Next year, in May, came Rae by boat to carry out the plans, and Birnie, the Scotch warder of the Columbia bars at old Astoria, as clerk, and Sinclair as trader, and McKay and Ermatinger by land as leaders of the inland brigades. Rae lands goods worth $10,000, and takes possession of a 1000 acre farm on the site of the modern San Francisco, and purchases a building worth $4,600 to house the goods. Eloise McLoughlin, Rae’s wife, does not come at once; and the Spaniards are a pleasure-loving people. Wines are used more than water, and the handsome Scotchman is no unwelcome visitor to the lavish homes of the proud Mexicans. What with wine and beautiful Spanish women as different from the Half-breed wives of the North as wine from water, and plotting and counter-plotting of revolutionists—did Rae lose his head? Who can tell? It would have needed a wise head to remain steady in an atmosphere so charged with political intrigue—intrigue which Rae had been appointed to watch. He certainly drank hard, and he may have cherished errant love, too, for when Eloise McLoughlin, his girl bride, came down from the Columbia River, high words were often heard between the two. American influence was waxing strong in San Francisco; and in his cups, Rae was wont to boast “that it had cost £75,000 to drive Yankee traders from the Columbia, and the Hudson’s Bay Company would drive them from California if it cost a million.”
Came one of the sporadic revolutions. The revolutionists were partial to the English, hostile to the Americans. Rae furnished the rebels with arms. They were defeated. They had not paid for their arms. Rae found himself responsible for a loss of $15,000—some accounts say $30,000—to his Company. That he was in love with a Spanish woman may have been a baseless rumor; but if there were a shadow of truth in it, it must have furnished additional reason for discrediting him with his father-in-law—McLoughlin. January, the 19th, at eight A. M., Sinclair, the clerk, heard loud cries above the store. He dashed upstairs into Rae’s apartments to find him standing in the presence of Eloise McLoughlin with a pistol in his hand ready to kill himself. Sinclair knocked the weapon from his hand. A shot rang out. Rae had had another pistol and fell to the floor with his brains blown out. On a table near were the bottle of an opiate, which he had taken to deaden pain, and his will, written that very morning. His wife fainted. Absolutely nothing more is known of the tragedy than the facts I have set down here. It is a theme rather for the novelist than the historian. Simpson ordered the San Francisco post closed. Dugald McTavish came down in March of ’46 to close up affairs. The one-thousand-acre farm, which would have netted the Company more than all the furs of Oregon if they had held on to it till San Francisco grew to be a city, was relinquished without any compensation of which I could find a record. The store was sold for $5,000. So ended the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ambitions for empire in California. The truth is—in spite of Sir George Simpson’s efforts, and owing to blunders on the part of the British Government, which will be given in the next chapter, the Company was playing such a losing game in Oregon, it was useless to hold on to California longer.
Notes to Chapter XXXII.—This entire chapter deals with such a vast field and with so many disputed points, it would literally require a large volume to give all the authorities or deal in detail with the disputes. I have not attempted to give a chronological account of McLoughlin’s empire. So vast was it and so varied the episodes, a chronological account would have required a jumping from spot to spot from Alaska to California, resembling the celerity of a flea. Instead, I have grouped the leading episodes and leading characters and leading legends according to area, and told each district’s story in a separate group. This gives at least enough coherence to keep the facts in memory.
As to authorities, I have drawn my data primarily from the Archives of H. B. C. House; secondarily from such marvelous collections of data as Hubert Howe Bancroft’s, and Father Morice and the hundreds of old navigators and traders whose journals of this era have been given to the world. In addition, I have consulted every authority who has ever written on the era. Naturally, among so many authorities, there are wide discrepancies. Where I have taken my information from Hubert Howe Bancroft, I have quoted him word for word, with full credit, but in two or three cases, it will be seen my story differs from his; for instance, the story of Douglas at Stuart Lake, in which his version makes Douglas out a hero, mine makes Douglas out a very human hero, learning the lessons that afterward made him great. In each case where my version differs from Mr. Bancroft’s, my authority has been the H. B. C. Archives—which were not accessible when Mr. Bancroft wrote, or such well-known sources as Morice, who got his facts on the spot, while Bancroft had to depend on the memory and contradictory testimony of old retired factors.
Again in the case of names, take one example. Different authorities refer to the ubiquitous McKay as Robt., Alex, Dan, Joseph. Now there may have been all these McKays in the Oregon service, for the McKays of the fur trade were legion. But the McKay, who led the South Brigade, was one and the same and only Tom McKay, son of Mrs. McLoughlin’s first husband. Another error—it is said this McKay took cruel part in the Seven Oaks massacre. To say that Tom McKay, who from the time of his father’s death hated Indians from the marrow of his bones, took part in a massacre of white men—is simply absurd. As a matter of fact, this Tom McKay must have been about ten years old at that time. He certainly was present; but I should be reluctant to believe that a boy of that age fought and killed a full grown H. B. C. soldier. A hundred such discrepancies occur in the California story, which space forbids my pointing out, but where I have departed from old authorities, I have been guided by H. B. C. manuscripts. For instance, all authorities say H. B. C. trappers were not in California before 1835; yet I read fifteen hundred pages of their wanderings there, before 1828.
Okanogan is spelled as many ways as it has letters. I have spelled it the way it is pronounced—O-kan-og-an. I need not explain such place names as Okanogan, Kamloops, Nicola are from Indian tribes.