[168] Captain Wyeth returned to Fort Vancouver February 12, 1835. The journal of his hardships during this trapping expedition is in his Oregon Expeditions, pp. 234-250.—Ed.
[169] According to Wyeth's statements, Fort William was eight miles from Vancouver, on the southwest side of the island. Built in the spring of 1835, it was upon Wyeth's return to the United States (1836) left in charge of C. M. Walker, who came out with Jason Lee. Walker was given instructions to lease the place, but no tenant offering, it was soon abandoned, and the Hudson's Bay Company established a dairy farm near the site.—Ed.
[170] Clackamas River rises in the Cascade Range, between Mounts Hood and Jefferson, and flows northwest through a county of the same name into the Willamette, at the present Oregon City.—Ed.
[171] On the Chinook jargon—the medium of communication between the whites and Indians of the Northwest coast—see Franchère's Narrative in our volume vi, p. 240, note 40.—Ed.
[172] This was a party arranged by John Turner, who had previously visited Oregon with Jedidiah S. Smith. For Ewing Young, see our volume xx, p. 23, note 2. The wounded man was Dr. William J. Bailey, an Englishman who, after being educated for a physician, enlisted as a sailor, and after much roving had been a year or two in California. On recovering from his wounds, he settled in Willamette valley, married Margaret Smith, a mission teacher, and had a large farm and an important practice. Bailey became a man of note in early Oregon history, was a member of the executive committee of the provisional government in 1844, and died at Champoeg in 1876.—Ed.
[173] Called by the inhabitants of this country, the "rascally Indians," from their uniformly evil disposition, and hostility to white people.—Townsend.
[174] The Loloten or Tototen tribe of Klamath Indians. From their hostile and thievish disposition, their habitat was styled Rogue River, and they are usually spoken of as Rogue River Indians. The river is in southwestern Oregon, and the tribe related to those of northern California. Trouble arose between this tribe and the miners, lasting from 1850 to 1854, in which several battles were fought. There were in 1903 but fifty-two survivors, on Grande Ronde Reservation, in western Oregon.—Ed.
[175] Dr. Gairdner was a young English physician and scientist who had studied with Ehrenberg, in Germany, and Sir William Hooker, in Scotland. Under the patronage of the latter he had come as physician to Fort Vancouver. He died in Hawaii, whither he had gone for his health. His name is perpetuated in that of one of the Columbia salmon.—Ed.
[176] When Lewis and Clark visited the Columbia (1805-06), they noted signs of a declining population, and thought it due to an epidemic of small-pox that a few years before had decimated the native population. In 1829, shortly after the ground had been broken for a farm at Fort Vancouver, a form of intermittent fever broke out among both white men and Indians. To the latter it proved deadly, and for three years raged without abatement. This epidemic had occasioned the desolation noted by Townsend.—Ed.
[177] Reverend Samuel Parker was born in New Hampshire (1779); educated at Williams and Andover, he settled at Ithaca, where he died in 1866. At the meeting of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1834), the subject of an Oregon mission was discussed and Parker appointed to make investigations. Arriving at St. Louis too late for the annual brigade, he returned home, only to come out the succeeding year in company with Marcus Whitman. At the Green River rendezvous, Whitman went back for reinforcements, but Parker pushed on, with Nez Percés as his sole companions, as far as Fort Walla Walla, where he arrived October 6, 1835. He remained in Oregon until June, 1836, then embarked for Hawaii, reaching home in May, 1837.—Ed.