Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/294

278 was a friend of Governor Abernethy, he wrote him a letter on his own account, containing the news to which he had listened a short time before in the office of the fur company, and, in particular, mentioning the three parties which the dispatch had indicated as headed for three points, including The Dalles. Both of these letters were presented at the same time to the provisional legislature, which was then in session. They were also published in the Oregon Spectator of the time, and the attention of Mr. Hinman was called to the fact that his own letter contained an account of the three parties sent out to kill the whites, while the letter of Mr. Douglas made no mention of it. It is the opinion of Mr. Hinman that the clause was purposely left out in order to shield the agent of the company at Fort Walla Walla. Whether he was criminally implicated in the plot or not, the circumstantial evidence would have been damaging, and the officers of the company saw it. The circumstances would show, when put together, that Mr. McBean, the agent of the company at Fort Walla Walla, had sent a dispatch to Fort Vancouver, containing information that a party of armed Indians were headed for The Dalles, with the purpose of killing the inmates of the mission station; that he had instructed the messenger bearing that dispatch to ask for a boat only after he had failed to get one himself; that the messenger had used every effort to get one without succeeding; that Mr. Hinman had learned of his wishes incidentally through an Indian who had not been sent to ask for the boat; and that Mr. Hinman had been told that the agent at Fort Walla Walla had instructed the messenger not to tell Mr. Hinman about the massacre. Mr. Douglas saw at once that warning should have been given at The Dalles, and that the failure to do so, together with the accompanying circumstances, was an embarassing position for the agent at Fort Walla Walla. Mr. Hin-