The conduct of this expedition, as has been already mentioned, was
assigned to Mr. Wilson Price Hunt, of Trenton, New Jersey, one of the
partners of the company, who was ultimately to be at the head of the
establishment at the mouth of the Columbia. He is represented as a
man scrupulously upright and faithful his dealings, amicable in his
disposition, and of most accommodating manners; and his whole conduct
will be found in unison with such a character. He was not practically
experienced in the Indian trade; that is to say, he had never made any
expeditions of traffic into the heart of the wilderness, but he had
been engaged in commerce at St. Louis, then a frontier settlement on
the Mississippi, where the chief branch of his business had consisted in
furnishing Indian traders with goods and equipments. In this way, he had
acquired much knowledge of the trade at second hand, and of the various
tribes, and the interior country over which it extended.
Another of the partners, Mr. Donald M'Kenzie, was associated with Mr.
Hunt in the expedition, and excelled on those points in which the other
was deficient; for he had been ten years in the interior, in the
service of the Northwest Company, and valued himself on his knowledge of
"woodcraft," and the strategy of Indian trade and Indian warfare.
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