Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/123

Rh affairs. He must have been "by instinct, inheritance, blood and tradition, a pioneer."

At the age of twenty-two, therefore, we find Newell beginning the career of an American trapper and mountain man. In the same company was the brave and impulsive and often bumptious Jos. L. Meek, then aged nineteen. Between the two was established a lifelong friendship: but Newell was the finer as well as the stronger character and always leader of the two. The influence of the trappers and mountain men has not yet been given full recognition in the history of the acquisition of Oregon, and the record of that period has perhaps been lost beyond recovery to a great degree. There are rare government documents obtainable, and unprinted reports are said to exist among the archives at Washington from which many interesting items are yet to be drawn; for the Government obtained much information about the Oregon Country from the early trappers. The life of the mountain man was one of frequent peril and hardship, and called for continual vigilance, bravery and endurance. He journeyed when and where he pleased, and often when he did not please, and winter journeys across plains and mountains were too frequent to be then thought worthy of mention. Of Dr. Newell's individual life during those eleven and one-half years, we know little. His name appears not infrequently in the memoranda obtained by Mrs. Victor and embodied in her writings, also in letters of Ebbert and Burnett. He had a good voice and his songs and stories around the campfires are a common recollection among those who knew him then and afterward; he was a great lover of books in later life and read the Bible and Shakespeare and other standard works during those year, for the trappers are known to have had these books in their camps. He did not rise to the position of partner but was a sub-trader or "bushaway" and was often in authority during the absence of the owners. He was annually at Rendezvous; in her diary, Mrs. Eells speaks of him as a guest at dinner at Green River in 1838, and Asahel Munger in 1839. He was also a free trapper for a time. In 1833