St. Tammany Farmer

An Old Battleground.

Spot in the Far Northwest Where Indian Tribes Met and Fought to the Death.

Where the great steel bridge of the Northern Pacific railway spans the Columbia river, halfway between Spokane and Seattle, Wash., and near the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers, says the Washington Star, there was fought, 60 years ago, a battle to the death between two Indian tribes, probably the Cayuses and the Walla wallas or the Clahclellahs, which latter tribe was a reckless and thieving one.

The railway company has recently completed a great irrigating ditch 25 miles long and 20 feet wide that is turning this valley adjacent to the west bank of the Columbia from a sage brush plain into what a few years hence will be an orchard and garden spot 20 miles square, with a climate peculiarly adapted, it is said, to raising all sorts of vegetables, berries, peaches, apples, plums, cherries and alfalfa. In the tearing up process an old Indian battle-ground has been found on the same spot where Lewis and Clark, the pioneer explorers, pitched their camp and from which they pushed their way up stream to the mouth of the Yakima river in the year 1805.

This is all historic ground, as at a later date Grant and Sheridan and other army officers were stationed in this vicinity—Grant in 1852-3, Sheridan in 1855-6, both of them taking part in repelling Indian uprisings. In this old battle-ground, and first by means of a well, there were unearthed recently skeletons, flint-lock rifles, Indian heads, brass badges, bearing date of 1846, broken hatchets, spear heads, elks' teeth and a piece of cloth or matting spun from threads of weeds or hemp.

Everything went to show that this part of the Kennewick valley was at one and the same time an old Indian battle and burying ground, as it is now known that the Indians congregated here in great numbers on account of the mild climate, especially during the winter months, when the inclement weather of the higher altitudes drove them into more hospitable regions.