Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/405

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Hall J. Kelley.
389

purchased, to reclaim it on the pretense that it was stolen. Young had lost $18, 000 or $20,000 worth of furs in California, but he had taken away with him nearly a hundred horses. The first thought of a Calif ornian would be that these were somewhat in the nature of a reprisal, since horses in Oregon were worth much more than in California. At all events Governor Figueroa thought proper to warn the chief of the Hudson's Bay Company against the Americans, and the Americans were only too ready to turn to political account this exhibition of authority by a "foreigner."

Doctor McLoughlin, on the other hand, always desiring to be just, and by nature generous, yet the representative of a corporation which did not feel bound to be either except from motives of policy, was moved by the indignant utterances of the Americans to inquire further of Figueroa, from whom he finally received information which caused him to offer Young the privilege of purchasing goods at the company's store. This offer was scornfully rejected, and the Tennessee trader, as imperious in his rags as the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in his broadcloth, made himself felt as a power in the Wallamet, defying both fur companies and missionaries to deprive him of his rights as an American in Oregon, and setting an example of independence to others. Nor did any of Young's party prove to be unworthy pioneers. One of them, Webley J. Hauxhurst, a New Yorker from Long Island, built a grist-mill at Champoeg, the first one in the valley, and afterwards joined the Methodist mission church. Joseph Gale became an influential member of the colony from the American standpoint.

Young settled on the west side of the Wallamet, opposite Vancouver, but finding it difficult to fling off the odium resulting from the injurious poster, which although with-