is evident from the rarity of offences. They were indeed useful in their way.[1]
One of Young's men, Webley J. Hauxhurst, erected a grist-mill at Champoeg in the summer of 1834, adding greatly to the convenience and comfort of the inhabitants of French Prairie, including the missionaries, who had previously pounded their barley in a large wooden mortar, and ground their wheat in a small cast-iron mill called a corn-cracker. Hauxhurst, who was a native of Long Island, subsequently joined the Methodist church, being the first fruit of missionary work among the settlers. His conversion took place in January 1837, and he was ever after a faithful adherent to the organization; nor were there any of this so-called band of horse-thieves who seemed indisposed to earn an honest living.
Another party of eight, coming in the summer of 1835 to join in the colonization of Oregon,[2] on reaching Rogue River were attacked by the savages, and four of the number slain, the others with difficulty escaping.[3]
- ↑ Mention is made, in chapter iii. of this volume, of the killing of Thornburg by Hubbard at Fort William. But these were Wyeth's men. Captain Lambert and Mr Townsend held an inquest, and after hearing the evidence, returned a verdict of justifiable homicide. Townsend's Nar., 224. Gray, in Hist. Or., 197, tells Hubbard's story as happening several years later when there was a magistrate in the country, before whom he was tried. No such trial ever took place. Hubbard was given a certificate by the coroner's jury to show that the killing was in self-defence and to clear him in case of arrest. Lee contributes the fact that the desire for strong drink, that article being obtainable at Fort William, led to the stealing of a pig, and the selling of it for liquor which the thief 'barbarously compelled the owner to drink; and now, poor man, he has no pork to eat in harvest!' Lee and Frost's Or., 140.
- ↑ Townsend's Nar., 228. Gray with his usual inaccurracy says there was no arrival of settlers in 1835.
- ↑ The same who later caused the bloody wars of 1853 and 1855–6. Kelley relates that while he and Young were en route for Oregon, some of those men who had joined and left them, and who were formerly trappers under the famous leader, Joe Walker, of the American fur company in the Rocky Mountains, wantonly slew the California Indians on several occasions where they hung upon their rear, and that Young approved of the murders, saying they were 'damned villains, and ought to be shot.' But no mention is made of any encounter with the natives after entering the Oregon territory, not even on Rogue River, a probable consequence of their having fallen in with the Hudson's Bay Company trapping party, returning from California under Michel La Framboise. The policy pursued by the British company made the presence of one of their parties in the neighborhood a safeguard to all white men alike, though even La Framboise was sometimes compelled to in-
