Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/256

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242 T. C. ELLIOTT

cloth, a sword, jacket and hat;" and in their journals also appears a list of the names of about a dozen traders who had been accustomed to frequent the Coast at the mouth of the river. When Lieut. Broughton, of the British Royal Navy, in the Chatham sailed cautiously into the Columbia River in the early afternoon of October 21, 1792, he passed at anchor behind Cape Disappointment a trading brig named the Jenny, one Captain Baker in command (after whom Baker's Bay takes its name) and Broughton records that this captain had been there earlier in the same year. The name of Captain Baker does not appear on the list of names set down by Lewis and Clark; by them this same bay was named Haley's Bay, after a trader then best known to the Chinook Indians. These brief recitals in authentic records have led some to an unanswered inquiry as to whether some itinerant trader may not have actually sailed into the Columbia River in advance of its dis- covery by Captain Robert Gray in May, 1792. The diplomats of Great Britain raised no such claim in connection with the dispute over the Oregon boundary line, however.

Turning now to the sources of the Columbia an interesting contrast exists between the beginning of trade there with that on the upper Missouri River, across the Rocky Mountain range. Manual Lisa is the name prominently conected with the Mis- souri River at that period ; immediately following the return of the Lewis and Clark expedition Lisa built a trading post on the Yellowstone River at the mouth of the Big Horn and began to purchase furs for transport to St. Louis; that was during the summer of 1807. At the same time David Thompson, a partner of the North-West Company of Canada, was building an establishment at the head waters of the Columbia from which he transported furs to the Rainy Lakes, and Fort Wil- liam on Lake Superior. Manual Lisa had troubles enough with snags and Indians along the Missouri and was resourceful to overcome them. David Thompson experienced even greater difficulties in crossing the Rocky Mountains and descending the long course of the Saskatchewan River to Lake Winnipeg. David Thompson is one of the most remarkable figures con-