Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/698

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
WHITE PEOPLE AT WAIILATPU.
647

am indebted for a voluminous narrative of pioneer events,[1] says was in October, he again met the caravans at the Umatilla.[2]

From the train to which Crawford belonged he selected several persons whom he engaged to aid him in various ways at Waiilatpu. He secured a man named Saunders as a teacher, who with his wife and children agreed to go to the mission; a tailor named Isaac Gilliland, and a farmer named Kimball, from Indiana, among whose family was a daughter of seventeen.[3] There were already at the mission many who intended to winter there, part of a company from Oscaloosa, Iowa, and others,[4] in all fifty-four, some

  1. P. W. Crawford was born on the right bank of the Tweed, in Roxburyshire, Scotland, not far from the home of Walter Scott. He was taught the elementary branches in this neighborhood, but studied mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, where he learned surveying. For a short time after leaving the university he was in the service of a large commercial firm in London, and again at Southampton. From there he went to Quebec, and thence to Toronto and other parts of Canada, after which he travelled through the northern tier of states on the south side of the lakes, living for some time in Michigan and Illinois. He came to Oregon in 1847 in company with a family named Cline, and took a land claim on the Cowlitz River in November 1847, where he lived long and happily. Crawford's Narrative of the Overland Journey, containing also a history of early and subsequent events, is, without regard to style, the most complete record extant of the times it represents, and manifests throughout the author's remarkable powers of observation.
  2. Crawford says the doctor had been on 'a mission of benevolence, conveying and escorting a company of immigrants over a new and much improved route to the Dalles, and who gave us another cut-off so as to shorten our route and give us good grass and water all the way.' Nar., MS., 51. This affectionate reference, with which the historian even for truth's sake has no occasion to meddle, since the doctor could at the same time attend to his own business of establishing the new station at the Dalles, and pilot the immigration over the road to that place, comports with the general impression of his willingness to be of service. Crawford speaks of him as being at this time a stout and robust looking man, of a seemingly strong and intelligent mind. Nar., MS., 52.
  3. Gilliland was from Long Island, and was an elderly man without family. L. Woodbury Saunders was a native of New Hampshire, but had resided in central New York, and also in Indiana, from which latter state he emigrated. His wife was from Vermont, her maiden name being Mary Montgomery, and her mother's maiden name Stickney, from an old English family. Mrs Saunders later married Alanson Husted.
  4. The persons at Waiilatpu after the new selections had been made were Joseph and Hannah Smith and 5 children, the elder of them being a girl of 16; Mr and Mrs Saunders and 5 children, the elder a girl of 14; Mr and Mrs Kimball and 5 children, the elder a girl of 16; Joseph and Sally Ann Canfield and 5 children, the elder a girl of 16; Mr and Mrs Hall and 5 children, the elder a girl of 10; Josiah and Margaret Osborne and 3 children, the elder a girl of 9; Elam and Irene Young and 3 sons, the eldest aged 21; Mrs Rebecca Hays and one young child; Miss Lorinda Bewley and her brother,