Note 1 — THE NUMBER AND CONDITION OF THE NATIVE RACE IN OREGON WHEN FIRST SEEN BY WHITE MEN.

This custom of purchasing wives seems to have extended through many of the interior tribes, and amongst some the privilege seems not to have been confined to the men. It is related of a large war party of Sioux who, near Independence Rock, in 1842, found Messrs. Hastings and Lovejoy, and good humoredly gave them up to their fellow travelers, taking a small present of tobacco as ransom; that, seeing a grown daughter of one of the few white families of the Oregon immigrants, they came repeatedly in increased numbers to look at her, until her father was annoyed and indignant at their visits, and wrathful and threatening when he learned that the brawny braves desired to purchase the girl to give her as a present to their war chief. These grown up children of nature went off like gentlemen when informed by one who knew their customs that it was not a custom of white fathers, or the white people, to sell their daughters. [Matthieu’s Reminiscences, Vol. I, No. 1, Quarterly of the Ore. Hist. Soc.] In 1844, while Gilliam’s train lay over one day at Fort Laramie, for trade purposes, in close neighborhood to the tepees of a considerable camp of Sioux, three female members of the tribe visited the camp of R. W. Morrison, captain of one of the companies into which the train of eighty-four wagons was divided. The captain had two assistants, and the Sioux women seemed to conclude that Mrs. Morrison was blessed with three husbands. Their proposition, made by signs by the two elder women, was that the third, apparently a widow, though young, was willing to give six horses for one of the younger men. It took Mrs. Morrison and the choice of the young widow some time to convince her two friends that they had made a mistake, and they departed with all outward signs of sadness over the failure of their mission. These proposals to secure connubial happiness by purchase were made, one four and the other two years, before Francis Parkman, Jr., arrived at Laramie to join a Sioux camp in order to get material for his Oregon and California Trail.