PRINTING DEPARTMENT UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Vol. V., No. 2 April, 1914

The Washington Historical Quarterly

[JOURNAL OF JOHN WORK, JUNE-OCTOBER, 1825]

(Introduction and annotations by T. C. Elliott.)

Readers of the Washington Historical Quarterly have already become acquainted with Mr. John Work, an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company, through his previous journal—with introductory note—published in Volume III, pp. 198-228, recording the details of the journey of an expedition from Fort George on the Columbia river to the Fraser river and back in November-December, 1824, (in which he remarked among other things about the "weighty rain" common to the Coast and Puget Sound localities). Mr. Work's particular duties during January-May, 1825, we do not know; this was the period during which Governor Simpson and Chief Factor John McLoughlin selected the site for Fort Vancouver and the headquarters were removed from Fort George (Astoria) to the new location, which was on the high ground east of the present city of Vancouver, Washington, where the buildings of the Washington (State) Asylum for the Blind and Deaf now stand. Governor Simpson returned up the Columbia river in March, 1825, with the Express bound for York Factory on Hudson's Bay, but events indicate that he already had learned to place much confidence in the young clerk John Work. In June, Mr. Work finds himself assigned to duty in the interior and accompanies the "brigade" of officers and voyagers under Mr. John McLeod returning up the river with goods for the trade at the various interior forts. Mr. McLeod was then stationed at Thompson River (Kamloops) but had been given leave to return across the mountains to Hudson's Bay the following spring.

Readers of the "three synoptical writers of Astoria," as Dr. Elliott Coues designates Gabriel Franchere, Alexander Ross and Ross Cox, have had occasion perhaps to tire of the narratives of successive journeys up and down the Columbia river with the constant encounters with the Indians at the Cascades and Dalles portages. In this journal we have another account of the same journey and discover that with the education of the Indians of the Columbia to the fixed and just policy of the Northwest and Hudson's Bay Companies in their trade relations, the hatred and distrust and armed resistance of these Indians has already ceased to a great extent and that only the natural disposition to pilfer has to be taken much into account.