Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/240

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
186
Nellie Bowden Pipes

the Indians, but to the whites themselves, succeeded by means of an indemnity in persuading the two manf acturers to abandon their baleful trade.

In 1840, the American ships Lausanne and Maryland entered the Columbia for a cargo of salmon and some peltries; but their operations were no more fortunate than those of the brig Perkins which in the summer of the following year came into the river with the intention of trading with the natives and was bought by Wilkes, commander of the American expedition, armed as a warship and named the Oregon, and used for carrying the equipment of the sloop Peacock, lost on the bar. However, at the end of September, 1842, an American trading ship was able to get a fairly large cargo of salted salmon; it sailed for the Sandwich Islands, carrying away seven Methodists and their families.[1]

Here ends the series of land and sea expeditions sent to this Territory, whether by order of the Government of the United States, by companies, or by private individuals. The official documents cited by us are enough to show the importance attached by the Cabinet at Washington to the possession of these vast regions.

Jason Lee, head of the Methodist Americans, and his brother,[2] Daniel Lee, were the first to settle, during the autumn of 1834, on the plains of the Willamette, where before long they were joined by eight of their confreres—Abernethy, Whitman, Leslie, Perkins, Frost, Khun, Gray and White,[3] who settled, some at Clatsop, near Point

  1. September 1, 1842, Rev. John P. Richmond, of the Nisqually Mission, J. L. Whitcomb, David Leslie and his two daughters, Dr. William J. Bailey took passage on the Chenamus for the Sandwich Islands. (Lee & Frost, 323, 324).
  2. Daniel Lee was the nephew of Jason Lee.
  3. George Abernethy, Marcus Whitman, David Leslie, H. K. W . Perkins, Joseph H. Frost, William W. Kone, William H. Gray, Elijah White. Of these Whitman and Gray represented the A. B. C . F . M . and came in 1836; the others were Methodists. White came in April, 1837; Leslie and Perkins in September, 1837; Abernethy and Kone on the Lausanne, 1840.