The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek by Richard Kluger

Author:Richard Kluger [Kluger, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-59534-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Leschi ended his message for Casey by insisting that neither he nor his warriors had taken part in the Battle of Seattle. In a further effort to show his good faith, he also asked the Fort Steilacoom commander to dispatch John Swan, lately retired from his post as warden on Fox Island, to visit the Indian guerrillas’ hideout deep in the forest between the White and Green rivers in order to observe his people’s condition and to hear them express firsthand their desire to coexist amicably with the whites. Casey, probably without clearing the mission with Stevens, urged Swan to take up the offer by Leschi; at the least, Swan could bring back useful intelligence about Leschi’s capacity to continue waging war.

After a stay of a day and two nights at the remote Indian war camp, a ring of twenty log cabins arranged for maximum protection beside the Green River, Swan returned and reported to Casey on the bleak conditions and signs of discord among the 150 or so braves gathered there. “Leschi is anxious for peace,” the Courier said Swan had concluded, “but he wishes a guarantee that his people will receive no punishment, and that a new reservation shall be set apart for their use. He fears that if his people lay down their arms private citizens may take their lives for what they have done in war.”

Stevens offered no receptivity to Leschi’s terms and almost surely interpreted his plea and straitened circumstances as further proof of the Indians’ growing desperation in the face of an expected all-out assault by white soldiers. Leschi’s vulnerability was revealed ten days after Swan’s stay when the Nisqually leader received other visitors, distinctly unwelcome ones. Baited with an offer from white officials of twenty dollars for the head of any of Leschi’s warriors and eighty dollars for the chief’s, Patkamin’s Snoqualmie braves made their way to Leschi’s secluded camp. Outnumbered by the defenders, Pat’s men used the cover of darkness to surround Leschi’s compound but were detected by the Nisqually sentries. According to an account in the Pioneer and Democrat, the two chiefs loudly exchanged insults through the night air, each promising to own the other’s head once daylight came. After withstanding ten hours of steady gunfire, which grew more intense and destructive as Pat’s marauders crept closer, Leschi’s men ran for it at dawn. They splashed across the Green River or clung to logs to stay afloat, but lost at least nine braves and perhaps twice that many; the attackers, far fewer. It was Leschi’s first real defeat since he had taken up arms, and ironically it was inflicted by those of his own race.

As Leschi tried to regroup his forces, in part by urgently seeking reinforcements from his Yakima and Klickitat relatives beyond the mountains, Silas Casey moved out from Fort Steilacoom with 250 trained army regulars, determined to flush out pockets of Indian resistance with short, swift jabs. Meanwhile, Stevens was dispatching his volunteer units in every direction to

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