nia, and thus get the start of any American trappers that might be sent as a result of Smith's reports. Ogden was successful in this movement, and entered the great valley about the same time that McLeod left it.[1] He also obtained a rich harvest of skins during his stay of eight months, and carried his furs to the north by McLeod's trail. These were the only visits of Hudson Bay trappers before 1832.[2]
The visit of the Patties to California in 1828-30 is the topic next demanding attention. Sylvester Pattie, a Kentuckian, lieutenant of rangers against the Indians in 1812-13, and later a lumberman in Missouri, joined a trapping and trading expedition to New Mexico in 1824, with his son James Ohio Pattie. The father was about forty years of age, and the son a school-boy of perhaps fifteen. With their adventures in New Mexico and Arizona for the next three years I am not concerned here. More than once they visited the Gila, and in September 1827 the elder Pattie was made captain of a company of thirty trappers, organized at Santa Fé to operate on the Colorado.[3] They reached the Colorado and Gila junction December 1st, or at least the Patties and six men did so, the rest having left the Gila, striking northward some two weeks earlier. The eight of Pattie's party were in a desperate strait. They understood from the Yumas that there were Christians down the river, and started to find them, floating on canoe rafts, trapping successfully as they went, and
- ↑ It seems rather unlikely that this could have been accomplished so soon as the autumn of 1828. Either it was in 1829, or Smith had reached Fort Vancouver early in 1828, instead of in the autumn as has been supposed.
- ↑ Similar versions of McLeod's and Ogden's expeditions, originating probably indirectly from Warner, but perhaps also from the recollections of other old trappers, are given in the county histories, newspaper articles, and other recent publications. See also Hist. N. W. Coast, i., this series. Cronise, Nat. Wealth, 41, says that French Camp, near Stockton, was located by a party of these trappers who encamped here from 1829 to 1838. In Humphreys' Letter to Gwin, 1858, p. 5, is is stated that Richard Campbell of Sta Fé came with pack-mules from N. Orleans to S. Diego in 1827. I find nothing more on the subject.
- ↑ Pattie, Narr., 133, translates the passport given them.
