A considerable number of the Lower Coquille bands had been once induced to come in, but by the meddlesome interference of a few squaw men and reckless disturbers of the peace, they were frightened, and fled the encampment. A party of miners and others, who had collected at Port Orford, volunteered, pursued, and attacked those Indians near the mouth of Coquille, killing fourteen men and one woman, and taking a few prisoners. This was claimed by them as a battle, notwithstanding no resistance was made by the Indians.
This witness clearly establishes the fact, that unarmed and unresisting Indians were attacked and shot down like wild beasts, and that “extermination” was the war cry of the white men. He confirms, too, the statement in regard to the rapidity with which intelligence is transmitted from one tribe to another, and its effect.
Do you wonder at the Modocs refusing to surrender,
with so much to remind them of the white man’s bloodthirsty deeds? See the last quotation from Gen. Palmer, and remember that these fourteen men and one woman were killed after the surrender, and in the attempt to escape.
White men were accustomed to regard the Indian as the synonym for treachery and savage brutality. Let us see how this matter stands in the light of what has been already written, after adding one or two other instances from the many that crowd thickly forward for a place on the witness-stand.
Judge E. Steele, a lawyer of high character, a resident of Y-re-ka, Cal., since 1851, and also an ex-superintendent of Indian Affairs, in reporting an Indian difficulty in 1851, relates:—
That while hunting for two Indians who had committed some offence, we fell in with Ben Wright, who, learning from a squaw with whom he was living that the Indians had taken that course, he, with a band of Shastas, had started in pursuit and intercepted and captured them. We came in together, and took the Indians to Scott valley, and there gave them a fair trial, proving their identity by both white men and Indians, and the Indian testimony and their own story, all of which was received in evidence. One was found guilty, and the other acquitted and set at liberty. Our present superintendent of public instruction, Professor G. K. Godfrey, was one of the jury. During our absence the people remained under great excitement, as all kind of rumors were afloat; and our company was so small, and I had started into a country inhabited by hordes of wild Indians, and those of Siskiyou mountain and Rogue-river valley notoriously hostile and warlike. Old Scar-face, learning of the difficulty at Rogue river, contrary to advice given him when we left, had come out from the cañon, appeared on the mountain lying east of Y-re-ka, as the Indians afterward told me, for the purpose of letting the whites know the trouble, as the roads were guarded by the Indians on the mountains, so that travellers
could not pass. As soon as he was seen, a wild excitement ensued, and a company started in pursuit. Scar-face, seeing the danger, fled up the Shasta valley, on foot, his pursuers after him, well mounted. After a race along the hills and through the valleys for about eighteen miles, he was finally captured and hung upon a tree, at what is now called Scar-face Gulch.
In speaking of a trip to Rogue-river valley he says:—
We had got out of provisions, and when, at the mouth of Salmon river, we made known our destination to the chief, Euphippa, he took his spear and caught us some fish, but would take no pay.