Hall Jackson Kelley 123
five innocent, and to all appearances, upright and manly men, and perforated their bodies with balls, while weltering in their blood. I heard but a single groan. Two or three of the party, mounting their horses, hastened to murder in like manner the other two, and they were shot while fording the stream.
"Now my conductor, looking sharply at me, said, 'Mr. Kel- ley, what do you think of this?' I felt it my duty to give an evasive answer : 'We must protect ourselves in the wilderness among hostile Indians.' Doubtless, if my answer had not been that way, I should have been also shot."**
Although Kelley had failed to obtain official permission to survey the country through which he passed, he made as thorough an examinaticm as possible and recorded the results of his observaticms. Upon the basis of these notes and of the information subsequently obtained in Oregon, he prepared a "Map of Upper California and Oregon," which in 1839 ^^ P^^ into the hands of Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts, chairman of the house committee on foreign affairs. According to his statement, this map "was examined by Col. Fremont, who explored the same country in 1837 ^^ '40 [1843-4], and was pronounced remarkably correct. It was the first ever made by an American of the valley of the Sacramento."** From the confusion of dates and from the fact that Fremont did not refer to diis map in any of his reports, it may be inferred that the examination of the map was made after Fremont's return and not before.
This map, together with a reproduction on a smaller scale, is now in the bureau of indexes and archives of the department of state, having been recovered by Kelley and transmitted to Joel R. Poinsett, secretary of war, under date of June 12, 1839. It is a rough draft, but as Kelley said in his letter, "It is the knotidedge imparted by the map that gives it value, and not the mere mechanical execution of it." Upon it a dotted line indicates Kelley's route through California and Oregon.
In California as in Mexico, the possibilities of development
15 Ibid., 108-10; tee ateo Clarke, Pioneer Days of Oregon, I, 99^7,
