proposed wagon trail from the head of steamboat navigation. on the Missouri to the navigable waters of the Columbia. The editor of the Missouri Intelligencer spoke of the new route as having a significance in several respects: because it embraced a portion of the road to Oregon, in which the national government was becoming deeply interested; because it would be the means of developing a new and profitable trade for Missouri; and because "the adventurous enterprise and hardy habits of this frontier people will soon penetrate beyond the mountains and compete for trade on the shores of the Pacific."

From this time the Santa Fé trade was a regular feature of Missouri enterprise, the wagon trains carrying westward American goods of many different kinds, and bringing back in payment great quantities of silver coin, and droves of mules. So important did this commerce become that the United States government frequently sent companies of troops to convoy the caravans, in order to protect them from attacks by the Indians.

It was not long before others besides the merchants began to visit New Mexico, attracted by the opportunities which the country afforded for money making in various lines. Among those entering in 1824 were the two Patties, father and son, the latter a boy of fourteen or fifteen years. They spent three years in mining, trading, and other occupations, and then, toward the end of the year 1827, started on a trapping expedition for Colorado River. Their company of thirty men, under the elder Pattie's leadership, reached the Colorado in safety, and eight members, including father and son, made their way down this river, reaching tidewater early in the year 1828. From the Colorado they crossed the desert westward, arriving at San Diego before the end of March.

Concerning the treatment accorded the party by the Mexican authorities there are two accounts. One of them is the Narrative of James Ohio Pattie, the young man, who returned to the United States, entered a Kentucky seminary,

and related his story to Timothy Flint, by whom it was published at Cincinnati in 1833. Pattie insists that the governor of California, Echiandia, who at this time lived at San Diego, cruelly oppressed and maltreated his father, thus causing his death, which occurred about a month after their arrival. All the men were thrown into prison, and, as in the case of Smith a year and a half earlier, were befriended by American shipmasters. Late in the summer the men were released in order that they might return to the Colorado and fetch a quantity of furs which they had placed en cache, though young Pattie was held as a hostage to insure their return. They found the furs spoiled, and all came back except two, who fled to New Mexico. Pattie's ad

ventures in California, according to his own statement, were extremely varied, including a vaccinating tour through the length of the coast, an extended voyage on an American vessel, and participation in the so-called "Solis Revolt," which occurred in 1829. Finally, he was allowed to go to Mexico in June, 1830, whence he returned to Kentucky before the end of the year.

Pattie's companions preferred to remain in southern California, and one of these, Nathaniel Pryor, afterward gave information contradicting the charges of cruel treatment made by Pattie, and dwelling with some detail upon the kindness shown the father, Sylvester Pattie, by the Mexicans during the illness from which he died. He declared that the rough old trapper himself was so softened by this kindness that he voluntarily adopted the faith of his benefactors. His funeral was described as an imposing ceremony. Whatever may be the exact truth of the matter, there is no doubt that half of this little American party were content to remain in California, thus adding four to the list of those from the United States who settled in the country. prior to 1830. Having entered by a direct overland route, the coming of this party possessed a significance wholly out of proportion to the number of colonists. Henceforth bands of trappers or traders, most of them Americans, drifted

in each year by this southern route from Sante Fé and many remained as permanent settlers.

The year 1830 brought to California, among others, Ewing Young, who later figured prominently in Oregon history. Young was a Tennesseean, and by trade a cabinetmaker. At an early age he had been attracted to the frontier, together with such traders and Indian fighters as the Bent brothers, the Waldos, Campbell, and St. Vrain. It is related by William Waldo, that in 1829 a party of hunters, headed by Charles and William Bent, fell in, on the Sante Fé trail, with "a long string" of Comanche Indians, with whom a running fight was kept up for about forty days. Meantime, bands of the natives were recruiting in large numbers for the destruction of the whites. Young, who at the time was trading in the vicinity of Taos, heard of the predicament of Bent's party and, gathering a force of ninety-five trappers, beat off the Indians. Major Bennett Riley, another man afterward identified with California history, was active in the rescue. Waldo says that Kit Carson, then a mere boy, won his first laurels in this fight. Four years later, when Charles Bent and St. Vrain founded Bent's Fort on the upper Arkansas, Carson became the hunter for that establishment and remained there until 1842, when he became a guide to Frémont.

In the spring of 1830, Young, with a party of trappers, entered California, taking beaver from the interior streams, and afterward working down along the coast from San Francisco Bay. Some of his men are supposed to have remained in the country, but the leader and most of the others returned to New Mexico. Two years later, he was catching otter on the coast, and then he went inland to trap beaver. He pursued this occupation until the close of the year 1833, ascending the Sacramento and wandering northward as far as Klamath Lake. The following year he joined Hall J. Kelley, and made his way across the Siskiyous and into the Willamette valley. His operations had some direct influence in bringing settlers to California; but a much more