Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/277



I was born in Bracken County, Kentucky, June 23, 1810, where I resided until early in the year of 1829, when I started for the Rocky Mountains in the employ of William Sublette to engage in the fur trade for the American Fur Company, in whose employ I remained six years. I then joined the Hudson's Bay Company and trapped for that company three years. In the fall of 1838 I came to the Mission kept by the Rev. Mr. Spalding at Lapwai; remained there through that winter, working at blacksmithing, a trade that I had learned in Kentucky. In the spring of 1839 I started for the Willamette Valley, arriving there on the 20th of May the same year, and settled at Champoeg for one year. I then moved to the Tualatin Plains, twelve miles west of Portland, where I now reside, in the fall of 1841.

In January, 1848, in company with the late Jos. L. Meek, Nathaniel Bowman, David Young, John Owens, James Stead, Samuel Miller, Jacob Leabo, Dennis Burriss, and a Mr. Jones, started for the States with dispatches for help from the parent Government. Had an escort of volunteers under Captain Lawrence Hall, sent out by General Cornelius Gilliam's orders to accompany us to the foot of the Blue Mountains, as the Indians were very bad, we being then in the midst of the Cayuse war. Nothing of interest occurred on the trip except one fight with the Indians, in which the volunteers were victorious after a fight of eight hours. At this place some of the soldiers went out on a foraging expedition and captured some