The southwestern portion of Oregon is a vast plain, whose general altitude is nearly four thousand feet above the level of the sea. A greater part of it is an uninhabited wilderness of sage-brush desert. A few hundred Indians have held it for generations, except the narrow belts of arable lands along the streams. There, Indians are commonly called “Snakes,” deriving the name from the principal river of the country.

The overland route to Oregon traverses this region for hundreds of miles. Many years ago the emigrants became engaged in a war with the few scattering bands of Indians along the route, and for many years hostilities continued. The origin of the first trouble is not known by white man’s authority. The Indian story is to the effect that white men began it to recover stock, which they, the Indians, had purchased from other tribes. This may be correct, and may not; but that a relentless war was carried on for years there is no doubt, and, that in the aggregate, the Indians got the better of it.

The great overland route to the mining regions of Idaho in early days passed through this hostile country. Many valuable lives were lost, and a great many hundreds of horses, mules, and cattle were stolen. The Snakes were daring enemies, and brave fellows on the warpath, successful in making reprisals, and, having nothing but their lives to lose, were bold and audacious scouts. They kept a frontier line of several hundred miles in length in constant alarm. Life was unsafe even within the lines of settlement.

Owyhee-Idaho country was one of the bloody battle-grounds, the Indians waylaying travellers along the roads, and from cover of sage-brush, or ledge of rocks, firing on them, and, in several instances, attacking stages loaded with passengers. At one time the stage was fired into on the road between Boise City and Silver City. The driver—Charley Winslow—and four passengers were killed and scalped. At another time, within ten miles of a mining town of two thousand inhabitants, Nathan Dixon, the driver of a stage-coach, was shot through the body and fell in the boot of the stage, a passenger by his side taking the lines and driving the stage-load of passengers out of danger. Poor “Nate!”—he paid the penalty of too brave a heart. He had been offered an escort at the station but one mile away, and declined it, saying, “He was not made to be killed by Indians.”

H. C. Scott, a ranchman living on Burnt river, Oregon, with his family, consisting of a wife and two children, went in a two-horse wagon to visit a neighbor two miles away. On their return they were fired on by Snake Indians. Mr. Scott received his death-wound; his wife was also shot through the body, but with heroic coolness took the lines of the team, and drove home, with her murdered husband struggling in death on the floor of the wagon, his blood sprinkling her children and herself. She lived but a few hours and was buried with him. The children were unharmed, although several volleys were discharged after the flying team and its load.

On the road from “The Dalles” to CaÑon city many skirmishes were had with these Indians. On one occasion they attacked the stage carrying passengers and the United States mail. The driver, Mr. Wheeler, was shot with a slug cut from an iron rod that had been used to secure the tail-board of a freight-wagon. The slug passed through his face, carrying with it several teeth from both sides of his upper jaw. Strange to relate, he drove his team out of further danger.

Not unfrequently freighters would lose the stock of entire trains, numbering scores of animals. Packers, too, lost their mule-trains. Lone horsemen were cut off, and murder, blood and theft reigned supreme in the several routes through the “Snake country.”

A party of eighty-four Chinamen were killed while en route to the mines of Idaho. Helpless, unarmed Chinamen, they are game for the savage red men, and the noble-hearted white men also. One man, commenting on this occurrence, remarked that, “they had no business to be Chinamen. The more the Indians killed, the better.” Instances of Indian butchery might be multiplied.

But, on the other hand, they in turn suffered in the same inhuman manner. Independent companies were organized to punish them, and punishment was inflicted with ruthless vengeance. Innocent, harmless Indians were murdered by these companies. Women were captured, or put to death. One circumstance will illustrate this feature of Indian warfare, as carried on by the white men. Jeff Standiford, of Idaho City, went in pursuit of savages with a company of white men and friendly Indians.

A camp was found and attacked. The men escaped, the women and children were captured. The old, homely women were shot, and killed; the children were awarded to the whites who distinguished themselves in their great battle against helpless women and children. The better-looking squaws were sold to the highest bidder for gold dust to pay the expenses of the expedition. But the fame of the company was established as “Indian fighters.” When we hear of Indians doing such deeds, we cry “extermination,” nor stop to learn the provocation.

This kind of Indian war continued several years, during the “great rebellion.” One feature or sanitary cure on the part of the Snake Indians I do not remember to have seen in print. While they were poorly armed, and were cut off from supplies of ammunition, and especially of lead, they cut up iron rods from captured wagons, without any forges, into bullets. On the persons of Indian warriors who were killed and captured,—I say captured, because many were killed and carried off by their friends, to prevent mutilation, and because of their fidelity to each other,—were found iron slugs, stones that were cut into the shape of balls, and wooden plugs one or two inches in length, and one inch in diameter. These latter were used by them to stop hemorrhage. When a warrior was struck by a bullet, he immediately inserted a wooden stopper in the wound. Rude surgical treatment this, and yet they claim it to be of great value.

This “Snake war” afforded abundant opportunity for frontiersmen to learn the manly art of killing Indians; and they did learn it, and learned it well. Volunteer companies were enlisted to stand between the white settlers and the Snake Indians, while the regular army was withdrawn to assist in putting down the rebellion; and they stood there, some of them, and others lay there, and they are lying there to this day.

The famous Oregon poet, Joaquin Miller, earned his spurs as a war-man out on the plains fighting Snake Indians, and many others of less celebrity did likewise. But the handful of Snake Indians were harder to conquer than General Lee or Stonewall Jackson. General Lee touched his military hat with one hand, and passed over his sword with the other to General Grant, under the famous apple-tree, some months before.

E-he-gan, We-ah-we-wa and O-che-o had pulled down their war-feathers in presence of General Crook. When the drums of the Union army were beating the homeward march, General Crook was ordered to the frontier to whip the Snakes. Some of the regiments of the regular army were sent out to relieve the volunteers who garrisoned the military posts. Many a brave fellow who had returned from fighting rebels went out there to die by Snake bullets, and in some instances to be scalped.

They found a different enemy, not less brave, but more wily and cunning, who were careful of the waste of ammunition. These Snake Indians were not content to make war on white men, but continued to invade the territory of other Indians; particularly that of Warm Springs Reservation, and occasionally of the Umatilla; also, to capture horses and prisoners.

Among the exploits in this line, the carrying off a little girl, daughter of a chief of the Warm Springs, was the most daring, and perhaps the most disastrous, in its results to the Snakes; daring, because committed in broad daylight, and inside the lines of white settlements.

The affair created great excitement when it was known among the friends of the child’s parents. No people are more intensely affected by such occurrences than Indians. This feeling is very much enhanced by the knowledge that captives are often sold as slaves into other tribes. Hence this capture was disastrous to the Snake Indians, because it aroused the fire of hate among the “Warm Springs,” and sent many of their braves to the warpath.

General Crook being the right man in the right place, and finding that his regulars could not successfully cope with the Snakes, called for volunteers from Umatilla and Warm Springs Reservation. A company of Cayuse Indians, under the leadership of the now famous Donald McKay, went from the former, and another company, under command of Dr. Wm. C. McKay, an older brother of Donald’s, from the latter agency. I know nothing of the theology of Gen. Crook, whether he is posted about the war-policy of his Satanic Majesty, but he struck it this time,—“fighting the devil with fire.”

These Indians were enlisted with the understanding that they were to have, as compensation for their services, the booty won from the “Snake Indians;” but were armed and rationed by the Government.

The father of the captured girl promised to award the brave who should recapture her, with her hand; or, in other words, she was to be the wife of the man who brought her in.

In those days, no well-established Indian law recognized the necessity for a marriage ceremony, neither prevented a brave from taking as many wives as he was able to buy, or otherwise obtain.

Hence this captive girl became a prize within reach of any brave who went on the warpath, and could succeed.

This tempting bounty, together with a love of plunder and the thirst for revenge, added to the ambition of the Indians to do something that would entitle them to the recognition of their manhood by white men, made recruiting easy to accomplish, and the two companies were quickly made up. The enlisted Indian scouts, when supported by the Government and furnished with arms and ammunition, clothed and mounted, were just the thing Crook had been wanting.

The Snakes had learned that soldiers in blue were poor marksmen, and that they could drive them by strategy. But as one of the chiefs related afterward, when they saw blue coats slip from their horses and take to the brush, giving back shot for shot, they were astonished. Then, too, the scouts under the McKays, Indians themselves, tracked them over plain and mountain, until they were forced to fortify, and, they became desperate.

Meanwhile this wily general, divested of his official toga, was out with his Indian scouts, one of whom said he looked like “a-cul-tus-til-le-cum” (a common man), but he “mum-ook-sul-lux-ic-ta-hi-as-tyee-si-wash,” (“makes war like a big Indian chief.”)

General Crook, giving his Indian scouts permission to take scalps and prisoners, under savage war custom, very soon compelled the Snake chiefs to sue for peace.

This result was brought about by the “Warm Springs” and “Umatillas,” under the leadership of the McKay brothers, who advised a winter campaign. General Crook, with rare good sense, availing himself of their wisdom and experience, pursuing the Snakes, in mid-winter, over the high sage brush plains, and through the mountains.

The Snakes were under the leadership of three several chiefs. E-E-gan’s band, infesting the frontier on Burnt and Owyhee rivers, Eastern Oregon, numbering never more than three hundred warriors, had been reduced to less than two hundred, by the casualties of war; We-ah-we-wa’s band, of about the same number, swinging along between Burnt river and the CaÑon City country.

Against these Donald McKay, with the Umatilla Indian scouts, was sent, supported by a company of the United States cavalry.

Donald was eminently successful in his scouting expedition, in recapturing horses, taking scalps, and, what has since been of more importance to him, in also retaking the captured daughter of the Warm Spring chief.

She was not found with her original captors, it being a common practice with Indians, and especially when at war, to pass captives out of the hands of the original captors, and, whenever practical, in exchange for other slaves.

Those who may meet this famous scout, Donald McKay, and his pretty little Indian wife, Zu-let-ta (Bright Eyes), would never suspect that she had served three years as a slave among the Snake Indians, and that the great stalwart fellow was her deliverer; yet such is the truth.

The third division of the Snake tribe was under the famous chief Pe-li-na, whose battle-grounds and warpaths were east of the Cascade mountains, and south of the Warm Spring Reservation.

During one of the engagements incident to this Snake war, he was killed in a fight with Dr. McKay’s Warm Spring scouts. He was probably the most daring and successful leader the Snake Indians have ever had.

On his death, a chief named O-che-o assumed command, and conducted the last battle fought by this band. Harassed and driven by the combined power of United States soldiers and their Indian allies, they made at last a stand, and fought bravely, but were overpowered, and finally compelled to surrender.

When they came in with hands dyed with the blood of innocent victims, and offered to shake hands with General Crook, he refused; and placing his own behind him, coolly said, “When you prove yourselves worthy—not till then.”

They were subjugated, and accepted the terms, “unconditional surrender”—without treaty or promise, except that of protection or subsistence on the part of the Government and an acknowledgment of its authority, and the promise of obedience on the part of the Indians.

At Warm Springs Agency an Indian, who had been with Crook, invited me to visit the department barn with him.

He led the way, climbing up gangways and ladders, until we reached the upper garret. He pointed to a dark-looking pile in one corner resembling a black bear-skin. On examination I found they were scalps. The scout remarked that he did not know how many were there now, because white men carried them off, and Capt. Smith, the agent, forbade them from touching them; that when they came home from “Crook’s war,” at the great scalp-dance they had sixty-two. He appeared to regret that the men who had cut them off the hated Snakes’ heads could not be permitted to ornament their shot-pouches with them. I selected one or two as reminders of the handiwork of the scouts, and also as specimens of the long black hair of the Snake Indians. I haven’t them now. For a while they hung in my office; but the doors were sometimes left unlocked, and they were missing. Pretty sure, they are now playing switch for a couple of handsome ladies residing,—well, no odds where.

If my reader will accompany me awhile we will visit the “Snake country,” and see it for ourselves. From the home office at Salem, Oregon, our route leads us down the beautiful Willamette valley, via Portland; thence once again up the Columbia by steamer and rail, through “the Cascades,” seeing new beauties each time in things we had not noticed on former trips. On the right a mountain stream leaps off a rock six hundred feet, and turns to mist, forming a perpetual cloud, that hides its main course, but pours its constant rain into a great pool below, and, overflowing, leaps again two hundred feet, and lighting on stony bed, made deeper and softer each century, it comes out to a smiling, sparkling silver sheet beneath the evergreen forests, and joins the river in its flow to the briny deep.

On the left we see Castle Rock, on which Jay Cooke built a fine air-castle when the North Pacific Railroad was built upon paper, intending to match the ideal with the real in time, to sit on its summit, and, from the tower of his mansion, wave his welcome to the panting iron charger on his arrival from Duluth, en route to the great metropolis of the northwest.

Jay Cooke failed; the iron courser is stabled at Duluth; the metropolis is covered with heavy forests, and the hum of busy life is not heard very much at Puget Sound, and Castle Rock stands solitary and alone like some orphan boy.

So it will stand, for its mother mountains look on it with contempt, from its very insignificance. It is a pity Cooke can’t build the castle,—pity for this lonely rock, who bathes his feet in the boiling waters of the river.

“Rooster Rock” is still worse off, for he is surrounded by water too deep for him to wade, though he may keep his head above the flood.

Onward, upward we go, passing old rock towers and Indian burial-grounds, catching a glimpse of Father Hood, who seems in ill-humor now, and frowns, with dark clouds on his brow. Maybe he is angry with Mother Adams, on the north, who smiles beneath her silvery cap, while he scolds and thunders. The tables may yet turn with these mountain monarchs, and Hood may laugh while Mother Adams weeps. We will keep an eye on them for a few days, as our journey leads us toward the “Snake country.”

We are at “The Dalles.” Our commissary, Dr. W. C. McKay has made preparation for the journey; we are no longer to be hurried by steam so fast we cannot have the full benefit of the scenes we pass.

The doctor is a native of the mountains, and boasts that he is “no emigrant or carpet-bagger either;”—that his father’s blood was mixed with Puritan stock from Boston, and his mother knew how to lash him to the baby board and swing him to her back with strong cords, while she promenaded behind her husband, or gathered the wild huckleberries.

He is now, 1874, en route for the east with a troupe of Indians from Warm Springs and the Modoc Lava Beds.

Few who meet him will suspect he is the one of whom I write, unless I describe him more accurately. Educated in Wilbraham, Mass., at his father’s expense, he graduated with honor, and returned to his native land a strong, well-built, handsome gentleman. He married a woman of his own blood, fully his equal in culture.

The doctor has taken part in nearly all the important Indian affairs of Oregon and Washington Territory for a quarter of a century; sometimes as interpreter or secretary for treaty councils, and sometimes as United States Resident Physician, and again as leader of friendly Indians against hostile ones. His experiences have more the character of romance than any man in the northwest.

He meets us at the wharf and says, “Come, you are my guest,” and leads the way to the high, rocky bluffs overlooking the city of “The Dalles.” Our entertainment was made complete through the hospitality of the lady-like, dark-eyed woman who presided at a table whereon we found an elegant supper.

We light our pipes, and stroll out to the tents of the teamsters, packers, and hands who are to accompany our expedition. An Indian boy is baking bread by a camp-fire with frying-pans. Near by the door of the cooking-tent we see our kitchen, a chest or box,—and by its side stands a fifty-pound sack of self-rising flour, with the end open, and, resting on the flour, a lump of dough.

Jimmy Kane, the Indian cook, twists off a chunk, and, by a circling motion peculiar to himself, and one would say entirely original, he soon gives it the shape of a thin, unbaked loaf. See the fellow measuring the frying-pan with his eyes, first scanning the loaf and then the pan, until, in his judgment, they will fit each other well; then, holding the limp loaf in his left hand, with the other he slips a bacon rind over the inside of the pan, to prevent the dough from sticking, and claps the latter in; and, patting it down until the surface is smooth, he pulls from his belt a sheath-knife, and makes crosses in the cake to prevent blistering. Next, the frying-pan goes over the fire a moment or two until the bottom is crusted. Meantime the cook has drawn out coals or embers, standing the pan at an angle, and propping it in position with a small stick, with one end in the ground and the other in the upper end of the pan-handle. Meanwhile the coffee-pot is boiling, and in some other frying-pan the meats are cooking. But see that mess of dough, how it swells and puffs up, like an angry mule making ready for a bucking frolic. Jimmy takes the pan by the handle, and, with a peculiar motion, sends the now steaming loaf round and round the pan; then jerking a straw or reed from the ground, thrusts it into the heart of the loaf, and, quickly withdrawing it, examines the heated point. If no dough is there, the loaf is “done,” and then Jimmy throws it on his hand, and keeps it dancing until he lands it in the bread-sack, which is stored away among bed-blankets to keep it hot; while he proceeds to put another lump of dough through the same process. Sometimes the first loaf may be stood on end before the fire while the other loaves are taking their turn in the pan.

Perhaps a dozen cakes are standing like plates in a country woman’s cupboard, all on edge, while we look at the Indian cook setting the table on the ground. First spreading down a saddle-blanket, and then a table of thick sail-cloth, he draws the kitchen near, and pitches the tin plates and cups, knives, and spoons around, and, placing an old sack in the centre, sets thereon the frying-pan full of hot “fryins.” But Jimmy has everything on the table, and is waiting for the boys to come.

Listen, and you will hear the tramping feet of our band of horses and mules with which we are to make our journey. They come galloping into camp, seasoning the supper with dust.

On the following morning we are on the road toward the summit of the Blue Mountain, riding over high, rolling prairies, sometimes crossing deep, dark caÑons, and out again on the open plain. On the evening of the second day we pitched our camp in Antelope valley.

While Jimmy is preparing supper, a man approaches our camp from the open plain. He carries on his shoulders a breech-loading shot-gun, and, hanging by his side, a game-bag, through which the furry legs of Jack rabbits and the feathers of prairie chickens may be seen; and also in his left hand a string of mountain trout. The man declares himself a hunter by his spoils; but there is something else that causes us to stare at him,—the soft felt hat slouched over his face, flannel blouse, denim overalls stuffed into the top of his boots, a small pointer dog that keeps close to his heels, altogether presenting a spectacle not common in appearance.

As he comes near our camp, we recognize, in the sunburnt face and flaxen hair, a man whose heroic deeds have placed his name high on the roll of honor as a chieftain. This plain-looking, rough-clad, sunburnt hunter is George Crook, commander of the Department of the Columbia.

He is just the man that we wished to meet at this time. After a pleasant chat on every-day topics, the general threw himself down on a pile of blankets, and gave us his opinion of the Indian question, so far as concerned those we were going to meet. His experience made his views of great value, and we fully realized it within a few days.

We see, coming over the hill from Warm Springs Agency, a small cavalcade of Indians. They are to be of our party for the Snake expedition.

Foremost in the trail rode a young Indian, who had been with McKay’s scouts under Gen. Crook. The general quietly extended his hand to the new-comer, in token of recognition.

This man’s name was Tah-home (burnt rock). He had been successful, during the war, in capturing a little Snake Indian squaw of about twelve years of age. He had subsequently adopted her as his wife. Dr. McKay had arranged for Tah-home to bring his captive wife for the purpose of interpreter, it being presumed that she would, of course, be able to talk in her native tongue, having been only two years a captive.

It should be understood that nearly every tribe has a language distinct from its neighbors, and it was feared that some difficulty would arise in managing a council with a people who were so little known to other tribes, except by their daring acts of warfare; hence this arrangement with Tah-home and his squaw Ka-ko-na (lost child).

It required some strong promises to reassure Tah-home of the safety of this trip, in so far as it affected his property interest in the squaw; for at this time his thoughts were confined to this view of the case. When assured that, in the event the Snakes should claim his wife, and succeed in persuading her to remain with them, he should have two horses, he was satisfied to proceed.

One or two days after we encamped near CaÑon City, and, in pity for the poorly clad squaw, we had her dressed in a full suit of new clothes. From that time henceforth Tah-home seemed to be very much attached to his wife. “Fine feathers make fine birds” among Indian people as elsewhere.

Pursuing our journey, we at last stand on the summit of the Blue Mountains, one hundred and eighty miles south of “The Dalles.” Looking northward, spread out before us, a great high plain appears in full view, though hundred of miles away; high mountains, looking in the distance like a wooded fringe, and their high peaks, like taller trees that had outgrown their neighbors, were clothed in snow, making a marked contrast with their shining tops. To the south an elevated plateau of open country, bleak and dreary in its aspect. A few miles on we find a boiling spring of clear water, and near it a cool one.

Passing south of the summit, about fifty miles, we reach “Camp Harney,” a three-company military post established here to guard the Indians. There was a time when it was necessary. Indeed, it may be again.