Page:The Whitman Controversy.pdf/48

 is all the facts, statements and efforts covertly used to hold possession of the country hy the Hudson's Bay Company, and notwithstand ing the hest British authority charge the company, through Dr. McLoughlin's generosity, with the cause of its being given up to the Americans, the company, as such, used their whole power and influence to retain it.

A British war vessel, The Modest, was kept at Vancouver, and bastions and careful defences attached to that establishment but a short time before the Whitman massacre commenced. Rev. Father Demers has given us another statement to confirm our position, and enlighten us on the policy of the Hudson's Bay Company in strengthening the fort. Page 148, "Catholic Church in Oregon," he says: "It is false that the company had anything to fear from the Indians; if the fort was repaired, bastions built, and all other protective and defensive measures were completed, it was to defend itself against another kind of savageness."

Until the publication of that Catholic church work in 1878 we were in doubt as to the object of the company, but had our suspicions that the measures taken by the company, as our Reverend M. Demers says, were as he affirms them to be, which brings to the writer's mind an old saying—"Children and fools will sometimes tell the truth." We must not forget that the good old Dr. McLoughlin had left the service of the company before the Whitman massacre and became a settler in Oregon City. Nor must we forget the statement of Mr. Ogden to Mr. Douglass, as found in Gray's history, pages 516–17. Honorable A. Hinman says: "We went first to Mr. Ogden's room and informed him of the massacre. He was shocked and said—'Mr. Hinman, you now see what op position in religion will do.' We then went to Mr Douglass' room and informed him, and when Mr. Ogden was pacing the room he said—' Mr. Douglass, you see now what opposition in religion does.' After a moment's pause, Mr. Douglass replied—' There may be other causes.'" What were the causes except to dispose of Americans?

After Dr. McLoughlin left that company we have only to turn to their treatment of their own countrymen in their own hunting grounds to show their policy and treatment to be inhuman, as the British author affirms.