Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/156

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128
Fred Wilbur Powell

desire to prevent the settlement of Americans on the Columbia. He claimed that Captain Dominis of the brig Owyhee of Bos- ton, who was in the Columbia in 1829, had communicated to McLoughlin information as to Kelle/s purpose to colonize Oregon, and that the chief factor at once prepared to protect the monopoly of his company by discouraging trade with Americans and by preempting the most desirable sites.^

Again it is necessary to record the defeat of Kelley; but again it must be said that while the result of his efforts was personal failure, the actual result was success. Through the American Society he had started the movement which led to the coming of Wyeth and demonstrated the practicability of the overland route ; he had aroused the churches to the oppor- tunity for work among the Indians, which led to the coming of the Lees and other missionaries. Now he had brought into the Oregon country nine men, most of them American citi- zens, who with Calvin Tibbetts were to remain as settlers, thus establishing American occupation and ultimate domination in that territory.*^ All this was not apparent at the time ; least of all to Kelley. To those at Fort Vancouver he appeared as a strange, almost pathetic figure; the wreck of a man in his prime, whose race was about run. In his Recollections of the Hudson's Bay Company, as quoted by Bancroft, George B. Roberts said: 'I remember the visit of Hall J. Kelley. He was penniless and ill-clad, and considered rather too rough for close companionship, and was not invited to the mess. He

a4S*ttitm€nt of Ortgon, 86-7; ColoniaaHon of Oregon, 6. H« alao said that Dominis Kare McLoughlin a copy of the General Circular; but that pamphlet was not issuea until 1831. We may well believe, however, that the Hudson's Bay authorities were informed of the movement for Oreson settlement in congress in iSaS, for they were men of sa^[acity, and it is unlikely that they failed to keep in touch with the British legation at Washington. It is possible also that Dr. McLoughlin may have learned of the movement for emigration from the American trapper and fur trader, Tedediah Smith, who was at Fort Vancouver from Augott, 1828, to March, 1820.— -Elliott, Dr. John McLoughlin and his guests, Washington Historical Society, Quarterly. Ill, 67-8.

25 The members of the party, in addition to Kdley and Young, were: Brandy- wine, Lawrence Carmichael, Elisha Ezeldel, Joseph GaJe, Webley John Hawkbur^ John Howard, Kilbom, John McCarty, and George Wlnslow. Ezekid was a wheelrigfat; Hawkhurst, a native of Long Island, was a carpenter; Gale was a native of the District of Columbia; Winslow was colored. The names are given in Bancroft, Oregon. I, I^TJ^ upon the authority of Gray, Oregon, xgx, supple- mented by Lee and Frost, Ten Years in Oregon, 129. Gray made no mention of Kelley.