Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/105

 OREGON PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 97 years in which they settled in Oregon. They were of the party of eight that built the vessel STAR OF OREGON in 1841. W. H. Gray in his History of Oregon, page 190, says that Felix Hathaway, who was a ship carpenter, was a sur- vivor of the William and Ann, a vessel which was wrecked at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1829. All other Oregon histories and accounts of the wreck say that no one survived the disaster. George LeBreton, an American, who was chosen May 2, 1843, the Clerk or Recorder of the Supreme Court of the Pro- visional Government, came to Oregon, in 1840, on the Brig "Maryland," as supercargo, the brig being commanded by Captain John H. Couch. LeBreton made Oregon his home. So far as I have been able to learn, only two white men settled in the Willamette Valley in 1841 : William M. Doughty, a free trapper, an American, and Charles McKay, a Scotchman, but in 1841 a party consisting of twenty-three families being about sixty persons, all British subjects, and agriculturists from the Red River Settlement and Territory, some of whom were French-Canadians, arrived at Ft. Walla Walla, October 4 of that year, and a short time after, most of them settled on the Nisqually Plains on Puget Sound. Later, probably in 1842, most of them settled in the Willamette Valley (Lee and Frost's "Ten Years in Oregon," 216). One or two stayed on the Nisqually Plains. Two or three families settled on the Cowlitz River. This is the party, on whose supposed arrival in the fall of 1842, is largely based the Whitman Myth. THE LAUSANNE PARTY. In 1838 Rev. Jason Lee returned to the eastern states to obtain additions to the Oregon Methodist Mission. Even at that time, the Mission, as a mission, was a failure, for the reason that there were scarcely any Indians in the Willamette Valley to be converted. Nevertheless, he raised a large sum of money, and the ship Lausanne was chartered, which brought a number of missionaries and a large quantity of goods for a store and materials for the construction of grist and saw mills.