Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/32

 20 Joseph J. Hill whom Sublette was a member, had their furs confiscated, and Mrs. Watson states the same thing of Yount. The difficulty of harmonizing Pattie's dates with those of Young's expedition. The chief difficulty in har- monizing the accounts of the Young and the Pattie ex- peditions is in connection with the dates of the Pattie narrative. According to Pattie, he left the copper mines on the second of January, 1826, and traveled down the Gila with a company of French trappers until the 28th of the month. It was the 29th of January that he fell in with the American company. They traveled up the Colorado and finally reached Santa Fe on the first of August, 1826. This was before Young's party left that place. But Pattie's dates are very unreliable throughout his entire narrative. Where we have contemporary docu- ments with which to check them as in the case of that portion of his narrative dealing with events in California, we are frequently able to show that his dates are inaccu- rate, in some cases, a number of months. It seems that he depended upon his memory for the major portion of his narrative, and so, while his facts usually appear to be fairly accurate, his dates are frequently wrong. It is possible, therefore, that he is out some nine months or more in his dates on this trip. Difficulty of harmonizing Pattie's dates with other events. There are some things in the narrative, itself, which seem to make this conclusion imperative In the first place, Pattie speaks of traveling the full length of the Grand Canyon through snow from a foot to eighteen inches deep. But according to his narrative it was m the month of April when they made that jonrney. Trav- eling on the south side of the Grand Canyon, it would be rather unusual to find snow that deep at that season of the year. Further, according to Pattie, it was the first of August, 1826, that the company reached Santa Fe and had their furs confiscated. But Narbona was still gov-