Note 2 — Chapter XII · [1]

Both Bartolomé Baca (Vaca) and Narbona were Mexican officers. The former, whose term of office was from 1823 to September, 1825, belonged to a New Mexican family, and was one of the captains of the companies organized in 1808. Antonio Narbona came (1805) from the province of Chihuahua, as lieutenant of soldiers sent to repel a Navaho raid. He was governor, September, 1825, to May 1827. In 1843 he was colonel of an expedition against the Apache in Arizona.

Ewing Young was a native of Knox County, Tennessee. He early went west for hunting and trapping, having passports for Mexican territory signed at Washington in 1828-29. In these years he made his first overland trip from New Mexico to California, where he aided the padres of San José in an expedition against revolted neophytes. In 1829 he returned to New Mexico, married a Taos woman, and again (1831) set out for California. There in 1834 he met Hall Kelley, and was persuaded to accompany him to Oregon, where he formed one of the first American settlements in the Chehalem Valley, tributary to the Willamette. A journey to California in 1836, to purchase cattle, resulted in stocking the Oregon pioneers. Young's Oregon settlement prospered; he erected saw and grist mills, and upon his death (1841) the administration of his estate was the occasion of the first tentative experiment in civil government in Oregon. In after years, a son Joachim came from New Mexico, and laid successful claim to the property, which was paid by the state.

Milton J. Sublette was a younger brother of William (for whom see our volume xix, p. 221, note 55, Gregg) and himself a noted trapper and trader, operating chiefly in the Rocky Mountains. In 1833 he entered into arrangements with Nathaniel Wyeth (see our volume xxi), but the next year was compelled to retire because of injury to a leg, which caused his death at Fort Laramie, December 19, 1836.—Ed.