Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/129

Rh could be prepared to decide, and nothing was clone then, nor for twenty years afterward, toward the purchase of Hudson's Bay Company claims, during which time their forts, never of much value except for the purposes of the company, went to decay, and the lands of the Puget Sound Company were covered with American squatters, who, holding that the rights of the company under the treaty of 1846 were not in the nature of an actual grant, but merely possessory so far as the company required the land for use until their charter expired, looked upon their pretensions as unfounded, and treated them as trespassers, Roberts, who was a stockholder in the Puget Sound Company, took charge of the Cowlitz farm in 1846. Matters went on very well for two years. Then came the gold excitement and demoralization of the company's servants consequent upon it, and the expectation of a donation land law. He left the farm which he found it impossible to carry on, and took up a land claim as a settler outside its limits, becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States. But pioneer farming was not either agreeable or profitable to him, and was besides interrupted by an Indian war, when he became clerk to the quartermaster general. When the Frazer River mining excitement came on he thought he might possibly make something at the Cowlitz by raising provisions. But when his hay was cut and put up in cocks it was taken away by armed men who had squatted on the land; and when the case came into court the jury decided that they knew nothing about treaties, but did understand the rights of American citizens under the land law. Then followed arson and other troubles with the squatters, who took away his crops year after year. The lawyers to whom he appealed could do nothing for him, and it was only by the interference of other people who became ashamed of seeing a good man persecuted in this manner, that the squatters on the Cowlitz farm, were finally compelled to desist from these acts, and Roberts was left in peace until the Washington delegate, Garfield, secured patents for his clients the squatters, and Roberts was evicted. There certainly should have been some way of preventing outrages of this kind, and the government should have seen to it that its treaties were respected by the people. But the people's representatives, to win favor with their constituents, persistently helped to instigate a feeling of opposition to the claims of the British companies, or to create a doubt of their validity. See Roberts' Recollections, MS., 75. at the same time that they were compelled to pay taxes as proprietors.

Gradually the different posts were abandoned. The land at Fort Umpqua was let in 1853 to W. W. Chapman, who purchased the cattle belonging to it, which travellers were in the habit of shooting as