The Oroville weekly gazette. [volume] (Oroville, Wash.) 1905-19??, 1910-06-24
A GREWSOME EXPOSURE
The Railroad Graders Torn Up a
Multitude of Bones on the Site
of An Old Indian Battle.

While engaged in finishing up the
excavation and grading on the east
side of the river last week the railroad
contractors cut through an old Indian
burying ground, and workmen on the
job say the fragmentary remains of
upward OF 200 Indians were turned up
within the narrow compass of road ex-
cavation. These grewsome relics of
mortality were in such an advanced
stage of disintegration that only por-
tions of the skeletons remained. From
the positions of the bones it was evil
dent that many of the defunct were
buried in sitting position. In con-
nection with the bones many relics
OF articles possessed by warriors in
their life time and placed in the graves
at the time of interment, came to light.
Besides rude and crude weapons of
warfare there were necklaces of small
sea shells, small hollow copper cylin-
ders, and one of elk's teeth as perfect
as when it decorated the swarthy neck
OF the proud owner in his life time
Strange to say the buckskin thongs
upon which these gewgaws were strung
were in almost as good state of pre-
servation as when committed to the
earth with the savage owner. The
various relics were appropriated by
the wOrkmen, and the bones scraped
in a heep in one of the fills and covered
from view.
The spot selected by the red men of
long ago to store away departed is a
small fiat above the river, opposite the
lower part of town, under the shadow
of bare out-croppings of granite. Evi-
IDENTIFY the ground was popular as a
place of interment ages ago. 1t is said
that when the Hudson Bay company
had post near the forks in the 30s or
40s of the last century, the Indians
used the spot as cemetery, but from
all appearances the ground has not
been used for that purpose for many
years. A most interesting tradition
relative to the locality and the numer-
GUS interments comes down through
the Oldest surviving Indians of the val
ley. 1t is said that upward of 100 years
ago vast horde of copper colored bar
barians came down from the far north
like a plague of locust, bent on scalps
and plunder. Their canoes dotted the
lake like huge water fowl, and host
of 1.-the warrors on foot darted from
rock to rock, and bush to bush, hoping
to catch the Okanogans, large tribe
of which peopled this part of the valley,
unprepared. However the approach
ing foe was discovered, an alarm given
and the fighting men of the Okanogans
rallied among the rocks near where
the bones were recently dug up, and
where an old ford was located, pre-
pared to give battle in defense of their
homes and families. The contending
parties met in mortal combat, the hills
resounding to the weird, wild battle
cries, the death shrek, the groans of
the wounded. The fight was long and
bloody, one side animated by the hopes
of booty, the other struggling to save
their homes and families from the
ruthless hands of the invaders. Long
victory hung in the balance, first one
side gaining an advantage, and then
the other retrieving the lost ground.
But the Okanogans were outnumbered,
their best and bravest falling before
the arrows and beneath the tomahawks
of the enemy the few survivors hot
footed from the fatal field. 1t was a
blow from which the almost annihilated
tribe never entirely recovered. The
eXultant victors drove away to the
north all the women and horses that
they could round up, leaving the homes
of the Okanogans stripped and desc
late and the spirits of the survivors
broken. After doing all the damage
in their power the merciless invaders
returned from whence they came, and
the crippled and disheartened remnant
of once powerful and happy people
collected the remains of their fallen
tribesmen and gave them seplechure
where the plowshare of advancing ciy-
| ilization broke into their resting places
a century later.