The Mountaineer 41 
coming to Puget Sound by the overland route. He met the 
train of wagons over which James Biles served as captain. 
Nelson Sargeant guided them to the Naches Valley and up the 
mountain slopes. McClellan had called it an impossible pass, 
Winthrop ealled it “Via mala,” and yet these pioneers hacked 
a wagon road over the pass in three weeks of the month of 
October. Over some steep places they used ropes on their 
wagons and parts of the wagons were left by the way, but the 
whole party crossed in safety. 
In eight days, from June 12 to 20, 1856, Lieutenant-colonel 
B. F. Shaw marched a little army of 175 mounted soldiers, 107 
pack animals, and 27 packers over the Naches Pass to the 
Wenas branch of the Yakima River. These were Territorial 
Volunteers serving under Governor Isaae I. Stevens. Officers 
of the regular army had declared the pass impossible a few 
days before that successful march by the volunteer troops in 
that Indian war. 
At the outbreak of that war, late in 1855, Lieutenant W. 
A. Slaughter had crossed the mountains through Naches Pass, 
but hearing nothing of Major G. O. Haller whose troops had 
been turned back by overwhelming numbers of Indians near 
the present Fort Simcoe, he (Slaughter) turned back to the 
west side of the mountains. Meeting Captain Maurice Maloney 
with a company of regulars and a company of volunteers under 
Captain Gilmore Hays, the combined force again crossed the 
mountains. This time the season had so far advanced that the 
route was again retraced. Philip H. Sheridan in his memoirs 
tells of marching from the east side to meet Maloney’s force 
and finding the snows had sent them back. 
Settlers near the trail to Naches Pass eall it “McClellan’s 
road” and they claim there is a brass cannon near the Pass 
which was left by that officer in 1853. This is an error; Me- 
Clellan did not reach the actual pass and the reconnoiter he 
did make was with two companions and no artillery or baggage. 
If the traditional cannon is at the Pass it was probably left 
there by one of the little armies that marched that way during 
the Indian war of 1855-1856. 
