Unknown to Clinton Woodford, April 23, 1862

CLINTON WOODFORD, Secretary of a Public Meeting held at Trinidad :

SIR: Before answering your letter of the 11th instant, transmitting a copy of resolutions passed at a meeting in Trinidad, I have waited to receive Lieutenant Flynn’s official report of his scout. That report is now received, and it appears by it that Lieutenant Flynn has done no more than his duty. Under instructions from the general commanding the Department of the Pacific the troops under my command are now prosecuting a war against the hostile Indians in this district wherever they may be found. Lieutenant Flynn, while in command of a scout, was led to believe, from information received, that a band of some 200 hostile Indians had crossed to the southerly side of Redwood Creek and gone down to its mouth. He very properly went in pursuit of them. Before arriving there he saw three Indians going in that direetion, very possibly, at least, to inform the others of his approach, and so enable them to escape. He very properly took them prisoners, and they having attempted to escape after being fully warned of the consequences, Lieutenant Flynn having no other means of stopping them, and in order to prevent, as he supposed, the entire defeat of the object of his expedition, as a good and faithful officer fired upon them, by which fire one of them was killed and another wounded. Whatever course may be adopted with regard to the peaceable Indians in this district, the citizens of Trinidad cannot expect any county boundary line to constitute a barrier to the pursuit of hostile Indians by the troops under my command.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,