Gen. John E. Wool, commander of the department of the Pacific, in November, 1855, had stopped at Crescent City while on his way to the Yakima country. He received full information while here of the military operations in southern Oregon. Skipping many details, it is sufficient to state that he ordered Capt. A. J. Smith to move down the river from Fort Lane and form a junction with the United States troops under Captains Jones and E. O. C. Ord (afterward a major-general in United States army), who were prosecuting an active campaign in the region about Chetco, Pistol River, and the Illinois River Valley. Captain Smith left Fort Lane with eighty men—fifty dragoons and thirty infantry. I can only take the time to mention a few of the fights in that region during the spring of 1856. On March 8th Captain Abbott had a skirmish with the Chetco Indians at Pistol River. He lost several men. The Indians had his small force completely surrounded when Captain Ord and Captain Jones with one hundred and twelve regular troops came to his relief. They charged and drove the Indians away with heavy loss. On March 20, 1855, Lieutenant-Colonel Buchanan, assisted by Captains Jones and Ord, attacked an Indian village ten miles above the mouth of Rogue River. The Indians were driven away, leaving several dead and only one white man wounded in the fight. A few days later Captain Angne's [Augur?] company (United States troops) fought John and "Limpy's" band at the mouth of the Illinois River. The Indians fought desperately, leaving five dead on the battlefield. On March 27, 1855, the regulars again met the Indians on Lower Rogue River. After a brisk fight at close quarters the Indians fled, leaving ten dead and two of the soldiers were severely wounded. On April 1, 1855, Captain Creighton, with a company of citizens, attacked an Indian village near the mouth of the Coquille River, killing nine men, wounding eleven and taking forty squaws and children prisoners. About this time some volunteers attacked a party of Indians who were moving in canoes at the mouth of Rogue River. They killed eleven men and one squaw. Only one man and two squaws of the party escaped. On April 29, 1855, a party of sixty regulars escorting a pack train were attacked near Chetco. In this fight three soldiers were killed and wounded. The Indians lost six killed and several wounded.
The volunteer forces of the coast war were three companies known by the names of "Gold Beach Guards," the "Coquille Guards," and the "Port Orford Minute Men." I have not the time to enter into the details of the battle that was fought on the twenty-seventh of May, 1855, near Big Meadows, on Rogue River. Captain Smith was in command of his eighty regulars. Old "John" lead the Indians. The operations covered a period of two days, John using all the tactics of military science in handling his four hundred braves during the battle. Just as everything was ready, according to "John's" plans for an attack upon the regulars, Captain Angne's [Augur?] company was seen approaching. The Indians were then soon dispersed. Captain Smith lost twenty-nine men killed and wounded in this battle, and had it not been for the timely arrival of Angne's [Augur?] company, his men would all have been killed.
While these operations were being carried on by the United States troops, the volunteer forces were not idle. They were kept busy with "Limpy" and "George's" warriors, at points in Josephine County. On January 28, 1856, Major Latshaw moved down the river with two hundred and thirteen men. He had several skirmishes and lost four or five men in killed and wounded. On May 29th "Limpy" and "George" surrendered at Big Meadows to Lieutenant-Colonel Buchanan. On May 31st Governor Curry ordered the volunteer forces to disband—nearly all the Indians had surrendered. About one thousand three hundred of the various tribes that had carried on the war were gathered in camp at Port Orford. About July 1, 1856, "John" and thirty-five tough looking warriors, the last to surrender, "threw down the hatchet." I have now gone over, in chronological order, the principal events connected with the Indian wars of southern Oregon. I am fully aware that the narrative is very defective, and that many events of importance have not even been mentioned. You who took part in these early struggles can easily fill in the gaps, and correct the errors that I may have unconsciously made.
There were some men who took part in the Indian wars of southern Oregon who afterward became prominent in the history of the Nation. I will name a few, viz, Gen. U. S. Grant, Gen. J. B. Hood (late of Confederate army), Gen. Phil Kearny, Gen. Wool, Gen. A. J. Smith, Gen. Geo. Crooks, Gen. A. V. Kautz, Gen. Phil Sheridan, Gen. J. C. Fremont, Gen. Joe Lane (candidate for vice president of the United States in 1860), Gen. Joe Hooker (who built the military road in the Canyon Mountains in 1852), and Kit Carson.
We all rejoice that the general government has at last acknowledged the value of your services to civilization; and has made some provision of recompense for the privations which you suffered.
I see before me old gray headed mothers who will also share with you this recognition of the Nation's gratitude. It is well, and to my comrades of the Civil war, who are here, and who have been the promotors of this reunion of veterans, let me say that no women of any war, in which the American people have ever been engaged, are more deserving of the Nation's bounty than these old, feeble, pioneer mothers of southern Oregon. When their fathers, brothers, and husbands went out to meet their savage foes, these women were not left in well protected cities, villages, and homes, but often in rude cabins, situated in close proximity to the conflict; and unlike the chances of civilized warfare, no mercy could be expected from the enemy—surrender meant not only death, but torture and heartless cruelty. In every hour of those dark days these women proved themselves to be fit helpmates to a race of daring men—and worthy all honors that are accorded the brave.
MINTO PASS: ITS HISTORY, AND AN INDIAN TRADITION.
By John Minto.
There was a tradition among the Indians of the central portion of the Willamette Valley at the time when the missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Church attempted christianization from 1834 to 1840, that a trail or thoroughfare through this natural pass had formerly been much used by their people and that its use was abandoned after, and as one of the results of, a bloody battle between the Mollalas (who claimed the western slopes of the Cascades from the Clackamas River south to the Calapooia Mountains,) and the Cayuses who were originally of the same tribe, but who had become alienated by family feuds, of which the battle or massacre of their tradition was the end. The superstitious belief of the Indians in the transmigration of the souls of dead warriors into the bodies of beasts of prey, like panthers, bears, and wolves, would of itself go far to cause the Indians to abandon the use of such a trail, but the formation of the gorge by which the river cuts its way through the roughest portion of the range is such as to give great numbers of opportunities for ambuscades—a common resort of Indian warfare. Certain is it that for some cause the Indians of Chemeketa, Chemawa, and Willamette spoke with dread of going up that river. They did, however, have trails on each side of this natural pass,—that to the south being first used by a pioneer settler named Wyley. It became known as the Wyley Trail, and subsequently was adopted as a general route over which the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Military Wagon Road was located. The other to the north comes into the Willamette Valley via the Table Rock and down the Abiqua. Both these trails were used exclusively by the Indians of the east side of the range as means of coming into the Willamette Valley with the exception of the Mollalas, who were intermarried with the Warm Springs Indians and the Klamaths when the settlement by the whites began. The free trappers and the retired Canadians, who had settled as farmers and trading parties of the Hudson Bay Company, continued to use the trail up the North Santiam Valley until 1844-45, when, in addition to the country reached by it being "trapped out," furs fell in price in the general market so that it temporarily ceased to be used by the engagees of the Hudson Bay Company. In the summer of 1845 Dr. E. White, then a sub-agent of the United States for the Indians of Oregon, examined, or claimed to have examined, the route as a means of getting immigration into western Oregon more easily than by way of the Columbia River Pass. Either the doctor did not examine closely or was very easily discouraged; at all events no beneficial results followed. At this same time Stephen L. Meek was leading a party of the immigration of that year with the purpose of entering the Willamette Valley by that way. Meek had trapped on the head waters of the John Day River a few seasons previous, and had here met Canadians from the Willamette, who had come over the trail and doubtless thought he could easily find it; and there is little reason to doubt that he would have done so had it not been that by reason of their much wandering in searching the way from the mouth of the Malheur to the waters of the Des Chutes, the people he led were in such desperate straits that he had to flee for his life. There was another reason: a ridge makes out on the east side of the main range, but parallel with it, which completely shuts the pass from being seen in outline from the east.