Page:Letters to Mrs. F. F. Victor, 1878-83.djvu/19

 was also a shipmate of Capt [John] Dominis who was here in the Btig Owhyhee in I830 & to whom the indians attributed the fever & ague of that year. It came about the time of the Ist cultivation of the soil at Vancouver was fearfully violent and must have been in the air as it affected us all, from the root eating Indians to the Carniverous English sea men. Our ships were about 200 to 300 Tons, armed with 6 to IO nine pounder canonades in the waist, with a few swivels & musquetouns-those on the coast were provided with a net of 9 thread Ratline, IO feet all round the ship, the outer bordering was chain. A few boxes of hand-grenades were al ways at hand. I never knew the indians to be abused. The Brig "Dryad", in fact all the Co's ships admitted any num ber of the Indian women on board the canoes returned for them and no troubles came in this way. The flower of the lower Columbia Women were wives to the companys labour ing men. Sol: Smiths wife now at Clatsop was one of them. I've known her since '3I. In those years, say 3I-34, there certainly was outside of the Co's people not IO women who had dresses. The women all wore the Calequarter-cedar petticoat, either twisted into cords or frayed from the waist to the knees, this, with a piece of green or scarlet Baize over the shoulders constituted their dress. the men had only a shirt, with sometimes a blanket. The Hayoquoise [hiaqua shells] were then valuable. I have known a party of 30 men to be sent to the Chehaylis to buy them for the Southern i e Umpqua & Col & pay I2 & 14 Blankets per fathom for the best. there were 30 to the fathom for medicine kind, & then the fewer the more valueable. The Company had some immi tation ones of Ivory made in London, but they didn't take. The Ships lost here oIn the bar were the William & Ann, crew all massacred by the Clatsops-they got ashore with arms wet & defenceless. This was avenged, and the two Clat sop chiefs killed. The Issabella Capt Ryan got aground on Sand Island & was a total loss-the Vancouver with a cargo of ?30,000 was lost after the pilot was on board-a mere nothing was saved.iThe Co didn't like this, & in the fall all the furs were shipped at Nesqually via the Cowlitz port age-this was in '48. I was then at the Cowlitz. Every fall