Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/35



OLD FORT OKANOGAN AND OKANOGAN TRAIL 27

The most interesting witness for the company is Mr. Alex- ander Caufield Anderson, who had been in charge of the post for a number of years in the late forties and early fifties as a dependency of Colville. He described the buildings in detail and testified to the value of the whole establishment. Among other things he said the stretch of country used for a horse range was in the shape of a triangle, each side of which was about 25 or 30 miles long. That it was bounded as follows, commencing at the mouth of the Okanogan river, thence up the Columbia to The Dalles (Box canyon of the pres- ent time), thence along the range of hills to the "montee" on the Okanogan river, thence down the Okanogan to the mouth. Now where was the "montee" ? No one now living knows as far as can be learned. The testimony of the wit- nesses for the United States tends to show that Fort Okanogan had become a very dilapidated, run down and worthless estab- lishment years before its final abandonment, and had for all practical purposes been abandoned in the middle fifties. On the other hand, the witnesses for the Hudson Bay Company say it was, up till about 1847, a very important post of the company, and that it was still valuable. The company's wit- nesses attempted to carry the idea that the post was not even abandoned as late as 1864, but admitted that all the goods and people had been removed some years before that, and that a local Indian living there was all that had been left in charge, but none of their witnesses pretended to know if the said Indian was still there or not when they were giving their testimony, in 1865, or thereabouts. It is very apparent, in- deed, that the witnesses for the claimant did not care to dis- close just when the company ceased to maintain Fort Okanogan as a trading post, and attempted by indirection, to stretch the time a few years so as to make their claim for damages as strong as possible. A careful consideration of all the sources of information that I have been able to find as to the probable date of the abandonment of Fort Okanogan by the Hudson Bay Company, has confirmed me in the opinion that my in- formation is correct upon which I base the statement that