Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/232

 224 THOMAS M. ANDERSON. ferred to the diocese of St. Louis. In 1853, Bishop Blanchet was made Bishop of Nesqually, with a jurisdiction co-exten- sive with the new Territory of Washington. In the meantime, Lieutenant- Colonel Bonneville, Fourth Infantry, had assumed command, and one of his first acts was to invite Father Brouil- let to take quarters in the post. There is a tradition, which, however, cannot be verified by positive proof, that Colonel Bonneville himself suggested to the Catholics the idea of claiming title to the reservation. In May, 1853, Bishop Blanchet filed his claim, but no action was taken on it until the expiration of the Hudson Bay license in 1859, when the Commissioner of the Land Office acknowledged the claim and ordered the land surveyed and set off to it. Against this Governor Stevens protested in behalf of the military, the town of Vancouver and the heirs of Amos Short. Then followed a number of reports and an extended correspondence, until finally Attorney- General Smith decided that the Mission of St. James was only entitled to the ground upon which the church stood. Acting on this opinion, the Secretary of the Interior tendered the church a patent for forty-four one-hundredth parts of an acre, in August, 1883. This was declined. A languid and intermittent correspondence was kept up, as the claim had gotten into the circumlocution office of the Tite Barnacles. All that could be learned was that the case was suspended on questions of courtesy between the Interior Department and the War De- partment. The mission could well afford to wait. Witnesses die, the heads of departments change, but the church lives on in secula saeculorum. Then, too, the padres were getting along much better with the military than they had with the Hudson Bay barons. Colonel Bonneville had brought them back and al- lowed them to enclose five acres for their own use in the reservation. With his consent a house was built for the Bishop and gardens and orchards were planted. Indeed, Bonneville and Brouillet got along as pleasantly and convivially together as Robin Hood and Friar Tuck. Then, under the administra-