he married his first wife, the daughter of a sub-chief of the Nez Perce tribe. Joseph Meek is said to have married another daughter in the same family but to have had trouble in getting her; we are told this in "The River of the West." There is no record of similar troubles by Dr. Newell. But the competition of the Hudson's Bay Company was too much for the American trappers and there was no future to such a life, and in 1840 Newell determined to take his chances on the acquisition of Oregon by the Americans and to move down to the Willamette Valley (whither his fellow trapper Ebbert had already gone) and persuaded some of his comrades to go with him. In making this journey, he pioneered the way for wagons (horse canoes, the Indians called them) from Fort Hall across the Snake River Plains and through the Blue Mountains to the Columbia River. The story of that really important occurrence is best told in his own modest language. The following is taken from the annual address delivered at the meeting of the members of the Oregon Pioneer Association at Salem, Oregon, on June 16, 1876, by the Hon, Elwood Evans of Olympia, Washington, and printed in the "Transactions" for that year:
"Let me now refer to the statement of the late Dr. Robert Newell, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Oregon in 1846, a name familiar and held in high remembrance by acient Oregonians. It is interesting for its history, and in the present occasion illustrates the difficulty, at that time, of getting into Oregon. It details the bringing of the first wagon to Fort Walla Walla, Oregon, in 1840, the Wallula of Washington Territory. The party consisted of Dr. Newell and family, Col. Jos. L. Meek and family, Caleb Wilkins of Tualatin Plains, and Frederick (should be Francis) Ermatinger, a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company. It had been regarded as the height of folly to attempt to bring wagons west of Fort Hall. The Doctor suggested the experiment. Wilkins approved it and Ermatinger yielded. The Revs. Harvey Clark, A. B. Smith, and P. B. Littlejohn, missionaries, had accompanied the American Fur Company's expedition as far as Green River, where they employed Dr. Newell to pilot them to Fort Hall. On arriving there they
