Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/287



LOWNSDALE LETTER TO THURSTON 247

To explain the matter more fully I will just give the journal of the Doctor's, not as published by him but as related by one present and the after acts proved he gave the matters pretty fair. Met the Doctor, his Highness the Bishop, his Honor Douglas, his thickness Peter Skeen Ogden, his Laqueys Switz- ler and Burns, with a few others too tedious to mention. The Doctor presiding with general consent and without a division, thus commenced the proceedings:

Doctor: "Mr. Burns shut that door we we don't want don't want people to hear what we talk about."

Burns : "The door is shut, Doctor, and by the Lord Jasus if the first bloody American shows his pate in rache, ile make him think it was Patrick Obrine had struck him."

Doct. : "Now, now, gentlemen, I have have thot best to ask to ask what it is best to do to do about this election this election. We have some grave questions to be settled with this prating American government and also with bloody Hooshers in Oregon, and I should like to hear to hear what you all will recommend."

Douglas: "We have but little to settle with the American government except what few definitions are necessary to be made to the treaty and there is but little hope of our getting a delegate from Oregon at present. Our people are leaving us every day and of them that can be made to take the oath of in- tention are not enough to elect Meek, and no other man ought to be sent by us for he has nothing to lose as an American and all to gain by serving us but at present I do not see how he is to be elected. I think however, that our agent, Mr. San- ders, will succeed in smoothing some one's conscience, whose opinion will be taken by the American Government, and we shall have a fair decision. That flare-up of Thornton's however may make it necessary to get hold of some other person beside Sanders for he will be watched by these cunning Americans."

Doctor : " 'Twont do 'twont do. Must have some body as delegate from here must have somebody to see our claims independent of the treaty independent of the treaty and that must be attended to by the next session or we won't have a foot of land but what the treaty gives us. These grants have to come through Congress and these Democrats can't be hum- bugged as easy as one or two individuals."

Ogden : "I think the doctor is right but then the company has great influence and our agents will be busy enough to have considerable bearing on these things among our Amer-