Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/55



DID THE RETURNING ASTORIANS USE THE SOUTH PASS?

A Letter of Ramsay Crooks.

Contributed by HARRISON C. DALE.

On June 29 or 30, 1812, a party ostensibly under the command of Robert Stuart, carrying with them letters and papers for Colonel Astor, set out from the recently erected post, Astoria, to return overland to the states. Stuart was accompanied by Ramsay Crooks, Robert McLellan, Benjamin Jones, Francois Le Claire (or Le Clerc), and Andre Vallee. Following up the Columbia and the Snake, familiar country to them all, for they had traversed it only a few months before, they encountered, August 30, just below Caldron Linn, Joseph Miller and three others, who had been detached from the main party of over- land Astorians at Andrew Henry's abandoned post on upper Snake river, the previous October. These men related how, during the winter, they had traveled far to the south and east of Henry's post and then, with the approach of spring, west- ward again until they had been discovered by Stuart and his party. 1 They now proceeded together, but in a few days Mil- ler's companions abandoned the rest of the party. Miller now undertook to pilot the remainder on their journey eastward, but, as it happened, his services were not particularly valuable. Under his direction, they followed the Snake some distance until they reached a country of great sandy plains. On Sep- tember 7, they abandoned the Snake and, still under Miller's guidance, wandered in a vague fashion until they reached a river to which they gave his name. 1 This stream they ascended until September 12. They then turned east over a range of

i Washington Irvin i Bear river accor"

ng, Astoria, Philadelphia, 1841, II, ia8. ding to Irving, Ibid., II, 134, and, wit!

i Bear river according to Irving, Ibid., II, 134, and, with a query, according to Coues, Henry-Thompson Journals, Nw York, 1897, II, 8*4, note.