Rogue River War, Part Two , Joseph Lane

  Joseph Lane (1801-1881) was the first territorial governor of Oregon, appointed in 1848 by President James K Polk.  (Not by President Milllard Fillmore, as I misstated in the first part of the series.)  

Lane was from Indiana, a former legislator and a high-ranking military officier from the Mexican War. By all acccounts he was a brave and capable administrator. But by the Summer of  1850 he anticipated he was to be replaced  as governor of the Territory by the new Whig President,former General Zachery Taylor.(see note below this article.) 

Gold had been discovered near the Rogue in the Spring of 1850. Miners began to come into the region and with them the first female settlers.  Native peoples began to  attack miners in the Rogue River area (and those whites passing through to get to the Willamette Valley region to the north from California) and that brought Lane to southern Oregon.  Although out of official office, his reputation made many settlers clamor for his presence in the region. 

IN 1850, in an act of typical highhandedness, Congress passed an act in effect ordering the removal of the "Indians" of the from the entire Western Cascade Mountain region.  The plan was to send all Indians east of the Cascades into the drier and harsher eastern of the territory.   A Donation Land Claims Act was set up to lure settlers into the region.  (Of course, with the coming gold strike, such incentives were unnesessary, hundreds of  whites quickly began to settle in the Rogue Area.) The natives tribe were to be paid for their land, naturally,  but the whole of the pay out was totake the form of "agricultural and mechanical and educational articles of use"(1).  As little money as possible was to actually go to the tribes and they would face relocation to boot.

The Indians were not immediately removed from  the area, if only because the US military lacked the firepower to do so, but also some native groups had been willing to interact peacefully with whites (including the intermarriage of miners and valley farmers with native women.)  The Rogue Area remained relativley untroubled for long periods overthe next few years, but there was bloodshed on both sides and gradually more and more white "volunteer" groupss were "avenging" attacks on white travellers with fulll-scale assaults and exterminations on any "Indians" that were within reach.  Some white deplored this brutal conduct, but they were a minority in the region.    

By 1853, the Donation Acts and violence between the new arrivals and the native peoples had spilled over to a point where the Taklema, Shasta, and other Rogue Area tribes were more and more united and about to engage in an all-out war. An appeal was made to the Indian leader  "Chief Joe" who had gone with his followers to Fort Lane (named for the ex-governor) near the Table Rocks area as a defacto reservation to forestall any more attacks by packs of white vigilantes.

 In the book "50 Years in Oregon" by the frontier historian and soldier T.T. Geer devotes a portion of his personal story to a dramatic meeting between the natives and a party of military officals led by Lane near the Table Rocks, located  just west of a portion of the Rogue River near present day Gold Hill, a suburb of Medford. 

above, a farm near the Table Rocks of Oregon, circa 1850's. 

         

On the morning  of that day, General Lane sent for me and desired me to go with him to the Council ground, inside the Indian encampment, to act as interpreter, as I was master of the Chinook jargon. I asked the General upon what terms and where we were to meet the Indians. He replied that the agreement was that the meeting was to take place within the encampment of the enemy, and that we should be accompanied by ten other men of his own selection, unarmed. Against those terms I protested, telling the General that I had traversed that country five years before and had fought those same Indians; that they were notoriously treacherous, and in early times had earned the name of “Rogues” by never permitting a white man to escape with his scalp when once within their power; that I knew them better than he did, and that it was criminal folly for eleven unarmed white men to place themselves voluntarily within the power of seven hundred well-armed hostile Indians, within their own encampment.

I reminded him that I was a soldier in command of a company of cavalry, and was ready to obey his orders to lead my men into action or to discharge any soldierly duty, no part of which, however, was to go into the enemy’s camp as an unarmed interpreter.

The General listened to my protest and replied that he had fixed the terms of meeting the Indians and would keep his word, and that if I was afraid to go I could remain behind. When he put it upon that ground I replied that I thought I was as little acquainted with fear as he was, and that I would accompany him to what I feared would be our slaughter.

Early on the morning of September 10, 1853, we mounted our horses and set out in the direction of the Indian encampment. Our party consisted of General Joseph Lane, Joel Palmer, superintendent of Indian affairs, Samuel P. Culver, Indian agent, Captain A. J. Smith, and several others. After riding a couple of miles across the level valley we came to the foot of the mountains, where it was too steep for horses to ascend. We dismounted, hitched our horses, and after scrambling up for a half a mile over huge rocks and through brush, found ourselves within the Indian stronghold, just under the perpendicular cliff of Table Rock, surrounded by seven hundred fierce and well-armed hostile savages, arrayed in all their gorgeous war-paint and feathers.

Captain Smith had drawn out his company of dragoons and left them in line on the plain below. It was a bright, beautiful morning and the Rogue River valley lay at our feet like a panorama; the exact line of dragoons, sitting statue-like on their horses, with their white belts and burnished scabbards and carbines, looked as if engraved upon a picture, while a few paces in our rear the huge perpendicular wall of Table Rock towered frowningly many hundred feet above.

 

(left) The Table  Rock area today.   

 

"The business of the treaty commenced at once. Long speeches were made by General Lane and Superintendent Palmer, which had to be translated twice. When an Indian spoke the Rogue River tongue it was translated by an Indian interpreter into Chinook for me, when I translated it into English. When Lane or Palmer spoke, the process was reversed. This double translation of long speeches made the labor tedious and it was late in the afternoon when the treaty was completed and signed.

"In the meantime, an episode occurred which came near terminating the treaty, as well as the representation of one of the “high contracting” parties in a sudden and tragic manner. About the middle of the afternoon a young Indian came running into camp stark naked and with the perspiration running from every pore. After making a brief harangue he threw himself upon the ground, apparently exhausted. As his speech had created a great tumult amongst his tribe, General Lane told me to inquire of the Indian interpreter the cause of the commotion. The Indian responded that a company of white men on Applegate Creek, under the command of Captain Owen, had that morning captured an Indian known as Jim Taylor, tied him to a tree and shot him to death. The hubbub and confusion among the Indians at once became intense and murder gleamed from each savage eye. The Indian interpreter told me that the Indians were threatening to tie us up to trees and serve us as Owen’s men had served Jim Taylor. I saw some Indians gathering up lasso ropes, while others drew the skin covers from their guns and wiping-sticks from their muzzles. There appeared to be a strong probability that our party would be subjected to a sudden volley.

"I explained as briefly as I could what the interpreter had communicated to me, and in order to keep our people from huddling together and thus making a better target for the savages, I used a few English words not likely to be understood by the Indian interpreter, such as “disperse” and “segregate.” In fact, we kept so close to the savages and so far separated from one another that any firing must have been nearly as fatal to the Indians as to the whites.

"While I admit I thought my time had come and hurriedly thought of wife and children, I noticed nothing but coolness among my companions. General Lane sat on a log with one arm bandaged in a sling, the lines about his mouth rigidly compressing his lips, while his eyes flashed fire. He asked brief questions and gave sententious answers to what little the Indians said to us. Captain Smith, who was prematurely gray-haired and was afflicted with snappy eyes, leaned upon his cavalry saber and looked anxiously down upon his well-formed line of dragoons in the valley below. His eyes snapped more vigorously than usual and muttered words escaped from under the white mustache of the old dragoon that did not sound like prayers. His squadron looked beautiful, but, alas! they could render us no service.

"I sat down on a log close by old Chief Joe, and having a sharp hunting knife under my shirt kept one hand near the handle, determined that there should be one Indian made “good” about the time the firing commenced.

"But in a few moments General Lane stood up and began to speak very slowly and distinctly. He said: “Owens, who has violated the armistice and killed Jim Taylor, is a bad man. He is not one of my soldiers. When I catch him, he shall be punished. I promised in good faith to come into your camp with ten other unarmed men to secure peace. Myself and my men are placed within your power; I do not believe you are such cowardly dogs as to take advantage of our unarmed condition. I know that you have the power to murder us and can do so as quickly as you please; but what good will our blood do you? Our murder will anger our friends and your tribe will be hunted from the earth. Let us proceed with out treaty, and instead of having war have lasting peace.” Much more was said in this strain by the General, all rather defiant and nothing of a begging character. The excitement gradually subsided after Lane promised to give a fair compensation for the defunct Jim Taylor in shirts and blankets.

"The treaty of September 10, 1853, was completed and signed, and peace restored for the next two years. Our party wended its way down the rocks to where our horses were tied and mounted. Old A. J. Smith gal­loped up to his squadron and gave a brief order. The bugle sounded a note or two and the squadron wheeled and trotted off to camp. As General Lane and party rode across the valley, we looked up and saw the rays of the setting sun gilding the summit of Table Rock. I drew a long breath and remarked to the General that the next time he wanted to go into a hostile camp unarmed he must hunt up some one besides myself to act as his interpreter. With a benignant smile he remarked: “Bless you, sir, luck is better than science.”

T. T. Geer: 50 Years in Oregon - Chapter 27 (Gen. Joseph Lane) 

(1) In an interesting sidenote, Taylor's first choice for the post had been Abraham Lincoln, then a former Congressman from Illinois.  Lincoln turned down the post, however, perhaps at the urging of his socialite wife,  Mary Todd Lincoln, and the post instead went to a Kentucky politico, Joseph Gaines. Lincoln at this time was a less than successful one-term Whig Party  Congressman. Nevertheless, the future President had  campaigned hard  for Genral Taylor's election.    Had Lincoln taken the Oregon Territorial Governorship, it is certain he never would have served as the  President of the United States during the Civil War.