over to Tualatin Plains, and settled first near Mr. Hill’s place, now
Hillsboro. In 1845, he recalls that he was employed in building the
first frame barn in Oregon (W. M. C.), on the Wilkins place; and he here
made the acquaintance of the old mountain men, Wilkins, Ebberts, Newell,
Meek, and Walker. He was not well satisfied, however, with the locality.
It was a long way over the hills and through the deep woods to the
Willamette River at Linnton, or at Oregon City—Portland then being a
mere camping station on the Willamette. Case wished to locate on the
river, and accordingly, in 1846, moved to French Prairie, and acquired,
partly by donation claim, and afterwards by purchase, two sections of
land, being about one-half prairie, and the other half timber. It was
three miles from Champoeg, where Newell acquired the Donald Manson
place, and became town proprietor. Here he has remained, engaged in
farming, saw milling, and running a tile factory, performing his duties
as a citizen, being known during the war period as an unyielding union
man, and occupying the responsible place during that time and later of
County Judge of Marion County. He has had a family of thirteen children,
eight of whom are now living. He has twenty-three grand-children. His
life has been one of intense activity, and he has performed almost no
end of hard physical work, and has borne heavy responsibilities.
He says, however, that the most intense and thrilling experiences of his
life were during the season that he spent in California, and going to
and returning from the mines. This was 1849. It is worthy of the most
careful record, being remembered to the most minute details by Mr. Case,
and affording a chapter in human experience seldom equalled. It also
shows the moulding influences brought to bear upon Oregon men, who
showed themselves as perhaps of the firmest fibre to be found on the
Pacific slope in 1849; which is saying a great deal. It deserves to be
told in the language of Mr. Case himself, and perhaps it will be. But
for some reasons it will be proper to give these recollections in a
somewhat condensed form, as in their entirety, as told by himself, they
would compose a volume. Indeed, in his rapid and energetic conversation,
with which only the most experienced stenographer could keep pace, it
required him four hours to tell the whole thing—even omitting many of
the details that he remembers. However, it is only an idle thought or
wish to imagine that what men were years in living in the fastest period
of Pacific Coast history, can ever be told in full or the life itself be
reproduced. There are distinct parts to his narrative. The Voyage; the
Oregon Miner’s Vengeance; and The Return Overland.
THE VOYAGE.
News of the discovery of gold in 1848 was first brought to Oregon by an
Oregonian by the name of Barnard. Marshall was building a mill, as is
well known, for Sutter, on the American River, and after allowing the
water to run through the tail ditch to sluice it out, examined the bed,
as the water was again shut off, and found at the bottom of the ditch
many little yellow rocks, which were highly polished and very heavy. Not
being acquainted with gold, which he had an idea occurred in native form
only as dust, not as nuggets, he tried pounding out one of the little
yellow rocks—which instead of crumbling under the hammer, was flattened
finally to the size of a saucer, and of course was made very thin. Even
then, however, the true nature of the rock was not suspected; and it was
not known that it was gold until Marshall had word from the United
States’ Assay Office at San Francisco to which he had sent a small
collection of nuggets to the value, however, of $1,000.
By this news, Barnard, the Oregonian, was incited to return home and
tell his neighbors. But at San Francisco he was detained two months,
being positively refused passage on the ships for the Columbia. He
believed that he was purposely hindered by parties who wished to go to
Oregon and buy up all the provisions, tools, etc., to be had here, at
low prices, and to sell them at San Francisco at a great advance.
Finally he got a ship, and reaching Oregon late in August, the news was
published, and the Oregonians, many of them just returning from the
Cayuse war, formed a company, and that season broke and completed the
first wagon road to California, taking the high table-land route by way
of Klamath Lake, Lost Lake, the lava beds, and across the Pitt River
Valley far to the eastward of Mount Shasta—or Shasta Butte, as called by
the old pioneers. Mr. Case was not ready to go with the overland party,
but found passage on the bark Anita, which sailed from the Columbia the
middle of February. There was a large crowd of men on board, considering
the size of the ship, being sixty-six in number, and the quarters were
very narrow, 12 × 20 feet, and the ceiling being only 5 feet high, with
two tiers of berths arranged around the sides of the apartment. The
voyage, moreover, was long and tedious. As the crossing of the Columbia
bar was made, with a stiff wind, Mr. Case was reminded by the breakers
as they ran and tossed and finally broke upon the rocks of Cape
Disappointment, of the herds of buffaloes that thundered over the
plains—the movement of the waves seeming about equally swift and
tumultuous. But the wind soon stiffened to a gale, the bark put to sea,
and land was lost to sight; and the storm did not at last abate until
they were far off the coast to the west of Vancouver Island. Then,
however, with a west or north wind, that was bitterly cold, the voyage
was made down to the latitude of San Francisco, but in constant storms
of snow, frequently sufficient to leave as much as a foot of the article
on deck over one night. When at last the clouds dispersed and a fair
west wind blew, and the skies were again clear, the entire sweep of the
horizon appeared as one world of water, except that far to the
northeast, the very tip of Shasta, white and glittering, just jutted out
of the sea. It was then seventeen hours sailing before the shore
appeared in sight. Then the Golden Gate was reached and passed, and the
voyage was over. It occupied a month. Sailing to Sacramento and
proceeding thence to Coloma, Mr. Case, being a mechanic, found
employment at such good prices as to detain him from the mines. But the
season proved to be one of excitement during which even bloodshed
occurred; and Mr. Case was forced to play an important part in the
program.
THE COLUMBIA RIVER MEN’S VENGEANCE.
Very soon after reaching Coloma, Mr. Case found that the community was
in a broil. No open troubles had yet occurred, but there were causes of
exasperation which were working rapidly to a climax. It was due
primarily to a difference in system and ideas between the various
elements of the people then in California. It was in fact a part of the
final clash between the old Spanish system and the American; the
beneficiaries of the Spanish system, or Grandees, being on one side, and
on the other the Oregonians, representing the American idea. It was
proved in the event that men who could establish an independent
government in Oregon, and were able to compel the obedience of the
Cayuse Indians, were able also to make in California a deep impression
for their idea of liberty. The disturbed, or rather the entirely
unorganized condition of government in California, made possible the
following course of events. The military government of this territory,
just taken from Mexico, had not given place to a civil organization, and
it was not thoroughly known what authorities were in power. Sutter had
received a large grant of land, and with this was coupled certain power
to enforce justice among the Indians, and he was recognized as a sort of
justice of the peace; but this was of very limited extent, and there was
no central authority in the whole state, unless military.
California was occupied originally by men who had received great land
grants, some of which were as much as six leagues square. These men were
at first Spanish-Americans, who were thus rewarded for government
services. They formed a sort of nobility or aristocracy, and held their
places like the baronies or counties of the old world, and their
possessions were frequently of the dimensions of a county. Their ranches
were on an average about twenty-five miles apart, and the ranges between
were stocked with great bands of cattle. The Indians, a mild and
inoffensive people, were employed as laborers and cattle drivers by the
Spanish-Americans, and a genuine European feudal system was in force.
The first Americans (or Germans, or English) who went to California
acquired some of these ranches, and continued the Mexican system. Only
they employed it with characteristic American energy, and pushed it to a
much greater extreme. With the discovery of gold and the opening of the
mines, a prospect of vast profits appeared to the early Californians,
who were English, or American, or German; and their first intention was
to work the mines in the same manner that they worked their ranches—by
the labor of the native Indian, or by importation of Mexican debtors,
who could be procured very cheap. It was still the law in Mexico to put
debtors in prison on the complaint of their creditors, and they could be
held until the debt was paid, and the debtor himself failing in this,
his son could be held. Many of these debtors were imprisoned for but
trifling sums, and upon settlement with the creditors, could be
practically bought by other parties almost like slaves, the purchase of
the debt giving the right to hold the debtor. Hundreds of Mexicans were
thus procured and sent to the mines, at a cost in some cases of but a
few dollars to the purchasers, and contracted to work for some trifling
sum, often not over twenty-five cents a day, in washing gold. Contract
labor from Chili (W. M. C.) was also obtained, and it was estimated that
by the midsummer of 1849 as many as five thousand such laborers were at
work on the California placers.
But the original traders were making even more profit by trade with the
contract laborers, or with the Indians who were employed to wash gold,
the Indian women doing such work along with the men. When they had a
little dust their natural fondness for finery was stimulated, and cheap
and gaudy articles, such as shawls and shirts, were sold for dust. But
the dust that was brought by the Indians was balanced by the shrewd
trader with a weight which was the Mexican silver dollar, weighing just
an ounce, with whose value the Indians were well acquainted. By this
method of reckoning, the gold was valued the same as the silver. A
shirt, for instance, which was marked to begin with at the regular price
of $3, was bought with a balance of three silver dollars in gold dust,
making $48 in actual value. Indeed the amount of dust obtained of the
Indians for some of the articles was truly “fabulous.” Mr. Case recalls
that a certain shawl of unusually magnificent pattern and blinding
colors, which cost the trader but $1.50, was bought by an Indian chief
for his favorite daughter for $1,500 worth of dust.
Into this flourishing condition of things the Oregonians, or Columbia
River men, as they were called, entered in 1849. The most of them went
into the mines, but there were some who quickly saw that there was more
profit in trading with the Indians than in digging the gold.
Consequently they began setting up stores, and bought and sold goods.
Competition thus began. The price of a shirt, a standard article, was
forced down to $2, that is, to two ounces of dust; and then to one
ounce, and even lower. By this operation the old traders, such as Weimer
and Besters, of Coloma, and Marshall, and even Sutter, were offended, as
it soon became apparent to those who were intending to operate the mines
on the medieval Spanish system, and by the employment of Indians and
contract labor, that their whole system of trade and business was in
danger of collapsing. Mr. Case is confident that the Indians were then
incited against the Columbia River men, that they were told that the
people from Oregon were intruders and had no business there, and were
taking gold that belonged to themselves. At all events, mysterious
murders began to take place in the mountains and along the mining
streams. This was not greatly noticed at first, but as one after another
fell and it began to be asked who was killed, it became plain that in
every case the victim was a Columbia River man. The authorities, such as
they were, gave the subject no attention. Sutter himself, acting as a
justice of the district under his old concession, showed no concern; and
the Californians, among whom were such traders as Weimer and Besters,
Winters, Marshall and others, when asked for their explanation, replied
that these murders were evidently committed by the Oregonians
themselves; they were old trappers and mountain men of the most
desperate character, and they were undoubtedly murdering and robbing one
another. This the Oregonians knew to be false, and that it should be
said created a presumption in their minds that the California traders
were inciting the Indians to cut off the Columbia River men. This
suspicion led them to talk quietly to one another and to consider what
should be done. Finally a little band of about thirteen in number was
organized quite secretly, and of this Mr. Case, as one of the most
intelligent, was chosen virtual leader. In this band of Oregonians was
Fleming Hill (usually called Flem), and Greenwood, a half-breed Crow
Indian.
Affairs were brought to a crisis at last by the murder of six
Oregonians, all on one bar. The first that Case heard of the affair was
at the house of Besters, where he was boarding while he was working upon
a building. Besters, coming in late to supper, was in great glee, saying
that he had taken in $2,500 that afternoon from the Indians. The news of
the murder of the six Columbia River men was soon abroad, and it seemed
impossible but that the murderers were the Indians who had brought the
dust. This was the conclusion at which the Oregonians arrived, but they
would not proceed until full evidence had been procured. Meeting Hill,
as if casually, on the streets of Coloma, Case told him to take the
thirteen men and find and follow the trail of the murderers, whom he
felt certain were the Indians of the tribe in the vicinity, belonging to
that very valley, and not a distant tribe from the mountains. A
circumstance favoring such a conclusion was the fact that the tribe in
the valley numbered over a hundred; but those who had come in to trade
at Weimer and Bester’s store were only about twenty-five. The rest of
the tribe, it was apparent to those acquainted with the Indians, had
struck off in a body to make a trail to the mountains, to lead off
suspicion, and would return, singly or in small groups, to their homes.
Case himself continued working as usual at Coloma, as it was very
necessary that some one be at that point to watch the progress of
affairs. He soon discovered, however, that there was a spy on him, an
Indian employed at the sawmill of a Californian, Mr. Winters.
At the end of several days Hill appeared again in town. Seeing him while
he was working upon the roof, Mr. Case contrived to meet him as soon as
possible, and inquired what had been discovered. Hill replied, “We found
various tracks from the pit where the six miners who had been killed and
stripped were buried. These, taking across the river, then made one
plain, broad trail out to the mountains. We followed this for two days,
when it suddenly disappeared, scattering in all directions, and could be
followed no longer.” “Then they are not mountain Indians,” said Case;
“they belong right here in this valley.”
This brought the Oregonians decisively to what was to be done; whether
to tell their discoveries to the Californians, or Sutter, or to take
vengeance into their own hands. The former course seemed entirely
useless, as they felt sure that the Californians knew enough of the
affair already, and had decided to let the Oregonians take care of
themselves. Confirmation of the guilt of the Indians, if any were
needed, was found in the report of an American who kept a horse ranch at
some distance from town. He had, shortly before, seen a large number of
Indians coming down the mountain side on foot, and dispersed in separate
groups, and not in single file, as he had always observed them before.
They were evidently that part of the band who had led a trail off to the
mountains, returning home. The Oregonians concluded, therefore, that the
only way to put an end to the murders was to proceed precisely as they
would out on the plains; that is, make war on the Indians irrespective
of the California authorities and wipe out the tribe, if that was
necessary. This was accordingly done. The tribe was found and surprised
by the band of thirteen armed Oregonians. Twenty-six of the Indians were
killed on the instant. No women were shot, however, though they fought
the same as the men. They and six men surrendered. Greenwood shouted as
the blow was struck, “Now, this is what you get for killing Columbia
River men.”
After the surrender, the Indian women began weeping and wailing in a
manner truly heart-rending over the bodies of their dead husbands and
fathers; but they acknowledged that the punishment was just, as they had
killed the Columbia River men. But they pleaded that they were told to
do it, which, if true, cannot but create a feeling of sympathy for them,
the unfortunate dupes. After the slaughter and surrender, Hill mounted
his horse and rode to Coloma, and the six Indian men were hurried after
under a guard, and the women and children were driven after these by the
rest of the thirteen Oregonians. It was 4 o’clock when Hill arrived. The
six Indians were but a short distance behind, and hardly had been placed
in prison, together with the Indian spy, at Winter’s mill, who was owned
as a leading partner in the crime, when the remnant of the tribe, on the
run, with the Oregonians galloping behind them, came into town. It was a
burning day, the mercury standing at 106° in the shade, but the distance
from the scene of the slaughter, forty miles, had been covered since 11
o’clock that forenoon. The town was excited beyond measure. Men and boys
to the number of hundreds gathered in a circle about the Oregonians, who
drove the tribe to the shelter of a spreading pine tree, in whose shade
they lay stretched on the ground. There was great complaint and deep
mutterings on the part of the Californians, who said, “See what you have
done! We can stay here no longer. There are eighty thousand Indians in
California, and now they will drive every white man from the mines.” So
great indeed was the terror, that many new arrivals just up the river
from San Francisco, coming to the mines from the east, turned around
immediately and left. Others were scarcely dissuaded by the Oregonians
themselves, or those who took their part, who declared that the trouble
was now ended, if all stood together. However, it required great
firmness on the part of the Columbia River men. Sutter, to whom word was
sent asking if he would try the seven Indians in prison, replied that he
had better not, as he could do nothing but release the men who had been
captured by the murderers from Oregon. With this message from the civil
authority, such as it was, the Oregonians proceeded to try the Indians
themselves, disregarding Sutter entirely. But just as the Indians were
being taken from prison, and were in the midst of a thick crowd of
spectators, the one known as the spy made a sudden shout, and all the
seven dropped on the instant to the ground and began wriggling on all
fours between the legs of the astonished bystanders; the Oregon guard
instantly attempted to shoot them—which created a scene of strange and
almost ludicrous excitement. Two were shot at once; two were shot after
they left the crowd; the other two reached the river and began swimming
away, and one of these was shot as he rose on the opposite side of the
stream. What became of the seventh was not known.
The women and children were of course released, but with the warning
that no Indian should again work on the bars. But this did not end the
trouble. Another Oregonian was killed. The Oregonians again took the
warpath, with the intention of killing all the savages they saw. One was
soon found and dispatched. Eleven were next found and pursued to the
cabin of an English rancher named Goff, who at first made no response to
their summons at his door. But as the boys began picking the mud
chinking out of the logs, and threatened to fire into the room, he
opened the house and delivered the Indians, who were then immediately
hanged. The tribe was then traced, and although taking refuge in the
tules of a swamp of a marshy lake, were attacked by the guards on
horseback, and all the men, and one woman, who was fighting with the
men, were killed—making in all seventy-six of the tribe that fell, the
Oregonians having lost by secret murder thirty-three. The women and
children were again brought back by the Oregonians to Coloma, and were
furnished by them with provisions and pans, and were allowed to wash
gold and support themselves. But they secretly took their leave, and
were found at length in a distant canyon of the high mountains, at the
limit of snow, nearly starved, but subsisting on pine nuts and the roots
of wild clover, gathered by a few old men in a lower valley. It was a
man named Smith who traced them, as among the tribe were his Indian wife
and child. They were again induced to return to Coloma, and now in a
pitiable condition, Californians injudiciously sent them a large supply
of beef and flour—a sort of food to which they were unaccustomed, and of
which they ate so greedily as to induce a virulent disease, of which
fifty-two died, practically exterminating the tribe.
This was Rocky Mountain men’s justice that was thus dealt out in the
California mines, and of the same piece as that of the Cayuse war, or
that of the general Indian war of 1855-56.
It was rough and terrible, and the Indians were the victims; but the old
California system was the real cause. The attempt was made to work the
mines upon a system of inequality—of proprietors and peons. The
Oregonians, accustomed to a system of equality, finding themselves
exposed to outlawry, and not protected from the poor savagery of the
Indians, struck as they could. It is to be remembered, too, that the
secret murder of thirty-two men, without any attempt at meting out
justice, was an enormity that no community should brook. But that it was
not mere personal vengeance, but the purpose to establish the system of
free labor, and to root out the contract system, or rather the peon
system, was shown by the following: