In early September 1854, Major Granville Hallar led a U.S. military force from its post in Oregon to avenge the Ward-party deaths. At the rebuilt Hudson Bay's Fort Boise near the mouth of the Boise River, Indians who were arrested were released after proving their innocence. The next day, four Indians were arrested; three were killed and one was wounded but escaped. The expedition then moved up the Payette River, tracking a suspect Indian band to a 15-lodge encampment. Soldiers charged the hastily abandoned camp and found a saddlebag inscribed with one victim's name, a silver goblet from Germany, $50 in a silk purse, and other Ward party belongings. Two men from the tribe were found nearby and killed. The military then went to the massacre site and reburied the Ward party. The following year, Hallar returned. While camped near Fort Boise, four Indians entered the camp and were arrested. One confessed, implicated his companions, and was shot while trying to escape. The other three were tried, found guilty, and hanged on gallows erected over the Ward party's mass grave. The Ward Massacre changed the course of Western history. After the attack, Hudson's Bay abandoned its trading posts at Ft. Hall and Ft. Boise. With no permanent forts protecting southern Idaho, the U.S. adopted a policy of providing horse soldiers, often local volunteers, to escort travelers on the trail. When the Civil War began in 1861, troops were withdrawn, and use of the Oregon Trail fell sharply in the following years. Travel revived during the war after major gold deposits were discovered in the Boise Basin, and in 1863 President Lincoln's administration established a military Fort Boise at the upper end of the Boise Valley to protect miners and other travelers in southern Idaho and to ensure that Idaho gold went into the Union treasury.