The principal in this betrayal of Mr. Astor's interests, as well as those of the United States, was Duncan McDougal, who had left the Northwest Company in 1810, to enter Astor's service. He came out in the Tonquin, and soon after took to wife the daughter of old Concomly, chief of the Clatsops. An amusing account of the unctuous and piscivorous nuptials is given in some of the chronicles of the time. There arc tin tures of the story better suited to private reading than to public recital. McDougal remained here till April, 1817, when he finally left "Fort George" and returned to Canada. In selling Mr. Astor out he seems to have been overborne by the superior tact and force of J. G. McTavish, the principal agent of the Northwest Company. One of his associates in the Pacific Fur Company (Alexander Ross) says that McDougal was "a man of but ordinary capacity, with irritable peevish temper, the most unfit man in the world to head an expedition or to command men." Another chronicler says that old Concomly, after the transfer, ' ' no longer prided himself upon his white son-in-law, but whenever he was asked about him, shook his head and said his daughter had made a mistake, for, instead of getting a great warrior for a husband. she had married a squaw." But we shall dwell here no further on these incidents in the early social life in Oregon.
Other writers at first hand, besides Franchere, who have dealt with this early history, are Alexander Ross and Ross Cox, both of the Pacific Fur Company, or Astor party. Ross came in the Tonquin, Cox in the Beaver, Astor's second vessel; Cox's book was published in London in 1831; that of Ross in London in 1849. Ross spent not less than fifteen years in the Columbia River region, after which he settled at Red River. Cox's book covers six years at Astoria from 1811 to 1817. Both narratives have high value.
The same must be said of that portion of the journals of Alexander Henry, which is devoted to the Lower Columbia country. By the painstaking annotations of Dr. Coues, these journals also have been made to possess an inestimable value to all who feel an interest in the early history of Oregon.
