Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/202

196 from one common parentage, since time and circumstances may have wrought a change in this case, as well as in that. The circumstances which lead us to this opinion are these: about fifty years ago, as we were informed by different gentlemen, connected with the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, and previous to their establishment in that country a Japanese Junk was cast upon the North West coast of Oregon; the people who saved themselves from the wreck were taken and enslaved by the Indians, and were found among them by the Company's Traders in that condition. They endeavored to purchase them from their masters, but were unable to obtain them at any reasonable price. The Company, after the expiration of several years, found it necessary to employ a steamer to collect their furs on this coast, and instructed the master upon its arrival to obtain, if possible, the Japanese slaves. The Indians, whose villages were near the Sea shore, were at the time of the Steamer's arrival on that coast, many of them, out in their canoes, some distance from land. As soon as they perceived her they fled for the shore, and the steamer pursuing, so terrified them that they not only abandoned their canoes, but their villages also, and fled en masse to the mountains, leaving not only the Japanese, but every thing else behind them. The Japanese were taken on board the steamer, conveyed to Fort Vancouver, and sent from there to their native country. And beside this, there are the remains of a wreck, near Cape Look Out, at which the Indians have frequently collected beeswax, which was thrown out on the beach by the surf; and it is the general impression that this also was a Japanese or Chinese vessel. The Indians have some strange and mysterious traditions concerning this wreck, but we were not able to learn any thing definite from them, concerning its character, of the time of its destruction, but it is evidently many years since it was lost. We know of no account of