Two Stories
The Voyageur and his flintlock gun
I have two stories to tell you. The first is the story of Patrick McKenzie, someone who did not become famous in the HBC’s fur trade: anything but, in fact. The second story is about a large party of immigrants who were lost in the deep snow of wintertime in the Calapooya Mountains of Oregon.
So, the first story: Patrick McKenzie was a mixed-blood man who worked on the west side of the Rocky Mountains for a few years. According to Bruce Watson, in Lives Lived, Patrick McKenzie was first hired by the HBC in 1839, and served as apprentice-postmaster in the Saskatchewan District. Also according to Bruce Watson, he came to the Columbia in 1841, but was post master at Thompson River as early as 1835. He was employed there up to 1845, and at the same time he was apprentice post master at Fort Colvile, 1841-1844, and postmaster, 1844-1845. On December 31, 1845, he was discharged, after having served at two posts. He seems to have enlisted again, serving as interpreter and retiring in 1852.
So, I think we have two men here, not one. But there is more to his story than that!
I first found Patrick McKenzie in the book, Fort St. James and New Caledonia: Where British Columbia Began, by Marie Elliot [Harbour Publishing, 2009], on page 132. The year is 1844 (or at least the year that the two missionaries, Father Antonio Ravalli and John Nobili, were on the brigade trails was 1844.) This is what Marie Elliott had to say of Patrick McKenzie:
Ravalli was bound for Fort Colvile to establish a new church, but Nobili planned to continue on to New Caledonia. His superiors had encouraged him to visit the Natives there, and win McLoughlin’s approval. Manson agreed to let him accompany the brigade. As they commenced their journey through the Okanagan Valley, Nobili learned that [John] Tod [of Kamloops] was anxious to placate Chief Nicola because his eldest son, also named Nicola, had been accidentally killed by the HBC clerk Patrick McKenzie that spring while he and McKenzie were taking the express to Fort Colvile. Now the brigade stopped where the young man had been buried at Priest’s Prairie, an overnight camp near present-day Summerland, and Nobili set up an outdoor altar and conducted a service beside the grave. Nicola appeared to understand that the HBC had not been responsible for his son’s death.
There is an interesting little side story in this book: as he came through Kamloops in 1828, Governor Simpson had a red-lined capote left at Kamloops for Chief N’Kwala (Nicola) when he next showed up at the fort. “Nicola looked after this robe of honour carefully,” Marie Elliott wrote, “and twenty years later he wore it for a meeting with the Jesuit priest John Nobili at Okanagan Lake.” But that has little to do with the main story here: that is, Patrick McKenzie.
So, as we see above, McKenzie accidentally shot Chief N’Kwala’s son at Priest’s Encampment in spring 1845.
To my surprise, I recently found Patrick McKenzie mentioned in Thomas Lowe’s “Private Journal at Fort Vancouver.” On Sunday, December 1, 1845, Lowe writes:
“Mr. [John] McPherson arrived here in the afternoon, accompanied by Patrick McKenzie from above. McPherson left the Service last Spring and went across the Mountains with the Express, but came back in the Fall, and has now brought down his wife and family from Fort Colvile to settle at the Wallamette. Patrick McKenzie, Postmaster, was stationed at Thompson’s River, but it seems that he could not agree with Mr. [John] Tod, and he has come down here to endeavour to make some arrangements with Dr. McLoughlin.”
McKenzie did not tell the truth, obviously. Nor was he going to get any help from Dr. McLoughlin, who was on his way out the door. Instead, it appears that McKenzie was simply discharged from the Company’s service. Then, on January 6, 1846, which was the same day that McLoughlin “started for the Wallamette Falls in the Forenoon, where he is to stay for some time,” Patrick McKenzie arrived back at Fort Vancouver with Mr. Charles Forrest, who was in poor health. Why was McKenzie at Cowlitz Farm, I wonder? There are no post journals for Fort Nisqually at that time, and none for Fort Victoria either. Why was he there?
So, of course Governor Simpson bawled out John Tod of Kamloops for the troubles the Kamloops post was in with the local First Nations, as a result of what Patrick McKenzie had done. In John Tod’s letter to Governor Simpson, dated March 1847, Tod explained that “With regard to the Natives of Thompson’s River:
Who were said to have been in a state of insubordination, the result of my arrangements, such as they were, will, I trust, bear me out there, & spare me from further reproaches on that head. The Conduct of Nicola, as Mr. [Peter Skene] Ogden justly remarked, “was materially to be expected from the death of his son,” and I add, from other causes jointly concurring, at the time & subsequent thereto — at the period of the fatal accident with Mr. McKenzies riffle [sic], I had no Interpreter — at least none in whom sufficient confidence could be placed, nevertheless had the affair not been managed with at least some degree of foresight, the probability is (and I am not alone in this opinion) that some sanguinary act [would] have immediately ensued either on the part of the father himself, or that of his tribe. Peace however was restored long before the date of my last letter to Yourself, and throughout the District, all have been in a state of perfect tranquility since.
As you will see, there appears to be another incident that angered the First Nations people who lived around the fort. I believe it might be the attempt to poison the wolves that were attacking the horses and cattle that now grazed outside the Kamloops post. (This story is told in Robert Belyk’s John Tod: Rebel in the Ranks [Horsdal & Schubert, 1995].) John Tod put out strychnine in wolf traps, which the local First Nations men did not generally raid. On this occasion, however, one Indigenous man did, and he consumed the poisoned meat. Using blue vitriol, Tod saved the man’s life, and nursed him back to health in the fort. Nevertheless, the First Nations people blamed Tod for the accident, and they harangued him — until Tod pointed out that the man had stolen from a trap, committing a serious breach of custom.
So, this last story has nothing to do with Patrick McKenzie, of course. But Patrick McKenzie is, on his own, an interesting story, but it is unlikely I will find anything more. When I first ran across this story a number of years ago, I thought it was Ferdinand McKenzie who had shot young N’Kuala. He worked in the New Caledonia District and is a character in my book, The HBC Brigades: Culture, Conflict, & Perilous Journeys of the Fur Trade.
My books, The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay, 1826-1849, and The HBC Brigades (mentioned above) can be ordered from Amazon, at https://amazon.com/author/nancymargueriteanderson
But these are troubling times: If you, like many others, don’t want to order from Amazon, you can order the books from me via the Contact sheet. I will invoice you via Pay Pal, and mail a signed copy of the book[s] to you. (You don’t have to have a Pay Pal account.)
You can also order The York Factory Express here: https://ronsdalepress.com/york-factory-express-the/
Now, at the beginning of this post, I said I have two stories. Here’s the other one. On December 6, 1846, Thomas Lowe wrote in his private journal kept at Fort Vancouver: “Several Americans came here today in order to try and procure from the Company a considerable number of horses with which they were to proceed to relieve a party of about five hundred Emigrants who started from the States this year for Oregon, and are said to be dying of starvation on the road. Mr. [Peter Skene] Ogden could only give three Mules, but offered them a supply of Flour, this however they say [there] is no want of, the settlers in the Upper Country having contributed [much of the flour] required. Three Emigrants were left somewhere about the Umpqua Mountains, having endeavoured to come by the route opened by Mr. [Jesse] Applegate this Summer. They have been obliged to abandon all their waggons and property, and many have already died from absolute starvation. There is a considerable party mustering to take a supply of provisions to them, but many more must by this time have died, as the weather has been very unfavorable.”
This is NOT the Donner Party, where 80 people were lost in deep snow in a high mountain pass as they made their way west to California in winter 1846-1847. It happened at the same time, however. Nor were there 500 men lost in the mountains: more like 30 or 40. In December 1846, a fall of deep snow in the Calapooya Mountains of Oregon trapped a large party of immigrants, and their supplies dwindled. News of their plight reached the settlers in the Willamette Valley, and a man named Thomas Holt organized a relief party for them. Holt, accompanied by a Canadien and five Métis men, departed the Willamette Valley with horses and provisions to rescue these poor people. Along the way, they stumbled upon other small parties that had managed to push their way through: Mr. Goff and company, for example; Mrs. Newton (whose husband had been killed by the Umpqua Indians); and other parties of men, women and children. Holt’s party also met another party of rescuers: Moses Harris and his men.
At the head of the Willamette Valley, Holt’s party found five desperate families, and gave them supplies to continue their journey. They found evidence of dead cattle along the way, another indication of desperation and starvation. When they reached Elk Creek, near present day Elkton, they discovered five more families with no provisions, and one of the Métis men stayed and hunted for meat for them.
Holt and two of his Métis men pressed on, meeting the last group of immigrants who had been without flour for eight weeks. Then, Holt’s party lost four horses to the Umpqua Indians. On crossing Elk Creek, they discovered five more families whose supplies were absolutely decimated. On December 20, the merged parties set off again, but the Umpqua Indians refused to lend them canoes to cross the turbulent North Umpqua River, unless they were paid with a gun. Augustin Delore stepped forward and offered them his own rifle, and the exhausted immigrants continued their journey west. Some found shelter in Fort Umpqua, in present day Elkton. Others found shelter elsewhere, wherever they could hunker down. One young boy stayed alone in an old empty cabin, located where the city of Eugene, Oregon, stands today. They all eventually made it to the communities already established in the Willamette Valley.
The Americans who rescued these immigrants were Thomas Holt, Owens, Duskins, and Patten. I don’t have their full names, but the two Métis who accompanied Holt the whole way were Jean Baptiste Gardapie and Augustine Quine Delore. Gardapie had worked in the Snake River Expeditions and was an old scout and guide before becoming a settler in the Willamette. Augustin Dellart DeLore was born in 1828 in what is now BC, of a Shuswap mother (he was probably born at the Kamloops post or one of its outposts.) He became a Mountain Man, a fur trapper and Indian fighter and a scout in the Oregon territory, where he was sometimes known as Quinn Delore — and he was only 18 years old when he went on this winter adventure!
Thomas Holt’s journal is at: https://truwe.sohs.org/files/news1847.html It was published in the newspaper, Oregon Spectator, March 4, 1847. There is no more mention of this expedition that I can see in Thomas Lowe’s journal, but his story makes it clear that the men at Fort Vancouver knew of these lost immigrants, and offered what help they could afford.
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2025. All rights reserved.