Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/303

 Oregon a company of twenty-three families, or about sixty persons, from the Red River settlement, brought out under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company to settle on the lands of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. They had left Red River about the first of June with carts, of which each family had two, and with bands of cattle, horses, and dogs. The men and boys rode on horseback, and the women and children were conveyed in the carts with the household goods. The whole formed a procession of more than a mile in length. They started twenty-eight days in advance of Simpson, who passed them at Fort Carlton, on the Saskatchewan, and they arrived about the middle of October at Nisqually, where it was designed they should settle. But soon discovering the inferior quality of the soil in that region, they nearly all removed to the Willamette Valley, to the great disappointment of McLoughlin and other members of the Puget Sound Company.

The failure of the Red River settlers to remain on the lands of the Puget Sound Company defeated whatever political design the formation of that organization favored, and during the year after their arrival added a considerable number to the Willamette settlements.