Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/285



LOWNSDALE LETTER TO THURSTON 245

tion of Governor Lane: As usual and with their effrontery everything that could be done in paying attention to him and the other publick officers was done, every stratagem to interest him in his course of action as governor in a manner to suit their views among the rest the asking leave to permit the priest who had been detected in taking powder and lead to the Indians, petitioned him to permit him to take and carry the same to the Indians. This much he granted them, but how much farther I know not, but I rather think that his as well as the rest of the publick officers might have sense enough to see that Doctor McLaughlin and those he can ride are not the majority of the people of Oregon. The prospect at present shows their representatives elected to serve them intend to report matters as they are to the mother country and if their aim (the publick officers) is to come here to speculate on the trade of Oregon instead of administering the laws, that they (the people's representatives) will permit them so to do, but they (the representatives) will not take the trouble to ask Doctor Me to give them a copy for their reports, and yet we have some who think this lumber business should be kept out of the hands of our officers. "No odds where they got the money," and others say "Judges and collectors buying claims of land might meet a claimant on the bench and in the custom house ;" others again say "If I was collector and had only to make my return once and a while I should not feel fearful to undertake the paying $15,000 dollars for a half of one and to spend twice as much in building steam saw-mills particularly when in six months the duties collected would pay the whole." But then, people will talk, and a man may be a 'man for a' that'/* After the Hudson's Bay Company found the officers expected they would be looked to and not them they thought their only chance was to render it impossible for us to send a man as delegate to Congress in whom we could confide and if we did they would dog and harrass such an one as they have ever done who would not carry their opinions foremost and particularly if he carried any documents with him bearing on the settle- ment of matters against them; in some of these cases of previous occurrence shows how well they have carried out their plans, for in the year '45 when Doctor White was known (by Hudson's Bay Company or Doctor Me ) to have papers from the legislature favorable to the American side of the question he was assailed on the way and his papers demanded. (I do not say whether he was safely clear of the same influ- ence himself, but he gave them not up.) But this was the