First meeting of the committee of twelve.—All invited to participate.—The Rev. J. Lee and Mr. Abernethy ridicule the organization.—Mr. Lee tells a story.—Letter from Governor Abernethy.—The main question at issue.—Drowning of Cornelius Rogers and party.—Conduct of Dr. White.—Methodist Mission.—Catholic boasts of conversions.

By mutual understanding the committee of twelve first met at Wallamet Falls, about the middle of March, 1843. My impression is that Dr. Babcock was not present with the committee, and that Dr. White was chosen temporary chairman. G. W. Le Breton was secretary of the committee. A motion was made and carried to invite the citizens of the village to participate in the deliberations of the committee. Rev. Jason Lee, Rev. Mr. Waller, Mr. Abernethy, R. Moore, in fact, nearly all the prominent men of the place, were present, and participated in the discussions.

We found Rev. Jason Lee and Mr. Abernethy disposed to ridicule the proposed organization as foolish and unnecessary. Rev. Jason Lee in his argument illustrated the folly of the effort, by telling us of a company of militia gotten up somewhere in Canada. He said “the requisite notice had been given, and all the people liable to military duty were present on the day to elect the officers required for the company. When they had elected all their officers, there was one private soldier left. ‘Well,’ says the soldier, ‘you may march me, you may drill me, you may face me to the right, or to the left, or about face, just as much as you please, but for mercy’s sake don’t divide me up into platoons.’”

Mr. Abernethy made a little attempt to ridicule the proposed organization, in moving to amend the resolution recommending three justices of the peace and three constables. We are now in receipt of an explanation from the governor in reference to the question of an independent government, as debated at the Lyceum, which we give verbatim, as it places the governor with his own explanation on that question, and I think gives us the correct statement of the case, and shows his policy, which was, to defeat not only the proposition for an independent government, but any effort for a provisional one, for at least four years,—which were not only the views of Mr. Abernethy, but those of Messrs. Lee, Leslie, Babcock, and Hines:—

Portland, March 11, 1866.

Dear Sir,—Allow me to correct one statement in your History of Oregon in the Gazette of 5th March. You speak of a debate in a Lyceum, and say: “Mr. Abernethy moved that in case our government did not extend its jurisdiction over the country in four years, that then the meeting would be in favor of an independent government.” The facts are these: We had weekly meetings for discussion. Mr. Hastings, Dr. McLaughlin’s lawyer, offered a resolution, “That it is expedient for the settlers on this coast to establish an independent government.” This subject was warmly discussed, Mr. Abernethy being, with a few others, opposed to it. At the close of the discussion the vote was taken and decided in favor of an independent government. Mr. Abernethy then offered the following: “Resolved, That if the United States extends its jurisdiction over this country within four years, it will not be expedient to form an independent government,” as the subject for the next discussion. This was warmly discussed, many who voted for the first resolution saying if the United States government is extended over us, it is all we want, and voted in the affirmative. The resolution was carried, and destroyed the effect of the first resolution.

You will see by this you have the thing all wrong.

Yours truly,
Geo. Abernethy.

P. S.—Dr. White, I think, was present; am not certain. This independent government move was a prominent scheme of Dr. McLaughlin.

The main question at issue before the committee at the Falls meeting was the office of governor. Dr. Bailey was in the Sandwich Islands; nothing was to be feared from him; but Dr. White was, to say the least, an impudent candidate. I have been informed that Dr. Bailey, an Englishman, came to that meeting February 18, 1841, with all his French voters trained to vote for himself for governor, and that he nominated himself, in opposition to Mr. Hines and Dr. Babcock, for that office, and conducted himself in such a manner that it disgusted some, and was the means of breaking up the proposed civil government, as what Americans there were then in the country found they would be outnumbered by the French and English (which was unquestionably the fact), and thus they would be completely at the disposal of English rule.

Such being the case, much credit is due to the men who defeated that effort, and I see no reason why Mr. Hines, in his account, and as an actor in those meetings, should attempt to give a different impression, and say that “the officers of the squadron were consulted, and were found to be decidedly opposed to the scheme.” (Page 421 of his book.) This fact alone, and I have it from an actor and an eye-witness in the meeting referred to, is, to say the least, strange and unaccountable on the part of Mr. Hines. He either feared the influence of Bailey, or the truth, which he withheld in the case, and leaves a wrong impression upon the minds of his readers.

From the sickening, fawning, and contemptible course of Dr. White, the committee at the Falls meeting were induced to yield the point of an organization without an executive head, and by that means got a unanimous vote to call a public meeting to organize a provisional government at Champoeg, on the 2d of May, 1843. This was effort number one of February and June, 1841, over again. Those of us who commenced this move did not feel that we had gained much, still we hoped for the best and prepared for the worst as well as the meeting at Champoeg on the 2d of May, 1843.

We will let the provisional government rest till the 2d of May, 1843, while we take a look over the whole country, and at the actors in it, first stopping to drop a tear at the grave of our friends as we proceed. On the 2d of February our best and most esteemed friend, Cornelius Rogers, with whom we had spent years of the kindest confidence and friendship, left our house for Oregon City, as his future residence and home, with his young wife, the eldest daughter of Rev. David Leslie, and her youngest sister. They took passage down the river with W. W. Raymond, a man who came to the country with the re-enforcement of the mission of 1839-40. He was at that time a member of the Methodist Mission, in good standing. Dr. Elijah White and Esquire Crocker, of Lansingville, Tompkins County, New York, were also in the canoe, one of the largest of Chinook manufacturing. They arrived all safe at Canemah. It was let down stern first by a line, around a point of rocks just above the falls on the Oregon City side, since blasted away for a canal and boat channel. In the eddy formed by the point of rock a large tree had lodged, forming a convenient landing, and occupying a large portion of the eddy water, so that it was necessary for the canoe to remain close to the log for safety from the swift current. There were two Indians to guide the canoe into this landing, one in the bow and one in the stern. The one in the stern escaped by jumping from the canoe and catching upon a piece of drift-wood on a rock just above the fall. White, as the canoe came alongside of the log upon which all were to land, being near the bow of the canoe, and not thinking, or perhaps caring, for any one but himself, jumped upon the side of the canoe, and with a spring, upon the log, before there was time for any one to secure the bow of the canoe, to prevent it from swinging into the current. The force of White’s spring upon the canoe to reach the log threw it into the current, which was too strong for Raymond and his Indians to hold, and in a moment it darted into the middle of the channel, and the next moment was plunged broadside over the falls, some twenty-five feet perpendicular. The force of the current threw the canoe to the bottom of the fall, right side up, but the under-swell threw it back to the sheet of falling water, which filled and upset the canoe in an instant. All that went over were lost. Raymond, who had attempted to hold the canoe, came over the point of rocks (a difficult place) and found White upon the log, and that he had made no effort to relieve the drowning party.

Mr. Hines, I see, gives a more favorable account of this transaction for White. I think this the nearest correct, as Raymond gave the alarm, and a boat was launched, and reached within ten feet of Mr. Rogers before he sank to rise no more. His and Esquire Crocker’s bodies were found and interred. Those of Mrs. Rogers and her sister were never found. Rev. G. Hines, W. H. Gray, and Robert Shortess, were appointed by Judge Babcock to appraise the estate of Mr. Rogers, which was found to be worth about $800, clear of all liabilities. His heirs at law resided in Utica, New York. Rev. Harvey Clark was appointed administrator, discharging that duty faithfully, and I think without compensation. None of the appraisers received a dime for their services. There followed this affliction a severe storm, and an unusually high flood in the Wallamet River. The appraisers were detained several days on account of it, but finally reached their homes in safety.

The Methodist Mission had extended their stations to Fort Nasqualla on Puget Sound and Clatsop Plains, and made an effort to establish a mission station on the Umpqua River. At this last-named place the Indians had been prepared by the instructions they had received through the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Jesuit priests to destroy Lee and Hines, and commence the slaughter of the settlement. (See Hines’ account of the trip, pages 100 to 110 inclusive, made in 1842.)

Messrs. Frost and Cowan had become disgusted with their missionary calling, and Rev. Dr. Richmond had also found his Nasqualla location not a suitable one, or at least, he by some means had become convinced that he could not benefit the Indians about the fort, and made up his mind to leave.

It will be remembered that Vicar-General Brouillet, of Wallawalla, in his attempt to prove that the “Catholic stations and stationary priests” were early in the country, says “almost every Indian tribe possessed some Catholic members” as early as 1840, and that Mr. Demerse’s labors among the Cayuses in 1840 “had made there a mission so fruitful that the Protestant missionaries had got alarmed and feared that all their disciples would abandon them if he continued his mission among them.” (Page 87 of “Protestantism in Oregon,” by Brouillet.) Neither Hines, Richmond, nor Smith could understand why it was that the Indians upon this coast and throughout the country were so different from the accounts they had heard and read of them up to 1840. In June, 1853, had either of those gentlemen picked up the New York Freeman’s Journal, they would have seen the statement that, as early as 1840, “almost every Indian tribe [on this coast] possessed some Catholic members.” A little further along they would have been startled with the announcement, that these Jesuit missions had become “so fruitful that the Protestant missionaries had got alarmed and feared that all their disciples would abandon them.” This was but the work of two years,—from 1838, late in the fall, to 1840. This was, without doubt, a great triumph, and well does this Jesuit blow his trumpet; and well he may, for he had the active aid of an unscrupulous monopoly who are said to be attempting the same thing with just such implements upon their own countrymen in British Columbia. Why, I ask, have states and countries in Europe found it necessary to suppress that order of the Roman Church? And why is England, to-day, hesitating to give this church in particular the same confidence she does to all others?