EWING YOUNG AND His ESTATE 175
supplies." But just across the river from the mission lived Ewing Young who said to Slacum, "A cloud hung over him so long, through Dr. McLoughlin's influence, that he was almost maddened by the harsh treatment he had received from that gentleman." It should be noted that this was two years and a half after Ewing Young had arrived from California and the false charge lodged against him that he was at the head of a party of horse thieves. The exemplary conduct of himself and his associates had not sufficed to secure that at- titude toward him on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company authorities, or of those under their influence, including the mis- sion people, but that he felt that he was an outcast. Young had some 81 horses and mules, about half as many as all the rest of the settlement, and only twenty-nine acres in cultiva- tion on which to use them. Evidently the order given by Dr. McLoughlin on Young's arrival in the country that the Can- adian farmers should not trade with him continued to be in force. The hostile boycott was still effective. It meant, and was intended to mean, eventual exclusion from Oregon. Young had become desperate. If he could not get into relations of mutual advantage and co-operation with his fellowmen and neighbors through exchange of his surplus of beaver skins, horses or wheat for the vital necessities of a civilized life he proposed to erect a distillery and offer a commodity for which white man and Indian would risk the danger of the displeasure of the Hudson's Bay Company and their own destruction as well. Accordingly a caldron had been secured from the dis- mantled establishment at Fort William, a building completed, the arch raised and the boiler set for use as a still. 3 Jason Lee with the missionaries now rightly became active in the organ- ization of a defense against this menace to the community. A temperance society was formed which sent a courteous plea to Young to desist and offered remuneration for the expenses already incurred. It was at this stage that Slacum appeared on the scene.
3 White, Ten Years in Oregon, p. 78.
