The years of 1853-4 were years of comparative peace, free from actual Indian wars, and afforded the pioneers an opportunity of improving their farms, building up more comfortable homes and surrounding their families with some comforts and conveniences of civilization.  Yet even these years were not free from alarms and stampedes.  Time and again swift riders spread the news that the redskins had dug up the tomahawk and had gone on the war path.  These scares arose from isolated murders by the Indians, whose cupidity could not withstand the temptations of the white man’s property.  It was not, therefore, until midsummer of 1855 that hostilities began in earnest.  A federation had been formed among all the tribes of Northern California, Southern and Eastern Oregon and Washington.  The great leaders of this insurrection were Tyee John and his brother “Limpy,” Rogue River Indians, and John was one of the greatest, bravest and most resourceful warriors this continent has produced.  Another was Pe-mox-mox, who ruled over the Cayouses and the Columbias, and was killed early in the war while attempting to lead the white troops into ambush.

The outbreak was sudden and fierce, lighting up the frontier with the burning cabins of the settlers.  Travelers were waylaid, prospectors murdered and in many instances entire families wiped out, their homes becoming their funeral pyres.  Neither age nor sex was spared.  Little children were seized by the heels and their brains dashed out against the corner of the cabin.  One entire family perished amid the flames of their burning home.  Women were butchered under circumstances of peculiar and diabolical atrocity.  A man named Harris, attacked by Indians on the Rogue River, defended himself until killed.  His wife then took up the defense of her home and little daughter, and with a heroism that has rendered her name immortal in the annals of Oregon, held the savages at bay until relief came twenty-four hours later.

Mock sentimentalists and fake humanitarians have walled their eyes to heaven in holy horror at the “barbarities” practiced by white men upon the “poor persecuted red man.”  Yet had they witnessed scenes like those I have so faintly portrayed, they too, would have preached a war of extermination.  You and I, reader, have an exceedingly thin veneering of civilization, and in the presence of such scenes of diabolical atrocity would slip it off as a snake sheds his skin.  I have seen men as kind and gentle,—­as humane—­as yourself transformed into almost savages in the presence of such scenes.

For a year previous to the great outbreak, the Indians would leave their reservations in squads, and after murdering and pillaging the settlements, would return with their plunder to the protection of the agencies.  Demands made for their surrender by the settlers were answered by a counter demand for their authority, which required delay and generally ended with the escape of the murderers.  The result was that squads of Indians off the reservations were attacked and sometimes exterminated.  Thus affairs grew from bad to worse until the final great outbreak during the summer of 1855.