Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/263

Peter Skene Ogden, Fur Trader. 241 their lives back to Fort George. The result of that escapade was a grand wedding at Fort George in April, 1819, at which the daughter of Chief How How, of the Cowlitz tribe, became the wife of one of the gentlemen of the fort. Whether Mr. Ogden was the groom we do not know, but bashfulness would not have been a prevailing hindrance. The record is silent, also, as to his presence at another event at Fort George on October 6th of 1818, when J. B. Prevost, special commissioner of the United States, arrived in H. M. ship Blossom, and went through the formality of raising the Stars and Stripes over the fort, an occurrence that seems to have been viewed in the light of a joke by the participants, but really was of considerable importance in the claim of the United States to the Oregon Country." As Peter Skene Ogden was learned in legal phrases, the first lawyer to reside in Oregon we may say, let us romance a little and suppose that he was present and entered a demurrer to the proceeding. In 1820, Mr. Ogden acquired an interest in the Northwest Company. Among the family papers is one yellow and worn and bearing the written signatures of all the partners of the Northwest Company present and voting (some very promi- nent names of the fur trade) at the annual meeting held at Fort William in July of 1820, reciting the transfer to Peter S. Ogden of one share in the company and his admission as a partner. That year he appears to have been in charge in the Shuswap country, for in a report written from Thompson river (British Columbia) in 1823 by John McLeod, who was then there, it is stated in regard to the Indians living on a certain branch of the river that "Mr. Ogden three years ago made an attempt to send freemen up this North river, but in consequence of some dissension that broke out amongst them they returned (having) been 40 miles up the river." This statement is as yet the only direct reference found as to his whereabouts in 1820 and 182 1, but from his familiarity a