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But the gold brigade went on. Even sleepy old Champoeg was roused; unquiet crept in as the serpent crept into Eden. In 1849 Canadians and half-breeds went to the mines. A strange epidemic swept among them, so that out of six hundred only one hundred and fifty returned alive. A dozen years later Champoeg itself was carried off in a flood.

The farms on French Prairie were sold to Americans. Little tow-headed Missourians sported in the barns and rifled the flower-gardens. Yankee boys and girls wondered what meant so many huts all in a row back of each Canadian manor house, huts of the Indian slaves of the old Champoeg days.

One of the first acts of the new governor of Oregon Territory was to call in $50,000 of gold coin in five and ten dollar pieces minted at Oregon City. Every coin bore the stamp of a beaver a reminiscence of the Hudson's Bay regime when the beaver-skin was legal tender. When the money was melted at the U. S. mint at San Francisco every piece was found to contain ten per cent more gold than government money. Oregon was honest as well as brave.

The last act of that same administration occurred one still and smoky day when Tiloukaikt and four accomplices of the Whitman massacre were hung in great solemnity at Oregon City. The United States marshal at the gallows was Joe Meek, the trapper.