Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/185

Rh a great many of the old traders of all nationalities, early pioneers of enterprise, who had gone into California before the discovery of gold. The most of these had married native Indian women. They became Mexican citizens and took land grants, some of these grants containing from one to three leagues square, for the purpose of engaging in the stock business—cattle, horses, and sheep, mostly the former. In this they had been engaged for a number of years. These people went prospecting as soon as gold was discovered; found gold to a great extent, and employed the Indians to do their work; employed them by the hundreds; furnished them with pans and set them to digging and washing gold, and they paid them with calico shirts of the cheapest class, each shirt being given for an amount of gold dust equal to the weight of three silver dollars, the traders thereby realizing $48 for each shirt; and the same price for each pan.

The Oregonians on their arrival saw it was cheaper to buy shirts and sell them to the Indians than to do the digging themselves; but they lowered the price to balance the weight of two silver dollar pieces, which would be equal to $32 in gold dust. By this great affront was given to the old traders, as the Oregonians were getting the greater part of the trade and of the gold, on account of the drop in price. The Californians then, on their part, dropped the price to the weight of one silver dollar, which was followed by the Oregonians, and it was afterwards reduced as low as that of a fifty-cent piece.

Then began the next phase of the situation. When the reduction of the price of shirts began, killing of the. Oregonians began, until six Columbia River men were killed on the eleventh day of April, 1849, about thirteen miles from Coloma, on the North Fork of the American River, making a total, counting those who had been lost before, of thirty-two Columbia River men who had been