Oregon Cavalry Recruits Sought for Expedition Against Native People
A recruitment call for the First Regiment of Oregon Cavalry to combat Indigenous resistance on the frontier.
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.
100 Volunteers wanted for the First Regiment of Oregon Cavalry, to serve three years unless sooner discharged. 100 Dollars Bounty. The company will consist of one Captain, one First, and one Second Lieutenant; one First Sergeant, one Quartermaster Sergeant; one commissary sergeant, five Sergeants, eight Corporals, two Teamsters, two Farriers or blacksmiths, one Saddler, one wagoner, and seventy-eight privates. The Governor of Oregon, in his proclamation calling for these volunteers, says that they will be needed the coming spring on the frontiers of this State and Washington Territory, for an expedition against the Snake Indians who have so long been mercilessly engaged in robbing immigrants and murdering our fellow citizens. Office in Olympia with Wells, Fargo & Co. Francis Henry, Recruiting officer.
“They will be needed... for an expedition against the Snake Indians who have so long been mercilessly engaged in robbing immigrants and murdering our fellow citizens.”
This notice serves as a grim artifact of the settler-colonial expansion era. It reflects the state-sponsored violence that defined the mid-19th-century frontier, a stark contrast to modern efforts to engage in truth and reconciliation regarding the history of Indigenous dispossession in the Pacific Northwest.
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