White had hardly reached home when he was called to the mouth of the Columbia to take measures for the arrest and punishment of George Geer, a sailor who had deserted from an American vessel which had been in the river selling liquor to the natives.[1] Geer had acted as agent in this nefarious business, which had occasioned battles and bloodshed among the Clatsops and Chinooks; and Frost had protested somewhat warmly, as his own life as well as the lives of the contestants was endangered. This so enraged Geer, who was, as White expressed it, "a fool as well as a villain," that he offered a bribe of five blankets to the natives to murder Frost. White arrested the man, but not knowing what to do with him in the absence of any law, prevailed on McLoughlin to allow him to accompany the Hudson's Bay Company's express across the mountains, on a promise never to return to the country.
By the 1st of April, 1843, White had eight prisoners on his hands, mostly Indians, guilty of various crimes, principally horse-stealing and petty larceny of articles of food. He says in his report that "crimes are multiplying with numbers among the whites, and with scarcity of game among the Indians." The crimes of which the white men were guilty seem to have been few, and were probably violations of the laws of the United States regulating intercourse with the natives. In his zeal to perform his whole duty, White may have sometimes listened to complaints which might have been disregarded. He was confessedly in doubt as to his authority to prevent certain acts which he found injurious to the general peace, and was compelled to ask the commissioner of Indian affairs for specific instructions in the premises.[2] Letters received from Spalding and Brewer testified to the better behavior of the natives at their stations during the winter, but
