Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/411

Rh the Indians of Oregon. I think, myself, that the behavior of these men was cowardly, and I set the conduct of Young high above theirs.

Cyrus Shepard, that gentle Christian, whom everybody loved, and who was employed at the fort to teach the children of the company, was the only missionary who openly visited Kelley. Jason Lee, according to Kelley when at Vancouver, paid him clandestine visits in the night time, to learn his plans. At these interviews Kelley became satisfied that Lee, on account of pecuniary obligations to McLoughlin, feared to acknowledge his acquaintance with Kelley or his designs, and would by no means seem to favor them.

Nuttall, who was a Cambridge man, was well acquainted with Kelley 's writings, owing to them, Kelley believed, his idea of studying the botany of Oregon. But Nuttall, as well as the Lees, thought too highly of his privileges at Vancouver to risk them by acknowledging this fact. And Wyeth, who was not like himself, an educated man, never having learned to spell correctly, or to introduce in his writings capitals and punctuation points where they belonged, and who had led as far as Vancouver as many free Americans as had Young and himself—Wyeth, who when in Massachusetts was one of his prospective colonists,—was on the Columbia River utterly indifferent to him.

This treatment of Kelley by his countrymen must have been construed at Vancouver as condemnatory, although its shrewd and magnanimous chief may have guessed a little of its meaning and sought to make