DOCUMENTARY 217
But the real bitterness between the two men began with the death of young John McLoughlin at Stickeen. This was touched upon by an important letter published in this Quarterly, June, 1914 (Volume 25).
Now young McLoughlin and young McLeod got mixed up, in some way, in the Canadian Rebellion of 1837, while they were both either in the Red River country or in eastern Canada. I have not yet been able to get details, and have only one of Simpson's letters which show that they had made themselves so conspicuous that they had fallen under the dis- pleasure of the United States Government. Governor Simpson got both youths out of the scrape and sent McLoughlin to the mouth of the Columbia with his father. It was only five years later that the young man was murdered, having unwisely been sent to one of the most dangerous posts on the coast, with a crew of insolent, insubordinate, undisciplined men, without any second officer, and himself not old enough nor experienced enough, nor with judgment enough, to manage the post with- out assistance. It was almost a crime to send him there, as I see it rash and inexperienced as he was and most unwise and ungenerous in Simpson to send away his second officer and leave the novice there alone, if it was done through dis- like. Yet those things did happen, without fatal results, and without personal motives, in the exigencies of the fur trade, and one has only to read letter after letter of McLoughlin, to the Governor and Committee, and to Simpson, to feel that nothing but the utmost skill, determination, and British firm- ness and justice ever carried the Company through those years without massacre.
In this connection it might be well to note, because the Com- pany has been maligned, that many residents of the Red River country begged that the Company should keep control of that country while there were Indians in it, because of their won- derful control of the natives ; that there never was a massacre in the Oregon country, or an Indian war, until the natives knew that the British no longer had control of the country;
