Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/207

{{rh||{{sc|Document—A Narrative by Dr. McLoughlin.}}|195} their cattle at Walla Walla and they were rather weak after their long journey, they asked and obtained the loan of cattle from me.

In 1834 one Kelley came from Boston by way of California, accompanied by Ewing Young and eight English and American sailors. Kelley left the states with a party intending to come here by way of Mexico, but the party broke up on the way and Kelley alone reached California, and with one man overtook our California trappers on their return about two hundred miles from San Francisco, and Young, a few days after, with the rest of them; but as Gen. Fiqueroa, Governor of California, had written me that Ewing Young and Kelley had stolen horses from the settlers of that place I would have no dealings with them, and told them my reasons. Young maintained he stole no horses, but admitted the others had. I told him that might be the case, but as the charge was made I could have no dealings with him till he cleared it up. But he maintained to his countrymen and they believed it, that as he was a leader among them, I acted as I did from a desire to oppose American interests. I treated all of the party in the same manner as Young, except Kelley, who was very sick. Out of humanity I placed him in a house, attended on him and had his victuals sent him at every meal till he left in 1836, when I gave him a passage to Oahoo. On his return to the states, he published a narrative of his voyage in which, instead of being grateful for the kindness shown him, he abased me and falsely stated I had been so alarmed with the dread that he would destroy the Hudson's Bay Company's trade, that I had kept a constant watch over him, and which was published in the Report of the United States Congress. In 1835 five English and American deserters having lost two of their companions murdered by Indians made their way from