boats, as they had been the previous year. The scenes of suffering at the Cascades in 1843 were repeated in 1844. Minto, who it will be remembered hastened to the Willamette for help for his employer and friends, tells us that on returning with a boatload of provisions to the Cascades he found "men in the prime of life lying among the rocks seeming ready to die. I found there mothers with their families, whose husbands were snow-bound in the Cascade Mountains, without provisions, and obliged to kill and eat their game dogs. Mrs Morrison had traded her only dress except the one she wore for a bag of potatoes. There was scarcely a dry day, and the snowline was nearly down to the river."[1]
In such a plight did the immigration of 1844, which set out with high hopes to plant an independent colony in Oregon, find itself on reaching the promised land. The loss of life had been light notwithstanding the hardships of the journey;[2] but the loss of property in cattle, clothing, and household and other goods had been great, to the ruin of many The cattle had become fat during the weeks of detention on the grassy plains, and were unfit for the hard work oi hauling loaded wagons for the remainder of the summer. Many died of exhaustion; some were taken by the natives, who, although not in open hostility, were troublesome at several places on the route, at the Kansas agency, at Laramie, in the Cayuse country and on the Columbia;[3] although White had deputized
- ↑ Camp-fire Orations, MS., 15.
- ↑ Besides Barnette, Thomas Vance, Mr and Mrs Sager, and a young girl mentioned in Mrs Minto's Female Pioneering, MS., I find no other deaths noted in the several manuscripts and books referring to this immigration. All the others came through to Oregon, except a part of eighteen who turned off on the California road after passing Fort Hall. This party had thirteen wagons, the first to enter California from the United States. The names of the party were Townsend, James Montgomery, John Greenwood, Britian Greenwood, and another Greenwood, John Sullivan and brother, Dennis Martin, John Martin, Murphy and four sons, Jackson, Stevens, and Hitchcock. Or Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1876, 42.
- ↑ Clyman relates that the Cayuses were very anxious to know of him when the wagons and stock might be expected,as they wished to exchange horses for for cattle; but that although they had horses to sell, they did not refrain from
