[Footnote 15: Franchère, one of the scribbling clerks whom Thorn so detested, says this man was Weekes, who almost lost his life entering the Columbia. Irving, who drew much of his material from Franchère, says Lewis, and may have had special information from Mr. Astor; but all accounts--Franchère's, and Ross Cox's, and Alexander Ross's--are from the same source, the Indian interpreter, who, in the confusion of the massacre, sprang overboard into the canoes of the squaws, who spared him on account of his race. Franchère became prominent in Montreal, Cox in British Columbia, and Ross in Red River Settlement of Winnipeg, where the story of the fur company conflict became folk-lore to the old settlers. There is scarcely a family but has some ancestor who took part in the contest among the fur companies at the opening of the nineteenth century, and the tale is part of the settlement's traditions.] [Footnote 16: A partner in trade with Crooks, both of whom lost everything going up the Missouri in Lisa's wake.] [Footnote 17: Doings in the North-West camp have only become known of late from the daily journals of two North-West partners--MacDonald of Garth, whose papers were made public by a descendant of the MacKenzies, and Alexander Henry, whose account is in the Ottawa Library.] CHAPTER III THE NOR' WESTERS' COUP "_It had been decided in council at Fort William that the company should send the Isaac Todd to the Columbia River, where the Americans had established Astoria, and that a party should proceed from Fort William (overland) to meet the ship on the coast_," wrote MacDonald of Garth, a North-West partner, for the perusal of his children. This was decided at the North-West council of 1812, held annually on the shores of Lake Superior. It was just a year from the time that Thompson had discovered the American fort in the hands of former Nor' Westers. At this meeting Thompson's report must have been read. The overland party was to be led by the two partners, John George MacTavish and Alexander Henry, the sea expedition on the Isaac Todd by Donald MacTavish, who had actually been appointed governor of the American fort in anticipation of victory. On the Isaac Todd also went MacDonald of Garth.[18] The overland expedition was to thread that labyrinth of water-ways connecting Lake Superior and the Saskatchewan, thence across the plains to Athabasca, over the northern Rockies, past Jasper House, through Yellow Head Pass, and down half the length of the Columbia through Kootenay plains to Astoria. One has only to recall the roaring cañons of the northern Rockies, with their sheer cataracts and bottomless precipices, to realize how much more hazardous this route was than that followed by Hunt from St. Louis to Astoria. Hunt had to cross only the plains and the width of the Rockies. The Nor' Westers not only did this, but passed down the middle of the Rockies for nearly a thousand miles.