heads. ^ Learning of Wyeth's plan to return to Oregon in the spring, Lee arranged to have all the provisions and equipments for the new mission taken to the Columbia in the May Dacre, while he and his nephew, Daniel Lee, and three laymen, Cyrus Shepard, P. L. Edwards, and C. M. Walker, joined Wyeth's overland party and made their way to the Columbia. They decided, for various reasons, to let the Flatheads wait and to begin work among the Indians on the Willamette. All went down to Vancouver, arriving in the month of September, 1834. When the May Dacre came in with their supplies, the missionaries explored the country for a suitable site. "On the east side of the river [Willamette], and sixty miles from its mouth, a location was chosen to begin a mission. Here was a broad, rich bottom, many miles in length, well watered and supplied with timber, oak, fir, cottonwood, white maple, and white oak, scattered along its grassy plains." ^ They immediately began preparing materials for a house and when the rains of winter came had a respectable shelter. At the same time land was fenced for cropping, a barn built, and other improvements made; so that the establishment took on the appearance of a prosperous woodland farm. The first Oregon colony. The missionaries were
iThe Indians who went to St. Louis were often spoken of as Flatheads but there is evidence that some of the delegates were in reality Nez Perces.
2 Lee and Frost's "The First Ten Years of Oregon," reprinted by the Oregonian, Sunday edition, October 11 to January 10, 1903- 1904.
