On March 6 Colonel Casey’s troops on Muckleshoot prairie had a sharp fight with the enemy. On the 10th Major Hays, with 110 men of his Central battalion, fought the principal and decisive battle of the war on the Sound, known as the battle of Connell’s prairie. It was brought on by the Indians, who, emboldened by their previous successes, fought for five hours with a confidence and stubbornness that enabled the volunteers to inflict severe losses upon them. They were finally routed by a charge on their left flank by Captains Swindal and Rabbeson, and a simultaneous attack in front by Captains Henness and White, with a loss of twenty-five or thirty killed and many wounded. They even abandoned their war-drum in their flight. Major Hays, who handled his command with skill and judgment as well as courage, reported that they numbered at least two hundred warriors. It afterwards appeared that their numbers were much larger, and that they were aided in the fight by a hundred Yakima warriors.
The fruits of Governor Stevens’s thorough preparations were now manifested by incessant blows and untiring, unsparing warfare. The Indians were allowed no respite from attack, and could find no refuge, even in the densest swamps and thickets. The Central battalion sent out strong parties to beat up the country of the White, Green, Cedar, and Puyallup rivers to the base of the mountains. Major Van Bokkelen, with Captain Smalley’s Company G, forty-six men, and seventy-six of Pat-ka-nim’s braves, swept the forests from the Snohomish to Connell’s prairie, thence up the mountain to the Nahchess Pass, thence northward along the foot of the range to his own northern line, and thence into and over the Snoqualmie passes. Captain Sidney Ford with his Chehalis Indians, and agent Wesley Gosnell with a party of friendly, or pretended friendly, Indians from the Squaxon reservation—own brothers to the hostiles these—scoured the swamps and bottoms of the Puyallup and Nisqually; Lieutenant Pierre Charles, with a force of Cowlitz and Chehalis Indians, scouted up the Cowlitz and Newarkum rivers, and captured a number of the enemy. The ladies of Olympia, under the lead of Mrs. Stevens, made blue caps with red facings, with which these red allies were equipped, to distinguish them from their hostile kindred. Another company was called out and organized among the settlers of the Cowlitz plains under Captain E.D. Warbass, which built a blockhouse on Klikitat prairie, twelve miles higher up the Cowlitz, and also kept scouting parties constantly on the move. Major Maxon and his company scouted and searched the whole length of the Nisqually valley far into the range, leaving their horses and plunging into the tangled forests on foot, and on one of their scouts killed eight and brought in fourteen captives of the enemy. Miller’s and Achilles’s companies joined in the work, while Goff was sent back to the river to increase his strength to a hundred, and, with another company to be raised there,—N, Captain Richards,—to rendezvous at the Dalles in readiness for operations in the upper country.
The governor urged Captain Swartwout to unite with Captain Lander’s company, by furnishing a detachment and boats from the Massachusetts, in routing out the Indians who infested the shores of Lake Washington; and when the naval officer declined, Captains Howe and Peabody led detachments of the Northern battalion from the Snohomish down through the unknown and trackless forest, and beat up the shores of the lake. Lander’s Company A was posted on the Duwhamish River, a few miles from Seattle, where it built a blockhouse, and from which point Lieutenant Neely led a party in a canoe expedition up Black River into the lake, and fell upon a camp of the hostiles just after it had been abandoned, which was found filled with remains of cattle, stores, and goods recently plundered from Seattle and the settlers. Colonel Casey, after being reinforced by the two companies brought over from Vancouver, established a post higher up on White River, from which, and from his post on Muckleshoot prairie, parties scouted the surrounding forest. Every blockhouse with its little garrison, every armed train and express and canoe, as well as the numerous scouting parties, was constantly watching and searching for hostile Indians, and, worse than all, their own kindred, of whom Shaw declared “blankets will turn any Indian on the side of the whites,” now joined in the hunt, and, stimulated by rewards offered for the heads of the hostile chiefs and warriors, showed the way to all their secret haunts and trails. The tide had, indeed, turned, after two months of this unrelenting warfare, and nearly every tribe on the Sound now freely proffered its assistance. The northern Indians, also, tendered their services, which were declined, excepting eight men, who joined the Northern battalion, and proved themselves uncommonly brave, strong, and hardy soldiers.
Thus the whole tangled region, with its dense forests and almost impenetrable swamps, from the Snohomish to the Cowlitz, nearly two hundred miles, was beaten up, the Indian resorts and hiding-places searched out, and their trails discovered and explored, especially those across the mountain passes, many of which were now for the first time made known to the whites. The whole policy and plan of campaign were Governor Stevens’s, and the execution almost entirely the work of his brave and patriotic volunteers. The governor had, indeed, brought about a real concert of action with Colonel Casey by his frank and considerate treatment of that officer, but the regular forces kept within a very short tether of Fort Steilacoom.
It was in the midst of the rainy season that this aggressive campaign was waged. So impracticable and unwise was it deemed by the brave and excellent Major Hays that he remonstrated with the governor against exposing the volunteers to such hardships, and, finding him inexorable, resigned rather than undertake it, as also did two officers of his former company. Amid constant rains and swollen streams the volunteers thridded the dripping forests, where every shaken bough drenched the toiling soldiers with another shower-bath, following some dim trail, or oftener cutting or forcing their way through the trackless woods,—heavy packs of blankets and rations on their backs, the axe in one hand and the rifle in the other. Scarcely would they return from one scout when they would be ordered out again. To every demand the volunteers responded with the greatest alacrity, spirit, and fortitude. The mounted men without a murmur left their horses and took to the woods as foot scouts. The Southern battalion, enlisting with the expectation of campaigning on the plains of the upper country, instantly and without a murmur obeyed the order summoning them to the Sound, to the discomforts and hardships of the rains and forests and swamps. The settlers freely turned out with their teams of oxen, and the storekeepers furnished blankets, clothing, shoes, and provisions to the extent of their ability.
On March 26, just as the campaign was well under way, the Yakimas and Klikitats swooped down upon the Cascades portage on the Columbia, which was left insufficiently guarded by Colonel Wright with a force of only nine regular soldiers in a blockhouse, and massacred nineteen settlers, and killed one soldier and wounded two others. Colonel Wright, who was at the Dalles preparing an expedition for the Yakima country, immediately proceeded to the Cascades with a strong force of regular troops, and the Indians disappeared. Satisfied that the friendly Indians in that vicinity were implicated in the attack, he caused ten of them, including the chief, to be summarily tried by military commission and hanged, an act which, if committed by the territorial authorities or volunteers, would have caused redoubled denunciations on the part of Wool and his parasites, but which, done by this regular officer, excited no comment. This affair at the Cascades is also of interest as being General P.H. Sheridan’s début in the art of war.
The massacre at the Cascades excited new alarm among the settlers about Vancouver and along the Columbia. To reassure them, and keep them from abandoning their farms, the governor called out another company of volunteers under Captain William Kelly, known as the Clark County Rangers, caused several new blockhouses to be built, and had the rangers constantly patrol the settlements. It was at this time, and largely in consequence of the Cascades massacre, that he called out Captain Warbass’s company, for he deemed it essential that the settlers should not again abandon their farms. He also wrote Colonel Wright proposing a “thorough understanding between the regular and volunteer service, so their joint efforts may be applied to the protection of the settlements and the prosecution of the war,” in order that no force need be wasted, and inviting his suggestions to that end. But Colonel Wright, although personally ready to coöperate like Colonel Casey, was under the strictest orders from Wool in no way to recognize the volunteers. In his reply to the governor he simply stated what he was doing, and proposing to do, without venturing any suggestions. In truth, between the governor and his volunteers, who were so efficiently protecting the settlements and attacking the common foe, on the one hand, and his irate commanding general, who had positively ordered him to ignore the territorial authorities and forces, on the other, Colonel Wright was in something of a quandary, and it must be confessed that he conducted himself with no little diplomatic skill.
For two months after the fight of Connell’s prairie, Governor Stevens kept his whole force thus incessantly searching the forests and hunting down the hostiles with unrelenting vigor. The Indians, thrown completely on the defensive, did not commit another depredation after the Cascades disaster on all that long line of exposed and scattered settlements. They were driven and chased from resort to resort; their most hidden camps and caches of provisions were discovered and destroyed; many were killed or captured; and by the middle of May over five hundred came in and gave themselves up, while the guilty chiefs and warriors fled across the Cascades and sought refuge among their Yakima kindred. The surrendered were placed on the reservations with the friendly Indians, except a number of suspected murderers, who were tried by military commissions; but very few were found guilty for lack of evidence, and they were also sent to join their people on the reservations. It was not the governor’s policy to punish them for taking part in the war, or fights only, but he deemed it essential to the future peace of the country that the murderers of settlers and chief instigators of the outbreak should be punished, and believed that if they were allowed to escape scot free they would stir up trouble again.
Thus the war west of the Cascades was ended by the complete surrender or flight of the hostiles.
In June the posts and blockhouses built by the volunteers on Puyallup and White rivers, Connell’s prairie, and Camp Montgomery were turned over to the regulars, and the volunteers who were not required for an expedition east of the Cascades were disbanded in July.