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EWING YOUNG AND His ESTATE 189

MEXICAN DOCUMENTS AND THOSE OF THE PARISH OF TAOS,

NEW MEXICO, THROW LIGHT ON THE WESTWARD

MOVEMENT OF EWING YOUNG

In all probability, then, it was Ewing Young that one morn- ing in May, 1826, left Fort Osage, Missouri, in an expedition gotten up by Ceran St. Vrain. It was destined for the Rocky Mountains. It arrived at Santa Fe probably late in June. On the 29th of August, 1826, Antonio Narbona, governor of New Mexico, issued at Santa Fe a passport to this company to "pass to the state of Sonora for private trade." 26 Complaints were soon filed against them by Mexican beaver hunters and others that they were threatening the extinction "of a product so useful and so valuable;" that they were arrogant and "had talked in an insolent manner," and that they were "getting alarming quantities of peltries frequently without paying even an eighth of the customs to the treasury." 27 By 1830 Young is clearly identified as an independent leader of trapping and mule trading parties entering California. 28 In one of these expeditions he was a partner of David Waldo and David E. Jackson, formerly an associate of Sublette. 29 From this point on in his career the California documents keep him clearly in view. Only one definitely established and interesting fact is known about him in that interim between his connection with the St. Vrain expedition to the Gila and his final departure from New Mexico to California in September, 1831. This fact is certified to in the affidavit of Kit Carson and two residents of Taos already referred to. Young seems for a time to have identified himself with that community. For the affidavit says he "left this territory about the year thirty-two or there-abouts and that said Young had lived as man and wife with Maria Josefa Tafoya and that said Maria Josefa Tafoya had issue by said Young as acknowledged by him, that said issue was a boy and called Jose Joaquin. . . ." The same who appeared to claim, and who in 1855 received, the proceeds of the Ewing Young estate from the Territory of Oregon. 30

26 Marshall, op. cit., p. 253.

27 Quoted from Marshall, op. cit., 257-9-

28 Bancroft, History of California, v. II, p. 600; v. Ill, pp. 174-5.

29 Ibid, v. Ill, pp. 387-8; Documentary Record, appendix, I, p. 203.

30 Documentary Record, appendix, pp. 197-202.