was withdrawn to assist in putting down the rebellion; and they stood there, some of them, and others lay there, and they are lying there to this day.
The famous Oregon poet, Joaquin Miller, earned his spurs as a war-man out on the plains fighting Snake Indians, and many others of less celebrity did likewise. But the handful of Snake Indians were harder to conquer than General Lee or Stonewall Jackson. General Lee touched his military hat with one hand, and passed over his sword with the other to General Grant, under the famous apple-tree, some months before.
E-he-gan, We-ah-we-wa and O-che-o had pulled down their war-feathers in presence of General Crook. When the drums of the Union army were beating the homeward march, General Crook was ordered to the frontier to whip the Snakes. Some of the regiments of the regular army were sent out to relieve the volunteers who garrisoned the military posts. Many a brave fellow who had returned from fighting rebels went out there to die by Snake bullets, and in some instances to be scalped.
They found a different enemy, not less brave, but more wily and cunning, who were careful of the waste of ammunition. These Snake Indians were not content to make war on white men, but continued to invade the territory of other Indians; particularly that
of Warm Springs Reservation, and occasionally of the Umatilla; also, to capture horses and prisoners.
Among the exploits in this line, the carrying off a little girl, daughter of a chief of the Warm Springs, was the most daring, and perhaps the most disastrous, in its results to the Snakes; daring, because committed in broad daylight, and inside the lines of white settlements.
The affair created great excitement when it was known among the friends of the child’s parents. No people are more intensely affected by such occurrences than Indians. This feeling is very much enhanced by the knowledge that captives are often sold as slaves into other tribes. Hence this capture was disastrous to the Snake Indians, because it aroused the fire of hate among the “Warm Springs,” and sent many of their braves to the warpath.
General Crook being the right man in the right place, and finding that his regulars could not successfully cope with the Snakes, called for volunteers from Umatilla and Warm Springs Reservation. A company of Cayuse Indians, under the leadership of the now famous Donald McKay, went from the former, and another company, under command of Dr. Wm. C. McKay, an older brother of Donald’s, from the latter agency. I know nothing of the theology of Gen. Crook, whether he is posted about the war-policy of his Satanic Majesty, but he struck it this time,—“fighting the devil with fire.”
These Indians were enlisted with the understanding that they were to have, as compensation for their services, the booty won from the “Snake Indians;” but were armed and rationed by the Government.
The father of the captured girl promised to award the brave who should recapture her, with her hand; or, in other words, she was to be the wife of the man who brought her in.