treaty with the Rogue River people, he went to California and busied himself with gold mining until the spring of 1851, when his friends and admirers recalled him to Oregon to run for delegate to congress. About the time of his return the rifle regiment departed to return by sea to Jefferson barracks, near St Louis, having been reduced to a mere remnant by desertions, and never having rendered any service of importance to the territory. 72 12 Brackett's U. S. Cavalry, 129-30. It was recruited afterward and sent to Texas under its colonel, Brevet General P. F. Smith. CHAPTER IV. A DELEGATE TO CONGRESS. 1849-1850. THE EARLY JUDICIARY — ISLAND MILLS-ARRIVAL OF WILLIAM STRONG- DURING the transition period through which the territory was passing, complaint was made that the judges devoted time to personal enterprises which was demanded for the public service. I am disposed to think that those who criticised the judges of the United States courts caviled because they overlooked the conditions then existing. The members of the territorial supreme court Were Chief Justice Bryant and Associate Justice Pratt. Within a few months, the chief justice's health O. C. Pratt was born April 24, 1819, in Ontario County, New York. He entered West Point, in the class of 1837, and took two years of the course. His stand during this time was good, but he did not find technical military training congenial to his tastes, excepting the higher mathematics, and he obtained the consent of his parents to resign his cadetship, in order to complete his study of law, to which he had devoted two years previous to entering the Military Academy. He passed his examination before the supreme court of New York in 1840, and was admitted to the bar. During this year he took an active part in the presidential campaign as an advocate of the election of Martin Van Buren. In 1843 he moved to Galena, Illinois, and established himself as an attorney at law. In 1844 he entered heartily into politics, as a friend of Polk, and attracted attention by his cogent discussion of the issues then uppermost, the annexation of Texas, and the Oregon question. In 1847 he was a member of the convention to make the first revision having become impaired, he left Oregon, returned to Indiana, resigned, and soon after died. Associate Justice Burnett, being in California, and very lucratively employed at the time that he learned of his appointment, declined it; and as their successors, Thomas Nelson and William Strong,2 were not soon appointed, and came ultimately to their field of duty around Cape Horn, Judge Pratt was left unaided nearly two years in the judicial labors of the territory. By act of congress, March 3, 1859, it was provided, in the absence of United States courts in California, violations of the revenue laws might be prosecuted before the judges of the supreme court of Oregon. Under this statute, Judge Pratt went to San Francisco, by request of the secretary of the treasury, in 1849, and assisted in the adjustment of several important admiralty cases. Also, about the same time, in his own district, at Portland, Oregon, as district judge of the United States for the territory of Oregon, he held the first court of admiralty jurisdiction within the limits of the region now covered by the states of Oregon and California. Another evil to the peace and quiet of the community, and to the security of property, arose soon after the advent of the new justices-Strong, in August of the constitution of Illinois. In the service of the government he crossed the plains to Santa Fé; thence to California. In 1848 he became a member of the supreme court of Oregon, as noted. He was a man of striking and distinguished personnel, fine sensibilities, analytic intelligence, eloquent, learned in the law, and honorable. 2 William Strong was born in St Albans, Vermont, in 1817, where he resided in early childhood, afterward removing to Connecticut and New York. He was educated at Yale college, began life as principal of an academy at Ithaca, New York, and followed this occupation while studying law, removing to Cleveland, Ohio, in the mean time. On being appointed to Oregon he took passage with his wife on the United States store-ship Supply in November 1849 for San Francisco, and thence proceeded to the Columbia by the sloop of war Falmouth. Judge Strong resided for a few years on the north side of the Columbia, but finally made Portland his home, where he has long practised law in company with his sons. During my visit to Oregon in 1878 Judge Strong, among others, dictated to my stenographer his varied experiences, and important facts concerning the history of Oregon. The manuscript thus made I entitled Strong's History of Oregon. It contains a long series of events, beginning August 1850, and running down to the time when it was given, and is enlivened by many anecdotes, amusing and curious, of early times, Indian characteristics, political affairs, and court notes. 3 Strong, who seems to have had an eye to speculation as well as other offi. DECADENCE OF THE FUR COMPANY. 103 1850, and Nelson, in April 1, 1851-from the interference of one district court with the processes of another. Thus it was impossible, for a time, to maintain order in Judge Pratt's district (the second) in two instances, sentences for contempt passed by him being practically nullified by the interference of the judge of the first district. Among the changes occurring at this time none were more perceptible than the diminishing importance of the Hudson's Bay Company's business in Oregon. Not only the gold mania carried off their servants, but the naturalization act did likewise, and also the prospect of a title to six hundred and forty acres of land. And not only did their servants desert them, but the United States revenue officers and Indian agents pursued them at every turn.* When Thornton was at Puget Sound in 1849 he caused the arrest of Captain Morris, of the Harpooner, an English vessel which had transported Hill's artillery company to Nisqually, for giving the customary grog to the Indians and half-breeds hired to discharge the vessel in the absence of white labor. Captain Morris was held to bail in five hundred dollars by Judge Bryant, to appear before him at the next term of court. What the decision would have been can only be conjectured, as in the absence of the judges the case never came to trial. Morris was released on a promise never to return to those waters.5 But these annoyances were light compared to those which arose out of the establishment of a port of tials, had purchased a lot of side-saddles before leaving New York, and other goods at auction, for sale in Oregon. His saddles cost him $7.50 and $13, and he sold them to women whose husbands had been to the gold mines for $50, $60, and $75. A gross of playing cards, purchased for a cent a pack at auc tion, sold to the soldiers for $1.50 a pack. Brown sugar purchased for 5c. a pound by the barrel brought ten times that amount; and so on, the goods being sold for him at the fur company's store. Strong's Hist. Or., MS, 27-30. Roberts says, in his Recollections, MS., that Douglas left Vancouver just in time to save his peace of mind; and it was perhaps partly with that object, for he was a strict disciplinarian, and could never have bent to the new order of things. Roberts' Recollections MS., 16 entry, and the extension of the revenue laws of the United States over the country. In the spring of 1849 arrived Oregon's first United States revenue officer, John Adair, of Kentucky; and in the autumn George Gibbs, deputy-collector. No trouble seems to have arisen for the first few months, though the company was subjected to much inconvenience by having to go from Fort Victoria to Astoria, a distance of over two hundred miles, to enter the goods designed for the American side of the strait, or for Fort Nisqually to which they must travel back three hundred miles. About the last of December 1849 the British ship Albion, Captain Richard O. Hinderwell, William Brotchie, supercargo, entered the strait of Fuca without being aware of the United States revenue laws on that part of the coast, and proceeded to cut a cargo of spars at New Dungeness, at the same time trading with the natives, for which they were prepared, by permission of the Hudson's Bay Company in London, with certain Indian goods, though not allowed to buy furs. The owners of the Albion, who had a government contract, had instructed the captain and supercargo to take the spars wherever they found the best timber, but if upon the American side of the strait, to pay for them if they could be bought cheap. But during a stay of about four months at Dungeness, as Gibbs, who came with the rifle regiment, was employed in various posi tions on the Pacific coast for several years. He became interested in philology and published a Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, and other matter concerning the native races, as well as the geography and geology of the west coast. In Suckley and Cooper's Natural History it is said that he spent two years in southern Oregon, near the Klamath; that in 1853 he joined McClellan's sur veying party, and afterward made explorations with I. I. Stevens in Washington. In 1859 he was still employed as geologist of the north-west boundary survey with Kennerly. He was for a short time collector of customs at Astoria. He went from there to Puget Sound, where he applied himself to the study of the habits, languages, and traditions of the natives, which study enabled him to make some valuable contributions to the Smithsonian Institution. Mr Gibbs died at New Haven, Conn., May 11, 1873. 'He was a man of fine scholarly attainments,' says the Olympia Pacific Tribune, May 17, 1873, and ardently devoted to science and polite literature. He was something of a wag withal, and on several occasions, in conjunction with the late Lieut. Derby (John Phoenix) and others, perpetrated "sells" that obtained a world wide publicity. His friends were many, warm, and earnest.' |