The Washington Historical Quarterly, Volume V, 1914Various
History
The Washington Historical Quarterly, Volume V, 1914
Various
Northwest, Pacific -- History -- Periodicals
Readers of the Washington Historical Quarterly have already become
acquainted with Mr. John Work, an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company,
through his previous journal--with introductory note--published in
Volume III, pp. 198-228, recording the details of the journey of an
expedition from Fort George on the Columbia river to the Fraser river
and back in November-December, 1824, (in which he remarked among other
things about the "weighty rain" common to the Coast and Puget Sound
localities). Mr. Work's particular duties during January-May, 1825,
we do not know; this was the period during which Governor Simpson and
Chief Factor John McLoughlin selected the site for Fort Vancouver and
the headquarters were removed from Fort George (Astoria) to the new
location, which was on the high ground east of the present city of
Vancouver, Washington, where the buildings of the Washington (State)
Asylum for the Blind and Deaf now stand. Governor Simpson returned up
the Columbia river in March, 1825, with the Express bound for York
Factory on Hudson's Bay, but events indicate that he already had
learned to place much confidence in the young clerk John Work. In June,
Mr. Work finds himself assigned to duty in the interior and accompanies
the "brigade" of officers and voyagers under Mr. John McLeod returning
up the river with goods for the trade at the various interior forts.
Mr. McLeod was then stationed at Thompson River (Kamloops) but had
been given leave to return across the mountains to Hudson's Bay the
following spring.
Readers of the "three synoptical writers of Astoria," as Dr. Elliott
Coues designates Gabriel Franchere, Alexander Ross and Ross Cox, have
had occasion perhaps to tire of the narratives of successive journeys
up and down the Columbia river with the constant encounters with
the Indians at the Cascades and Dalles portages. In this journal we
have another account of the same journey and discover that with the
education of the Indians of the Columbia to the fixed and just policy
of the Northwest and Hudson's Bay Companies in their trade relations,
the hatred and distrust and armed resistance of these Indians has
already ceased to a great extent and that only the natural disposition
to pilfer has to be taken much into account.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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