Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/509

458 were not prepared to make until instructed by the British government to do so.

McLoughlin was very desirous that the immigration should find homes south of the Columbia River; first, because he believed that was their proper place of settlement, under an American form of government; but principally, as he alleged, because contact with the free and independent frontier men would destroy the spirit of obedience for which the company's servants were remarkable, and on which the success and prosperity of the company depended. To his great dissatisfaction, a considerable number encamped for the winter at Washougal, about seventeen miles above Vancouver, on the north bank of the river. They were some of those most thoroughly imbued with the Bentonian idea of American proprietorship, and soon found means of expressing that idea according to their several natures.

Elwood Evans states that Michael T. Simmons and his company, who were among those at Washougal, had first designed to settle in the Rogue River Valley; but that finding McLoughlin anxious to have the Americans settle on the south side of the Columbia, determined to locate himself and company on the north side of the river. According to Evans, who had means of obtaining his information from Simmons himself, the latter, after deciding to take a look at the Puget Sound region, applied to McLoughlin to furnish his family winter quarters in the fort; the request was refused unless he would agree to live on the south side of the river—a promise which Simmons would not give. A cabin outside the fort was finally obtained, and his family established in its shelter, when Simmons set out for Puget Sound, accompanied by Henry Williamson, Henry, James, and John Owens, and James Lewis. They proceeded no farther than the forks of the Cowlitz River, sixteen miles north of the Columbia, when finding their provisions becoming exhausted, and the journey excessively difficult, owing