Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/202



190 F. G. YOUNG

EWING YOUNG IN CALIFORNIA 31

By 1830 Ewing Young had secured recognition as one of the three or four leaders of trapping and trading expeditions westward out of Taos, New Mexico, down the Gila and across the Colorado into California. The annals of California of the early thirties exhibit him possessed of a passport signed by Henry Clay and vised by the Mexican minister at Wash- ington, March 30, 1828. This authorized the activities he was pursuing. In 1830 at the head of a group of a dozen trap- pers he passed north through the Tulares region, penetrating as far as San Jose. His band aided the mission authorities to recapture some runaway neophytes. He thus was in the good graces of the mission. But he had trouble with his own men. Three in the vicinity of San Jose deserted him and others when he was in the region east of Los Angeles quarreled among themselves with the result that one of their number was killed. In fact so insecure did he feel his hold on his party that instead of returning from the Colorado, where his trap- ping terminated in December, to southern California to ex- change his catch of fur for mules and thus obtain a larger margin of profit, he hastened directly home to Taos. Kit Carson was probably with Young in this 1830 expedition.

Young was not ready to start on his second expedition over this southeastern entrance to California before September, 1831. In the meantime he had become associated with David E. Jackson, formerly a partner of Sublette's and with David Waldo. Their plan of operations continued much the same as on Young's first expedition in 1830. They were to accumu- late a stock of beaver skins trapping the Gila and other streams on the way, trade for mules and horses in the region of Los Angeles and these were to be taken back for the Louisiana market. They were in demand too for the caravans plying between Santa Fe and St. Louis. Jackson with a detachment of nine hired men and a negro slave proceeded directly to

31 Bancroft, History of California, v. II, 600; v. Ill, pp. 174-5, 180, 317, 387-8, 393-4, 410, 630; v. IV, 85-7, 263-4.