Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/33

 Ewing Young in Far Southwest 21 ernor of New Mexico until May, 1827, and his attitude towards the American trappers had been one of leniency. Later in this very month (August, 1826) he issued licenses, as we have indicated, to a number of parties of American trappers, knowing full well that they were bound for the Gila to trap beaver. Pattie says that he left the copper mines on the second of January and that the American party, of which he later became a member, continued trapping until nearly the first of the next Aug- ust, when they arrived at Santa Fe. But this was con- trary to the regular trapping custom. The trapping season in the Far Southwest was the fall, winter and spring; in the regions farther north it was the fall and spring only. Never did the trappers continue their trap- ping activities into the hot summer months, nor would they be apt to wait until the first of January to start. The probability of Pattie' s narrative being an account of the expeditions of Miguel Robidoux and Ewing Young. Taking all things into consideration it is evident that Pattie's narrative gives an account of the expedition of Miguel Robidoux from the Santa Rita copper mines down the Gila to the mouth of Salt River, where the Robidoux party was massacred, and then continues with an account of the expedition of Ewing Young on the Gila and up the Colorado in the fall and winter of 1826 and the spring of 1827. Significance of the identification. With this identifi- cation established we are able now, for the first time, to apply the Pattie narrative to the Ewing Young expedi- tion. Heretofore, because Pattie's name was the only one mentioned in the narrative, it has been thought of as Pattie's expedition. We can now think of it from the point of view of the organizer and leader rather than from that of an egotistical boy who happened to be picked up along the way. To sum up the expedition we might say that after a journey of some three or four thousand miles Young and