Not only was there an extensive farm established at Fort Vancouver, but others at Fort Colville and on the Cowlitz, while a large grazing company or association was formed, to raise sheep, near Puget's Sound. The doctor was, moreover, anxious to wean the red man from his savage life to agricultural pursuits, as well as to promote in every way the settlement of the country. He succeeded in making cattle plentiful by forbidding the killing of any for a considerable period. At last he wrote in 1837, "I killed forty head of cattle last summer, so, you see, the taboo is broken." He hailed with satisfaction the arrival of missionaries, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, and did much to inculcate temperate habits among the people, both whites and natives. Indeed, in 1843 he rejoiced in having for a number of years successfully enforced a prohibitory law for both Indians and the French settlers on the Willamette, at that time numbering 200, ninety per cent of whom were old voyageurs and American Rocky Mountain trappers, yet with few exceptions temperance men, "which," quaintly wrote the doctor, "I think may be said to be unique of its nature in such a number." The American traders seem to have been his chief foes in the region of the Columbia, in regard to the liquor traffic—as the Russians were in the regions farther North.
The doctor was a firm believer in exemplary punishment for crime, especially in territories where such punishment only would act as a deterrent on savages, who might at any time be tempted to outrage. One instance of his method of dealing with such cases may be referred to.
From an old manuscript report of one of the Company's traders, who took part in the proceedings detailed, the following particulars are gleaned. In January, 1828, Mr. Alexander McKenzie and four men under his charge were murdered on Puget's Sound, on their way from Fort Langley, and an Indian woman of the party carried off, by the tribe known as the Clallums. All the effective men at Fort Vancouver were mustered and told by Chief Factor McLaughlin of the affair and of the necessity for an expedition being sent off in search of the murderous tribe, to make a salutary example of them if possible. A call for volunteers brought a ready response and on the 17th June a force of upwards of sixty men under Chief Trader Alex. R. McLeod set forth, with a salute of cannon from the fort and cheers from the officers and crew of the Eagle—presumably an American vessel. The voyageurs having enjoyed their customary regale and the Iroquois their war dance, on the previous evening, no delay for these ever necessary functions occurred and the expedition proceeded down the Columbia and up the Cowlitz to the portage, where their boats were cached, and horses obtained. Then the motley army, consisting of Canadians, half-breeds, Iroquois, Sandwich Islanders and Chinooks, with Scotch and English officers, mounted, set forth, looking, as the chronicler thought, more like a band of gypsies than a force collected for the purpose in view. At the end of the portage the force again embarked in canoes and on 1st July, coming upon a couple of lodges, one, understood to be occupied by Clallums, was at once attacked and death immediately dealt out to its inmates, ruthlessly, regardless apparently as to whether they were concerned in the murder of McKenzie and his party or not, while in the semi-darkness of evening men, women and even children appear to have shared the same fate.
Off Cape Townsend the company's vessel Cadboro', Captain Simpson, was sighted. Thereafter the land and naval forces co-operated—so far, at least, as the somewhat divergent views and orders of their respective commanders permitted. A day or two was spent off one of the Clallum villages, near New Dungeness, in apparently fruitless negotiations for the return of the Indian woman, whose father was a man of great influence in his own tribe. Not until a chief and eight others had been slain by shots from the vessel's guns and a bombardment of a village, where some articles of Mr. McKenzie's were found, had taken place, was the woman brought on board. A second village, from which the murderers of McKenzie's party were said to have set out, was burned. The force then parted from the Cadboro' and returned to Fort Vancouver. The Indians stated that seven people had been killed at the lodge fired upon on the 1st, and that the friends of these had at once avenged their deaths, by putting to death two of the principal murderers of McKenzie. In all, they reported 25 people killed in these various affrays, to avenge the original crime, not to speak of a very considerable quantity of Indian property destroyed.
It would be unjust to charge Dr. McLaughlin with the responsibility for the entire proceedings of this merciless expedition. What his instructions to Mr. McLeod were that gentleman kept pretty well to himself. Unfortunately the latter showed vacillation and timidity, at the moments when firmness and promptness were required, disputed and quarrelled with Captain Simpson on board his own vessel, assumed too much authority at one time, too little at another, with the result that indiscriminate slaughter and destruction of property seem to have taken the place of just and merited punishment. It is to be presumed, however, that the deterrent effect was produced, at any rate as to the Clallums.
The population, native and foreign, of the Columbia district, at this period, was of a wonderfully heterogeneous character. The number of small tribes into which the native population of the Pacific Coast and islands was divided is well known to have been large. Yet Indians from the plains and Iroquois from the far East had come in as servants of the company, while Sandwich Islanders—or Owhyhees (Hawaiians) as they were termed—were among almost all the company's crews and forces. French half-breeds and others of varying tints and gay costumes lent picturesqueness to the Hudson's Bay posts and campfires. Sir George Simpson gives a striking instance of the variety in colour and language afforded by a single boatload. "Our batteau carried as curious a muster of races and languages as perhaps had ever been congregated within the same compass in any part of the world. Our crew of ten men contained Iroquois, who spoke their own tongue; a Cree half-breed of French origin, who appeared to have borrowed his dialect from both his parents; a North Briton, who understood only the Gaelic of his native hills; Canadians who, of course, knew French; and Sandwich Islanders, who jabbered a medley of Chinook and their own vernacular jargon. Add to all this that the passengers were natives of England, Scotland, Russia, Canada and the Hudson's Bay Company's territories; and you have the prettiest congregation of nations, the nicest confusion of tongues, that has ever taken place since the days of the tower of Babel. At the native camp near which we halted for the night, we enriched our clans with one variety more, by hiring a canoe and its complement of Chinooks, to accompany us."
Sir George Simpson was at this time on his famous overland journey round the world, having the previous day, Sept. 1st, 1841, left Fort Vancouver, where, by the way, his party found two vessels of the United States exploring squadron under command of Lieutenant (afterward) Commodore Wilkes, which contributed much to the enjoyment of their week's stay there. The circumnavigators had parted on the beach at Fort Vancouver with Lieutenant Wilkes and party and had added to their number another Hudson's Bay officer, Mr. Douglas (afterwards Sir James Douglas, governor of Vancouver Island) and had visited the company's extensive dairy on the delta or island of Multnomah or Wapatoo. Thence down the Columbia and up the Cowlitz, across to Fort Nisqually and Puget's Sound, visiting the Cowlitz farm and the sheep ranch—a four days' journey from Fort Vancouver brought them to the company's steamer, the Beaver, on which they set out for the posts of the Pacific coast and Sitka—that coast trip now familiar to thousands of gold-seekers.
At the Stikine (or Stickeen) River—a place much in the world's eye during the past year or two—Sir George found young John McLaughlin, a son of the big doctor, in charge of the company's post, with a force of twenty-two men. The governor next proceeded to Sitka, and, after a somewhat protracted side trip to California and the Sandwich Islands, returned in the Spring of '42 to Stikine on board the company's ship, the Cowlitz, in tow of a Russian steamer loaned him by Governor Etholine of Sitka—to find that young McLaughlin had just been murdered by his own men, who were in a state of mingled mutiny and intoxication within the fort, while about 2000 Indians were gathered without, in readiness to take advantage of the insurrection within! The opportune arrival of Sir George, with two ships' crews at his disposal, enabled him to speedily quell the disturbance and disperse the Indians, after preparing their minds for a measure which the company was anxious here as elsewhere to enforce—the discontinuance of the liquor traffic. It may here be remarked that the one good result of this most unhappy tragedy at the Stikine was the agreement arrived at soon after with the Russian company—whose bad example had been held to necessitate the British company's fighting "firewater" with "firewater" at competitive trading posts—under which agreement both companies inaugurated a prohibitory liquor law on this coast.
Doubts as to his powers and the best policy to pursue led Sir George to take the man who fired the fatal shot with him to Sitka, whither he was returning en route to Siberia and Europe. For a less comprehensible reason he sent another man—a supposed participant in the affair—to Fort Vancouver, accompanied by a letter to Dr. McLaughlin, apprising him of the tragedy and casting some blame upon the murdered son for the insurrection. The letter the big doctor had, of course, no alternate but to receive, but the man he would not see nor so much as suffer to set foot on shore at Fort Vancouver—but had him kept a prisoner on board the Cadboro. On a trip of that vessel to Vancouver Island, this man saw Mr. Douglas and at once made a confession to him, implicating all the people at Stikine in a plot to murder John the younger. He even stated that an agreement to that effect had been drawn up by the man who was acting as a temporary assistant or clerk to the murdered man. The confession absolved the young trader from the charge of drunkenness and contradicted the depositions taken by Sir George in every material point. Little wonder is it that the doctor, smarting under the blow received, was not satisfied with the apparently easy methods pursued by Sir George, with whom he had moreover recently exchanged some angry words in California on matters of business; nor that he sent an officer of the company to Mr. Manson, with a complete new complement of men, to the Stikine to re-open the investigation—with no known retributive result, though the evidence taken tends to justify the doctor's summing up—his vigorous penmanship adding strength to his words—"The short and the long of the affair is, these fellows wanted to impose on my son, to which he would not submit"—true chip of the old block it seemed!—"They, finding they could not make him bend, conspired and murdered him."