Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/197

 SLACUM'S REPORT ON OREGON, 1836-7 189 coast or the Columbia, would bring a cargo chiefly of British manufactures, on which the duties had been paid; or, if the cargo was shipped for drawback, the vessel would have to enter some other port to discharge and reload, in order to get the benefit of the debenture certificates ; whereas the Hudson Bay Company's vessels come direct from London, discharge at Vancouver, pay no duty, nor are they subject to the expense and delay of discharging and reloading in a foreign port. Since the year 1828, a party of forty to fifty trappers, (Cana- dians,) with their women, slaves, &c., generally amounting to 150 to 200 persons and 300 horses, go out from Vancouver, towards the south, as far as 40 north latitude, These parties search every stream, and take every beaver skin they find, regardless of the destruction of the young animals: excesses, too, are unquestionably committed by these hunting parties on the Indians; and every small American party (save one) that has passed through the same country has met defeat and death. The parties being much smaller than those of the Hudson Bay Company, the Indians attack them with success; and the Americans hesitate not to charge the subordinate agents of the Hudson Bay Company with instigating the Indians to attack all other parties. In 1829, the American brig Owyhee, Captain Domines, of New York, entered the Columbia, and commenced trading with the Indians for beaver skins and peltries. In the course of nine months Captain Domines procured a cargo valued at ninety- six thousand dollars. It happened that this year the fever that has since desolated the Columbia from the, falls to Oak point appeared, and Dr. McLaughlin, the chief factor of the Hudson Bay Company, with all the gravity imaginable, informed me the Indians to this day believe that Domines, of the "Boston ship" brought the fever to the river. How easy was it for the Hudson Bay Company's agents to make the Indians believe this absurdity, for reasons, too, the most obvious! Domines was daily assailed with reports that the Indians intended at- tacking him when his vessel was lying at the rapids of the Willhamett, alias the "Maltonomah," of Lewis and Clark. The I