Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/171



THE CENri-;.\NlAL HISTORY OF OREGON 97

aud courage, would have been two liundred thousand iiuu-deriut? savages. And while it is true they did not look forward to the fruits of labor which miglit bestow upon them offices, iiouors aud distinctions, which the wilderness could not confer, they saeriticed self pride and ambition to faithfully and loyally serve their employer, looking only to the present and to their salary for reward ; and still none the less, performed so great a work in moulding and controlling the character and the natural bent of the Indians as to make the eventful settle- ment of the country an easy conquest over uative savagery. The gradual and comparatively easy substitution of civilization in all the vast territory once ruled by the Hudson's Bay Company, as compared with the stern and relentless war- fare which greeted and decimated the Scotch-Irish and Virginian pioneers who settled the Ohio valley sixty years prior is little less than a miracle in the develop- ment of the West. If anyone will turn to the history of the settlement of the states of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee and see with what nameless horrors, inde- scribable tortures and devilish savagery the Indians in that country fought the white settlers, they will sefi that the old Oregon Indians were peaceful men, by comparison. All the Indian wars of Oregon put together would not make three years actual warfare. And in all of it, so far as can be learned, there were but few prisoners put to torture by the Indians. But from the time Daniel Boone crossed over the Alleghany mountains and settled in the lonely wilds of Kentucky in 1769, down to the great battle with the Indians October 5, 1813, when their great leader aud hero Tecumseli was killed, over forty years, there was almost con- tinuous warfare with the Indians of the Ohio vallej'.

Let the impartial reader contrast the settler's experience in the Ohio valley, with the Indian wars of Oregon, and then thank such a nuin as John McLoughlin and Peter Skene Ogdeu that our pioneer fathers and mothers of Oregon were spared the trials and sufferings which their fathers and mothers passed through in reclaiming Ohio, Missouri and other eastern states from their savage foes.

The Indians of the vast Hudson Bay provinces did not lack the courage or the brains of the Indians of the Ohio valley. Neither did they lack natural resources to make effective opposition to the advances of the white man. They were simplj- managed and kept quiet until effective opposition was impracticable. The men who did this great work for Oregon, no matter what their motives were, deserve a large space in the history of this state. It cannot be pretended that they man- aged the Indians for the purpose of making them accept the rule of the white man in the establishment of civil society. It may be truly said they builded wiser than they knew, but for all they performed, all they accomplished, and all their labors to tame the red ilian, let us give them generous recognition and deserved Iiouors

But the Royal British prerogative favorite of the King was not to have an un- contested monopoly of the fur trade in half a continent. In the year 1783 Simon .MeTavi.sh, Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher, A. McGillivray, Roeheblave, Simon Fraser and other wealthy and influential merchants of Montreal organized the ■'Northwest Company of Montreal," and afterwards admitted to the Company Peter Pond and Peter Pangman, able and successful traders ; and still later on admitted Alexander Mackenzie in the Spring of 1785. The capital of this Com- pany does not appear in any of the sources of history examined. The shares were originally sixteen, and these were increased as new partners were taken, and as

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