Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/38



30 JUDGE WILLIAM C. BROWN

on, for quite a few parties went in over the old Okanogan and Fort Hope trails. One of these parties encountered in September of that year the well known fight with the Indians in McLoughlin canyon and another sharp scrimmage occurred a day or two later near where Oroville now stands. Joel Palmer was the first to bring wagons up through the Okano- gan valley. His pioneer trip is said to have been made in July, 1858. The train consisted of nine wagons with three or four yoke of oxen to each. They came from Wallula to Okanogan, where the wagons were unloaded and they crossed them and the merchandise over the Columbia in boats ob- tained at the old fort. The cattle were made to swim. The outfit then worked its way up the Okanogan valley to Okano- gan Lake, where it was found necessary to build rafts to pass the wagons and the merchandise. The stock was driven around through the hills on the old pack trail. The train ultimately reached Kamloops. Palmer made a second trip in 1859, in about the same way. From 1859 on, there was considerable travel in one way and another from Walla Walla, The Dalles and other Columbia river points, to the British Columbia mines, which went up over the Okanogan trail. Some of these old-time gold hunters and freighters stopped off and settled in the Okanogan country, and they became what has come to be commonly accepted as the "first settlers" of the Okanogan. Such was "Okanogan Smith" and his con- temporaries.

We know but little of the Okanogan Indians back of the time the whites first reached this section. They have almost no traditional history of their past, their migrations or their wars, that is of any historical value that I have been able to learn. We can, however, in a measure, pierce the past for a few decades back of 1800, and discern what manner of people they were, it being substantially the same as it was after the traders located amongst them, except insofar as articles of civilized manufacture altered their mode of life, which was not to any very great degree. The Okanogans are of the Salish stock, and belong to the same family o<f