[or-roots] Traveling from lif. to oregon before 1840

[DAVIESW739 at aol.com]

Dr. Bailey was in Oregon when we came, I think he had been there for a number 
of years. He lived for a time at the Mission and had married one of the 
Mission girls.He was a young English Surgeon. The story was whispered about that he 
had deserted from an English War Vessel at San Francisco. That may not have 
been true, neither has it any special bearing upon the story of his trip up the 
coast. I often heard him tell it, and a deep scar on his chin was evidence of 
the truth of it.

  He and George Gay, another young Englishman, left their ship and started 
North. Somewhere on the way, they fell in with a man, whose name I have 
forgotten, though I remember him very well. He was one of the biggest men the I ever 
saw. People said that he was as strong as an ox.They expected to reach the 
Hudson Bay Company's Post at Oregon City. It was at best, a hazardous undertaking. 
Their way led for several hundred miles through a dangerous Indian country. 
The three of them were alone and on foot, and the country was entirely strange 
to them. Northern California and Southern Oregon is one high range of 
mountains after another, a great deal of it is wilderness even now and nearly a 
century has passed since the three comrades, thrown together by chance, or force of 
circumstances, made the trip with nothing but the stars to guide them, and 
only such provisions as they could carry on their backs. They traveled at night 
through the open places and hid during the day. They had followed the water 
courses through the mountains and had swam the larger streams, so going must have 
been difficult and slow. One night they made their camp in a deep canyon. The 
walls were so steep and the vegetation so dense that they could not have seen 
the four or five silently, creeping Indians that had followed them maybe for 
miles. The Indians did not have guns in those days, so they must have hid and 
waited till the travelers were off their guard and had laid their guns aside. 
Then with bloodcurdling war whoops, the savages sprang out of the bushes 
within a few feet of where Dr. Bailey and his friends were cooking their supper. 
The big man, whose name I have forgotten, was frying bacon in a long handled, 
iron pan. The first Indian got the big iron pan and the sizzling contents of it 
full in the face, swish, swish, went the big man. Tomahawks were knocked out 
of the Indians hands and bang, bang, went the pan over their bare heads. 
Finally the pan, its self, crumbled and broke off, but the long handle, with the 
powerful man behind it, came down with the force of a sledge hammer. I've heard 
Dr. Bailey say: "Give me a hundred men like         , armed with long handled 
frying pans, and I would not be afraid to meet the whole Indian Nation."Finally 
George Gay succeeded in getting his gun and the fight was soon over, but when 
it was going fast and furriest Dr. Bailey was struck at with a tomahawk, he 
jumped back and the tomahawk, glancing, buried itself in his chin. He was 
terribly hurt, the lower lip and his chin bone was split entirely in two. He had 
presents of mind enough to throw himself backwards into the creek ten or twelve 
feet below. When his two friends had disposed of the savages, they went to 
look for him and found him lying in the shallow stream. They bandaged up his 
wound as best they could, then the big man threw him over his shoulder and they 
started in the darkness to get as far away from the place as they could. They 
waded for miles up the stream, then hid under logs when daylight came, and 
waited for night to come again. So for many miles they followed the North Star and 
traveled under cover of darkness.

  When they reached the Willamette Valley, they disagreed about directions 
and separated. Dr. Bailey found his way to the Methodist Mission. George Gay 
went to the Hudson Bay Post and married La Louise, the daughter of Dr. 
McLaughlin's Kanaka cook, and an Indian women. The man, whose name I have forgotten, 
came out nearer the coast mountains, but finally reached the settlement.



Walt Davies
Cooper Hollow Farm
Monmouth, OR 97361
503 623-0460 
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