Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/378

 3;66 FKDEBAIi BBPOBTEB. �to have been in -writing, and within the knowledge and eon- trol of the defendant, and therefore the omission to produce it is a matter which must have more or less weight against the defendant, aceording to, the circumstances of the case. Portions of the evidence partake of the character of hearsay, and some of it is decidedly argumentative. In considering it, it will be impossible to ignore the history of the period and place to which it relates. Eeading it, then, by this light, and where it is oontradictory or obscure supplementing it from this source, the material facts about the settlement and occupation of the mission station at The Dalles are these : �In the spring of 1838 the Eev. Daniel Lee and Eev. H. K. W. Perkins, under the direction of the Eev. Jason Lee, the superintendent of the defendant in Oregon, established a mis- sion within the limits of the tract described in the patent herein, at a place then called Wascopum, In the fall of the same year it was stocked with cattle from the Wallamet val- ley. The place was favorably situated for trade and inter- course with the Indians and immigrants from the east — the latter usually, at this point, exchanging their wagons for boats, and often bartering their poor oxen for supplies, such as fresh beef and the like. �In 1840 Mr. H. B. Brewer went to reside there as a farmer for the mission. Perkins and Lee left the mission for the east in 1844, and the Eev. A. F. Waller joined it about the same time. Waller and Brewer remained there until the transfer of the station to Whitman, in 1847. In 1844 the Eev. George Gary superseded Jason Lee as superintendent of the Oregon mission. Apparently the society had become dis- satisiied with the secular character and cost of the mission- ary operations, and sent Gary here to bring about a change in this respect. To this end, soon after his arrivai in the territory, the varions mission stations, exoept The Dalles, and ail the mission property, consisting mainly of large herds of horses and cattle, were disposed of to members of the mis- sion; so that after 1844 the defendant had no "mission among the Indian tribes" in Oregon except at The Dalles. Thereafter the labors of its faitbful clerical missionaries, of ��� �