Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/350

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

300 F. W. HOWAY

Kendrick was an officer on this tender. Two absolutely contradictory accounts of the boss of this schooner and her crew exist. According to La Rochef oucauld-Liancourt, the two vessels spent six or seven months in trading, prin- cipally in the vicinity of Queen Charlotte Islands. There the tender disappeared. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt says: "Un coup de vent terrible, qui a pense detruire son propre navire, a probablement frappe celui-la, plus rapproche alors de terre, et moins en etat que le sien de resister a un aussi gros terns. Avec lui ont peri douze hommes, ont ete perdus un nombre assez considerable de peaux et de matieres d'echange, et les plans des cotes des iles que le capitaine assure avoir decouvert." The other version is given by Boit in his manuscript Log of the Union on the authority of John Young as follows: "Captain Roberts had a small schooner as a tender on the N W Coast, which was cut off by the natives of Queen Charlotte Islands and every soul on board murder'd, among the rest a son of Captain Kendrick's who was 2d mate." Later in the log on the same authority Boit speaks of the treatment of captives by the Indians and after dwelling upon its horrors proceeds : "The same kind of treatment was experienced by a Newport man (by name, Bears) who was sav'd out of Capt Roberts' schooner (when taken at Cumsuah's village, Queen Char- lotte Isles), this poor fellow was likewise taken off by a Boston ship." If this story were true it would lead us into the interesting maze of striving to ascertain the identity of the vessel mentioned by Peron that was cap- tured and looted by the Haida and whose one survivor was similarly maltreated and similarly rescued ; 50 a story which most readers have been accustomed to regard as apocryphal.

But between these two conflicting reports the his- torian must, it would seem to me, take that which pur- ports to be the relation of the captain.


50 Peron's Voyage, Paris, 1824, Vol. 2, pp. 2-8.