Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/97

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ACCOMMODATION COURT.
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in office was a whig, with whose appointments they were predetermined not to be pleased. The officers elected by the legislature were: A. A. Skinner, commissioner to settle the Cayuse war debt; Bernard Genoise, territorial auditor; James Taylor, treasurer; Wm. T. Matlock, librarian; James McBride, superintendent of schools; C. M. Walker, prosecuting attorney, first judicial district; David Stone, prosecuting attorney, second judicial district; Wilson Blain, public printer; A. L. Lovejoy and W. W. Buck, commissioners to let the printing of the laws and journals. Other offices being still vacant, an act was passed providing for a special election to be held in each of the several counties on the third Monday in October for the election of probate judges, clerks, sheriffs, assessors, treasurers, school commissioners, and justices of the peace.

As by the territorial act the governor had no veto power, congress having reserved this right, there was nothing for him to do at Oregon City; and being accustomed of late to the stir and incident of military camps he longed for activity, and employed his time visiting the Indians on the coast, and sending couriers to the Cayuses, to endeavor to prevail upon them to give up the Waiilatpu murderers.[1] The legislative assembly having in the mean time passed a special act to enable him to bring to trial the Snoqualimichs, and Thornton's munificent offer of reward having prompted the avaricious savages to give up to Captain Hill at Steilacoom certain of their number to be dealt with according to the white man's law, Lane had the satisfaction of seeing, about the last of September, the first district court, marshal and jurymen, grand and petit, on the way to Puget Sound,[2] where the

  1. Lane's Autobiography, MS., 55; 31st Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 47, viii. pt. iii. 112.
  2. There was a good deal of feeling on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company concerning Lane's course, though according to Tolmie's account, in Truth Teller, the Indians were committing hostilities against them as well as