Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/232

 Moss said in Pioneer Times, a manuscript of 59 long-hand pages in the Bancroft Library. Moss dictated this to Ban croft's secretary, in Bancroft's presence, at Oregon City on Tuesday, June 18, 1878. He was then 68, not 79 or 83 or 88, and he was talking in the hearing of a man with a rich background of Oregon history, who could challenge his statements and thus shrewdly test their accuracy as he went along. The whole interview contains four references to Prairie Flower, with an introductory and uncomplimentary mention of W. H. Gray, author of History of Oregon, published in 1870. The first references appear on pages 16-19 of the manuscript:

"...Billy Gray did not suit me. His history of Oregon is one of the most untruthful articles I have ever read. I have known familiarly the circumstances he records there. He is prejudiced and untruthful too. There is scarcely a truth in it. He undertakes to give the history of a little debating society I formed here myself, The Falls Debating Society. Nesmith was one of the members; it was in 1843.

Some years afterwards there was a book published called the Prairie Flower. He says in his history that William Johnston was the author of the Prairie Flower, a member of our society. A sequel to the Prairie Flower has been published called Lena Leoti. I have never revealed the fact to anyone who was the author of the Prairie Flower, but Johnston was not the author; and Gray of course never knew that I wrote it. Speaking of the Hudson Bay Company, he is equally reckless. I am not an Englishman and do not love even the soil on which they are born, God Almighty knows, but I say give them their due. The Prairie Flower as it was published is not like the original. It has been changed from what it was originally. Originally it was intended to describe the experiences of our trip here. Many of the incidents transpired in Oregon. "Mrs. Morton" is the deceased mother-in-law of Mrs. Crawford. One of the characters is Crawford's wife. I do not know if he knows of it. Overton Johnston had as much to do with it as most men. He had it published when he went east."

These paragraphs explain his daughter's use of the names Wm. Johnson, W. Johnson, and William Johnson in her letters to George H. Himes and the Oregonian. She was confused and meant Overton Johnston, but the introduction