Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/158

132 Later in this chapter a quotation from Reverend George Gary will tell how Hauxhurst after he got religion tried to send Miss Mary back to the Yamhill lodges and how her supplications at his door in the dead of night reinstated her in his household, and later resulted in this ceremony.

Saturday 11th Feb. 1837.

Mr. Solomon H. Smith was married to Miss Ellen of the Clatsop tribe at the house of Mr. Smith Willamette settlement by Jason Lee.

Jason Lee must have tied this knot with a very wry face. Solomon Smith had succeeded John Ball as teacher of the half-breed children at Fort Vancouver in 1833, and during the next year conducted the first school in what is now Oregon. The hundredth anniversary of this event was widely celebrated in the state in 1934 by teachers and friends of education. It was not brought out how connubially erratic he had been—only the great and lasting good he had done. As Miss Ellen stood before him. Jason Lee, if he knew her story, must have looked appraisingly at this daughter of Chief Coboway of the Clatsops to see what there was about her to make men go mad. She had been the Indian wife of a French baker at Fort Vancouver. While teaching there Solomon Smith had fallen in love with her and had run away with her and her three children. Glorious Clatsop daughter, we would have looked at you, maybe with reproof but certainly with admiration, if Jason Lee didn't—in that day of helpless womanhood men never had the wish to leave you, it was you who left them or held them at your will, and here nearly four years afterwards you bring your white schoolmaster to the altar! By 1840, we are told she "wished to return to her own people as a missionary, having experienced a change of heart; and on the 16th of May they started on their trip, and held religious services with the Indians wherever they found it convenient to land."

Elwood Evans tells the story differently. She was still living at Clatsop Plains, a beautiful old woman of 85, when his book was published in 1889, and his account was probably based on an interview with her. According to Evans, ..."it was discovered by McLoughlin that her husband, Porier, had another wife in Canada; and upon the chief factor's advice she left the Frenchman, retaining only the youngest of her three children, which she also relinquished a few years later. She took up her residence with her sister, Mrs. Gervais, at French Prairie, but was frequently at the fort. There she was first seen by Solomon Smith, and sought by him as a wife. In the absence of any civil or ecclesiastical authority, ceremony was dispensed with; but in conscience they were bound, and a few years later were form-