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Title: The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society,(Vol. I, No. 3)
Author: Society, Oregon Historical
Language: English
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THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
=====================================
VOLUME I ] SEPTEMBER, 1900 [ NUMBER 3
=====================================
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
THE OREGON QUESTION II.—_Joseph R. Wilson_ 213
REMINISCENCES OF HUGH COSGROVE—_H. S. Lyman_ 253
REMINISCENCES OF WM. M. CASE—_H. S. Lyman_ 269
THE NUMBER AND CONDITION OF THE NATIVE RACE IN OREGON 296
WHEN FIRST SEEN BY WHITE MEN—_John Minio_
INDIAN NAMES—_H. S. Lyman_ 316
DOCUMENTS—Oregon articles reprinted from a file of the 327
N. Y. _Tribune_, 1812.
Letter by William Plumer, Senator from N. H. 336
* * * * *
PRICE: THIRTY-FIVE CENTS PER MONTH, ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
---------------------
H. W. SCOTT PRESIDENT
C. B. BELLINGER VICE-PRESIDENT
F. G. YOUNG SECRETARY
CHARLES E. LADD TREASURER
GEORGE H. HIMES, Assistant Secretary.
---------------------
DIRECTORS
THE GOVERNOR OF OREGON, _ex officio_.
THE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, _ex officio_.
Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1900,
H. W. SCOTT, MRS. HARRIET K. McARTHUR.
Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1901,
F. G. YOUNG, L. B. COX.
Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1902,
JAMES R. ROBERTSON, JOSEPH R. WILSON.
Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1903,
C. B. BELLINGER, MRS. MARIA L. MYRICK.
---------------------
_The Quarterly_ is sent free to all members of the Society. The annual
dues are two dollars. The fee for life membership is twenty-five
dollars.
Contributions to _The Quarterly_ and correspondence relative to
historical materials, or pertaining to the affairs of this Society,
should be addressed to
F. G. YOUNG,
EUGENE, OREGON. _Secretary_.
Subscriptions for _The Quarterly_, or for the other publications of the
Society, should be sent to
GEORGE H. HIMES,
CITY HALL, PORTLAND, OREGON. _Assistant Secretary_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOLUME I] SEPTEMBER, 1900 [NUMBER 3
THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OREGON QUESTION.
II.
The conventions of 1824 and 1825 marked the formal and final withdrawal
of Russia as claimant to the sovereignty of the Oregon country, or of
any part of it. The convention of the former year pledged her withdrawal
as claimant against the United States, that of the latter year as
claimant against Great Britain. The boundaries of the territories in
question were thus finally determined, and the parties to the dispute
were reduced to the two nations by whom the question at issue was
ultimately to be decided.
It was a great step taken toward settlement when the claims of all
nations but Great Britain and the United States were eliminated from the
question. But elimination of claims was not the only respect in which
progress towards settlement had been made during the period which closed
with the convention between Great Britain and Russia. The ten years
between the treaty of Ghent and this convention show a substantial
approach to agreement between Great Britain and America. The events of
the year 1818 in particular mark this approach. This year, so important
in the history of the relations between Great Britain and America,
opened with the issue of the order of January 26 by the British
government for the restitution of Fort George, the post at the mouth of
the Columbia, which, under the name of Astoria, had been taken
possession of by the British early in the late war. This order, which
was formally carried out in October of that year, gains in significance
the more closely the whole history of the case is examined. Astoria, it
will be remembered, was the name of the trading post established in 1811
by the Pacific Fur Company, of which John Jacob Astor, of New York, was
founder and chief stockholder. It was nominally an American company,
and was established under the American flag; but of the party of
thirty-three that landed April 12, 1811, to form the settlement, all
except three are said to have been British subjects. On the twelfth
day of November, 1813, in the absence of Mr. Astor’s agent, who was an
American, Mr. McDougall, his sub-agent, a British subject, representing
himself and the other partners present, likewise British subjects,
signed the bills of sale, and delivered up Astoria to the Northwest
Company, a British company. One month later, Captain Black, of the
British navy, in the sloop-of-war, Racoon, arrived in the Columbia, and
took possession of Astoria in the name of his sovereign, and in honor
of his sovereign changed the name to Fort George. He seems to have been
chagrined not a little to find that, instead of the glory of battering
down an American fort, nothing awaited him but to take peaceful
possession in the name of his king of a British settlement.
By the first article of the treaty of Ghent, “all territory, places, and
possessions whatsoever, taken by either party from the other during the
war” should be restored. In view of the history just given, it is not
strange that the British government, when called upon by the United
States to make restitution of Astoria in accordance with this article of
the treaty, objected, on the ground that the place was already a British
settlement when taken possession of by a British officer. And yet, in
the course of the negotiations that followed, Great Britain yielded this
point, and through her representative, Lord Castlereagh, “admitted, in
the most ample extent, our right to be reinstated, and to be the party
in possession while treating of the title.” Accordingly, October, 1818,
the order first issued January 26 preceding, was executed, and Fort
George was formally handed over to an American officer specially sent to
the Columbia to receive it, and once more the American flag floated over
this British settlement.
This act of restitution, under these circumstances, can hardly be
regarded as less than a concession on the part of Great Britain, a
concession the full significance of which appears only when the act of
restitution is taken in connection with the convention of joint
occupation entered into by the two governments that year, and with
certain intimations made by the British Plenipotentiaries in the
conferences which led up to that convention. It was in this convention
that the boundary between the two countries west from Lake of the Woods
to the Rocky Mountains on the forty-ninth parallel was agreed upon. In
the preliminary conferences the representatives of Great Britain
insisted that the boundary west of the Rocky Mountains should be settled
at the same time with the boundary eastward; that the two should stand
or fall together. In response to this wish, the American representatives
proposed that the same line of the forty-ninth parallel be extended
westward to the Pacific. This the representatives of Great Britain
refused to accept, nor would they themselves propose a line; but they
did intimate that the Columbia River itself was the most convenient
boundary that could be adopted, and that they would not agree to any
boundary that did not give to Great Britain a harbor at the mouth of the
Columbia River in common with the United States. The American
representatives not consenting to this, after further proposals and
counter proposals, none of which were acceptable to both governments, it
was finally agreed to adopt the now celebrated plan of joint occupation
as that plan is embodied in the third article of the convention of that
year.
Thus it is that the order of the British government for the restitution
of Astoria at the opening of the year 1818, taken in connection with all
the circumstances of the case, and the convention of joint occupation
made by the two governments at the close of the year, taken in
connection with concessions in conferences made by both parties, make
this year an era in the history of the Oregon Question. In particular,
two important lines had been proposed and discussed, each proposal
showing an important concession on the part of the party making it, and
each line proposed practically setting a limit for the future, in its
direction, to the territory that remained in question. For it may safely
be said that from this time the extreme limits of the claims of the
several parties were fixed; that henceforth the United States would not
press their claim to territory north of latitude 49°, nor would Great
Britain press hers to territory south of the Columbia. The territory
longer in question lay between these two lines, and it is doubtful
if ever after this year there was a time when the question might not
have been settled by Great Britain’s consenting to the line of the
forty-ninth parallel, or by the United States’ consenting to that of
the Columbia. With these limits to their several claims practically
agreed upon by Great Britain and the United States, and a plan of joint
occupation adopted at the close of the year 1818, it remained only to
eliminate claims of other nations to the territory in order to reduce
the question to its simplest terms. This elimination, as we have seen,
was effected by the conventions of 1819, of 1824, and of 1825, the
last of which left Britain and America free to settle the question of
sovereignty between themselves.
The conditions of the Oregon Question at the close of the period ending
1825 were, upon the whole, not unfavorable to America. It is true Great
Britain was the party in possession at this time through the settlements
of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but when it is remembered that these
settlements were made even before the more important concessions of the
conventions were made, these concessions are only the more strongly
significant of the disposition of the government of Great Britain to
treat fairly, at least, the claims of America. It is especially
significant of this disposition that the settlement at Fort George was
abandoned in the spring of 1825 by the British company in the
expectation that the Americans would speedily occupy it, and, though the
Americans failed at once to occupy it, it was left by the British
unoccupied for five years, as if they were waiting for the Americans to
come and claim their own. When we remember Britain’s well known
doctrine, of occupation within a reasonable time as necessary to
establish full title to lands claimed on the ground of prior discovery
and exploration, this can hardly be regarded as else than an invitation
on the part of Britain to the United States to come and make good their
title to at least that part of Oregon that lay south of the Columbia.
Occupation had been attempted, it will be remembered, in the case of the
establishments of the Pacific Fur Company at Astoria and other points on
the south and east of the Columbia. The whole conduct of England in
regard to these establishments, made for the purposes of trade, goes to
show that she regarded them as belonging to a legitimate mode of
occupation, the right of which she not only assumed to herself, but was
ready to allow to America. The failure of the settlements and their
ultimate abandonment as a mode of American occupation were due to the
accidents of war, not to the interference of diplomacy. The convention
of 1818, of joint occupation, was the embodiment of no new principle,
but simply the formal assent of both parties to a principle of
occupation assumed by America in the Astoria settlements, and by Great
Britain in those in the valley of the Columbia, and by each tacitly
allowed to the other.
In 1821, however, three years after the convention of joint occupation,
a movement was begun in the Congress of the United States toward an
occupation of the territory in dispute, of a very different character,
which, if it had actually been adopted as a measure enjoined upon the
executive, and once been attempted to be carried out, would have met
from Great Britain a very different response. In the house of
representatives, December 10, 1821, on motion of Mr. Floyd, of Virginia,
a committee was appointed to inquire into the expediency of occupying
the Columbia River and the country adjacent thereto; and the committee
had leave to report by bill or otherwise. Later in the same session this
committee reported a bill providing for the occupation of the mouth of
the Columbia. The occupation contemplated by this bill was to be, first
of all, military occupation, or, as one of the advocates of the bill
wished to make it by amendment, “an occupation by military force only,
with some encouragement to settlers.” The view of the territorial rights
of the United States in that region on which the bill was based was
briefly and clearly put by another of its advocates: “The bill under
consideration does not attempt a colonial settlement. The territory
proposed to be occupied is already a part of the United States.” The
convention of joint occupation of 1818 left the question of sovereignty
of the entire territory westward of the Rocky Mountains in abeyance. All
occupation, therefore, of any part of this territory, to be lawful under
this convention, must be of such a nature as to leave the question of
sovereignty to be settled by agreement of the powers participant in the
convention. Whatever rights either of the two parties to the convention
had, or conceived that it had, by the act of entering into the
convention it agreed, so long as the convention was in force, neither to
assert sovereignty, nor to do any act in the territory covered by the
convention that could be justly construed as an act of sovereignty. What
acts the two powers might lawfully do under the convention were not
clear at first, but it is difficult at this day to understand how anyone
who looked carefully into the question could have failed to see that the
acts contemplated in this first bill providing for occupation were not
such as could lawfully be done under the convention. The same may be
said of all the measures proposed in congress in regard to the
occupation of the territory during the earlier period of the convention.
There were men in congress who saw the unlawful character of each
measure as it was proposed, and opposed it on this ground. Others joined
these actively, on the ground that the Oregon Territory, if settled,
because of its distance and the barriers which separated it from the
United States, never could become a part of the union. To these were
added enough who based their opposition on other grounds to defeat every
such measure, either in the senate or in the house, or, as was the case
in the early history of congressional agitation, in both houses of
congress.
This early discussion in congress of our interests in Oregon, though it
failed to reach any practicable plan of occupation, was not without
valuable results. It served to clarify the minds of men in congress, and
out of it, on the nature of the question involved, and through the
information brought out and published in the course of the debates and
reports went far toward enlightening the public mind on the character
and resources of the territory in dispute. In the course of the
negotiations that preceded the convention of 1818, and led up to it, Mr.
Adams, as Secretary of State, in a letter of instructions to the
American Plenipotentiaries, had expressed his government’s low estimate
of the interests involved in the Oregon Question. “It may be proper,” he
then wrote, “to remark the minuteness of the present interests, either
to Great Britain or to the United States, involved in this concern, and
the unwillingness, for this reason, of this government to include it
among the objects of serious discussion with them.”
Such words, written on the eve of the first congressional agitation of
the question, could hardly have been written at the close of that
discussion. For at that time the Oregon Question had become a matter of
widespread interest, and both government and people were disposed to
include it among objects of serious discussion. Agitation of the
question in congress had the further effect of bringing the two
governments to make another attempt to effect a settlement by
convention. In 1824, when measures providing for occupation had been
discussed in congress for three years, Mr. Adams, Secretary of State,
wrote that though the government was aware that the convention of 1818
between the United States and Great Britain had four years to run, the
President was of the opinion that the present was not an unsuitable
moment for attempting a new and more definite adjustment of the claims
of the two powers in question; that the Oregon Territory was a country
daily assuming an aspect political, commercial, and territorial of more
and more interest to the United States. Negotiations were at this time
renewed between the two governments, but failed to issue in any
agreement. Two years later they were resumed, on motion of the British
government, but the two governments adhering substantially to their
several positions of 1818, no settlement was reached. The third article
of the convention of 1818 was, however, renewed for an indefinite
period. In the communications of Mr. Clay to Mr. Gallatin during this
period of negotiation, there is manifested an increase of interest in
the question on the part of the American government, even over that of
two years before.
The depth of this interest and the source of its inspiration appear from
various expressions of these official communications. “The President,”
Mr. Clay writes, “is anxious for a settlement on just principles. Such a
settlement alone would be satisfactory to the people of the United
States, or would command the concurrence of the senate.” “Much better,”
he continues, “that matters of difference should remain unadjusted than
be settled on terms disadvantageous to the United States, and which,
therefore, would be unsatisfactory to the people and to other
departments of government.”
From these words, and words of like tenor, it is evident that from this
out an interested people and an alert congress will have part in shaping
the policy of the government on the Oregon Question. It is to be noted,
too, that the government of the United States did not advance its
demands beyond the terms proposed at first, nor longer minimized the
interest of the question to itself, and that it took a firmer stand on
the boundary proposed. The Secretary of State now wrote of the line of
latitude 49° as a concession on the part of his government, and boldly
declared that as such it was an ultimatum.
After the renewal, in 1827, of the third article of the convention of
1818, with a provision for its indefinite continuance, or its abrogation
by either power on due notice, the subject drops out of congress for a
period of ten years, but only to return at the end of that time on the
demand of that voice which, as we have just observed, the administration
of Mr. Adams had already heard and attended to. This interval is an
important period in the history of the Oregon Territory. The two
governments stand stubbornly each on the boundary line of its own
proposal, the United States for the line of latitude 49°, Great Britain
for the line of the Columbia, seemingly making no approach to an
agreement. Other influences, however, were at work preparing the way for
final settlement, and determining the lines on which that settlement
should be made.
The ten years between the renewal, in 1827, of the convention of 1818,
and the resumption of the discussion of the subject in congress in the
year 1837, present a new phase of the Oregon Question, and may be termed
the period of early American settlement. In thus designating this
period, the settlement of Astoria in 1811 has not been forgotten. It has
already been shown that, though projected and supported by an American
capitalist, and made under letters from the American government and the
protection of the American flag, that settlement was scarcely entitled
to be called an American settlement; that whatever of American character
it had in its inception it lost two years later in its transfer to a
British company and to the protection of the British flag. The
settlement of Astoria, even as a British settlement, was not of a
permanent character. It contributed, it is true, a few settlers to later
communities as they were established, but by far its greatest
contributions to the settlement of the Oregon Question was in the
diplomatic transfer which it was the occasion of under the terms of the
treaty of Ghent. It did serve under the provisions of that treaty to
secure to the United States the valuable concession from Great Britain
of their right to be in possession of this position on the south bank of
the Columbia, pending the final settlement of the question of
sovereignty over the territory. As a permanent American settlement,
however, it has no place in the history of Oregon.
There is reason, therefore, in making the period of early American
settlement begin with the period mentioned. No actual settlement, it is
true, was made at the very first of this period, but about this time the
question of colonizing the region of the Columbia River began to be
seriously agitated in various parts of the United States. A company
having this end in view was organized about this time in Boston, and
another in New Orleans, while in various parts of the country the
propriety of forming such organizations was seriously discussed. Every
effort was made by these societies, and by individuals whose interest in
the subject had been awakened, to obtain and disseminate such
information as should awaken popular interest in the territory and
further the ends of its colonization.
The first enterprise that followed from this agitation, was that of
Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Boston, for the establishment of a settlement for
trade and agriculture on the Lower Columbia. After the failure of a
first attempt in 1832, Wyeth succeeded in the year 1834 in planting a
small settlement on Wapato Island, at the junction of the Willamette
with the Columbia. Untoward circumstances and disaffection among his
followers defeated his first attempt, and sent him back to the east,
after two years of gallant struggle, feeling that his second was far
from successful. His settlement, while it has had in some sense an
unbroken continuity, and has contributed of its members to the
subsequent settlements in Oregon, can hardly be said to have had the
character of a permanent colony. The largest results of Wyeth’s
enterprise are rather to be looked for in the contribution he made in
various ways to the furtherance of other enterprises than his own.
Substantially the same may be said of the enterprise of Hall J. Kelley,
the leading promoter of one or more of the emigration societies already
mentioned. He contributed materially to the ultimate settlement of the
territory by his persistent and widespread agitation in the east, and
later in some measure by bringing into the Willamette Valley a small
band of men, some of whose number became permanent settlers. No colony,
however, was planted in this region under his leadership, and he did not
himself finally make Oregon his home.
The American settlements in Oregon that have thus far been mentioned,
were organized primarily for the purpose of trade, and that, too, trade
of a character that was not likely to bring into the country and
permanently establish there colonists that should become rooted to the
soil. Traders and trappers might in time abandon their pursuits as such,
and, attaching themselves as individuals to a settled community, become
useful members of that community, as more than one such did in the early
history of Oregon, but no aggregation of such men, brought together for
their own peculiar purposes, was likely to become an organic society,
with powers of life and growth.
The American settlements in Oregon thus far lacked the first essential
to the planting even of the germs of a state. In no one of them was
there so much as one American home, nor were there the elements of one.
An American white woman had not yet set foot on Oregon soil, nor any
woman, save the native and her offspring. It was now more than a score
of years since that first settlement at Astoria, but Oregon still waited
the coming of that institution that lies at the foundation of every
American state, the American family.
About the time of Wyeth’s first expedition, there appeared in Saint
Louis what had somewhat of the character of a delegation from the native
tribes west of the Rocky Mountains. It consisted, as the story runs, of
four or five men from the Nez Perce tribe, who, having heard of the
White Man’s God and his Book, were come to ask that men be sent to teach
their people of these. The story of this strange and interesting mission
was taken up by the press and spread throughout the country. It gave a
new impulse and a new direction to the efforts of missionary societies
for the evangelization of the native tribes. One of the first fruits of
this new interest in missions was the organization by the Mission Board
of the Methodist Episcopal Church of a mission to the Oregon Indians.
This mission, as finally constituted, consisted of the Reverend Jason
Lee, as leader, and his nephew, Daniel Lee, and three lay members, Cyrus
Shepard, Philipp L. Edwards, and Courtney M. Walker, five in all, a
mission of men only. Sending their goods and supplies by sea to the
Columbia, they joined Wyeth in the spring of 1834, and traveled with him
overland, reaching Vancouver about the middle of September of that year.
After personal examination of the field by the leader, it was determined
that the mission should settle in the Willamette Valley, and a spot was
fixed upon not far from the site of the present town of Salem, and
within easy reach of a settlement already made by some retired employees
of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The object of the mission was the
evangelization of the Indian tribes of the valley, seemingly with little
thought at first of contributing to the colonization of the country.
This mission, indeed, the first among the Oregon Indians, like the
trading settlements that preceded it, lacked as first constituted one
essential to permanence. It did not include the family. The mistake was
doubtless early seen by the missionaries themselves, but was not
remedied until the arrival of the first reinforcement to the mission,
more than two years later. From the coming of the first reinforcement in
the spring of 1837, and the constitution thereupon of several families,
the mission began to take on somewhat of the character of a permanent
settlement, and with still further reinforcements a year or two later,
became the nucleus of the first permanent American colony in the
Willamette Valley.
In the meantime a second mission had been established east of the
Cascade Mountains. In the summer of 1836, Dr. Marcus Whitman and Mrs.
Whitman, the Rev. Henry H. Spaulding and Mrs. Spaulding, and William H.
Gray, under commission from the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions, crossed the Rocky Mountains, and settled among the
native tribes of the Upper Columbia. The primary object of this mission,
as was that of the mission to the tribes of the Willamette Valley, was
the evangelization of the Indians. But this mission, unlike that, was
based from the first on the family, and thus brought with it this first
condition of permanence. Within its limited number were the two first
American white families to settle in Oregon, and were included for a
period of six months or more the only American white women dwelling west
of the Rocky Mountains. From its original number, and more largely from
its later reinforcements, the mission made valuable contributions to the
body of permanent settlers, but perhaps its greatest contribution to the
history of Oregon was one incidental to its primary work as a mission,
in its showing to America and the world by its own first treading of the
same, that there was an open pathway for American families through the
Rocky Mountains into the valley of the Columbia. This mission thus
demonstrated for the first the practical contiguity of the Oregon
Territory to the United States. It was this contiguity as it was
subsequently made patent that was, almost more than all else, to
influence the Oregon Question to an issue favorable to the United
States. Whitman seems to have seen this from the first. The settlement
of the Oregon Question came to appear to him simply a matter of prior
settlement of the territory from contiguous states, and such prior
settlement was a question only of an open pathway through the
intervening mountains. To his mind, therefore, the first duty of the
American government was not in military occupation of the region in
question, nor in the extension over it of civil jurisdiction, but in
making the pathway thither already pointed out, a plain and safe highway
for American settlers. This done, the people would do the rest.
In the year 1837, after a silence of nearly ten years, the Oregon
Question was again moved in congress. Many things had happened in the
interval since its last appearance there to make it certain that with
its reappearance the question had come to abide until settled. The
settlements already mentioned, small as they were, were not
inconsiderable in their influence at the east. They were the centers of
ties that reached back into various influential communities in the
states of the union; nor were the men who composed the settlements slow
to avail themselves of every such tie to make and influence public
sentiment at home. The same energy and indomitable spirit which they
manifested in reaching the new land were shown again in their efforts to
enlighten the country in regard to the land they had come to possess,
and to persuade others to join them in their efforts to take and keep
possession of it. Never was a new country so much talked of, nor its
excellencies so enthusiastically set forth, when those who could do so
from experience were so few. From the time the first real American
colony was founded in Oregon, and there had been time for word from it
to reach the states from which its members had come, neither the
government nor the country was ever allowed for long at a time to forget
the existence of Oregon, of the Oregon colony, or of the Oregon
Question.
In the late summer of 1835, President Jackson, through certain letters,
as it appears, of William N. Slacum, a paymaster in the navy, who at
that time was spending some months in Alexandria, Virginia, on sick
leave, became strongly of the mind that the bay of San Francisco should
be in the possession of the United States. He almost immediately, on
receipt of these letters, directed Mr. Forsythe, Secretary of State, to
write to Anthony Butler, then in Mexico for the purpose of negotiating
the purchase of Texas, enlarging his instructions so as to include the
purchase of so much of the possessions of Mexico on the coast as would
embrace the bay of San Francisco. A little later the same year President
Jackson commissioned Slacum to visit the North Pacific Coast, directing
him at the earliest opportunity after arriving in the Pacific, “to
proceed to and up the Oregon, to obtain specific and authentic
information in regard to the inhabitants of the country, the relative
number of whites and Indians; the jurisdiction which the whites
acknowledged; the sentiments entertained by all in respect to the United
States and the two European powers having possessions in that region;
and finally all information, political, statistical, and geographical,
that might prove useful and interesting to the government.” The
commission thus specifically and somewhat peremptorily given was
fulfilled with promptness and energy, and, though the chief by whom the
commission had been given had retired from office before Mr. Slacum’s
return, the country was not deprived of the results of the
investigation. In December, 1837, through a memorial presented by Mr.
Slacum to congress, and by congress ordered to be published, coincident
with the recurrence of the discussion in congress of the Oregon
Question, congress and the country had the detailed results of this
first official inquiry into the condition and prospects of the
settlements in the region of the Columbia.
Throughout this period when the question was in abeyance, individual
explorers, American and British, had from time to time visited this
region and had returned to write for eager readers of what they saw and
learned in the strange new land, until a piqued interest on two
continents was alert for the next news from Oregon. The publication at
the close of this period of Irving’s Astoria in 1836, and of his
Adventures of Captain Bonneville in 1837, books which were themselves
the offspring of the widespread and romantic interest already felt,
served in turn to make that interest still more keen, and to awaken it
in minds where else it had never been felt.
But greatest among all the forces that had been at work during this
period toward the solution of this question was one that had worked
silently and unobserved, but persistently and effectively, and withal
wholly in the American interest. In the ten years that followed the
extension of the convention of 1818, more than three hundred thousand
people, immigrants from foreign lands and emigrants from older states,
had crossed the Mississippi and settled in the two states of Arkansas
and Missouri, and the territory of Iowa. At the close of this period,
when congress again took up the question more than half a million of
people were settled between the Mississippi River and the Rocky
Mountains, and of these more than three hundred thousand were in
Missouri alone, the state which stood upon the highway to the new
country, and nearest to the gate of entrance. The fact of this great
array of American families fast moving toward the intervening barrier,
and all but pressing upon it, with myriads of other families in the
older states following after, taken together with the door open no
farther than it had been proved to be open by the few American families
that had passed through, should have been enough to assure any calm
observer of what the issue was to be. There were such observers whom it
did so assure, and their calm faith and clear forecast stood the nation
in good stead in the exciting debates that were to follow.
The second period of the discussion of the Oregon Question in congress
began late in the year 1837, near the close of the first session of the
twenty-fifth congress. It was opened a few days before adjournment by
each house calling upon the President “to furnish at an early period of
the next session any correspondence that may have taken place between
the government and foreign powers in relation to our territory west of
the Rocky Mountains.” To both these resolutions the President, promptly
on the opening of the next congress, replied that no correspondence
whatever had passed between the government of the United States and any
other government in relation to that subject since the renewal in 1827
of the convention of joint occupancy. It thus appeared that while the
subject had been in abeyance in congress it had been equally so in the
executive department of the government, and it was not destined to
reappear in this department for a further period of more than four
years. Meanwhile the subject in one form or another was seldom absent
for long at a time from the discussions of congress. This was especially
true of the senate, where, in the person of Dr. Lewis F. Linn, senator
from Missouri, the title of the United States to Oregon and the cause of
the citizens of the United States who had settled there found an earnest
advocate and a zealous and indefatigable friend. Measures were
introduced in both houses of congress, by Doctor Linn in the senate, and
by Mr. Cushing in the house, looking to the occupation and settlement of
Oregon. These first measures elicited but little debate, and failed of
reaching action. They did, however, by bringing out reports from the
executive and committees, get before congress and the country a large
amount of information on the subject. In the house, after a year of
unavailing effort to reach action on the measures introduced, the
subject remained again in abeyance for two or three years. In the
senate, however, chiefly through the active interest of Doctor Linn, new
measures were introduced each session which, though failing in every
case of reaching the point of action, gained more and more the ear of
the senate and a wider attention in the country. In each of the measures
as thus far proposed there was some vitiating clause or provision which
to the calmer and clearer minds in the senate made it inconsistent with
the terms of the existing convention. It was open to congress to
abrogate that convention by giving due notice to Great Britain, and so
to open the way for a larger action on the part of the government, and
resolutions to this effect were introduced, but neither congress nor the
country as yet was ready for this step. Not yet clear as to what action
should next be adopted, congress was not prepared to remove this bar to
hasty or ill-advised measures. Thus far the convention had certainly
been in the interests of peace, and had not seriously interfered with
the progress of settlement.
The year 1842 was an important one in the history of the Oregon
Question. Early that year Doctor Linn had returned to the contest in the
senate with new zeal and determination, and other friends in congress
and out of it came to his support. His bill, as heretofore, was a bill
for the adoption of means for the occupation and settlement of the
Oregon Territory, and the extension of the jurisdiction of our courts
over our citizens settled there, with a provision promising a large
grant of land to actual settlers. This and previous bills had been
prefaced by a declaration that the United States held its title to the
Oregon country valid, and would not abandon it. The year opened with
better promise of favorable action than heretofore; the preamble, while
its adoption was strongly opposed by the majority in the senate, had
brought from even those who opposed its adoption the declaration that it
was a just expression of the sentiment of the country, while the
provision for the land grant to settlers, though opposed for the present
on the ground that it was not consistent with the convention, was
acknowledged by all to contemplate but a just compensation, which should
be made in due time, to pioneers who had taken the hardships and risks
of early colonization. The bill at this session had been presented under
most favorable auspices; the select committee to which it had been
referred was of great influence in the senate, and had unanimously
instructed their chairman to report the bill with the recommendation
that it pass. And yet, though thus auspiciously introduced, for some
reason as the months of the session went on it failed of being
vigorously pressed. We have the explanation of this in Senator Linn’s
own words, spoken in the senate on the last day of August, the closing
day of the session. After speaking of the favorable circumstances
attending the introduction of the bill, Senator Linn continued: “It was
thus placed in its order upon the calendar, but upon its coming up for
consideration as a special order Lord Ashburton arrived from England, to
enter upon a negotiation touching all points of dispute between the two
countries, boundaries as well as others, Oregon as well as Maine. In
this posture of affairs it was considered indelicate, not to say unwise,
to press the bill to a decision while these negotiations were pending.
They are now over, and a treaty is published to the world between the
United States and Great Britain, in which it seems that the question of
the Oregon Territory has been deferred to some more remote or auspicious
period, for an ultimate decision.” In conclusion Mr. Linn said that he
was confident that there were majorities in both houses for this bill;
and he felt equally certain that it would have passed at this session
but for the arrival of Lord Ashburton, and the pendency of the
negotiations. He gave notice that he would deem it “his imperative duty”
to bring in at an early day of the coming session this same bill, and
press it to a final decision. That the decision would be favorable he
did not entertain the slightest doubt, and he took pleasure in making
that opinion public “for the satisfaction of all those who might take an
interest in this beautiful country, the germ of future states to be
settled by the Anglo-American race, which will extend our limits from
the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.”
There is a tone of confidence in the words with which Senator Linn
dismissed the bill of 1842 that was not wholly unwarranted. As he spoke
he was aware that the largest colony of American settlers that had ever
set out for Oregon, a colony of staunch men and women, who had been
encouraged to set out by the assurances which his bill had given, were
then steadily nearing their destination. He was aware, too, that in the
brief time since the publication of the Ashburton treaty, in which no
mention was made of the Oregon boundary, congress and the country had
shown a temper that promised well for his measure when next it should be
introduced.
The interval between the publication of the treaty, August 9, and the
reassembling of congress in December, was one of earnest and often
heated discussion, not only of the provisions of the treaty, but of its
one noted omission. No satisfactory reason had yet been given why the
Oregon boundary had not been included with that of Maine. This omission,
taken together with intimations that soon reached the public that the
two governments were again engaged in negotiations on this subject,
began to awaken, in some quarters, at least, fears for the result. The
nature and ground of these fears, as far as they were capable of being
defined, may be seen in the declaration of the legislature of Illinois,
prefixed to resolutions on the Oregon Question presented to congress
early the next session. That declaration was, that “the safety of the
title of the United States [to Oregon] was greatly endangered by the
concessions made in the late treaty in relation to the boundary of
Maine, by her rights not being persisted in and made part of said
treaty, and will be more endangered by longer delay.”
In his annual message to congress, December 6, 1842, President Tyler,
after giving as the reason for the omission of the Oregon boundary from
the late treaty the fear that its discussion might imperil the treaty as
a whole, went on to express the purpose of the administration to urge
upon the government of Great Britain the importance of an early
settlement of this question. A few days later, the senate passed a
resolution calling upon the President to communicate to the senate the
nature of any “informal communications” that might have passed between
the Secretary of State and the Special Minister of the British
Government on the question of the Oregon boundary. To this resolution
the President, in his message of December 23, answered that measures had
been already taken in pursuance of the purpose expressed in his annual
message, and, under these circumstances, he did not deem it consistent
with the public interest to make any communication on the subject. But
neither the President’s expressed purpose, nor his subsequent
declaration that measures in pursuance of that purpose had already been
taken, stayed the progress of measures in congress.
On the nineteenth of December, in accordance with his promise made at
the close of the last session of congress, Mr. Linn introduced a bill of
like import with that of the former session. This bill was referred to a
select committee, of which Mr. Linn was chairman, and was soon reported
back to the house, when it was made a regular order for immediate
discussion. The discussion was continuous and earnest for more than a
month, when by a vote of twenty-four to twenty-two it passed the senate.
A vote of reconsideration failing to pass, the bill went to the house,
and was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which John
Quincy Adams was chairman, by whom, a few days later, it was reported to
the house with the recommendation that it should not pass. Thus the bill
failed of finally becoming a law, and doubtless many who advocated it in
the senate, on cooler reflection, felt that it was well that it did
fail. In a wider view, however, the measure was not a failure, for it
served its object well, though not in the way its supporters intended.
Few bills ever have called out from the senate a more earnest or an
abler discussion. The best talent of the body was enlisted in the
discussion, the spirit in which the debate was carried on was broad and
patriotic, and for the progressive illumination of the subject under
discussion the debate has never been surpassed. When it closed there
remained little to be said. The future course of congress in the matter
was practically settled in this debate and the action which followed;
while in the course of the discussion, the pathway by which the question
was ultimately to reach its solution was again and again pointed out.
This was done by no one more clearly than by Calhoun, who spoke twice at
length in opposition to the measure. He opposed the bill with the whole
force of his power of keen analysis and convincing logic, but he opposed
it because he saw in its adoption certain defeat of the very object
which he in common with the promoters of the bill desired to reach. He
counseled patience, and a strict abiding by the terms of the convention,
at the same time assuring his countrymen that time and the sure movement
of population toward and into the region in question were certain to
bring the solution desired. So accurately did he foresee and describe
the course by which the question would advance to its final settlement,
that his words at this day read rather like an epitome of history than
what they were, a forecast of events.
American colonists in Oregon at that moment were not indeed sufficiently
numerous to promise a speedy fulfillment of this prophesy. All told,
they scarcely numbered five hundred, men, women, and children, and
included not more than two score American families. They were enough,
however, to test the excellence of the land, and enough of them had
entered through the gateway of the mountains to prove that the country
was accessible to men and women who were serious in their purpose of
reaching it. Then, too, at the moment when Mr. Calhoun was speaking, at
various centers throughout the union and on the frontiers of Missouri, a
colony was organizing of men and women of the best stuff of which new
states are made, setting their faces toward the new land with the full
purpose of making it their home. This colony, nearly double in its
numbers the total American population then in Oregon, before the year
ended, successfully passed the barrier of the mountains, and with its
whole great caravan safely reached the valley of the Columbia. Thus,
sooner perhaps, and with a stronger and bolder movement than Mr. Calhoun
himself had expected when he spoke, the onward movement of population
began to make good the words of his prophesy.
When, in February, 1843, the senate bill failed in the house, it was
understood that the two governments were in communication on the subject
of the Oregon Territory. It was this understanding more than anything
else that led to the suppression of the Oregon bill in the Committee on
Foreign Relations. No proposal had as yet been made in official form,
but it is now known that the President and his secretary had a definite
policy in mind, and that while desirous of checking any measures in
congress which might hinder the negotiations which they aimed to bring
about, they felt obliged to conceal the nature of their policy with the
utmost care, for fear of arousing opposition in congress and the
country. As it was, there was no little dissatisfaction in congress with
the treaty which had just been negotiated by Webster and Lord Ashburton.
Like most treaties on boundary lines, this treaty was a settlement by
compromise. Many citizens from the section affected by the new boundary
line, and enemies of the administration from all sections, were prompt
to say that the secretary had yielded too much—that he had allowed the
United States to be overreached in the negotiations. The friends of
Oregon took alarm. They thought they saw in the omission of the Oregon
boundary from the treaty an occasion for another compromise, in which
there should be a surrender of territory justly claimed by the United
States. That this fear was widespread in the states of the Mississippi
Valley appears from the resolutions of state legislatures presented to
congress early in the following session. In more than one set of these
resolutions it was manifest, through plain statement or through
implication, that apprehensions for Oregon had been awakened by the
terms of settlement of the boundary line of Maine. There was reason for
uneasiness in the well known leaning of Mr. Webster toward certain
commercial advantages to be got by treaty from Great Britain, and his
low estimate of the value of the Oregon Territory to the United States.
We now know that for this and for other reasons the prevalent
apprehensions of the time in regard to the Oregon Territory were not
groundless. The evidence is now at hand that the President and his
secretary did contemplate a treaty with England which would involve a
surrender of territory on the North Pacific Coast such as no
administration hitherto had been willing for a moment to consider. The
compensation, however, for the territory surrendered was not, as was
then surmised, to be found wholly, if at all, on the Atlantic Coast.
It will be remembered that the Oregon Question was not the only question
that agitated the country at this time. There was the Texas question,
well nigh as old as that of Oregon, lately become pressing through
events in Texas itself, and through the growing importunity of the
Southern States. Then, too, there was the California question,—not a
question of as widespread and popular interest as either of the others,
but one which for a decade or more had been of growing interest to a
narrow but intelligent circle. There was a popular demand for the
assertion and maintenance of our rights in Oregon; there had come to be
a popular demand for the annexation to the union, or the reannexation,
as some chose to put it, of Texas; while as far back as the second
administration of President Jackson there had been a desire on the part
of farseeing statesmen to secure from Mexico the cession to the United
States of so much of California as to include the bay of San Francisco.
England was interested in Texas, was even thought by many in the United
States to be contemplating making it a colony; England had influence
with Mexico, her capitalists having loaned the Mexican government to the
amount of $50,000,000 on security of lands in New Mexico, California,
and other of her possessions; and England was urgent in all negotiations
on the Oregon boundary that she be allowed free navigation of the
Columbia, if not that that river be her southern boundary. In the United
States, the slave states were desirous of Texas; the Western States
pressed for the Oregon Territory at least to the forty-ninth parallel,
while there was a growing desire in commercial centers in the North
Atlantic States to have in American possession what was then regarded as
the only ample and safe harbor on the North Pacific Coast south of the
Straits of Fuca. Out of these various interests in England and America,
President Tyler and Mr. Webster, his Secretary of State, shaped the
policy of the administration. It is not likely that the President and
his secretary were in entire accord on the details of the policy; but
both alike were desirous that the administration should be signalized by
a settlement through negotiation of the questions then pressing upon the
country. In its earlier and more comprehensive form, the policy of the
administration included all the questions that have been mentioned.
These it sought to settle by a comprehension of them all in a tripartite
treaty between the United States, Mexico and Great Britain, whereby it
was hoped to secure from Mexico the recognition of the independence of
Texas, and the cession to the United States of her possessions on the
Pacific down to the thirty-sixth parallel. In compensation for her good
offices in these matters, the United States was to yield to Great
Britain all claim to the Oregon Territory down to the line of the
Columbia River. It was thought that the large acquisition thus secured
of territory south of the forty-second parallel would compensate for the
loss of Oregon north of the Columbia, while the northern and southern
sections would be reconciled to the treaty by the large acquisition it
secured north and south, respectively, of parallel thirty-six.
The plan of the administration included a special mission to England, on
which it was expected Mr. Webster should be sent, that he might be the
better able to negotiate the treaty; and, failing this, a mission to
China, to which Mr. Everett, then Minister to England, should be
transferred, thus still accomplishing the desired end by allowing Mr.
Webster to take his place in London. The mission to England failed in
committee; the mission to China passed in congress, but failed to carry
Mr. Webster to England, through Mr. Everett’s unwillingness to accept
the China mission. With his failure to reach England at this time, Mr.
Webster’s hope of being able to effect a settlement of the questions
pending between the two governments died; this having been his main
reason for remaining in President Tyler’s cabinet, his resignation
shortly followed. And thus, with Mr. Webster’s resignation from the
cabinet, passed forever all danger of a settlement of the Oregon
boundary on a line below the forty-ninth parallel.
There were causes operating to produce this result which do not appear
in this narrative. Even if the mission to England had succeeded, and Mr.
Webster had effected the tripartite treaty as he desired, it is doubtful
if it would have been accepted by the senate. Events were occurring
contemporaneously with the movement of these measures that rendered it
probable that the treaty, if made, would have failed of confirmation.
Certain it is that the early spring of that year found the President
less disposed to press for the settlement of the Oregon boundary
contemplated in this scheme, and with less reason to expect the approval
of congress or the country in any such settlement. Events had been
rapidly making such a settlement impossible. A notable one, the great
emigration of 1843, has already been mentioned. There were others
precedent to this.
Some years previous, the Rev. Jason Lee, while on a visit to the United
States, had visited Washington, and made a strong representation of the
need of a representative of the United States in Oregon. As a late
response to this plea, in the spring of 1842, the government had sent a
sub-agent to look after the interests of the Indians in Oregon. The
appointment fell upon Dr. Elijah White, who himself had been a member of
the Willamette mission. Doctor White had at once set out for Oregon, in
May of that year, and was accompanied by a colony of more than one
hundred persons, assembled largely through his influence, the first real
colony of American families, aside from the missions, to enter the
Oregon Territory. By the end of the winter of 1843, the government was
in possession of Doctor White’s report of the safe arrival in Oregon of
himself, and this colony; of the satisfaction of the colonists with what
they found there; and of the favorable condition and prospects of the
settlers already there. Some of the colonists themselves had written to
newspapers at their old homes giving good accounts of the new land, and
urging their friends to join them there. And these letters, wherever
found, were copied by all the great newspapers, north and south,
because, as their editors sometimes apologetically added, “every one was
eager to hear the latest news from the Oregon country.” About the same
time with the arrival of the report of the government’s own agent, there
appeared in Washington, fresh from his winter ride from Oregon, Dr.
Marcus Whitman, of the Walla Walla mission. In repeated interviews with
the President, and members of his cabinet, as well as with members of
congress, Doctor Whitman presented earnestly the practicability of large
companies of emigrants with their cattle and wagons reaching Oregon
through the mountains, and urged the government to encourage such
caravans by making the way thither as easy and safe as possible. What
was thus said in the ears of government, and through the public press,
was talked by many voices in crowded assemblies, at village stores, and
at firesides throughout the country, from the frontiers of Missouri to
the coast of Massachusetts, and from Portland, Maine, to New Orleans.
The people were thus already aroused, even before the failure in
congress of the administration’s plans for the settlement of the
boundary question. The country of the Oregon had been made to appear
inviting for seekers for new homes in all parts of the land, and
colonization of it by the direct route through the Rocky Mountains
practicable to the nation at large, so that the state of the public mind
at this time boded ill to any plan of settlement that proposed a
surrender of any part of the territory to which the United States was
believed to have a well grounded claim. The time for bargaining away any
part of the Oregon Territory, south of the forty-ninth parallel and the
Straits of Fuca, had now fully passed. No one was quicker to see and
appreciate the changed conditions of the question, than was the
President himself. Naturally desirous that his administration should
have the honor of settling this long pending question, he continued,
through his succeeding secretaries, to endeavor to bring the
negotiations to a successful conclusion; but henceforth his proposals
were based upon a return to the former position of the government on the
line of the forty-ninth parallel. After a proposal of the line of the
Columbia our government was at a disadvantage in renewing proposals
based upon the more northern line, while the changed temper of congress
and the country obliged to a firmer standing to the old position, once
it was resumed. The President’s best efforts, however, to bring
negotiations to a happy issue failed, and his administration closed with
the question still pending. The negotiations of this time show a zealous
purpose on the part of the President to effect a settlement, but show no
real progress toward that end. The same may be said of the measures in
congress of this period. Discussion of the question had been resumed in
the house, and went on in the senate, but since negotiations on the part
of the government with a view to a speedy settlement were almost
continuously pending, congress was induced to refrain from any action
that might thwart or trammel the government in its efforts.
It has already been pointed out in this paper that the correspondence
between the two governments precedent to the convention of 1818, pointed
to the line of the forty-ninth parallel as the final position of our
government in this question. In subsequent negotiations between the
United States and Great Britain, this line came to be regarded as in
some sort traditional with our government, and as such became
increasingly influential in shaping the proposals of succeeding
administrations. We have just seen how under pressure of considerations
external to the Oregon Question the administration of Mr. Tyler had been
momentarily in danger of yielding this our traditional line for one to
the south, on the Columbia. We have now to see how under pressure of
another sort the government under the administration of Mr. Polk came
near abandoning this traditional position for a line farther to the
north.
In 1824, in a treaty between the United States and Russia, the line of
54° and 40′ was fixed as the limit of the claim of the United States
northward as against Russia, and of Russia’s claim southward as against
the United States. This line was thenceforth considered as the northern
limit of the Oregon Territory. In the course of negotiations with Great
Britain it had been mentioned as the northern limit of our claim, but
the claim of the United States to this line had never been pressed by
the government. In the same paragraph in which the claim had been
mentioned by our government, it had been abandoned for the lower line of
the forty-ninth parallel. In the year 1842, however, after the treaty of
that year had been concluded and made public, in the reaction caused by
what was regarded as a surrender of rights and just claims on the part
of our government, a disposition was manifested in some sections of the
country, particularly in the west, to recur to the extreme northern
line, and to press our claim to the Oregon Territory fully up to that
limit. This disposition found expression in some of the resolutions of
the state legislatures which were presented to congress at its next
session. Later, it found more distinct and emphatic expression in
resolutions adopted by public meetings and local conventions in various
parts of the country held for the purpose of promoting the occupation
and settlement of the Oregon Territory. The agitation thus carried on in
the latter part of 1842, and the earlier months of 1843, culminated in a
convention held in Cincinnati in July of the latter year. This
convention from its size and representative character had somewhat of
national importance. The circular calling the convention issued from
Cincinnati under date of May 23, was sent to representative men far and
wide over the union, and was given publicity by the leading journals of
the day. In this circular the object of the convention was formally
stated to be, “to urge upon congress the immediate occupation of the
Oregon Territory by the arms and laws of the republic, and to adopt such
measures as may seem most conducive to its immediate and effective
occupation, whether the government acts or not in the matter.” It will
be proposed, the circular continues, “to base the action of the
convention on Mr. Monroe’s declaration of 1823, ‘that the American
continents are not to be considered subject to colonization by any
European powers.’” The convention in a session of three days discussed
thoroughly the various aspects of the subject on which it came together,
and concluded by adopting a declaration of principles which was signed
by the chairman, Col. R. M. Johnson, and ninety other delegates,
representing six states of the Mississippi Valley. The first of the
principles adopted defined clearly what the convention understood by the
Oregon Territory which it was sought to occupy and settle, asserting, as
it did, the right of the United States from the line of latitude 42° to
that of 54° and 40′. Among letters read in the convention from prominent
men unable to be present was one from Mr. Cass, in which he declared
that no one would be present who would concur more heartily with the
convention in the measures that might be adopted than should he; he
would take and hold possession of the territory of the Pacific Coast,
come what might. It is not difficult to see in the utterance of the
Cincinnati convention, when taken in connection with the political
weight of the convention itself, the origin of that party war-cry which
was to make the presidential campaign of the following year so
celebrated in our history. Here was a constituency united in a solemn
pledge, which could not well be ignored in the estimate of political
forces. It was an influence to be bid for, and what more natural than
that it should be bid for, as it was bid for, by the party seeking a
means of reconciling northern and western voters to its more distinctly
southern policy of the annexation of Texas?
On becoming President, Mr. Polk seems not to have felt himself bound by
the extreme statement of his party’s position on the Oregon Question.
The tone of his inaugural is rather more conservative upon this subject
than might have been expected from the circumstances of his election.
His position, as stated in this paper, was sufficiently advanced,
however, to alarm the British government. In a letter of April 3,
addressed to Packenham, British Minister at Washington, Lord Aberdeen
said: “The inaugural speech of President Polk has impressed a very
serious character on our actual relations with the United States, and
the manner in which he has referred to the Oregon Question, so different
from the language of his predecessor, leaves little reason to hope for
any favorable result of the existing negotiation.” And yet Mr. Polk,
shortly after entering upon office, took up the negotiation as he found
it then pending, and made an honest effort to effect a settlement upon
the compromise line of his predecessors. In explanation of his course,
in his annual message to congress, December following, he said: “Though
entertaining the settled conviction that the British pretensions of
title could not be maintained to any portion of the Oregon Territory,
upon any principle of public law recognized by nations, yet, in
deference to what had been done by my predecessors, and especially in
consideration that propositions of compromise had been thrice made by
two preceding administrations to adjust the question on the parallel of
the forty-ninth degree of latitude, and in two of them yielding the free
navigation of the Columbia, and that the pending negotiations had been
commenced on the basis of compromise, I deemed it my duty not abruptly
to break it off. In consideration, too, that under the conventions of
1818 and 1827 the citizens and subjects of the two powers held a joint
occupancy of the country, I was induced to make another effort to settle
this long pending controversy in the spirit of moderation which had
given birth to the renewed discussion.”
In the letter above referred to, Lord Aberdeen, notwithstanding his
fears, directed Mr. Packenham to submit again to the new Secretary of
State the proposal for arbitration which he had submitted to his
predecessor, if conditions for such a proposal seemed favorable. On Mr.
Packenham’s informing Mr. Buchanan, the new Secretary of State, of his
instructions to this effect, Mr. Buchanan expressed the hope that a
satisfactory settlement of the question might yet be effected through
negotiation. In accordance with this expressed hope, Mr. Buchanan, a few
days later, submitted a proposal of the line of the forty-ninth parallel
extended through to the Pacific, offering to Great Britain any port or
ports on Vancouver’s Island she might choose. This proposal was rejected
by Mr. Packenham, without first submitting it to his government, in a
paper in which, after declaring the proposal offered less than was
offered by the United States in 1826, he concluded: “The undersigned
trusts that the American Plenipotentiary will be prepared to offer some
other proposal for the settlement of the Oregon Question more consistent
with fairness and equity, and with the reasonable expectations of the
British government.” This paper was presented on July 29; on August 30
Mr. Buchanan presented to Mr. Packenham a carefully prepared paper, in
which, after reviewing the position in which the President found himself
in reference to the question on coming into office, and setting forth
the motives which had actuated him in making the present proposal in
spite of his personal views on the subject, he called the British
Minister’s attention to the fact that the President’s proposal had been
rejected by him in terms not over courteous, without even a reference of
it to his government, and concluded: “Under such circumstances, I am
instructed by the President to say that he owes it to his own country,
and to a just appreciation of her title to the Oregon Territory, to
withdraw this proposition to the British government, which was made
under his direction; and it is hereby accordingly withdrawn.”
We have it on the authority of Mr. Polk’s diary that the concluding
paragraph is of the President’s own wording; that Mr. Buchanan urged the
President so to couch his answer as to encourage the British government
to make an offer on their part; that this the President positively
declined to do, saying that if the British government wished to make an
offer they must do so on their own responsibility. It was a matter of
regret on the part of Lord Aberdeen, on hearing of the matter, that this
proposition of our government had not been referred by Mr. Packenham to
his government. Later, Mr. Packenham, on receipt of a communication from
Lord Aberdeen, approached Mr. Buchanan with a view of getting from the
President encouragement to present another proposition on behalf of
Great Britain. This, though repeatedly urged to do so by Mr. Buchanan,
the President firmly refused to give. And thus the question stood at the
convening of congress in December.
The President’s message had, on the question of the Oregon Territory,
been prepared with special care. The several paragraphs bearing on this
subject were read and discussed in cabinet, and amended, until they
embodied the President’s policy in its maturest form. Again Mr. Polk was
besought by the Secretary of State to soften the tone of his message on
this point, but he refused, preferring, as he said, “his own bold
stand.” After reviewing briefly the history of negotiations on the
question under his predecessors, and noting that these had uniformly
been maintained on the part of the United States on the compromise line
of the forty-ninth parallel; and after stating somewhat particularly the
reasons that had induced him to take up the negotiations as he found
them pending on his entrance to office, and to continue them on the same
line in spite of his own personal convictions that the United States had
a just claim to the whole of the Oregon Territory, the President
proceeded to recommend to the favorable consideration of congress five
measures, all of which he thought clearly within the right of the United
States under the terms of the convention of joint occupancy. The first
and capital one of these recommendations was, that congress authorize
the President to terminate the convention of joint occupancy by giving
the British government the required notice. In accordance with this
recommendation a resolution to that effect was promptly introduced in
congress, and thereupon the Oregon Question was thought by all to have
assumed a grave aspect. Many men within congress, and without, some of
them Mr. Polk’s best friends and advisors, felt that while the measure
was clearly within the terms of the convention it was neither wise nor
safe at that time to adopt it. To every representation, however, of this
view of the case made to the President, he returned the uniform answer
that in his judgment the notice should be given.
The Secretary of State was not alone in his alarm at the President’s
bold stand on this question. He, with others, finding themselves unable
to induce the President to change his attitude on this point, and
finding that in the present mood of congress the resolution of notice
was likely to pass, used every endeavor to induce him to consent to a
renewal of the proposition for compromise on the line of the forty-ninth
parallel, or to invite such a proposal from the British government.
On the twenty-fifth of February, Mr. Calhoun, now returned to the
senate, called upon the President and met there Senator Colquitt, of
Georgia. Mr. Calhoun urged upon Mr. Polk that it was important that some
action of pacific character should go to England upon the next steamer,
and asked the President’s opinion of the policy of the senate’s passing
a resolution in executive session, advising the President to reopen
negotiations on the basis of the forty-ninth parallel. Mr. Polk was
unwilling to advise such a course; he did, however, finally tell Mr.
Calhoun and Mr. Colquitt, in confidence, as members of the senate, that
if Great Britain should see fit to submit a proposition for compromise
on that line, he should feel it his duty, following the example of
Washington on important occasions, to submit the proposition to the
senate confidentially for their previous advice. This course had already
been considered in cabinet two days before, on the reading of a dispatch
from Mr. McLane, our Minister in London, and had met with the almost
unanimous approval of the members.
The house had already, on the ninth of February, passed the resolution
of notice; the senate yet delayed and debated. But from the time when
the President consented to encourage a further proposition of compromise
from the British government by promising to submit the same to the
senate for advice, events moved rapidly to a favorable conclusion. April
17 the resolution of notice passed the senate. Formal notice
was addressed by our President to the Minister in London on the
twenty-eighth of April, was received by him in London on the fifteenth
of May, and on the twentieth of May was by him presented to Lord
Aberdeen. Two days before receiving the notice, however, on the
eighteenth of May, Lord Aberdeen had addressed a note to Mr. Packenham,
at Washington, instructing him to offer a compromise on the basis of
such a modification of the line of the forty-ninth degree of north
latitude as would give to Great Britain Vancouver’s Island, and allow
her the free navigation of the Columbia for a limited term of years.
On the tenth of June, in a message to the senate, the President
submitted this proposal, and asked the senate’s previous advice.
This was formally given in a resolution adopted June 12, by a vote
of thirty-eight to ten, in which the senate advised the President to
accept the proposal of the British government. A treaty based upon
this proposal was concluded and signed on the fifteenth day of June by
the representatives of the two powers. This treaty, on the following
day, was laid before the senate by the President, for its approval,
and three days later was confirmed without amendment. This convention
provided for the extension of a line on the forty-ninth degree of
north latitude, westward from the Rocky Mountains, to the middle of
the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island,
and thence southerly, through the middle of said channel, and of Fuca
Straits, to the Pacific Ocean.
It was found by the commissioners appointed to determine a line in
accordance with this convention that in one part of the strait there
were two recognized channels, an easterly one, by the Straits of
Rosario, and a westerly one, by the Canal De Haro. The commissioners
failing to agree as to which of the channels was the channel
contemplated by the treaty, the determination of this portion of the
line was left in abeyance. It remained so until the year 1871, when the
joint high commission appointed to adjust sundry differences between the
two governments, met in Washington. By certain articles of a convention,
concluded at this time it was agreed by the representatives of the two
powers, to submit to the Emperor of Germany the question as to which of
the two channels was the more in accordance with the treaty of June 15,
1846, the commissioners pledging their respective governments to accept
his award as final. The Emperor of Germany submitted the question to
three experts, Doctor Grimm, Doctor Goldschmidt, and Doctor Kiepert. In
accordance with the report of these distinguished scholars, the Emperor
of Germany, on the twenty-first of October, 1872, rendered his decision,
that the line by way of the Canal De Haro was the one most in accordance
with the treaty. This decision was accepted by the two governments, and
the unsettled portion of the boundary line determined in accordance with
it.
Thus, after the vicissitudes of more than three-quarters of a century of
debate and negotiations, with the determination of this last detail, the
Oregon Question reached its full and final decision.
JOSEPH R. WILSON.
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REMINISCENCES OF HUGH COSGROVE
By H. S. LYMAN.
Hugh Cosgrove, an Oregon pioneer of 1847, and a representative of the
men of some means, who established the business interests of the state,
is of Irish birth, having been born in County Cavan, North Ireland, in
1811. Although now in his ninetieth year, he is still of clear mind and
memory, and recalls with perfect distinctness the many scenes of his
active life. He is still living on the place which he purchased, in
1850, on French Prairie, near Saint Paul. He is a man of fine physical
proportion, being in his prime, five feet, eleven inches tall, and full
chested, broad shouldered, and erect, and weighing about one hundred and
eighty pounds. He has the finely moulded Celtic features, and genial
expression of the land of Ulster, and enjoys the fine wit and humor for
which his race is famous. His father was a farmer, but learning much of
the opportunities in Canada, concluded to cross the ocean to improve the
conditions of himself and his family. It was about that period when
assisted emigration from East Britain was in vogue, and mechanics of
Glasgow, Scotland, were loaned 10£ sterling for each member of the
family, to take up free homes in Canada; the loan to be returned after a
certain time. The Cosgroves not being from that city, did not enjoy this
loan, but determined to take advantage of the other opportunities
offered all the immigrants, which were a concession of one hundred acres
of land free, and an outfit of goods necessary to setting up a home in
the new land.
Taking passage on a lumber ship, the Eliza, of Dublin, at a rate of 3£
each, and furnishing their own victualing, they made a speedy and
prosperous voyage, some considerable glimpses of which remain in the
memory of Mr. Cosgrove, after the lapse of eighty years. He remembers
well, also, the breaking up of the old home, the auction of the family
belongings, and the general sense of hope and abandon with which they
cut loose from the shores of the old world. None of the family,
probably, had any considerable appreciation of the vast race movement to
which they as units of society were answering, but felt keenly the
bracing effect of increased energy and enthusiasm which that movement
imparted.
In Canada they hastened to secure their possessions, locating the one
hundred-acre lot of their own, in the hard timber woods out on the
boulder-sprinkled soil of lower Canada, in the Dalhousie township,
within five miles of Lanark, and obtaining a free government outfit at
the government store at Lanark. Here young Hugh spent the most of his
boyhood, helping to clear the farm, becoming an expert axeman, burning
the hard wood, from the ashes of which was leached the potash that paid
for the clearing; and also getting his education at the free school. He
recalls these as very happy years, and the pride and joy that all the
family took in owning their own home did very much to form his character
on a more liberal and progressive plan than could have been had in old
world conditions. At the age of twenty-one he was married to Mary, a
daughter of Richard Rositer,—“a glorious good man,” of Perth. Learning
at length that land of a better quality, less stony, was vacant “out
west,” a move was made to Chatham, in Canada West, as then known. Having
a “birth-right claim,” as it was called, to one hundred acres, and
finding that he could make a purchase adjoining of one hundred acres of
“clerical land,” the young farmer laid out his two hundred-acre farm,
and made buildings to improve it. But learning that land was still
better the farther west one went, he proceeded as far as the Detroit
River.
But just at this juncture all things were thrown in confusion by the
uprising of the “Patriots,” the extent of whose organization was not
known. There was great alarm felt, and the Canadian militia were likely
to be called out. Now the Cosgroves had been duly taught that “the
Yankees” were terrible people, almost ready to eat innocent people from
the old country. But now that the Canadian side looked warlike, Mrs.
Cosgrove said to her husband: “Very likely now you will be called out
with the militia, and I will be left alone; why not cross over into the
United States, and begin there?” She was acquainted, moreover, with a
family in Detroit. Mr. Cosgrove acted upon the suggestion, and this led
into a very much larger field of operations.
They found life on the American side much more intense and extensive,
and discovered that the Yankees, instead of being a species of
man-eaters, were royal good fellows.
Having saved some money for a new start, he prudently looked about how
to invest it so as to make increase as he crossed the line. He found at
the custom house that duty on cattle was low. He bought cows, selling at
$10 each in Canada, which he disposed of in Michigan at as much as $40
each,—his first “good luck.” This gave him some ready money to begin
business.
Fortunately in disposing of his cattle he made the acquaintance of a Mr.
Saxon, a business man of very high character, recently from New Jersey.
He was, indeed, not only a strict business man, but strictly religious,
and a crank in habits of morality, taking pains to advise young men
against bad habits. By this Mr. Saxon, Cosgrove was interested in taking
work, just being begun on the railway line from Detroit to Chicago,
Illinois, then a landing place on the marshy shores of Lake Michigan.
“Why not take a contract?” asked Mr. Saxon, who had himself the work of
locating a twenty-mile section of the road; and offered all assistance
necessary in making bids, and was willing to guarantee Cosgrove’s
responsibility. By this great service a paying contract was secured of
grading a section of road. The contract was profitable, and the ins and
outs of business were learned—especially the art of how to employ and
work other men profitably,—Mr. Saxon, the ever ready friend, frequently
giving the young immigrant helpful advice.
Having saved something like $5,000 from his operations, he was next
visited by a coterie of eastern men who were coming west to mend their
fortunes—to go to Chicago, and take a contract of excavating and filling
on the great projected canal from Chicago to the Mississippi—a work only
just completed at this day. It was then begun under state control. He
soon discovered that he was the only capitalist in the number, and in
order to save the job, bought out the main man, a Mr. Smith, who had a
contract of $80,000. This was finished to advantage, although the state
suspended operations. Prices were excellent, some of the rock excavating
being done at fifty to seventy-five cents, and rock filling at $1.25 per
square yard. Further contracts were taken, but in the course of time
prices were forced down. In following up the railway development, a
residence was made at Joliet, where he bought one hundred and sixty
acres of land, on which much of the city now stands. But two things
acted as a motive to make him look elsewhere. One was the malaria of the
Illinois prairie; the other was the report of Oregon.
A newspaper man by the name of Hudson, of the Joliet _Courier_, who had
come to Oregon, wrote back very favorable accounts of that then
territory, especially praising the equable climate. A number of Joliet
men, among whom were Lot Whitcomb and James McKay, read these articles
with interest, and finally made up their minds to cross the country to
Oregon, a name that was to the old west about what the new world was to
the old. Lot Whitcomb, a man of affairs, who afterwards made himself
famous in Oregon as a steamboat man, thought Oregon would be a great
place for contractors and men able to carry on large undertakings, as he
heard that there were few such there.
In April, 1847, accordingly, a party of thirteen families were ready to
start. Cosgrove had been trading during the winter, to get suitable
wagons and ox teams. He preferred to make the eventful journey
comfortably and safely, and lack nothing that forethought could provide.
He did not belong to the poorer class, who had to make the trip partly
on faith. Three well made, well built wagons, drawn each by three yoke
of oxen—young oxen—and a band of fifteen cows constituted his outfit. He
had young men as drivers, and his family was comfortably housed under
the big canvas tops.
He now recalls the journey that followed as one of the pleasantest
incidents of his life. It was a long picnic, the changing scenes of the
journey, the animals of the prairie, the Indians, the traders and
trappers of the mountain country; the progress of the season, which was
exceptionally mild, just about sufficed to keep up the interest, and
formed a sort of mental culture that the world has rarely offered.
Almost all migration has been carried on in circumstances of danger and
distress, but this was, although daring in the extreme, a summer jaunt,
with nothing to vitiate the effect of the great changes in making out
the American type.
The following particulars of the journey have the interest of being
recalled by a pioneer now in his ninetieth year, showing what sharp
lines the original experiences had drawn on the mind, and also being in
themselves worthy of preservation. However much alike may have been the
journeyings across the plains in general features, in each particular
case, it was different from all others, and no true comprehension of the
whole journey, the movement of civilization across the American
continent, can be gained without all the details; the memory of one
supplying one thing, and that of another supplying another. The
experiences of the Cosgroves were those of the pleasantest kinds, the
better-to-do way of doing it, without danger, sickness, great fatigue,
or worry, and with no distress.
After making the drive across Iowa and Missouri, in the springtime, when
the grass was starting and growing, the Missouri River was crossed,
waiting almost a week for their turn at Saint Joe, and then they were
west of the Mississippi, with the plains and the Indian country before
them. An “organization” was duly effected. Nothing showed the American
character more distinctly than the impulse to “organize,” whenever two
or three were gathered together. It was the social spirit. There was no
lack of materials, as besides this party of thirteen families, there
were hundreds of others gathering at Saint Joe, the immigration of that
year amounting to almost two thousand persons. A train of one hundred
and fourteen wagons was soon made up, and Lot Whitcomb was elected
captain. Mr. Cosgrove says, “I was elected something. I have forgotten
what it was”—but some duty was assigned to each and all, and the big
train moved.
Almost immediately upon starting, however, they were met by some
trappers coming out of the mountains, who said, “You will never get
through that way; but break up in small parties of not over fifteen
wagons each.”
It soon proved as the trappers said. The fondness of organization, and
having officers, is only exceeded among Americans by the fondness of
“going it on one’s own hook;” and this, coupled with the delays of the
train, broke up Lot Whitcomb’s company in two days. In a company, as
large as that, a close organization was next to impossible. A trifling
break down or accident to one hindered all, and the progress of the
whole body was determined by the slowest ox. When Mr. Cosgrove separated
his three fine wagons, and active young oxen, and drove out on the
prairie, Captain Whitcomb said, “that settles it. If Cosgrove won’t stay
by me, there is no use trying to keep the company together.” With
thirteen wagons, and oxen well matched, all went well.
Indians of many tribes were gathered or camped at Saint Joe, and
followed the train along the now well traveled road. They were polite as
Frenchmen, bowing or tipping their hats, which were worn by some, as
they rode along. They expected some little present, usually, but were
well satisfied with any article that might be given; and the immigrants
expected to pass out a little tobacco or sugar, or some trifle.
There was but one affair with Indians that had any serious side. This
occurred at Castle Rock, an eminence out on the prairie, some hundreds
of miles from the Mississippi. Here the train was visited, after making
the afternoon encampment, by a party of about forty mounted Pawnees,
clothed only in buffalo robes. They seemed friendly, asking for sugar
and tobacco, as usual. But as they rode off, they disclosed their
purpose—making a sudden swoop, to stampede the cattle and the horses of
the train. The young men of the train, however, instantly ran for the
trail ropes of their horses, and began discharging their pieces at the
Indians, who, perhaps, were more in sport than in earnest, or, at least,
simply “saucing” the immigrants; and wheeled off to the hills, letting
the stock go.
But this was not all of it, as the Pawnees soon overtook two men of the
train who were out hunting, and, quickly surrounding them, began making
sport, passing jokes, and pointing at the men and laughing to one
another; and ended by commanding the alarmed and mystified hunters to
take off their clothes, article by article, beginning with their boots.
When it came to giving up their shirts, one of the white men hesitated,
but was speedily brought to time by a smart stroke across the shoulders
by the Indian chief’s bow. When the two white men were entirely
disrobed, the Pawnees again made remarks, and then commanded them to run
for camp; but considerately threw their boots after them, saying they
did not want them. Much crestfallen, the two forlorn hunters came out of
the hills, “clipping it as fast as they could go” to the train, which
was already excited, and thought at first that this was a fresh
onslaught of the savages. The men of the train, however, were not very
sorry for the young fellows, as they were notorious boasters, and from
the first had been declaring that they would shoot, first or last, one
Indian a piece before they reached Oregon.
The animal life, as it gradually was encountered, was a source of great
interest. The gentle and fleet, but curious, antelopes were the first
game. Mr. Cosgrove had two very large and swift greyhounds, which were
able to overtake the antelopes. But the meat of these animals was not
very greatly relished, being rather dry.
The wolves were the most constant attendants of the train, appearing
daily, and howling nightly. These were the large gray wolves, much like
our forest species; also, a handsome cream-colored animal, and the black
kind, and most curious of all, the variety that was marked with a dark
stripe down the back, crossed by another over the shoulders. Then the
coyotes were innumerable, and yelped at almost every camp fire. Shooting
at the wolves, however, was nothing more than a waste of ammunition, and
these animals were at length disregarded. Even the greyhounds learned to
let them severely alone, for though at first giving chase ferociously,
they soon found a pack of fierce wolves no fun, and were chased back
even more ferociously than they started out.
The cities of the prairie dogs were interesting places, and the tiny
chirp, a yelp, of the guardian of the door, became a familiar sound. Mr.
Cosgrove recalls shooting one of these, finding it much like a chipmunk,
only of larger size.
But the great animal of the prairie was the buffalo. The vast herds of
these grand animals impressed the travelers of the plains quite
differently, almost always giving a shock of strange surprise. One
immigrant recalls that his first thought at seeing distant buffaloes,
but few in number, in the sparkling distance, was that they were
rabbits. With Mr. Cosgrove’s party there were indications enough of the
animals. Indeed, the plains were strewn with the buffalo chips, and it
was the regular thing, noon and evening, as they came to camp, for each
man to take his sack and gather enough of them for the camp fire; and
coming to the Platte Valley they found the region strewn with the dead
bodies of the thousands of the animals, which had probably come north
too soon, and were caught in the last blizzard of the winter; but no
live buffaloes were seen. But at length, as the train crested a slope,
and a vast expanse of prairie opened in view, Mr. Cosgrove looked over,
and seeing what seemed brown, shaggy tufts thickly studding the distance
as far as eye could reach, he exclaimed, “We shall have plenty of
firewood now! No need of gathering chips tonight!” He thought the vast
Platte Valley was covered with stunted clumps of brush-wood. One of the
girls was near, however, and after looking, cried out, “See, they are
moving!” Then first he realized it was a herd of buffaloes. Nor were
they simply grazing; they were on the run and bearing down on the train.
The cry of “buffaloes!” was passed back. It was not altogether safe to
be in the path of such an immense herd, and the train was quickly
halted, the wagon pins drawn, and a band of hunters quickly went out on
horseback to meet the host, and also to get buffalo meat. The herd
divided, leaving the train clear and the oxen standing their ground. One
part went off to the hills; the other took the fords of the Platte,
making the water boil as they dashed through. Enough were shot to stock
the train; yet the herd was so vast that at least four hours elapsed
before the last flying columns had galloped by—like the last shags of a
thundercloud. What a picture—thirteen families with their oxen and
wagons, sitting quietly in the midday blaze, while a buffalo troop,
perhaps one hundred thousand strong, or even more, dashed past on either
side. The best method of preparing the buffalo meat was by jerking it,
over a slow fire of sagebrush sticks; the meat being sliced thin, and
dried in the smoke in one night. At a later time, when buffalo had
become as familiar as cattle, however, the train was stopped by one
single monarch. It was just at evening, and the man detailed to go ahead
to find a good camping place was out of sight. A shot was heard,
however, and the startled train was halted, and the king-pins were
drawn, all ready for any emergency; for it might be Indians ahead.
The picket soon was seen, riding at top speed, and crying as he came,
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” and just behind him was an enormous buffalo,
charging the whole train. The animal did not stop until within a few
rods, and then only with lowered head, and huge square shoulders. The
difficulty of shooting him without inducing him to make a charge, if not
dropped, was at once apparent. But at length, at a signal, about fifteen
rifle balls were poured into his front; and after a moment he began to
reel from side to side, and then fell over. Even then no one dared to go
and cut the throat, to bleed him; but after a time one cried, “I’ll do
it!” and the deed was done. It required several yoke of oxen to make a
team strong enough to drag him to camp, and his estimated weight was
twenty-two hundred pounds.
The last buffalo meat was from an animal that had just been killed by a
party of trappers near the divide of the Rocky Mountains. As for deer
and elk, none of these were seen on the plains. Birds of the prairie
were abundant, especially the sage hens, as the more arid regions were
crossed; but the flavor of this fowl was too high for the ordinary
appetite. Rattlesnakes were innumerable, but no one of the train
suffered from these reptiles except a girl. This occurred at
Independence Rock. As the young lady was clambering among the crevices,
she incidentally placed her hand upon a snake, which struck. Large doses
of whiskey, however, soon neutralized the venom.
After crossing the divide of the Rocky Mountains to the headwaters of
the Snake River, the numberless salmon of the streams become the wild
food in place of the buffalo meat of the plains. At Salmon Falls there
were many Indians of different western tribes taking the fish as they
ascended the rapids. In consequence, the royal Chinook was sold very
cheap; for a brass button one could buy all that he could carry away.
Here occurred a laughable incident. The whole camp was almost stampeded
by one wild Indian. He was a venerable fellow, dressed in a tall old
silk hat, and a vest, and walked pompously as if conscious of his
finery; his clothing, however, being nothing except the hat and vest. At
his approach, the camp was alarmed. The more modest hastily retreated to
their tents; and some of the men, angry that their wives should be
insulted, were for shooting the inconsiderate visitor. A young married
man, whose bride was particularly scandalized, was greatly exasperated.
But the object of the old Indian was merely peaceable barter. He carried
in each hand an immense fish; and Mr. Cosgrove, seeing his inoffensive
purpose, bade the boys be moderate, and going out to meet him, hastily
sawed a button from his coat, with which he purchased the fish, and sent
the old fellow off thoroughly satisfied.
On the Umatilla, after crossing the Blue Mountains, with all their
wonders of peak and valley, as they were camped beside the river,
the immigrants were visited by Doctor Whitman and his wife, and Mr.
and Mrs. Spaulding. Mr. Cosgrove remembers them all very distinctly.
Doctor Whitman he describes as tall and well proportioned, of easy
bearing, and hair perhaps a little tinged with gray; and very affable.
Mrs. Whitman was remarkably fine looking, and much more noticeable
than Mrs. Spaulding. Mr. Cosgrove has especial reason to remember the
missionaries, because, himself not being well, and this circumstance
being discovered by them, he was the recipient of various little
delicacies, of fruit, etc., not to be had in the train. A trade was
also made between himself and Whitman, of a young cow that had become
foot-sore, and could go no further, for a very good horse. Doctor
Whitman, says Mr. Cosgrove, “was a glorious good man;” and the news of
his massacre by the Indians a few months later, went over Oregon with a
shock like the loss of a personal friend.
Mr. Spaulding gave notice of a preaching service to be held about six
miles distant from the camp, and some of the immigrants attended. The
coming of the Catholic priests to that region was alluded to in the
sermon, and they were spoken of as intruders.
At The Dalles there was a division of opinion among the immigrants as to
the best route to follow into the Willamette Valley; whether over the
mountains or down the Columbia by bateaux to Vancouver. However, this
was easily settled for Mr. Cosgrove’s family. Word having reached
Vancouver that there were immigrants arriving, bateaux were sent up and
in readiness. The price asked for the service was moderate, and the
voyage was made quickly and comfortably. The wagons were taken to pieces
and loaded upon the boats, and the teamsters had no difficulty in
driving the oxen by the old trail, swimming them across the Columbia.
James McKay, a traveling companion, not being able then—though
afterwards a wealthy man—to employ a bateaux; built a raft, which
brought him through safely. Others went over the mountains.
On arrival at Vancouver, Mr. Cosgrove found a small house, with a big
fireplace, which he rented, and housed his family, feeling as happy as a
king to be under a roof once more. Here he could leave his family safely
while he looked over the country.
By the time that he reached the Cascades, the early autumn rains were
falling gently, and at Vancouver they were continuing; but they seemed
so light and warm as to cause little discomfort; and the Indians were
noticed going around in it unconcernedly barefooted.
At one time Mr. Cosgrove was eagerly advised by Daniel Lownsdale to
locate a claim immediately back of his own, on what is now included in a
part of the Portland townsite. But the timber here was so dense, and the
hills so abrupt that he saw no possible chance to make a living there,
and decided to look further.
Valuable advice was given by Peter Speen Ogden, then governor of the
fort. Mr. Cosgrove was quite for going down the river to Clatsop, so as
to be by the ocean. Mr. Ogden said, however, “It depends on what you are
able to do. If you want to go into the timber, go to Puget Sound; if you
want to farm, go up the Willamette Valley.”
Mr. Cosgrove decided that as he knew nothing of lumbering, but did know
something of farming, that he had better proceed to the farming country.
Coming on up the Willamette Valley, he was met everywhere in the most
friendly fashion; especially so by Mr. Hudson, the newspaper man of the
Joliet _Courier_, who constrained him, “right or wrong,” to turn his
cattle into a fine field of young wheat to pasture over night. Hudson
was living a few miles above Oregon City, opposite Rock Island, and was
a flourishing farmer. He went to the California mines, and was very
fortunate, discovering a pocket in the American River bed, in a crease
in the rocks, so rich that he dared not leave it, but worked without
cessation a number of days, ordering his meals brought to him, at an
ounce of gold dust each, and took over $22,000 from his claim.
Meeting Baptiste Dorio, of Saint Louis, on French Prairie, he proceeded
with him to look up farm lands. At Dorio’s a somewhat laughable incident
occurred. It was, at that early day, the custom for all to carry knife
and fork with them, and these were the only individual articles of table
furniture. The meal, usually beef and potatoes, was placed on an immense
trencher, hewed out of an oak log, and around this all sat, and each
helped himself at his side of the trencher.
Mr. Cosgrove ate heartily of the fine beef, which, however, he noticed
looked rather white. At the conclusion of the meal Dorio asked suddenly,
“Which do you like best, ox beef or horse beef?” “I do not know that I
could answer that,” said the fresh arrival, “as I have never yet eaten
horse beef?” “Yes, you have,” said the Frenchman imperturbably; “that
was horse beef that you have just eaten,”—a piece of information that
nearly ruined Mr. Cosgrove’s digestion for the rest of the day.
He found the Canadian farmers ready to dispose of their places, and was
besieged by many who had square mile claims to sell for $100, or less,
each; and with the fertile prairie, its deep sod, tall grass, and
expanse diversified with strips of forest trees, or lordly old groves,
he was very much pleased. Coming to Saint Paul he found entertainment at
the Catholic mission, and by a Mr. Jones, who was employed then as
foreman, he was furnished much valuable information. By the brusqueness
of Father Baldu, in charge of the establishment, he was, however, rather
taken aback. When he was ready to go, and went to the father to tell him
so, with the idea of offering pay for his entertainment, the reverend
gentleman simply remarked, “Well, the road is ready for you.”
Nevertheless, with St. Paul he was well pleased. There was a church and
a school, and a good place to sell his produce. He therefore purchased
the section adjoining the mission, paying $800,—two oxen and two cows,
and included in the bargain was the use of a fairly good house.
He had some stout sod plows of much better make than those of the
Canadians, and at once, as the winter was open, began to break the
prairie, and sowed forty acres to wheat. His family were comfortably
established, but met rather a severe shock as they went to meeting for
the first time. With feminine interest and delight his wife and
daughters brought out their best dresses and bonnets, as they would at
Chicago or Joliet. Mr. Cosgrove himself selected his best suit for the
occasion—he had three with him, a blue, and a gray frock, and a
swallowtail coat. The swallowtail and a rather high silk hat, and the
other accompaniments of full dress, was the suit that he chose. At the
meeting, however, where the appearance of the strangers caused minute
observation, the men all sitting on one side and the women on the other,
there were no bonnets,—the women wore only a red handkerchief tied over
the head; and the latest style bonnets from the east created not only
admiration, but much suppressed—though not very well suppressed—
merriment in the congregation.
On returning home Mrs. Cosgrove was very much dispirited, and exclaimed,
“To think that I have brought my family here to raise them in such a
place as this!” However, taking up the difficulty in a truly womanly
way, she soon had the women of the neighborhood making sun-bonnets, and
then instructed them how to weave wheat straw and make chip hats; and in
course of time they even put on bonnets. Not so, however, with Mr.
Cosgrove’s swallowtail coat and silk hat. These were such a mark for
ridicule that he never tried them again, at least in that circle; but
found his blue frock good enough. Indeed, even to this day, swell dress
is much despised among Oregon men.
However, the placid life of the Oregon farmer was not to be long
continued. The California mines broke out, and Mr. Cosgrove was
constrained to go along with the rest of the settlers. He made two
trips, returning the first time after a month’s mining to spend the
winter. The second time, which was prolonged to a stay of about twenty
months in the mines, he made very successful, but occasion arising to
sell his store in the mines for $15,000, he finally decided to do so,
and taking his dust, went down to San Francisco to look for a ship for
the Columbia.
While at the bustling town he was induced to invest $15,000 in a stock
of goods, which he brought to Oregon, and set up a store at Saint Paul.
Here he continued in business for a number of years, but says that he
discovered he was not cut out for a merchant, and so in course of time
fell back upon the farm.
The place upon which he is now living, which is part prairie and part
wood land, of fine quality, is immediately adjoining his original square
mile, which he sold, as under the donation act, but one square mile
could be claimed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
REMINISCENCES OF WM. M. CASE.
By H. S. LYMAN.
William M. Case, a pioneer of 1844, who is still living on the donation
claim taken by him in 1845 on French Prairie, was born in Wayne County,
Indiana, not far from the Ohio line, in 1820. He is consequently now
eighty years of age, but is still vigorous, of unimpaired memory, firm
voice, and still master of affairs on his large farm of over one
thousand acres. He is six feet tall, of wiry build, and rather nervous
temperament, and very distinctively an American. In mind he is intensely
positive of the most definite views and opinions, and has the peculiarly
American qualities of fondness for concrete affairs. His hair and beard
are now nearly snow white, and worn long; and his face is almost as
venerable as that of the poet Bryant, which it somewhat resembles.
His life covers almost numberless interesting experiences, but is
perhaps most intimately connected with the part played by the Oregonians
in the California mines. This sketch will be confined more particularly
to the peculiar facts of his life not common to all the pioneers. Mr.
Case is particularly the man who can tell of the effects of the gold
mining and California life upon Oregon and Oregonians, and he can
explain a number of facts, quite apparent in their effects, but seldom
or never given in their causes, of the feeling that has arisen between
Californians and Oregonians.
It was an interesting incident that first directed his attention to
Oregon. By William Henry Harrison, while serving as delegate to congress
from the then territory of Indiana, public documents were forwarded
freely to his constituents. To William M.’s father, who was an
acquaintance of Harrison’s, there came, among other volumes, a journal
of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Columbia River. Over this the
boy used to pore, even while still young, and out of the crabbed volume,
whose matter (certainly not the literary style) interested the whole
nation, a most vivid picture was constructed of Oregon scenery, with the
big trees, and the mild climate, and grass green all the winter. He made
up his mind to come to Oregon when he was old enough. Before he was
twenty he told his father of his intention, and was met with no
opposition, the father being both considerate and intelligent; but with
his consent, was given this advice: “Don’t go, William, before you are
married; take a wife with you.” This wise and not at all unpleasant
counsel young Case put into execution; hating, like all born men of
action, to keep an idea long which he did not carry out in performance.
By his young wife, who was from New Jersey, he was encouraged, rather
than otherwise, to make the journey. She said, “My father used to dip me
in the surf of the Atlantic on the New Jersey shore, and I would like to
go and dip in the surf of the Pacific Ocean.”
Proceedings in congress in regard to Oregon were carefully watched by
Mr. Case, especial note being taken of the Linn bill, by whose
provisions there were to be given a square mile of land to each man,
another to his wife, and a quarter section to each child. It was well
understood that the United States government could not give title to
land in Oregon; but this bill was introduced as a promise of what it
would do; and was in reality a test of the American spirit. Would the
American people settle Oregon? If so, the United States would claim the
territory.
Men like Case were found, who had a broad outlook, who understood the
value of land in the Columbia or Willamette Valley, and who saw that the
United States must front the Pacific as well as the Atlantic. These
ideas were largely formed by the broad spirit of the west, the Ohio and
Mississippi Valley, whose chief representatives were men like Doctor
Linn and Colonel Benton in congress. Such men wished to live their lives
on a more liberal scale than was possible even in the old west. Mr.
Case, like his father, was an old line whig, and later an uncompromising
republican. He says: “The United States Bank helped the country a great
deal. But when, upon the expiration of its charter, the bill to grant a
second charter was vetoed by President Jackson, there followed a crash
such as can never be described. The country never fully recovered from
the depression until the discovery of gold in 1848.” Wages, he says,
were twenty-five cents a day in Indiana, or $6 a month, or $100 a year,
in special cases. Under such circumstances, a young man saw no chance
for accumulating a competence, but in Oregon he might begin with a
better outlook.
During the year of 1841, when he was married at the age of twenty-one,
Case was making his preparations, and on April 1, 1842, started out for
Platte City, Missouri, which he reached June 10. However, he was too
late to catch the Oregon train, which had left the first of the month.
Going to Northern Missouri, he remained until 1844, but was on time to
catch the first train of that season. The crossing of the Missouri River
was made at a point about ten miles below the present City of Omaha, at
a place now called Bellevue. The train of sixty wagons was organized
under Captain Tharp; and a regular line of march was established, the
train moving in two divisions, on parallel lines, and about a quarter to
half a mile apart, to be in easy supporting distance in case of an
attack by Indians. The whole train was brought together at nighttime,
the wagons being driven in such a way as to form a perfect corral,
inside of which the tents for the night were placed; although frequently
no tents were set, especially after Nebraska was passed, where the
season of 1844 was very late and stormy. With the company of General
Gilliam of that year, traveling with which were R. W. Morrison, John
Minto, W. R. Rees, and other well-known pioneers, the company of Captain
Tharp and Mr. Case had no connection, and were in advance all the way.
John Marshall, however, who went to California in 1846, and discovered
gold in 1848, was a member of the train.
The three following incidents on the plains may be mentioned as
presenting something new. One was a charge, or stampede, of about one
thousand buffaloes. This occurred in the Platte Valley. As the two
divisions were moving along deliberately, at ox-speed, in the usual
parallel columns, the drivers were startled by a low sound to the north
as of distant thunder. There was no appearance of a storm, however, in
that or any other direction, and the noise grew louder and louder, and
was steady and uninterrupted. It soon became clear that there was a herd
of buffaloes approaching and on the run. Scouring anxiously the line of
hills rimming the edge of the valley, the dark brown outline of the herd
was at length descried, and was distinctly made out with a telescope, as
buffaloes in violent motion and making directly for the train. The front
of the line was perhaps half a mile long and the animals were several
columns deep, and coming like a tornado. They had probably been
stampeded by hunters and would now stop at nothing. The only apparent
chance of safety was to drive ahead and get out of the range of the
herd. The oxen were consequently urged into a run and the train itself
had the appearance of a stampede. Neither were they too quick; for the
flying herds of the buffaloes passed but a few yards to the rear of the
last wagons, and were going at such a rate that to be struck by them
would have been like the shock of rolling boulders of a ton’s weight.
Mr. Case recalls measuring one buffalo that was six feet, two inches,
from hoof to hump, and was over four feet from dewlap across the body.
Another most important occurrence was near Fort Platte, where a
Frenchman by the name of Bisnette was in command, and in which another
Frenchman, Joe Batonne, was also an important actor; something, perhaps,
that has never been related, but which probably prevented the
destruction of the train. It happened that at Bellevue Mr. Case found
and employed a young Frenchman by the name of Berdreau, and about two
hundred miles out from Omaha he was asked by this Berdreau to take in
another young Frenchman, Joe Batonne, who had started with a Doctor
Townsend of the train, but had fallen out with him and now was seeking
another position. Batonne was therefore traveling with Case. As they
were approaching Fort Platte, however, word was received from the
commandant, Bisnette, to come forward no further; but if they had anyone
in the train who knew the Sioux language to send him. “There is a war
party of Sioux Indians here,” was his information, “and I cannot
understand why they should be here. The place for them at this time of
the year is on the Blackfoot or Crow border, while this is in the very
center of their territory. I fear they mean some mischief to the train.”
Batonne was the only one in the train who understood Sioux. He was
accordingly sent forward, being inconspicuously dressed, along with some
others, all riding their horses. The party reached Fort Platte and
passed freely among the Sioux Indians. These formed an immense host,
being a full party of six men to a tent, and five hundred tents, which,
although crowded together irregularly, still covered a considerable
space.
Batonne kept his ears open as his party rode here and there, but said
nothing. Finally, as they were passing a certain tent, a young Sioux was
heard to exclaim, “It always makes me itch to see an American horse; I
want to ride it so bad.” A chief answered him in a low voice, “Wait a
few days, until the immigrants come up, and we shall have all their
horses.” This was soon reported by Batonne to Bisnette, who at once sent
word back to the train to wait until he had contrived some plan to send
the Indians off. The plan he hit upon was this—and he told it afterwards
only to Mr. Case and Joe Batonne, under strict promises of secrecy:
He called all the chiefs together with the message that he had very
important news for them. They accordingly assembled and sat in solemn
council. After the pipe was passed and smoked, the first whiff, as
usual, being directed to the Great Spirit, Bisnette began:
“I have lived with you now many years and have always dealt honorably.”
“Yes,” answered the Sioux.
“I have never told you a lie.”
“Never,” said the chiefs.
“And have been as a brother.”
“You have been our white brother,” they said.
“Well,” he continued, “I have just heard news that is of utmost
importance to you. The immigrants who come from the sunrise and will
soon be here have been delayed; a man died; they buried him; he had the
smallpox. I advise you, therefore, to leave this place as soon as
possible, and to go to your northern border and not return for over a
month.”
No news could have been more alarming to the Indians, who understood
only too well what the smallpox was; not many years before infected
blankets having been distributed among them through the agency of white
trappers whom they had been allowed to rob, as a sort of punishment for
having robbed lone trappers heretofore; and by this the whole tribe had
been decimated by the scourge, very many dying, and some even of those
who recovered, but were badly marked, had killed themselves. They had
been told by the trappers that the smallpox pits were the mark of the
devil. “The devil will get you sure now” they told them. As soon as
Bisnette told these Indians that there was smallpox in the train the
chiefs slid out to their tents, and within fifteen minutes the whole
army was on the move, going to the north, and not returning while the
immigrants of that season were passing.
The other point was the cause of the breaking up of the organization.
After passing the Sioux country, fear of the Indians wore off, and the
necessity of rapid travel became more and more apparent, but among the
one hundred and twenty men of the train—as many at least as two to the
wagon—at least one hundred, says Mr. Case, were “worthless,” or
dangerously near that line. The daily labor of the march was devolved
more and more upon the twenty men or so that felt the necessity of
pushing on. The majority, however, often spent their evenings playing
cards to a late hour, or dancing and fiddling with the young folks
around the fire, and slept the next morning until called for breakfast
by the women. Various ways were devised to equalize these matters; the
women, among other devices, being put up to taking and burning the packs
of cards, unbeknown to the men. But it finally became old—getting up 2
o’clock of a morning to hunt the cattle, which, in grazing, always
attempted to go ahead of one another, and thus sometimes were spread out
for several miles on the prairie. Doing this again and again, for men
who would not take their turn, but were sleeping at the camp, was
finally too much to be borne. Case and some others, accordingly made
ready, and one morning struck out with their wagons, and before night
the whole train was resolved into two sections; the jolly boys who
danced and fiddled being left behind.
Arriving in Oregon, Mr. Case first stopped at Linnton, but soon went
over to Tualatin Plains, and settled first near Mr. Hill’s place, now
Hillsboro. In 1845, he recalls that he was employed in building the
first frame barn in Oregon (W. M. C.), on the Wilkins place; and he here
made the acquaintance of the old mountain men, Wilkins, Ebberts, Newell,
Meek, and Walker. He was not well satisfied, however, with the locality.
It was a long way over the hills and through the deep woods to the
Willamette River at Linnton, or at Oregon City—Portland then being a
mere camping station on the Willamette. Case wished to locate on the
river, and accordingly, in 1846, moved to French Prairie, and acquired,
partly by donation claim, and afterwards by purchase, two sections of
land, being about one-half prairie, and the other half timber. It was
three miles from Champoeg, where Newell acquired the Donald Manson
place, and became town proprietor. Here he has remained, engaged in
farming, saw milling, and running a tile factory, performing his duties
as a citizen, being known during the war period as an unyielding union
man, and occupying the responsible place during that time and later of
County Judge of Marion County. He has had a family of thirteen children,
eight of whom are now living. He has twenty-three grand-children. His
life has been one of intense activity, and he has performed almost no
end of hard physical work, and has borne heavy responsibilities.
He says, however, that the most intense and thrilling experiences of his
life were during the season that he spent in California, and going to
and returning from the mines. This was 1849. It is worthy of the most
careful record, being remembered to the most minute details by Mr. Case,
and affording a chapter in human experience seldom equalled. It also
shows the moulding influences brought to bear upon Oregon men, who
showed themselves as perhaps of the firmest fibre to be found on the
Pacific slope in 1849; which is saying a great deal. It deserves to be
told in the language of Mr. Case himself, and perhaps it will be. But
for some reasons it will be proper to give these recollections in a
somewhat condensed form, as in their entirety, as told by himself, they
would compose a volume. Indeed, in his rapid and energetic conversation,
with which only the most experienced stenographer could keep pace, it
required him four hours to tell the whole thing—even omitting many of
the details that he remembers. However, it is only an idle thought or
wish to imagine that what men were years in living in the fastest period
of Pacific Coast history, can ever be told in full or the life itself be
reproduced. There are distinct parts to his narrative. The Voyage; the
Oregon Miner’s Vengeance; and The Return Overland.
THE VOYAGE.
News of the discovery of gold in 1848 was first brought to Oregon by an
Oregonian by the name of Barnard. Marshall was building a mill, as is
well known, for Sutter, on the American River, and after allowing the
water to run through the tail ditch to sluice it out, examined the bed,
as the water was again shut off, and found at the bottom of the ditch
many little yellow rocks, which were highly polished and very heavy. Not
being acquainted with gold, which he had an idea occurred in native form
only as dust, not as nuggets, he tried pounding out one of the little
yellow rocks—which instead of crumbling under the hammer, was flattened
finally to the size of a saucer, and of course was made very thin. Even
then, however, the true nature of the rock was not suspected; and it was
not known that it was gold until Marshall had word from the United
States’ Assay Office at San Francisco to which he had sent a small
collection of nuggets to the value, however, of $1,000.
By this news, Barnard, the Oregonian, was incited to return home and
tell his neighbors. But at San Francisco he was detained two months,
being positively refused passage on the ships for the Columbia. He
believed that he was purposely hindered by parties who wished to go to
Oregon and buy up all the provisions, tools, etc., to be had here, at
low prices, and to sell them at San Francisco at a great advance.
Finally he got a ship, and reaching Oregon late in August, the news was
published, and the Oregonians, many of them just returning from the
Cayuse war, formed a company, and that season broke and completed the
first wagon road to California, taking the high table-land route by way
of Klamath Lake, Lost Lake, the lava beds, and across the Pitt River
Valley far to the eastward of Mount Shasta—or Shasta Butte, as called by
the old pioneers. Mr. Case was not ready to go with the overland party,
but found passage on the bark Anita, which sailed from the Columbia the
middle of February. There was a large crowd of men on board, considering
the size of the ship, being sixty-six in number, and the quarters were
very narrow, 12 × 20 feet, and the ceiling being only 5 feet high, with
two tiers of berths arranged around the sides of the apartment. The
voyage, moreover, was long and tedious. As the crossing of the Columbia
bar was made, with a stiff wind, Mr. Case was reminded by the breakers
as they ran and tossed and finally broke upon the rocks of Cape
Disappointment, of the herds of buffaloes that thundered over the
plains—the movement of the waves seeming about equally swift and
tumultuous. But the wind soon stiffened to a gale, the bark put to sea,
and land was lost to sight; and the storm did not at last abate until
they were far off the coast to the west of Vancouver Island. Then,
however, with a west or north wind, that was bitterly cold, the voyage
was made down to the latitude of San Francisco, but in constant storms
of snow, frequently sufficient to leave as much as a foot of the article
on deck over one night. When at last the clouds dispersed and a fair
west wind blew, and the skies were again clear, the entire sweep of the
horizon appeared as one world of water, except that far to the
northeast, the very tip of Shasta, white and glittering, just jutted out
of the sea. It was then seventeen hours sailing before the shore
appeared in sight. Then the Golden Gate was reached and passed, and the
voyage was over. It occupied a month. Sailing to Sacramento and
proceeding thence to Coloma, Mr. Case, being a mechanic, found
employment at such good prices as to detain him from the mines. But the
season proved to be one of excitement during which even bloodshed
occurred; and Mr. Case was forced to play an important part in the
program.
THE COLUMBIA RIVER MEN’S VENGEANCE.
Very soon after reaching Coloma, Mr. Case found that the community was
in a broil. No open troubles had yet occurred, but there were causes of
exasperation which were working rapidly to a climax. It was due
primarily to a difference in system and ideas between the various
elements of the people then in California. It was in fact a part of the
final clash between the old Spanish system and the American; the
beneficiaries of the Spanish system, or Grandees, being on one side, and
on the other the Oregonians, representing the American idea. It was
proved in the event that men who could establish an independent
government in Oregon, and were able to compel the obedience of the
Cayuse Indians, were able also to make in California a deep impression
for their idea of liberty. The disturbed, or rather the entirely
unorganized condition of government in California, made possible the
following course of events. The military government of this territory,
just taken from Mexico, had not given place to a civil organization, and
it was not thoroughly known what authorities were in power. Sutter had
received a large grant of land, and with this was coupled certain power
to enforce justice among the Indians, and he was recognized as a sort of
justice of the peace; but this was of very limited extent, and there was
no central authority in the whole state, unless military.
California was occupied originally by men who had received great land
grants, some of which were as much as six leagues square. These men were
at first Spanish-Americans, who were thus rewarded for government
services. They formed a sort of nobility or aristocracy, and held their
places like the baronies or counties of the old world, and their
possessions were frequently of the dimensions of a county. Their ranches
were on an average about twenty-five miles apart, and the ranges between
were stocked with great bands of cattle. The Indians, a mild and
inoffensive people, were employed as laborers and cattle drivers by the
Spanish-Americans, and a genuine European feudal system was in force.
The first Americans (or Germans, or English) who went to California
acquired some of these ranches, and continued the Mexican system. Only
they employed it with characteristic American energy, and pushed it to a
much greater extreme. With the discovery of gold and the opening of the
mines, a prospect of vast profits appeared to the early Californians,
who were English, or American, or German; and their first intention was
to work the mines in the same manner that they worked their ranches—by
the labor of the native Indian, or by importation of Mexican debtors,
who could be procured very cheap. It was still the law in Mexico to put
debtors in prison on the complaint of their creditors, and they could be
held until the debt was paid, and the debtor himself failing in this,
his son could be held. Many of these debtors were imprisoned for but
trifling sums, and upon settlement with the creditors, could be
practically bought by other parties almost like slaves, the purchase of
the debt giving the right to hold the debtor. Hundreds of Mexicans were
thus procured and sent to the mines, at a cost in some cases of but a
few dollars to the purchasers, and contracted to work for some trifling
sum, often not over twenty-five cents a day, in washing gold. Contract
labor from Chili (W. M. C.) was also obtained, and it was estimated that
by the midsummer of 1849 as many as five thousand such laborers were at
work on the California placers.
But the original traders were making even more profit by trade with the
contract laborers, or with the Indians who were employed to wash gold,
the Indian women doing such work along with the men. When they had a
little dust their natural fondness for finery was stimulated, and cheap
and gaudy articles, such as shawls and shirts, were sold for dust. But
the dust that was brought by the Indians was balanced by the shrewd
trader with a weight which was the Mexican silver dollar, weighing just
an ounce, with whose value the Indians were well acquainted. By this
method of reckoning, the gold was valued the same as the silver. A
shirt, for instance, which was marked to begin with at the regular price
of $3, was bought with a balance of three silver dollars in gold dust,
making $48 in actual value. Indeed the amount of dust obtained of the
Indians for some of the articles was truly “fabulous.” Mr. Case recalls
that a certain shawl of unusually magnificent pattern and blinding
colors, which cost the trader but $1.50, was bought by an Indian chief
for his favorite daughter for $1,500 worth of dust.
Into this flourishing condition of things the Oregonians, or Columbia
River men, as they were called, entered in 1849. The most of them went
into the mines, but there were some who quickly saw that there was more
profit in trading with the Indians than in digging the gold.
Consequently they began setting up stores, and bought and sold goods.
Competition thus began. The price of a shirt, a standard article, was
forced down to $2, that is, to two ounces of dust; and then to one
ounce, and even lower. By this operation the old traders, such as Weimer
and Besters, of Coloma, and Marshall, and even Sutter, were offended, as
it soon became apparent to those who were intending to operate the mines
on the medieval Spanish system, and by the employment of Indians and
contract labor, that their whole system of trade and business was in
danger of collapsing. Mr. Case is confident that the Indians were then
incited against the Columbia River men, that they were told that the
people from Oregon were intruders and had no business there, and were
taking gold that belonged to themselves. At all events, mysterious
murders began to take place in the mountains and along the mining
streams. This was not greatly noticed at first, but as one after another
fell and it began to be asked who was killed, it became plain that in
every case the victim was a Columbia River man. The authorities, such as
they were, gave the subject no attention. Sutter himself, acting as a
justice of the district under his old concession, showed no concern; and
the Californians, among whom were such traders as Weimer and Besters,
Winters, Marshall and others, when asked for their explanation, replied
that these murders were evidently committed by the Oregonians
themselves; they were old trappers and mountain men of the most
desperate character, and they were undoubtedly murdering and robbing one
another. This the Oregonians knew to be false, and that it should be
said created a presumption in their minds that the California traders
were inciting the Indians to cut off the Columbia River men. This
suspicion led them to talk quietly to one another and to consider what
should be done. Finally a little band of about thirteen in number was
organized quite secretly, and of this Mr. Case, as one of the most
intelligent, was chosen virtual leader. In this band of Oregonians was
Fleming Hill (usually called Flem), and Greenwood, a half-breed Crow
Indian.
Affairs were brought to a crisis at last by the murder of six
Oregonians, all on one bar. The first that Case heard of the affair was
at the house of Besters, where he was boarding while he was working upon
a building. Besters, coming in late to supper, was in great glee, saying
that he had taken in $2,500 that afternoon from the Indians. The news of
the murder of the six Columbia River men was soon abroad, and it seemed
impossible but that the murderers were the Indians who had brought the
dust. This was the conclusion at which the Oregonians arrived, but they
would not proceed until full evidence had been procured. Meeting Hill,
as if casually, on the streets of Coloma, Case told him to take the
thirteen men and find and follow the trail of the murderers, whom he
felt certain were the Indians of the tribe in the vicinity, belonging to
that very valley, and not a distant tribe from the mountains. A
circumstance favoring such a conclusion was the fact that the tribe in
the valley numbered over a hundred; but those who had come in to trade
at Weimer and Bester’s store were only about twenty-five. The rest of
the tribe, it was apparent to those acquainted with the Indians, had
struck off in a body to make a trail to the mountains, to lead off
suspicion, and would return, singly or in small groups, to their homes.
Case himself continued working as usual at Coloma, as it was very
necessary that some one be at that point to watch the progress of
affairs. He soon discovered, however, that there was a spy on him, an
Indian employed at the sawmill of a Californian, Mr. Winters.
At the end of several days Hill appeared again in town. Seeing him while
he was working upon the roof, Mr. Case contrived to meet him as soon as
possible, and inquired what had been discovered. Hill replied, “We found
various tracks from the pit where the six miners who had been killed and
stripped were buried. These, taking across the river, then made one
plain, broad trail out to the mountains. We followed this for two days,
when it suddenly disappeared, scattering in all directions, and could be
followed no longer.” “Then they are not mountain Indians,” said Case;
“they belong right here in this valley.”
This brought the Oregonians decisively to what was to be done; whether
to tell their discoveries to the Californians, or Sutter, or to take
vengeance into their own hands. The former course seemed entirely
useless, as they felt sure that the Californians knew enough of the
affair already, and had decided to let the Oregonians take care of
themselves. Confirmation of the guilt of the Indians, if any were
needed, was found in the report of an American who kept a horse ranch at
some distance from town. He had, shortly before, seen a large number of
Indians coming down the mountain side on foot, and dispersed in separate
groups, and not in single file, as he had always observed them before.
They were evidently that part of the band who had led a trail off to the
mountains, returning home. The Oregonians concluded, therefore, that the
only way to put an end to the murders was to proceed precisely as they
would out on the plains; that is, make war on the Indians irrespective
of the California authorities and wipe out the tribe, if that was
necessary. This was accordingly done. The tribe was found and surprised
by the band of thirteen armed Oregonians. Twenty-six of the Indians were
killed on the instant. No women were shot, however, though they fought
the same as the men. They and six men surrendered. Greenwood shouted as
the blow was struck, “Now, this is what you get for killing Columbia
River men.”
After the surrender, the Indian women began weeping and wailing in a
manner truly heart-rending over the bodies of their dead husbands and
fathers; but they acknowledged that the punishment was just, as they had
killed the Columbia River men. But they pleaded that they were told to
do it, which, if true, cannot but create a feeling of sympathy for them,
the unfortunate dupes. After the slaughter and surrender, Hill mounted
his horse and rode to Coloma, and the six Indian men were hurried after
under a guard, and the women and children were driven after these by the
rest of the thirteen Oregonians. It was 4 o’clock when Hill arrived. The
six Indians were but a short distance behind, and hardly had been placed
in prison, together with the Indian spy, at Winter’s mill, who was owned
as a leading partner in the crime, when the remnant of the tribe, on the
run, with the Oregonians galloping behind them, came into town. It was a
burning day, the mercury standing at 106° in the shade, but the distance
from the scene of the slaughter, forty miles, had been covered since 11
o’clock that forenoon. The town was excited beyond measure. Men and boys
to the number of hundreds gathered in a circle about the Oregonians, who
drove the tribe to the shelter of a spreading pine tree, in whose shade
they lay stretched on the ground. There was great complaint and deep
mutterings on the part of the Californians, who said, “See what you have
done! We can stay here no longer. There are eighty thousand Indians in
California, and now they will drive every white man from the mines.” So
great indeed was the terror, that many new arrivals just up the river
from San Francisco, coming to the mines from the east, turned around
immediately and left. Others were scarcely dissuaded by the Oregonians
themselves, or those who took their part, who declared that the trouble
was now ended, if all stood together. However, it required great
firmness on the part of the Columbia River men. Sutter, to whom word was
sent asking if he would try the seven Indians in prison, replied that he
had better not, as he could do nothing but release the men who had been
captured by the murderers from Oregon. With this message from the civil
authority, such as it was, the Oregonians proceeded to try the Indians
themselves, disregarding Sutter entirely. But just as the Indians were
being taken from prison, and were in the midst of a thick crowd of
spectators, the one known as the spy made a sudden shout, and all the
seven dropped on the instant to the ground and began wriggling on all
fours between the legs of the astonished bystanders; the Oregon guard
instantly attempted to shoot them—which created a scene of strange and
almost ludicrous excitement. Two were shot at once; two were shot after
they left the crowd; the other two reached the river and began swimming
away, and one of these was shot as he rose on the opposite side of the
stream. What became of the seventh was not known.
The women and children were of course released, but with the warning
that no Indian should again work on the bars. But this did not end the
trouble. Another Oregonian was killed. The Oregonians again took the
warpath, with the intention of killing all the savages they saw. One was
soon found and dispatched. Eleven were next found and pursued to the
cabin of an English rancher named Goff, who at first made no response to
their summons at his door. But as the boys began picking the mud
chinking out of the logs, and threatened to fire into the room, he
opened the house and delivered the Indians, who were then immediately
hanged. The tribe was then traced, and although taking refuge in the
tules of a swamp of a marshy lake, were attacked by the guards on
horseback, and all the men, and one woman, who was fighting with the
men, were killed—making in all seventy-six of the tribe that fell, the
Oregonians having lost by secret murder thirty-three. The women and
children were again brought back by the Oregonians to Coloma, and were
furnished by them with provisions and pans, and were allowed to wash
gold and support themselves. But they secretly took their leave, and
were found at length in a distant canyon of the high mountains, at the
limit of snow, nearly starved, but subsisting on pine nuts and the roots
of wild clover, gathered by a few old men in a lower valley. It was a
man named Smith who traced them, as among the tribe were his Indian wife
and child. They were again induced to return to Coloma, and now in a
pitiable condition, Californians injudiciously sent them a large supply
of beef and flour—a sort of food to which they were unaccustomed, and of
which they ate so greedily as to induce a virulent disease, of which
fifty-two died, practically exterminating the tribe.
This was Rocky Mountain men’s justice that was thus dealt out in the
California mines, and of the same piece as that of the Cayuse war, or
that of the general Indian war of 1855-56.
It was rough and terrible, and the Indians were the victims; but the old
California system was the real cause. The attempt was made to work the
mines upon a system of inequality—of proprietors and peons. The
Oregonians, accustomed to a system of equality, finding themselves
exposed to outlawry, and not protected from the poor savagery of the
Indians, struck as they could. It is to be remembered, too, that the
secret murder of thirty-two men, without any attempt at meting out
justice, was an enormity that no community should brook. But that it was
not mere personal vengeance, but the purpose to establish the system of
free labor, and to root out the contract system, or rather the peon
system, was shown by the following:
At length Case decided to go up into the mines when affairs were at last
settled, and the men were working without trouble or danger; he had
fallen in with a certain Major Whiting, an American by birth, who had,
however, been living in Mexico, and had even served in the Mexican army
against the United States. This Mexican officer was now bringing up from
that region a long mule train of provisions and a company of peons whom
he had taken from prison at a cost to himself on the average of but $2
each, and had contracted with them to work for him at eighteen cents a
day. Case reached the mines before him. When Whiting arrived he called
upon Case first of all to ask what was the intention of the Oregon
miners about allowing his debtors to work upon the bars. Case replied,
“I speak only for myself; but I am opposed to it.” Whiting then asked
him to call a meeting to determine the opinion of the miners. Case
complied. Mr. Finley of Oregon City happened to be chosen chairman of
this meeting, and a young man named——, secretary. The call had been made
most literally by Case’s getting up upon a high rock and shouting so as
to be heard all over the canyon, and then those that came first raised
such a cry that it could be heard for a distance of two miles up and
down, and a pistol was also fired. At such a summons, of course, the
miners came to the camp in great numbers, and upon the object of the
meeting being announced, resolutions were passed unanimously to allow no
working of the mines except by those who were American citizens and
intended to remain in the United States; thus forbidding those who were
not citizens or who came simply to work and then return to foreign
homes. In the face of this decision, Whiting, of course, was obliged to
leave, having no inclination to meet the Oregon riflemen; and took his
Mexican debtors along with him. When Case came to inform him of the
action of the meeting he showed the utmost coldness, refusing to speak
except to say that he knew their action already, having been present.
This resolution of the miners, backed by their reputation acquired as
dead-shots and no let-up, not only decided Major Whiting to leave, but
those very same resolutions forwarded to the military governor, Smith,
were issued by him as a proclamation. He believed that this was the only
way to restore and maintain order in the mines, the will of the mountain
men not being safely disregarded. A national spirit and a certain
primary justice also required that American mines and privileges for
which many millions of dollars had been paid to Mexico should be
preserved to American citizens and worked for the benefit of this
country, and not be turned over to the speculators and contractors of
the whole world.
By this proclamation the Mexican and Chelano peons were required to
return to their own country. The system of equality which the Oregonians
rudely, but rightly represented, was established. Thousands of miners in
California who never heard of this little contest which was worked out
principally by a few rugged young mountain men from Oregon, began to
enjoy thenceforth the free and equal opportunity of the California
mines, and California thus became Americanized, and in the end a great
free state. The influence of Oregon, therefore, cannot be disregarded—
although the actions of the Oregon men at the time created intense
feeling against themselves, and Mr. Case considers this the source of
the still persistent dislike of Oregon shown by Californians; which has
hardened into a sort of tradition.
RETURN HOME.
The journey overland from the Sacramento up to the Willamette was, in
1849, one long adventure; and, on three hundred miles of the distance,
that of no peaceful kind. Case had had enough of sea voyaging in going
to California, and when, in the early fall, he counted over his
earnings, amounting to about $2,800, he said that he would go home by
land. The Indians of Northern California and Southern Oregon were
hostile, being declared enemies to the whites. The Oregon men had,
during the previous autumn, built a road through, making a long detour
from the Rogue River Valley to the borders of Klamath Lake by the old
Applegate route, and thence by Lost River and Lake, the Lava Beds, and
the long plateau east of Mount Shasta, to Pitt River, and then two
hundred miles across the chain of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the
Sacramento. The Indians of this region had ever been of the wildest and
most warlike character, regarding white men as natural enemies. The
famous Modocs were a remnant of one of these tribes. The large party of
the Oregonians who had passed through the previous year had, to quite an
extent, overawed the natives, especially in the Pitt River Valley. The
party of Case consisted of only eight men, himself being chosen captain,
and they carried some $28,000 worth of dust.
Over the mountains, from the Sacramento to the Pitt River Valley, a
distance of some two hundred miles, and through the Pitt River Valley,
they proceeded in a leisurely manner, allowing their horses to graze at
will upon the wild pea vines that grew luxuriously, and thus kept them
thriving. A large number of travelers were met on the way, going to the
mines, among whom was a party of strict Presbyterians from Springfield,
Illinois, who always rested on the Sabbaths. It was almost universally
taken by new travelers of that road that the Pitt River Valley was the
main Sacramento, and they were loth to strike over the mountains as the
way required.
Later upon the journey, Major Warner was fallen in with, having a party
of one hundred soldiers, mostly Irishmen. With this officer pleasant
conversations were held. He expressed his surprise that Case should try
to go through the Indian country with but eight men, while he felt
unsafe with his one hundred. But Case replied that his party was the
best. They all knew the Indians were like snapping dogs, that would snap
and run, while Warner’s men knew nothing of Indians. The event proved
only too truly Case’s estimate. Warner with his one hundred men were
subsequently attacked and all were destroyed (W. M. C.). Warner also had
imbibed the California idea of Oregon. He once remarked to Case, “I
understand that Oregon can never be an agricultural section.” “Why?”
asked Case. “The valleys are too narrow. I am told that there are few
over a thousand yards wide—that gives no room for ranches.” “The
Willamette Valley,” said Case, “where I live is forty miles across, not
counting the foothills. That gives room for ranches.”
Emerging finally out of the Pitt River Valley and entering upon the
great plateau east of Shasta Butte, Case’s little party traveled so near
the snow of the mountain region, and it was now late September, that the
snow-banks seemed no higher above them than the tops of the trees. They
were coming to the Modoc country, and the lava beds. These last were a
great curiosity; the natural forts made by boiling and finally subsiding
little craters of not over an acre in area, and looking so much like
fortifications that many took them for the work of Indians, especially
attracted attention. Here began the forced marches. For three nights and
four days Case slept not a wink, and the distance covered during that
time was about three hundred miles. Skirting the marshy shores of Lost
Lake, where Lost River disappears, and the water is so stained with
ochre as to be a deep red; and finally crossing the natural bridge, or
causeway, and coming to the Klamath Basin; and crossing the Klamath
River where there is a series of three low falls of about two feet
high each, over some flat tabular rock formations—they finally reached
the dangerous Indian country of the Rogue River. Here occurred one
of the strangest Indian fights. Mr. Case’s party was not concerned
in this, but was a few hours behind; yet enjoyed the results of the
victory. The road at a certain point skirted along a bluff where there
were many crevices and natural hiding places, and below the road ran
the river. The wagon-way here was only just about wide enough for one
vehicle to pass. This was a natural place for the Indians to ambush a
passing party, and Case and his comrades would no doubt have suffered
and probably have been cut off entirely, if it had not been that just
before they reached this place, two other parties were passing, one
on the way to California and the other but a few hours ahead of Case
going to Oregon. The Oregon party was that of Robert Newell, consisting
of thirty men, for California. As he came to this dangerous point,
about four or five o’clock in the afternoon, Newell discovered that
there were Indians in the crevices of the rock ready to attack him.
With the capacity of a general, he divided his force so as to command
the situation. Five of his men he sent forward so as to attract the
Indians’ attention along the road and to draw their fire, but still to
keep out of reach. A reserve of seven he stationed under cover; and in
the meantime he detailed the eighteen others to pass under the shelter
of the wild plum bushes that skirted the river and faced the bluff,
and under this shelter to creep up into the very midst of the Indians,
select their men and shoot them down instantly—which would surprise and
stampede the savages, and is the true way, so says Mr. Case, to fight
the Indians.
This manouvre was executed with perfect success. The eighteen men that
crept up through the brush succeeded in falling upon the Indians in the
rocks, and were shooting them down before their presence was discovered;
and the Indians, surprised and confused, seeing white men in front and
in their midst, rushed out of their hiding places and began retreating
along the face of the bluff. But just at this time the party from
California, under Weston and Howard, arrived from the other direction,
and hearing the firing, hurried forward, and seeing the Indians pouring
out of the rocks, began discharging their rifles upon them. By this the
savages were entirely demoralized. The only space left was the river
itself, and into its tumultuous current they began to precipitate
themselves, the miners still firing upon them as they struggled in the
water, until the river ran red. The slaughter must have been very great.
Yet of all this, though but a few miles away, Case knew nothing. He
placed his camp for the night in a sink, so that any Indians creeping up
must be seen, and kept guard himself, with his ear to the ground, so as
to hear any stealthy steps approaching. He saw or heard nothing.
Nevertheless, the next morning, when one of his men went to the river
for water, he reported upon his return that there were the footprints of
as many as five hundred Indians upon the sand bar of the river, where
the night before there were none to be seen. This, Case found to be
about so, and with hands on the trigger, and hearts ready for anything,
the little company started out, expecting an ambuscade at any moment.
Case’s advice to his men was, “If we are attacked, keep close together.
If you divide up, we are lost.” But they had not gone far before they
heard a shot, and soon were greeted by the advance of Newell’s men; and
the next moment were met by Newell himself, who told them of the fight,
and that the country was full of hostile Indians; but Weston and Howard
were not far ahead, and the best thing for them was to shove forward and
overtake them. Accordingly, Case shoved forward, passing hour after hour
in the depths of the canyons, and hearing almost continually the Indians
calling to one another from the mountains—now on this side and now on
that. But still they were not attacked. They were often upon the trail
of the white men, but they, too, were shoving ahead, and not until the
Rogue River Valley was passed and the Umpqua reached, was Weston’s party
overtaken. The junction was made early in the morning. The night before,
Mr. Case, although for the third night without sleep, kept guard, and at
about 2 o’clock A. M. heard a dog baying not over a quarter of a mile
away. He knew this indicated the white men’s camp, and in fact
recognized the dog. Very cautiously approaching the camp, for fear of
being mistaken for Indians, and being fired upon, the little party
advanced and were recognized. Then the peril was over. The rest of the
journey was made more deliberately, but though now relieved of guard
duty, Mr. Case felt sleepless, and scarcely rested until some days had
passed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE NUMBER AND CONDITION OF THE NATIVE RACE IN OREGON WHEN FIRST SEEN BY
WHITE MEN.
The first estimates we have of the number of the native race in the
valley of the Columbia were by Lewis and Clark, who gained their
information while exploring the river from its sources in the Rocky
Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Based upon information derived from the
natives, their estimate was forty thousand. This was in 1805-6.
Forty years later, Rev. C. G. Nicolay, of King’s College, Oxford, and
member of the Royal Geographical Society of London, writing in support
of England’s right to the country created by the assumed moral benefits
to the natives effected by the trade influences of the Hudson’s Bay
Company—and, doubtless, with all the information that company could
furnish—estimated the number at thirty thousand, including all the
country from the California line north to 54° 40′. Noting that the
second estimate is for the wider bounds, and yet twenty-five per cent.
less, the numbers seem strongly to indicate that the native race was
rapidly decreasing between the dates mentioned.
In looking for the causes of this decrease of population of the native
race, we find at the outset diseases common to, but not very destructive
to civilized life, are, nevertheless, terrible in their effects on
people living so near the plane of mere animal life as were the natives
of Oregon—especially those of them in the largest valleys, and near the
sea,—when first seen by white men. The first American explorers received
information from the Clatsop tribe of Indians during their stay near
them in the winter of 1805-6, that some time previous to that a malady
had been brought to them from the sea, which caused the death of many of
their people. As they reached the Lower Willamette Valley, on their
return eastward, they found living evidence that the malady had been
smallpox, and the remains of capacious houses within the district—now
covered, or being rapidly covered, by the white race,—which indicated
that the disease had swept out of existence, or caused to flee the
locality, large numbers of the natives. A woman was seen by Captain
Clark in the company of an old man, presumably her father, sole
occupants of a building two hundred and twenty-five feet long and thirty
feet wide, under one roof, and divided by narrow alleys or partitions
into rooms thirty feet square. Other buildings, empty or in ruins, were
found near this. This woman was badly marked with smallpox; and from her
apparent age, and information the old man endeavored to convey, this
disease had killed many people and frightened others away about thirty
years previously.
Information received from natives by signs cannot be deemed reliable;
but no writing can be plainer than the human face marked by smallpox. We
have, then, from the journal of Lewis and Clark, traditional information
from the Clatsop natives, and in the appearance of this woman—presumably
of the Multnomah tribe—evidence of the presence of smallpox one hundred
miles in the interior; and fifty years later we have from the Yakima
chieftain, Kamiakin, at the Walla Walla council held by Gov. I. I.
Stevens, intimations that the suffering of his people from smallpox in
former times was one reason for his objection to whites’ settling in his
country.
Whatever truth there may be in these earlier traditions of the natives,
the rapid decrease of the tribes on the Lower Columbia and in the
Willamette Valley, between 1805 and 1845, and the decaying condition of
those found here at the latter date, are facts which cannot be called in
question. Those writers who are predisposed to blame the white man for
all the results of the commercial and social contact between the races
will see only the fearful and repulsive effects upon the ignorant
native—supposed to be innocent—of drunkenness and debauchery, which the
white man’s avaricious trade and licentiousness ministered to. While,
beyond question, these were destructive agencies, they, in my judgment,
never were but a small moiety of the cause of the general decay of the
race west of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges, from Alaska to Lower
California. As to the licentious intercourse between the sexes, the
natives were ready and sought opportunity to participate in the
destructive commerce. And their customs, which were their only laws,
left womanhood—especially widowhood—an outcast, where she was not held
as a slave. It was a fact well known to pioneers yet living that a woman
of bright, kindly disposition, of natural intelligence, which made her a
natural leader of her sex, who was in 1840 the honored wife of the chief
of one of the strongest coast tribes, and as such styled a queen by some
writers, was in 1845 a leader and guide of native prostitutes, who
watched and followed ships entering the Columbia from the time they
crossed the bar in until they crossed out. And between opportunities of
this kind, she went from camp to camp of white settlers on the Lower
Columbia, thus seeking trade without the least sign of shame. The
customs and usages of the race, for which the leading men were
responsible, debar us of any just right to hold native womanhood
responsible for a social system which deemed a female child the best
trading property—valued high or low according to the status of the male
portion of her family. The husband bought his wife, and might, where she
did not suit, send her back to her people and claim a return of the
property given for her, ostensibly as presents.[1] This, if her family
had any pride or courage, would probably lead to trouble. A native
husband could dispose of an unsatisfactory wife. He could kill her by
personal ill-usage,[2] or keep her to labor for means to purchase and
support another wife, or as many more as his means and desires induced
him to buy.[3]
The general relations between the husband and wife among the native
races in Western Oregon were that the husband should kill the game or
catch the fish, as the subsistence was from game or fish. The dressing
of skins for clothing, the weaving of rush mats for camp covers or for
beds, the preparation of cedar bark for clothing, nets and ropes, and
the digging of roots, gathering of berries, etc., were all left to the
wife and the slaves at her command, if there were any. The husband and
wife seemed to have separate property rights as to themselves, and on
the death of either the most valuable of it, and often all of it, was
sacrificed to the manes of the dead. Sometimes living slaves were bound
and placed near the dead body of a person of importance in the tribe.[4]
Under this custom, when a leading man like Chenamus, Chief of the
Chinooks, died, the body was carefully swathed in cedar bark wrappings;
his war canoe or barge of state was used as his coffin, and his second
best canoe, if he had two, was inverted and placed over the body as a
defense against the weather or wild beasts; a small hole was made in the
lower canoe and it was placed in a slanting position to facilitate
complete drainage. No money reward would induce an Indian of the Lower
Columbia to enter and labor in a canoe that had been thus used for the
dead. Thus the best and generally all the property worth notice was
rendered useless to the living. The wife in such a case might be owner
of slaves in her own right, or of a _business canoe_, and in some cases
of a small canoe used on the Lower Columbia root gathering, or by the
husband or sons in hunting water fowl. Such a wife becoming a widow—
supposing her dead husband a chief, succeeded by a son by another of his
wives, or by a brother, unfriendly and jealous of her influence,—would
not be a totally helpless outcast. She would have the means of gathering
her own subsistence. This, however, was above the common lot of native
widows. The same custom of destroying the property of the dead prevailed
amongst natives of the Willamette Valley when the American home builders
first came; and it was a common sight to come upon a recently made grave
and scare the buzzards or coyotes from feasting on carcasses of horses
slain to the departed, the grave itself being indicated by the cooking
utensils and tawdry personal adornments of the deceased. Under this
custom there was no property left for distribution by the average
native. A chief, living with thrifty care for his family, might leave
slaves to be divided among his sons or daughters, as some few did, but
often when the heirs were sons or daughters of different mothers bitter
family feuds were a natural result, and the law of might decided. There
was no marriage record, no law to distribute fairly what might justly
belong to the widow and the fatherless, no individual ownership of land,
no definite boundaries to districts claimed by tribes. Thus the whole
polity of the native race here limited the exertions of the people to
seeking a present subsistence, or, at the most, enough to tide them over
from one season to another. Diversity of seasons has a much more
intimate relation to the food supply of the wild life than to a people
who have arrived at the agricultural stage of evolution. Many wild
animals and feathered game have sufficient of the instinct of the
passenger pigeon and squirrel of the Atlantic seaboard to induce them to
migrate from districts in which their food fails as a result of untoward
seasons and go to others where there is plenty.[5] The native tribes
west of the Cascade Range could not do that, and therefore must have
often been reduced in numbers by bad seasons, before they were known to
the white race.
The condition of the natives as to surplus food and the scarcity of
large game in the Columbia Valley, as found by Lewis and Clark, shows
that the normal season left the then population little they could spare.
The party may be said to have run a gauntlet against starvation in their
journey from the Rocky Mountains to the mouth of the Columbia. They saw
few deer, and no antelope or elk. Salmon and dogs were their chief
purchases from the Indians, and they ate of the latter till some of the
men got to prefer dog flesh to venison. The salmon grew rancid and
mouldy under the influence of the warm wet winter, and made the men
sick. Their hunters, in what was forty years later the best elk range in
Oregon, often failed to meet their daily wants, and sometimes killed
their game so far from camp that it spoiled in the woods. So that when
they learned that a whale had been thrown on the beach, at the mouth of
the Nehalem, they went thirty miles, and with difficulty succeeded in
the purchase of three hundred pounds of whale blubber.
They stayed at their winter camp until the latter part of March, 1806.
The game had left their vicinity; they exhausted the surplus of the
Indians near them, so they started on their return journey in order to
reach the Chopannish “Nation,” with whom they had left their horses,
before the natives would leave for their spring hunt for buffalo east of
the Rockies.
Under date of March 31, their journal reads: “Several parties were met
descending the river in quest of food. They told us that they lived at
the great rapids (the cascades), but the scarcity of provisions had
induced them to come down in hopes of finding subsistence in the more
fertile valley. All living at the rapids, as well as nations above, were
in much distress for want of food, having consumed their winter’s store
of dried fish, and not expecting the return of the salmon before the
next full moon—which would be on the second of May. This information was
not a little embarrassing. From the falls (The Dalles) to the Chopannish
Nation, the plains afforded neither deer, elk, nor antelope, for our
subsistence. The horses were very poor at this season, and the dogs must
be in the same condition, if their food, the dried fish, had failed.”
These considerations compelled the party to go into camp, and send out
their hunters on both sides of the Columbia, from its north bank,
opposite the quick sand (Sandy) river. Their purpose being to obtain
meat enough to last them to where they had left their horses, and this
they did, with the addition of some dogs and wapatos they were able to
secure from the natives by hard bargaining. The eight days they thus
delayed they used to good purpose. Captain Clark, acting on information
by an Indian of the existence of a large river making in from the south,
which they had passed and repassed without having seen it, because of a
diamond shaped island lying across its mouth, hired an Indian guide, and
returning down the south shore, penetrated the Multnomah (Lower
Willamette), to near the present location of Linnton, and saw evidences
in ruined buildings of a much denser population than then existed there,
and in the two hundred and twenty-five foot building already mentioned,
saw the woman marked by smallpox. Here, also, were met Clackamas and
other Indians from the falls of the Willamette.
Elk, deer, and black bear were the large game their hunters killed. Some
of the deer were extremely poor. They do not mention having seen flesh
of any kind in the hands or camps of natives, much less a successful
native hunter of such game.[6] Neither do they mention seeing a horse
west of the Cascade Range. The receiving of one sturgeon from a native
is mentioned, and some dried anchovies (smelt). But the chief wealth of
this richest part of the district—the most inviting to settlers in their
estimation of any they had seen west of the Rocky Mountains, is the
wapato—“the product of the numerous ponds in the interior of Wapato”
(Sauvie’s) Island. This was almost the sole staple article of commerce
on the Columbia.
This bulb, the root of the arrowhead lily (_sagittaria variabilis_) is
described by Lewis and Clark as “never out of season,” and as being
“gathered chiefly by the women, who employ for the purpose canoes from
ten to fifteen feet long, about two feet wide, nine inches deep, and
tapering from the middle. They are sufficient to contain a single person
and several bushels of roots, yet so very light that a woman can carry
them with ease. She takes it into a pond where the water is sometimes as
high as the breast, and by means of her toes separates this bulb from
the root, which, on being freed from the mud, immediately rises to the
surface of the water and is thrown into the canoe. In this manner these
patient females will remain in the water for several hours, even in the
dead of winter.”[7]
This first party of the white race, thirty-six in number, were thus
detained eight days gathering a sufficiency of food to make it prudent
to risk a journey of ten days through the heart of the great and fertile
Columbia Valley, then so devoid of large game as to make it reasonable
to assume that at some period not very remote from the time of their
visit the population had slaughtered the elk, deer, and antelope, and
driven the buffalo to the east side of the Rockies. The practice of
large parties of the strongest tribes passing that backbone of the
continent every summer to hunt this noblest of North American game is
good presumptive evidence that it had at no remote period ranged in the
valley of the Columbia. In 1806, then, we have the fact of a population,
roughly estimated at forty thousand, ekeing out a hand-to-mouth living,
from salmon chiefly, with the additions of wokas kouse (wapato and
camas),—the latter much the more generally distributed from the Pacific
Ocean to the summit flats of the Rocky Mountains—by going across those
mountains annually for game. They had, of course, to go in parties
sufficiently strong for defense against the hated, dreaded and
destructive Blackfeet. The taking of such journeys proves their
necessity. The tribes unable through weakness or situation to make such
expeditions, as were all those of Western and Southwestern Oregon, had
to gather their precarious living from the plants mentioned, grass
seeds, the small native fruits, of crab apple, haw, huckleberries,
cranberries, etc. Looking over a recent report of the Division of
Botany, United States Department of Agriculture—a contribution from the
United States Herbarium, Vol. V, No. 2, by Frederick V. Coville—I find
one hundred plants described as used by the Klamath Indians, forty-six
of which—as seeds, fruits or roots—were used as food by that tribe. No
effort has yet been made to enumerate all the kinds of flesh, fish, and
insect life used by the native race for sustenance. Lewis and Clark
found evidence that the coast native sometimes resorted to searching the
beach for fish cast up by the tide. The tribes on the south bank of the
Snake River, and southward, used to fire the high, arid plains, where
possible, and collect the crickets and grasshoppers thus killed. As late
as 1844 these insects were dried and made into a kind of pemmican by
pestle and mortar. The Rogue River natives used the grasshopper meal as
a delectable food as late as 1848, and as late as 1878 the writer saw
the chief medicine man of the Calipooyas collecting in a large mining
pan the tent caterpillars from the ash trees within four miles of Salem.
He asserted most emphatically that they were “close muckamuck” (good
food).
For years before and after the last mentioned date the writer knew
Joseph Hudson (Pa-pe-a, his native name), the lineal chief of the
Calipooyas, who signed the treaty of cession of the east side of the
Willamette Valley to the United States. He was the only native of
Western Oregon the writer ever talked with who seemed to comprehend, or
care for, the consequences to the natives of the appropriation of
ownership of the soil by the white race. He had judgment to perceive
that the latter had agencies of power and of progress with which his
people could not have coped, even at their best estate—which family
tradition had handed down to him. This pointed to a time when his people
had numbered eight thousand, as he estimated, at which time and later,
to the time of his grandfather, Chief San-de-am, _his people used the
circle hunt_, driving the deer to a center agreed upon, by young men as
runners, the point to drive to being selected as good cover to enable
the bowmen to get close to the quarry. From him the information was
gained as a family tradition that about 1818 eight men, carrying packs
on their backs and coming from the north, reached his grandfather’s
village, near where the town of Jefferson now is. They were set across,
and, going southward, they conveyed to other natives that they had
crossed San-de-am’s river. The whites shortened the name to Santiam, as
they did Yam-il to Yamhill. These eight men returned after several
months and brought the first horses the Calipooyas ever saw. They sold a
mare and colt for forty-five beaver skins. Joe, as he was familiarly
called, a man of truth and honor, could not but mourn the fate of his
people. Being in a small way his banker for small loans (he working for
me) I know he was kept poor by the general worthlessness of his tribe,
as it was one of the functions of a Calipooya chief to help the weak and
good for nothing members of his tribe. This man honestly performed any
rough and common contract labor (he would never work for day wages),
carrying his burden of sorrow for his people’s condition to where the
wicked and low can no longer trouble. The writer received from him many
hints and plain statements as to the mental capacity or mode of
reasoning of the native race. Custom led them to appeal to him in
troubles resulting from drunken rows. A young dandy of the tribe,
getting into the power of the law for knifing a woman in a camp fray,
would appeal to Joe, as chief, for financial help, with no more sense of
shame than an Irish landlord who had wasted his property in riotous
living would have in spunging off his former tenants to a green old age.
There are many people of the white race who cannot help being
participants in the results of the change of racial dominion which has
taken place on the North Pacific Slope within the past century. They
feel they are participants in a gigantic act of robbery. A lady whose
writings on any subject it is a delight to read, in the June number of
the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, shows the origin of land
titles so far as the English race of men have made them. It would be an
instructive addition to her able paper if some one, well read on the
effects of guarded land titles in sufficient area to support family life
on each allotment, would describe their influences upon a community so
blessed.
Already enough has been said to indicate that prior to the visit of
Lewis and Clark, the native race was in a condition of decline; that in
a normal or average season a body of forty men, or less, found it
difficult to avoid starvation while moving from place to place in a
country estimated to contain forty thousand.
It may be admitted, because it is true though shameful, that the
licentiousness of trade had sown the seeds accelerating the decay of the
native race in Western Oregon, from the Columbia River to the Umpqua,
and from its mouth to Fort Hall. Within these bounds, but especially
near the chief lines of commerce, the missionary even had as much need
of a medical book as he had of his bible, as far as the people he had
come to guide in the way of life was concerned.
Abundant reason had Dr. John McLoughlin (that living copy of the great
heart of Bunyan’s matchless fancy) for giving welcome to the American
missionaries. He knew the value of a clean mind or soul in keeping a
clean and healthy body; though with a wise physican’s care he kept the
hospital at Vancouver open to any white sick, whom the resident doctor
the Hudson’s Bay Company maintained there recommended to it.
Doctor McLoughlin instituted the first hospital in Oregon for white
people here prior to the overland immigration of family life from the
Missouri border in 1843. The native race then were being removed rapidly
by a disease they themselves called the “cold sick,” which had raged
among them from 1832. Some of the symptoms indicated a malarial cause,
but quinine and other ague remedies had no effect upon the Indian sick.
Like the plague now raging in India, it was confined, seemingly,
entirely to the natives; also, almost entirely to the fishing villages
on the large rivers. I have long had a theory which I confess being
unable to give an intelligent reason for; that that plague had its
origin in eating filth. The natives themselves found that to thrust
their arrow points through the putrid liver of a deer or elk would
enable them to kill their enemies by a slight wound by blood poison. Is
it not, then, possible that eating putrid flesh, or fish—the garbage
cast up by the tide,—the spent salmon from the river shore, or those
wallowing in death throes on its surface, could not be done with
impunity?
In times of famine the natives, on the sea coast and on the rivers, did
eat such food; as the inland tribes, like the Klamaths, sometimes
sustained life by eating black moss, and the bark of certain trees.
These latter foods, however, were not putrid.
To support the theory that this cold sick plague, which began on the
Lower Columbia in 1832, and which kept the wail for the dead sounding
along its banks till 1844, may have originated in poisoned food, we have
the statement of Lewis and Clark’s journal that salmon pemmican which
they purchased in quantity at The Dalles moulded, and made the men sick,
in the damp and warm winter camp, near the sea. But, whatever the cause,
the effect was to depopulate, or cause the abandonment of once populous
villages.
In 1805, the central seat of the Multnomahs, near the east end of Wapato
(Sauvie’s) Island, had a population of “eight hundred souls” noted, “as
the remains of a large nation,” surrounded by kindred near-by tribes,
aggregating two thousand two hundred and sixty souls. In 1845 the site
was without human habitation. “The dead were there,” in large numbers,
swathed in cedar bark, and laid tier above tier on constructions of
cedar slabs about four inches thick, and often four feet wide,—causing
the observer to wonder how the native, with such agencies as he
possessed, could fell and split such timber. At this time so many as two
hundred natives, could not be seen on the banks of the Lower Columbia,
between the mouth of the Willamette and Clatsop Point, without special
effort at counting the few living in the scattered villages, often
separated by several sites once inhabited by large numbers apparently.
This was particularly noticed on the south bank, at Coffin Rock, and the
main shore, between that and Rainier. “The dead were there,” in
abundance, but no life but the eagle, the fish hawk, the black loon, and
the glistening head of the salmon-devouring seal, then very numerous.
There was a village of the Cowlitz tribe on the south bank, below where
Rainier now stands. The people looked poor, ill fed, and worse clothed.
The chief had come to us in the stream to invite us to camp near,
exhibiting a single fresh hen’s egg as inducement. We did so, and
visiting their camp had the first sight of life in a native fishing
village. Some of the children were nearly naked. Though it was
midwinter, the adult females, with one exception, were dressed in the
native petticoat, or kilt, as second garment, the other being a chemise
of what had been white cotton; one was engaged in the manufacture of
cedar bark strings used in the formation of the kind of kilt she wore.
The exception in the camp was a young woman of extraordinary personal
beauty, a daughter of the chief family of the Cathelametts. She had
recently been purchased, or espoused, by the heir-apparent of the
Cowlitz chief. She seemed to be indifferent to the life around her, and
shortly after was, presumably, the cause of tribal war. She was
permitted a few weeks later to pay a visit to her own tribe, accompanied
by an old woman of her husband’s. They both joined a party of the women
of her tribe in a wapato gathering expedition. The old duenna did not
return,—her body was found next day near the wapato beds, horribly
mutilated by a knife murder. The natural fruit of the Chinooks’ polity
of marriage. A short tribal war resulted.
In order to show the measure of manhood this system produced in a
different phase from that of Chiefs Kalata’s and Chenowith’s, I will
relate from memory a short visit at the lodge of the Cathelamett chief:
As one of a party of the employees of Hunt’s mill, making our way from
Astoria to the mill, we were approaching Cathelamett Point, the village
of the tribe, on the south shore. We were hailed from the shore and
found ourselves near the women and girls of the tribe, having a good
time gathering the newly risen stems of the common fern and preparing it
for food in earth ovens over heated rocks. They voluntarily told us they
had no prepared food, but pressed us to go on to their village, and
“Lemiyey” (old mother) (pronounced in a tone that conveyed love and
respect) would gladly entertain us. They made no mistake in this. The
old lady seemed proud of the opportunity to act as hostess, and without
ostentation put her help to work and gave us a bountiful meal of fresh
salmon and wapatos, and afterward put on what had evidently been often
used as a robe of state, and passed back and forward in illustration of
scenes she had been part of. Her son, apparently utterly oblivious to
the spirit of his mother’s eye and movement, continued repeating the
offers to sell to us his tribal claim to the lands lying between Tongue
Point and Cathelamett, that he had begun on our arrival. He was but a
youth, not so tall as his stately old mother appeared in her robe (of
what I afterwards concluded was badger skins, but may have been
mistaken), and he seemed mentally incapable of appreciating the
influences then forming around him and his people, which appropriated
their lands, while not one of them had the spirit to assert a right or
raise the question of justice against the action of the white race. This
was, with perhaps one exception, the cleanest, most self-respecting body
of natives left on the Lower Columbia in 1845, where Lewis and Clark
had, only forty years before, enumerated, by information from the
natives, thirteen thousand eight hundred and thirty below the cascades
and between that and the ocean. I do not believe that thirteen hundred
could be found within the same limits at the latter date. There was not
in all that distance, to my knowledge, a single man of the race who had
the intelligence and public spirit combined to appear before the
authorized agents of the United States ten years later and plead for the
rights of their people in the treaties made south of the Columbia. It is
questionable whether there was one in all the country north of Rogue
River who would have done so of his own motion, had not the humane
General Palmer and J. L. Parrish, as agents, advised the Indians to act.
It is not to be understood from this that all good and all beauty had
departed from the native life. When J. L. Parrish was in charge of
Methodist mission property, in 1845, a white man from Oregon City
appeared temporarily at Solomon S. Smith’s to solicit the hand of a
young woman named Oneiclam in marriage. The young woman civilly and
modestly declined the honor, saying such a marriage could not secure the
respect of either the man’s people or the woman’s, and would fail in
conferring happiness. She was clean enough and good enough to secure the
personal friendship and advice of Mrs. J. L. Parrish, which proved her a
rare exception to her class. Such marriages soon ceased after the
American home-builder assumed dominion over Oregon, the white mother
thus arriving being strongly against inter-racial contracts. Doubtless
the hopelessness of the struggle against race prejudice has borne
heavily on the heart of many a man and woman on both sides of the race
question, but the fight is over now and many a heart broken in the
struggle (as I think was that of my friend Joseph Hudson, last Chief of
the Calipooyas) is at rest. The responsibility for the red race is now
the white man’s burden. He carries it well, while already the light of a
brighter day than the red man of fifty years ago could forecast is
piercing the prejudices and hates of that time. The white man brought
the surveying compass, the book in which to record titles to land,
another for the record of marriages, still another to record the rights
of property to the results of wedlock. Schools are open to the native
race and every generous mind wishes it well. But, while our sympathies
may go out toward the ignorant or incompetent race in a conflict of
power, we should not fail to note the services to all races rendered by
the victor.
A glance at the changed conditions of life within the bounds of old
Oregon: Instead of forty thousand persons ill-fed, ill-clad, living from
hand to mouth, often bordering on famine, unable to support forty
interesting visitors passing through their country, we have now,
perhaps, fully one million, and the surplus of foodstuffs and clothing
material they send out to the markets of the world, would feed well four
millions. And, it is not extravagant to say that the territory to which
the Oregon trail was made fifty-eight years ago will some day be made to
support forty millions in comfort.
This paper, it will be observed, has dealt entirely with the native race
in Northwestern Oregon, because this was the field of the race contest.
The point to which the guiding minds of the white race looked as most
desirable. Jefferson said, and Benton repeated: “Plant thirty thousand
rifles at the mouth of the Columbia.” The first exploring party sent out
by the former selected as the most interesting region in which to make
excursions, the district now containing the first and second chosen
commercial centers,—Vancouver and Portland.
The native race amid whom these were planted were described in their
average manhood as mean, cowardly and thievish. Forty years later,
to this description might be added ignorant, superstitious, and
utterly without public spirit. The tribes east and south from this
district were, excepting those located at the great fishing centers
on the Columbia, less thievish, and much more bold and spirited in
self-defense.
To the recent and valuable historical description of those tribes,
including the natives in what is now Western Washington, I am indebted
to the life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, by his son, Hazard Stevens, for
the number of natives west, as well as east, of the Cascades treated
with by Governor Stevens in 1855, just before the natural leaders of the
native race made their only united effort to stem the tide of inflow of
the white race.
{Total number found west of the Cascades 9,712
{Total number with whom treaties were made 8,597
{Total number east of the Cascade Mountains 12,000
{Total number treated with 8,900
{Total number found in Washington Territory 21,000
{Total number treated with 17,497
For Governor Stevens’ success in getting the eastern section of the
native race into treaty relations he was indebted solely to the
steadiness and good faith of the Nez Perces, the tribe which was always
conspicuous for its care of its womanhood.
JOHN MINTO.
-----
Footnote 1:
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.
Footnote 2:
Late in 1844, Katata, Chief of the Clatsop Tribe, murdered his
youngest wife, then but recently espoused from a leading family of the
Chinooks. The latter made war upon him for the act. J. L. Parrish, in
charge of the Methodist mission at the time, refused Katata his hand
after learning of his deed. The brutal chief made an effort to be
revenged for what he deemed an insult, but failed in his attempt.
Footnote 3:
The kind of chivalry the system bred was illustrated by Chief
Chenowith, supposed instigator of the Cascades massacre in 1855, who
was tried and condemned for fighting with the Klickitats and Yakimas.
“He offered ten horses, two squaws, and a little something to every
tyee, of (for) his life, boasting that he was not afraid of death, but
was afraid of the grave in the ground.”—[L. W. Coe in _Native Son
Magazine_ for February, 1900. Mr. Coe acted as interpreter at the
execution].
Footnote 4:
In 1844 the Chief of the Wascopams died at The Dalles, and was
succeeded by his brother, who was somewhat under the influence of Rev.
Alvan Waller, of the Methodist Episcopal mission there. A young slave
boy was bound and secured in the dead house with the body of the dead
chief, in accordance with the customs of the tribe. Mr. Waller
continued pleading for the release of the boy for three days and got
the new chief’s consent to take the boy out of his horrible situation
on condition that it be done secretly and the boy taken away, so that
the people of the tribe would never see him. He was taken to Mr. J. L.
Parrish, at Clatsop mission, and remained a member of his family till,
in 1849, he went to the California gold mines.
Footnote 5:
The writer has observed this instinct manifested one season by wild
ducks. The oak trees in the vicinity of his residence south of Salem,
of which there were considerable areas, bore a heavy crop of acorns.
The wild ducks by some means found it out, and must have by some means
informed each other, as the flocks of them passing over my farm from a
large beaver dam pond, where they rested at night, to their feeding
grounds daily rapidly increased from day to day, and as rapidly
decreased when the supply of acorns was consumed.
Footnote 6:
The writer has had his home fifty-five years in the Willamette Valley,
and has never seen or known of a native to kill a deer. He has known
one spend a day hunting to kill five wood rats.
Footnote 7:
This extract illustrates the condition of womanhood. Lewis and Clark
write of the production of wapato in this locality as though it grew
nowhere else; but it grew—yet grows—on the margins of ponds and bayous
of most of the streams flowing into the Columbia west of the Cascades.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDIAN NAMES.
Indian names and Indian words in general of the tribes of the region of
the Columbia have many peculiarities, and amply repay time spent in
trying to study them out. The following pretends to be only the merest
beginning, and the writer has advanced only to the edges of the subject.
It comprises only those names, and those meagerly and superficially, of
the Lower Columbia and Willamette rivers, and these have been obtained
from but two or three original sources. Those sources, however, are as
reliable and intelligent as are to be found, being the recollections of
Silas B. Smith, of Clatsop, and Louis Labonte, of Saint Paul, Oregon.
That others may present anything they may have on the subject, and thus
the stock of information be increased before those who have the original
information shall have passed away, and the later investigators be left
only to conjecture, is my idea in preparing this paper.
In the first place we must bear in mind a remark of Mr. Smith’s, and
that is that the most of the Indian names we have incorporated into our
own nomenclature are more or less altered. He says that white men always
like to change the original Indian somewhat. This is no doubt true. Such
a disposition arises partly from the white man’s egotism, which rejoices
in showing that he can make a thing wrong if he pleases, and especially
that an Indian name has no rights which he is bound to respect; and it
arises in part from the white man’s ignorance. This ignorance is shown
partly in the lack of training of our ears in hearing, so that we
frequently are unable to distinguish between allied letters, or sounds,
such as “p” and “b,” or “m,” for the consonants, or between a simple
vowel sound, or a compound, or diphthong. Moreover, our English language
is almost hopelessly mixed up between the open, or broad continental
pronunciation of the vowels, and the narrow, or closed sound; so that no
one is sure that an “a” stands for “ay,” as in “day,” or for “ah,” as in
“hurrah.” The Yankee peculiarity, also, of leaving off the sound of “r”
where it belongs, and putting it on where it does not belong, like
saying “wo’k” for “work,” or “Mariar” for “Mariah,” has very materially
changed the original pronunciation. With us, too, the pronunciation of
the vowels follows a fashion, and varies from time to time according to
what particular “phobia” or “mania” we may happen to be cultivating. At
present the prevailing Anglomania is probably affecting our speech as
well as our fashions and politics. An Indian name, therefore, that might
have been rendered into very good English fifty years ago, may now,
having become subject to the mutations of our fads of pronunciation, be
spoken quite differently from the original tongue.
But, after making all these allowances, due to our white man’s egotism,
ignorance and change of fashions, the main difficulty is in the
strangeness, and, it might be said, the rudimentariness of the Indian
sounds. Many, perhaps the most, of the aboriginal tones have no exact
phonetic equivalent in English. We must remember that their names were
originated away back in their own history, and were not affected by
contact with Europeans, and have therefore a primitive quality not found
even in the Jargon. This makes them more difficult, but certainly not
less interesting.
In general it will be found, I think, that the aboriginal languages have
the following peculiarities of pronunciation:
1. Almost all the sounds are pronounced farther back in the throat than
we pronounce them. This brings into use an almost entirely different
set of tones, or more exactly, it brings the various vocal sounds
produced by the vocal chords to a point at a different, and to us an
unused position of the throat or mouth—at a point where we can
scarcely catch and arrest the sound. This makes the vowel sounds in
general pectoral or ventral, and the consonant sounds guttural or
palatal. As to the consonants, also, it often gives them a clucking or
rasping sound not found in our language, unless in certain
exclamations.
2. As a consequence of the above, the vowel sounds are not very fully
distinguished from the subvowels. There is no “r” sound; if that is
ever seen in an Indian name it has been interpolated there by some
white mal-transliterator. “L” easily runs into “a,” and “m” into “b.”
Names that upon first pronunciation seem to have an “l” turn out upon
clearer sound to have a short Italian “a,” or those having an “m” to
be more exactly represented by “b.” Probably the fact as to “r” is
that it is identical in the aboriginal throat with long Italian “a,”
or the ah sound, as it still is with Easterners and Southerners.
3. Many of the most common aboriginal consonants, or atonic sounds,
while simple to them, can be represented in English only by compounds.
Such are the almost universal “ch” which can be as accurately rendered
“ts,” (?) and the very common final syllable “lth.” “T” is also
produced so far back in the throat as to be almost indistinguishable
from “k.” It seems to be a principle to slip a short “e” sound before
an initial “k,” and many names begin with a short introductory “n”
sound, which is nearly a pure vowel. Of the vowels, “a” pronounced as
ah is the most common, though long “a,” properly a diphthong, and long
“i” a diphthong, and long “e” are very frequent. While it is true that
the sounds as a rule are _in_, rather than _out_, still the pure
vowels, especially “a,” and this used as a call, or cry, is often very
open and pure.
4. It will probably be found, also, that the sounds are varied more or
less according to meaning. With us tones are a matter of expression.
With the aborigines they were probably a matter primarily of meaning.
This would arise from the fact that their language was not written,
but spoken, and their terms were not descriptive, but imitative. We
know, for instance, that the Jargon word indicating pastime, which is
“ahncuttie,” means a shorter or longer period, according as the length
the first vowel is drawn out—a very long time ago admitting also of
imitative gesticulation. This principle would modify the pronunciation
of words, lengthening or shortening the vowels, or opening or closing
them, or perhaps drawing semi-vowels out into pure vowels, and
softening or sharpening the consonants.
While any expression of opinion must be very modest, still this much may
be ventured: That our language has lost many valuable elements in its
evolution from the spoken to the written form, especially in the matter
of picturesqueness. We have, of course, gained immeasurably in
directness and objective accuracy, but true evolution does not abolish
any former element, but retains and subordinates it, and thereby is able
to advance to new utilities. By study of a pure aboriginal language on
the imitative principle, expressed only in tones, not only may the
advantages of our own tongue be understood, but its deficiencies may be
remedied, and a more complete language at length be developed. I am by
no means of the opinion that all that is human, or of value to
civilization, is to be found in the Anglo-Saxon race, or even in the
white race; but that the slow and painful struggles and ponderings of
the other races are also to be wrought into the final perfect expression
of humanity in society, art, literature and religion.
After the above, which is perhaps too much in the way of introduction, I
will proceed with the names that I have been favored with—only wishing,
if that were possible, that our aboriginal languages might be
reconstructed in their entirety.
Water, says Mr. Smith, unless enclosed by land, was never named. The
Columbia or the Willamette had no names. Water was to the native mind,
like air, a spiritual element, and just the same in one place as
another; and the circumstance that it was bounded by land made it no
other than simply “chuck”—the Jargon word. If Indians ever seemed to
give a name to a river, all that was meant was some locality on the
shore. The idea of giving an appellation to a body of water from source
to outlet never occurred to them.
The following are some of the more common Indian names of places, as
given by Mr. Smith:
_Chinook_, or _Tsinook_—The headland at Baker’s Bay.
_Clatsop_, or, more properly, _Tlahtsops_—About the same as
Point Adams at mouth of the Columbia.
_Wal-lamt_, accented on last syllable, and but two syllables—A
place on the west shore of the Willamette River, near Oregon
City, and the name from which Willamette is taken.
_E-multh-a-no-mah_—On east side of Sauvie’s Island; from which
the name Multnomah is derived.
_Chemukata_—Chemekata, site of Salem.
_Chemayway_—A point on the Willamette River about two and one-half
miles southward from Fairfield, where Joseph Gervais, who came to
Oregon with Wilson G. Hunt in 1811, settled in 1827-28. The name
Chemawa, the Indian school, is derived from this.
_Champoek_—Champoeg, an Indian name signifying the place of a
certain edible root. The name is not the French term _le campment
sable_, as naturally supposed by some, and stated by Bancroft.
_Ne-ay-lem_—The name from which Nehalem is derived.
_Acona_—Yaquina.
To these might be added, perhaps, Sealth, the name of the Indian chief
after whom the City of Seattle is called. The name is of two syllables,
accented on the first. This well illustrates the tendency of the whites
to transpose letters, here making an “lth” into a “tle” in imitation of
the French, or, perhaps, the Mexican names. Bancroft learnedly discusses
the similarity between the Washington and Mexican “tl,” apparently not
knowing that the Washington termination was not “tl,” but “lth.”
I will now give, in more detail, names of places, chiefs, and of some
primitive articles of food, and utensils, etc.:
NAMES OF PLACES AND CHIEFS IN CLATSOP COUNTY.
_Tle-las-qua_—Knappa.
_Se-co-mee-tsiuc_—Tongue Point.
_O-wa-pun-pun_—Smith’s Point.
_Kay-ke-ma-que-a_—On John Day’s River.
_Kil-how-a-nak-kle_—A point on Young’s River.
_Nee-tul_—A point on Lewis and Clark River.
_Ne-ahk-al-toun-al-the_—A point on west side of Young’s Bay,
near Sunnymead.
_Skip-p-er-nawin_—A point at mouth of Skipanon Creek.
_Ko-na-pee_—A village near Hotel Flavel, where the first white
man in Oregon, Konapee, lived.
_Ne-ahk-stow_—A large Indian village near Hammond.
_Ne-ah-keluc_—A large Indian village at Point Adam’s, name
signifying “Place of Okeluc,” or, where the _Okeluc_ is made;
“_Okeluc_” being salmon pemmican.
_E-will-tsil-hulth_—A high sand hill, or broken end of a sea
ridge, facing the sea beach about west of the “Carnahan” place,
meaning steep hill.
_E-wil-nes-culp_—A flat-topped hill against the beach about west
of the “West” place, meaning “Hill cut off.”
_Ne-ah-ko-win_—Village on the beach about west of the “Morrison”
place, where the Ohanna Creek once discharged into the ocean.
_Ne-ah-coxie_—Village at the mouth of Neacoxie Creek.
_Ne-co-tat_—Village at Seaside.
_Ne-hay-ne-hum_—Indian lodge up the Necanicum Creek.
_Ne-ahk-li-paltli_—A place near Elk Creek where an edible plant,
the Eckutlipatli, was found.
_Ne-kah-ni_—A precipice overlooking the ocean, meaning the abode
of _Ekahni_, the supreme god; called “Carnie Mountain” by the
whites.
_Ne-tarts_—Netarts.
_Nestucca._
_Tlats-kani_—A point in Nehalem Valley reached either by way of
Young’s River, or the Clatskanie; and hence the name
“Claskanine” for the branch of Young’s River, and “Clatskanie”
for the stream above Westport. In saying “_tlastani_,” the
Indians meant neither of those streams, but merely the place
where they were going to or coming from; but with usual
carelessness the whites applied it to both.
There were two lakes on Clatsop plains, one of which was
called _O-mo-pah_, Smith’s Lake: and the other, much larger,
_Ya-se-ya-ma-na-la-tslas-tie_, which now goes by the name of an
Indian, _Oua-i-cul-li-by_, or simply _Culliby_.
The name of Cape Hancock was _Wa-kee-tle-he-igh_; _Ilwaco_,
_Comcomby_, _Chenamas_, _Skamokoway_, _Kobaiway_, _Tostam_, and
_Totilhum_, were chiefs.
These chiefs’ names illustrate some of the peculiarities of Indian
pronunciation. _Kobaiway_, who was the Clatsop chief when Lewis and
Clark came, was called by them _Comowool_; _Tostam_ was sometimes called
_Tostab_; and _Totilhum_, “a powerful man of the people,” had the
Columbia River called after him by some whites. Seeing some Indians
coming down the great stream with camas, etc., they asked where they
obtained this: “From _Totilhum_,” was the reply; meaning that they had
been on a visit to the chief. Then thinking they had made a great
discovery, the whites announced that the Columbia was called _Totilhum_.
_Totilhum_ was chief of the Cathlamets, who originally had their village
on the Oregon side, near Clifton.
INDIAN NAMES OF PLACES IN THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY—SOME CHIEFS.
_Ni-a-kow-kow_—St. Helens. A noted Indian chief here was
_Ke-as-no_. He was made a friend by the Hudson’s Bay Company, was
given fine presents, and entrusted with the duty of firing a salute
to the company’s vessels as they came in sight up the river.
_Nah-poo-itle_—A village just across the river from
_Niahkowkow_. The name of the chief was _Sha-al_, who was very
large sized.
_Nah-moo-itk_—A point on Sauvie’s Island.
_Emulthnomah_—A point a little above.
_Wa-kan-a-shee-shee_—A point across the river from
_Emulthnomah_; meant “white-headed duck,” or diver.
_Na-quoith_—On mainland, old Fort William.
_Na-ka-poulth_—A pond a little above Portland, on the east side,
where the Indians dug wapatoes.
_E-kee-sa-ti_—The Willamette Falls. The name of the tribe here
was _Tla-we-wul-lo_. The name of a chief was _Wah-nach-ski_; he
had a nephew, _Wah-shah-ams_.
_Han-te-uc_—Point at mouth of Pudding River.
_Champo-ek_—Champoeg, meaning the place of a certain edible
root. “Ch” pronounced hard, as in “chant.”
_Che-sque-a_—Ray’s Landing.
_Cham-ho-kuc_—A point near the mouth of Chehalem Creek; Chehalem
Village, in Chehalem Valley. A Chehalem chief was _Wow-na-pa_.
_Chemayway_—_Chemayway_ was also a name given to Wapato Lake.
_Cham-hal-lach_—A village on French Prairie.
It will be noticed that the names above the Willamette Falls frequently
begin with “Che” or “Cham,” as the coast names often begin with “Ne.”
The name for Clackamas was _Ne-ka-mas_, and for Molalla, _Mo-lay-less_.
The name Tualatin was _Twhah-la-ti_. At Forest Grove, near the old
A. T. Smith place, was an Indian village, _Koot-pahl_. The bare hill
northwest, now called David’s Hill, was _Tahm-yahn_, and an open
spot up Gales’ Creek Valley was _Pa-ach-ti_. A Tillamook chief was
_Tae-sahlx_. The name of a chief at The Dalles was _Wah-tis-con_.
Labonte remembers several chiefs at Spokane, one of whom was _Ilmicum
Spokanee_, or the Chief of the Moon; another, _Ilmicum Takullhalth_, or
the Chief of the Day, and another, _Kah-wah-kim_, or Broken Shoulder. A
chief of the Colville tribe was _Skohomich_, a very old, white headed
man when Labonte saw him in about 1827. A tribe at the Cascades were
the _Wah-ral-lah_.
NAMES OF ANIMALS.
Coyote—Chinook, _Tallapus_; Klikitat, _Speeleyi_; Spokane,
_Sincheleepp_.
Fox—Spokane, _Whawhaoolee_.
Gray wolf—_Cheaitsin_.
Grizzly bear—Spokane, _Tsim-hi-at-sin_; Chinook, _E-shai-um_.
Black bear—Spokane, _N’salmbe_; Chinook. _Itch-hoot_.
Deer—Spokane, _Ah-wa-ia_; Doe, _Poo-may-ia_, or _Poom-a-wa-ia_.
(?) Calapooia, “A big buck,” _Awaia umpaia_.
Black bear—Clackamas, _Skint-wha_.
Beaver—_Wa-ca-no_.
Deer—Chinook, _Mowitch_; Calapooia, _A-mo-quee_.
Elk—Calapooia, _An-ti-kah_.
Elk—Clatsop, _Moo-luk_.
Duck—Clatsop, _Que’ka-que’kh_ (_onomatopœia_).
Geese—Clatsop, _Kah-lak-ka-lah-ma_ (_ono._).
Yellow legged goose—_Hi-hi_.
Columbia Sucker—_Kaht-a-quay_.
Smelt—Clatsop, _O-tla-hum_.
Hake—Clatsop, _Sca-nah_.
Silverside salmon—_O-o-wun_.
Blue back salmon—Clatsop, _Oo-chooi-hay_.
Large black salmon of August run—Clatsop, _Ec-ul-ba_.
Steelhead—Clatsop, _Qua-ne-ah_.
Dog salmon—Clatsop, _O-le-ahch_.
Cinook salmon (Royal Chinook)—Clatsop, _E-quin-na_, from which
“_Quinnat_,” the name of the Pacific Coast salmon species has
been taken.
Trout—_O-tole-whee_.
Whale—Clatsop, _E-co-lay_.
Horse—Clatsop, _E-cu-i-ton_.
Cow—Clatsop, _Moos-moos_ (_ono._).
Sheep—_Ne-mooi-too_.
Wildcat—Clatsop, _E-cup-poo_.
[Mr. Smith conjectures that the name of wildcat was
given from the alarm call of the squirrel, which was
hunted by the wildcats, and whose cry indicated the
presence of these animals.]
Beaver—Clatsop, _E-nah_.
Seal—Clatsop, _Ool-hi-you_.
Sea lion—Clatsop, _Ee-kee-pee-tlea_.
Sea otter—Clatsop, _E-lah-kee_.
Coon—Clatsop, _Twa-las-key_.
EDIBLE ROOTS, ETC.
Wapato—Clatsop, _Kah-nat-sin_.
Camas—Calapooia, _Ah-mees_.
Loaf of Camas—_Um-punga_.
Foxtail tuber—Clatsop, _Che-hup_; Calapooia, same.
[The _che-hup_ was quite an article of commerce, being
prepared by the Calapooias and traded with the coast
tribes. It was black, and sweet tasting.]
Thistle root—Clatsop, _Sh-nat-a-whee_.
Blue lupine root—Clatsop, _Cul-whay-ma_.
[This was a root as large as one’s finger, a foot long,
and roasted, tasted like sweet potato.]
Wild tulip, or brown lily—Clatsop, _Eck-ut-le-pat-le_.
Cranberry—Clatsop. _Solh-meh_.
Strawberry—Clatsop, _Ah-moo-tee_.
Service berry—Clatsop, _Tip-to-ich_.
Blue huckleberry—Same as service berry.
Buffalo berry—Clatsop, _Smee-ugh-tul_.
Sallal—Clatsop, _Sal-lal_.
Hazel nuts—Calapoolia, _To-que-la_.
Wasps’ nest—Calapooia, _An-te-alth_.
[The nest of the “yellow jackets” was dug out of the
ground, the insects being first well smoked so as not to
sting; and the combs, with the honey and larvæ, were
considered a great delicacy. The expression (Calapooia)
“_msoah quasinafoe antealth_,” means “yellow jacket’s
nests are good eating.”]
Tar weed seed—Calapooia, _Sah-wahh_.
The tar weed seeds were small and dark, ripening late. One of the
objects of burning the prairie over in the fall was to ripen and
partially cook these seeds, which, after the fire had passed, were left
dry and easily gathered. They were ground like camas root in a mortar
and then resembled pepper in appearance, but were sweet tasting.
CHINOOK AND SPOKANE NUMERALS.
One—Chinook, _ikt_; Spokane, _nekoo_.
Two—Chinook, _mox_; Spokane, _es-sel_.
Three—Chinook, _clone_; Spokane, _tsye-sees_.
Four—Chinook, _lack-et_; Spokane, _moos_.
Five—Chinook, _quin-am_ or _quun-un_; Spokane, _chyilks_.
Six—Chinook, _tahum_; Spokane, _e-tecken_.
Seven—Chinook, _sinomox_; Spokane, _sees-pul_.
Eight—Chinook, _sto-ken_; Spokane, _ha-en-um_.
Nine—Chinook, _quoist_; Spokane, _h’noot_.
Ten—Chinook, _tat-ta-lum_; Spokane, _oo-pen_.
Twenty—Chinook, _tattalum-tattalum_; Spokane, _es-sel oo-pen_.
One hundred—Spokane, _en-kay-kin_.
HOUSEHOLD ARTICLES, IMPLEMENTS, ETC.
Blankets—Calapooia, _Pas-sis-si_.
Kettle—Calapooia, _Moos-moos_.
Slaves—Calapooia, _El-ai-tai_.
_Haiqua_ shells, used for money, a small turritella, found on
the northern coast.
Small _haiqua_—Calapooia, _Cope-cope_.
Tobacco—Calapooia, _E-kai-noss_.
Knives—Calapooia, _Eoptstsh_.
Powder—Calapooia, _Poo-lal-lie_.
Buffalo robe—Clatsop, _Too-i-hee_.
Wagon—Clatsop, _Chick-chick_ (_ono._).
High-bow Chinook canoe—Clatsop, _Esquai-ah_.
Big tub Chinook canoe—Clatsop, _Ska-moolsk_.
Small duck canoe—_Kah-see-tic_(_h_).
Clackamas canoe—Clackamas, _Tse-quah-min_.
Even from the above meager list a number of interesting inquiries might
be begun, but my object at present is only to make a small contribution
along what I believe will prove a profitable line of investigation,
hoping that others will add theirs. In this way something will be
accomplished toward reconstructing the simple life of our natives, doing
them a justice, and discovering, I am sure, what will be a delight and
benefit both to the present and to the coming generations of our own
people.
H. S. LYMAN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOCUMENTS.
All of the following newspaper articles were taken from a single year of
the New York _Tribune_. They serve well to indicate the interest with
which Oregon Territory was regarded throughout the country in 1842:
[From the _Tribune_ (New York), January 18, 1842.]
FROM OREGON.
EXTRACT OF A LETTER DATED WILHAMET, FEBRUARY 19, 1842.
I will now tell you something of the people of this country. There
are about seventy-five to eighty French Canadians settled in this
country, principally discharged from the service of the Hudson Bay
Company; there are also about fifty Americans settled in and about
this country, making, perhaps, one hundred and twenty-five to one
hundred and thirty male inhabitants, who are married to Indian
women. They raise from their farms, on an average, from three to
five hundred, and some from ten to twelve hundred bushels of wheat,
besides great quantities of pease, potatoes, oats, barley, corn,
etc. The Hudson Bay Company have in their employ at Fort Vancouver
about one hundred and twenty-five persons, and many in several
other forts both sides of the Rocky Mountains.
These people, as I said before, are married to Indian women, and
live very much the same, in all respects, as our farmers at
home, with the exception of not being obliged to labor half as
much. They generally have from fifty to one hundred head of
horses, half as many cows, and about the same number of hogs;
these all take care of themselves. The people here cut no hay
and make no pastures; they do not give their hogs any feed,
excepting about a month before they kill them. There is one
church here, and the people have contracted for a brick church
and other buildings necessary, such as a school house for the
French and one for the Americans. The French have one priest
here and one at Fort Vancouver.
The Americans generally attend at the mission, and, as far as I
can see, the people here are as well behaved and moral as in our
town. We have now a committee at work drafting a constitution and
code of laws; have in nomination a governor, an attorney-general,
three justices of the peace, etc.; overseers of the poor, road
commissioners, etc. We have already chosen a supreme judge with
probate powers, a clerk of the court and recorder, a high sheriff,
and three constables; so that you see we are in a fair way of
starting a rival republic on this side of the mountains, especially
as we are constantly receiving recruits— those people whose time
has expired with the Hudson Bay Company, and from mountain hunters
coming down to settle.—_National Intelligencer_.
[From the _Tribune_ (New York), Friday morning, March 24, 1842.]
Oregon is now the theme of general interest at the west. Large
meetings to discuss the policy of taking formal possession of
and colonizing it have been held at Columbus, Ohio, and several
other places. Many are preparing to emigrate. A band of hardy
settlers will rendezvous at Fort Leavenworth, and set out thence
for Oregon early in May, under the command of Major Fitzpatrick.
[From the _Tribune_ (New York), April 26, 1842.]
FROM OAHU.
The ship William Gray brings to Salem, Massachusetts, date from
Honolulu, November 27. * * * Late intelligence from Oregon
confirms previous accounts with regard to missionary operations.
From the fewness of the Indians and their migratory habits it is
feared that little good can be effected among them. Many of the
missionaries have become farmers and others are preparing to
leave.
[From the _Tribune_ (New York), March 13, 1842.]
OREGON.
The following letter is from an intelligent sea captain just
returned from the Pacific Ocean. It gives information of the
progress of the British appropriation of the trade and all the
accessible regions of the Northern Pacific, which should be
impressed upon the American public.—_Globe_.
BOSTON, May 1, 1842.
SIR: Thinking it may be interesting or important to know some of
the late operations and present plans of the Hudson’s Bay
Company in the North Pacific Ocean, I beg leave to present to
your notice some facts in relation to the same, and which have
come to my knowledge from personal observation, or from sources
entitled to the fullest credit.
All that extensive line of coast comprehending the Russian
possessions on the Northwest Coast of America, from Mount Saint
Elias south to the latitude 54° 40′ north (the last being the
boundary line between the Russian and American territories),
together with the sole and exclusive right or privilege of
frequenting all ports, bays, sounds, rivers, etc., within said
territory, and establishing forts and trading with the Indians,
has been leased or granted by the Russian-American Fur Company
to the British Hudson’s Bay Company, for the term of ten years
from January, 1842; and for which the latter are to pay,
_annually_, four thousand seal skins, or the value thereof in
money, at the rate of thirty-two shillings each, say £6,400
sterling, or $30,720.
In the above-named lease the Russians have, however, reserved to
themselves the Island of Sitka, or New Archangel; in which
place, you probably are aware, the Russians have a large
settlement—the depot and headquarters of their fur trade with
the Fox Islands, Aleutian Islands, and the continental shore
westward of Mount Saint Elias. All the trading establishments of
the Russians lately at Tumgass, Stickene, and other places
within said territory, leased to the Hudson’s Bay Company, have
of consequence been broken up. Thus the Hudson’s Bay Company not
content with monopolizing the heretofore profitable trade of the
Americans, of supplying the Russian settlements on the Northwest
Coast, have now cut them off also from all trade with the most
valuable fur regions in the world.
Whether the arrangements made between the Russians and English,
above alluded to, are conformable to the treaties existing
between the United States on the one part, and those nations
respectively on the other, I leave to your better knowledge to
determine.
With the doings of the Hudson’s Bay Company at Puget Sound and
the Columbia River you are doubtless fully informed; those,
however, lately commenced by them in California will admit of my
saying a few words.
At San Francisco they purchased a large house as a trading
establishment and depot for merchandise; and they intend this
year to have a place of the same kind at each of the principal
ports in Upper California. Two vessels are building in London,
intended for the same trade—that is, for the coasting trade; and
after completing their cargoes, to carry them to England. These
things, with others, give every indication that it is the
purpose of the Hudson’s Bay Company to monopolize the whole hide
and tallow trade of California, a trade which now employs more
than half a million of American capital. At the Sandwich Islands
the company have a large trading establishment, and have
commenced engaging the commerce of the country, with evident
designs to monopolize it, if possible, and to drive off the
Americans, who have heretofore been its chief creators and
conductors.
I have been informed, by one of the agents of the Hudson’s Bay
Company, that the agricultural and commercial operations of the
English at Puget Sound, Columbia River, California, and Sandwich
Islands, are carried on, not actually by the Hudson’s Bay
Company, but by what may be termed a branch of it—by gentlemen
who are the chief members and stockholders of said company, and
who have associated themselves under the firm Pelly, Simpson &
Co., in London, and with a capital of more than $15,000,000!
Seeing these companies, then, marching with iron footsteps to
the possession of the most valuable portion of country in the
Northern Pacific, and considering, too, the immense amount of
their capital, the number, enterprise, and energy of their
agents, and the policy pursued by them, great reason is there to
fear that American commerce in that part of the world must soon
lower its flag. But, sir, it is to be hoped that our government
will soon do something to break up the British settlements in
the Oregon Territory, and thereby destroy the source from which
now emanates the dire evils to American interests in the western
world. In the endeavor to bring about that desirable object, you
have done much; and every friend to his country, every person
interested in the commerce of the Pacific, must feel grateful
for the valuable services rendered them by you.
With great respect, your obedient servant,
HENRY A. PRICE.
HON. LEWIS F. LINN,
Senator of the United States, Washington.
[From the _Tribune_ (New York), July 4, 1842.]
SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION.
The Missouri _Reporter_ of the fourteenth instant contains a
notice of the expedition of Lieutenant Fremont, of the United
States Topographical Engineers, to the base of the Rocky
Mountains, in the latitude of the Platte and Kanzas rivers, with
a view to ascertain positions and localities, to explore the
face of the country, and to make the government fully acquainted
with that remote and important point of our extended territory
now becoming of so much greater interest from the extension of
our trade to the northern parts of Mexico and California, and
the settlement growing up in the valley of the Columbia River.
The line of communication now followed by immigrants, traders
and travelers to the Columbia and California, is upon this
route, and through the famous South Pass—a depression in the
Rocky Mountains at the head of the River Platte, which makes a
gate in that elevated ridge, passable in a state of nature, for
loaded wagons, of which many have passed through. This
examination of the country on this side of the Rocky Mountains
comes at a very auspicious moment to complete our researches in
that direction, and to give more value to the surveys and
examinations of the Columbia River, its estuary, and the
surrounding country, made by Lieutenant Wilkes in his recent
voyage, and of which a full report has been made to the
government. These two examinations will give us an authentic and
interesting view of the important country belonging to the
United States on each side of the Rocky Mountains; and taken in
connection with the great scientific survey of Mr. Nicollet,
commencing at the mouth of the Missouri River, and extending
north to the head of the Mississippi, and to latitude 49°, and
covering all the country in the forks of these two rivers, over
an extent of ten degrees of latitude, will shed immense light
upon the geography and natural history of the vast region west
of the Mississippi River.—_Globe_.
The following is the article from the Missouri _Reporter_:
Lieutenant Fremont, of the corps of the topographical engineers,
left here under orders from the war department, about ten days
ago, with a party of twenty men on a tour to the Rocky
Mountains. The object of the expedition is an examination of the
country between the mouth of the Kanzas and the headwaters of
the great River Platte, including the navigable parts of both
these rivers, and what is called the Southern Pass in the Rocky
Mountains, and intermediate country, with the view to the
establishment of a line of military posts from the frontiers of
Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River. This expedition is
connected with the proposition now before congress to occupy the
territory about the Columbia River as proposed by Dr. Linn’s
bill.
The great River Platte is the most direct line of communication
between this country and the mouth of the Columbia, and that
route is known to be practicable and easy. It therefore becomes
important to ascertain the general character of that river and
the adjacent country, and the facilities it will be likely to
afford in prosecuting contemplated settlements in Oregon. This
Southern Pass, or depression in the Rocky Mountains, is near the
source of the extreme branch of the River Platte, and affords an
easy passage for wagons and other wheel carriages, which have
frequently passed over the mountains on that route without
difficulty or delay; and it is important that the latitude of
this point should be ascertained, as it is thought that it will
not vary much from the line established between the United
States and Mexico by treaty with Spain, 1819. If this pass
should fall south of that line (the forty-second degree of north
latitude) it may become necessary to examine the country north
of it, the line of the Yellowstone and south branch of the
Columbia would, it is thought, afford the next best route.
Lieutenant Fremont, though young, has had much experience in
surveys of this kind, having made the topographical survey of
the Des Moines River, and having assisted the scientific Mr.
Nicollet in his great survey of the Upper Mississippi. He is
well supplied with instruments for making astronomical
observations; for fixing the longitude and latitude of important
points; and a daguerrotype apparatus for taking views of
important points and scenes along the route; and, if not
obstructed in his operations by large bands of wild, wandering
Indians, which sometimes trouble small parties passing through
that region, may be expected to impart much valuable information
to the government and to the country.
Since the attention of the country has been directed to the
settlement of the Oregon Territory by our able senator (Doctor
Linn), and by the reports of those who have visited that region
in person, the importance of providing ample security for
settlers there, and of opening a safe and easy communication
from the western boundary of Missouri to the Columbia River has
been universally admitted.
The day is not far distant when, if the general government shall
do its duty in the matter, Oregon will be inhabited by a hardy,
industrious, and intelligent population, and the enterprise of
our citizens find a new channel of trade with the islands of the
Pacific, the western coast of this whole continent, and perhaps
with Eastern Asia. Notwithstanding the many obstacles at present
in the way of the settlement of this territory, emigrants are
rapidly pouring into it, and only demand of government that
protection which is due to all our citizens, wherever they may
choose to reside. While negotiations are pending at Washington
to adjust all existing difficulties between this country and
Great Britain, our right to this territory should not be
forgotten. At present, it may seem a small matter to the
negotiations; but they should remember that every year’s delay
will only render the final adjustment of the disputed
northwestern boundary more difficult.
We are pleased to learn that the proper authorities at
Washington evince a disposition to do something toward
encouraging the early occupation of Oregon by permanent American
settlers. It is known that many of the islands in the Pacific
have already been settled by Americans, and trading houses
established, by which a large and profitable business is carried
on with the Indian tribes on the northwestern coast of America,
and with the East Indies and China. There is nothing to prevent
trading establishments in Oregon from ultimately securing a
large share of this trade, and adding much to the wealth and
prosperity of the whole union.
But, regardless of these ultimate advantages, the prospect of
immediate success is so great that many of our hardy pioneers
are already turning their attention to the settlement of Oregon,
and many years will not elapse before that territory contains a
large population. Doctor Linn has done much to urge a speedy
occupation of it by permanent American residents. If Lieutenant
Fremont shall be successful in his contemplated exploration of
the route, and if the government shall furnish proper protection
to those who shall seek a home in that distant region, the
English may not only be completely dislodged from the foothold
they have already acquired there, but prevented from making
further inroads upon our western territory, and long
monopolizing the greater part of the trade at present carried on
with the Indian tribes at the Northwest and West.
[From the _Tribune_ (New York), July 15, 1842.]
THE EXPLORING EXPEDITION.
The Washington correspondent of the _Journal of Commerce_ writes
as follows of the results of the exploring expedition:
The universal opinion here on the subject of the conduct and
results of the exploring expedition is highly favorable to the
officers who had charge of it. It has certainly given to
Lieutenant Wilkes a reputation as an accomplished seaman and an
energetic and scientific officer.
He delivered before the national institute a course of lectures,
at the request of that body, on the subject of the expedition,
which gave satisfaction and instruction to a numerous and
enlightened auditory—among whom were Mr. J. Q. Adams, Mr.
Poinsett, Mr. Woodbury, the members of the cabinet, and many
scientific gentlemen from every portion of the union.
At the close of his last lecture the honorable Secretary of the
Navy (Mr. Upshur) rose and addressed the assembly in the warmest
terms of commendation of the successful labors and efforts of
Captain Wilkes, and the officers and scientific corps under his
command. He adverted to one fact which of itself spoke strongly
of the skill with which the expedition had been conducted—that
it had visited the remotest quarters of the globe, traversed the
most dangerous seas, surveyed the most impenetrable coasts, and
encountered the vicissitudes of every climate with so little
difficulty or loss.
The secretary also remarked on the immense treasures in natural
science which the officers of the expedition had collected and
transmitted to the government in such admirable order, and which
now formed the basis of the museum of the national institute.
He commented, also, on Captain Wilkes’ report upon the Oregon
Territory, and declared that this report was alone an ample
compensation to the country for the whole cost of the
expedition. He expressed the opinion, in fine, that the results
of the expedition were highly valuable and honorable, not to
this country alone, but to the cause of civilization in the
world.
[From the _Tribune_ (New York), August 10, 1842.]
_Correspondence from Washington._
Points of the treaty. * * * The boundary line agreed upon runs
to the Rocky Mountains, and leaves unsettled the question of the
Oregon Territory. There is nothing lost by this, for our
emigrants are daily settling this question. We grow stronger
there by time, and become _nearer_, too.
In the same paper of the same date as the above:
THE OREGON FUR TRADE.
This valuable traffic, which is at once the instrument of
exploration and the nursery of seamen, was by the convention of
1818 suffered to be pursued promiscuously by British and
Americans, and in consequence of that suicidal provision is fast
being diverted from the latter to the former. Our exports of
furs to Canton amounted in 1821, to $480,000; in 1832, to about
$200,000, and in 1839, to $56,000, showing a gradual decrease
between the years 1821 and 1839 of more than seven-eighths, in
the amount and value of this trade. A better practical
commentary is not needed upon the effect of our legislation, and
while Americans are thus annually withdrawing from this trade,
Great Britain is extending her facilities for commanding it
every day. Her hunters and trappers are scattered over the whole
extent of the territory; nor are they content with the
legitimate profits of the business. While within the British
Territory the strictest provisions are made to prevent the
destruction of game unnecessarily, no such precautions are
enforced here, but on the contrary the Indians and others are
encouraged to hunt at all seasons of the year without regard to
the preservation of game. The result of this will be the
extermination of the beaver and other animals killed for their
fur within a few years unless the United States interferes.
[From the _Tribune_ (New York), December 14, 1842.]
THE NORTHWEST COAST.
Some apprehension exists that a settled design is entertained by Great
Britain of disputing our claim to the territory beyond the Rocky
Mountains and the whole Pacific Coast in that quarter. A letter to the
editor of the _Globe_ from an officer of the United States ship Dale,
belonging to the Pacific Squadron, dated “Bay of Panama, September 23,
1842,” contains the following paragraph:
We sailed from Callao seventh instant in company with the frigate
United States (Commodore Jones’ flagship), and sloop-of-war Cyane,
but we separated from them and bore up for this port on the seventh
day out. Just previously to our departure two British ships-of-war
(the razee Dublin, and sloop-of-war Champion) sailed thence on
_secret service_! Of course this mysterious movement of Admiral
Thomas elicited a thousand conjectures as to his destination,
the most probable of which seemed to be that he was bound for
the Northwest Coast of Mexico, where, it is surmised, a _British
station_ is to be located in accordance with a secret convention
between the Mexican and English governments! And it is among the
_on dits_ in the squadron that the frigate, the Cyane, and the
Dale, are to rendezvous as soon as practicable at Monterey to keep
an eye upon John Bull’s movements in that quarter.
The following document is a letter by William Plumer, then United States
Senator from New Hampshire. The original is in the possession of Dr. Jay
Tuttle, of Astoria. Bradbury Cilley, Esqr., to whom the letter is
addressed, was an ancestor of Doctor Tuttle. The copy was secured by
George H. Himes, Assistant Secretary of the Oregon Historical Society.
WASHINGTON, Feby 25, 1806.
MY DEAR FRIEND: A few days since I received your kind letter of
the 27th January. It had a long passage. Your letters need no
apology. They always afford me pleasure, and I regret that I so
seldom receive them.
The papers of the day inform you that we are doing little,
except meeting, talking, and adjourning. Indeed we have little
business to do that is of importance. The great, astonishing
changes that so rapidly succeed one another in Europe admonishes
us to deliberate much and act little in relation to our
connection with them. We ought, in my opinion, to reserve
ourselves for events.
I do not believe there is any fear of an invasion from any
nation. I am, therefore, opposed to expending millions in
fortifying our seaports. I consider the money to be thus
expended worse than lost. Those works, if erected, will compel
us to an annual expenditure, to a considerable amount, to
support them. The revenues of the United States, for years,
might be expended in erecting fortifications. This kind of a
defense is in its nature unavailing. Witness the great but
useless fortifications at Copenhagen in 1801; witness a single
British frigate in 1776, with the tide and a gentle breeze,
passing unhurt down the Hudson, by all our forts at New York.
If, instead of raising money to fortify against enemies that are
distant as the moon, a reasonable sum was annually and prudently
applied to building a permanent navy, we should then exert our
energies to a useful purpose. We should then find increasing
commerce would not in every sea depend, for protection, on the
capricious whims of nations whose interests it is to capture and
condemn it. But I presume we shall do nothing this session that
will be permanent. In a popular government there are too many
whose constant inquiries are directed rather to please, than
serve, the people.
The senate to gratify France has interdicted the trade to
Saint Domingo, and to restrain the President from warring
against Great Britain, they have resolved that he must resort
to negotiation. The fact is, the President knew Jay’s rendered
a former administration unpopular, and to remove the
responsibility from the President to the Senate, his friends
induced them in their legislative capacity to assume and
exercise their executive powers and request him to negotiate,—
the very measure he had adopted. I was apprised of the fact,
opposed and voted against it, much against the will of my
friends. I am unwilling to remove the responsibility which the
constitution has imposed on him—’tis dangerous.
Yesterday I dined with the President. I felt in high glee, and
enjoyed myself; but I thought the President discovered an
unusual weight of care. The times, indeed, require all his
vigilance.
Mr. Burr is here—but is not yet Minister to Great Britain—nor I
hope never will [be].
Our weather is remarkably warm. The grass is verdant, and the
birds of spring are come. I enjoy good health and spirits—but
wish to return to my friends and family—though I fear I shall
not for many weeks.
Make my compliments agreeable to Mrs. Cilley, and be assured
that I am with much esteem yours sincerely,
WILLIAM PLUMER.
BRADBURY CILLEY, ESQR.,
Nottingham, N. H.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PUBLICATIONS
OF THE
OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
--------------
SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF OREGON
VOLUME I
NUMBER 1.—JOURNAL OF MEDOREM CRAWFORD—AN ACCOUNT OF HIS TRIP ACROSS THE
PLAINS IN 1842. PRICE, 25 CENTS.
NUMBER 2.—THE INDIAN COUNCIL AT WALLA WALLA, MAY AND JUNE, 1855, BY COL.
LAWRENCE KIP—A JOURNAL. PRICE, 25 CENTS.
NUMBERS 3 TO 6 INCLUSIVE.—THE CORRESPONDENCE AND JOURNALS OF CAPTAIN
NATHANIEL J. WYETH, 1831-6.—A RECORD OF TWO EXPEDITIONS, FOR THE
OCCUPATION OF THE OREGON COUNTRY, WITH MAPS, INTRODUCTION AND INDEX.
PRICE, $1.10.
THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY FOR 1898-9, INCLUDING
PAPER BY SILAS B. SMITH, ON “BEGINNINGS IN OREGON,” 97 PAGES. PRICE, 25
CENTS.
--------------
QUARTERLY OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
CONTENTS NO. 1, VOL. I, MARCH, 1900.
THE GENESIS OF POLITICAL AUTHORITY AND OF A COMMONWEALTH 1
GOVERNMENT IN OREGON—_James R. Robertson_
THE PROCESS OF SELECTION IN OREGON PIONEER SETTLEMENT— 60
_Thomas Condon_
NATHANIEL J. WYETH’S OREGON EXPEDITIONS—“In Historic 66
Mansions and Highways Around Boston”
REMINISCENCES OF F. X. MATTHIEU—_H. S. Lyman_ 73
DOCUMENTS—Correspondence of John McLoughlin, Nathaniel J. 105
Wyeth, S. R. Thurston, and R. C. Winthrop, pertaining to
claim of Dr. McLoughlin at the Falls of the Willamette—the
site of Oregon City
NOTES AND NEWS 70
--------------
CONTENTS NO. 2, VOL. I, JUNE, 1900.
THE OREGON QUESTION—_Joseph R. Wilson_ 111
OUR PUBLIC LAND SYSTEM AND ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION IN THE 132
UNITED STATES—_Frances F. Victor_
GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN EARLY OREGON—_Mrs. William Markland_ 158
_Molson_
NOT MARJORAM.—THE SPANISH WORD “OREGANO” NOT THE ORIGINAL OF 165
OREGON—_H. W. Scott_
REMINISCENCES OF LOUIS LABONTE—_H. S. Lyman_ 169
DR. ELLIOTT COURS—_Frances F. Victor_ 189
DOCUMENT.—A Narrative of Events in Early Oregon ascribed to 193
Dr. John McLoughlin
REVIEWS OF BOOKS.—“McLoughlin and Old Oregon”—_Eva Emery_ 207
_Dye_
“Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest”—_H. K. Hines,_ 210
_D. D._
NOTE.—A Correction 212
PRICE: THIRTY-FIVE CENTS PER NUMBER, ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR
------------------------------------------------------------------------
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON.
--------------
_THE GRADUATE SCHOOL confers the degrees of Master of Arts, (and in
prospect, of Doctor of Philosophy,) Civil and Sanitary Engineer (C. E.),
Electrical Engineer (E. E.), Chemical Engineer (Ch. E.), and Mining
Engineer (Min. E.)_
--------------
_THE COLLEGE OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS confers the degree of
Bachelor of Arts on graduates from the following groups: (1) General
Classical; (2) General Literary; (3) General Scientific; (4) Civic-
Historical. It offers Collegiate Courses not leading to a degree as
follows: (1) Preparatory to Law or Journalism; (2) Course for Teachers._
--------------
_THE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING.—_
_A.—The School of Applied Science confers the degree of Bachelor of
Science on graduates from the following groups; (1) General Science;
(2) Chemistry; (3) Physics; (4) Biology; (5) Geology and Mineralogy.
It offers a Course Preparatory to Medicine._
_B.—The School of Engineering: (1) Civil and Sanitary; (2) Electrical;
(3) Chemical._
--------------
_THE SCHOOL OF MINES AND MINING.
THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE at Portland.
THE SCHOOL OF LAW at Portland.
THE SCHOOL OF MUSIC.
THE UNIVERSITY ACADEMY._
_Address_
THE PRESIDENT,
EUGENE, OREGON.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- 1. Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
- 2. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised if a
predominant form was found within the text, but all other spelling
and punctuation remains unchanged.
- 3. Underscores in the text, like _this_, are used to represent text
that was italicised in the original book.
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