Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/267

 Peter Skene Ogden, Fur Trader. 245 delivered to him a letter from Gov. Simpson which turned that gentleman back again to take charge of the Snake Expe- dition that fall. (Of this we learn in his "Fur Hunters.") Down the Columbia the party go in three boats and reach the "Forks of Spokane" on the 21st at evening, three months from York Factory. Flere Mr. Birnie from Spokane House and Mr. Kennedy with 21 men start down the river for Fort George, and Mr. Kittsen, Mr. Ogden and Mr. Work set out for Spokane House on the 25th. And there evidently Mr. Ogden remains for the winter. Spokane House, nine miles northwest of the present city of Spokane, even then a center of activities (although soon to be abandoned for a more favorable location at Kettle Falls) — what was its attraction? Mr. Ross gives a rather highly colored view of it : "There all the wintering parties, with the exception of the northern district, met. There they all fitted out; it was the great starting point. * * * At Spokane House, there were handsome buildings ; there was a ball room even and no females in the land so fair to look upon as the nymphs of Spokane ; no damsels could dance so gracefully as they; none were so attractive. * * But Spokane House was not celebrated for fine women only ; there were fine horses also. The race ground was admired, and the pleasures of the chase often yielded to the pleasures of the race. Alto- gether Spokane House was a delightful place." We insert this reference to Spokane House because it is appropriate to this period in our narrative. Either just now or a few years earlier Mr. Ogden has taken unto himself another wife, a remarkable woman from the Spokane tribe of Indians (if fam- ily tradition is correct), who became a dutiful mother to his children and afterward resided at Ft. Vancouver and for some years at Oregon City. During the sixties, she removed to Lac la Hache in British Columbia and died there in January, 1886, at the age of ninety-eight years. She was a step-daughter of old Francois Rivet, of the Lewis and Clark party, who took up a claim on French Prairie in Oregon, and she was heir to