ties.[1] While attempting to ford the Umpqua River he was attacked by Indians, who killed fifteen of the company and took all their property. Smith, Turner, and two others[2] escaped to Fort Vancouver. McLoughlin of the Hudson's Bay Company sent back a party with one of the survivors to recover the lost effects, in which they are said to have been successful. Jedediah Smith returned eastward by a northern route in 1829, and two years later he was killed by the Indians in New Mexico. I append part of a map of 1826 purporting to show 'all the recent geographical discoveries' to that date.
An important topic, perhaps connected indirectly with Jedediah Smith's visit, is the first operations of the Hudson's Bay Company's trappers in California. Respecting these operations before 1830, I have no original and definite information, except that contained in the statement of J. J. Warner, himself an old trapper, still living in 1884, and an excellent authority on all connected with the earliest American pioneers, although he did not himself reach California until the beginning of the next decade.[3] Warner states
- ↑ Feb. 1, 1828, gov. to Martinez. Alludes to the abuses committed by Smith. Dept. Rec., MS., vi. 178. Probably he had stopped on the way to hunt and trap. June 26th, Cooper was thanked by J. Lennox Kennedy, U. S. consul at Mazatlan, for his services in Smith's behalf; will send documents to U. S. min. at Mexico. Vallejo, Doc., MS., xxix. 250. But May 6, 1820, he was ordered as bondsman by gov. to pay $176 due from Smith. Dept. Rec., MS., vii. 148. June 25, 1829. E. reports to the min. of rel. a rumor that the Americans intend to take S. Francisco, a plan which he ascribes to the advent of Smith. Id., vii. 25.
- ↑ There is a discrepancy of one man in totals, but there is also a compensating uncertainty about one of the men who remained in Cal. Cronise, Nat. Wealth of Cal., 42, erroneously names two of the three survivors Laughlin and Prior. Victor, River of the West, 35-6, names Turner and Black. The particulars of the Umpqua fight belong to other parts of this series. See Hist. Or. and Hist. Northwest Coast. The map given herewith is copied from one in Warren's Mem. In Pac. R. R. Repts, xi. pl. iii., being a reduction from A. Finley's map of N. America published at Philadelphia in 1826.
- ↑ Warner's Reminiscences of Early California, MS., 27-33. The author
American vessel. It is possible, but not I think probable, that such was the case, one of the vessels being chartered to take him up the coast to or beyond Bodega. Warner says Smith started up the interior valley, but on account of difficulties in the way, turned to the coast 200 miles above Ross. The men who remained, besides Galbraith and Bowman, were Bolbeda, Pombert, and probably Wilson.
