Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/149

98 Young resolved to erect a distillery for the manufacture of ardent spirits at his settlement on the Chehalem.

In the beginning of 1836, when Wyeth broke up his establishment at Fort William, Young secured one of the caldrons used in pickling salmon, and set about the accomplishment of his purpose, aided by Lawrence Carmichael, another of the aggrieved colonizers. Now this was a well-aimed blow, and it struck both fur company and Mission in a most sensitive point, their commercial as well as moral conscience. During the year in which trade was carried on at Fort William, intoxicating drink was sold to the natives and settlers, in consequence of which some brawls and petty offences disturbed the good order otherwise maintained in the country.

On hearing of the design of Young and Carmichael, McLoughlin showed them how drink would ruin the farming interests, and destroy the colony he proposed to plant, and offered Young pecuniary aid, and agreed to establish him in some honorable enterprise. The missionaries took alarm. The Oregon Temperance Society was organized, and a meeting convened to consider the steps necessary to prevent the threatened evil. The conclusion reached was that Young and Carmichael should be addressed by letter, and requested to abandon their enterprise. And for the following reasons: the prosperity of the settlement, temporal and spiritual, would be retarded, and the already wretched condition of the natives rendered worse. Nor did they fail to appeal to Young's loyalty to American ideas, reminding him that selling intoxicating drink to aborigines was contrary to law.

To those who can discover it, there is an avenue to every heart. Young pompously professed allegiance to the United States government as the best and purest the sun ever shone upon, whose citizens—among whom he was by no means the least—were the rightful owners of all that region, though on what