Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/122

104 unusual vigor of mind and body possessed by so many of the Oregon pioneers.

First it is well to explain why he was called Doctor Newell. In the year 1868, he visited the city of Washington in company with Utsemilicum, Lawyer, Timothy and Jason, chiefs of the Nez Perces, who had business there relating to treaties for their lands. It is related [by Mr. Roberts] that while there he was introduced publicly as a leading physician from this section of the country, but that he at once, in a genial manner common to himself, explained that medicine was not his profession, but that during some early experiences as a mountain trapper he had been called upon by necessity to undertake a simple surgical operation (Bancroft gives a similar explanation), and also had acquired a knowledge of some simple remedies through the brewing of roots and herbs and had used them with like effect upon dogs, horses, Indians and his fellow trappers, and consequently had been nicknamed Doctor. In those days the degree of doctor was very easily conferred and without the ceremony now common in our institutions of learning. Even the apothecaries were often dubbed doctors; and who would now deny them the honor!

Of the early years of Doctor Newell but little information has been available. Mr. Elwood Evans was a careful gatherer of facts and in his manuscript History of Oregon (Bancroft Collection) states that Newell was born on March 30, 1807, at Putnam, Ohio, and that on the 17th of March, 1829, he left St. Louis for the Rocky Mountains in company with the Smith-Jackson-Sublette party of trappers, successors of Gen. Wm. Ashley. In Bancroft's History the statement appears that he came to St. Louis from Cincinnati as an apprentice learning the trade of a saddler and that his father had died when he was young. We have a right to assume that he came of good stock or was blessed with good home training and had some advantage of the schools then available; else we cannot account for the qualities of restraint and control and the natural leadership which made him so useful in the formation of the Provisional Government of Oregon and in other executive