[171] For the origin of this name see our volume vi, p. 233, note 36.—Ed.
[172] For the Clatsop see our volume vi, p. 239, note 39. The American with them was probably either Solomon H. Smith, or Calvin Tibbitts, who both lived at Clatsop Plains, having crossed the continent with Wyeth; see Wyeth’s Oregon, our volume xxi, p. 73, note 50.—Ed.
[173] James Birnie (Burney), for whom see Townsend’s Narrative in our volume xxi, p. 361, note 130.—Ed.
[174] See descriptions of this form of entombment in our volume xxi, p. 338; also in Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, iii, pp. 260, 326.—Ed.
[175] This was the building on the site of the present city of Salem, which was erected in 1842 by Jason Lee for the Indian mission school formerly conducted in a log house twelve miles below. The mission school had suffered reverses from illness and the loss of missionary leaders, and Rev. George Gary had arrived in Oregon May 1, 1844, to close up the affairs of the entire Methodist mission. The building for the school, which had with the surrounding land cost nearly $10,000 became the property of the Oregon Institute, which opened a school therein in the autumn of this year (1844). This subsequently became the nucleus of Willamette University, chartered in 1853.—Ed.
[176] The site was about three miles above Champoeg, not far from the residence of Etienne Lucier, one of the earliest settlers of French Prairie.—Ed.
[177] For a sketch of this missionary see De Smet’s Letters in our volume xxvii, p. 193, note 69.—Ed.
[178] The mission or residence at this point was known as St. Francis Xavier. The convent was, however, entitled St. Mary’s or Notre Dame, from the convent at Namur, whence the sisters set forth.—Ed.
[179] Chittenden and Richardson, De Smet, ii, p. 453, give “Oregon City” as the alternative of this native village. Consultation with Oregon historians, however, gives no support to this theory—the term “Cuhute” never having been applied to the locality of Oregon City during the residence, or within the knowledge of white settlers. George H. Himes of Portland, after interviewing several pioneers, writes us: “I conclude that the village referred to by De Smet was the name of a village belonging to a small sub-tribe of Indians in the vicinity of the present town of St. Paul, Marion County, which was annihilated by the disease already alluded to.”—Ed.
[180] This letter enclosed those following, numbered iv-xv, in the last of which De Smet says that he is sending a packet of letters by the Hudson’s Bay brigade from Columbia, which he has just encountered.—Ed.