Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/229

 VOLUME III.]

The materials of history are not yet ripe enough to give us authentic data of the very first introduction of domesticated sheep into Oregon, and will not be perhaps until the historical gleaner is admitted to the records of the Hudson Bay Company, the rule of which was superseded over the valley of the Columbia River between 1840 and 1843, by the pioneer American home builders.

The earliest mention of sheep in Oregon is by John Ball, who came with N. J. Wyeth in 1832, and who became the first school-teacher by instruction of a dozen boys, sons of officers of the Hudson Bay Company. In the winter of 1832-33, in a letter to his parents, dated Vancouver, February 23, 1833, Mr. Ball says: "This is a post of the Hudson Bay Company, which extends its trade in furs from Canada to this place. Here they have extensive farming operations, raise wheat, corn, pease, potatoes, * * * and have cattle, sheep and hogs.' In a letter to the writer, Dr. W. F. Tolmie mentions that