Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/110

72 Company officials objected, and he thought best not to force a passage. That fall he returned to Fort Vancouver.

"The following spring he was promoted to a chief factorship, the second on the Columbia, and placed in charge of the New Caledonia district, with six forts under his charge, with Headquarters at Fort St. James on Lake Stuart. There he remained until the spring of 1844, and was eminently successful in the management of the district, bringing in furs to the value of $100,000 to Fort Vancouver every spring. He was during this time, made a member of the board of management of the Columbia district, which met at Fort Vancouver every year.

"In 1844, he crossed the mountains on a year's leave of absence, and visited Canada and Europe, and returned in the summer of 1845, in charge of the Warre-Vavasour party, to the Columbia, in behalf of the British government. From that time he became the factor closest to the confidence of Colonial Governor, Simpson, and in many ways succeeded Dr. McLoughlin, who retired from Fort Vancouver in 1846. After James Douglas moved to Victoria in 1849, Mr. Ogden was in full charge of the Columbia up to the time of his death. The year 1852 he spent in Canada and New York and vicinity, and visited Washington to present claims of the company for advances during the Cayuse war, and assisted Governor Simpson in business matters there. Returning by way of the Isthmus of Panama in the winter of 1853, he was a passenger on the Tennessee, which was wrecked on the California coast, near Telegraph Rock, in March, and by some exertion or exposure, then contracted or aggravated some disease that caused his death. He died at the home of his favorite daughter, Mrs. Archibald McKinlay of Oregon city, in September, 1854, at the age sixty years. The Rev. St. Michael Fackler, officiated at his burial in the Mountain view cemetery of that city, where his grave may be seen, a wild rose bush its only adornment, and the shining peak of Mt. Hood, his only monument.

"Peter Skene Ogden was twice married to native women .(according to fur company custom.) His first wife was a Cree, and his second a Spokane woman. The latter resided with him for several years at Fort Vancouver, and afterward at Oregon city, where a house was built for her on the McKinlay donation claim. During his last illness, Dr. McLoughlin visited Mr. Ogden, and urged him to have a legal ceremony performed, but Mr. Ogden refused saying that his open support of, and companionship with this wife for many years counted for more than any mere words a clergyman might utter.

"The service for which Peter Skene Ogden is best known in Oregon was his ransom of the survivors of the Whitman massacre in December, 1847. It is probable that no other man, with the possible exception of Dr. Robert Newell, of Champoeg, could have accomplished this rescue. The Indians had known Mr. Ogden for more than thirty years, and knew that he always kept his word, and they trusted him. But he was careful to make them no promises, and not to upbraid them for what their Indian nature had made inevitable. He himself was not so very fond of the 'Missionarying,' as he called it, but had great admiration for Mrs. Whitman. He was known to the Indians during his later years as the Old White-Head. During his management at Fort Vancouver, he came to be generally known by the whites as Governor Ogden. He never became a citizen of the United States, but described himself in his will as of Montreal, Canada."

There are few instances in history where a man has filled so large a page in dealing with the native races of men as that of Peter Skene Ogden. And ther are none where greater patience, successful management and supreme courage were manifested. Dr. John McLoughlin whose great career will be set forth in another chapter, occupied a higher station than Ogden, and he had a greater part in managing the business of the company, but he says he was not so greatly