The Day a Cannon Changed History at the Cascades
Before he was a Civil War legend, Philip Sheridan fended off a regional uprising with a single, deafening shot.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In November 1858, Indigenous people attacked the blockhouse at the Middle Cascades, leaving the occupants in imminent danger of massacre. A courier was sent to Vancouver, where Philip Sheridan held the fort. Sheridan ordered an old-fashioned iron cannon to be placed on a small steamer, and in a remarkably short time, he was steaming up the Columbia River. Arriving at the Cascades, the cannon was put on shore and positioned on the bank in range of the beleaguered blockhouse, which was surrounded by warriors. In the excitement, the gun was loaded very heavily. When the order was given, a fearful boom crashed throughout the mountains; the cannon kicked over the bluff and went splashing into the Columbia, twenty feet below. Sheridan stood perplexed, but his chagrin turned to joy as he beheld the Indigenous forces running with all their speed for the mountains. They had never before heard the report of a cannon and imagined judgment day had come. Sheridan won his first victory, saving the lives of those in the blockhouse.
“They had never before heard the report of a cannon, and imagined the judgment day had come.”
While this account reflects the biased, frontier-myth perspective of the era, the Middle Cascades conflict was a real flashpoint in the regional Indian Wars. Today, the area is largely submerged under the pool of the Bonneville Dam, hiding the physical terrain where these violent, formative colonial encounters occurred.
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