Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/234

 226 THOMAS M. ANDERSON. the court was bound by the decision of the Secretary as to facts and also bound to correct his erroneous decision as to the law. Here was a brilliant piece of legal leger-de-main, worthy of the talents of lawyers and churchmen. At the preliminary hearing, the Post Commander made the point that the Catholic Church was a foreign corporation, therefore could not claim the benefit of the mission clause in the law of 1848. The lawyers received the proposition as a jest and the court "smiled and passed the question by," but the point was destined to receive more serious attention. At this hearing in chambers, February, 1887, the court dissolved the injunction as to all except the five acres actually enclosed. At the spring session of the court, held at Vancouver in April, 1887, the answer of the respondents was filed and the law points argued in demurrer before Judge Allyn. At this hearing all the points of the complainant's demurrers were overruled, the injunction dissolved as to all except the ground upon which the church stood. Testimony was ordered to be taken before a commissioner and then submitted for consider- ation at the next session of the court. It now became evident that the crucial question was this : Were the priests at the Hudson Bay post of Vancouver acting as missionaries to the Indians on August 14, 1848? To meet this question, the writer hunted up dozens of old settlers and wrote scores of letters. Out of the whole number there were comparatively few who had personal knowledge of facts transpiring prior to August, 1848 ; nevertheless, when the time came, both the church and the military had mustered quite a number of witnesses. The leading witnesses for the church were a Father Joseph Joset, an old Jesuit priest who succeeded Father DeSmet in his mission in the Coeur d'Alene country; Joseph St. Germain and Marcel Bernier, old Canadian-French trappers and couriers-du-bois ; August Rochon, a servant of the priests Blanchet and Demers when they came here in 1838; Mary Petrain, a wife of one of the old Hudson Bay Company's ser- vants ; Mary Proulx, the first woman married in the church ;