Long before the lighthouse went up at the mouth of the Coquille River, the Nasomah band of the Lower Coquilles lived along its banks a few hundred yards upriver from a miners' ferry that operated near where the lighthouse now stands. In the early morning of Jan. 29, 1854, about 40 miners from the Whiskey Run diggings attacked the Nasomah villagers as they slept, killing 16. Indian Agent F.M. Smith, arriving on the scene shortly after, described it as “a massacre too inhuman to be readily believed.” The miners, led by George H. Abbott, William H. Packwood and A.F. Soap, had organized as “volunteers” just two days earlier to avenge charges of thievery and “insolence” on the part of the natives. They met again the day after the massacre to publicly proclaim they had prevented an Indian uprising