patches to Washington City. This journey will be an arduous one,
and I would recommend him to the favorable notice of your excel
lency.
I have the honor to be, etc.,
GEORGE ABERNETHY, Governor of Oregon.
Meek, like most of the men at this time in Oregon, was in the prime of life, and had a young family to provide for. He could not start at once on a journey of several thousand miles, leaving nothing for them arid taking nothing himself. Neither did he agree with the governor as to the route best to be pursued, Abernethy wishing him to go to California, with dispatches for Governor Mason, and thence east; but the experienced mountain man was a better judge of the business before him than the executive, and chose to accompany the volunteers to the seat of war, and to take the immigrant route, which he had been one of the first to travel, as an immigrant, and which led through a country with which he was familiar. This decision, owing to various impediments in the way of the army, retarded his movements, until the patience of the executive was exhausted, as we shall see hereafter.
On the twenty-fifth of December, after a secret session of the legislature to confer with the governor, there was issued the following proclamation :
In consequence of the low state of the finances of this country, and the general impression being that the Indians of the upper country were not united, a small force was thought sufficient to proceed to Walla Walla to punish the Cayuse Indians, and a proc lamation was issued by me asking for one hundred men, since which information has been received here which leads to the belief that the Indians have united, and the force ordered out in that case being insufficient, I therefore call on the citizens of the territory to furnish five hundred men, and appoint the following persons brevet captains to enroll such citizens as may wish to enlist, viz., Wesley Shannon, John Ford, and Thomas McKay, Champoeg county; John Owens, Wm. Williams, and John Stewart, Polk county; Philip Thompson, George Nelson, and Felix Scott, Yamhill county; Isaac W. Smith, and Benjamin Q,. Tucker, Tualatin county; James Officer
