the whole region west to the Pacific ocean, and dominated all the lesser tribes of
the Umpqua, Coos Baj^ and the Coquille. Smith and his partj' were received
with outward signs of friendship, and spent one night on an island near the
mouth of the Umpqua river. The next morning after breakfast Smith and one
of his men left camp to find a foi'ding place to cross the river, and no sooner
were they out of sight of the camp than an attack was made by a concealed band
of Indians and fifteen men killed outright. Hearing the shouts and yells Smith
hastily returned to camp only to see his men killed and his furs seized by the
Indians. He could do nothing but seek safety in flight. He fled across the river
with his one man, and after many trials and great suffering they both reached
Fort Vancouver in safety. Two other men of the party, Arthur Black and a
man named Turner succeeded in getting away with their lives after a terrific
hand to hand fight with the savages. Turner killed four of the Indians with a
club, and Black, a physically powerful man, with bare hands knocked the sav-
• ages right and left until he got into the forest and escaped. Both of these men
also succeeded in reaching Fort Vancouver nearly naked, having only shirt and
trousers on, and living for ten days on snails, toads and fern roots.
And now it is seen what sort of a man Dr. John McLoughlin was. When poor Smith, a rival trapper to the Hudson's Bay Company, crept into the recep- tion hall of Fort Vancouver bareheaded and barefooted, McLoughlin listened at- tentively to his tale of woe. All sorts of stories have been given by Oregon histo- rians, not only about this massacre of the Smith party, but also of the conduct of the Hudson 's Baj- Company in relation thereto. Judgment can only be fairly rendered upon known and indisputable facts. On hearing Smith's story, Mc- Loughlin promptly ordered his field captain, Thos. McKay, to take fifty men with twenty pack horses and go to the Umpqua river to the scene of the mas- sacre with all possible haste and recover Smith's furs from the Indians. This McKay did, notwithstanding Smith thought it useless because he thought it would be impossible to recover the furs. McKay did as ordered, and within two weeks was back again to Vancouver with nearlj^ all the furs that had been stolen. Now if McLoughlin had been so minded, it would have been easy for him to have forced hard terms on poor Smith. Btit he took no advantage of the situa- tion. But for the horses that were lost on the trip McLoughlin charged four dollars each, and for the time of his men he charged at the rate of sixty dollars a year, and gave Smith a draft on London for the market price of the furs in Oregon. Mrs. Victor in her book entitled ' ' The River of the West, ' ' referring to this experience of Smith with the Hudson's Bay Company, says (p. 35) : "That George Simpson, the governor of the Hudson's Ba.y Company, chanced to be spending the winter at Vancouver, and offered to send Smith to London the fol- lowing summer in the company 's vessel, where he might dispose of his furs him- self to advantage; but Smith declined this offer, sold the furs to McLoughlin, and returned in the spring to the Rocky mountains. ' ' -Joe Meek is undoubtedly her authority for this statement; and Joe Meek was never a partisan of the Hudson's Bay Company. Smith was a man of great energy and perseverance. No sooner had he got paid for these furs seized by the Indian murderers, but he was off again to distant St. Louis to organize another expedition. But Smith not re- turning to St. Louis as his partners expected, a party was sent out to hunt him lip. The party proceeded to the head of Snake river where Smith and his men
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