William Cameron McKay

William Cameron McKay (1824–1893) was a scout in the Snake War and Modoc War, a Captain in the U.S. Army, a member of the Warm Springs Scouts, and a physician and surgeon.

William "Billy" McKay was born at Fort George on May 18, 1824, what is now Astoria, Clatsop County, Oregon. He was the Metis son of a famous trapper and guide Thomas McKay and his wife, Timmee T'lkul Tchinouk, daughter of Tshinouk (Chinook) chief Concomly. He was a grandson of Alexander MacKay and the step-grandson of Dr. John McLoughlin.

Billy’s first wife was Catherine who died on May 30, 1848, followed, seven months later by the death of their son Thomas Archibald McKay on October 25, 1848 at Fort Vancouver. Billy then married Margaret Campbell, also Metis, on October 3, 1856. She was the daughter of a Chief Factor of the North West Company, Collin Campbell, and a sister in law of James Sinclair who was famous for leading a group of Red River Metis to the lower Columbia in 1841. After his grandfather died his grandmother, Margaret Waddens McKay (Metis) remarried to Dr. John McLoughlin known as “the father of Oregon.”

Educated by his step-grandfather, he was sent with his brothers to be educated in the Eastern United States in 1838. At the age of 19 he was licenced to practice medicine.

He commanded a group of Warm Springs Indians that served as scouts for the U.S. Army in the Snake War a campaign against the Northern Paiute in 1866-1868. Because of his Indian heritage, Dr. McKay was denied the franchise during the 1870 general election. U.S. District Judge Matthew P. Deady rejected his suit to win back that right, but Dr. McKay marshaled the support of a number of prominent men—including President Ulysses S. Grant, whom he had befriended when Grant was a young officer at Fort Vancouver during the 1850s. Subsequently, Deady's decision which denied him voting rights was reversed in 1872 by a special act of Congress.

McKay was assigned as a government physician attached to the Indian Agencies at Warm Springs, Kalamath and finally the Umatilla Reservation. He died on the Umatilla Reserve of a heart attack on January 2, 1893.

He died on January 2, 1893, aged 74 in Pendleton, Umatilla County, Oregon. He was buried in the Olney Cemetery in that city.