Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/34

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

26 JUDGE WILLIAM C. BROWN

murder of Chief Factor Black at Kamloops in 1841, he being a boy of some 6 or 7, and was there at the time. John Todd's journal also shows that the La Fleur family was at Kamloops then.

The history of Fort Okanogan could be written almost year by year if all available sources of information were drawn upon. The works of Ross covers the years from 1811 to 1816 and to some extent later. Cox covers 1813 to 1816. Fran- chere's "Narrative" indirectly relates to Okanogan more or less from 1811 to 1814. The journals of John Work commence in the early twenties and cover many years. He was much at Okanogan and he is the most valuable original source as to the place in the twenties and thirties, as he gives us a wealth of the every day occurrences there, mostly the comings and goings incident to the trade. For the period about 1841 the journal of John Todd, written while in charge at Kamloops, tells us a very great deal about what was going on at Okanogan during that time. For Okanogan and Kamloops were next door neighbors in those days and there was much intercourse between the two places. Another very valuable source of original information in regard to Fort Okanogan and the other Hudson Bay Company posts in old Oregon, is the testimony given in the matter of the adjustment of the claims of the Hudson Bay Company against the United States for the pay- ment of indemnity on account of the giving up of their posts and lands. The record of these proceedings, including a transcript of the testimony, was printed by government author- ity, and the same fills a set of books comprising many volumes. It is said that there is only one library in the United States possessing a complete set, and that is in the Congressional Library at Washington, but there is a partial set in the library of the State University at Seattle. The testimony was taken mostly by deposition at various places along in the middle sixties. Many officers and ex-officers of the Hudson Bay Company testified as to the use the company had made of the old fort, and also how they had for a great many years utilized for grazing purposes a wide extent of range adjacent thereto.