Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/274

 I will now return to the history of the country in general from forty-three. After the company found Doctor Whitman opposed the doctrine that the Hudson's Bay Company had or dared to hold possession of Oregon, it now was their policy to get him from among the Indians that they might use them as they had been used by Great Britain during the revolution and last war, as a check to what they thought dangerous to their interest, i.e., settling Oregon by Americans or to assist in a war, if thought expedient, against the United States. Accordingly the Indians were encouraged in anything that seemed like opposition to his plans. Doctor Whitman was advised to sell his station and abandon the missionary enterprise. This he, however, refused to comply with; then to further annoy the settlers the prospect of an outbreak of the Indians, (Many times have we heard this assertion made as if by prophecy that in case the United States gave no land to all that then had the right of suffrage (including half-breeds and British subjects) they would massacre all the whites in Oregon as the Indians should join the half-breeds and make it an easy matter to subdue them,) at any time any of the plans which had been laid were thwarted, particularly those kind of petty thievings and robberies of emigrants on their journey through the different tribes east of the Cascade mountains, and the matter always known to the Hudson's Bay Company, who, although they said they could not prevent such occurrences, encouraged such acts by paying for the articles of which the Americans were robbed, and exacted from those Americans the amount of the goods so purchased of the Indians, at least what they said they had paid to the Indians to release the goods. It is also notorious that they, the H. B. Co., have always possessed entire sway over the Indians and that they represented to the Indians that the "King George people" (as termed the H. B. Co. by the Com.) were not friends of the "Bostons" (the name by which the Americans were called,) and that they were not one people, and when they offended the "Bostons", the "King George people" were not "sylex" (Indian word of Chinook language,) or displeased, and would not "mamoke sylex," that is to go to war with the Siwash (or Indians,) but if the Siwash Cochshut icht King George Tilicum, capshawalla ictas King George hias sylix mamoke poo (or if any Indian should do harm to the persons or property of the Hudson's Bay Company's people they would go to war with and shoot everyone that were guilty.) To explain more fully here what I mean I will just relate a conversation between the