[15] Franchère, one of the scribbling clerks whom Thorn so detested, says this man was Weekes, who almost lost his life entering the Columbia. Irving, who drew much of his material from Franchère, says Lewis, and may have had special information from Mr. Astor; but all accounts—Franchère's, and Ross Cox's, and Alexander Ross's—are from the same source, the Indian interpreter, who, in the confusion of the massacre, sprang overboard into the canoes of the squaws, who spared him on account of his race. Franchère became prominent in Montreal, Cox in British Columbia, and Ross in Red River Settlement of Winnipeg, where the story of the fur company conflict became folk-lore to the old settlers. There is scarcely a family but has some ancestor who took part in the contest among the fur companies at the opening of the nineteenth century, and the tale is part of the settlement's traditions.
[16] A partner in trade with Crooks, both of whom lost everything going up the Missouri in Lisa's wake.
[17] Doings in the North-West camp have only become known of late from the daily journals of two North-West partners—MacDonald of Garth, whose papers were made public by a descendant of the MacKenzies, and Alexander Henry, whose account is in the Ottawa Library.
[18] A son of the English officer of the Eighty-fourth Regiment in the American War of Independence.
[19] Jane Barnes, an adventuress from Portsmouth, the first white woman on the Columbia.
[20] In justice to the many descendants of the numerous clan MacTavish in the service of the fur companies, this MacTavish should be distinguished from others of blameless lives.
[21] Some say seventy-four.
[22] The enormous returns made up largely of the Astoria capture. The unusually large guard was no doubt owing to the War of 1812.
[23] An antecedent of the late Sir Roderick Cameron of New York.
[24] More of the voyageurs' romance; named because of a voice heard calling and calling across the lake as voyageurs entered the valley—said to be the spirit of an Indian girl calling her lover, though prosaic sense explains it was the echo of the voyageurs' song among the hills.