Oregon settlers now had leisure time for building up their homes, so better houses were erected, fields were fenced and plowed, school houses and churches built, scythes and axes were wielded in place of the rifle that now rested in idleness above the cabin door.  A new era had dawned on the Oregon, and gentle peace like a brooding spirit hovered above the erstwhile desolate land.

During the succeeding years, up to 1861, there was little to distract the attention of the pioneers.  My time was occupied during that period in assisting on the farm during summer and attending the district school during the winter.  The loop holes in the wall of the old school house for the rifles had been boarded up, and the larger boys no longer “toted” their guns, and stacked them in the corner.

On the east side of the Cascade mountains, however, the gentle savage was lord of all the lands over which he roamed.  Here he was yet master, and thereby hangs a tale.  In 1845 an immigrant train attempted to enter the Oregon by way of the “Meeks cut off.”  With them were the Durbins, Simmons, Tetherows, Herrins and many others I cannot now recall.  The history of that journey is one of hardship, starvation, and death.  After enduring sufferings such as sicken one in the bare recital the remnant staggered into the settlements, more dead than alive.  They crossed the Cascade mountains, coming down the Middle Fork of the Willamette river, and somewhere west of Harney Valley they stopped on a small stream.  An old Indian trail crossed at that point, and the oxen in sliding down the bank to water uncovered a bright piece of metal.  It was picked up and taken to camp, where a man who had been in the mines in Georgia pronounced it gold.  He flattened it out with a wagon hammer, and was quite positive it was the precious metal.  But men, women and children subsisting on grasshoppers and crickets and fighting Indians most of the day, had something else to think about.

The incident, therefore, was soon forgotten amid the dire stress of their surroundings.  But when gold was discovered at Sutter’s Fort in California, Sol Tetherow called to mind the finding of the piece of metal on the banks of the stream not far from Harney Valley.  He told about it—­told and retold the story, and as the stories from California grew, so grew the story of the old man, until finally he declared he could have “picked up a blue bucket full in the bed of the creek.”  Hence originated the name, the “Blue Bucket Diggins.”

During the years of 1857-58-59-60 and 61, companies were formed in the valley counties to search for the “Blue Bucket Diggins.”  The companies were loosely formed, with little or no discipline, and were, therefore, predestined to end in disaster.  After crossing the mountains and seeing no sign of Indians, the officers had no power and less inclination to enforce discipline.  There being no signs of Indians, it was useless to maintain guards; they could