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Title: The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its
Commerce

Author: William Denison Lyman

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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
COLUMBIA RIVER: ITS HISTORY, ITS MYTHS, ITS SCENERY, ITS
COMMERCE ***

The
Columbia River

Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery
Its Commerce

By

William Denison Lyman
Professor of History in Whitman College,
Walla Walla, Washington

With 80 Illustrations and a Map

G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1909

Copyright, 1909
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York

to my parents

Horace Lyman and Mary Denison Lyman
pioneers of 1849, who bore their part in laying the
foundations of civilization upon the banks of

the columbia, this volume is dedicated
by the author

I see the living tide roll on,
It crowns with rosy towers
The icy capes of Labrador,
The Spaniard’s land of flowers;
It streams beyond the splintered ridge
That parts the northern showers.
From eastern rock to sunset wave,
The Continent is ours.
Holmes.

PREFACE

A S one of the American Waterways series, this volume is designed to be
a history and description of the Columbia River. The author has sought
to convey to his reader a lively sense of the romance, the heroism, and the
adventure which belong to this great stream and the parts of the North-west
about it, and he has aimed to breathe into his narrative something of the
spirit and sentiment—a spirit and sentiment more easily recognised than
analysed—which we call “Western.” With this end in view, his treatment of
the subject has been general rather than detailed, and popular rather than
recondite. While he has spared no pains to secure historical accuracy, he has
not made it a leading aim to settle controverted points, or to present the
minutiæ of historical research and criticism. In short, the book is rather for
the general reader than for the specialist. The author hopes so to impress his
readers with the majesty of the Columbia as to fill their minds with a
longing to see it face to face.
Frequent reference in the body of the book to authorities renders it
unnecessary to name them here. Suffice it to say that the author has
consulted the standard works of history and description dealing with
Oregon—the old Oregon—and its River, and from the voluminous matter
there gathered has selected the facts that best combine to make a connected
and picturesque narrative. He has treated the subject topically, but there is a
general progression throughout, and the endeavour has been to find a
natural jointure of chapter to chapter and era to era.
While the book has necessarily been based largely on other books, it may be
said that the author has derived his chief inspiration from his own
observations along the shores of the River and amid the mountains of
Oregon and Washington, where his life has mainly been spent, and from
familiar conversations in the cabins of pioneers, or at camp-fires of hunters,
or around Indian tepees, or in the pilot-houses of steamboats. In such ways
and places one can best catch the spirit of the River and its history.

The author gladly takes this opportunity of making his grateful
acknowledgments to Prof. F. G. Young, of Oregon University, for his
kindness in reading the manuscript and in making suggestions which his
full knowledge and ripe judgment render especially valuable. He wishes
also to express his warmest thanks to Mr. Harvey W. Scott, editor of the
Oregonian, for invaluable counsel. Similar gratitude is due to Prof. Henry
Landes of Washington University for important assistance in regard to some
of the scientific features of the first chapter.
W. D. L.
Whitman College,
Walla Walla, Wash.,
1909.

CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I.—THE HISTORY
CHAPTER I
The Land where the River Flows 3

CHAPTER II
Tales of the First White Men along the Coast 33

CHAPTER III
How All Nations Sought the River from the Sea and how they
43
Found it

CHAPTER IV
First Steps across the Wilderness in Search of the River 69

CHAPTER V
The Fur-Traders, their Bateaux, and their Stations 98

CHAPTER VI
The Coming of the Missionaries to the Tribes of the River 136

CHAPTER VII
The Era of the Pioneers, their Ox-Teams, and their Flatboats 159

CHAPTER VIII
Conflict of Nations for Possession of the River 179

CHAPTER IX
The Times of Tomahawk and Firebrand 202

CHAPTER X
When the “Fire-Canoes” Took the Place of the Log-Canoes 234

CHAPTER XI
Era of the Miner, the Cowboy, the Farmer, the Boomer, and the
249
Railroad-Builder

CHAPTER XII
The Present Age of Expansion and World Commerce 265

PART II.—A JOURNEY DOWN THE RIVER
CHAPTER I
In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies 273

CHAPTER II
The Lakes from the Arrow Lakes to Chelan 290

CHAPTER III
In the Land of Wheat-Field, Orchard, and Garden 313

CHAPTER IV
Where River and Mountain Meet, and the Traces of the Bridge of
332
the Gods

CHAPTER V
A Side Trip to some of the Great Snow-Peaks 352

CHAPTER VI
The Lower River and the Ocean Tides 374

Index 399

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

St. Peter’s Dome, Columbia River, 2300 Feet High Frontispiece
Copyright, Kiser Photograph Co., 1902.

Mount Adams from the South 74
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

Capt. Robert Gray 76

The “Columbia Rediviva” 76

Mount Hood from Lost Lake 82
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Eliot Glacier, Mt. Hood 84
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Astoria in 1845 116
From an old print.

Astoria, Looking up and across the Columbia River 116
Photo. by Woodfield.

One of the Lagoons of the Upper Columbia River, near
120
Golden B. C.
Photo. by C. F. Yates, Golden.

Saddle Mountain, or Swallalochort near Astoria, Famous
120
in Indian Myth

Photo. by Woodfield.

Steamer “Beaver,” the First Steamer on the Pacific, 1836 124

Portland, Oregon, in 1851 124
From an old print.

Grave of Marcus Whitman and his Associate Martyrs at
210
Waiilatpu
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.

Cayuse Babies—1 212
Copyright by Lee Moorehouse, 1898.

Cayuse Babies—2 212
Copyright by Lee Moorehouse, 1898.

Col. B. F. Shaw, who Won the Battle of Grande Ronde in
222
1856
By courtesy of Lee Moorehouse.

Fort Sheridan on the Grande Ronde, Built by Philip
224
Sheridan in 1855
By courtesy of Lee Moorehouse.

Tullux Holliquilla, a Warm Springs Indian Chief, Famous
in the Modoc War 228
as a Scout for U. S. Troops

By courtesy of Lee Moorehouse.

Hallakallakeen (Eagle Wing) or Joseph, the Nez Percé
230
Chief
By T. W. Tolman.

Camp of Chief Joseph on the Nespilem, Wash. 232
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.

Tirzah Trask, a Umatilla Indian Girl—Taken as an Ideal
234
of Sacajawea

Photo. by Lee Moorehouse, Pendleton.

Oregon Pioneer in his Cabin 256
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Old Portage Railroad at Cascades in 1860 258

A Log-boom down the River for San Francisco 258
Photo. by Woodfield.

Lumber Mill and Steamboat Landing at Golden, B. C. 260
Photo. by C. F. Yates.

A Typical Lumber Camp 262
Photo. by Trueman.

A Logging Railroad, near Astoria 264
Photo. by Woodfield.

Natural Bridge, Kicking Horse or Wapta River, and Mt.
276
Stephen, B. C.
Photo. by C. F. Yates.

Sunrise on Columbia River, near Washougal 276
Copyright, Kiser Photograph Co., 1902.

Lake Windermere, Upper Columbia, where David
Thompson’s Fort was Built 280
in 1810

Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

Mt. Burgess and Emerald Lake, One of the Sources of the
282
Wapta River, B. C.
Photo. by C. F. Yates.

Bonnington Falls in Kootenai River, near Nelson 284
Photo. by Allan Lean.

Bridge Creek, a Tributary of Lake Chelan, Wash. 286
Photo. by F. N. Kneeland, Northampton, Mass.

Kootenai Lake, from Proctor, B. C. 288
Photo. by Allan Lean, Nelson.

Lower Arrow Lake, B. C. 290
Photo. by Allan Lean, Nelson.

Bridal Veil Falls on Columbia River 292

Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Shoshone Falls, in Snake River, 212 Feet High 294
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho 296
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

Lake Cœur d’Alene, Idaho 296
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

The “Shadowy St. Joe,” Idaho 298
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

On the Cœur d’Alene River, Idaho 300
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

Gorge of Chelan River, the Outlet of Lake Chelan 302
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.

Head of Lake Chelan—Looking Up Stehekin Cañon 304
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

Cascade Pass at Head of Stehekin River, Wash. 306
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.

Doubtful Lake, Cascade Range, Washington, near Lake
308
Chelan
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane, Wash.

Horseshoe Basin through a Rock Gap, Stehekin Cañon 310
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

Lake Chelan 312
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

A Harvest Outfit, Dayton, Wash. 314
Sunset Magazine.

A Combined Harvester, near Walla Walla 314
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.

Inland Empire System’s Power Plant, near Spokane, 20,000
316
Horse-Power
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

Lower Spokane Falls 316
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

Cañon of the Stehekin, near Lake Chelan 318
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

Memorial Building, Whitman College, Walla Walla 320
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.

Starting the Ploughs in the Wheat Land, Walla Walla,
322
Wash.
Photo. by W. D. Chapman, Walla Walla.

On the Historic Walla Walla River 324
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.

Blalock Fruit Ranch of a Thousand Acres at Walla
326
Walla, Wash.
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.

Witch’s Head, near Old Wishram Village. The Indian
Superstition is that 328
these Eyes will Follow any Unfaithful Woman

By courtesy of Lee Moorehouse.

Cabbage Rock, Four Miles North of the Dalles 330
Photo. by Lee Moorehouse, Pendleton.

Eagle Rock, just above Shoshone Falls in Snake River 332
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

Stehekin Cañon, 5000 Feet Deep 334
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

Steamer “Dalles City,” Descending the Cascades of the
336
Columbia

Memaloose Island, Columbia River 338
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Horseshoe Basin near Lake Chelan, Wash. 340

Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.

Castle Rock, Columbia River 342
Copyright, Kiser Photograph Co., 1902.

The Lyman Glacier and Glacier Lake in North Star Park,
344
near Lake Chelan

Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

Hunters on Lake Chelan, with their Spoils 346
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

A Morning’s Catch on the Touchet, near Dayton, Wash. 346
Sunset Magazine.

Oneonta Gorge—Looking in 348
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Cape Horn, Columbia River—Looking up 350
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.

Looking up the Columbia River from the Cliff above
352
Multnomah Falls, Ore.
Copyright, 1902, by Kiser Photograph Co.

Spokane Falls and City, 1886 354
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.

Spokane Falls and City, 1908 354

Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

In the Heart of the Cascade Mountains, above Lake
360
Chelan, Wash.
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.

Birch-Tree Channel, Upper Columbia, near Golden, B. C. 362
Photo by C. F. Yates, Golden.

Typical Mountain Meadow, Stehekin Valley, Wash. 364
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.

High School, Walla Walla, Wash. 366
Photo. by W. D. Chapman, Walla Walla.

Lake Chelan 368
Photo. by F. N. Kneeland.

On the Banks of the Columbia River, near Hood River 370
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Rooster Rock, Columbia River—Looking up 372
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.

Band of Elk on W. P. Reser’s Ranch, Walla Walla, Wash. 374
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.

Oregon City in 1845 376
From an old print.

Fort Vancouver in 1845 376

Lone Rock, Columbia River, about Fifty Miles East of
378
Portland
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.

Willamette Falls, Oregon City, Ore. 380
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Among the Big Spruce Trees, near Astoria, Oregon 382
Photo. by Woodfield, Astoria.

Portland in 1908. Mt. St. Helens Sixty-Five Miles Distant 384

Portland Harbour, Oregon 386
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.

Fish River Road in Upper Columbia Region, B. C. 388
Photo. by Trueman, Victoria.

Multnomah Falls, 840 Feet High, on South Side of
Columbia River about 390
Sixty Miles above Portland
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Chinook Salmon, Weight 80 Pounds 392
Photo. by Woodfield, Astoria.

Lake Adela, near Head of Columbia River, B. C. 394
Photo. by C. F. Yates.

Bridal Veil Bluff, Columbia River, Oregon 396
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.

Band of Kootenai Indians, B. C. 398
Photo. by Allan Lean, Nelson.

Maps At End

PART I
The History

CHAPTER I

The Land where the River Flows
Contrasts—The Two Islands—Uplift—
Volcanic Action—Flood—Age of Ice—
Story of Wishpoosh and Creation of the
Tribes—Outline of the Mountain
Systems—Peculiar Interlocking of the
Columbia and the Kootenai—The
Cascade Range—The Inland Empire—
The Valleys West of the Cascade
Mountains—The Forests—The Climate
—The Native Races and Some of their
Myths—Story of the Kamiah Monster—
The Tomanowas Bridge at the Cascades
—Origin of Three Great Mountains—
The Chinook Wind—Myths of the
Unseen Life—Klickitat Story of the
Spirit Baby—Beauty of the Native
Names.

W ONDERFULLY varied though rivers are, each has a physiognomy of
its own. Each preserves its characteristics even in the midst of
constant diversity. We recognise it, as we recognise a person in different
changes of dress. The Ohio has one face, the Hudson another, and each
keeps its essential identity. The traveller would not confuse the Rhine with
the Danube, or the Nile with the Volga.
Even more distinctive than most rivers in form and feature is the Columbia,
the old Oregon that now hears far other sounds than “his own dashings,” the
River of the West, the Thegayo, the Rio de los Reyes, the Rio Estrachos, the
Rio de Aguilar, the many-named river which unites all parts of the Pacific
North-west. It is to its records of romance and heroism, of legend and
history, as well as to its alternating scenes of stormy grandeur and tranquil
majesty that the reader’s attention is now invited. Though among the latest
of American rivers to be brought under the control of civilised men, the

Columbia was among the earliest to attract the interest of the explorers of
all nations, and the struggles of international diplomacy over possession
were among the most momentous in history. The distance of the Columbia
from the centres of population and the difficulty of reaching it made its
development slow, and for this reason its pioneer stage lasted longer than
would otherwise have been the case. In this part of its history there was a
record of pathos, tragedy, and achievement not surpassed in any of the
annals of our country, while, in its later phases, the North-west has had the
sweep and energy of growth and power characteristic of genuine American
development. Finally, by reason of scenic grandeur, absorbing interest of
physical features, the majesty and mystery of its origin in the greatest of
American mountains, the swift might of its flow through some of the
wildest as well as some of the most beautiful regions of the globe, and at
the last by the peculiar grandeur of its entrance into the greatest of the
oceans, this “Achilles of Rivers” attracts alike historian, scientist, poet,
statesman, and lover of nature.

“A land of old upheaven from the abyss,” a land of deepest deeps and
highest heights, of richest verdure here, and barest desolation there, of
dense forest on one side, and wide extended prairies on the other; a land, in
brief, of contrasts, contrasts in contour, hues, productions, and history;—
such is that imperial domain watered by the Columbia River and its
affluents. To the artist, the poet, the scientist, and the sportsman, this region
presents noble and varied scenes of shore, of mountain, of river, of lake,
while to the romancer and historian it offers a wealth of native legend and
of record from the heroic ages of American history.
As a fit introduction to the picture of the land as it now appears, there may
be presented a brief record of the manner in which it was wrought into its
present form. Professor Thomas Condon of Oregon thought that the first
land to rise on the Pacific Coast was composed of two islands, one in the
region of the Siskiyou Mountains of Northern California and Southern
Oregon, and the other in the heart of what are now the Blue Mountains and
Saw-tooth Mountains of North-eastern Oregon, South-eastern Washington,

and Western Idaho. Other geologists have doubted the existence of the
second of these two islands.
Those islands, if both existed, were the nuclei of the Pacific Coast region.
The rock consisted of the earlier granite, sandstone, and limestone crust of
the earth. For long ages these two islands, washed by the warm seas of that
early age, and bearing a life now found in the tropics, were slowly rising
and widening their boundaries in all directions.
Next, or perhaps as early, to respond to the pressure of the shrinking crust
of the earth and to appear above the sea, was the vast cordon of pinnacled
peaks which compose the present Okanogan and Chelan uplift, granite and
porphyry, broken by volcanic outflow. These peaks are veined with gold,
silver, and copper.
That first age of mountain uplift was ended by the coming on of the age of
fire. The granite upheaval of the Blue and the Cascade Mountains was
blown apart and cracked asunder by volcanic eruption and seismic force. A
vast outflow of basalt and andesite swept westward from the Blue
Mountains to meet a similar outflow moving eastward from the Cascades.
Thus, throughout the Columbia Basin, the surface is mainly of volcanic
rock overlying the shattered fragments of the original earth crust. At many
points, however, the primeval granite or sandstone surface was not covered,
while at frequent intervals the breaking forth of the fiery floods transformed
those original rocks into various forms of gneiss, porphyry, and marble. But
the greatest result of the age of volcanic outflow was the elevation of the
stupendous isolated snow peaks which now constitute so striking a feature
of Columbian landscapes.
With the close of the age of fire, the mountain chains were in place, as they
now stand, but the plains and valleys were not yet fashioned. Another series
of forces must needs come to elaborate the rude outlines of the land. And so
came on the third great age, the age of flood. The upheaval of the mingled
granite and volcanic masses of the Cascade and Blue Mountains, while at
the same time the Rockies were undergoing the same process, imprisoned a
vast sea over the region now known by Westerners as the Inland Empire. In
the depths of this sea the sediment from a thousand torrents was deposited
to fashion the smooth and level valleys of the Yakima, the Walla Walla, the

Spokane, and lesser streams, while a similar process fashioned the valleys
of the Willamette and other streams between the Cascades and the Coast
Mountains westward.
But while the age of flood was shaping the great valley systems, a fourth
age—the age of ice—was working still other changes upon the plastic land.
The mountains had been reared by upheaval and volcanic outflow to a
stupendous height. Then they became glaciated. The whole Northern
Hemisphere, in fact, took on the character of the present Greenland.
Enormous glaciers descended the flanks of the mountains, gouging and
ploughing out the abysmal cañons which now awe the beholder, and
scooping out the deeps where Chelan, Cœur d’Alene, Pend Oreille,
Kaniksu, and other great lakes delight the vision of the present day.
Such were the forces that wrought the physical features of the land where
the River flows. We do not mean to convey the impression that there was a
single age of each, and that they followed each other in regular
chronological order. As a matter of fact there were several eras of each,
interlocked with each other: upheaval, fire, flood, and frost. But as the
resultant of all, the Columbia Basin assumed its present form. The great
forces which have thus fashioned this land manifested themselves on a scale
of vast energy. Evidences of upheaval, fire, flood, and glacier are exhibited
on every side, and these evidences constitute a testimony of geological
history of the most interesting nature. Long before this record of the rocks
had found a white reader, the native red man had read the open pages, and
interpreted them in the light of his ardent fancy.
The Indian conception of the flood, involving also that of the creation of the
native tribes, is one of the most fantastic native legends. This is the story of
the great beaver, Wishpoosh, of Lake Kichelos. According to this myth the
beaver Wishpoosh inhabited that lake on the summit of the Cascade
Mountains, the source of the Yakima River.
In the time of the Watetash (animal people) before the advent of men, the
king beaver, Wishpoosh, of enormous size and voracious appetite, was in
the evil habit of seizing and devouring the lesser creatures and even the
vegetation. So destructive did he become that Speelyei, the coyote god of
the mid-Columbia region, undertook to check his rapacities.

The struggle only made the monster more insatiate, and in his wrath he tore
out the banks of the lake. The gathered floods swept on down the cañon and
formed another great lake in the region now known as the Kittitas Valley.
But the struggle between Wishpoosh and Speelyei did not end, and the
former in his mad fury went on thrashing around in this greater lake. For a
long time the rocky barriers of the Umtanum restrained the flood, but at last
they gave way before the onslaughts of the wrathful beaver, and the
loosened waters swept on down and filled the great basin now occupied by
the fruit and garden ranches of the Cowiche, Natchees, and Atahnum. In
like fashion the restraining wall at the gap just below Yakima city was torn
out, and a yet greater lake was formed over all the space where we now see
the level plains of the Simcoe and Toppenish. The next lake formed in the
process covered the yet vaster region at the juncture of the Yakima, Snake
and Columbia rivers. For a long time it was dammed in by the Umatilla
highlands, but in process of time it, too, was drained by the bursting of the
rocky wall before the well-directed attacks of Wishpoosh. The yet greater
lake, the greatest of all, now formed between the Umatilla on the east and
the Cascade Mountains on the west. But even the towering wall of the
Cascades gave way in time and the accumulated floods poured on without
further hindrance to the open sea.
Thus was the series of great lakes drained, the level valleys left, and the
Great River suffered to flow in its present course. But there is a sequel to
the story of the flood. For Wishpoosh, being now in the ocean, laid about
him with such fury that he devoured the fish and whales and so threatened
all creation that Speelyei perceived that the time had come to end it all.
Transforming himself into a floating branch, he drifted to Wishpoosh and
was swallowed. Once inside the monster, the wily god resumed his proper
size and power; and with his keen-edged knife proceeded to cut the vitals of
the belligerent beaver, until at last all life ceased, and the huge carcass was
cast up by the tide on Clatsop beach, just south of the mouth of the Great
River. And now what to do with the carcass? Speelyei solved the problem
by cutting it up and from its different parts fashioning the tribes as each part
was adapted. From the head he made the Nez Percés, great in council and
oratory. From the arms came the Cayuses, powerful with the bow and war-
club. The Klickitats were the product of the legs, and they were the runners
of the land. The belly was transformed into the gluttonous Chinooks. At the

last there was left an indiscriminate mass of hair and gore. This Speelyei
hurled up the far distance to the east, and out of it sprung the Snake River
Indians.
Such is the native physiography and anthropogenesis of the land of the
Oregon.
If now one could rise on the pinions of the Chinook wind (the warm south
wind of the Columbia Basin, of which more anon), and from the southern
springs of the Owyhee and the Malheur could wing his way to the snowy
peaks in British Columbia, from whose fastnesses there issues the foaming
torrent of Canoe River, the most northerly of all the tributaries of the Great
River, he would obtain, in a noble panorama, a view of the land where the
River flows, in its present aspect, as fashioned by the elemental forces of
which we have spoken. But not to many is it given thus to be “horsed on the
sightless couriers of the air,” and we must needs use imagination in lieu of
them. Even a map will be the safest guide for most. Inspection of the map
will show that the distance to which we have referred covers twelve degrees
of latitude, while the distance from the source of the Snake River in the
Yellowstone National Park to the Pacific requires a span of fifteen degrees
of longitude. The south-eastern part of this vast area occupying Southern
Idaho is mainly an arid plain; arid, indeed, in its natural condition, but,
when touched by the vivifying waters in union with the ardent sun, it
blossoms like a garden of the Lord. Upon these vast plains where the
volcanic dust has drifted for ages, now looking so dismal in their
monotonous garb of sage-brush, the millions of the future will some time
live in peace and plenty, each under his own vine and apple-tree. On the
eastern boundary, all the way from Western Wyoming to Eastern British
Columbia, stand cordons of stupendous mountains, the western outposts of
the great Continental Divide. These constitute one spur after another, from
whose profound cañons issues river after river to swell the torrents of the
turbid and impetuous Snake on its thousand-mile journey to join the
Columbia. Among these tributary streams are the Payette, the Boisé, the
Salmon, and the Clearwater. Yet farther north, beyond the system of the
Snake, are the Bitter Root, the Missoula, the Pend Oreille, the Spokane, and
the Kootenai (we follow here the American spelling, the Canadian being
Kootenay), with almost innumerable affluents, draining the huge labyrinths
of the Bitter Root Mountains and the Silver Bow.

Thus our northward flight carries us to the international boundary in latitude
49 degrees.
Far beyond that parallel stretches chain after chain of divisions of the great
Continental Range, the Selkirks, the Gold Range, Purcell’s Range, sky-
piercing heights, snow-clad and glaciated. Up and down these interlocking
chains the Columbia and the Kootenai, with their great lakes and
unexplored tributaries, seem to be playing at hide-and-seek with each other.
These rivers form here one of the most singular geographical phenomena of
the world, for so strangely are the parallel chains of mountains tilted that
the Kootenai, rising in a small lake on the western flank of the main chain
of the Canadian Rockies and flowing south, passes within a mile of the
source of the Columbia at Columbia Lake, separated only by a nearly level
valley. Connection, in fact, is so easy that a canal once joined the two
rivers. From that point of contact the Kootenai flows far south into Idaho,
then makes a grand wheel to the north-west, forming Kootenai Lake on the
way, then wheeling again in its tortuous course to the west, it joins the
greater stream in the midst of the majestic mountain chains which stand
guard over the Arrow Lakes. And meanwhile where has the Columbia itself
been journeying? After the parting from the Kootenai it flows directly
north-west between two stupendous chains of mountains. Reaching its
highest northern point in latitude 52 degrees, where it receives the Canoe
River, which has come two hundred miles or more from the north, it turns
sharply westward, finding a passageway cleft in the mountain wall. Thence
making a grand wheel toward the south, it casts its turbid floods into the
long expanse of the Arrow Lakes, from which it emerges, clear and bright,
soon to join the Kootenai. And how far have they journeyed since they
parted? The Columbia about six hundred miles, and the Kootenai hardly
less, though having passed within a mile of each other, flowing in opposite
directions.
It will be readily seen from this description that the mountains which feed
the Columbian system of rivers on the east and north, are of singular
grandeur and interest. But now as we bear our way southward again we
discover that another mountain system, yet grander and of more curious
interest, forms the western boundary of the upper Columbia Basin. This is
the Cascade Range. Sublime, majestic, mysterious, this noble chain of
mountains, with its tiaras of ice, its girdles of waterfalls, its draperies of

forest, its jewels of lakes, must make one search long to find its parallel in
any land for all the general features of mountain charm. But over and
beyond those more usual delights of the mountains, the Cascade Range has
a unique feature, one in which it stands unrivalled among all the mountains
of the earth, with the exception possibly of the Andes. This is the feature of
the great isolated snow peaks, stationed like sentinels at intervals of from
thirty to sixty miles all the way from the British line to California. There is
nothing like this elsewhere on the North American continent. The Sierras of
California are sublime, but their great peaks are not isolated monarchs like
those of the Cascades. The high Sierras are blended together in one
mountain wall, in which no single peak dominates any wide extended
space. But in the long array of the Cascades, five hundred miles and more
from the international boundary to the California line, one glorious peak
after another uplifts the banner and sets its regal crown toward sunrise or
sunset, king of earth and air to the border where the shadow of the next
mountain monarch mingles with its own. Hence these great Cascade peaks
have an individuality which gives them a kind of living personality in the
life of any one who has lived for any length of time within sight of them.
From the north, moving south, we might gaze at these great peaks, and find
no two alike. Baker—how much finer is the native name, Kulshan, the
Great White Watcher—first on the north; Shuksan next, the place where the
storm-winds gather, in the native tongue; then Glacier Peak, with its girdle
of ice, thirteen great glaciers; Stewart next with its dizzy horn of rock set in
a field of snow; then the great king-peak of all, Rainier, better named by the
natives, Takhoma, the fountain breast of milk-white waters; and after this,
Adams, or in the Indian, Klickitat, with St. Helens or Loowit near at hand
on the west; then, across the Great River, Hood or Wiyeast, with its
pinnacled crest; next southward, Jefferson with its sharp chimney whose top
has never yet been touched by human foot; yet beyond, the marvellous
group of the Three Sisters, each with its separate personality and yet all
together combining in one superb whole; then Mt. Scott, Mt. Thielson,
Diamond Peak, Mt. Pitt, and with them we might well include the truncated
cone of Mt. Mazama, once the lordliest of the chain, but by some mighty
convulsion of nature, shorn of crown and head, and now bearing on its
summit instead the most singular body of water, Crater Lake, on all the
American continent.

Fifteen is the number of the great peaks named, but there are dozens of
lesser heights, snow-crowned and regal. The great Cascade chain is,
therefore, the noblest and most significant feature of the topography of the
land of the Columbia. Between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades lies
what is locally known as the Inland Empire, mainly a continuous prairie or
series of prairies and valleys, wheat land, orchard land, garden land, fertile,
beautiful, attractive, broken by an occasional mountain spur, as the irregular
mass of the Blue Mountains, but substantially an inhabited land, reaching
from Colville, Spokane, and the Okanogan on the north to the Klamath
valleys on the south, a region five hundred miles long by two hundred wide,
a goodly land, one difficult to excel in all the potentialities of use for human
needs.
Such are the distinguishing features of the Columbia Basin on the east side
of the Cascade Mountains.
To the west of those mountains is another vast expanse of interior valleys,
not so large indeed and not more fertile, but even more beautiful, and by
reason of earlier settlement and contiguity to the ocean, better developed.
This series of valleys is enclosed between the Cascade Mountains and the
Coast Range, and in a general way parallels the Inland Empire already
described. But this statement should be qualified by the explanation that
North-western Washington consists of the Puget Sound Basin, which is a
distinct geographical system, while South-western Oregon consists of the
Umpqua and Rogue River valleys, and these valleys though commercially
and politically a part of the Columbia system, are geographically separate,
since they debouch directly into the Pacific Ocean. There is left, therefore,
for the Columbia region proper west of the Cascade Mountains, the
Willamette Valley in Oregon, and the valleys of the Lewis, Kalama, and
Cowlitz in Washington, with several smaller valleys on each side. The
Willamette Valley is the great distinguishing feature of this part of the
Columbia Basin. A more attractive region is hard to find. Mountains snow-
clad and majestic, the great peaks of the Cascades already described, guard
it on the east, while westward the gentler slopes of the Coast Range
separate it from the sea. Between the two ranges lies the valley, two
hundred miles long by about a hundred broad, including the foot-hills, a
succession of level plains, oak-crowned hills, and fertile bottoms. Not

Greece nor Italy nor the Vale of Cashmere can surpass this earthly paradise
in all the features that compose the beautiful and grand in nature.
Geologists tell us that this Willamette region was once a counterpart of
Puget Sound, only with less depth of water, and that, as the result of
centuries of change, the old-time Willamette Sound has become the
Willamette Valley. It has now become the most thickly settled farming
region of the Columbia Basin, and, as its fitting metropolis, Portland sits at
the gateway of the Willamette and Columbia, the “Rose City,” handsomest
of all Western cities, to welcome the commerce of the world.
The valleys on the Washington side of the Columbia make up together a
region of great beauty, fertility, and productiveness, perhaps a hundred
miles square, and, though yet but partially developed, contain many
beautiful homes.
The larger part of the Columbia Valley west of the Cascade Mountains is, in
its natural state, densely timbered. Here are found “the continuous woods
where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound but his own dashings.” These
great fir, spruce, cedar, and pine forests, extending a thousand miles along
the Pacific Coast from Central California to the Straits of Fuca (and indeed
they continue, though the trees gradually diminish in size, for nearly
another thousand miles up the Alaska coast), constitute the world’s largest
timber supply. The demands upon it have been tremendous during the past
twenty years, and the stately growths of centuries have vanished largely
from all places in the near vicinity of shipping points. Yet one can still find
primeval woods where the coronals of green are borne three hundred feet
above the damp and perfumed earth, and where the pillars of the wood
sustain so continuous a canopy of foliage that the sunlight is stopped or
filters through only in pale and watery rays. Hence all manner of vines and
shrubs grow with almost tropic profusion, though with weak and straggling
stems.
Throughout the entire Pacific North-west the soil is of extraordinary
fertility. It is largely of volcanic dust as fine as flour and seems to contain
the constituents of plant life in inexhaustible abundance. Even in the arid
belts of Eastern Oregon, where to the eye of the stranger the appearance is

of a hopeless waste, those same elements of plant food exist, and with water
every manner of tree or vine or flower bursts quickly into perfect life.
The climate of the Columbia Basin is a puzzle to the stranger, but in most of
its aspects it quickly becomes an equal delight. As is well known, the Japan
ocean current exercises upon the Pacific Coast an effect similar to that of
the Gulf Stream on Ireland and England. Hence the states of the Columbia
Valley are much warmer in winter than regions of the same latitude on the
Atlantic Coast or in the Mississippi Valley. Though the average temperature
is higher, yet it is cooler in summer on the Pacific Coast than on the
Atlantic. The Pacific climate has much less of extremes. The State of
Washington has about the same isothermal line as North Carolina. There is,
however, another feature of the Columbia climate not so well known to
non-residents, which is worthy of a passing paragraph. This is the division
of the country by the Cascade Mountains into a humid western section and
a dry eastern one. The mountain wall intercepts the larger part of the vapour
rising from the Pacific and flying eastward, and these warm masses of
vapour are condensed by the icy barrier and fall in rain on the western side.
Hence Western Oregon and Washington are damp and soft, with frequent
clouds and fogs. The rainfall, though varying much, is in most places from
forty to fifty inches a year. But east of the mountain wall which has “milked
the clouds,” the air is clear and bright, the sun shines most of the year from
cloudless skies, and there seems to be more of tingle and electricity in the
atmosphere. The rainfall ranges from ten to thirty inches, and in the drier
parts vegetation does not flourish without irrigation.
Any view of primeval Oregon would be incomplete without a glimpse of
the native race, that melancholy people, possessed of so many interesting
and even noble traits, whose sad lot it has mainly been to struggle against
the advent of a civilisation which they could not understand nor resist, and
before which they have melted away in pitiful impotency. But they have at
least had the highest dignity of defeat, for they have died fighting. They
have realised the conception of the Roman Emperor: “Me stantem mori
oportet.”
The Oregon Indians have essentially the same characteristic traits as other
Indians, secretiveness, patience, vindictiveness, stoicism; and, in their best
state, fidelity and boundless generosity to friends.

The poor broken fragments of the once populous tribes along the Columbia
cannot but affect the present-day observer with pity. Most of the tangible
memorials of this fallen race have vanished with them. Not many of the
conquerors have been sympathetic or even rational in their treatment of the
Indians. Hence memorials of memory and imagination which might have
been drawn from them and treasured up have vanished with them into the
darkness. Yet many Indian legends have been preserved in one manner and
another, and these are sufficient to convince us that the native races are of
the same nature as ourselves. Some of the legends which students of Indian
lore have gathered, will, perhaps, prove interesting to the reader.
A quaint Nez-Percé myth accounts for the creation as follows: There was
during the time of the Watetash a monster living in the country of Kamiah
in Central Idaho. This monster had the peculiar property of an irresistible
breath, so that when it inhaled, the winds and grass and trees and even
different animals would be sucked into its devouring maw. The Coyote god,
being grieved for the destruction wrought by this monster, made a coil of
rope out of grass and with this went to the summit of Wallowa Mountains to
test the suction power of the monster. Appearing like a tiny spear of grass
upon the mountain, he blew a challenge to the monster. Descrying the small
object in the distance Kamiah began to draw the air inward. But strange to
say, Coyote did not move. “Ugh, that is a great medicine,” said the monster.
Coyote now took his station upon the mountains of the Seven Devils, a
good deal closer, and blew his challenge again. Again the Kamiah monster
tried to breathe so deeply as to draw the strange challenger into his grasp,
but again he failed. “He is a very big medicine,” he said once more. And
now Coyote mounted the top of the Salmon River Mountains, somewhere
near the Buffalo Hump of the present time, and again the monster’s breath
failed to draw him. The baffled Kamiah was now sure that this was most
extraordinary medicine. In reality, Coyote had each time held himself by a
grass rope tied to the mountain.
Coyote now called into counsel Kotskots, the fox. Providing him with five
knives, Kotskots advised Coyote to force an entrance into the interior of the
monster. Entering in, Coyote found people in all stages of emaciation,
evidently having had their life gradually sucked out of them. It was also so
cold and dark in the interior that they were chilled into almost a condition
of insensibility. Looking about him, Coyote began to see great chunks of fat

and pitch in the vitals of the monster, and accordingly he rubbed sticks
together and started a fire, which being fed with the fat and pitch, soon
grew into a cheerful glow. Now, armed with his knives, he ascended the
vast interior until he reached the heart. He had already directed Kotskots to
rouse up and gather together all the emaciated stowaways and provide that
when the monster was cut open they should see how to rush out into the
sunlight. Great as was the monster Kamiah, he could not stop the persistent
hacking away at his heart which Coyote now entered upon. When the fifth
knife was nearly gone, the heart dropped down and Kamiah collapsed into a
lifeless mass. The people under the guidance of Kotskots, burst out into the
sunshine and scattered themselves abroad. It must be remembered that these
were animal people, not human. Coyote called upon them to wait until he
should have shown them a last wonder, for, cutting the monster in pieces, he
now began to fashion from the pieces a new race of beings to be called
men. The portion which he cut from the head he flung northward, and of
this was fashioned the Flathead tribe. The feet he cast eastward, making
them the Blackfeet. So he continued, making new tribes here and there. But
at the last Kotskots interposed an objection. “You have made no people,” he
said, “for the valley of the Lapwai, which is the most beautiful of all.”
Realising the force of the suggestion, Coyote mixed the blood of the
monster with water and sprinkled it in a rain over the entire valley of the
Clearwater. From these drops of blood and water, the Nez Percé tribe was
formed. The heart of the monster is still to be seen by all travellers in that
country, being a heart-shaped hill in the valley of Kamiah.
Perhaps the most perfect and beautiful of all Indian fire myths of the
Columbia, is that connected with the famous “tomanowas bridge” at the
Cascades. This myth not only treats of fire, but it also endeavours to
account for the peculiar formation of the river and for the great snow peaks
in the near vicinity. This myth has various forms, and in order that it may be
the better understood, we shall say a word with respect to the peculiar
physical features in that part of the Columbia. The River, after having
traversed over a thousand miles from its source in the heart of the great
Rocky Mountains of Canada, has cleft the Cascade Range asunder with a
cañon three thousand feet in depth. While generally swift, that portion
between The Dalles and the Cascades is deep and sluggish. There are,
moreover, sunken forests on both sides visible at low water, which seem

plainly to indicate that at that point the river was dammed up by some great
rock slide or volcanic convulsion. Some of the Indians affirm that their
grandfathers have told them that there was a time when the river at that
point passed under an immense natural bridge, and that there were no
obstructions to the passage of boats under the bridge. At the present time
there is a cascade of forty feet at that point. This is now overcome by
government locks. Among other evidences of some such actual occurrence
as the Indians relate, is the fact that the banks at that point are gradually
sliding into the river. The prodigious volume of the Columbia, which here
rises from fifty to seventy-five feet during the summer flood, is continually
eating into the banks. The railroad has slid several inches a year at this point
toward the river and requires frequent readjustment. It is obvious at a slight
inspection that this weird and sublime point has been the scene of terrific
volcanic and probably seismic action. One Indian legend, probably the best
known of their stories, is to the effect that the downfall of the bridge and
consequent damming of the river was due to a battle between Mt. Hood and
Mt. Adams,—or, some say, Mt. St. Helens—in which Mt. Hood hurled a
great rock at his antagonist; but, falling short of the mark, the rock
demolished the bridge instead. This event has been made use of by
Frederick Balch in his story, The Bridge of the Gods.
But the finer, though less known legend, which unites both the physical
conformation of the Cascades and the three great snow mountains of Hood,
Adams, and St. Helens, with the origin of fire, is to this effect. According to
the Klickitats, there was once a father and two sons who came from the east
down the Columbia to the region in which Dalles City is now located, and
there the two sons quarrelled as to who should possess the land. The father,
to settle the dispute, shot two arrows, one to the north and one to the west.
He told one son to find the arrow to the north and the other the one to the
west, and there to settle and bring up their families. The first son, going
northward, over what was then a beautiful plain, became the progenitor of
the Klickitat tribe, while the other son was the founder of the great
Multnomah nation of the Willamette Valley. To separate the two tribes more
effectively, Sahale, the Great Spirit, reared the chain of the Cascades,
though without any great peaks, and for a long time all things went in
harmony. But for convenience’ sake, Sahale had created the great
tomanowas bridge under which the waters of the Columbia flowed, and on

this bridge he had stationed a witch woman called Loowit, who was to take
charge of the fire. This was the only fire in the world. As time passed on
Loowit observed the deplorable condition of the Indians, destitute of fire
and the conveniences which it might bring. She therefore besought Sahale
to allow her to bestow fire upon the Indians. Sahale, greatly pleased by the
faithfulness and benevolence of Loowit, finally granted her request. The lot
of the Indians was wonderfully improved by the acquisition of fire. They
began to make better lodges and clothes and had a variety of food and
implements, and, in short, were marvellously benefited by the bounteous
gift.
But Sahale, in order to show his appreciation of the care with which Loowit
had guarded the sacred fire, now determined to offer her any gift she might
desire as a reward. Accordingly, in response to his offer, Loowit asked that
she be transformed into a young and beautiful girl. This was accordingly
affected, and now, as might have been expected, all the Indian chiefs fell
deeply in love with the guardian of the tomanowas bridge. Loowit paid little
heed to any of them, until finally there came two chiefs, one from the north
called Klickitat and one from the south called Wiyeast. Loowit was
uncertain which of these two she most desired, and as a result a bitter strife
arose between the two. This waxed hotter and hotter, until, with their
respective warriors, they entered upon a desperate war. The land was
ravaged, all their new comforts were marred, and misery and wretchedness
ensued. Sahale repented that he had allowed Loowit to bestow fire upon the
Indians, and determined to undo all his work in so far as he could.
Accordingly he broke down the tomanowas bridge, which dammed up the
river with an impassable reef, and put to death Loowit, Klickitat, and
Wiyeast. But, inasmuch as they had been noble and beautiful in life, he
determined to give them a fitting commemoration after death. Therefore he
reared over them as monuments, the great snow peaks; over Loowit, what
we now call Mt. St. Helens; over Wiyeast, the modern Mt. Hood; and,
above Klickitat, the great dome which we now call Mt. Adams.
Of the miscellaneous myths which pertain to the forces of nature, one of the
best is that accounting for the Chinook wind. All people who have lived
long in Oregon or Washington have a conception of that marvellous warm
wind which in January and February suddenly sends them almost summer
heat amid snow banks and ice-locked streams, and causes all nature to

rejoice as with a resurrection of spring time. Scarcely anything can be
imagined in nature more picturesque and dramatic than this Chinook wind.
The thermometer may be down nearly to zero, a foot of snow may rest like
a pall on the earth, or a deadly fog may wrap the earth, when suddenly, as if
by the breath of inspiration, the fog parts, the peaks of the mountains may
be seen half stripped of snow, and then, roaring and whistling, the warm
south wind comes like an army. The snow begins to drip like a pressed
sponge, the thermometer goes with a jump to sixty, and within two hours
we find ourselves in the climate of Southern California. No wonder the
Indians personified this wind. We personify it ourselves.
The Yakima account of the Chinook wind was to the effect that it was
caused by five brothers who lived on the Columbia River, not far from the
present town of Columbus. Now there is at rare intervals in this country a
cold north-east wind, which the Indians on the lower Columbia call the
Walla Walla wind because it comes from the north-east. The cold wind was
caused by another set of brothers. Both these sets of brothers had
grandparents who lived near what is now Umatilla. The two groups of
brothers were continually fighting each other, sweeping one way or the
other over the country, alternately freezing or thawing it, blowing down
trees and causing the dust to fly in clouds, and rendering the country
generally very uncomfortable. Finally, the Walla Walla brothers sent a
challenge to the Chinook brothers to undertake a wrestling match, the
condition being that those who were defeated should forfeit their lives. It
was agreed that Speelyei should act as umpire and should inflict the penalty
by decapitating the losers. Speelyei secretly advised the grandparents of the
Chinook brothers to throw oil on the wrestling ground so that their sons
might not fall. In like manner he secretly advised the grandparents of the
Walla Walla brothers to throw ice on the ground. Between the ice and the
oil it was so slippery that it would be hard for any one to keep upright, but
inasmuch as the Walla Walla grandfather got ice on the ground last, the
Chinook brothers were all thrown and killed.
The eldest Chinook had an infant baby at home, whose mother brought him
up with one sole purpose in view, and that was that he must avenge the
death of his father and uncles. By continual practice in pulling up trees he
became prodigiously strong, insomuch that he could pull up the largest fir
trees and throw them about like weeds. The young man finally reached such

a degree of strength that he felt that the time had come for him to perform
his great mission. Therefore he went up the Columbia, pulling up trees and
tossing them around in different places, and finally passed over into the
valley of the Yakima, where he lay down to rest by the creek called the
Setas. There he rested for a day and a night, and the marks of his couch are
still plainly visible on the mountain side.
Now, turning back again to the Columbia, he sought the hut of his
grandparents, and when he had found it, he found also that they were in a
most deplorable condition. The Walla Walla brothers had been having it all
their own way during these years and had imposed most shamefully upon
the old people. When he learned this, the young Chinook told his
grandfather to go out into the Columbia to fish for sturgeon, while he in the
meantime would lie down in the bottom of the boat and watch for the Walla
Walla wind. It was the habit of these tormenting Walla Walla wind brothers
to wait until the old man had got his boat filled with fish, and then they,
issuing swiftly and silently from the shore, would beset and rob him. This
time they started out from the shore as usual, but to their great
astonishment, just as they were about to catch him, the boat would shoot on
at miraculous speed and leave them far behind. So the old man landed
safely and brought his fish to the hut. The young Chinook then took his
grandparents to a stream and washed from them the filth which had
gathered upon them during all those years of suffering. Strange to say, the
filth became transformed into trout, and this is the origin of all the trout
along the Columbia.
As soon as the news became known abroad that there was another Chinook
champion in the field, the Walla Walla brothers began to demand a new
wrestling match. Young Chinook very gladly accepted the challenge,
though he had to meet all five. But now Speelyei secretly suggested to the
Chinook grandfather that he should wait about throwing the oil on the
ground until the ice had all been used up. By means of this change of
practice, the Walla Walla brothers fell speedily before the young Chinook.
One after another was thrown and beheaded until only the youngest was
left. His courage failing, he surrendered without a struggle. Speelyei then
pronounced sentence upon him, telling him that he must live, but could
henceforth only blow lightly, and never have power to freeze people to
death. Speelyei also decreed that in order to keep Chinook within bounds he

should blow his hardest at night time, and should blow upon the mountain
ridges first in order to prepare people for his coming. Thus there came to be
moderation in the winds, but Chinook was always the victor in the end. And
thus at the present time, in the perpetual flux and reflux of the oceans of the
air, when the north wind sweeps down from the chilly zones of Canada
upon the Columbia Basin, his triumph is but transient. For within a few
hours, or days at most, while the cattle are threatened with destruction and
while ranchers are gazing anxiously about, they will discern a blue-black
line upon the southern horizon. In a short time the mountain ridges can be
seen bare of snow, and deliverance is at hand. For the next morning, rushing
and roaring from the South, comes the blessed Chinook, and the icy grip of
the North melts as before a blast from a furnace. The struggle is short and
Chinook’s victory is sure.
Nearly all our native races had a more or less coherent idea of a future state
of rewards and punishments. “The happy hunting ground” of the Indians is
often referred to in connection with the Indians of the older part of the
United States. Our Indians have ideas in general quite similar. Some believe
that there is a hell and a heaven. The Siskiyou Indians in Southern Oregon
have a curious idea similar to that of the ancient Egyptians as well as of the
Mohammedans. This is to the effect that the regions of the blessed are on
the other side of an enormously deep chasm. To pass over this, one must
cross on a very narrow and slippery pole. The good can pass, but the bad
fall off into empty space, whence they reappear again upon the earth as
beasts or birds.
The Klickitat Indians, living along The Dalles of the Columbia have a fine
legend of the land of spirits. There lived a young chief and a girl who were
devoted to each other and seemed to be the happiest people in the tribe, but
suddenly he sickened and died. The girl mourned for him almost to the
point of death, and he, having reached the land of the spirits, could find no
happiness there for thinking of her. And so it came to pass that a vision
began to appear to the girl at night, telling her that she must herself go into
the land of the spirits in order to console her lover. Now there is, near that
place, one of the most weird and funereal of all the various “memaloose”
islands, or death islands, of the Columbia. The writer himself has been upon
this island and its spectral and volcanic desolation makes it a fitting location
for ghostly tales. It lies just below the “great chute,” and even yet has many

skeletons upon it. In accordance with the directions of the vision, the girl’s
father made ready a canoe, placed her in it, and passed out into the Great
River by night, to the memaloose island. As the father and his child rowed
across the dark and forbidding waters, they began to hear the sounds of
singing and dancing and great joy. Upon the shore of the island they were
met by four spirit people, who took the girl, but bade the father return, as it
was not for him to see into the spirit country. Accordingly the girl was
conducted to the great dance-house of the spirits, and there she met her
lover, far stronger and more beautiful than when upon earth. That night they
spent in unspeakable bliss, but when the light began to break in the east and
the song of the robins was heard from the willows on the shore, the singers
and the dancers fell asleep.
The girl, too, had gone to sleep, but not soundly like the spirits. When the
sun had reached the meridian, she woke, and now, to her horror, she saw
that instead of being in the midst of beautiful spirits, she was surrounded by
hideous skeletons and loathsome, decaying bodies. Around her waist were
the bony arms and skeleton fingers of her lover, and his grinning teeth and
gaping eye-sockets seemed to be turned in mockery upon her. Screaming
with horror, she leaped up and ran to the edge of the island, where, after
hunting a long time, she found a boat, in which she paddled across to the
Indian village. Having presented herself to her astonished parents, they
became fearful that some great calamity would visit the tribe on account of
her return, and accordingly her father took her the next night back to the
memaloose island as before. There she met again the happy spirits of the
blessed, and there again her lover and she spent another night in ecstatic
bliss. In the course of time a child was born to the girl, beautiful beyond
description, being half spirit and half human. The spirit bridegroom, being
anxious that his mother should see the child, sent a spirit messenger to the
village, desiring his mother to come by night to the memaloose island to
visit them. She was told, however, that she must not look at the child until
ten days had passed. But after the old woman had reached the island, her
desire to see the wonderful child was so intense that she took advantage of a
moment’s inattention on the part of the guard, and, lifting the cloth from the
baby board, she stole a look at the sleeping infant. And then, dreadful to
relate, the baby died in consequence of this premature human look. Grieved

and displeased by this foolish act, the spirit people decreed that the dead
should never again return nor hold any communication with the living.
In concluding this chapter we cannot forbear to call the attention of our
readers to the rare beauty of many of the native Indian names of localities.
These names always have some significance, and ordinarily there is some
such poetic or figurative conception involved in the name as plainly reveals
the fact that these rude and unfortunate natives have the souls of poets
beneath their savage exterior. It is truly lamentable that some of the
sonorous and poetic native names have been thrust aside for the
commonplace and oft-repeated names of Eastern or European localities or
the still less attractive names of discoverers or their unimportant friends.
Think of using the names Salem and Portland for Chemeketa and
Multnomah, the native names. Chemeketa means “Here we Rest,” or, some
say, the “Place of Peace,” for it was the council ground of the Willamette
Valley Indians. But the Methodist missionaries thought that it would have a
more Biblical sound and conduce to the spiritual welfare of the natives to
translate the word into its equivalent, Salem. So they spoiled the wild native
beauty of the name for all time. Multnomah means “Down the Waters.” But
two Yankee sea captains, with a sad deficiency of poetry in them, tossed up
a coin to decide whether to employ the name of Boston or Portland, the
native town of each, and the latter won the toss.
Oregon has been more fortunate than Washington in its State name, for it
has the unique name, stately and sonorous, which old Jonathan Carver first
used for the River and which is one of the most distinctive of all the names
of States. But whether Oregon is Indian, Spanish, French, or a corruption of
something else, or a pure invention of Carver’s is one of the mooted points
in our history. Idaho, too, has one of the most mellifluous of names,
meaning the “Gem of the Mountains.”
All three States have many beautiful and appropriate names of rivers, lakes,
mountains, and cities. Such are Chelan, “Beautiful Water”; Umatilla, “The
Wind-blown Sand”; Walla Walla, “Where the Waters Meet”; Shuksan, “The
Place of the Storm Winds”; Spokane, “The People of the Sun”; Kulshan,
“The Great White Watcher”; Snoqualmie, “The Falls of the Moon God.”
Seattle derives its name from the old chief Seattle, or Sealth.

The most bitterly disputed name of all is Tacoma vs. Rainier, as the name of
the greatest of our mountains. The name of Rainier was derived by
Vancouver from that of an officer of the British navy, a man who never
knew anything of Oregon and had no part or lot in its discovery or
development. Tacoma, or more accurately, Takhoma (a peculiar guttural
which we cannot fully indicate), was the native Indian name, meaning,
according to some, “The Great White Mountain,” and according to others
meaning “The Fountain-breast of Milk-white Waters.”
With these glances at the character of the land, and its native inhabitants, we
are now ready to see how they became known to the world.

CHAPTER II

Tales of the First White Men along the Coast
Nekahni Mountain and Tallapus—Quootshoi
and Toulux—Original Beauty of Clatsop
Plains—The Story Told by Celiast and
Cultee—Casting of the “Thing” upon
the Beach—The Pop-corn—Burning of
the Ship—Konapee, the Iron-worker—
Franchère’s Account of Soto—The
Treasure Ship on the Beach at Nekahni
Mountain—The Black Spook and
Mysterious Chest—The Inscription Still
Found on the Rock—The Beeswax Ship
—Quiaculliby.

W E have told something of the mountains, rivers, and lakes which
make up the framework of our Pacific North-west. We have also tried
to see the land through the eyes of the native red men, and have called back
a few of the grotesque, fantastic, sometimes heroic, sometimes pathetic
legends which they associated with every phase of their country.
Now the very centre of Indian lore, the Parnassus, the Delphi, the Dodona,
of the lower Columbia River Indians, is the stretch of mingled bluff, plain,
lake, sand-dune, and mountain, marvellously diversified, from the south
shore of the Columbia’s mouth to the sacred Nekahni Mountain. It is a
wonderously picturesque region. From it came Tallapus, the Hermes
Trismegistus of the Oregon Indians. Its forests were haunted by the
Skookums and Cheatcos. From the volcanic pinnacles of Swallallochast,
now known as Saddle Mountain, the thunder bird went forth on its daily
quest of a whale, while at the mountain’s foot Quootshoi and Toulux
produced the first men from the monstrous eggs of that same great bird. In
short, that region was rich in legend, as it was, and still is, in scenic beauty.
It is said by the Indians that a hundred years or more ago it was much finer
than now, for the entire breadth of Clatsop Plains was sodded with deep

green grass and bright with flowers almost the whole year through. This
bright-hued plain lay open to the sea, and across its southern end flowed
three tide streams, having the aboriginal names of Nekanikum, Ohanna, and
Neahcoxie.
It was a veritable paradise for the Indians. The forests were filled with elk
(moosmoos) and deer (mowitch), while fish of almost every variety
thronged the waters, from that king of all fish now known as the royal
chinook of the Columbia down to such smaller fry as the smelt and the
herring, which even now sometimes so throng the lesser streams that the
receding tide leaves them by the thousands on the muddy flats. On the
beach were infinite numbers of clams; and as an evidence of their
abundance we can now see shell mounds by the acre, in such quantity,
indeed, that some of the modern roads have been paved with shells.
This favoured region was the home of the Clatsops. There, too, according to
the legends, the first white men landed. The story of the first appearance of
the white men has reached our own times in various forms, but the most
coherent account is through the word of Celiast, an Indian woman who died
many years ago, but who became the wife of one of the earliest white
settlers and the mother of Silas Smith, now dead, but known in his time as
one of the best authorities on Indian history. Celiast was the daughter of
Kobaiway, a chieftain whose sway extended over the land of the Clatsops in
the time of the Astor Company a century ago. Celiast was in fact the best
authority for many of the Indian legends. But she is not alone in the
knowledge of this appearance of the white men, for a number of other
Indians tell the substance of the same tale. Among others an old Indian of
Bay Centre, Washington, by the name of Charlie Cultee, related the story to
Dr. Franz Boas, whose work in the Smithsonian Institute is known as
among the best on the native races. This is the story, a composite of that of
Celiast and that of Cultee.
It appears that an old woman living near the ancient Indian village of Ne-
Ahkstow, about two miles south of the mouth of the Great River (the
Columbia) had lost her son. “She wailed for a whole year, and then she
stopped.” One day, after her usual custom, she went to the seaside, and
walked along the shore towards Clatsop. While on the way she saw
something very strange. At first it seemed like a whale, but, when the old

woman came close, she saw that it had two trees standing upright in it. She
said, “This is no whale; it is a monster.” The outside was all covered over
with something bright, which they afterwards found was copper. Ropes
were tied all over the two trees, and the inside of the Thing was full of iron.
While the old woman gazed in silent wonder, a being that looked like a
bear, but had a human face, though with long hair all over it, came out of
the Thing that lay there. Then the old woman hastened home in great fear.
She thought this bearlike creature must be the spirit of her son, and that the
Thing was that about which they had heard in the Ekanum tales.
The people, when they had heard the strange story, hastened with bows and
arrows to the spot. There, sure enough, lay the Thing upon the shore, just as
the old woman had said. Only instead of one bear there were two standing
on the Thing. These two creatures,—whether bears or people the Indians
were not sure,—were just at the point of going down the Thing (which they
now began to understand was an immense canoe with two trees driven into
it) to the beach, with kettles in their hands.
As the bewildered people watched them they started a fire and put corn into
the kettles. Very soon it began to pop and fly with great rapidity up and
down in the kettles. The pop-corn (the nature of which the Clatsops did not
then understand) struck them with more surprise than anything else,—and
this is the one part of the story preserved in every version.
Then the corn-popping strangers made signs that they wanted water. The
chief sent men to supply them with all their needs, and in the meantime he
made a careful examination of the strangers. Finding that their hands were
the same as his own, he became satisfied that they were indeed men. One of
the Indians ran and climbed up and entered the Thing. Looking into the
interior, he found it full of boxes. There were also many strings of buttons
half a fathom long. He went out to call in his relatives, but, before he could
return, the ship had been set on fire. Or, in the language of Charlie Cultee,
“It burnt just like fat.” As a result of the burning of the ship, the Clatsops
got possession of the iron, copper, and brass.
Now the news of this strange event became noised abroad, and the Indians
from all the region thronged to Clatsop to see and feel of these strange men
with hands and feet just like ordinary men, yet with long beards and with

such peculiar garb as to seem in no sense men. There arose great strife as to
who should receive and care for the strange men. Each tribe or village was
very anxious to have them, or at least one of them. The Quienaults, the
Chehales, and the Willapas, from the beach on the north side, came to press
their claims. From up the river came the Cowlitz, the Cascades, and even
the Far-off Klickitat. The different tribes almost had a battle for possession,
but, according to one account, it was finally settled that one of the strange
visitors should stay with the Clatsop chief, and that one should go with the
Willapas on the north side of the Great River. According to another, they
both stayed at Clatsop.
From this first arrival of white men, the Indians called them all
“Tlehonnipts,” that is, “Of those who drift ashore.” One of the men
possessed the magical art of taking pieces of iron and making knives and
hatchets. It was indeed to the poor Indians a marvellous gift of Tallapus,
their god, that they should have a man among them that could perform that
priceless labour, for the possession of iron knives and hatchets meant the
indefinite multiplying of canoes, huts, bows and arrows, weapons, and
implements of every sort. The iron-maker’s name was Konapee. The
Indians kept close watch of him for many days and made him work
incessantly. But, as the tokens of his skill became numerous, his captors
held him in great favour and allowed him more liberty. Being permitted to
select a site for a house, he chose a spot on the Columbia which became
known to the Indians, even down to the white occupancy of the region, as
“Konapee.”
Among other possessions, Konapee had a large number of pieces of money,
which, from the description, must have been Chinese “cash.” From this
some have inferred that Konapee must have been a Chinaman, and the
wrecked ship a Chinese or Japanese junk. This does not, however, follow.
For the Spaniards had become entirely familiar with China, and any
Spanish vessel returning from the Philippine Islands or from China would
have been likely to have a supply of Chinese money on board.
There is an interesting bit of testimony which seems to belong to this same
story of Konapee. It is found in the book by Gabriel Franchère in regard to
the founding of Astoria, the book which was the chief authority of Irving in
his fascinating narrative entitled Astoria. Franchère describes meeting an

old man, eighty years old, in 1811, at the Cascades, whose name was Soto,
and who said that his father was one of four Spaniards wrecked on Clatsop
beach many years before. His father had tried to reach the land of the
sunrise by going eastward, but having reached the Cascades was prevented
from going farther and had there married an Indian woman, Soto’s mother.
It is thought likely that the father of Soto was Konapee. The two stories
seem to fit quite well. If this be true, it is likely that Konapee’s landing was
as early as 1725. If all the details of Konapee’s life could be known, what a
romance might be made of it! There is no reason to suppose that he ever
saw other white men or ever got away from the region where the fortune of
shipwreck had cast him. Yet he was in possession of one of the greatest
geographical secrets of that country, for the hope of the discovery of some
great “River of the West,” the elusive stream which many believed to be a
pure fabrication of Aguilar and other old navigators, had enticed many a
“marinere” from many a far “countree.”
In any event it is probable that the Columbia River Indians had got a
general knowledge of the whites and their arts from Konapee long before
the authentic discovery of the river was made. Especially it seems that from
him they got a knowledge of iron and implements fashioned from it.
Captain Cook mentions that when he visited the coast in 1780 the Indians
manifested no surprise at the weapons or implements of iron. In fact even
all whites who supposed themselves to be the first to visit this coast found
the Indians ready to trade and especially eager to get iron. A new era of
trade and business seems to have been inaugurated among these Clatsops
and Chinooks dating from about the supposed time of Konapee. But he was
by no means the only one of his race to be cast upon the Oregon shore.
There is a story of a treasure ship cast upon the beach near Nekahni
Mountain. This mountain, the original home of Tallapus, while on its
summit the great chief god Nekahni himself dwelt, is one of the noblest
pieces of Nature’s art all along the shore. Fronting the ocean with a
precipitous rampart of rock five hundred feet high and thence rising in a
wide sweeping park clad in thick turf, and dotted here and there with
beautiful spruce and fir trees, to an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet,
the sacred Nekahni presents as fine a combination of the beautiful and
sublime as can be seen upon a whole thousand miles of coast. It was a
favourite spot with the natives. For lying upon its open and turfy slopes

they could gaze upon many miles of sea, and could no doubt light up their
signal fires which might be seen over a wide expanse of beach. Very likely
there, too, they celebrated the mysterious rites of Nekahni and Tallapus.
One pleasant afternoon in early summer, a large group of natives assembled
upon the lower part of Nekahni, almost upon the edge of the precipitous
cliff with which it fronts the sea. Gazing into the offing they saw a great
object like a huge bird drawing near from the outer sea. It approached the
shore, and then from it a small boat with a number of men and a large black
box put out to land. Coming to the beach the men took out the box and also
a black man whom the Indians supposed to be a spook or evil demon.
Going a little way up the beach the men dug a hole into which they lowered
the box, and then having struck down the black man they threw him on top
of the box and, covering it up, they returned to the ship, which soon
disappeared from sight. On account of the black man buried with the box,
the superstitious Indians dared not undertake to exhume the contents of the
grave. But the story was handed from one generation to another, and it came
to constitute the story of the “treasure ship.”
In recent times the idea that here some chest, with gold and jewels in the
most approved style of buried fortunes, might be found has caused much
searching. The ground has been dug over for the sight of the regulation
rusty handle which is to lead to the great iron-bound chest with its
doubloons of gold and crucifixes of pearls. Parties have come from the
Eastern States to join the search. One party even secured the guidance of
spirits who professed to locate the treasure. But though the spirit-led
enthusiasts turned over every stone and dug up the sand for many feet along
the beach, they found never an iron-bound chest, and never a sign of the
treasure. There is, however, in plain sight now, on a rock at the foot of
Nekahni Mountain, a character cut in the rock bearing a rude resemblance
to a cross. Some think it looks more like the letters, I.H.S., the sacred
emblem of the Catholic Church. There is also what seems to be quite a
distinct arrow pointing in a certain direction. But the treasure remains
unfound.
The next legend of the prehistoric white man is that of the “Beeswax Ship.”
This, too, has a real confirmation in the presence of large quantities of
beeswax at a point also near Nekahni Mountain, just north of the mouth of

the Nehalem River. Some naturalists claimed at one time that this substance
was simply the natural paraffine produced from the products of coal or
petroleum. But more recently cakes of the substance stamped with the
sacred letters, “I.H.S.,” together with tapers, and even one piece with a bee
plainly visible within, may be considered incontestable proof that this is
indeed beeswax, while the letters, “I.H.S.” denote plainly enough the origin
of the substance in some Spanish colony. An interesting point in connection
with this is the historical fact that on June 16, 1769, the ship San José left
La Paz, Lower California, for San Diego, and was never heard from again.
Some have conjectured that the San José was the “Beeswax Ship,” driven
far north by some storm or mutiny. As to the peculiar fact that a ship should
have been entirely loaded with beeswax it has been conjectured that some
of the good padres of the Spanish Missions meant to provide a new station
with a large amount of wax for the sake of providing tapers for their
service, the lighted candles proving then, as they do now, a matter of marvel
and wonder to the natives, and, with other features of ceremonial worship,
having a great effect to bring them into subjection to the Church.
The Indian legend runs on to the effect that several white men were saved
from the wreck of the “Beeswax Ship,” and that they lived with them. But
having infringed upon the family rights of the natives, they became
obnoxious, and were all cut off by an attack from them. One story, however,
asserts that there was one man left, a blue-eyed, golden-haired man, that he
took a Nehalem woman, and that from him was descended a fair-
complexioned progeny, of which a certain chieftain who lived at a beautiful
little lake on Clatsop plains, now known as Culliby Lake, was our
Quiaculliby.
Such in brief survey, are some of the stories which preserve the record of
the space betwixt the Indian age of myth and the period of authentic
discovery.

CHAPTER III

How all Nations Sought the River from the Sea and
how they Found it
Search for Gold—Economic Effects—Early
Extension of Exploration Westward—
Cortez—Magellan—Aguilar—Fables of
the Sea—Shakspere and Swift—Maps
—Great Wars of the Seventeenth
Century and Downfall of Spain—Long
Delay—Resumption of Exploration—
Spanish Settlement of California—
Russia and Behring—Perez—Heceta—
Cook—Fur-trade—Gathering of Nations
—The Yankees—Gray and Kendrick—
Meares and Vancouver—The Complete
Discovery—Strife between England and
the United States.

T HE period of the Renaissance is one, which by reason of splendid
achievements in literature, in art, in science, and in discovery, can
hardly be duplicated. We are here especially concerned with the
discoverers. A mingling of motives impelled those dauntless spirits onward,
and among the most potent was the greed for gold. Much American history
is bound up with the mad rush for the precious metals, and the spread of
exploration from the West Indies and Mexico, the first centres of Spanish
power, was one of its results. Only eight years after the landing of
Columbus on San Salvador, the Portuguese Gaspar Cortereal had conceived
the idea of a north-west passage, which in some unexplained manner
became known as the Strait of Anian. In 1543, the Spaniards Cabrillo and
Ferrelo coasted along the shores of California, and the latter was doubtless
the first white man to look upon the coast of Oregon. In 1577, England
appeared in the person of that boldest and most picturesque of the half-
discoverers, half-pirates, of that time, Francis Drake. In that year he set
forth on the wonderful voyage in which he plundered the treasures of the

Spanish Main, cut the golden girdle of Manila, queen of the Spanish Orient,
skirted along the coast of California and Oregon, and at last
circumnavigated the globe. Brilliant as were Drake’s exploits, they did not
result in the discovery of our Great River. In 1592, just a century after
Columbus, Juan de Fuca, whose name is now preserved in the strait leading
to Puget Sound, is said to have made that voyage which is regarded by most
historians as a myth, but which affords so fascinating a bit of narration that
it ought to be true. Two hundred years later John Meares, the English
navigator, attached the name of the stout old Greek pilot to that inlet now
familiar to ships of all nations. With the passage of a few years more,
explorations upon the western shore of America began to assume a more
definite form. In 1602 the best equipped squadron thus far sent out left
Acapulco under command of Vizcaino, with the aim of carrying out
Monterey’s great purpose for the northward extension of Spanish power.
The fleet being scattered by storm, the fragata in command of Martin
Aguilar ran up the coast as far as latitude 43 degrees. There they found a
cape to which they attached the name still held, Cape Blanco. From that
point, following the north-westerly trending of the coast, they soon came
abreast of a “rapid and abundant river, with ash trees, willows, and
brambles, and other trees of Castile upon its banks.” This they endeavoured
to enter, but from the strength of the current could not. “And seeing that
they had already reached a higher latitude than had been ordered by the
viceroy and that the number of the sick was great, they decided to return to
Acapulco.” Torquemada, the historian, from whom the account is taken,
goes on to say:
It is supposed that this river is one leading to a great city, which
was discovered by the Dutch when they were driven thither by
storms, and that it is the Strait of Anian, through which the
vessels passed in sailing from the North Sea to the South Sea;
and that the city called Quivera is in those parts; and that this is
the region referred to in the account which His Majesty read,
and which induced him to order this expedition.
The interesting question arises, Was the river the Columbia? It is the only
large river on the Oregon coast, though the Umpqua, if at flood stage, might
have given the impression of size. The latitude is not right, either, though
the Spanish narrator does not say how far north of Cape Blanco they went.

But whether or not Aguilar really went so far north as the Columbia, his
voyage was one of much interest. It gave Spain a warrant to claim the
western coast of America; it still further strengthened the idea of the Strait
of Anian; it seemed to confirm the romantic conception of a great city or
group of cities with civilised inhabitants along that passage way, and it gave
the first name to the river, the Rio de Aguilar.
Thenceforth the navigators of all nations accepted as the primary object of
their search some great river of the West. Hidden in the fogs of fancy, as it
lay shrouded in truth in the mists of the ocean, the supposed Rio de Aguilar
yet held the spell of enchantment over many an “ancient mariner” of many
a land. Whatsoever nation could actually find the river and establish a
definite claim to first discovery, would have, by the generally accepted
usage of nations, the right of occupation and ownership.
That was a fruitful time for fables of the sea, and around the Great River
many of them gathered. The original of Baron Munchausen seems to have
existed in the persons of Captain Lorenzo Ferrer de Maldonado and
Admiral Pedro Bartolomé de Fonte. The first of these worthies, whose
voyage was said to have been made in 1588, describes in a very
circumstantial manner his passage through the Strait of Anian and his exit
upon the Asiatic side of the continent. This he averred was marked with a
very remarkable rocky eminence which rendered it wonderfully adapted to
fortification and defence, the mountain being so steep, in fact, that a missile
dropped from the summit would fall directly upon a ship in mid-channel. It
is thought by some students that some unchronicled Spanish navigator may
have actually made the inland passage up the Alaskan coast and that some
report of it may have become transformed into Maldonado’s story. Fonte’s
story seems to have first appeared in a London publication in 1708, though
his voyage was alleged to have been made in 1640. He told a marvellous
tale of a great river which led to a magnificent lake on whose banks stood a
great city. The river he located in latitude 53 degrees, and he named it the
Rio de los Reyes, or River of Kings. This is far north of the Columbia, but
the account persisted in popular idea for a long time. The name became
associated with those of the Rio de Aguilar and the River of the West.
These and other similar tales, the flotsam and jetsam of ocean myths, gave
something of inspiration and suggestion to literature. For even long before

the alleged exploits of Fonte, the fertile mind of Shakspere had conceived
of Caliban and Ariel and other fancies of the age of Western adventure. And
in the next century the prince of political satirists, Jonathan Swift, had
located almost exactly at the mouth of the Rio de Aguilar, the land of the
Brobdingnagians, while the countries into which the veracious Gulliver was
thrown at a later time, Luggnagg and Blubdubrib, were in the Pacific at a
somewhat indefinite distance from the land of the Giants.
The land of the Oregon was in short, the land of the great unexplored and of
boundless fancy. Some of the old maps illustrating that period are of much
interest. Zaltieri’s map of 1566 shows a generally accurate conception of
the eastern part of America and of the western coast of Mexico and
California, but the entire continent above about latitude 60 degrees is
occupied with a mare septentrionale incognito. Luck’s map of 1582
presents a fairly good conception of Florida and Mexico, but is entirely
astray on the western coast. The Wytfliet-Ptolemy map of 1597 has a
singularly indented coast running nearly east and west in the location of
Oregon, while Cape Blanco and a river, the Rio de los Estrachos, in about
latitude 51 degrees, seem to be an attempt to denote Aguilar’s cape of 1543,
and to locate the river by still another name, though in a higher latitude.
Maldonado’s map of the Strait of Anian of 1609 is manifestly manufactured
to suit the occasion, and is interesting only as showing how far mendacity
and gullibility could travel hand in hand.
But now the first age of discovery on the coast of Oregon drew to a close. It
cannot be said that much of tangible knowledge had been attained. Puzzling
questions had been raised. Labyrinths of conjecture, with no definite clues
for exit, had been entered. Fascinating romances had been so interwoven
with probable fact that no one could untangle them. A general conception of
a great river and a great north-west passage had been held up with some
distinctness as the goal of navigators. Finally, most important of all, what
had been seen was of so enticingly interesting a nature and seemed to
promise results so important, that they furnished a motive for continued
exploration. It certainly looked as though the nations would continue the
search for the Great River of the West. Spain had the inside track of all,
though Drake and Cavendish and Hawkins had run down many a richly
laden treasure galleon and had laid the booty at the feet of the Virgin Queen,

and many an embittered buccaneer of French or English race had hounded
the flag of Spain across the breadth of half the seas.
But a great change was impending. There was a new shuffle of the cards in
the hands of the Fates and the Furies as the seventeenth century moved on
apace. Spain’s time had come. Her cup of iniquity was now full. Her whole
measure of national policy had been the sword for the pagan and the
inquisition for the heretic. The banished Moors of Granada and the
murdered “Beggars” of Holland and the wasted Incas and Montezumas of
America united to call down the vengeance of Nemesis upon the destroyer
of a fair world’s peace.
The stupendous struggles engendered by the Reformation, culminating in
the Thirty Years’ War, went on almost without pause for over a century.
That strife, ending at Westphalia in 1648, saw Spain prostrate and the
principle of religious toleration triumphant. But almost immediately another
struggle arose, the natural successor of the first, the struggle against the
absolute monarchy of the Bourbons. As may well be seen, the nations of
Europe were so enchained in the strife against Pope and King that they had
little thought for new discoveries. Over a hundred and sixty years passed
after the voyage of Aguilar before there was another serious movement of
discovery on the coast of Oregon.
This new movement of Pacific exploration, destined to continue with no
cessation to our own day, was ushered in by Spain. There was even yet
much vitality in the fallen mistress of the world. Impelled by both religious
zeal and hope of material gain, the immigration of 1769 went forth from La
Paz to San Diego and Monterey. That inaugurated the singular and poetic,
in some aspects even beautiful, history of Spanish California, an era which
has provided so much of romance and poetry for literature in the California
of our own times. The march of events had made it plain to the Spanish
Government that, if it was to retain a hold on the Pacific Coast, it must
bestir itself. Russia, England, and France, released in a measure from the
pressure of European struggles, were fitting out expeditions to resume the
arrested efforts of the sixteenth century. It seemed plain also that colonial
America was going to be an active rival on the seas. And well may it have
so seemed, for, in the sign of the Yankee sailor, the conquest was to be
made.

But just at that important juncture a most favouring condition arose for
Spain. The government of England precipitated the struggle of the
American Revolution. France soon joined to strike her island rival a deadly
blow by assisting in the liberation of the colonies. For the time, Spain had
nearly a clear field for Pacific discovery, so far as England and France were
concerned. As for Russia, the danger was more imminent. Russia had,
indeed, begun to look in the direction of Pacific expansion a long time prior
to the Spanish immigration to California. That vast monarchy, transformed
by the genius of Peter the Great, had stretched its arms from the Baltic to
the Aleutian Archipelago, and had looked from the frozen seas of Siberia to
the open Pacific as a fairer field for expansion. Many years elapsed,
however, before Peter’s great designs could be fulfilled. Not till 1741 did
Vitus Behring thread the thousand islands of Sitka and gaze upon the
glaciated crest of Mt. St. Elias. And it was not till thirty years later that it
became understood that the Bay of Avatcha was connected by the open sea
with China. In 1771 the first cargo of furs was shipped directly from
Avatcha to Canton. Then first the vastness of the Pacific Ocean was
comprehended. Then first it was understood that the same waters which
lashed the frozen ramparts of Kamchatka encircled the coral islands of the
South Sea and roared against the stormy barriers of Cape Horn.
The Russians had not found the Great River, though it appears that Behring
in 1771 had gone as far south as latitude 46 degrees, just the parallel of the
mouth of the Columbia. But he was so far off the coast as not to see it.
Three Spanish voyages followed in rapid succession: that of Perez in 1774,
of Heceta in 1775, and of Bodega in 1779. The only notable things in
connection with the voyage of Perez were his discovery of Queen
Charlotte’s Island, with the sea-otter furs traded by the natives, the first
sight of that superb group of mountains which we now call the Olympic,
but which the Spaniards named the Sierra de Santa Rosalia, and finally the
fine harbour of Nootka on Vancouver Island, named by Perez Port San
Lorenzo, for years the centre of the fur-trade and the general rendezvous of
ships of all nations. But no river was found.
With another year a still completer expedition was fitted out, Bruno Heceta
being commander and Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, second in
command. This voyage was the most important and interesting thus far in

the history of the Columbia River exploration. For Heceta actually found
the Great River, so long sought and so constantly eluding discovery. On
June 10, 1775, Heceta passed Cape Mendocino, and entered a small bay just
northward. There he entered into friendly relations with the natives and took
solemn possession of the country in the name of His Catholic Majesty of
Spain. Sailing thence northward, he again touched land just south of the
Straits of Fuca, but there he met disaster at the ill-omened point
subsequently named Destruction Island. For there his boat landing for
exploration was set upon by the savage inhabitants, and the entire boat-load
murdered. Moving southward again, on August 15th, in latitude 46 degrees
10 minutes, Heceta found himself abreast of some great river. Deciding that
this must be indeed the mysterious Strait of Fuca, or the long concealed
river of the other ancient navigators, he made two efforts to enter, but the
powerful current and uncertain depths deterred him, and he at last gave up
the effort and bore away for Monterey. Three additional names were
bestowed upon the River at this time. Thinking the entrance a bay, Heceta
named it, in honour of the day, Ensenada de Asuncion. Later it was more
commonly known as Ensenada de Heceta, while the Spanish charts
designated the river as Rio de San Roque. The name of Cabo de Frondoso
(Leafy Cape) was bestowed upon the low promontory on the south, now
known as Point Adams, while upon the picturesque headland on the north
which we now designate as Cape Hancock, the devout Spaniards conferred
the name of Cabo de San Roque, August 16th being the day sacred to that
saint.
The original account given by Heceta is so interesting that we insert it here:
On the 17th day of August I sailed along the coast to the 46th
degree, and observed that from the latitude 47 degrees 4 minutes
to that of 46 degrees 10 minutes, it runs in the angle of 18
degrees of the second quadrant, and from that latitude to 46
degrees 4 minutes, in the angle of 12 degrees of the same
quadrant; the soundings, the shore, the wooded character of the
country, and the little islands, being the same as on the
preceding days.
On the evening of this day I discovered a large bay, to which I
gave the name Assumption Bay, and a plan of which will be

found in this journal. Its latitude and longitude are determined
according to the most exact means afforded by theory and
practice. The latitudes of the two most prominent capes of this
bay are calculated from the observations of this day.
Having arrived opposite this bay at six in the evening, and
placed the ship nearly midway between the two capes, I sounded
and found bottom in four brazas [nearly four fathoms]. The
currents and eddies were so strong that, notwithstanding a press
of sail, it was difficult to get out clear of the northern cape,
towards which the current ran, though its direction was eastward
in consequence of the tide being at flood. These currents and
eddies caused me to believe that the place is the mouth of some
great river, or of some passage to another sea. Had I not been
certain of the latitude of this bay, from my observations of the
same day, I might easily have believed it to be the passage
discovered by Juan de Fuca, in 1592, which is placed on the
charts between the 47th and the 48th degrees; where I am
certain no such strait exists; because I anchored on the 14th day
of July midway between these latitudes, and carefully examined
everything around. Notwithstanding the great difference
between this bay and the passage mentioned by De Fuca, I have
little difficulty in conceiving they may be the same, having
observed equal or greater differences in the latitudes of other
capes and ports on this coast, as I will show at the proper time;
and in all cases latitudes thus assigned are higher than the real
ones.
I did not enter and anchor in this port, which in my plan I
suppose to be formed by an island, notwithstanding my strong
desire to do so; because, having consulted with the second
captain, Don Juan Perez, and the pilot Don Christoval Revilla,
they insisted I ought not to attempt it, as, if we let go the anchor,
we should not have men enough to get it up, and to attend to the
other operations which would be thereby necessary. Considering
this, and also, that in order to reach the anchorage, I should be
obliged to lower my long boat (the only boat I had) and to man
it with at least fourteen of the crew, as I could not manage with

fewer, and also as it was then late in the day, I resolved to put
out; and at the distance of three leagues I lay to. In the course of
that night, I experienced heavy currents to the south-west, which
made it impossible to enter the bay on the following morning, as
I was far to leeward. These currents, however, convinced me
that a great quantity of water rushed from this bay on the ebb of
the tide.
The two capes which I name in my plan, Cape San Roque and
Cape Frondoso, lie in the angle of 10 degrees of the third
quadrant. They are both faced with red earth and are of little
elevation.
On the 18th I observed Cape Frondoso, with another cape, to
which I gave the name of Cape Falcon, situated in the latitude of
45 degrees 43 minutes, and they lay at an angle of 22 degrees of
the third quadrant, and from the last mentioned cape I traced the
coast running in the angle of 5 degrees of the second quadrant.
This land is mountainous, but not very high, nor so well wooded
as that lying between the latitudes of 48 degrees 30 minutes, and
46 degrees. On sounding I found great differences: at a distance
of seven leagues I got bottom at 84 brazas; and nearer the coast I
sometimes found no bottom; from which I am inclined to
believe there are reefs or shoals on these coasts, which is also
shown by the colour of the water. In some places the coast
presents a beach, in others, it is rocky.
A flat-topped mountain, which I named the Table, will enable
any navigator to know the position of Cape Falcon without
observing it; as it is in the latitude of 45 degrees 28 minutes, and
may be seen at a great distance, being somewhat elevated.
It may be added that the Cape Falcon of Heceta was the bold elevation
fronting the sea, known now as Tillamook Head, while the Table Mountain
was doubtless what we now call Nekahni Mountain, both points especially
the scenes of Indian myth.
Such was the actual discovery of the Columbia River, and as such the
Spaniards justly laid claim to Oregon. Their treaty with the United States in

1819 was the formal conveyance of their claims to us. Nevertheless Heceta
only half discovered the River. It seems very strange that with the all-
important object of two centuries’ search before him, he should so readily
have succumbed to the fear of the powerful outstanding current. But the
Spaniards were not in general the patient and persistent students of the
shores that the English and Americans were. Their charts were in general
worthless. Nevertheless Spain came nearest “making good” of any of the
European powers. In 1779 Bodega and Arteaga sailed far north and sighted
a vast snow peak “higher than Orizaba,” which was doubtless St. Elias. In
the same year Martinez and De Haro established themselves at Nootka.
Subsequent voyages of Bodega, Valdez, and Galiano, and their first
circumnavigation of Vancouver Island (named by them Quadra’s Island,
but, by mutual courtesy and good-will of the British and Spanish rivals,
designated Vancouver’s and Quadra’s Island), gave them a clear title to the
Pacific Coast of North America from latitude 60 degrees to Mexico.
But “that is another story.” What of the Great River? In the very year of the
declaration of American independence, the most elaborate expedition yet
fitted out for western discovery, set forth from England in command of that
Columbus of the eighteenth century, Captain James Cook. After nearly two
years of important movements in the Southern Hemisphere and among the
Pacific Islands, Cook turned to that goal of all nations, the coast of Oregon.
But the same singular fatality which had baffled many of the explorers thus
far, attended this most skilful navigator and best equipped squadron thus far
seen on Pacific waters. For Cook passed and repassed the near vicinity of
both the Straits of Fuca and the Columbia River, but without finding either.
Killed by the treacherous natives of Hawaii in 1778, Cook left a great name,
a more intelligent conception of world geography than was known before,
and greatly strengthened claims by Great Britain to the ownership of pivotal
points of the Pacific. Of all the great English navigators, Cook is perhaps
best entitled to join the grand chorus that sings the Songs of Seven Seas. But
he did not see the Great River of the West. What had become of it? After the
fleeting vision which it accorded to Heceta, it seemed to have gone into
hiding.
But a new set of motives came into play immediately after Cook’s voyage.
The two ships, the Resolution and Discovery, took with them to China a
quantity of furs from Nootka. A few years earlier, as previously stated, the

Russian fur-trade from Avatcha to China had been inaugurated. A great
demand for peltries sprang up at once. A new régime dawned in Chinese
and East India trade. Gold, silver, and jewels had not thus far rewarded the
search of explorers. They were reserved for our later days of need. But the
fur-trade was as good as gold. The North Pacific Coast, already interesting,
assumed a new importance in the eyes of Europeans. The “struggle for
possession” was on. The ships of all nations converged upon the fabled
Strait and River of Oregon. English, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish,
Americans, began in the decade of the eighties to crowd to the land where
the sea-otter, beaver, seal, and many other of the most profitable furs could
be obtained for a trifle. The dangers of trading and the chances of the sea
were great, but the profits of success were yet greater.
The fur-trade began to take the place of the gold hunt as a matter of
international strife. The manner in which our own country, weak and
discordant as its different members were when just emerging from the
Revolutionary War, entered the lists, and by the marvellous allotment of
Fortune or the design of Providence, slipped in between the greater nations
and secured the prize of Oregon, is one of the epics of history, one which
ought to have some native Tasso or Calderon to celebrate its triumph.
Following quickly upon the conclusion of the American War, came a series
of British, French, and Russian voyages, which gradually centred more
particularly about Vancouver Island and Nootka Sound. The British
exceeded the others in numbers and enterprise. Among them we find names
now preserved at many conspicuous points on the northern coast: as
Portlock, Hanna, Dixon, Duncan, and Barclay. The most notable of the
French was La Pérouse, who was best equipped for scientific research of
any one. A number of Russian names appear at that period, most of which
may yet be found upon the maps of Alaska, as Schelikoff, Ismyloff,
Betschareff, Resanoff, Krustenstern, and Baranoff.
But none of them set eyes on the River, and it seemed more mythical than
ever. As a result, however, of their various expeditions, incomplete though
they were, each nation followed the usual practice of claiming everything in
sight, either in sight of the eye or the imagination, and demanded the whole
coast by priority of discovery.

Never did a geographical entity seem so to play the ignis fatuus with the
world as did the River. Thirteen years elapsed from the discovery of the Rio
San Roque by Heceta before any one of the dozens who had meanwhile
passed up and down the coast, looked in again between the Cabo de
Frondoso and the Cabo de San Roque. Then there came on one negative and
two positive discoveries, and the elusive stream was really found never to
be lost again.
The negative discovery was that of Captain John Meares in 1788. Since
England afterwards endeavoured to make the voyages of Meares an
important link in her chain of proof to the ownership of Oregon, it is worthy
of some special attention. It happened on this wise. Meares came first to the
coast of Oregon in 1786, in command of the Nootka to trade for furs for the
East India Company. With the Nootka was the Sea-Otter, in command of
Captain Walter Tipping. Both seem to have been brave and capable seamen.
But disaster followed on their track. For having sailed far up the coast, they
followed the Aleutian Archipelago eastward to Prince William’s Sound.
Separated on the journey, the Nootka reached a safe haven, but her consort
never arrived, nor was she ever heard of more. The Nootka, after an Arctic
winter of distress and after losing a large part of the crew through the
ravages of scurvy, abandoned the trade and returned to China. Discouraged
by the outcome, the East India Company abandoned the American trade and
confined themselves henceforth to India.
But Meares, finding that the Portuguese had special privileges in the fur-
trade and in the harbour of Nootka, entered into an arrangement with some
Portuguese traders whereby he went nominally as supercargo, but really as
captain of the Felice, under the Portuguese flag. With her sailed the
Iphigenia with William Douglas occupying a place similar to that of
Meares. In estimating the subsequent pretensions of Great Britain, the
student of history may well remember that these two mariners, though
Englishmen, were sailing under the flag of Portugal.
Reaching again the coast of Oregon, Meares looked in, June 29, 1788, at the
broad entrance of an extensive strait which he believed to be the mythical
Strait of Juan de Fuca of two centuries earlier, but which he did not pause to
explore. He had resolved to solve the riddle of the Rio San Roque or the
Ensenada de Asuncion or de Heceta, and turned his prow southward. On

July 5th, in latitude 46 degrees 10 minutes, he perceived a deep bay which
he considered at once to be the object of his search. Essaying to enter, he
found the water shoaling with dangerous rapidity and a prodigious easterly
swell breaking on the shore. From the masthead it seemed that the breakers
extended clear across the entrance. With rather curious timidity for a bold
Briton right on the eve of a discovery for which all nations had been
looking, Meares lost courage and hauled out, attaching the name Deception
Bay to the inlet and Cape Disappointment to the northern promontory, the
last a name still officially used.
Meares left as his final conclusion in the matter, the following
memorandum: “We can now assert that there is no such river as that of St.
Roc exists, as laid down in the Spanish charts.” In view of this statement of
the case it would certainly seem that he could not be accepted as a witness
for English discovery, even if the Portuguese flag had not been flying at his
masthead.
After bestowing the name of Lookout upon the great headland christened
Cape Falcon by Heceta and known to us as Tillamook Head, Meares
squared away for Nootka, and there he spent a very profitable season in the
fur-trade.
But into the harbour of Nootka that same year of 1788, there sailed the ship
of destiny, the Columbia Rediviva, in command of John Kendrick. With the
Columbia came the Lady Washington, commanded by Robert Gray. These
were the advance guard of Yankee ships which the energies of our liberated
forefathers were sending forth as an earnest of the coming conquest of
Oregon by the universal Yankee nation.
Gray and Kendrick were engaged in the fur-trade, and their energy and
intelligence made it speedily profitable. It took a long time and a long arm,
sure enough, in that day, to complete the great circuit of the outfitting, the
bartering, the transferring, the return trip, and the final sale;—three years in
all. The ship would be fitted out in Boston or New York with trinkets, axes,
hatchets, and tobacco, and proceed by the Horn to the coast of Oregon,—six
months or sometimes eight. Then up and down the coast, as far as known,
they would trade with natives for the precious furs, making a profit of a
thousand per cent. on the investment. Gray on one occasion got for an axe a

quantity of furs worth $8000. The fur-barter would take another six or eight
months. Then with hold packed with bales of furs, the ship would square
away for Macao or Canton, six or eight months more. In China, the cargo of
furs would go out and a cargo of nankeens, teas, and silks go in, with a
great margin of profit at both ends. Then away again to Boston, there to sell
the proceeds of that three years’ “round-up” of the seas, for probably ten
times the entire cost of outfitting and subsistence. The glory, fascination,
and gain of the ocean were in it, and also its dangers. Of this sufficient
witness is found in vanished ships, murdered crews, storm, scurvy, famine,
and war. But it was a great age. Gray and Kendrick were as good specimens
of their keen, facile, far-sighted countrymen, as Meares and Vancouver were
of the self-opinionated, determined, yet withal manly and thorough Britons.
Among other pressing matters, such as looking out for good fur-trade in
order to recoup the Boston merchants who had put their good money into
the venture, and looking out for the health of their crew, steering clear of the
uncharted reefs and avoiding the treacherous natives, Gray and Kendrick
remembered that they were also good Americans. They must see that the
new Stars and Stripes had their due upon the new coast.
The first voyage of the two Yankee skippers was ended and they set forth
for another round in 1791, but with ships exchanged, Gray commanding the
Columbia on this second voyage. The year 1792 was now come, and it was
a great year in the annals of Oregon, three hundred years from Columbus,
two hundred from Juan de Fuca. The struggle between England and Spain
over conflicting rights at Nootka, which at one time threatened war, had
been settled with a measure of amicability. As a commissioner to represent
Great Britain, Captain George Vancouver was sent out, while Bodega y
Quadra was empowered to act in like capacity for Spain. Spaniards and
Britons alike realised that, whatever the Nootka treaty may have been,
possession was nine points of the law, and both redoubled their efforts to
push discovery, and especially to make the first complete exploration of the
Straits of Fuca and the supposed Great River. There were great names
among the Spaniards in that year, some of which still commemorate some
of the most interesting geographical points, as Quimper, Malaspina,
Fidalgo, Caamano, Elisa, Bustamente, Valdez, and Galiano. A list of British
names now applied to many points, as Vancouver, Puget, Georgia, Baker,

Hood, Rainier, St. Helens, Whidby, Vashon, Townsend, and others, attests
the name-bestowing care of the British commander.
In going to Nootka as British commissioner, Vancouver was under
instructions to make the most careful examination of the coast, especially of
the rivers or any interoceanic channels, and thereby clear up the many
conundrums of the ocean on that shore. With the best ship, the war sloop
Discovery, accompanied by the armed tender Chatham, in command of
Lieutenant W. R. Broughton, and with the best crew and best general
equipment yet seen on the coast, it would have been expected that the
doughty Briton would have found all the important places yet unfound. That
the Americans beat him in finding the River and that the Spaniards beat him
in the race through the Straits and around Vancouver Island, may be
regarded as due partly to a little British obstinacy at a critical time, but
mainly due to the appointment of the Fates.
On April 27, 1792, Vancouver passed a “conspicuous point of land
composed of a cluster of hummocks, moderately high and projecting into
the sea.” This cape was in latitude 46 degrees 19 minutes, and Vancouver
decided that here were doubtless the Cape Disappointment and Deception
Bay of Meares. In spite of the significant fact that the sea here changed its
colour, the British commander was so prepossessed with the idea that
Meares must have decided correctly the nature of the entrance (for how was
it possible for an English sailor to be wrong and a Spaniard right?) that he
decided that the opening was not worthy of more attention and passed on up
the coast. So the English lost their second great chance of being first to
enter the River.
Two days later the lookout reported a sail, and as the ships drew together,
the newcomer was seen to be flying the Stars and Stripes. It was the
Columbia Rediviva, Captain Robert Gray, of Boston. In response to
Vancouver’s rather patronising queries, the Yankee skipper gave a summary
of his log for some months past. Among other things he stated that he had
passed what seemed to be a powerful river in latitude 46 degrees 10
minutes, which for nine days he had tried in vain to enter, being repelled by
the strength of the current. He now proposed returning to that point and
renewing his effort. Vancouver declined to reconsider his previous decision
that there could be no large river, and passed on to make his very elaborate

exploration of the Straits of Fuca and their connected waters, and to
discover to his great chagrin, that the Spaniards had forestalled him in point
of time.
The vessels parted. Gray sailed south and on May 10, 1792, paused abreast
of the same reflex of water where before for nine days he had tried vainly to
enter. The morning of the 11th dawned clear and favourable, light wind,
gentle sea, a broad, clear channel, plainly of sufficient depth. The time was
now come. The man and the occasion met. Gray seems from the first to
have been ready to take some chances for the sake of some great success.
He always hugged the shore closely enough to be on intimate terms with it.
And he was ready boldly to seize and use favouring circumstances. So, as
laconically stated in his log-book, he ran in with all sail set, and at ten
o’clock found himself in a large river of fresh water, at a point about twenty
miles from the ocean.
The geographical Sphinx was answered. Gray was its Œdipus, though
unlike the ancient Theban myth there was no need that either the Sphinx of
the Oregon coast or its discoverer perish. The River recognised and
welcomed its master.
The next day the Columbia moved fifteen miles up the stream. Finding that
he was out of the channel, Gray stopped further progress and turned again
seaward. Natives, apparently friendly disposed, thronged in canoes round
the ship, and a large quantity of furs was secured.
The River already bore many names, but Gray added another, and it was the
one that has remained, the name of his good ship Columbia. Upon the
southern cape he bestowed the name of Adams, and upon the northern, the
name Hancock. These also remain.
The great exploit was completed. The long sought River of the West was
found, and by an American. The path of destiny for the new Republic of the
West was made secure. Without Oregon we probably would not have
acquired California, and without a Pacific Coast, the United States would
inevitably have been but a second-class power, the prey to European
intrigue. The vast importance of the issue then becomes clear. Gray’s happy
voyage, that Yankee foresight and confidence in his seamanship and
intuitive suiting of times and conditions to results which marks the vital

turning points of history, differentiate Gray’s discovery from all others upon
our north-west coast.
As we view the matter now, a century and more later, we can see that our
national destiny, and especially the vast part that we now seem at the point
of taking in world interests through the commerce of the Pacific, hung in
the balance to a certain extent upon the stubborn adherence by Vancouver,
the Briton, to the preconceived opinion that there was no important river at
the point designated by his Spanish predecessor, and the contrasted
readiness of the American Gray to embrace boldly the chances of some
great discovery. It is true that the “Oregon Question” was not to be settled
for several decades. Much diplomacy and contention, almost to the verge of
war, were yet to come, but Gray’s fortunate dash, “with all sail set, in
between the breakers to a large river of fresh water,” gave our nation a lead
in the ultimate adjustment of the case, which we never lost.
We have said that there was one negative discovery—that of Meares—and
two positive ones. Gray’s was one of the two, and that of Broughton, in
command of the Chatham accompanying Vancouver, was the other.
On the 20th of May, the Columbia Rediviva—a most auspicious name—
bade adieu to the scene of her glory, and with the Stars and Stripes floating
in triumph at her mizzen-mast, turned northward. Again the American
captain encountered Vancouver and narrated to him his discovery of the
Columbia. With deep chagrin at his own failure in the two most important
objects of discovery in his voyage, the British commander directed
Broughton to return to latitude 46 degrees 10 minutes, enter the river, and
proceed as far up as time allowed.
Accordingly, on October 21st, the companion ships parted at the mouth of
the River, the Discovery proceeding to Monterey, while the Chatham
crossed the bar, described by Broughton as very bad, and endeavoured to
ascend the bay that stretched out beautiful and broad before them. But
finding the channel intricate and soundings variable, the lieutenant deemed
it advisable to leave the ship at a point which must have been about twenty
miles from the ocean, and to proceed thence in the cutter.
There is one thing observable in Vancouver’s account of this expedition of
Broughton, and that is extreme solicitude to establish these two

propositions:—first, that the lower part of the Columbia is a bay and that its
true mouth is at a point above that reached by Gray; and second, that the
River is much smaller than it really is. It is hard to reconcile the language
used in Broughton’s report as given by Vancouver with the supposition of
candour and honesty. For while it is true that the lower part of the River is
of bay-like expanse from four to nine miles in width, yet it is entirely fresh
and has all river characteristics. One of the points especially made by Gray
was that he filled his casks with fresh water. Moreover, the bar is entirely at
the ocean limit. So completely does the River debouch into the Ocean, in
fact, that in the great flood of 1894 the clams were killed on the ocean
beaches for a distance of several miles on either side of the outer headlands
through the freshening of the sea.
As to the size of the River, Broughton gives its width repeatedly as half a
mile or a quarter of a mile, whereas it is at almost no point below the
Cascades less than a mile in width, and a mile and a half is more usual.
Broughton expresses the conviction that it can never be used for navigation
by vessels of any size. In view of the vast commerce now constantly
passing in and out, the absurdity of that idea is and has been for years
sufficiently exhibited. The animus of the British explorers is obvious. By
showing that the mouth of the River was really an inlet of the sea, they
hoped to lay a claim to British occupancy as against Gray’s discovery, and
by belittling the size of the River they hoped to save their own credit with
the British Admiralty for having lost so great a chance for first occupation.
Broughton ascended the River to a point near the modern town of
Washougal. He bestowed British names after the general fashion, as Mt.
Hood, Cape George, Vancouver Point, Puget’s Island, Young’s Bay,
Menzies’ Island, and Whidby’s River. With true British assurance, he felt
that he had “every reason to believe that the subjects of no other civilised
nation or state had ever entered this river before; in this opinion he was
confirmed by Mr. Gray’s sketch, in which it does not appear that Mr. Gray
either saw or was ever within five leagues of its entrance.” Therefore he
“took possession of the river, and the country in its vicinity, in His Britannic
Majesty’s name.”
In view of all the circumstances of Gray’s discovery, and his impartation of
it to the British, this language of Vancouver has a coolness, as John Fiske

remarks, which would be very refreshing on a hot day.
On November 10th, the Chatham crossed the bar outward bound for
Monterey to join the Discovery.
Such, in rapid view, were the essential facts in the long and curiously
complicated finding of our River. We see that various nations bore each a
part. We see the foundation of the subsequent contention between Great
Britain and the United States.

CHAPTER IV

The First Steps across the Wilderness in Search of the
River

Jefferson and Ledyard—Verendrye—
Montcachabe, the Indian—The Indians
—The Canadians—Results of the
Louisiana Purchase—Fitting out the
Lewis and Clark Expedition—The
Winter with the Mandans—Crossing of
the Great Divide—Meeting of
Sacajawea and Cameahwait—Descent
from the Mountains to the Clearwater
and Kimooenim—Canoe Journey Down
the Snake and Columbia—First Sight of
Mt. Hood—Clark in the Rôle of a
Magician—The Timm or Great Falls—
The Sunken Forests—First Appearances
of the Tide—The Winter of 1805-06 at
Fort Clatsop—The Beginning of the
Return Trip—Faithfulness of the Indians
—Reception of Lewis and Clark in the
States—The Hunt Expedition—The
Voyageurs and Trappers—Slow
Progress to the Snake River—Disasters
and Distress along the “Accursed Mad
River”—Starvation—New Year’s Day
of 1812—A Respite from Suffering in
the Umatilla—First Sight of the
Columbia and the Mid-winter Descent
to Astoria—Melancholy Lot of Crooks
and Day—Results of the Hunt
Expedition.

T HE Pacific North-west was discovered both by land and by sea. To
Thomas Jefferson, the great apostle of Democracy, is due the gathering
of American interests in the far West, and the opening of the road by which
American sovereignty was to reach the Pacific. His great mind outran that
of the ordinary statesman of his time, and, with what seems at first sight the

strangest inconsistency in our political history, he was the State-rights
theorist and at the same time the creator of nationality beyond any other one
of our early statesmen. Away back in 1786, Jefferson met John Ledyard,
one of Cook’s associates in his great voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and
grasped from the eager and energetic Yankee sailor, the idea of American
destiny on the Pacific Coast. The fertile mind of Jefferson may justly be
considered as the fountain of American exploration up the Missouri, across
the crest of the Shining Mountains, as they then called the Rockies, and
down the Columbia to the Pacific. Although Jefferson never himself took
any steps beyond the Alleghanies, he was the inspiration of all the
Americans who did take those steps.
Since we are speaking of first steps across the wilderness we should not
forget that those of other nationalities than ours first crossed the American
continent. The honour of the pioneer expedition to the crest of the Rocky
Mountains belongs to the Frenchman, Verendrye. In 1773 he set forth from
Montreal for the Rocky Mountains, and made many important explorations.
His party is said to have reached the vicinity of the site of Helena, but never
saw the sunset side of the Great Divide.
We are told by the interesting French writer, La Page, that the first man to
proceed across the continent to the shores of the Pacific was a Yazoo Indian,
Montcachabe or Montcacht Ape by name. According to the story, his two-
year journey across the great wilderness through every species of peril and
hardship, savage beasts and forbidding mountains and deserts, hostile
Indians often barring his progress for many days, was one of the most
remarkable explorations ever made by man. This Yazoo Indian with the
long name was a veritable Columbus in the nature of his achievements. But
results for the world could hardly follow his enterprise.
The first traveller to lead a party of civilised men through the Shining, or
the Stony Mountains, finally known as Rocky Mountains, to the Pacific
Ocean, was Alexander Mackenzie, a canny Scotchman, leading a party of
Scotch and French Canadian explorers. In 1793 he reached the Pacific
Coast at the point of 52 degrees 24 minutes 48 seconds north latitude. His
inscription upon a rock with letters of vermilion and grease, were read
many years afterwards: “Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada by land, July
22, 1793.”

But the explorations of Canadians were too far north to come within the
scope of the Pacific North-west of our day. We must therefore take up the
American expeditions which proceeded from the master mind of Jefferson.
The first of these was the expedition of Lewis and Clark. This expedition
did more to broaden the American mind and to fix our national destiny than
any similar event in our whole history.
As soon as Jefferson was inaugurated president, he had urged upon
Congress the fitting out of an expedition “to explore the Missouri River and
such principal streams of it as, by its course of communication with the
waters of the Pacific Ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado, or
any other river, may offer the most direct and practical water
communication across the continent, for the purposes of commerce.”
But before anything had actually been accomplished in the way of
exploration, that vast and important event, the Louisiana Purchase, had been
effected. The significance of this event was but little understood at the time,
even by statesmen, but Jefferson realised that a great thing had been
accomplished towards the development of the nation. His enthusiasm and
hopefulness spread to Congress and to the leaders of opinion throughout the
land. A like enthusiasm soon possessed the mass of population, and
emigration westward began. Already the older West was teeming with that
race of pioneers which has made up the life and the grandeur of the
nineteenth century. The American hive began to swarm. “Out West” began
to mean something more than Ohio and Kentucky. The distant sources of
the Missouri and the heights of the Shining Mountains, with all the fantastic
tales that had been told of them, were drawing our grandfathers farther and
farther from the old colonial America of the eastern coast, and were
beginning to modify the whole course of American history. The atmosphere
of boundless expectation gathered over farm and town in the older States
and the proposed expedition of Lewis and Clark fascinated the people as
much as the voyage of Columbus fascinated the Spain of his day.
And what manner of men were in charge of this expedition, thus filled with
both interest and peril? Meriwether Lewis was the leader of the party. He
was a captain in the U. S. Army who was well known to Jefferson and who
had been selected by him as possessed of the endurance, boldness, and
energy which made him the fittest man within Jefferson’s knowledge for the

duties of commander. His whole life, from his boyhood days in Virginia,
had been one of bold adventure. It is related that at the tender age of eight,
he was already illustrious for successful midnight forays upon the coon and
possum. He had not received a scientific education, but immediately upon
receiving the appointment of commander of the expedition, he entered with
great energy upon the acquisition of knowledge along geographical lines
which would best fit him for preserving an accurate record of his journey.
William Clark, the lieutenant of the expedition, was also a United States
officer, a man of very good judgment, boldness, and skill in organising his
work, and readiness in meeting every kind of emergency. The party was
made up of fourteen United States regular soldiers, nine Kentucky
volunteers, two French voyageurs, a hunter, an interpreter and a negro
servant. The soldiers were offered the munificent bounty of retirement upon
full pay, with a grant of land. By Jefferson’s directions, the party were
encouraged to keep complete records of all they saw and did. They carried
out the instruction so fully that seven journals besides those of Lewis and
Clark themselves, were carefully kept, and in them a record was made of
every important, as well as unimportant, discovery, even down to the
ingredients of their meals and their doses of medicine. It is safe to say that
no expedition was ever more fully or accurately reported. Although not a
single one of the party possessed literary attainments, there is nevertheless a
singular charm about the combined record which has been recognised to
this day by repeated editions of the work. It was well understood that the
success of the expedition depended largely upon making friends with the
Indians, and the explorers were therefore completely fitted out with beads,
mirrors, knives, and all manner of trinkets.
The summer of 1804 was spent in an easy and uneventful journey of five
months up the Missouri to the country of the Mandan Indians, in what is
now Dakota. There they determined to winter. The winter was devoted to
making the acquaintance of Indians and to collecting botanical and
zoölogical specimens, of which they sent President Jefferson a large amount
by a portion of the party which now left them and descended the River.
And, while speaking of their relations to Indians, it is very interesting to
note the attitude Jefferson instructed them to take in respect to the native
tribes. He insisted upon a policy of peace and good-will toward all the
tribes upon the route. It is observable that Jefferson refers in a most

considerate and friendly manner to the Indians, and instructs the explorers
to arrange, if possible, to have some of the more important chiefs induced to
come back with the explorers to the city of Washington. He also points out
the desirability of urging any bright young Indians to receive such arts as
might be useful to them when in contact with the white men. Jefferson even
goes so far as to advise the explorers to take along vaccine matter that the
Indians might be instructed in the advantages of vaccination. A number of
medallion medals were made that were intended to be given as presents to
Indian chiefs, the inscription of which was “Peace and Friendship,” with the
design of clasped hands. These medals, it may be remarked, seem to have
been prized by the Indians as among their greatest treasures. Several of
them have been found in Indian graves; one even in a grave of the Nez
Percé Indians in Idaho.
While among the Mandans, the expedition was joined by the most attractive
personage in it, that is to say, Sacajawea. This young Indian woman, the
only woman in the expedition, seems to have furnished the picturesque
element in the composition of the party, and she has in later days become
the subject of great interest on the part of students of Pacific Coast history.

Mt. Adams from the South.
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

On April 7th, everything was in readiness for resuming their journey up the
River. The explorers embarked again in a squadron of six canoes and two
pirogues.
On the twelfth day of August, an advance party of the explorers crossed the
Great Divide of the Rocky Mountains, the birthplace of mighty rivers.
Descending the western slope, they found themselves in the country of the
Shoshone Indians. Captain Lewis was leading this advance expedition, and,
as he neared the highest point of the pass, he realised the significance of the
transition from the waters of the Missouri to those of the Columbia. A
quotation from his narrative at this most interesting point of the journey
gives the reader a better conception than any description could, of the
feelings of the explorers:
The road was still plain, and as it led directly toward the
mountains, the stream gradually became smaller, till after their
advancing two miles further, it had so greatly diminished in
width that one of the men in a fit of enthusiasm, with one foot
on each side of the rivulet, thanked God that he had lived to
bestride the Missouri. As they proceeded, their hope of seeing
the waters of the Columbia rose to almost painful anxiety; when
at the distance of four miles from the last abrupt turn of the
stream, they reached a small gap formed by the high mountains
which recede on either side, leaving room for the Indian road.
From the foot of one of the lowest of these mountains, which
arises with a gentle ascent of about half a mile, issued the
remotest water of the Missouri. They had now reached the
hidden sources of that river, which had never before been seen
by civilised man; and as they quenched their thirst at the chaste
and icy fountain,—as they sat down by the brink of that little
rivulet, which yielded its distant and modest tribute to the parent
ocean,—they felt themselves rewarded for all their labours and
difficulties. They left reluctantly this interesting spot, and

pursuing the Indian road through the interval of the hills, arrived
at the top of a ridge from which they saw high mountains,
partially covered with snow, still to the west of them. The ridge
on which they stood formed the dividing line between the waters
of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. They found the descent
much steeper than on the eastern side, and at the distance of
three-quarters of a mile, reached a handsome, bold creek of
cold, clear water running to the westward. They stopped to taste
for the first time the waters of the Columbia.
The party was now upon the western slope of the Great Divide, in the
vicinity of the present Fort Lemhi in Eastern Idaho. They supposed that
they were almost to the Pacific, not realising that a thousand miles of
difficult and dangerous travel and more than two months of time still
separated them from their wished-for goal. The journey, in fact, from the
springs of the Missouri to the navigable waters of the Columbia, proved to
be the most critical of the whole series.
Soon after passing the crest of the mountains, the party encountered a band
of sixty Indians of the Shoshone tribe, coming to meet them at full speed,
upon fine horses, and armed for battle. Captain Lewis, who always showed
great discretion with Indians, took the Stars and Stripes in his hand, and
advanced alone to meet the party. As soon as the Indians perceived that he
was a white man, they showed signs of great rejoicing, and the three leaders
of the war-party, dismounting, embraced the American captain with great
exuberance, shouting words which he afterwards discovered meant, “We
are rejoiced! We are rejoiced!” The valiant captain, however, was much
more pleased with the hearty good-will of their intentions than in the
manner of its expression, inasmuch as they had transferred a good portion
of the war paint from their own faces to his. Lewis now brought up his
companions and entered upon a long and friendly conference with the chief
of the party, whose name was Cameahwait. Captain Lewis, as the
representative of the great American nation, set forth to the eager listeners
about him, a glowing report as to the benevolence of the Great Father at
Washington, and his desire that his brothers of the West should come into
friendly relations with him and trade their furs for the beads and blankets
and knives which the Indians so highly prize. He also explained to them
that they would receive from his government guns and ammunition which

would enable them to cope with the dreaded Sioux or the pitiless Blackfeet.
Captain Lewis also greatly aroused the curiosity of these Indians by
indicating to them that he had with him a woman of their tribe, and also a
man who was perfectly black and yet not painted. He now made a
proposition to Cameahwait to go back with him and his companions to the
forks of the Missouri where they had left the main party with their goods
and boats. Cameahwait very gladly agreed to do this and also to provide
them with horses for the journey westward to the navigable waters of the
Columbia.

Capt. Robert Gray.

The Columbia Rediviva.

After a journey of several days upon the back trail, the party found
themselves again at the forks of the Missouri, but, somewhat to their
surprise and consternation, the main party was not there. The Indians at first
were very much excited, and, believing that they had been deceived and
that the white men were enticing them to destruction, they were at the point
of wreaking vengeance upon them. But with great tact and boldness, Lewis
gave the chief his gun and ammunition, telling him that if it proved that he
had been a deceiver, they might instantly kill him. Reassured, the Indians
proceeded onward and in a short time they could descry the boats, making
their way slowly up the impetuous stream toward a bold promontory where
the Indians were stationed. In the bow of the foremost boat was seated

Sacajawea, clad in her bright red blanket, and gazing eagerly at the group of
Indians, thinking it possible that they might be of her own tribe. As the boat
approached the band, the keen-sighted little Indian woman soon perceived
that these people were indeed of her own Shoshone tribe. Quickly
disembarking, she made her way to them, when suddenly her eyes fell upon
the chief, Cameahwait. Then to the astonishment of the white men who
were with her, she broke forth suddenly into a torrent of tears which were
soon changed into joyful smiles as the chief, with almost as much emotion
as herself, rushed forward to embrace her. She then explained to Captain
Lewis that Cameahwait was her own brother, whom she had not seen since,
as a little girl, she had been seized by the Mandans and carried into
captivity.
Of course there was now the kindliest feeling between the party of
explorers and the Indians. They found everything that they needed, horses,
provisions, and guides, placed at their disposal. They were at that time, as
would be seen by an inspection of the map, at the head waters of Salmon
River. They hoped that they might find a route down that powerful stream
to navigable water. But the Indians assured them that the river was white
with foam for many miles and disappeared in a chain of terrific snowy
mountains. It became necessary, therefore, to find a more northerly route,
and on the last day of August, with twenty-nine horses, having bidden a
hearty good-bye to the hospitable Shoshones, they turned north-westward
and soon became entangled in the savage ridges and defiles, already spotted
with snow, of the Bitter Root Mountains.
They were at this time among some of the upper branches of the second
largest tributary of the Columbia, named by them Clark’s Fork, though at
the present time more commonly known by the more rhythmic title of Pend
Oreille. After several days of the most difficult, and indeed dangerous,
journeying of their entire trip, they abandoned the northern route, turned
southward, and soon reached the wild and beautiful stream which they
called the Kooskooskie, commonly known to modern times as the
Clearwater, one of the finest of all the fine rivers of Idaho, the “Gem of the
Mountains.”
But they were not yet by any means clear of danger. The country still
frowned on them with the same forbidding crags, and the same blinding

snow storms as before. They were approaching the starvation point. The
craggy precipices were marked with almost daily accidents to men and
beasts. Their only food was the flesh of their precious horses. Under these
harassing circumstances, it was decided that the wisest thing was for
Captain Clark to take six of his best men and press rapidly forward in
search of game and a more favourable country. After a hard journey of
twenty miles, he found himself upon the crest of a towering cliff, from
which stretched in front a vast open plain. This was the great plain, now
covered with wheat-fields and orchards, lying east and north of the present
city of Lewiston, Idaho. Having made their way down the declivities of the
Bitter Root Mountains to the prairie, where they found a climate that
seemed almost tropical after the bitter cold of the high mountains, the
advance guard camped and waited for the main party to come up.
Rejoicing at their release from the distressing conditions of their passage of
the Bitter Root Mountains, they passed onward to a beautiful mountain-
enclosed valley, which must have been in the near vicinity of what is known
as the Kamiah Valley of the present time. Here they found themselves with
a large body of Indians who became known subsequently as the Nez Percés.
These Indians appeared to be the most honest, intelligent, and attractive
they had yet met,—eager to assist them, kind and helpful, although shrewd
and business-like in their trading.
The Nez Percés imparted to them the joyful news that the Great River was
not far distant. Seeing the Clearwater to be a fine, navigable stream, the
explorers determined to abandon the weary land journey and once more
commit their fortunes to the waters. They left their horses with the Nez
Percés, asking that they should meet them at that point in the following
spring when they expected to be on their return trip. The scrupulous fidelity
with which the Nez Percés carried out their trust is some evidence of the
oft-made assertion that the treachery characteristic of the Indians was
learned afterwards from the whites.
With five large and well-filled canoes, and with a good supply of eatables
and all the other necessaries of life, the explorers now cast themselves upon
the clear, swift current of the Kooskooskie, and on the 10th of October
reached that striking and interesting place where the beautiful modern town
of Lewiston is located, at the junction of the Clearwater and the Snake. The

turbid, angry, sullen Snake, so striking a contrast with the lesser stream,
received from the explorers the name of Kimooenim, its Indian name.
Subsequently they christened it Lewis’s Fork, but the still less attractive
name of Snake is the one by which it is universally known.
The journey of a hundred and twenty miles from the junction of the
Clearwater and the Snake to the junction of the latter stream with the
mighty Columbia, seems to have been a calm and uneventful journey,
though the explorers record every manner of event, whether important or
unimportant. Knowledge of their approach seems to have reached the
Indian world, and when on October 16th they reached the point where the
modern city of Pasco is located, they were met by a regular procession of
two hundred Indians. The two great rivers were then at their lowest point in
the year, and they found by measurement that the Columbia was 960 yards
in width and the Snake, 575 yards. In the glimmering haze of the pleasant
October day they noted how the vast, bare prairie stretched southward until
it was broken by the rounded summits of the Blue Mountains. To their
astonishment, they found that the Sohulks, who lived at the junction of the
rivers, so differed from other Indians that the men were content with one
wife and that they would actually assist her in the drudgery of the family
life. After several days spent in rest and getting fish, which seemed to
throng the river in almost countless numbers, they resumed their journey
upon the magnificent flood of the Columbia. Soon after passing what we
now call the Umatilla Highland, they caught their first glimpse, clear-cut
against the horizon of the south-west, of the bold cone of Mt. Hood,
glistening with its eternal snows. Landing upon the broad prairie near where
Umatilla is now located, Captain Clark shot a crane and a duck. He then
perceived a group of Indians who were almost paralysed with terror and yet
able to make their way with considerable expedition to a little group of
tepees. Having entered one of these, Captain Clark discovered thirty-two
Indians, men, women, and children, all of whom seemed to be in the
greatest terror, wailing and wringing their hands. Endeavouring by kind
looks and gestures to soothe their perturbation, Captain Clark held up a
burning glass to catch a stray sunbeam with which to light his pipe.
Whereupon the consternation of the Indians was redoubled, to be soothed
only by the arrival of the two Indian guides who were accompanying the
party. The terrified Indians explained to the guides that they knew that

Captain Clark must have some bad medicine about him, for he had dropped
out of the sky with a dead crane and a duck, accompanied by a terrible
noise.

Mt. Hood from Lost Lake.
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

The Indians being now convinced that he was a mortal man, and, moreover,
having heard the sound of the violin which the negro servant carried with
him, became so enamoured with the strangers that they stayed up with them
all night, and in the morning collected by hundreds to bid them good-bye.
The Indians had now given them to understand that in a short time they
would reach the place which they knew as “Timm.” This seems to have
been an Indian word for falls. It still appears in the name Tumwater Falls
applied to the falls at Celilo on the Columbia. A weird, savage place this
proved to be; crags of basalt, thrust through the soil, like clenched hands,

seemed almost to grasp the rushing river. Making several portages, the
voyagers reached that extraordinary place now called The Dalles, or the
“big chute,” where all the waters of the Columbia are squeezed into a crack
only a hundred and fifty feet in width. The River, in fact, is “turned on
edge.” The explorers, finding the shore so rough that it was difficult to carry
their boats over, steered boldly through that witch’s caldron. Though they
must have been carried with frightful rapidity through the boiling stream,
they reached the end of the cataract without accident. At this point they
began to be aware of the fact that they were reaching the sphere of the white
traders from the ocean, for they began to see blankets, axes, brass kettles,
and other articles of civilised manufacture. The Indians, too, were more
saucy, suspicious, and treacherous than those of the upper country.
Being launched upon the calm, deep flood of the River below The Dalles,
they observed the phenomenon of the submerged forest, which at a low
state of water is still conspicuous. They correctly inferred that this indicated
a damming up of the River at some recent time. They thought indeed that it
could not have been more than twenty years previous. We know, however,
that submerged trees or piles, as indicated by remains of old Roman
wharves in Britain, may remain intact for hundreds of years. This place on
the Columbia is, however, one of the most interesting of its many
interesting phenomena. It is evident that within very recent times,
geologically speaking, there was a prodigious rock-slide from the
mountains which closed the River, producing the cataract of the Cascades
and raising the River above, some forty feet.
Here the explorers had their last portage. On the second day of November
they reached the foot of the Cascades and perceived the movement of the
tide, which made it plain to them that the ocean was near at hand. Yet, in
reality, it was much farther than they thought, for the majestic lower River
extends one hundred and sixty miles from the foot of the last cataract to the
Pacific. It is interesting to notice comments made by the explorers upon the
green and fertile islands at the lower end of the Cascades, and that spired
and turreted volcanic cliff which they called Beacon Rock, but which we
know now as Castle Rock.
The rest of the journey of Lewis and Clark was a calm floating down the
tranquil flood of the lower Columbia in the midst of the fog and clouds

which at that season of the year generally embrace all objects. On
November 7th the mist suddenly broke away before them, the bold
mountainous shores vanished in front, and, through the parted headlands,
they looked forth into the expanse of the ocean.

Eliot Glacier, Mt. Hood.
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Their journey was now ended. They had demonstrated the possibility of
crossing the continent and of linking together the waters of the Missouri
and the Columbia.
The winter of 1805-06 was spent in log buildings at a point named by the
explorers, Fort Clatsop, situated on the Lewis and Clark River at the south
side of the Columbia a few miles from the present site of Astoria. The

location of this fort has been identified in modern times, as has also the
location of the salt cairn, upon what is now known as the Seaside Beach,
commemorated by an inscription.
One of the interesting little human touches in the narrative of Captain Lewis
describes the casting of a whale upon Clatsop Beach and the journey of the
party to see the great marine curiosity, as well as to secure some of its fat
and blubber. The Indian woman, Sacajawea, was to be left behind to keep
camp while they were all at the beach, but she put up the earnest plea that
inasmuch as she had never seen any such curiosity as the “big fish,” and as
she had journeyed all those weary miles from the country of the Mandans, it
seemed hard that she should be denied the privilege of satisfying her eyes
with a view of the whale. Lewis remarks that the request of the poor woman
seemed so reasonable that they at once fixed up camp in such manner that it
could be left, and took her with them, to her intense satisfaction.
After four months spent in the fogs and mists of the coast, and without
seeing any of the ships which the Indians said were accustomed to come in
considerable numbers during the spring and summer, the party turned their
faces homeward on the 23d of March, 1806. The commander posted upon
the fort a notice which read as follows:
The object of this last is that through the medium of some
civilised person who may see the same, it may be made known
to the world that the party consisting of the persons whose
names are hereunto annexed and who were sent out by the
Government of the United States to explore the interior of the
continent of North America, did penetrate the same by way of
the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the discharge of the latter
into the Pacific Ocean, at which they arrived on the 14th day of
November, 1805, and departed on their return to the United
States by the same route by which they had come.
They also gave to the chiefs of the Clatsops and Chinooks certificates, to
which they attached great importance and which were afterwards exhibited
to other explorers, setting forth the just and hospitable treatment which
these Indians had accorded the party.

The return from Fort Clatsop to the Missouri was in the main a pleasant and
successful journey without extraordinary event, except the fact that upon
their return they discovered the Willamette River, which, strange to say, had
eluded their observation on their journey down the River in November. The
journal contains the somewhat quaint statement that the chief cultivable
region which they discovered in Oregon was Wapatoo Island, now known
as Sauvie’s Island, at the mouth of the Willamette. They express the
conviction that that fertile tract of country and the region adjoining might
sometime support a population of fifty thousand people. They seem to
regard this as an extraordinary prophecy of prosperity. Inasmuch as there
are already over four times that number of people in the city of Portland, it
would seem that Lewis and Clark were hardly “boomers” in the modern
sense of the word.
One interesting thing in connection with the Lewis and Clark expedition
receives special emphasis from them in the account of their return journey,
and that is, the faithfulness, honesty, and devotion of the Indians when
entrusted with any charge, as the care of horses or canoes. This character of
the Indians was so marked that one can hardly avoid the conclusion that the
subsequent troubles with the Indians were due very largely to abuse by the
whites.
No better summary can be given of the scope of this historic journey than
that by Captain Lewis himself in his journal. He says:
The road by which we went out by way of the Missouri to its
head is three thousand ninety-six miles; thence by land by way
of Lewis River over to Clark’s River and down that to the
entrance of Traveller’s Rest Creek, where all the roads from
different routes meet; thence across the rugged part of the Rocky
Mountains to the navigable waters of the Columbia, three
hundred and ninety-eight miles, thence down the river six
hundred and forty miles to the Pacific Ocean, making a total
distance of four thousand one hundred and thirty-four miles. On
our return in 1806 we reduced the distance from the Mississippi
to the Pacific Ocean to three thousand five hundred and fifty-
five miles.

The safe return of the explorers to their homes created a sensation
throughout the United States and the world. Leaders and men were suitably
rewarded. Though the expedition was not marked by many remarkable
adventures or dramatic events, and though the narration given by the
explorers is of a plain and simple kind with no attempt at literary
ornamentation, yet occurring, as the expedition did, at such a peculiar
juncture in our history, and having such an effect to bridge the chasm
between the old time and the new, this Lewis and Clark expedition has
continued to receive, and justly, more attention than any other journey in
our history. President Jefferson, paying a tribute to Captain Lewis in 1813,
expressed himself thus:
Never did a similar event excite more joy throughout the United
States; the humblest of its citizens have taken a lively interest in
the issue of this journey and looked with impatience for the
information it would furnish. Nothing short of the official
journals of this extraordinary and interesting journey will exhibit
the importance of the service, the courage, devotion, zeal, and
perseverance, under circumstances calculated to discourage,
which animated this little band of heroes, throughout the long
dangerous, and tedious travel.
The expedition of Lewis and Clark may justly be considered as constituting
the first steps across the wilderness. The breadth of the American continent
was now known. The general relations of its rivers and mountain systems
and prairies were understood. Something of its prodigality of resources
became set forth to the world. A dim consciousness of the connection of this
vast Pacific domain with the progress of American destiny appeared to our
grandfathers. And although the wilderness traversed by this complete
expedition did not come into possession of the United States for many
years, yet it might well be said that our subsequent acquirement of it was
due to the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Of the many remarkable explorations which followed, with all of their
adventure and tragedy, we cannot here speak. For several years all the
expeditions to the far West were the outgrowth of the fur-trade. Most
remarkable of these early journeys was that of the Hunt party which was the
land division of the great Astor movement to establish the Pacific Fur

Company. That company was established by John Jacob Astor of New York
for the purpose of making a bold and far-reaching attempt to control the fur-
trade of the Pacific Coast in the interests of the United States. While the sea
division was upon its journey around Cape Horn, the land division was in
process of organisation at St. Louis. Wilson Price Hunt, the commander of
this division, was the second partner in the Astor company. He had been
merchandising for some years at St. Louis, and had become impressed with
the financial profits of the fur-trade as well as with the vast possibilities of
American development on the continent. Hunt was a fine type of the
pioneer promoter of that age. Brave, humane, cheerful, and resolute, he
appears to us as the very flower of the adventurous Argonauts who were
searching for the seal and beaver fleeces of the far West.
With Hunt were associated four other partners of the expedition, Crooks,
McKenzie, Miller, and McCellan. Accompanying the party were two
English naturalists, Bradbury and Nuttall, who did the first scientific study
of the Rocky Mountain region. There were forty Canadian voyageurs whose
duties consisted of rowing, transporting, cooking, and general drudgery.
The remaining twelve of the party consisted of a group of American hunters
and trappers, the leader of whom was a Virginian named John Day. The
company was in all respects fitted out most bountifully.
There were at that time two great classes of trappers. The first and most
numerous were the Canadian voyageurs. These were mainly of French
descent, many of them being half-breeds. Almost amphibious by nature and
training, gay and amiable in disposition, with true French vivacity and
ingenuity, gliding over every harsh experience with laugh and song,
possessed of quick sympathies and humane instincts which enabled them to
readily find the best side of the Indians,—these French voyageurs
constituted a most interesting as well as indispensable class in the trapper’s
business.
The free trappers were an entirely different class of men. They were usually
American by birth, Virginia and Kentucky being the homes of most of
them. Patient and indefatigable in their work of trapping, yet, when on their
annual trip to the towns, given to wild dissipation and savage revellings,
indifferent to sympathy or company, harsh and cruel to the Indians, bold
and overbearing, with blood always in their eyes, thunder in their voices,

and guns in their hands, yet underneath all of their harsh exterior having
noble hearts, could they but be reached, these now vanished trappers have
gone to a place in history alongside of the old Spartans and the followers of
Pizarro and Cortez in Spanish conquest.
Of the many adventures of the Hunt party on the journey up the Missouri,
we cannot speak. For some reason, although taking a more direct route than
did Lewis and Clark, and having, to all appearance, a better equipped party,
they did not make so good time. Guided by Indians, they crossed chain after
chain of mountains, supposing each to be the summit, only to find another
yet to succeed. At last on the 15th of September, they stood upon a lofty
eminence over which they could gaze both eastward and westward.
Scanning attentively the western horizon, the guide pointed out three
shining peaks, whose bases, he told them, were touched by a tributary of the
Columbia River. These peaks are now known as the Three Tetons.
And now the party set forth upon the long descent of the western slope,
passing mountain after mountain and stream after stream, some of the way
in boats which the voyageurs made from the green timber of the forests, and
much of the way being obliged to carry their effects around cataracts and
rapids, and thus losing much time. Nevertheless, they found one long
stretch of over a hundred miles upon the upper Snake which they navigated
with comparative ease. But having reached what is now known as the Seven
Devils country in South-western Idaho, they found themselves in a chain of
rapids and precipitous bluffs where neither boats nor horses, apparently
nothing but wings, could be of service. This was in fact the beginning of
over a hundred miles of the most ragged and inaccessible region upon the
whole course of the Snake River, a region which even to this day contains
neither road nor steamboat route, and by which the great State of Idaho is
separated into two divisions, neither directly accessible to the other by any
ordinary modes of travel.
After a forty-mile tramp up and down the river, Hunt decided that the only
way to escape the difficulties with which they were surrounded, was to
divide the party into four divisions, hoping that one of them might find
game and a way out of the forbidding volcanic wastes in which they were
beleaguered. Two of the parties soon returned. One, being in charge of

McKenzie, continued upon its course northward and reached the mouth of
the Columbia, without ever again seeing the main party.
During the weeks that followed, the main party, lost amid the great
mountains which lie eastward from the present vicinity of Baker City and
Wallowa Lake, suffered all the torments of famine and cold. In places the
river ran through volcanic sluiceways, roaring and raging; in some cases,
although within hearing, yet entirely inaccessible, so that although within
sound of its angry raving, the travellers were often obliged to lie down with
tongues parched and swollen for lack of water. The party applied to this
long volcanic “chute” the name of the Devil’s Scuttle-hole, and to the river
they applied the name La Rivière Maudite Enragée, or “Accursed Mad
River.”
The lives of the party were evidently at stake. In the emergency Hunt
determined to divide his force into two divisions, one on the north and one
on the south side of the river. From the 9th of November until the first part
of December they urged on this dismal and heart-sickening march. They
passed a few wretched Indian camps where they managed to secure dogs
for food, and once they got a few horses. The frightened and half-starved
Indians could give them no clear information as to the location of the Great
River, but they signified that they supposed it to be yet a long way off. The
party was evidently approaching something, for gigantic snowy mountains
now loomed dimly through the winter mists. Finding it impossible to make
headway against blinding snowstorms and up the icy crags, they turned
their course down to the river itself and made a cheerless camp. In the
morning they were startled by seeing upon the opposite side of the river, a
group of men more wretched and desolate than themselves. It soon
appeared that this was the other party, which had entirely failed in finding
either food or guidance from the Indians. Finding it necessary that some
provision should be made for these dying men, Hunt constructed a rude
canoe from the limbs of trees and the skin of one of the horses. In this crazy
craft one of the daring Canadian voyageurs made his way with some of the
horse meat, which, poor as it was, was sufficient to save life for the time.
With their little remaining strength, they pressed on down the river until
they reached another small village of the wretched Snake Indians. Urging
these Indians to provide for them a guide, and at last securing one by the

most bounteous offers of rewards, Hunt succeeded in gathering all of his
party together, with the exception of six sick men whom they were obliged
to leave to the tender mercies of the Indians.
For another fortnight, the cold and hungry party floundered painfully
through the snow across the rugged mountains which lie between what we
now know as the Powder River Valley and the Grande Ronde. Reaching a
lofty mountain height on the last day of December, they looked far down
into a fair and snowless prairie, bathed in sunshine and appearing to the
winter-worn travellers like a gleam of summer. Moreover, they soon
discerned a group of Indian lodges which they judged were well supplied
with dogs and horses. Thither hastening eagerly, they soon found
themselves in a beautiful valley, which from their description must have
been the Grande Ronde Valley. Beautiful at all times, it must have seemed
trebly so to these ragged and famished wanderers.
The next morning the new year of 1812 shone in upon them bright and
cheerful, as if to make amends for the stern severity of the outgoing year.
And now the Canadians insisted upon having their New Year’s holiday. Not
even death and famine could rob the light-hearted voyageurs of their
festivals. So with dance and song and with dog meat, roasted, boiled, fried,
and fricasseed, they met the newly-crowned year with their Gallic
happiness and abandon.
The Indians assured them that they could reach the Great River within three
days. But they found it twice that, and their way led across another lofty
chain of snowy mountains, before the canopy of clouds which hung above
them parted. There, looking far down from their snowy eyre, they beheld
the boundless and sunny plains of the Great River. Swiftly descending the
slopes of the mountains, they emerged upon that finest land of all Eastern
Oregon, the plains of the Umatilla. Here they found the tribe of the
Tushepaw Indians with thirty-four lodges and two hundred horses. More
significant than these to Hunt were axes, kettles, and other implements of
white construction, indicating that these Indians had already come into
communication with the traders upon the lower River. In answer to his
eager questions, the Tushepaws informed him that the Great River was but
two days distant and that a small party of white men had just descended it.
Being now certain that this was the advance guard which had left him at the

Devil’s Scuttle-hole, Hunt felt sure that they were safe and was therefore
relieved of one great anxiety.
After a few days’ rest upon the pleasant prairies and in the comparatively
genial climate of the Umatilla, the party set forth upon horses obtained from
the Tushepaws, and after a pleasant ride of two days across the rolling
prairie, they beheld flowing at their feet, a majestic stream, deep and blue, a
mile in width, sweeping toward the sunset, evidently the Columbia. At the
great falls of the River, known to the Indians as the Timm or the Tumwater,
just above what we now call Dalles City, Hunt exchanged his horses for
canoes. This last stage of two hundred and twenty miles by boat down the
River, was calm and peaceful and a refreshing rest after the distress and
disaster of their winter journey through the mountains. Not till the 15th of
February, however, did they reach the newly christened town of Astoria.
Rounding the bluffs of Tongue Point, they beheld with full hearts the Stars
and Stripes floating over the only civilised abode west of St. Louis.
Westward they saw the parted headlands between which the River pours its
floods into the ocean. As the boats drew near the shore, the whole
population, trappers, sailors, and Indians, came down to meet them.
Foremost in the crowd they saw the members of the party which had gone
on ahead through the Snake River Mountains. Having had no hope that
Hunt and his men could survive the famine and the cold, these members of
the advance guard were the more rejoiced to see them. The Canadians, with
their French vivacity, rushed into each other’s arms, sobbing and hugging
like so many schoolgirls. Even the nonchalant Americans and the stiff-
jawed Scotchmen smiled and gave themselves up to the gladness of the
hour. The next two or three days were mainly devoted to eating and telling
stories.
As we have seen, they had lost several of their number from starvation and
drowning along the banks of the Snake River. They had also left six sick
men with the Indians in the heart of the mountains. They had little hope of
ever seeing these again, but the next summer the party on their way up the
Columbia River, saw two wretched looking beings, naked and haggard,
wandering on the river bank near the mouth of the Umatilla. Stopping to
investigate, they discovered that these were Day and Crooks, the leaders of
the party which they had left behind. Their forlorn plight was relieved with
food and clothes, and, having been taken into the boat, they related their

dismal tale. It appeared that they had been provided sufficiently by the
Indians to sustain their lives through the winter. In the spring they had left
the Canadians among the Indians, and had set forth in the hope of reaching
the Great River. But having reached The Dalles, they had been robbed of
rifles and ammunition, stripped of their clothing, and driven forth into the
wilderness. They were almost at the point of a final surrender to ill-fortune
when they beheld the rescuing boat. So, with joyful hearts, they turned their
boat’s prow to Astoria, which they reached in safety. But poor Day never
regained his health. His mind was shattered by the hardships of his journey,
and he soon pined away and died. The barren and rugged shores of the John
Day River in Eastern Oregon take on an added interest in view of the sad
story of the brave hunter who discovered them, and who wandered in
destitution for so many days beside them. Strange to say, the four
Canadians who remained among the Indians were afterwards found alive,
though utterly destitute of all things. Hence it appears that the loss of life in
this difficult journey was not great.
The journeys here narrated may be considered as covering what we have
designated as the first steps across the wilderness. Within a few years, many
parties of trappers, explorers, and adventurers, with some scientists, and a
little later, parties of missionaries, made their way over the great plains,
through the defiles of the mountains, and down the barren shores of the
Snake River to the Columbia and the sea. Each party had its special
experiences, and made its special contribution to geographical or
commercial advancement. But to the parties led by Lewis and Clark and by
Hunt, we must accord the greatest meed of praise for having broken the first
pathways across the continent and for having linked the two oceans by the
footsteps of civilised men.

CHAPTER V

The Fur-Traders, their Bateaux, and their Stations
Importance of the Fur-trade as Connected
with all Other Parts of the History—Fur-
hunters Compared with Gold-hunters—
Sea-otter—Ledyard’s Exploration—The
European Inaugurators of the Trade—
Beginnings of the American Trade—
The Great British Companies and their
Struggles with the French—
Mackenzie’s Journey across the
Continent—Thompson’s Descent of the
Columbia—Union of the Two Great
Canadian Companies—The American
Fur Companies—Henry’s Fort—The
Winship Enterprise on the River—John
Jacob Astor and the Pacific Fur
Company—Rivalry with the North-
westers—Arrangements for Expeditions
by Land and Sea, and the Personnel of
these—Voyage of the Tonquin and her
Disastrous Approach of the River—
Founding of Astoria—Appearance of
Thompson and the North-westers—
Interior Expedition and Founding of
Fort Okonogan—McDougall, the
Smallpox Chief and Bridegroom of the
Indian Princess—Evil Tidings in Regard
to the Tonquin—Other Disasters—War
of 1812 and Sale of Astoria to the
North-westers—Restoration of Astoria
to the Americans—Monopolisation of
the River by the Hudson’s Bay
Company—Their Expeditions—Hard
Lot of Madame Dorion and her Children
—Adventures of Alexander Ross—The

Forts and General Plan of Work—Fort
Vancouver and its Remarkable
Advantages—Dr. McLoughlin, or the
“White Eagle”—Profits of the Fur-trade
—The Canoes and Bateaux and the
Voyageurs—The Routes of the Brigades
—Later Americans.

A S the reader will doubtless already have discovered, we are presenting
the history of the River topically rather than chronologically. The
various great stages of progress, discovery by sea, discovery by land, fur-
trade, Indian wars, missionary undertakings, international contests,
beginnings of steamboat navigation, and settlement, overlap each other, and
each topic compels us in a measure to anticipate its successors. This is
especially true of the topic treated of in this chapter.
The fur-trade was an important factor in the eras of discovery both by land
and by sea, in the Indian wars and in the era of settlement, while the strife
of nations for the possession of the land of Oregon is almost a history of the
fur companies and their international policies. Remembering this synthetic
nature of these features of our history, we shall endeavour, with as little
repetition as possible, to present a coherent picture of that great era of the
fur-traders.
Without doubt one of the earliest uses to which man has put the lower
animals is that of clothing his body in their captured skins. The acquisition
of furs has been a special feature of the colder climes. It is obviously also a
feature of discovery and conquest, for it is the wilderness only which yields
any considerable number of fur-producing animals. Thus navigation,
commerce, discovery, invention, economics, finally international wars and
policies, have been rooted to a large degree in this primal business. The fur-
hunters have held the hunters of gold and precious stones and spicery a
close race in the rank of world movers. Indeed it may well be questioned
whether results of greater moment to humanity have not proceeded from the
quest for furs than from that for gold.

The Spaniards expended their energies in the gold and silver hunt in Mexico
and Peru and annihilated the races of those lands in their pitiless rapacity.
The other great exploring nations of the sixteenth century, especially the
French, while not indifferent to the possibility of encountering the precious
metals, found more certain and permanent results in the less feverish and
dazzling pursuit of the wild animals of the wilderness. Neither the hunters
for gold nor those for peltries were the state-builders and home-builders
without whom our American Union would not exist. But they were the
avant-couriers of both. Our land of Oregon has had the peculiar fortune of
being opened by both for both.
China furnished the most active and convenient market for furs to those
who secured their supplies on the Pacific Coast of North America. The
Russians were the first Europeans to enter the Chinese market, and they
began their voyages as early as 1741.
The sea-otter seems to have had its chief habitat on the Pacific shore from
Oregon to Alaska, and, as the ships of all nations began to crowd upon the
location of the fabled Strait of Anian, the trade with the natives for these
precious furs became constantly augmented, until the curious and
interesting creatures, so fatally attractive, were added to the long list of
“lower creatures” whom the greed of the “higher creatures” has
exterminated. A book by Coxe published in London in 1787 first made
known to the English-speaking people the rich profits of the Russians from
the transportation of the sea-otter skins to China. He instanced a case of a
profit of $50,000 from a single cargo. It had, however, been known in 1785
from the report of the voyage of Captain Cook that the North-west Coast of
America contained a new source of wealth from the accumulation of these
furs by the Indians and their eager desire to trade them for trinkets and
implements of civilised manufacture.
The first American to comprehend the greatness of the fur-trade on the
North-west Coast of the Pacific, both as a means of profit to himself and as
a patriotic impulse to direct his own nation into the channels of westward
expansion, was John Ledyard. Thomas Jefferson and John Paul Jones
became deeply interested in Ledyard’s extravagant hopes of future wealth
and glory, but all his efforts came to naught, and in 1788 this brilliant
adventurer, just on the eve of setting out to explore the interior of Africa,

suddenly put an end to his own life at Cairo, Egypt. Ledyard should always
be remembered by his countrymen, for, though his glowing visions were
unfulfilled, he was an important link in the great chain which bound Oregon
to our own country.
During these same years, several Englishmen, already noted in the chapter
on discovery, Portlock, Dixon, Hanna, Barclay, and Meares, were actively
engaged in the fur-trade, while the voyages of La Pérouse and Marchand
carried the flag of France on the same quest, and Spain’s once illustrious
emblem of world dominion was borne by Quadra, Valdes, Galiano, Fidalgo,
Quimper, Caamano, and several others. While these explorers all were
impelled in part by national pride and diplomacy, the hope of sharing the
spoils of the sea-otter droves was the chief lure to the tempestuous seas of
the North Pacific.
In Bullfinch’s Oregon and El Dorado is a very interesting narration of the
inception of the American part in the fur-trade of Oregon. In a building
known as the Coolidge Building in Boston a company were gathered
together in 1787 discussing the reports, then first made public, of Cook’s
voyages. Mr. Joseph Barrell, a rich merchant of Boston, was much
impressed with Cook’s account of the chances of barter with the Indians for
furs and the disposal of them in China for yet more profitable cargoes of
teas, silks, and other characteristic commodities of that land. As a result of
this conference, a company was formed in Boston to prosecute such
enterprise, the members of the company, Messrs. Barrell, Brown, Bulfinch,
Darby, Hatch, and Pintard, being among the foremost of the business men
in Boston in that good year of the creation of the American Constitution.
The enterprising Yankees rapidly drew to the front, so that during the years
from 1790 to 1818, the records show one hundred and eight American
vessels regularly engaged in the business, while only twenty-two English,
with a few Portuguese and French are found. It should, of course be
remembered that the tremendous strife of the Napoleonic Wars was
engrossing the attention of European nations during that time. So well
known did the Boston navigators become in that period that the common
name of Americans used by the Oregon Indians was “Bostons.” Robert
Gray, the discoverer of the Columbia River, was fitted out by Bulfinch and
others of the first Boston Company. During the period under consideration

the profits of the traffic were usually very great, though variable, sometimes
actual losses being incurred, while disaster from wreck, storm, scurvy, and
murderous Indians was frequent. During the two years, 1786 and 1787, if
Dixon is to be followed, there were sold in Canton five thousand eight
hundred sea-otter hides for $160,700. Swan figures that with the four years
ending with 1802, forty-eight thousand five hundred skins were sold.
Sturgis states that he knew a capital of $50,000 to yield a gross income of
$284,000. He relates that he had collected as high as six thousand fine skins
in a single voyage and once secured five hundred and sixty of the best
quality in one day. The Indians, however, learned to become very expert
traders, and as they discovered the eagerness with which the whites sought
their furs, they raised the price. They became, moreover, very capricious
and unreliable, so that the phenomenal profits could no longer be obtained.
The stage of the history of the fur-trade of which we have thus far spoken
may be called its first era of a free-for-all rush to the new seas, with no vast
moneyed interests in any position of leadership. But commercial conditions
were already in existence which were bound to reverse the situation.
Great operators, gigantic companies, foreshadowings of the great trusts of
the present, with monopolistic aims, were seeking the ear of the British
Government, while enterprises, larger, though not so monopolistic, were
rapidly forming in the United States. The great monopolies of Europe had
indeed existed long prior to the period of the Oregon fur-traders. As far
back as the beginning of the sixteenth century, De Monts, Pontgrave,
Champlain, and other great French explorers had secured monopolies on the
fur-trade from Louis XIII. and his minister, Richelieu. Later La Salle,
Hennepin, D’Iberville, and others had the same advantages. The St.
Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the upper Mississippi were the great
“preserve” of these great concessionaires. The English and their American
Colonists set themselves in battle array against the monopolistic Bourbon
methods of handling the vast domain which the genius and enterprise of De
Monts and Champlain had won for France, with the result that upon the
heights of Abraham the Fleur-de-Lis was lowered before the Cross of St.
George, and North America became English instead of Gallic, and one of
the world’s milestones was set for good. Then by one of those beautiful
ironies of history which baffle all prescience, victorious Britain violated the
principles of her own conquest and adopted the methods of Bourbon

tyranny and monopoly, with the result that another milestone was set on the
highway of liberty and the new continent became American instead of
European.
But out of the struggles of that century, French, English, and American, out
of the final distribution of territory, by which England retained Canada and
with it a large French and Indian population, mingled with English and
Scotch,—out of these curious comminglings, economic, commercial,
political, religious, and ethnic, grew the great English fur companies, whose
history was largely wrought out on the shores of the Columbia, and from
whose juxtaposition with the American State-builder the romance and epic
grandeur of the history of the River largely comes.
Many enterprises were started by the French and English in the seventeenth
century, but the Hudson’s Bay Company became the Goliath of them all.
The first charter of this gigantic organisation was granted in 1670 by
Charles II. to Prince Rupert and seventeen others, with a capital stock of ten
thousand five hundred pounds. From this small beginning, the profits were
so great that, notwithstanding the loss of two hundred thousand pounds
from the French wars during the latter part of the century, the Company
declared dividends of from twenty-five to fifty per cent.
The field of operations was gradually extended from the south-eastern
regions contiguous to Hudson’s Bay until it embraced the vast and dreary
expanses of snowy prairie traversed by the Saskatchewan, the Athabasca,
the Peace, and finally the Mackenzie. Many of the greatest expeditions by
land under British auspices which resulted in great geographical discoveries
were primarily designed for the expansion of the fur-trade.
Just at the critical moment, both for the great Canadian Fur Company, as
well as for discovery and acquisition in the region of the Columbia, a most
important and remarkable champion entered the lists. This was the North-
west Fur Company of Montreal. It was one of the legitimate consequences
of the treaty of Paris in 1763, ceding Canada to Great Britain. The French in
Canada became British subjects by that treaty, and many of them had
extensive interests as well as experience in the fur business. Furthermore a
number of Scotchmen of great enterprise and intelligence betook
themselves to Canada, eager to partake of the boundless opportunities

offered by the new shuffle of the cards. These Scotchmen and Frenchmen
became natural partners in the foundation of enterprises independent of the
Hudson’s Bay monopoly. In 1783 a group of the boldest and most energetic
of these active spirits, of whom the leaders were McGillivray, McTavish,
Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher, Rechebleve, Thain, and Frazer, united in
the formation of the North-west Fur Company. Bitter rivalry soon arose
between the new company and the old monopoly. Following the usual
history of special privilege, the old company, which had now been in
existence one hundred and thirteen years, had learned to depend more on
privilege than on enterprise, and had become somewhat degenerate. The
North-westers “rustled” for new business in new regions. In 1789
Alexander Mackenzie, as one of the North-westers, made his way, with
incredible hardship, down the river which bears his name to the Frozen
Ocean. A few years later he made the first journey to the shore of the
Pacific, commemorating his course by painting on a rock on the shore of
the Cascade Inlet, north-east of Vancouver Island, these words: “Alexander
Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand
seven hundred and ninety-three.”
As a result of the new undertakings set on foot by the North-westers and the
reawakened Hudson’s Bay Company, both companies entered the Columbia
Valley. The struggle for possession of Oregon between the English and
American fur companies and their government was on. In the summer of
1810 David Thompson of the North-west company crossed the continental
divide by the Athabasca Pass in latitude 52° 25′. The North-westers had
heard of the Astor enterprise in New York and realised that they must be up
and doing if they would control the land of the Oregon. Although the
character of soil, climate, and productions of the Columbia Valley was but
imperfectly known, enough had been derived from Lewis and Clark, and
from ocean discoveries to make it plain that the Columbia furnished the
most convenient access to the interior from the sea, and that its numerous
tributaries furnished a network of boatable waters unequalled on the
Western slope, while there was every reason to suppose that its forests
abounded in fur-bearing animals and that its climate would admit of much
longer seasons of work than was possible in the biting winters of the
Athabasca. It became vital to the continental magnitude of the designs of
the Canadian companies that they control Oregon.

For greater topical clearness we will anticipate a little at this point and state
that after several years of intense rivalry it became plain to the British
Parliament that it was suicidal to allow a policy of division in the face of a
common enemy. Hence in 1821, by act of Parliament, the two companies
were reorganised and united under a charter which was to last twenty-one
years (and as a matter of fact was renewed at the end of that time), and
under the provisions of which the North-westers were to have equal shares
in both stock and offices, though the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company,
was retained. It will be remembered therefore, that up to the year 1821, the
two great Canadian companies were distinct, and that during that time the
North-west Company was much the more active and aggressive in the
Columbia Valley, but that after that date the entire force of the Canadian
Companies was combined under the name of the old monopoly. But
however bitter the first enmity of the Canadian rivals, they agreed on the
general proposition that the Americans must be checkmated, and during the
score of years prior to their coalition they were seizing the pivotal points of
the Oregon country. During the next two decades they created a vast
network of forts and stations, and reduced the country contiguous to the
River and its tributaries to a system so elaborate and interesting as to be
worthy of extended study. We can sketch only its more general features.
And the more perfectly to understand them, we must arrest here the story of
the great Canadian monopoly and bring up the movement of the American
fur companies.
It may be noted, first of all, that by reason of the quicker colonisation and
settlement and consequent establishment of agriculture and other arts
pertaining to home life, the region of the United States east of the
Mississippi never became the natural habitat of the trapper and fur-trader to
anything like the degree of Canada and the western part of our own land.
Nevertheless extensive fur interests grew up on the Mississippi during the
French régime, and in 1763-4 August and Pierre Choteau located a trading
post on the present site of St. Louis, and the fascinating history of that great
capital began.
Most of the American trading companies confined their operations to the
east side of the Rocky Mountains. But the Missouri Fur Company of St.
Louis, composed of a miscellaneous group of Americans and Hispano-
Gallo-Americans, under the presidency of Manuel Lisa, a bold and

enterprising Spaniard, took a step over the crest of the mountains and
established the first trading post upon the waters of the Columbia. This was
in 1809. Andrew Henry, one of the partners of the aforesaid company,
crossed the mountains in that year and a year later built a fort on a branch of
Snake River. This seems to have been on what subsequently became known
as Henry’s River. It was in one of the wildest and grandest regions of all
that wild grand section of Snake River. Henry’s River drains the north side
of the Three Tetons, while the south branch, known afterwards as Lewis and
finally as Snake River, drains the south of that group of mountains. Henry
must be remembered as the first American and the first white man recorded
in history who built any structure upon any tributary of our River, and the
year was 1810. Both Henry and his Company had hopes of accomplishing
great things in the way of the fur-trade in that very favourable region. But
the next year the Indians were so threatening that the fort was forsaken and
the party returned to the Missouri. When the Hunt party in the fall of 1811
sought refuge at this point they found only a group of abandoned huts, with
no provisions or equipment of which they could make any use.
But though Henry’s fort was but a transient matter, his American
countrymen were beginning to press through the open gateways of both
mountain and sea. In the early part of 1809 the Winship brothers of Boston,
together with several other keen-sighted Yankees, formed a project for a
definite post on the Columbia River, proposing to reach their destination by
ship. Accordingly they fitted out an old vessel known as the Albatross, with
Nathan Winship as captain, William Gale as captain’s assistant, and William
Smith as first mate. Captain Gale kept a journal of the entire enterprise, and
it is one of the most interesting and valuable of the many ship’s records of
the North-western Coast.
Setting sail with a crew of twenty-two men and an excellent supply of
stores and ammunition, and abundance of tools and hardware for erecting
needful buildings, the Albatross left Boston in the summer of 1809. After a
slow and tedious, but very healthful and comfortable voyage, stopping at
the Hawaiian Islands on the route, the Albatross reached the mouth of the
Columbia River on May 26, 1810. Many American and other ships had
entered the mouth of the River prior to that date, but so far as known none
had ascended any considerable distance. Apparently Gray and Broughton
were the only shipmasters who had ascended above the wide expanse now

known as Gray’s Bay, while the Lewis and Clark expedition contained the
only white men who had seen the river above tide-water. The Winship
enterprise may be regarded with great interest, therefore, as the first real
attempt to plant a permanent establishment on the banks of the River.
Winship and his companions spent some days in careful examination of the
river banks and as a result of their search they decided on a strip of valley
land formed by a narrowing of the River on the north and an indentation of
the mountain on the south. This pleasant strip of fertile land is located on
the south bank of the lordly stream, and its lower end is about forty-five
miles from the ocean. Being partially covered with a beautiful grove of oak
trees, the first to be seen on the ascent of the River, the place received the
name of Oak Point. It may be noted that this name was subsequently
transferred to a promontory nearly opposite on the north bank, and this
circumstance has led many to locate erroneously the site of the first
buildings designed for permanent use on the banks of the Columbia. And
such these were, for the Lewis and Clark structures at what they called Fort
Clatsop, erected four and a half years earlier, were meant only for a winter’s
use. But the Winship party had glowing visions of a great emporium of the
fur-trade, another Montreal or St. Louis, to inaugurate a new era for their
country and themselves. They designed paying the Indians for their lands
and in every way treating them justly. They seem in short to have had a very
high conception of the dignity and worth of their enterprise. They were
worthy of the highest success, and the student of to-day cannot but grieve
that their high hopes were dashed with disaster.
Tying the Albatross to the bank on June 4th, they entered at once with great
energy on the task of felling trees, rearing a large log house, clearing a
garden spot, in which they at once began the planting of seeds, and getting
ready to trade with the natives. But within four days the River began to rise
rapidly, and the busy fort-builders perceived to their dismay that they had
located on land subject to inundation. All the work thus far done went for
naught, and they pulled their fort to pieces and floated the logs down stream
a quarter of a mile to a higher place. There they resumed their buildings
with redoubled energy. But within a week a much more dangerous situation
again, and this time permanently, arrested their grand project. This time it
was the very men toward whom they had entertained such just and
benevolent designs, the Indians, who thwarted the plans. For, as Captain

Gale narrates in a most entertaining manner, a large body of Chinooks and
Cheheeles, armed with bows and arrows, and some muskets, made their
appearance, announcing that they were on their way to war against the
Culaworth tribe who had killed one of their chiefs a year before. But the
next day the Indians massing themselves about the whites, gave such plain
indications that the previous declaration was a pretence that the party
hastily got into a position of defence. Their cannon on board the Albatross
had already been loaded in anticipation of emergencies, and so plain was it
that they could make a deadly defence that the threatened attack did not
come. A long “pow-wow” ensued instead, and the Chinooks insisted that
the builders must select a site lower down the river. After due consideration
the party decided that any determined opposition by the Indians would so
impair their enterprise, even though they might be able to defend
themselves, that it would be best to seek a new location. Accordingly they
reloaded their effects, dropped down the River, and finally decided to make
a voyage down the California coast and return the next year. Return they
did, but by that time the next year the Pacific Fur Company had already
located at Astoria the first permanent American settlement, and the Winship
enterprise faded away. That the design of the Winships was not at all
chimerical is apparent from the fact that within twenty years the Hudson’s
Bay Company had made of Vancouver, sixty miles farther up the River, the
very kind of a trading entrepôt of which the Winships had dreamed. Their
dream was reasonable, but the time and place were unpropitious.
A quotation from Captain Gale’s journal will give a conception of his
feelings:
June 12th.—The ship dropped further down the River, and it
was now determined to abandon all attempts to force a
settlement. We have taken off the goats and hogs which were
left on shore for the use of the settlement, and thus we have to
abandon the business, after having, with great difficulty and
labour, got about forty-five miles above Cape Disappointment;
and with great trouble began to clear the land and build a house
a second time, after cutting timber enough to finish nearly one-
half, and having two of our hands disabled in the work. It is,
indeed, cutting to be obliged to knuckle to those whom you have
not the least fear of, but whom, from motives of prudence, you

are obliged to treat with forbearance. What can be more
disagreeable than to sit at the table with a number of these
rascally chiefs, who while they supply their greedy mouths with
your food with one hand, their bloods boil within them to cut
your throat with the other, without the least provocation.
On the way out of the River Captain Winship learned that the Chinooks
designed capturing his vessel, and would doubtless have done so, had not
his vigilance prevented.
While the crew of the Albatross were engaged in these adventures the
largest American Fur Company yet formed was getting ready to effect a
lodgment on the shores of the Columbia. This was the Pacific Fur
Company. John Jacob Astor was the founder of this enterprise. Though
unfortunate in almost every feature of its history and its final outcome, this
company had a magnificent conception, a royal grandeur of opportunity,
and it possessed also the felicity, shared by no one of its predecessors, of
the genius of a great literary star to illuminate its records. To Washington
Irving it owes much of its fame. Yet the commercial genius of Astor could
not prevent errors of judgment by the management any more than the
literary genius of Irving was able to conceal their errors, or the genius of
American liberty able to order events so as to prevent victory for a time by
the “Britishers.” As we view the history in the large it may be that we shall
conclude that the British triumph at first was the best introduction to
American triumph in the end.
John Jacob Astor may, perhaps, be justly regarded as the first of the great
promoters or financial magnates who have made the United States the
world’s El Dorado. Coming from Germany to this land of opportunity after
the close of the Revolutionary War, he soon manifested that keen intuition
in money matters, as well as intense devotion to accumulation, which has
led to the colossal fortunes of his own descendants and of the other
multimillionaires of this age. Having made quite a fortune by transporting
furs to London, Mr. Astor turned to larger fields. With his broad and keen
geographical and commercial insight, he could readily grasp the same fact
which the North-westers of Montreal were also considering, that the
Columbia River might well become the key to an international fur-trade, as
well as a strategic point for American expansion westward. He made

overtures to the North-westers for a partnership, but they declined. Then he
determined to be the chief manager, and to associate individual Americans
and Canadians with himself. With the promptitude of the skilful general, he
proceeded to form his company and make his plan of campaign in time to
anticipate the apparent designs of the active Canadians. They saw, as well
as Astor did, the magnitude of the stake and at once made ready to play
their part. For, as already noted, David Thompson crossed the Rockies by
the Athabasca Pass in 1810, spent the winter at Lake Windermere on the
Columbia River, and in the summer of 1811 reached Astoria, only to find
the Astor Company already established there. It should be especially noted
that the Thompson party was the first to descend the River from near its
source to the ocean, although of course Lewis and Clark had anticipated
them on the portion below the junction of the Snake with the main River.
Mr. Astor’s plans provided for an expedition by sea and one by land. The
first was to convey stores and equipment for founding and defending the
proposed capital of the empire of the fur-traders. Of the expedition by land
under Hunt we have already given a full account in the preceding chapter,
since its events rather allied it to the era of exploration than that of the
traders. The organisation of Mr. Astor’s company provided that there should
be a capital stock of a hundred shares, of which he should hold half and his
associates half. Mr. Astor was to furnish the money, though not to exceed
four hundred thousand dollars, and was to bear all losses for five years. The
term of the association was fixed at twenty years, though with the privilege
of dissolving it in five years if it proved unprofitable. The general plan and
the details of the expedition had been decided upon by the master mind of
the founder with statesmanlike ability. It comes, therefore, as a surprise to
the reader that Mr. Astor should have made a capital mistake at the very
beginning of his undertaking. This mistake was in the selection of his
associates and the captains of some of his ships. Of the partners, five were
Americans and five were Canadians. Two only of the Americans remained
with the company long enough to have any determining influence on its
policies. Take the fact that the majority of the active partners and almost all
the clerks, trappers, and other employees of the company were Canadians,
and put it beside the other fact that war was imminent with Great Britain
and did actually break out within two years, and the dangerous nature of the
situation can be seen. Of the ship-captains, the first one, Captain Jonathan

Thorn of the Tonquin, was a man of such overbearing and obstinate nature
that disaster seemed to be fairly invited by placing him in such vitally
responsible a position. The captain of the second ship, the Beaver, was
Cornelius Sowles, and he seems to have been as timid and irresolute as
Captain Thorn was bold and implacable. Both lacked judgment. It was
probably natural that Mr. Astor, having had his main prior experience as a
fur-dealer in connection with the Canadians centring at Montreal, should
have looked in that direction for associates. But inasmuch as war between
England and the United States seemed a practical certainty, it was a great
error, in founding a vast enterprise in remote regions whose ownership was
not yet definitely recognised, to share with citizens of Great Britain the
determination of the important issues of the enterprise. It would have saved
Mr. Astor great loss and chagrin if he had observed the maxim: “Put none
but Americans on guard.” As to the captains of the two vessels, that was an
error that any one might have made. Yet for a man of Astor’s exceptional
ability and shrewdness to err so conspicuously in judging the character of
the men appointed to such important places seems indeed strange.

Astoria in 1845.
From an Old Print.

Astoria. Looking up and across the Columbia River.
Photo. by Woodfield.

To these facts in regard to the personnel of the partners, the captains, and
the force, must be added two others; i. e., war and shipwreck. The
combination of all these conditions made the history of the Astoria
enterprise what it was. Yet, with all of its adversity, this was one of the best
conceived, and, in most of its details, the best equipped and executed of all
the great enterprises which have appeared in the commercial history of our
country. As an element in the development of the land of the Oregon, it
must be accorded the first place after the period of discovery.

The Tonquin left New York on September 6, 1810. She carried a fine
equipment of all things needed for founding the proposed emporium. She
was manned by a crew of twenty-one and conveyed members of the fur-
trading force to the number of thirty-three. Stopping at the Sandwich
Islands, an added force of twenty-four natives was taken aboard. At various
times on the journey the rigid ideas of naval discipline and the imperious
temper of Captain Thorn came near producing mutiny among the partners
and clerks. When the Tonquin hove to off the mouth of the Columbia on
March 22, 1811, the eager voyagers saw little to attract. The wind was
blowing in heavy squalls, and the sea ran high. Nevertheless the hard-
hearted Captain issued orders to the first mate, Fox, with a boat’s crew of
four men, to go into the foaming waves and sound the channel. The boat
was insufficiently provided, and it seemed scarcely short of murder to
despatch a crew under such circumstances. But the tyrannical captain would
listen to no remonstrances, and the poor little boat went tossing over the
billows on her forlorn hope. Such indeed it proved to be, for neither boat
nor any one of the crew was ever heard of again. This was a wholly
unnecessary sacrifice of life, for the Tonquin was in no danger, and time
could just as well have been taken for more propitious weather.
The next day, the wind and sea having abated, the Tonquin drew near the
dreaded bar, but, no entrance that satisfied the captain appearing, the ship
again stood off to spend the night in deep water. On the next day, the 24th,
the wind fell and a serene sky seemed to invite another attempt. The
pinnace in command of Mr. Aikin, with two white men and two Kanakas,
was sent out to find the channel. Following the pinnace the ship moved in
so rapidly under a freshening breeze that she passed the pinnace, the
unfortunate men on board finding it impossible to effect an entrance and
being borne by the refluent current into the mad surge where ocean tide and
outflowing river met in foamy strife. So the pinnace disappeared. But
meanwhile the crew had all their energies engaged to save the Tonquin. For
the wind failed at the critical moment and the ship struck the sands with
violence. Night came on. Had the men been classically trained (as in fact
Franchère was) they might have remembered Virgil, Ponto nox incubat
atra. But they had no time for classical or other quotations. Hastily
dropping the anchors they lay to in the midst of the tumult of waters, in that
worst of situations, on an unknown coast in the dark and in storm. But as

Franchère expresses it, Providence came to their succour, and the tide
flooding and the wind rising, they weighed the anchors, and in spite of the
obscurity of the night, they gained a safe harbour in a little cove inside of
Cape Disappointment, apparently just about abreast of the present town of
Ilwaco.
Thus the Tonquin was saved, and with the light of morning it could be seen
that she was fairly within the bar. Natives soon made their appearance,
desirous of trading beaver-skins. But the crew were in no mood for
commerce while any hope existed for finding the lost sailors. Taking a
course toward the shore by what must have been nearly the present route
from Ilwaco to Long Beach, the captain and a party with him, began a
search and soon found Weeks, one of the crew of the pinnace. He was stark
naked and suffering intensely from the cold. As soon as sufficiently revived
he narrated the loss of the pinnace in the breakers, the death of three of the
crew, and the casting of himself and one of the Kanakas upon the beach.
The point where they were cast would seem to have been near the present
location of the life-saving station.
The two survivors of the ill-fated pinnace having been revived, the party
returned to the Tonquin, which was now riding safely at anchor in the bay
on the north side of the river, named Baker’s Bay by Broughton nineteen
years before. Joy for their own escape from such imminent perils was
mingled with melancholy at the loss of their eight companions of the two
boats, and with the melancholy there was a sense of bitterness toward the
captain, who was to blame, at least for the loss of the small boat.
But now the new land was all before them where to choose, and since
Captain Thorn was in great haste to depart and begin his trading cruise
along the coast, the partners on the Tonquin, Messrs. McKay, McDougal,
David Stuart, and Robert Stuart, decided somewhat hurriedly to locate at
the point which had received from Lieutenant Broughton the name of Point
George. Franchère gives a pleasant picture of the beauty of the trees and
sky, and the surprise of the party to find that, though it was only the 12th of
April when they set to work upon the great trees which covered the site of
their chosen capital, yet spring was already far advanced. They did not then
understand the effect of the Japan current upon the Pacific Coast climate.

An incident of special interest soon after landing was the appearance on
June 15th of two strange Indians, a man and a woman, bearing a letter
addressed to Mr. John Stuart, Fort Estekatadene, New Caledonia. These
two Indians wore long robes of dressed deerskins with leggings and
moccasins more like the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. They could not
understand the speech of the Astoria Indians nor of any of the mixture of
dialects which the white men tried on them, until one of the Canadian clerks
addressed them in the Knisteneaux language with which they seemed to be
partially familiar. After several days of stay at the fort the two wandering
Indians succeeded in making it clear to the traders that they had been sent
out by a clerk named Finnan McDonald of the North-west Fur Company
from a fort which that company had just established on the Spokane River.
They said that they had lost their way and in consequence had descended
the Tacousah-Tessah (and this Franchère understood to be the Indian name
for the Columbia, though the general impression among the Indians is that
Tacousah-Tessah, or Tacoutche-Tesse, signified Frazer River). From the
revelation gradually drawn from these two Indians (and the surprising
discovery was made that they were both women) the very important
conclusion was drawn that the North-west Fur Company was already
prepared to contest with the Astor Company the possession of the River.
The peculiar feature of the situation was that the most of the Astorians,
though American by the existing business tie, were Canadian and British by
blood and sympathy, and hence were very likely to fraternise with the
Montreal traders.

One of the Lagoons of the Upper Columbia River, near Golden, B. C.
Photo. by C. F. Yates, Golden.

Saddle Mt., or Swallalochost, near Astoria, Famous in Indian Myth.
Photo. by Woodfield.

However the Astorians decided to send an expedition into the interior to
verify the story given by the two Indian women, but, just as they were ready
to go, a large canoe with the British flag floating from her stern appeared,
from which, when it had reached the landing, there leaped ashore an active,
well-dressed man who introduced himself as David Thompson, of the
North-west Company. This was the same man, the reader will remember,
who had crossed the Rocky Mountains the year before, had wintered near
the head of the River, and had then descended it, seeking a location for the
Columbia River emporium of the Canadian company. But he was too late. It
was quite strange by what narrow margins on several occasions the British
failed to forestall the Yankees.
On July 23d the delayed expedition of the Astorians set forth far to the
interior, and as a result of their investigations, David Stuart, in charge of the
party, began the erection of a trading house at the mouth of the Okanogan,
five hundred and forty miles above Astoria. It was on September 2, 1811,
that this post was begun, and hence Fort Okanogan may be regarded as the
first American establishment in the present State of Washington. It was
antedated a few months by the post of the North-west Company at the
entrance of the Little Spokane into the Spokane, near the present site of the
City of Spokane.
During the fall of 1811 the Indians around Astoria became very threatening.
Direful rumours, too, in regard to the destruction of the Tonquin began to
disquiet the Astorians. In the emergency the wary McDougall, then acting
as the head of the Company, bethought himself of a very effective
expedient. He had learned that dreadful loss of life among the Indians had
resulted a few years before from smallpox and that the Indians were
mortally afraid of it. Calling into his room several of the principal chiefs, he
asked if they remembered the smallpox. Their serious faces were sufficient
proof that they did. McDougall then held up a small vial and continued with
awful solemnity: “Listen to me. I am the great smallpox chief. In this little
bottle I keep the smallpox. If I uncork the bottle and let it out I will kill

every man, woman, and child of the Indians. Now go in peace, but if you
make war upon us I will open the bottle, and you will die.” The chiefs filed
out in terror, and peace was preserved.
McDougall still further cemented the bond of union with the natives by
becoming united in wedlock with the daughter of Comcomly, the one-eyed
chieftain of the Chinooks. After numerous and thorough ablutions had
somewhat mitigated the oiliness and general fishiness of the Chinook
princess, she was clad in the most brilliant style of the native beauty, a
grand holiday was declared at Astoria, and white men and Indians joined in
the wedding feast and made the welkin ring with their demonstrations. Thus
did the daughter of Comcomly become the first lady of the land, and thus
did peace brood over the broad waters of the lower River.
During the winter of 1811-12 the two instalments of the Hunt party made
their appearance, after their distressful journey from St. Louis as already
narrated in Chapter IV. In May, 1812, the company’s ship Beaver arrived
from New York, loaded with stores and trading equipment, and bringing a
considerable addition to the force of men. In the following month sixty men
were despatched up-river, and by them a trading post was located at
Spokane and another on the Snake River somewhere near the present site of
Lewiston, while one section of the party went across the mountains and
down the Missouri to convey dispatches to Mr. Astor.
At this stage of the history of the Astoria enterprise, every aspect was
encouraging. The trade in furs on the Spokane, the Okanogan, the Snake,
the Cœur d’Alene was excellent, a successful cruise along the coast by the
Beaver seemed sure, and the Indians about the mouth of the River were
friendly and well disposed. Mr. Astor’s great undertaking seemed sure to be
crowned with success. In the midst of all the signs of hope came tidings of
dismay. It became known with certainty that the Tonquin had been
destroyed. This appalling disaster was related directly to the Astoria
Company by the only survivor. This was an Indian of the Chehalis tribe
whose name is given by Irving as Lamazee, by Ross as Lamazu, and by
Bancroft as Lamanse. He had escaped from the Indians who had held him
after the destruction of the Tonquin and had finally found his way to
Astoria, there to tell his tale, one of the most sanguinary in the long roll of
struggles with the Indians. The next great disaster was the wrecking of the

Lark, the third of the Company’s ships from New York. During the same
period Mr. Hunt, the partner next in rank to Mr. Astor and the one above all
who could have acted wisely and patriotically in the forthcoming crisis, had
gone in the Beaver on a trading cruise among the Russians of Sitka, and by
a most remarkable series of detentions he had been kept away from Astoria
for over a year.
To cap the climax of misfortunes, the War of 1812 burst upon the
knowledge of the fur-traders and seemed to force upon such of the partners
as were of British nationality the question of their paramount duty. As a
result of the crisis, McDougal and McKenzie, although against the wishes
of the other partners present, sold out to the agent of the North-westers, who
had repaired at once to Astoria upon knowledge of the declaration of war.
Thus the great Astoria enterprise was abandoned, and the Stars and Stripes
went down and the Union Jack went up. Soon after the transfer, the British
man-of-war Raccoon, Captain Black, arrived at Astoria, expecting to have
seized the place as a rich prize of war. Imagine the disgust of the expectant
British mariners to discover that the post had already been sold to British
subjects, that their long journey was useless, and that their hopes of prize
money had vanished.
With the close of the War of 1812 a series of negotiations between the
ministers of the two countries took place in regard to the possession of the
River, by which it was finally decided that Astoria should be restored to the
United States. Accordingly, on the 6th of October, 1818, the British
Commissioners, Captain F. Hickey, of His Majesty’s Ship Blossom, and J.
Keith, representing the North-west Fur Company, signed an act of delivery
restoring Fort George (Astoria) to the United States. Mr. J. B. Prevost,
Commissioner for the United States, signed the act of acceptance. Astoria
was once again American property.

Steamer Beaver, the First Steamer on the Pacific, 1836.

Portland, Oregon, in 1851.
From an Old Print.

While the River was now nominally in possession of the United States, it
was practically under the control of the British fur companies. The Pacific
Fur Company ceased to operate, and the North-westers entered upon active
work both by sea and land in exploring the vast and profitable domain
which the misfortunes of their American rivals, supplemented in a most
timely manner by the treachery of McDougall and McKenzie, had put
within their power. The canny Scotchmen, McDougall, McTavish,
McKenzie, McDonald, and the various other Macs who now guided the
plans of the North-westers, signalled their entrance into power by
despatching companies to the various pivotal points of the great Columbia
Basin, the Walla Walla, Yakima, Okanogan, Spokane, and Snake rivers.
Two incidents may be related to illustrate the character of people and the
conditions of that wilderness period.

A party of ninety men in ten canoes left Astoria for up-river points on April
4, 1814. While passing the mouth of the Yakima, about three hundred and
fifty miles up the River, the men were surprised to see three canoes putting
out from shore and to hear a child’s voice calling out, “Arretez donc! arretez
donc!” Stopping to investigate, the party found in one of the boats the
Indian wife of Pierre Dorion, with her children. Dorion, with five other
Canadians, had gone the previous summer with a party under command of
John Reed of the Astor Company. While trapping and hunting, deep in the
mountains of Snake River, the party had been massacred by Indians. The
woman and her two boys had alone escaped the massacre. It was the dead
of winter and the snows lay deep on the Blue Mountains. But the wife of
Dorion found shelter in a remote fastness of the mountains, putting up a
bark hut for a shelter and subsisting on the carcasses of some of her horses.
In the spring, the pitiful little company of mother and children descended to
Walla Walla and found there more kindly disposed natives, who cared for
them and turned them over to the protection of the whites. A more thrilling
story of suffering and heroism than this of Madame Dorion and her children
has never come up from the chronicles of the wild West.
Equally illustrative of the life of the fur-traders is the account given by
Alexander Ross of one of his many adventures in the Columbia country. In
1814 Ross went from Okanogan to Yakima to secure horses. With him were
four other whites and three Indian women. The Yakima Valley was then as
now a paradise of the Indians. There the tribes gathered by the thousands in
the spring to dig camas, to race horses, and to gamble, as well as to form
alliances and make plans for war. When the little company of traders
reached the encampment, they discovered to their astonishment that it was a
veritable city. Six thousand men, women, and children, with ten thousand
horses, and uncounted dogs and many shackled bears and wolves, were
strewn across the plain. It was a dangerous situation for the traders, for it
became plain to them that the Indians were unfriendly. But assuming an air
of careless bravado, Ross proceeded to display his store of trinkets for the
purpose of starting a traffic in horses. Assuming a very hilarious manner the
Indians would seize and drive away the animals as fast as the white men got
them. Then the Indians began to deprive them of clothes and food. Finally
they made ready to seize their three women as slaves. Ross managed to
have the women escape temporarily, but then the savages were worse than

ever. Matters reached a crisis when an obstreperous chief named Yaktana
snatched a knife from the hands of one of the Canadians. A desperate
struggle was just at the point of breaking out, which would inevitably have
resulted in the death of all the white men, when a sudden intuition flashed
through the quick mind of Ross, and rushing between the combatants he
handed his own knife, a much more elegant one, to Yaktana, saying in a
friendly tone, “This is a chief’s knife. Take it and give back the other.”
There was an instant revulsion. Yaktana was so much flattered that he
turned at once into a stanch supporter of the shrewd trader. Food was
brought. The horses were restored. Equipment was provided. The three
women were regained, and the company made their way without further
trouble to Okanogan.
We have already mentioned the important fact that in 1821 the two great
Canadian Companies, the North-western and the Hudson’s Bay, decided to
unite. With the union, the great era of fur-trade in the Columbia Basin fairly
began, to continue about twenty-five years, yielding then to the American
immigrant. That twenty-five years of the dominance of the great Fur
Company contained nearly all the poetry and romance as well as the profit
and statesmanship of the business. The entire region of the River, as well as
that of the Puget Sound country, was mapped out in a most systematic
manner with one chief central fort, Vancouver on the Columbia. A more
magnificent location for the purpose cannot be conceived. It is now the site
of a flourishing city and of the United States Fort Headquarters for the
North-west, generally conceded to be the finest fort location in the United
States. Fort Vancouver was established in 1825 upon a superb bench of land
gently sloping back from the River for two miles. Great trees fringed the
site, Mt. Hood lifted its pinnacled majesty sixty miles to the eastward, the
sinuous mazes of the Willamette Valley stretched out far southward, while
the lordly River was in full view a dozen miles up and down. Every natural
advantage and delight which wild nature could offer was here in fullness.
Ships could readily ascend the hundred miles from the ocean to unload their
merchandise and take on their cargoes of precious furs, the furs collected at
the outlay of so much toil and suffering over the area of hundreds of miles.
Every species of game and fish abounded in the waters and along the banks
of the River. Deer and elk tossed their antlers between the stately firs of the
upland, and pheasant and grouse whirred among the branches. Geese,

cranes, ducks, and swans, in countless numbers, darkened the lagoons amid
the many islands enclosed by the mouths of the Willamette and the adjacent
waters of the larger stream. Fish of many varieties, the royal Chinook
salmon, king of food fish, being at the head in beauty and edibility, though
surpassed in size by the gigantic sturgeon, which sometimes weighed a
thousand pounds, abounded in the River. No epicure of the world’s capitals
could command such viands as nature brought to the doors of the denizens
of Fort Vancouver.
The fort itself was laid out on a scale of amplitude suitable to the
spaciousness of the site. It was enclosed with a picket wall twenty feet high,
with massive buttresses of timber inside. This enclosure was a
parallelogram seven hundred and fifty by five hundred feet. Inside were
about forty buildings, the governor’s residence of generous dimensions
being in the centre. Two chapels provided for the spiritual needs of the
company, while schoolhouse, stores, “bachelors’ halls,” and shops of
various kinds attested the variety of the needs. Along the bank of the River,
outside the enclosure, lay quite a village of cottages for the married
employees, together with hospital, boathouses, granaries, warehouses,
threshing mills, and dairy buildings.
Taken altogether Fort Vancouver was the model fort of the western slope.
Moreover, the fertile soil and genial, humid climate soon encouraged the
factors of the Company to experiment with gardens and orchards, and,
within a few years after founding, fifteen hundred acres of land were in the
finest state of productivity, while three thousand head of cattle, twenty-five
hundred sheep, three hundred brood mares, and over a hundred milch cows,
added their bounteous contributions to the already plentiful resources of the
fort.
With this rich larder, with the spacious buildings, with the annual arrivals
and departures of ships by sea and fleets of bateaux by river, with hunting
trips and Indian policies, with the intercoast traffic with the Russians on the
north and the Spaniards on the south,—there was as much to engage and
delight the minds of these people as if they had lived in the heart of
civilisation.

Any account of Fort Vancouver would be incomplete without some
reference to Dr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Company in the
Columbia district from 1824 to the time of his retirement from the
Company in 1846 and settlement at Oregon City, Oregon, as an American
citizen. Rarely has any one in the stormy history of the Columbia Basin
received such unvarying and unqualified praise as has this truly great man.
Physically, mentally, and morally, Dr. McLoughlin was altogether
exceptional among the mixed population that gathered about the emporium
of the traders. Six feet four inches in height, his noble and expressive face
crowned with a great cascade of snowy hair, firm yet kindly, prompt and
businesslike yet sympathetic and helpful, “Old Whitehead” or “White
Eagle,” as the Indians called him, was a true-born king of men.
We have said that Fort Vancouver was the great central fort. The others
commanding the pivotal points upon the River and its tributaries were Fort
Hall and Fort Boisé on the Snake, Spokane House on the Spokane near the
present metropolis of the Inland Empire, Fort Colville on the river of the
same name near its junction with the Columbia, Fort Okanogan at the
junction of the stream of that name with the great River, Fort Owen in the
Cœur d’Alene region, Fort Simcoe in the Yakima country, Fort Walla Walla,
first known as Fort Nez Percé, on the Columbia at the mouth of the Walla
Walla, and Fort George on the former site of Astoria. These forts were all
laid out in the same general fashion as Fort Vancouver, though no one was
so large, elaborate, or comfortable. Besides the forts there were a number of
small trading posts. The chief furs procured in the interior were beaver, and
those on the coast were sea-otter. Many others, as the mink, sharp-toothed
otter, fox, lynx, raccoon, were found in abundance.
The profits of the business were immense. Alexander Ross relates that he
secured one morning before breakfast one hundred and ten beaver skins for
a single yard of white cloth. Ross spent one hundred and eighty-eight days
alone in the Yakima country. During that time he collected one thousand
five hundred and fifty beavers, besides other peltries, worth in the Canton
market two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds, which cost him in his
objects of trade only thirty-five pounds. That was while Ross was connected
with the Astor Company.

In completing this necessarily hurried chapter on the fascinating era of the
fur-traders, we cannot omit a brief reference to the movements of the
regular brigades of boats up and down the River, for these comprised a
great part of both the business and the romance of the age. The course of
these brigades was from the southern shores of Hudson Bay, through
Manitoba, to the crest of the Rockies at the head of the Columbia. Water
was utilised to the greatest possible extent, while at the portages and across
the mountains horse-power and man-power were employed. Once afloat
upon the Columbia, the brigades braved most of the rapids, paying
occasional toll of men and goods to the envious deities of the waters, yet
with marvellous skill and general fortune making their way down the
thousand or more miles from Boat Encampment to Fort Vancouver. The
descent was easy compared with the ascent. The first journey of the east-
bound brigade of the North-westers from Astoria to Montreal was in 1814,
and it required the time from April 4th to May 11th to reach the mouth of
Canoe River, the point at which they entered upon the mountain climb to
the head of the Athabasca.
The boatmen were French-Canadians, a hardy, mercurial, light-hearted race,
half French, with the natural grace and politeness of their race, and having
the pleasant patois which has made them the theme of much popular
present-day literature. They were half Indian, either in tastes and manners
or in blood, with the atmosphere of forests and streams clinging to every
word and gesture. They were perhaps the best boatmen in the world. Upon
those matchless lakes into which the Columbia and its tributaries expand at
intervals the fur-laden boats would glide at ease, while the wild songs of the
coureurs des bois would echo from shore to shore in lazy sibilations,
apparently betokening no thought of serious or earnest business. But once
the rapids were reached, the gay and rollicking knight of the paddle became
all attention. With keen eyes fixed on every swirl or rock, he guided the
light craft with a ready skill which would be inconceivable to one less
daring and experienced. The brigades would run almost all the rapids from
Death Rapids to the sea, making portages at Kettle Falls, Tumwater or
Celilo Falls, and the Cascades, though at some stages of the water they
could run down even them. They always had to carry around those points in
ascending the River. In spite of all the skill of the voyageurs the Columbia
and the Snake, the Pend Oreille and the Kootenai have exacted a heavy toll

of life from those who have laid their compelling hands upon the white
manes of chute and cataract. Many, even of the voyageurs, are the human
skeletons that have whitened the volcanic beds of the great streams.
The boats used by the fur brigades were either log canoes obtained of the
Indians or bateaux. The former were hollowed from the magnificent cedars
which grew on the banks of the River, sometimes fifty or sixty feet long,
with prow carved in fantastic, even beautiful fashion. They would hold
from six to twenty persons with from half a ton to two or three tons of load,
yet were so light that two men could carry one of the medium size while
four could handle one of any size around a portage. But the voyageurs
never took quite so much to the canoes as did the Indians, whose skill in
handling them in high waves is described by Ross and Franchère as
something astonishing. And even the Indians of the present show much the
same ability, though the splendid cedar canoes are no longer made, and only
here and there can one of the picturesque survivors be seen.
The bateaux were boats of peculiar shape, being built very high and broad
so that in an unloaded condition they seemed to rest on the water almost
like a paper shell. Both ends were high and pointed as prows. They were
propelled with oars and steered with paddles. One of the usual size was
about thirty feet long and five feet wide. Being of light-draft, double-
enders, capable of holding large loads and yet easily conveyed around
portages, more steady and roomy than canoes, these bateaux were the
typical Columbia River medium of commerce during the era of the fur-
traders. They, too, have mainly vanished from the scenes of their former
glory. Canoes, bateaux, cries and yells of Indians, songs of voyageurs, have
gone into the engulfing limbo of the bygone, along with the keen-eyed
Scotch factor and the sharp-featured Yankee skipper. Yet the swans and
geese and ducks still darken the more placid expanses of the River and the
salmon still start the widening circles in almost undiminished numbers,
while the glaciated heights of Hood and Adams and St. Helens (we would
rather say Wiyeast, Klickitat, and Loowit) still stand guard over the
unchanging waters.
This part of our topic has mainly centred upon the British possession of the
River. A full history of the fur era on the River would demand a chapter on
the later attempts of three remarkable men to reestablish American interests

in the disputed territory. These men were Jedediah Smith, Capt. E. L.
Bonneville, and Nathaniel J. Wyeth. But though these men belong properly
to this era, their efforts in the fur-trade were relatively unimportant in
comparison with the influence of their lives in the direction of permanent
American occupation. It seemed the appointment of destiny that the
American should play second fiddle to his British rival in the fur-trade. But
as tenfold, a thousandfold compensation, the American farmers, home-
builders, and tradesmen were to acquire final possession of one of the
goodliest lands on which the Stars and Stripes has ever floated. The bateaux
and canoes must needs give way to the steamboat and the launch, the
coureur des bois to the lumberman and the miner and farmer, and the
picturesque emporium of the British fur-trader on the River to the modern
American city. We shall, therefore, more fittingly chronicle the later
American fur-traders as a part of the march of their countrymen to
permanent ownership of Oregon.

CHAPTER VI

The Coming of the Missionaries to the Tribes of the
River
Journey of the Nez Percé Chiefs to Find the
White Man’s Book of Life—Interest
Excited among Christian People by this
Event—Methodist Church Leads in
Preparing for a Missionary Party—
Jason Lee and his Mission near
Chemeketa—The Reinforcement by the
Lausanne—Importance of Jason Lee as
a Force in Oregon History—The
Missions of the American Board at
Walla Walla, Lapwai, and Tshimakain—
Preliminary Journey of Whitman and
Parker in 1835—The Wedding Journey
from Missouri to the Columbia in 1836
—Dr. Whitman and his Associates and
their Traits of Character—On the
Summit of South Pass—Whitman’s
Waggon—Arrival at Vancouver and
Conference with McLoughlin—
Locations of the Missionaries—
Reinforcement in 1838—Friendship of
the Nez Percés—First Printing Press—
Whitman’s Ride in 1842-43—The
Catholic Missions—Fathers Blanchet,
Demers, and De Smet—Influence of the
Missions.

I N 1832 a strange thing happened. Four Indians appeared in St. Louis
seeking the “White Man’s Book of Life.” At that time General William
Clark was superintendent of Indian affairs, located at St. Louis. He was
familiar with the Western Indians and had greatly sympathised with them.

Learning of these strange Indians and their stranger quest, General Clark
sought them, and entered into communication with them. It is usually stated
that these Indians were Flatheads from the Pend Oreille region, but Miss
Kate Macbeth, a missionary for many years to the Nez Percés, became
convinced that three were Nez Percés and the fourth a Flathead. How they
had learned that the white man had a “Book of Life” is not known. Captain
Bonneville’s journal states that Pierre Pambrun had given many of the
Oregon Indians instruction in the rudiments of the Catholic worship. Some
have conjectured that Jedediah Smith, a noted American trapper, and, most
remarkable of all, a devout Christian, may have imparted religious thoughts
to them. Miss Macbeth believed that the motive of the mission was to find
Lewis and Clark, the explorers, whose visit in 1804-05 had produced a
profound impression on the Nez Percés. The first published account of these
four Indians appeared in the New York Christian Advocate for March 1,
1833. This was in the form of a letter from G. P. Disoway, in which he
enclosed a letter to himself from his agent, William Walker, an interpreter
for the Wyandotte Indians. Walker was at St. Louis at the time, and met
these four Indians in General Clark’s office. He was much impressed with
their appearance, and learned that General Clark had given them as full an
account as possible of the nature and history of man, of the advent of the
Saviour, and of His work for men. Walker states that two of the four men
died in St. Louis, and as to whether the others reached their native land he
did not know.
In the Illinois Patriot of October, 1833, the same topic was taken up,
together with the statement that Walker’s report had excited so much
interest that a committee of the Illinois Synod had been appointed to
investigate and report on what seemed the duty of the churches in the
premises. The committee accordingly went to St. Louis and confirmed the
account by conference with General Clark. They also made it an object to
learn all available facts in regard to the general conditions among the
Indians west of the Rocky Mountains.
One of the most valuable records in respect to these Indians is from George
Catlin, the noted painter and student of Indian life. Catlin was on the
steamer going up the Missouri toward Fort Benton with these two
remaining Indians on their homeward journey. His account of them in the
Smithsonian Report for 1885 is thus:

These two men, when I painted them, were in beautiful Sioux
dresses which had been presented to them in a talk with the
Sioux, who treated them very kindly, while passing through the
Sioux country. These two men were part of a delegation that
came across the mountains to St. Louis, a few years since, to
inquire for the truth of representation which they said some
white man had made among them, that our religion was better
than theirs, and that they would all be lost if they did not
embrace it. Two old and venerable men of this party died in St.
Louis, and I travelled two thousand miles, companion with these
two fellows, toward their own country, and became much
pleased with their manners and dispositions. When I first heard
the objects of their extraordinary mission across the mountains, I
could scarcely believe it; but, on conversing with General Clark
on a future occasion, I was fully convinced of the fact.
It appears from still another account of the matter that the two surviving
Indians were disappointed in that they did not actually get possession of the
“Book.” A speech of one of the chiefs as he left General Clark has been
published in a number of books, and is well worthy of preservation. It
should be stated, however, that this speech has no authentic source, nor
does it appear anywhere how it was obtained. It is commonly stated that it
was “taken down” at the time by one of the clerks in General Clark’s office.
The historian Mowry is authority for the statement that one of the Indians
gave the substance of the speech to the missionary, Spalding, at a later time.
It has, also, a somewhat conventionalised sound. Yet with whatever
discredit may be cast upon it, it possesses so many elements of interest that
it may well be given here. This is the reported speech.
I come to you over the trail of many moons from the setting sun.
You were the friend of my fathers, who have all gone the long
way. I came with an eye partly open for my people, who sit in
darkness. I go back with both eyes closed. How can I go back
blind, to my blind people? I made my way to you with strong
arms through many enemies and strange lands that I might carry
back much to them. I go back with both arms broken and empty.
Two fathers came with us. They were the braves of many
winters and wars. We leave them asleep here by your great water

and wigwams. They were tired in many moons and their
moccasins wore out.
My people sent me to get the White Man’s Book of Heaven. You
took me to where you allow your women to dance, as we do not
ours, and the book was not there. You took me to where they
worship the great Spirit with candles, and the book was not
there. You showed me images of the good spirits and the
pictures of the good land beyond, but the book was not among
them to tell us the way. I am going back the long and sad trail to
my people in the dark land. You make my feet heavy with gifts
and my moccasins will grow old in carrying them, yet the book
is not among them. When I tell my poor blind people after one
more snow, in the big council, that I did not bring the book, no
word will be spoken by our old men or by our young braves.
One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people
will die in darkness, and they will go on a long path to other
hunting grounds. No white man will go with them, and no White
Man’s Book to make the way plain. I have no more words.
Taken altogether, it may be said that this event, as preserved in these
various ways, constitutes one of the most pleasing and significant, though
pathetic, incidents in Indian history. It was, moreover, pregnant with results.
It might almost be said that it was the key to American possession of
Oregon. For upon the acquisition of the story by the Christian people of the
United States, there rose an immediate demand that something be done to
carry the Gospel to the Indians of the Oregon country. This story was
interpreted as a Macedonian cry. The period was one of strong religious
feeling, as well as missionary zeal. The warm-hearted followers of the
Cross felt at once that here was a providential opening to honour that Cross
and to advance its kingdom upon the western border of civilisation.
The Methodist Church was first to take up the work of sending forth
missionaries to the Oregon Indians. To Wilbur Fiske of Wesleyan
University seems due the credit of the first move. He enlisted the interest of
Jason Lee, a former student at Wesleyan University, but then engaged in
missionary work in the province of Quebec. Lee was a tall, athletic young
man, full of zeal and consecration, not polished or graceful in manner, but

powerful in spirit. He grasped at once the great possibilities in the
proposition of Dr. Fiske, and, going to Boston, became appointed by the
New England Conference as superintendent of a mission to Oregon. Daniel
Lee, Cyrus Shepard, and P. L. Edwards were named his associates.
In 1834, this mission band learned that Nathaniel Wyeth, famous as a fur-
trader, was expecting to cross the continent, sending his goods by the brig
May Dacre to the Columbia River. Such an opportunity was too favourable
to be lost, and the Methodist Board at once opened negotiations with
Captain Wyeth, with the result that this first missionary company to Oregon
went with him and arrived safely at Vancouver on the Columbia, the
headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The May Dacre reached her
destination soon after, and thus Mr. Lee and his comrades found themselves
at the threshold of their labours. The first intention had been to locate
among the Nez Percés and Flatheads, the ones from whom the Macedonian
cry had gone up. But Dr. McLoughlin, the chief factor at Vancouver, who
had received them with the utmost interest and cordiality, persuaded them
that the Willamette Valley would be a more promising field. Its advantages
were obvious. It was directly on water navigation to the sea, and within
easy distance of it. It was so near the chief entrepôt of the Hudson’s Bay
Company as to be comparatively safe and accessible to all mails. The valley
was of extraordinary scenic charm and salubrious climate. The natives,
moreover, seemed more tractable and peaceful than those of the upper
valley. Accordingly the Methodist brethren ascended the Willamette to a
point near a group of farms which had been located by French employees of
the Hudson’s Bay Company on what is known now as French Prairie. One
of these Frenchmen was Joseph Gervais, and from him the subsequent town
of Gervais was named. The mission was located on the Willamette near
Chemawa, the present site of the United States Indian School. It was ten
miles north of Chemeketa, which was the great Indian Council Ground, or
Peace Ground, from which fact the missionary applied to it the name of
Salem,—a change of name more commendable for piety than for taste.
Jason Lee set to work at once with zeal, patience, and intelligence, to
inaugurate the work to which he had consecrated his life. At times his
efforts seemed to be well rewarded. Then pestilence would attack the
Indians, followed by suspicion and excitement, as a result of which all the
gains would be lost. The work among the whites and their half-breed

families was more encouraging than that with the Indians. At the best,
Indians have been inconstant and unreliable in respect to religious
instruction.
In 1837 a strong reinforcement arrived, among whom were Dr. Elijah
White, destined to become a man of note as Superintendent of Indian
Affairs.
In 1838, Rev. Daniel Lee and Rev. H. K. W. Perkins established a new
station at Wascopum, now the location of The Dalles. In the same year
Jason Lee returned East to secure an addition to the mission. His efforts
were crowned with success. Five missionaries, one physician, six
mechanics, four farmers, one steward, and four female teachers, with a
number unclassified,—in all thirty-six adults and seventeen children,—
reached the Columbia River on the good ship Lausanne, under charge of
Captain Spalding, on May 21, 1840. This was the most notable company
that had yet reached our Great River. Among them were men and women
who contributed in a great degree to the subsequent growth of Oregon. Of
the number were Revs. Gustavus Hines, Alvin Waller, J. P. Richmond, and
J. H. Frost; Dr. Ira L. Babcock, George Abernethy, afterwards governor of
the territory, J. L. Parrish, and L. H. Judson. All the men were accompanied
by their wives, and most of them had children. They were, in short, the
advance guard of the American home-builders in Oregon, and as such they
deserve a special place on the roll of honour.
With this added force, it was possible to enlarge the work, in both secular
and religious lines, both among the whites and the Indians. A mission was
started at Clatsop on the south side of the mouth of the Columbia under Mr.
Parrish, one at the falls of the Willamette, and another on Tualatin Plains,
under Mr. Hines, while still another was located by Mr. Richmond at
Nisqually on Puget Sound.
As time passed on, it became more and more evident that this work was to
become less for Indians and more for the incoming whites. The whole
aspect of it changed. The Methodist Board in New England decided that
they were not justified in maintaining the missions, and these were
discontinued during the decade of the forties.

Out of the mission at Chemeketa grew Willamette University, one of the
most prominent educational institutions of Oregon.
Jason Lee returned to the East and died in Canada in 1845. His life, though
short, was heroic and influential. He looms large on the background of the
history of the Columbia. In brief retrospect, it may be said of him that he
combined religious zeal with shrewd common sense and capacity to see and
adapt himself to the business and political conditions of his time and place.
This capacity is illustrated by his shrewd management of a bold and
enterprising character named Ewing Young. This man was about starting a
distillery in the Willamette Valley. Knowing the ruinous effects of
intoxicants on Indians, the missionaries strongly opposed the enterprise. But
knowing also that Young was a man of force and capacity and much more
valuable as a friend than as an enemy, Mr. Lee accomplished the
abandonment of the distillery by indirection, and at the same time gained
one of the most important steps in the development of the country. For he
induced Young to undertake the great work of driving into the Willamette
Valley a large herd of cattle from California. To the settlers beginning to
locate on the fat pasture land along the Willamette and its tributaries, this
was a stage in history of priceless moment. Up to that time the only cattle in
the country belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company and it was not their
policy to encourage American settlers.
Another fact in connection with Jason Lee constitutes a landmark in the
history of American acquisition of Oregon. This was a memorial prepared
by him, with the assistance of P. L. Edwards and David Leslie, and signed
by practically all the adult men then accessible in the Willamette Valley,
thirty-six in number, addressed to the United States Congress and praying
that the Government would consider the importance of the Columbia River
country and the question of acquisition. This memorial was dated March 16,
1838, and was taken by Mr. Lee to the East and given to Senator Linn of
Missouri, in January, 1839. Senator Linn was so aroused over the boundless
possibilities offered to westward expansion that he introduced a bill in the
Senate calling for the establishment of Oregon Territory and the occupation
of it by the military forces of the United States. Though this bill did not
become a law, it constituted a rallying cry for the friends of American
possession, which had results of utmost importance.

In short, to Jason Lee, more than to any other one, unless we except Dr.
Marcus Whitman, of whom we shall speak later, must be attributed the
inauguration of that remarkable chain of causes and effects, a long line of
sequences, by which Oregon and our Pacific Coast in general became
American possessions, and the international destiny of our nation was
secured.
From the Methodist missions of Lower Columbia we turn to the
Presbyterian and Congregational missions of the upper River and its
tributaries. The American Board of Foreign Missions was at that time under
the joint control of three religious bodies, Presbyterian, Congregational, and
Dutch Reformed. At the instance of the last named body, the Board in 1835
commissioned Rev. Samuel Parker of Ithaca, N. Y., and Marcus Whitman,
M.D., of Rushville, N. Y., to make a reconnaissance of the country of the
Columbia, with the view of a mission. Under the protection of the American
Fur Company, the two spiritual prospectors journeyed as far as Green River.
There deciding that what they learned of the land beyond the Rocky
Mountains warranted the carrying out of the missionary project, they
determined to part company, Dr. Whitman returning to the “States” for
reinforcements, and Dr. Parker going onward through Oregon to the mouth
of the Columbia, and proceeding thence by ship to Honolulu, whence he
returned by water to his home. Dr. Parker was an elderly man, somewhat
pedantic and notional in his ways, but withal full of energy and zeal in the
cause. He was not so popular with trappers and frontiersmen as his
companion. For Whitman was a young, athletic man, capable of any degree
of fatigue, very ready in proffering his professional or other services to
those in need. There was a bonhommie and general disregard of the
conventionalities in Whitman that caused the rough spirits of the border to
“take to” him at once, while they rather looked askance at the more straight-
laced ecclesiastic. But Parker was a man worthy of all respect for his
qualities both of mind and purpose. He was a keen observer, and has left us,
as his contribution to history, his Travels beyond the Rocky Mountains, one
of the most readable and valuable books of travel in our western literature.
His journey was, in fact, the first one across the continent, after that of
Lewis and Clark, which produced a book of high standard.
Dr. Whitman made his way at once to his home in New York, accompanied
by two Nez Percé Indians. Arriving late on Saturday night he stopped with

his brother, and no one else of the village knew of his arrival, until at the
hour of service the next morning, he appeared in the aisle followed by his
two Indians. His appearance was so like that of an apparition that his
usually staid and proper mother lost her head entirely, and leaped to her
feet, shouting “Why, there is Marcus!” The equilibrium of the meeting was
for the time almost destroyed.
Within a few months, Dr. Whitman was married to Narcissa Prentiss. He
persuaded Rev. H. H. Spalding and wife, who had hitherto planned to go as
missionaries to the Osage Indians, to join them for Oregon. W. H. Gray was
secured to go with the party as secular manager.
And now began the famous “Wedding Journey” from New York to the
banks of the Columbia. It included within itself the romance, the pathos, the
devotion, the heroism, and at the last, the tragedy of missions.
The History of Oregon, by W. H. Gray, is the chief original authority for this
journey, though the women of the party kept journals which are of great
value. It would seem that all the members of the party were of marked
personality. Dr. Whitman was a tall, spare man, with deep blue eyes, wide
mouth, iron-grey hair, of inflexible resolution, and very set when his mind
was once made up, though flexible and even variable till that point had been
reached. He was of enormous physical strength and endurance, with a
constitution, as one who knew him later told the writer, “like a saw-mill.”
Mrs. Whitman was a woman of liberal education for those times, large, fair-
haired, blue-eyed, dignified, and somewhat reserved (rather “starchy,” the
mountain men thought her), very ladylike, refined, and attractive. One of
the pathetic and interesting things about her is related by Mrs. Martha J.
Lamb in the Magazine of American History, in 1884. This relates the fact
that the church of which Miss Prentiss (Mrs. Whitman) was a member in
Plattsburg, N. Y., held a farewell service for her, and in the course of it the
minister gave out the hymn:
Yes, my native land, I love thee,
All thy scenes, I love them well;
Friends, connections, happy country,
Can I bid you all farewell.

The entire congregation joined heartily in singing, but before the hymn was
ended voice after voice was choked with sobs, and in the last words the
clear, sweet soprano voice of Miss Prentiss was heard alone, unwavering,
like a peal of triumph.
Mr. Spalding was a very different man from Dr. Whitman and has not been
so well treated by historians. He is said to have been more nervous and
crotchety, though of remarkable industry and intense likes and dislikes,
which he never scrupled to express in vigorous fashion. The fact remains,
however, that his mission was altogether the most successful of all those
founded in Oregon.
Mrs. Spalding was tall, dark, rather coarse featured, and of fragile health. It
is truly wonderful that with such a handicap she should have been able to
accomplish the arduous journey to Oregon. She was less fastidious and
reserved than Mrs. Whitman and adopted the policy of taking the habits and
manners of the Indians in greater degree, whereas her more dignified sister
believed in the policy of trying to raise the Indians to her own level. The
Indians therefore understood Mrs. Spalding better. The Indians always
desired the privilege of entering Mrs. Whitman’s private room
unannounced, and, if possible, of seeing her at her bath or toilette. Her
natural objection to such intrusion was a chronic grievance which resulted
in the suspicion by the Indians that she was conspiring against them.
W. H. Gray, the secular agent, was a young, fine-looking, daring, and
athletic man, very skilful in making and handling boats, teams, waggons,
and anything else of a practical nature. He was so positive and even violent
in his views as to alienate many with whom he came in contact. Yet he was
one of the manliest men that ever came to Oregon, and was intimately
connected with nearly every important event in the history of the Columbia
River, navigation included. His four sons, all born in Oregon, became
steamboat captains and pilots, and without question, no one family has been
so intimately associated with the River as has the Gray family. If any one
group of people could be said to have filed a claim on the River, it is the
family of W. H. Gray. Gray’s history is of high value, yet so intense was his
hatred of the Hudson’s Bay Company and of the British in general, as well
as of Roman Catholics, that his book has been subjected to unsparing
criticism by later writers.

The little missionary band of five, accompanied by the two Nez Percé
Indians who had gone East with Whitman the year before, joined the
westbound caravan of the American Fur Company, and journeyed with
them the greater part of the way. One of the most thrilling and suggestive
moments in their journey was when they stood on the summit of the
Rockies at South Pass. There they looked down the westward maze of
mountains and valleys drained by the Snake River and its tributaries as
these swept west to join the Columbia and thence proceed to the Pacific.
With that vision before them, they spread the Stars and Stripes to the breeze
and kneeling upon the turf, they took possession of the great unknown to
the westward in the name of God and the American Union. Nobly was the
claim maintained, though with it came the crown of martyrdom.
Whitman desired above all other things to demonstrate the feasibility of a
waggon road to the Pacific. He therefore insisted on taking his waggon,
—“Chick-chick-shaile-kikash,” the Indians called it, in attempted
onomatopœia. His demonstration was successful, though the trouble was
infinite. He was compelled to leave the waggon at the Hudson’s Bay Fort
on the Boisé, near the present site of Boisé City, with the intention of
getting it the next year. The Hudson’s Bay people used every effort to
discourage Whitman in his waggon enterprise, though according to Gray,
they made much use of the vehicle in their fort.
On September 2, 1836, the mission party reached the Hudson’s Bay
Company’s fort at the mouth of the Walla Walla, a little more than four
months and two thousand two hundred miles from the banks of the
Missouri to those of the Columbia.
But the journey was not complete, for their definite location must yet be
selected. They proceeded now in bateaux down the Great River to
Vancouver, the headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s empire. There
Dr. McLoughlin, the chief factor, met them with his own peculiar cordiality,
and yet with the dignity befitting the head of so great an establishment. He
was a noble man, and though business considerations and the orders of the
directors of the company would have led him to “freeze out” the Americans,
yet humanity and his own genial nature forbade him to withhold the cordial
hand from the mission band. The fort and two ships in the river were
arrayed in gala attire in honour of the event. Dr. McLoughlin did the

honours of his spacious hall to Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding in a style
that would have graced a baronial mansion.
By Dr. McLoughlin’s advice, since the Methodist mission had been located
in the Willamette Valley, Whitman decided to establish himself among the
Cayuses in the beautiful and fertile valley of the Walla Walla, at Waiilatpu,
the “Place of the Rye-grass.” Spalding accepted the urgent appeal of the
Nez Percés to go a hundred and twenty-five miles eastward to Lapwai on
the Clearwater, near the modern site of Lewiston. Both stations were fair to
look upon, with every natural advantage. It proved, however, that the
Cayuses were fierce and intractable, while the Nez Percés, though warlike
and manly, were also docile, ambitious to learn, and predisposed to friendly
relations with the Americans.
In 1838, the American Board of Foreign Missions sent a reinforcement to
the field, consisting of Revs. Elkanah Walker, Cushing Eells, A. B. Smith,
and their wives. Mr. Gray, who had returned the previous year in order to
organise this reinforcement, had found a wife, and with her was now
accompanying this second missionary band to Oregon.
Messrs. Walker and Eells located at Tshimakain, on what is now called
Walker’s Prairie, near Spokane. Mr. Smith went to Kamiah up the
Clearwater, about sixty miles from Mr. Spalding’s station at Lapwai.
Time fails to speak of the many interesting events marking each of the
missions. They were all located in singularly attractive spots, and every one
of the missionaries made great progress in cultivating the ground, building
mills, houses, and fences, and interesting the Indians in the arts of peace. It
is true that when the novelty of the white man’s ways had passed, many of
the natives lost all interest. Yet upon the Spokanes and the Nez Percés,
lasting influences were wrought. The Nez Percés in particular, under the
influence of their noble and intelligent chief, Hal-hal-tlos-sot, or Lawyer,
almost decided the fate of American institutions in the upper Columbia
River region for years.
One of the especially interesting events in connection with the Nez Percé
mission was the acquisition by Mr. Spalding of the first printing-press used
west of the Rocky Mountains. This was donated by the church of Rev. H.
Bingham at Honolulu in 1839. The indefatigable Spalding, with the

assistance of his wife, who had unusual powers as a linguist, began at once
reducing the Nez Percé language to a written form and printing in it
translations of hymns and portions of the Bible. Some of these first books
of the Columbia River are still in existence. The venerable printing-press is
in the museum of the Oregon Pioneer Society at Portland.
The most dramatic and influential event in connection with the missions of
the Columbia, one of the most so in all American history, was Dr.
Whitman’s mid-winter ride in 1842-43 from Waiilatpu to St. Louis. Dr.
Whitman, in common with Jason Lee, soon began to perceive that the
Columbia Valley possessed resources and a location which would inevitably
make it the seat of a civilised population. The corollary of this was that the
mission must conform to the movements of the whites and in time cease to
be simply an Indian mission. He perceived another thing. That was the
purpose of the Hudson’s Bay Company to hold Oregon under English
possession and keep it a wilderness for the sake of the fur-trade. The
corollary of that was that, if American families could be induced to locate in
Oregon, they would in time topple the scale in favour of American
ownership.
The value of Oregon was then but dimly understood among the Americans.
Webster, Benton, and others of the great statesmen are on record in the
Congressional Globe with many disparaging remarks upon “that worthless
Columbia River country.”
Whitman watched all signs with anxious eye. Negotiations between
England and the United States indicated a probable surrender to the former.
The American Board was considering the abandonment of the mission.
Looking over the broad field of the future of the American nation with a
statesman’s vision, Dr. Whitman readily saw that the interests of his country
and of Christian civilisation demanded the acquisition of Oregon. Those
interests were in jeopardy. He made the great resolution to proceed at once
to the “States” with the threefold aim: confer with the officers of the
American Board on the retention of the mission, confer with President
Tyler, Secretary Webster, and such others of the officers of government as
he could see at Washington, and finally help organise and lead back to
Oregon an American immigration. His fellow-missionaries strongly
opposed his purpose. They felt that it was abandoning the religious aims of

the mission to take up political questions. But he declared that he had not
expatriated himself by becoming a missionary. Go he would. The
undertaking seemed chimerical, even desperate. But Whitman was bold,
athletic, persistent, possessing all the qualities of a hero.
With a single white companion, A. L. Lovejoy, and one or more Indian
guides, he left Waiilatpu on October 3, 1842. His journey through snow, ice,
wind, hunger, peril, and deprivation of every sort, has been ofttimes
described. The extent of his influence in securing the adoption by our
Government of the policy of retaining Oregon has become the theme of
earnest, even acrimonious discussion. The simple fact remains that Oregon
was “saved” to the American Union. The missionaries Lee and Whitman
bore, each his part, and a great one, in the great final result. It is not too
much to say that of the various lines of influence by which the valley of the
Columbia became American territory, that of missions was one of the
strongest.
The Catholic missions of the Columbia Valley have found several
chroniclers, of whom the most valuable are Rev. F. N. Blanchet and Rev.
Pierre J. De Smet. The former in his book, The Catholic Church in Oregon,
gives a clear and circumstantial account of the founding and carrying on of
the work in the Willamette Valley. The latter in his Oregon Missions, and
Western Missions and Missionaries, has given a singularly graphic and
interesting report on religious progress, and with it many charming
descriptions of the scenery and other natural conditions of the country.
Father Blanchet, in company with Rev. Modest Demers, went from
Montreal to Vancouver, a journey of over four thousand miles, in 1837. At
the Little Dalles of the Columbia, near the present Northport, a lamentable
disaster cost the lives of twelve of the company with whom they were
travelling. Reaching Vancouver on November 24, 1837, they received from
Dr. McLoughlin, who had himself been brought up a Catholic, a most
cordial welcome, though apparently not more cordial than the good man
had given Lee, the Methodist, and Whitman, the Presbyterian. The fact that
there were so many French Canadians in the country made the way of the
Catholic Fathers easier than that of the other missionaries. For the French,
with their gayety, sociability, and usual habit of intermarriage with the
Indians, were much more popular with them than were the more harsh and

reserved British and Americans. In fact the Catholic Fathers found a
building all ready for their use at the historic town of Champoeg on the
Willamette, thirty miles above Portland. There in 1836, the French settlers
had built a log church, the first church building in Oregon. It is rather sad to
relate that petty dissensions and jealousies marred the relations between the
Catholics and the Methodists. But both alike were zealous and indefatigable
in promoting the secular and religious interests of both red men and white
men.
While Fathers Blanchet and Demers and their associates were busily
engaged in the Willamette Valley, Father de Smet had come in 1840 into the
Flathead country, in what is now Northern Idaho. His first mission was St.
Mary’s, on the Flathead River, founded by the planting of the cross on
September 24, 1841. Other missions were soon established on Cœur
d’Alene Lake and Pend Oreille Lake. Branching out from them were
missions in Colville, and ultimately in the Walla Walla, Yakima, Wenatchee,
and Chelan valleys.
De Smet greatly overestimated the number of Indians, reckoning those in
Oregon at one hundred and ten thousand. He numbered his converts by the
thousands. So pressing seemed the needs that in 1843, he went to Europe
for reinforcements. He was very successful in his quest, returning the
following year in the ship L’Indefatigable, from Antwerp, accompanied by
four fathers, six sisters, and several lay brothers. He gives a thrilling
account of his entrance of the Columbia River on July 31, 1844. He vividly
portrays the terrors of the bar with the mighty surges dashing across the
entrance. The captain did not understand the channel and became diverted
from the true course, which was then by the north channel, and got into the
south. The latter is now the main channel, but then was dangerous. De Smet
piously regards their escape from wreck as due to the special interposition
of divine providence, and to the favour extended to them because of its
being the day sacred to St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of their order. De
Smet’s brilliant and poetical descriptions of the grandeur of the river and its
forests denote a keen appreciation of nature and a facile pen.
Demers, De Smet, and Blanchet entered upon their work with such energy
that by the time of De Smet’s report in 1844 there had been established four
dioceses in the region tributary to the Columbia; viz., Oregon City, Walla

Walla, Fort Hall, and Colville. Oregon City was the Metropolitan See and in
charge of Rev. F. N. Blanchet. Walla Walla was under the direction of Rev.
Magloire Blanchet, who at that date had charge also of Forts Hall and
Colville. Eleven chapels had been erected at different points; five in the
Willamette Valley, one at Vancouver, one on the Cowlitz, one on Cœur
d’Alene Lake, one on Pend Oreille Lake, one at Kettle Falls on the
Columbia near Colville, and one near Calispell among the Flatheads. There
were three schools; one being St. Mary’s among the Flatheads, while at St.
Paul’s on the Willamette, there were two, a college for boys, still the site of
a college, and a girls’ academy. Twelve clergymen were engaged at that
time in the work, and the number was soon increased to twenty-six by
another reinforcement from Europe. With the reinforcement were also
seven female teachers.
Each of these three chief groups of missions had its special aims, methods,
and results. The Catholic was more exclusively religious, while the
Protestants passed over readily from their initial religious aims to the
domain of political and educational interest. The net result was tremendous
in the history of the country.
Among the educational institutions growing directly out of the labours of
the missionaries we may mention Willamette University at Salem, the direct
successor of the Methodist mission at Chemeketa; Whitman College at
Walla Walla, founded by Cushing Eells as a memorial to Marcus Whitman;
Pacific University at Forest Grove, Oregon, founded by a later set of
Congregational Home Missionaries; and the Catholic College at St. Paul’s,
the successor of the school founded in 1839 by Blanchet.

They rest from their labours and their works do follow them.

CHAPTER VII

The Era of the Pioneers: their Ox-teams and their
Flatboats
Events and Men who led the Way to the
Pioneer Age—Kelley, Wyeth, and
Bonneville—Ewing Young—Farnham,
Shortess, and the “Oregon Dragoons”—
The Wilkes Expedition—The Star of
Oregon, and the Cattle Enterprise—Dr.
John McLoughlin and the Americans—
Dr. Marcus Whitman and his Winter
Ride, and the Immigration of 1843—
Retrospect of J. W. Nesmith—Features
of the Journey across the Plains—
Whitman’s Services—Getting the
Waggons across the Plains—Reaching
the River and Building Boats—Delights
and then Distress of the Descent of the
River—Battle with the River—
Condition in which they Reached
Vancouver, and their Reception by Dr.
McLoughlin—Subsequent Immigrations
—The Barlow Road—The Donation
Land Law—Quotation from Jesse
Applegate.

T HE pioneer era was ushered in by the coming to Oregon of fur-hunters,
missionaries, and little bands of adventurers, who together composed
the nucleus of that American community which formed the Provisional
Government of 1843. There were certain individuals, too, whose agency in
leading the way to the immigration movement was so unique as to deserve
mention.

One of these was Hall J. Kelley of Boston. He was a native of New
Hampshire and a Harvard graduate. As early as 1815, when seventeen years
old, he conceived the idea of the colonisation of Americans in Oregon. He
was a man of high scholarship, philanthropic spirit, and patriotic purpose.
He was a dreamer and idealist, planning to form a community on the
Columbia, as one of the Utopias which minds of that stamp, from Plato
down, have been fond of locating somewhere in the unexplored West. After
making a great effort, with partial success, to enlist Congress in his
schemes, he succeeded in organising a company of several hundred, and by
1828 shaped the definite plan of going to St. Louis and following the route
of the fur companies across the plains to the River of Oregon. But
opposition by those same fur companies, and adverse criticism by the press
broke up his enterprise for that time. In 1832 he started with a small party
for the land of his dreams by the route through Mexico and California. In
California, he met with Ewing Young, an American of great natural abilities
and some education. Young and Kelley, brainy and original men, the former
from shrewd commercial instinct and the latter from philanthropic dreams,
formed a little company, and proceeded overland from California to
Oregon. This was in the autumn of 1834. When, after some disasters, the
company of eleven reached the Columbia, Young took up a great tract of
land in the Chehalem Valley, where he devoted himself to stock-raising.
Kelley, having become an invalid, went in distress to Fort Vancouver, where
Dr. McLoughlin treated him with kindness, though the exclusive
“Britishers” would not admit him to “social equality.” The other members
of the company were scattered in various directions, but some of them
remained till American occupancy became an accomplished fact.
This company of 1834,—the same year that the Methodist missionaries
under Jason Lee arrived—may be considered the advance guard of
American immigration. Kelley, upon his return to New England by way of
the Sandwich Islands, disseminated much useful information about Oregon.
To him, without doubt, is to be attributed much of the subsequent wave of
interest which swept on toward American immigration. As first a New
England college man, educator, and social theoriser, and then a leader of the
pioneer movement to Oregon, Hall J. Kelley is worthy of permanent
remembrance.

Ewing Young became distinguished for leading the party which in 1837
drove a band of seven hundred cattle from California to Oregon. This even
marked an epoch in preparing for immigration and subsequent American
possession. One of the peculiarly noteworthy facts in connection with
Young’s enterprise, is that Dr. McLoughlin, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s
magnate, who had at first discountenanced Young on account of a charge of
stealing brought against him from California, and who frowned upon the
cattle enterprise for fear of American influence, became reconciled to both
Young and the cattle, and subscribed liberally to the enterprise.
Nearly contemporary with Kelley and Young were Bonneville and Wyeth.
Bonneville was a well-educated French-American, a West Pointer, and
holding the commission of captain in the United States Army. His ardent
and imaginative disposition became fired with the thought of a far western
expedition, and in 1832 he organised a fur-traders’ company of a hundred
and ten men. Though not realising his dreams of a fortune in furs,
Bonneville made many interesting and valuable observations upon the
Salmon, Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia rivers. He became thoroughly
imbued with the romance and scenic grandeur of the far West. Upon his
return to New York, he had the good fortune to meet Washington Irving at
the home of John Jacob Astor. Irving had already felt the irresistible
fascination which the River of Oregon has wrought upon all poetical
natures, and the result of this meeting was one of Irving’s most charming
volumes, Bonneville’s Adventures, a volume which became another potent
force in turning toward the Pacific slope the thoughts of the eager, restless
people of the frontier.
Still another in the group of men who led the way to immigration was
Nathaniel Wyeth. He was a talented, well-educated, and energetic
Bostonian. So distinguished a personage as James Russell Lowell has said
of him: “He was a very remarkable person, whose conversation I valued
highly. A born leader of men, he was fitly called Captain Nathaniel Wyeth
as long as he lived.”
Wyeth conceived the idea of a great trading company on the Columbia,
whose operations would necessarily create rivalry with the British. His
design was to send companies across the continent to the Columbia head-

waters and to maintain also ship connection by way of Cape Horn. He
believed that a ship load of salmon from the Columbia River to the Atlantic
sea-board would be a paying venture. On so large a scale did he lay out his
enterprise that he expected soon to have a business of two hundred
thousand dollars a year. But he looked beyond the fur and salmon business
to American possession and settlement, at least south of the River to the
California line. He therefore embraced in his view the building of
enterprises which should lead up to and then profit by American
immigration. Wyeth spent five years in Oregon, having many interesting
adventures, and as many business reverses. As was the case with Astor, the
British fur-traders proved too powerful for the Yankee. Among other
undertakings, he built a fort on Sauvie’s Island at the mouth of the
Willamette, which he called Fort William. He desired to make this the basis
of his trade, and he expected the Indians to go there to trade. But such was
the influence of the Hudson’s Bay people and their employees with the
Indians that Wyeth’s fort had no trade. It was during those years that a
frightful pestilence swept the natives away like flies, and there was great
fear among them that Wyeth’s fort might harbour the scourge. The period of
Wyeth’s enterprise in Oregon extended from the spring of 1832 to the
autumn of 1836. Though not a business success, it had a great bearing on
the creation of an interest in Oregon, and on preparing for immigration a
few years later. It opened the eyes of many Americans to the attractions of
Oregon and to the tremendous power and profits of the Hudson’s Bay
Company.
The next movement may be called a real immigration to Oregon. It
consisted of a party of nineteen, commonly known as the “Peoria party,”
since they went from Peoria, Ill. Jason Lee, the missionary of Chemeketa,
delivered a lecture at that place in 1838, and so much interest in Oregon
was aroused that in the year following, the Peoria party, the first regular
party from the Mississippi Valley, set forth for the River of the West. Their
leader, T. J. Farnham, christened his followers the “Oregon Dragoons” and
Mrs. Farnham gave them a flag with the inscription, “Oregon or the Grave.”
Farnham declared his purpose to seize Oregon for the United States.
The Peoria party had the good fortune to have two writers in the number,
whose accounts possess rare interest. These writers were the leader
Farnham, and Robert Shortess. The party went to pieces at Bent’s Fort on

the Arkansas, but its members reached Oregon somewhat in driblets during
that year, and the one following. Shortess reached the Whitman Mission at
Walla Walla in the fall of 1839, and there he remained until the following
spring, when he went down the River to The Dalles. From The Dalles, he
made his way over the Cascade Mountains to the Willamette Valley, and
there he lived many years. Farnham also finally reached Oregon, but his
avowed mission was unfulfilled. Shortess says of him: “Instead of raising
the American flag and turning the Hudson’s Bay Company out-of-doors, he
accepted the gift of a suit of clothes and a passage to the Sandwich Islands,
and took a final leave of Oregon.” But upon his return to the “States,”
Farnham published a Pictorial History of Oregon and California, a book of
many interesting features, and one which played a worthy part in waking
the people of the Mississippi Valley to the attractions of the Pacific Coast.
Soon after the close of Wyeth’s enterprise, there were two notable
government expeditions to the Columbia River. One was commanded by Sir
Edward Belcher of the British Navy, and the other by Lieutenant Charles
Wilkes of the American Navy. The Wilkes expedition was one of the most
interesting and important ever undertaken by the United States
Government. The squadron consisted of two sloops-of-war, the Peacock
and the Vincennes, the store ship, Relief, the brig, Porpoise, and the
schooners, Sea Gull and Flying Fish. This fine squadron took up its
principal station on Puget Sound, from which extensive surveys were made,
one across the mountains to Fort Okanogan; another of the Cowlitz Valley
and the Columbia River as far as Wallula.
One of the most important results of this elaborate Wilkes expedition was to
establish in the minds of officers of the Government the essential unity of
all parts of the Pacific Coast and the boundless opportunities offered to
American immigration. Wilkes and his intelligent officers readily grasped,
and conveyed through an elaborate report to the government, the idea that
Puget Sound was an inherent and integral part of Oregon and that the
Columbia Basin was essential to the proper development of American
commerce upon the Pacific. They may also have forecast the time when
California with her girdles of gold and chaplets of freedom would spring,
Athena-like, from the Zeus brain of American enterprise. The control of the
River was the key to the control of the entire coast from San Diego to the
Straits of Fuca;—and American ownership should have extended to Sitka.

A memorable calamity occurred to the squadron upon its entrance to the
River, and that was the loss of the Peacock on the Columbia River bar. The
oft-depicted terrors of the River were realised at that time, and yet it was
not the River’s fault for the Peacock was out of the channel. The spit is
known as “Peacock Spit” to this day.
Among the many episodes connecting Wilkes with the early immigration
was the building of the schooner Star of Oregon and her voyage to
California for cattle. This was in 1842. It will be remembered that Ewing
Young had made a successful trip from California with cattle. But as the
population of the Columbia had increased, there was a great desire among
the settlers to obtain a larger number of cattle to let loose upon the rich
pasture lands of the Willamette Valley. A little group of Americans
conceived the adventurous project of building a schooner of Oregon timber,
sailing with her to California, exchanging her there for stock, and driving
the band across the country home again. The schooner was built by Felix
Hathaway, Joseph Gale, and Ralph Kilbourne. The oak and fir timber of
which the vessel was built was cut on Sauvie’s Island, at the mouth of the
Willamette, and in due time she was launched and taken to Willamette Falls
for fitting. A difficulty arose. Dr. McLoughlin refused to sell sails, cordage,
and other materials. He had the only supply in Oregon. In despair the
enterprising ship-builders appealed to Lieutenant Wilkes. He felt a keen
interest in their laudable undertaking and made a visit to McLoughlin to try
to change his resolution. By assuring the Doctor that he would be
responsible both for all the bills, as well as for the good conduct of the
party, he induced him to allow the requisition for all materials necessary to
complete the gallant craft. Gale was the only sailor in the party. Having
satisfied Wilkes that he was qualified to command a ship, and having
received from him a present of a flag, an ensign, a compass, kedge-anchor,
hawser, log line, and two log glasses, the captain flung the flag to the
Oregon breeze and turned the prow of the Star of Oregon toward the
River’s mouth. She may be remembered as the first sea-going vessel built
of Oregon timber. Crossing the Bar in a storm, she sped southward in a
spanking breeze, all hands seasick except Gale. He held the wheel thirty-six
hours continuously, and in five days “dashed through the portals of the
Golden Gate like an arrow, September 17, 1842.”

As it was too late to get the cattle back to Oregon that fall, the party sold
their schooner for three hundred and fifty cows, wintered in California, and
the next spring drove to the Columbia twelve hundred and fifty head of
cattle, six hundred head of mules and horses, and three thousand sheep.
This was an achievement which made the way for immigration clearer than
ever before, and in a most effective manner united the American settlers
with the American government. Some of the Hudson’s Bay Company
people could begin to see the handwriting on the wall. Dr. McLoughlin saw
most quickly and most clearly, and as elsewhere narrated, began to transfer
his interests to the American side. This fine old man was big-brained, big-
bodied, and big-souled, a natural American, though compelled to work for
the British fur monopolists for the time. He admired the independent spirit
of the incoming Yankee immigrants, even when the joke was on him. He
afterwards told with much gusto of an American named Woods crossing the
Columbia to Vancouver to try to get goods. He found his credit shaky, and
somewhat piqued, he exclaimed: “Well, never mind, I have an uncle back
East rich enough to buy out the whole of your old Hudson’s Bay
Company!” “Well, well, Mr. Woods,” demanded the autocrat, “who may
this very rich uncle of yours be?” “Uncle Sam,” was the unabashed and
characteristic American reply. “Old Whitehead” also appreciated, though he
was obliged to manifest a dignified disapproval, when two young men from
New York, having reached the fort on the River, were asked about their
passports. Laying their hands on their rifles they replied, “These are an
American’s passports.”
These small miscellaneous immigrations were in continuance from about
1830 to 1842. In the latter year a hundred came. In 1843, as elsewhere
related, the Provisional Government was instituted. At the very same time,
the immigration of 1843 was on its way to the River.
This immigration of 1843 was in many respects the most remarkable of all.
It was the first large one, and it was a type of all. It will be remembered that
Dr. Marcus Whitman had made his great winter ride in 1842-43 across the
Rockies to St. Louis, with a double aim. First he wished to see the officers
of the American Board of Missions, and then to enlist the American
government and people in the policy of holding Oregon against the manifest
aims of the British. There was already a tremendous interest felt in Oregon
among the people of Missouri, Illinois, and the other great prairie States.

Whitman’s opportune arrival and his announced purpose to guide an
immigration to the Columbia became widely known, and brought to a focus
many vaguely-considered plans.
J. W. Nesmith, subsequently one of the most prominent pioneers and a
member of each House of Congress from Oregon, has given a humorous
account of the manner of starting this immigration of 1843, of which he was
a member, which is so characteristic that we quote it here.
Mr. Burnett, or as he was more familiarly styled, “Pete,” was
called upon for a speech. Mounting a log the glib-tongued orator
delivered a glowing florid address. He commenced by showing
his audience that the then western tier of states and territories
were crowded with a redundant population, who had not
sufficient elbow room for the expansion of their enterprise and
genius, and it was a duty they owed to themselves and posterity
to strike out in search of a more expanded field and a more
genial climate, where the soil yielded the richest return for the
slightest amount of cultivation,—where the trees were loaded
with perennial fruit,—and where a good substitute for bread,
called La Camash, grew in the ground; where salmon and other
fish crowded the streams; and where the principal labour of the
settlers would be confined to keeping their gardens free from the
inroads of buffalo, elk, deer, and wild turkeys. He appealed to
our patriotism by picturing forth the glorious empire we should
establish upon the shores of the Pacific,—how with our trusty
rifles we should drive out the British usurpers who claimed the
soil, and defend the country from the avarice and pretensions of
the British Lion,—and how posterity would honour us for
placing the fairest portion of the land under the Stars and
Stripes.... Other speeches were made full of glowing
descriptions of the fair land of promise, the far-away Oregon,
which no one in the assemblage had ever seen, and about which
not more than half a dozen had ever read any account. After the
election of Mr. Burnett as captain, and other necessary officers,
the meeting, as motley and primitive a one as ever assembled,
adjourned with “three cheers” for Captain Burnett and Oregon.

Peter Burnett to whom Nesmith here refers, was the same who became the
first governor of California.
By the walnut hearth-fires in many a home of the prairie States and at the
corn-huskings and quilting bees the talk of Oregon and the forests of the
Columbia, and the rich pasture lands of the Willamette, and the salmon and
game, and genial climate and majestic mountains, went the rounds. Interest
grew into enthusiasm, enthusiasm waxed hot, and in the early spring the
great immigration of 1843 set forth from Westport, Missouri, for the
Columbia waters. Though the immigration of 1843 was the earliest of any
size and the first with any number of women and children, it had perhaps
the least trouble and misfortune and the most romance and gayety and
enthusiasm of any. The experience of crossing the plains was one which
nothing else could duplicate;—the hasty rising in the chill damp of the
morning, the preparing the cattle and horses for the long, hard drive, the
rounds of the waggons to strengthen bolts and tires and tongues, the loading
of the rifles for possible hostile Indians or buffalo, the setting forth of the
scouts on horseback, the long train strung across the dusty plain, the
occasional bands of wild Indians emerging like a whirlwind from the broad
expanse, and then the approaching cool of night with its hurried rest on the
rough prairie sod. Sometimes there were nights of storm and stampede and
darkness. Sometimes savage beasts and savage men startled the train, or one
of the stupendous herds of buffalo went thundering across the prairie. Then
came the first glimpse of snowy heights, then of deep cañons, and then the
summit was attained, and far westward stretched the maze of plains and
mountains through which the Snake River, the greatest of the tributaries of
the Columbia, took its swift way.
During most of the journey, Dr. Marcus Whitman was guide, physician, and
friend. While severe controversy has arisen as to the extent of his services
in organising the immigration, the testimony is unvarying as to the value of
his presence with the train. Last to bed at night and first up in the morning,
attending both people, cattle, and horses in their sicknesses and accidents,
ahead of the train on horseback to find the passes of the hills and the fords
of the rivers, the watcher by night and the pilot by day, the missionary
doctor was the veritable “Mr. Greatheart” of the immigration.

Great was the astonishment of Captain Grant, commandant of the Hudson’s
Bay Fort Hall on Snake River, near the present Pocatello, when the long
train filed past the enclosure. Grant had known Whitman before and was
aware of his stubborn determination and patriotic purpose. But Grant
attempted just the same to dissuade the immigrants of 1843 from going
farther with their waggons, declaring the Blue Mountains to be impassable.
The doughty doctor simply laughed quietly and told the immigrants to push
on, and he would see them through. But just as they were entering the rough
defiles of the Blue Mountains, a band of Indians from Waiilatpu, headed by
Sticcus, came to meet the train, searching for Whitman, telling him that his
medical services were in great demand at Lapwai. The much-needed guide
turned over the pilotage of the train to Sticcus, and he himself hastened on
to minister to the sick at Lapwai. As he passed through Waiilatpu he learned
that the threatening conduct of the Indians had led Mrs. Whitman to go to
Vancouver, and that during his absence the Indians had burned his mill and
committed other depredations. But it was his lot to labour and suffer. He
had become accustomed to it.
The event proved that Sticcus was a thoroughly capable guide. For, though
not speaking a word of English, he made his directions so well understood
by pantomime that, as Mr. Nesmith has said, he led them safely over the
roughest mountain road that they ever saw. And so in due time the train
emerged from the screen of timber on the Blue Mountains. Stretched wide
before them, lay the plains of Umatilla and Walla Walla, while in the far
distance the River of the West poured through the arid waste. Yet farther the
snow summits of the Cascades ridged the western sky. After a brief pause at
Waiilatpu, the train reached the banks of the River. The immediate vicinity
of the section of the River first reached is very dry in autumn. Aside from
the River itself, the immediate scene is desolate and forbidding. But
probably those immigrants of ’43 gazed upon the blue flood, a mile wide
and hastening to the western ocean, with feelings almost akin to those
which swelled the hearts of the Pilgrims landing from the Mayflower. This
was another epic of state-making, and one generation after another of the
Americans who have wrought such achievement may well turn back to join
hands with those before.
Doubtless the immigrants, as they stood by the River in the pleasant haze of
the October afternoon, felt as though their journey was substantially at an

end. Being now at Fort Walla Walla on the river of that name, they paused
to make ready for the last stage of the journey, little realising what perils
and sufferings it would entail. Dr. Whitman and Archibald McKinley, the
chief factor at the fort, advised them to leave their cattle and waggons to
winter on the Walla Walla, while they pursued their way down the stream
on flatboats. Part of the company accepted the advice, but a number
determined to keep all their belongings together and to take their road along
the bank of the River to The Dalles, and there make their flatboats.
To those who remained on the Walla Walla now fell the difficult task of
constructing flatboats. Huge, uncouth, structures they were, made of timber
gathered on the river bank. But when loaded and pushed out into the swift
current, steered with immense sweeps in the stern, these flatboats afforded
to the footsore and exhausted immigrants a delightful change. Out of the
dust, off the rocks, away from the sage-brush, with more of laugh and song
than they had had for many a day, they swept gaily on. For a hundred miles
or more the elements were propitious. With the bright sunshine, the clear,
cool water, the majestic snow-peaks in the distance, the easily gliding boats,
—this seemed the pleasantest part of the entire journey. But after The
Dalles had been reached and the two divisions of the company were again
united and on their way down the River to the Cascades, disaster began to
haunt them. At the Cascades, a boat with several members of the Applegate
family, one of the most prominent in the immigration as well as afterwards,
was overturned in the rapids, and three of the party drowned in the boiling
surge. Two were saved in a way that seems almost miraculous. One of these
was a young boy, the other a young man. The boy was very active and an
excellent swimmer. After the overturning of the boat he was carried two
miles in the current, part of the time being entirely sucked under by the
whirling under-current. After being tossed with violence betwixt rock and
wave till it seemed that he must expire, he was suddenly spewed forth upon
a ledge of slippery rock, to which he clung desperately till he had recovered
breath. Then he drew himself up on a narrow shelf, and at the same instant
saw the young man swept by. Reaching forth, the brave boy managed to
bring the struggling man to the same shelter with himself. But when they
had regained sufficient strength to examine their surroundings, they
discovered that they were on a rocky niche from which they could find no
ascent of the ragged precipitous cliff. They were in a trap. Looking across

the River, they could see that the bank was smooth and that on that side lay
the trail. Young Applegate saw that a reef extended a considerable part of
the way across the River, and desperate as the attempt seemed, he resolved
to pick his way along the reef to a point whence he might swim to the other
shore. It was his only chance for life. Fearful as were the odds, the daring
lad accomplished his aim. He emerged on the further end of the reef.
Looking around, he discovered that his comrade had not possessed the
nerve to follow. And then,—most wonderful of all,—back he went to assist
his more timid fellow. In this, too, he succeeded, and after a return in which
they should have been drowned a dozen times, they both reached the farther
end of the reef. There casting themselves again into the inhospitable flood,
they buffeted their way to shore. Battered, bruised, exhausted, they yet
recovered and lived to a good old age to tell the tale of their fight with the
Columbia River.
From the Cascades to Vancouver, the company suffered more than in all the
rest of their journey. The fall rains were at hand, and it poured with an
unremitting energy such as no one can realise who has not seen a rain storm
on the lower River. Food had become almost exhausted. Clothing was in
rags. Tired, hungry, wet, cold, disheartened, the immigrants who had so
jauntily descended the River to this “Strait of Horrors,” presented a most
woful appearance. It actually seemed that many must perish. But in the
crisis, help came. One of the party managed to procure a canoe and
hastened down the River to Fort Vancouver. As soon as Dr. McLoughlin
learned that nearly nine hundred men, women, and children were
beleaguered in the mist and chill, he equipped boats with flour, meat, and
tea, and in his choleric excitement, waving his huge cane, bade the boatman
hurry to the rescue. It was not business for the good Doctor to thus aid and
abet American immigrants, and the directors of the Hudson’s Bay Company
and the cold-blooded Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-chief, disapproved.
But it was humanity, and that ever predominated in the mind of “Old
Whitehead.” The next night he caused vast bonfires to be alight along the
bank, and gathered all the eatables and blankets that the place afforded.
When the boat loads of the battered, but rescued Americans drew near, the
Doctor was on the bank to meet them, to hand out the women and children,
to administer the balm of cheery words and warmth and food. Few were the

travellers on the River, none were the immigrants of ’43, who would not
rise up and call him blessed.
After this happy pause at Vancouver, the immigration passed on to the
Willamette Falls, then the centre of operations in Oregon, and there they
were soon joined by the chosen men who had driven their thirteen hundred
head of cattle by the trail over the Cascade Mountains, a task toilsome and
even distressing, but one that was accomplished. After an inactive winter in
the mild, muggy, misty Oregon climate, the immigrants of ’43 spread
abroad in the opening spring to secure land, each his square mile, as the
Provisional Government provided, and as the American government was
contemplating.
Such was the coming of the immigrants to the River. Subsequent
immigrations bore a general resemblance to that of 1843. Each had its
special feature. That of 1845 was conspicuous for its size. It was three
thousand strong. It was also illustrious for the laying out of the road across
the Cascade Mountains near the southern flank of Mt. Hood. This noble and
difficult undertaking was carried through by S. K. Barlow and William
Rector. It was a terrific task, and was not completed the first year. Cañons,
precipitous rocks, morasses, sand-hills, tangled forests, fallen trees, criss-
crossed and interlaced with briars and vines and shrubbery of tropical
luxuriance, such as no one can appreciate who has not seen an Oregon
jungle,—these were the obstructions to the Barlow Road. But they were
vanquished and in 1846 and thence onward the immigrants made this the
regular route to the Willamette Valley. So steep was Laurel Hill on the
western slope that waggons had to be let down by ropes from level to level.
The marks of the ropes or chains are still seen on the trees of Laurel Hill.
The immigration of 1852 was sadly conspicuous for the devastations of
cholera. Many a family was broken in sunder and some even were entirely
eliminated by the dreadful plague. The immigrations of 1854 and 1855 were
notable for the Indian outbreaks, and especially for the atrocious butchery
of the Ward family near Boisé in the earlier year, the most pitiless Indian
outrage in Oregon history.
From 1850 onward for some years the Donation Land Law of Congress was
a great lure to immigrants, for by it a man and wife could obtain a section of
land. A single man could take up half a section. That situation encouraged

early marriages. Girls were in great demand. It was not uncommon to see
fourteen-year-old brides. Some narrators relate having found married
women in the woods of the Columbia who were playing with their dolls!
But though the immigrations varied in special features, they were all alike
in their mingling of mirth and melancholy, of toil and rest, of suffering and
enjoyment, of heroism, and self-sacrifice. They embodied an epoch of
American history that can never come again. To have been an immigrant
from the Missouri to the Columbia was an experience to which nothing else
on earth is comparable. It confers a title of American nobility by the side of
which the coronets of some European dukes are tawdry and contemptible.
Perhaps no one ever better phrased the spirit of Oregon immigration than
Jesse Applegate of the train of ’43, one of the foremost of Oregon’s
builders, long known as the “Sage of Yoncalla.” So fitting do we deem his
language that we quote here an extract from one of his addresses.
The Western pioneer had probably crossed the Blue Ridge or the
Cumberland Mountains when a boy and was now in his prime.
Rugged, hardy, and powerful of frame, he was full to
overflowing with the love of adventure, and animated by a brave
soul that scorned the very idea of fear. All had heard of the
perpetually green hills and plains of Western Oregon, and how
the warm breath of the vast Pacific tempered the air to the genial
degree and drove winter back to the North. Many of them
contrasted in imagination the open stretch of a mile square of
rich, green, and grassy land, where the strawberry plant bloomed
through every winter month, with their circumscribed clearings
in the Missouri bottoms. Of long winter evenings neighbours
visited each other, and before the big shell-bark hickory fire, the
seasoned walnut fire, the dry black-jack fire, or the roaring dead
elm fire, they talked these things over; and as a natural
consequence, under these favourable circumstances, the spirit of
emigration warmed up; and the “Oregon fever” became as a
household expression. Thus originated the vast cavalcade, or
emigrant train, stretching its serpentine length for miles,
enveloped in vast pillars of dust, patiently wending its toilsome
way across the American continent.

How familiar these scenes and experiences with the old
pioneers! The vast plains, the uncountable herds of buffalo; the
swift-footed antelope; the bands of mounted, painted warriors;
the rugged snow-capped mountain ranges; the deep, swift, and
dangerous rivers; the lonesome howl of the wild wolf; the
midnight yell of the assaulting savage; the awful panic and
stampede; the solemn and silent funeral at the dead hour of
night, and the lonely and hidden grave of departed friends,—
what memories are associated with the Plains across!

CHAPTER VIII

Conflict of Nations for Possession of the River
The Six Nations at First Engaged in the
Conflict—The Three Left in it—Claims
by Sea of Spain, England, and the
United States—Claims by Land—
Rivalries of the Great Fur Companies—
Capture of Astoria by the English—Its
Restoration to the United States—
Appearance of Fort George in 1818—
Joint Occupation Treaty of 1818—
Florida Treaty of 1819—Treaty with
Russia in 1825—Forces on the Side of
England and those on the side of the
United States—American Triumph
Inevitable—Policy of the Hudson’s Bay
Company in Contrast with that of the
American Immigration—Indifference of
the American Government—Utterances
of Some American Statesmen—Doings
of the American People—Gathering of
the Little American Colony in the
Willamette Valley—Need of
Government—First Meeting at
Champoeg—Advice of Commodore
Wilkes that they Delay—The “Wolf
Meetings”—Second Meeting at
Champoeg, and Establishment of the
Provisional Government—Its Chief
Provisions—Thornton’s Account of the
“Hall” at Champoeg—Peter H. Burnett
—Dr. McLoughlin’s Position—
Triumphs of the American Immigrant
over the Great Fur Company—
McLoughlin and Whitman—
Movements of Diplomacy between

England and the United States—
Webster, Linn, Benton, and Calhoun—
Inconsistent Positions of the Democratic
Party—Polk and the Platform of 54
Degrees 40 Minutes, or Fight—Near
Approach of War—Compromise on the
Line of 49 Degrees—Momentous
Nature of the Issue—Triumph of
American Home-builders.

E ARLIER chapters of this volume have already developed some of the
essential elements in the complicated strife of the maritime nations of
the world for possession of the land of the Oregon. This brief chapter will
endeavour to recapitulate and group those steps, and to trace the course of
events by which the line finally was drawn on the parallel of 49 degrees.
As we have seen, the many-named river, and the fact that it was the key to a
vast region and that the shores of the ocean contiguous to it seemed to
abound in the finest of furs, was a lure to Portuguese, Frenchman, Russian,
Spaniard, Englishman, and American. The first three became early
eliminated from the conflict, and the last three fought the triangular battle to
its ending with the final result that Uncle Sam inserted his broad shoulders
between Mexico and the 49th parallel, and thus controls the choicest land of
the sunset slope of the continent.
Spain, England, and the United States each had a valid claim to Oregon.
Spain, by the partial discovery of the River by Heceta in 1775, by the
voyages of Bodega and Arteaga in the same year and again in 1779, and by
the voyage of Valdez and Galiano around Vancouver Island in 1792,
together with many other voyages of a less definite nature by illustrious
navigators, as Malaspina, Bustamente, Elisa, and others, had a strong
position. Yet she had failed to clinch her discoveries or to take effective
possession.
Great Britain could point to the elaborate examinations of Cook and
Vancouver. The latter had made a minute investigation of the noble group of
waters whose outlet preserves the name of the old Greek pilot of

Cephalonia, Juan de Fuca; and his Lieutenant Broughton had entered the
Columbia River and proceeded over a hundred miles up the stream. The
nomenclature given to both the River and the Sound regions by Vancouver
had been the first in any sense complete. So England, too, had a strong
claim.
And what were the claims of the United States? First and foremost was the
discovery by Robert Gray of the River and his actual twenty-five-mile
ascension of it in May, 1792. He had gone much farther than Heceta, who
had only looked in, but he had not gone so far as Broughton. The latter
indeed, claimed, and his government followed him in the claim, that Gray
had not really been in the River at all, but was only in an estuary of the sea
into which the River flowed. But that, to any one who has seen the River, is
too much of a forced construction to stand serious examination. Moreover,
Gray antedated Broughton by some months.
Turning from sea claims to land claims, England could point to Alexander
Mackenzie as having crossed the continent in 1792, and as having reached
the veritable ocean at Cascade Inlet. But it again was a very strained
construction to extend that claim so far as to include the lower Columbia
Valley. The United States could justly advance as a sufficient offset, the
expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804. In 1811 David Thompson had
traversed the entire length of the Columbia for the British flag, only to find
the Astor Company already established under the Stars and Stripes at the
mouth of the River. From these essential facts out of many, we can easily
draw the conclusion that no one of these three contestants could justly be
too arrogant and exclusive. Some degree of modesty was befitting each.
We have already seen the rivalries of the great fur companies, the Hudson’s
Bay and the North-western of the British, and the Pacific of the Americans,
and the effect of the War of 1812 on their fortunes. As a result of that war
the Pacific Fur Company sold out to the North-westers, and a few years
later the North-westers united with the Hudson’s Bay Company under the
name of the latter. To all appearance the Yankee was worsted, and the
Briton in possession of the River.
But the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, closing the War of 1812, provided that all
territory taken by either party should be restored. The boundary line west of

the Lake of the Woods was left undrawn. John Jacob Astor now applied to
the Government to restore his captured property on the Columbia, stating
that if again in possession, he would resume his former operations. The
United States Government accordingly notified Great Britain of its intention
to re-occupy the fort at the Columbia’s mouth. For two years the
communication lay unanswered. In September, 1817, the sloop-of-war,
Ontario, Captain J. Biddle, was despatched to the Columbia with Mr. J. B.
Provost as special agent, under instructions to assert the claim of the United
States to the territory of the River. This decisive move compelled Great
Britain to come out from under cover. A long and tedious diplomatic
warfare ensued. Meanwhile the Ontario was pursuing her long journey
around Cape Horn. In 1818, an agreement was reached to the effect that
Astoria should be formally restored to the United States, but that the North-
western Fur Company should be allowed to remain in actual possession.
Captain Biddle of the Ontario had left Mr. Provost in Chile and had
proceeded to the Columbia to take possession. Captain Sheriff,
commandant of the British ships in the Pacific, being in Valparaiso, in H.
M. S. Blossom, learning of Mr. Provost’s presence there, conceived the
happy thought that it would be an international courtesy to invite Mr.
Provost to accompany him to Astoria. Accordingly on October 1, 1818, the
Blossom pushed her bow across the Bar, and on the 6th the formal
ceremony of transfer from the Union Jack to the Stars and Stripes took
place. Captain J. Hickey of the Blossom represented Great Britain, Mr. J.
Keith acted for the North-west Fur Company, while Mr. Provost stood for
the United States. It seems to have been a very good-natured affair
throughout. Placards were posted at the capes on both sides of the River
declaring the change of sovereignty. Fort George was quite a powerful
structure at that time, consisting of a strong stockade of fir logs twelve feet
high, enclosing a parallelogram one hundred and fifty by two hundred and
fifty feet, having within it dwellings, shops, store houses, and magazines.
On the walls were two eighteen-pound cannon, six six-pounders, four four-
pound carronades, two six-pound cohorns, and seven swivels. The day of
transfer must have been a very picturesque day among the many such in
Astoria’s history. We can imagine the soft October haze floating over Cape
Hancock, and the long, lazy swell of six thousand miles of sea, thundering
across Point Adams.

One interesting feature of Mr. Provost’s presence at Astoria was his
observation of the bar at the entrance of the River. This had generally been
represented to the world as something frightful. It is often so represented at
the present time. Mr. Provost in a letter to Secretary of State, John Quincy
Adams, says that there is a spacious bay, by no means so difficult of ingress
as has been represented. He states that there is a bar across the mouth of the
River, at either extremity of which there are sometimes appalling breakers;
but that there is a channel of nearly a league in width with a depth of
twenty-one feet at the lowest tides. He thinks, therefore, that with proper
buoys the access to vessels of almost any tonnage may be rendered secure.
This statement in regard to the Bar is of much interest as furnishing a basis
for comparison with the present conditions. The depth at low tide now is
about twenty-six feet, the increase probably being due to the jetty.
The logic of the restoration of Astoria to the United States, while at the
same time the British Fur Company was left in practical possession, was
realised in the Joint Occupation Treaty of 1818. By this singular
arrangement it was agreed that any country on the north-west coast of
America that may be claimed by either power shall be open for ten years to
the vessels, citizens, and subjects of the two powers.
In 1819 another very important step was taken; viz.: the Florida Treaty with
Spain. By this, Spain retired to the line of 42 degrees, ceding to the
American Republic all her rights above that line. With her own claims
joined to those of Spain, the Republic would seem to be able to snap her
fingers at England. But, with characteristic tenacity, the latter power made
ready to insist all the more strenuously upon her claims. In 1825 England
and the United States agreed with Russia upon the line of 54 degrees 40
minutes, as the southern line of Russian claims. With Spain and Russia out
of it, Oregon was left for England and the United States to fight over. The
Joint Occupation Treaty was to last ten years, with the privilege of renewal.
Meanwhile what were the factors in the struggle for possession? There was
on the side of England the Briarean monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay
Company, supported by a disciplined and intelligent government. But the
English people were not in it. On the American side the Government was
strangely indifferent. There were several ambitious attempts to control the
situation by American trading and fur companies. But the essential forces
were the American immigrant, the American missionary, the Declaration of

Independence, and the ox-team. Those were the champions of America.
They were the Davids against the Goliaths of British monopoly. At first
thought it seemed that Goliath would have a “walk-over.” The case seemed
hopeless for the Americans.
But to the deeper observer, American triumph was inevitable. It was the
Age of Democracy. The conception both of popular government and of
individual ownership of land, with which went the corollary of “equal
opportunities for all men and special privileges for none,” was graven deep
upon American character. With these things there went, of necessity, the
disapproval of slavery and the support of free labour. Still further there
went, by the same logic, the doctrine of unity and continental expansion.
These various influences have constituted the broad foundation on which
were reared the towers and battlements of American nationality.
In previous chapters we have outlined the operations of the Hudson’s Bay
Company, the coming of the missionaries, and the immigrations of
Americans. The policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company was to keep the
country a wilderness, to maintain amicable relations with the Indians, and to
depend mainly on the fur-trade for the great profits of their enterprise. The
policy of the American immigrants was to build homes, cities, roads,
steamboats, mills, develop the country, crowd out the natives, and depend
on mining, farming, stock-raising, lumbering, for their profits; not profits of
a monopoly located in a distant money centre, but profits of the individual
worker on his own land. The difference was world-wide. It represented two
different conceptions of government and of life itself.
But though the American people had the manifest destiny of expanding to
the Pacific, the Government was strangely supine. We say “strangely,” but it
was not so strange after all. Congress was dominated by the South in the
interest of slavery, and by the East in the interest of the tariff. Calhoun
usually led the South, and he weighed everything in the scales of slavery.
Webster governed Eastern sentiment largely, and he spoke for New England
manufacturers. It is true that Clay was at all times a power in the councils of
the nation, and Clay’s constant word was nationalisation and expansion. But
even Clay was so committed to the tariff that he did not always appreciate
the possibilities of the “West-most West.” The Presidents of the period from

1819 to 1846 were from the South or the Atlantic seaboard and not usually
inclined to regard the far West with special interest.
The American people were away ahead of the American government in the
struggle for possession of Oregon. A few of the utterances of leading
statesmen of that period as significant of their conception of Oregon, may
be given here. Benton, who became later the greatest champion of Oregon,
was so imperfectly informed in 1825 that he spoke thus: “The ridge of the
Rocky Mountains may be named as a convenient, natural, and everlasting
boundary. Along this ridge the western limit of the Republic should be
drawn, and the statue of the fabled god Terminus should be erected on its
highest peak, never to be thrown down.” But Benton improved, for later
referring to the Columbia, he said, “That way lies the Orient.” Webster said
of Oregon: “What do we want of this vast, worthless area, this region of
savages and wild beasts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus
and prairie dogs. To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts
or these great mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their base with
eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast
of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, and uninviting, and not a
harbour on it? What use have we of such a country? Mr. President, I will
never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific Coast one
inch nearer Boston than it is now.” And that was “God-like Dan!” Dayton
expressed himself thus: “God forbid that the time should ever come when a
State on the shores of the Pacific, with interests and tendencies of trade all
looking toward the Asiatic nations of the East, shall add its jarring claims to
our distracted and already overburdened confederacy.” The National
Intelligencer doubtless expressed a common sentiment in the following:
“Of all the countries upon the face of the earth, Oregon is one of the least
favoured by nature. It is almost as barren as Sahara and quite as unhealthy
as the campagna of Italy.”
Such an estimate by American statesmen was all right to the Hudson’s Bay
Company. They wished such an estimate and had taken pains to foster it.
But while the gullible American statesmen were thus accepting just the
version which their rivals were disseminating, the hard-handed and hard-
headed, though not hard-hearted frontiersmen of Missouri and Illinois and
Iowa were packing their ox-teams and starting across the desert for that
Sahara on the Columbia River. Also one Marcus Whitman, a missionary

physician of the Walla Walla, was floundering in the snows of the Sierra
Madre and crossing the Arkansas through broken ice, in order to tell the
benighted statesmen what the land of the Oregon really was like. The
American people were busy, and the statesmen looked askance. And so, a
few here and a few there, by trail or ship, adventurers, missionaries, sailors,
trappers, there was formed a gathering in the Willamette of the advance
guard of American home-builders. They began to call out of the wilderness
to Uncle Sam.
As a result of the coming of the missionaries and of the small immigrations
of the thirties and early forties, together with the settlement in the
Willamette Valley of various French-Canadian employees of the Hudson’s
Bay Company, there was enough of a population to demand some sort of
organised society.
W. H. Gray made a summary of population in 1840 to consist of two
hundred persons, of whom a hundred and thirty-seven were American and
sixty-three Canadian. Up to 1839 the only law was the rules of the
Hudson’s Bay Company. In that year the Methodist missionaries suggested
that two persons be named as magistrates to administer justice according to
the ordinary rules of American law. This was the first move looking to
American political organisation. In 1839 and 1840 memorials were
presented to the Senate by Senator Linn of Missouri at the request of
American settlers praying for the attention of Congress to their needs. But,
not content with lifting their voices to the home land, they proceeded to
organise for themselves.
At that time, Champoeg, a few miles above the falls of the Willamette and
located pleasantly on the west bank of that river, was the chief settlement.
There, on the seventh of February, 1841, a gathering of the settlers was held
“for the purpose of consulting upon steps necessary to be taken for the
formation of laws, and the election of officers to execute them.” Jason Lee,
the Methodist missionary, was chairman of the meeting, and he outlined
what he deemed the needed method of establishing a reign of law and order.
The meeting proved rather a conference than an organisation and the people
dispersed to meet again at the call of the chairman.

A week later an event occurred which brought most forcibly to the minds of
the settlers the need of better organisation. This was the death of Ewing
Young, one of the most prominent men of the little community. He left
considerable property, with no known heirs and no one to act as
administrator. It became clear that some legal status must be established for
the settlement. Another meeting was held, in which it was determined that a
government be instituted, having the officers usual in an American locality.
The work of framing a constitution was entrusted to a committee, in which
the five different elements, the Methodist missionaries, the Catholics, the
French Canadians, the independent American settlers, and the English, had
representation. The committee was instructed to confer with Commodore
Wilkes of the American Exploring Squadron, just at that time in the River,
and Dr. McLoughlin, the Hudson’s Bay magnate. Wilkes advised the
settlers to wait for added strength and for the United States Government to
throw its mantle over them. The committee decided that his advice was
sound and indefinitely adjourned. Constitution building rested for a time
along the shores of the Willamette.
In 1841 and 1842, two hundred and twenty Americans reached Oregon,
doubling the population.
The Americans were ill at ease without a government and kept agitating the
question of another meeting. But the English and the Catholic influences
opposed this. Some diplomacy was needed. The irrepressible Yankees were
equal to it. They determined to draw the settlers together under the
announcement of a meeting for the purpose of discussing the means of
protecting themselves against the ravages of the numerous wild beasts of
the valley. W. H. Gray was the leading spirit in this enterprise. In a most
picturesque and valuable account of it, John Minto has developed the
thought that the founding of the Oregon State bore a striking resemblance to
that stage in the Roman state, subsequently celebrated in the festival of
Lupercalia, wherein the first organisation was for defence against the wild
beasts. So the Willamette witnessed again the gathering of the clans,
Americans, English, French, half-breeds, Catholics, Protestants,
Independents, all coming together to protect themselves against the bears,
cougars, and wolves. The meetings were usually known thereafter as the
“wolf meetings.”

James O’Neil was made chairman of this historic gathering. With the
astuteness characteristic of American politicians, a previous understanding
had been made between Mr. O’Neil and the little coterie of which Mr. Gray
was the manager, that everything should be shaped to the ultimate end of
raising the question of a government. As soon, therefore, as the ostensible
aim of the meeting had been attained, W. H. Gray arose and broached the
all-important issue. After declaring that no one could question the wisdom
and rightfulness of the measures looking to protecting their herds from wild
beasts, he continued:
How is it, fellow-citizens, with you and me, and our wives and
children? Have we any organisation on which we can rely for
mutual protection? Is there any power in the country sufficient
to protect us and all that we hold dear, from the worse than wild
beasts that threaten and occasionally destroy our cattle? We have
mutually and unitedly agreed to defend and protect our cattle
and domestic animals; now, therefore, fellow-citizens, I submit
and move the adoption of the two following resolutions, that we
may have protection for our lives and persons, as well as our
cattle and herds: Resolved that a committee be appointed to take
into consideration the propriety of taking measures for the civil
and military protection of this colony; Resolved that this
committee consist of twelve persons.
There spoke the true voice of the American state-builder, the voice of the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The resolutions were
passed and the committee of twelve appointed, mainly Americans. The
committee met at the Falls of the Willamette, which by that time was
becoming known as Oregon City. Unable to arrive at a definite decision, the
committee issued a call for a general meeting at Champoeg on May 2d.
Pending the meeting, there was a general policy of opposition developed
among the French Canadians in the interest of the Hudson’s Bay Company
and England. This opposition threatened the overthrow of the entire plan. It
was, however, checkmated in an interesting fashion. George W. Le Breton
was one of the leading settlers and occupied a peculiar position. He was of
French origin, from Baltimore to Oregon, and had been a Catholic. His
existing affiliations were with the Americans. He was keen, facile, and well

educated. He discovered that the Canadians had been drilled to vote “No”
on all questions, irrespective of the bearing which such a vote might have
on the leading issue. Le Breton accordingly proposed that measures be
introduced upon which the Canadians ought to vote “Yes.” These tactics
were carried out. The Canadians were confused thereby. Le Breton watched
developments carefully and, becoming satisfied that he could command a
majority, rose and exclaimed, “We can risk it, let us divide and count!”
Gray shouted, “I second the motion!” Jo Meek, famous as one of the
Mountain Men, stepped out of the crowd and said, “Who is for a divide? All
in favour of an organisation, follow me!” The Americans speedily gathered
behind the tall form of the erstwhile trapper. A count followed. It was a
close vote. Fifty-two voted for, and fifty against. The Americans would
have been outvoted had it not been that Le Breton, with two French
Canadians, François Matthieu and Étienne Lucier, voted with them. The
defeated Canadians withdrew, and the Indians, who lined the banks of the
River to discover what strange proceedings the white men were engaged in,
perceived from the loud shouts of triumph that the “Bostons” had won.
Though the victory was gained by so scanty a margin, it was gained, and it
was decisive. It was one of the most interesting events in the history of
Oregon or the United States, for it illustrates most vividly the inborn
capacity of the American for self-government.
The new government went at once into effect. The constitution formulated
by the committee and adopted by the meeting at Champoeg provided that
the people of Oregon should adopt laws and regulations until the United
States extended its jurisdiction over them. Freedom of worship, habeas
corpus, trial by jury, proportionate representation, and the usual civil rights
of Americans were guaranteed. Education should be encouraged, lands and
property should not be taken from Indians without their consent. Slavery or
involuntary servitude should not exist.
The officers of government consisted of a legislative body of nine persons,
an executive body of three, and a judiciary of a supreme judge and two
justices of the peace, with a probate court and its justices, and a recorder
and treasurer. Every white man of twenty-one years or more could vote. The
laws of Iowa were designated to be followed in common practice. Marriage
was allowed to males at sixteen and females at fourteen. One of the most
important provisions was the land law. This permitted any individual to

claim a mile square, provided it be not on a town site or water-power, and
that any mission claims already made be not affected, up to the limit of six
miles square. This land law was framed upon the general conception of the
proposed Linn bill already brought before Congress. The land law allowed
land to be taken in any form, but since there was no existing survey, each
man had to make his own survey.
The first elected executive committee consisted of David Hill, Alanson
Beers, and Joseph Gale. Within a year an amendment was made to the
constitution providing for a governor. George Abernethy, a former member
of the Methodist mission, was chosen to fill the place.
Outer things were pretty crude in the little colony on the Willamette, though
brains and energy were there in abundance. J. Quinn Thornton expressed
himself as follows on the “Oregon State House,” which he says was in
several respects different from that in which laws are made at Washington
City:
The Oregon State House was built with posts set upright, one
end set in the ground, grooved on two sides, and filled in with
poles and split timber, such as would be suitable for fence rails,
with plates and poles across the top. Rafters and horizontal
poles, instead of iron ribs, held the cedar bark which was used
instead of thick copper for roofing. It was twenty by forty feet
and therefore did not cover three acres and a half. At one end
some puncheons were put up for a platform for the president;
some poles and slabs were placed around for seats; three planks,
about a foot wide and twelve feet long, placed upon a sort of
stake platform for a table, were all that was believed necessary
for the use of the legislative committee and the clerks.
There are several facts in connection with the inauguration of this
Provisional Government of Oregon which are almost equal to itself in
interest. One of these is that Peter H. Burnett, a lawyer and the most notable
member of the emigration of 1843, rendered the opinion that, by the spirit
of American institutions, the Provisional Government might be regarded as
possessing valid authority. Going in a few years to California, Mr. Burnett

incorporated the same principles into the government of that State and
became its first governor.
Another most significant fact was the attitude of the Hudson’s Bay
Company. That great organisation was of course opposed to American
ownership and to the Provisional Government. At first, the management
under Sir James Douglas (Dr. McLoughlin had been superseded by Douglas
because of his supposed leaning toward the Americans) affected to ignore
the government framed at Champoeg, declaring loftily that the company
could protect itself. Dr. McLoughlin, in his very interesting account of this,
says that the Americans adopted in 1845 a provision in the constitution that
no one should be called to do any act contrary to his allegiance. This
provision struck him as designed to enable British subjects to join the
organisation. Dr. McLoughlin was so pleased with the wise and liberal spirit
which this evinced that he prevailed on Douglas to join the Provisional
Government. The family was now complete. The American farmers and
immigrants and missionaries had triumphed over the autocratic government
of the great fur company. The American idea—government of the people,
by the people, and for the people—was vindicated. The local battle was
won for the Yankee.
Before leaving this great epoch of the history of the River, it will interest
the reader to know that Dr. McLoughlin, so conspicuous in the story thus
far, removed to Oregon City, and became an avowed American citizen,
living on the claim on which he filed at the Falls. Much trouble
subsequently arose between him and the Methodist mission people
represented by Rev. A. F. Waller. Harder yet, Congress was led by Delegate
Thurston of Oregon, to exclude him from the benefit of the Donation Land
Law. The final result was that the great-hearted ex-king of the Columbia
lost the most of his claim on the ground that he was an alien at the time of
taking it. The Hudson’s Bay Company directors chose to disapprove his acts
in bestowing provisions upon the weary and hungry and ragged American
immigrants, and they charged him personally with the cost. This, in addition
to the loss of his claim, rendered him almost penniless and sadly embittered
his old age. He said that he supposed he was becoming an American, but
found that he was neither American nor British, but was without a country.
It is pleasant to be able to record the fact that the Oregon Legislature

restored his land in so far as the State controlled it, but this was only just
before his death.
Of all the brave and big-souled men who bore their part in redeeming
Oregon and the Columbia from the wilderness, John McLoughlin has stood
at the head of the column, side by side with Marcus Whitman, the American
physician and missionary. Though identified at first with rival interests and
conflicting aims, McLoughlin and Whitman had many traits in common,
and the story of their lives and life-work in Oregon should be written in one
chapter. No one that ever knew or sympathised with Oregon history has
failed to give his meed of praise to both Whitman and McLoughlin. No one
ever stood on the hill at Waiilatpu and viewed the mission home of
Whitman in the fertile vale of the Walla Walla, the scene of martyrdom and
anguish, without joining it in mind with the expanse of the Columbia at
Vancouver and recalling “Old Whitehead,” and his large-minded and
humane lordship for twenty years of the land of the Oregon. Nor can one
withhold the thrill of indignation at the cold-blooded commercialism of the
Hudson’s Bay Company, and at the petty ingratitude of some Americans,
which together brought darkness to the old hero’s last days.
But though American Democracy was winning a bloodless triumph on the
Columbia, it seemed by no means certain that American diplomacy would
win on the Potomac. Webster, as Secretary of State under Harrison and
during part of Tyler’s administration, represented the conservative councils
of the New England seaboard, and was inclined to yield to England in
respect to the Oregon boundary.
Senator Linn of Missouri was the most steadfast friend of American
occupancy. He was the one to frame land bills to encourage American
immigration, and in his hands the memorials of the settlers on the Columbia
had been placed. But in 1843, he died, with his work undone. Benton, his
colleague, had meanwhile become fully as pronounced, and he pursued the
same policy with uncompromising and volcanic energy.
But a curious and anomalistic alignment of interests and parties now arose.
The Oregon question became entangled with those of Texas and slavery.
Calhoun became Tyler’s Secretary of State upon Webster’s resignation.
While the Democrats in general were more inclined to western expansion

than the Whigs, yet the slaveholders of the South were much more
interested in Texas than in Oregon. The Provisional Government of Oregon
had prohibited slavery. Calhoun was ready to fight Mexico for the
possession of Texas, but he did not want to fight England for possession of
Oregon. Nevertheless, he did not dare to offend the West by a square back-
down on Oregon. He therefore adopted a policy of “masterly inactivity.” He
believed that if war arose with England, we would lose “every inch of
Oregon,” for England could hurry a fleet to the Columbia River from China
in six weeks, whereas American ships would have to double Cape Horn,
and an American army would have to cross the continent under every
disadvantage of transportation. But time, he believed, would win all for the
Americans.
In this conception, Von Holst thinks Calhoun was wise. Roosevelt in his
Life of Benton, thinks that the war, if there had been war, would have been
fought out in Canada, and that, while Calhoun was not wrong in desiring
delay, he should never have abated one jot in demanding all of Oregon up to
54 degrees 40 minutes.
The Democratic platform on which Polk was elected President, demanded
“54 degrees 40 minutes,” and, in popular clamour, the words, “or fight,”
were added. Oregon, Texas, and slavery were practically the issues on
which Polk was elected. His inaugural address declared our title to Oregon
to be “clear and unquestionable.” Great excitement ensued, for if Congress
stood by the President, war was almost inevitable, unless England yielded.
To the surprise of the world, however, James Buchanan, the yielding, not to
say shifty, Secretary of State under the new administration, now announced
the willingness of our Government to compromise on the line of 49 degrees.
But here another complication ensued. Pakenham, the British envoy,
declined, in almost insulting terms, to accept 49 degrees. Polk thereupon
withdrew the proposition and in his next message stated that “no
compromise which the United States ought to accept can be effected.” At
the same time he advised the cancellation of the Joint Occupation Treaty. It
seemed now that the conflict between the nations for the possession of the
River would surely eventuate in war. Senator Cass of Michigan fanned the
flame by a speech declaring that “War is almost upon us.” The committees
on Foreign Relations in both House and Senate proposed resolutions to
notify England at once of the close of the Joint Occupation Treaty.

Excitement rose to fierce heat, and the standing of marine risks and
commercial ventures at once showed the popular sentiment. “Fifty-four,
forty, or fight!” was the spirit of Congress.
But now Calhoun found himself betwixt the devil and the deep sea. He did
not really wish to get all of Oregon, for fear of the effect on slavery. Yet he
dared not throw cold water on the tremendous spirits of patriotism and
ambition in the West demanding Oregon. A compromise was the only
recourse. Powerful men of the “Moderates” in both England and the United
States brought their influence to bear. Calhoun caused Lord Aberdeen,
Foreign Secretary of England, to understand that the President would again
take up the line of 49 degrees. Lord Aberdeen directed Pakenham to revive
the negotiations which had been somewhat rudely broken off. The Senate
reconsidered the situation more calmly and opened the way to a new treaty.
This was consummated and signed by President Polk on June 15, 1846, and
confirmed by the Senate on June 19th. The line of 49 degrees was accepted.
The Great River was divided by that line nearly equally between the two
nations, there being about seven hundred and fifty miles in American
territory and six hundred and fifty in British.
The decision of the ownership of the River was one of the most momentous
in American history. If we had not got Oregon, we probably would not have
got California. And without the Pacific Coast, the history of the Great
Republic would be essentially different, and the history of the world would
be essentially different.
The Oregon Question owed much of its interest to its very complicated
nature. It was at first a question between the governments of five different
nations, England, France, Russia, Spain, and the United States. In time it
became a question between England and the United States. Then it was a
question between Oregon immigrants and British Fur Company. Then it
became a question between slavery and freedom. This was still further
complicated by the fact that it was also a question between West, East, and
South. Different factions of different parties still further complicated it. It
was in truth a manifold question, and in its final solution we read some of
the most vital of American traits and movements. Out of it all the settlers of
the River may justly be said to have emerged with highest credit. The
American home-builder, the great Democracy of the West, the inborn

impulse to expand and to nationalise,—these were the essential factors in
the triumph. The settlers on the Willamette, the constitution-makers of
Champoeg, the immigrants and the missionaries, had already gained the day
before diplomacy took it up.

CHAPTER IX

The Times of Tomahawk and Fire-Brand
Extent of Indian Troubles in the Region of
the Columbia—Destruction of the
Tonquin—Conflicting Policies of the
British and the Americans in Regard to
the Fur-trade—Advances in Settlement
by Americans, and Indian Opposition—
The Whitman Mission and its Relations
to the Indians, and to the Hudson’s Bay
Company—The Pestilence of 1847—
The Whitman Massacre—Mr. Osborne’s
Reminiscences—Saving of the Lapwai
and Tshimakain Missions—The Cayuse
War—Great War of 1855-56—
Kamiakin and Peupeumoxmox—
Governor I. I. Stevens of Washington
Territory and his Efforts to Make
Treaties—The Walla Walla Council and
the Division among the Indians—
Pearson and his Ride—Outburst of
Hostilities and the Destruction that
Followed—Conflict between the
Regulars and the Volunteers—Battles of
Walla Walla, Cascades, and Grande
Ronde—Second Walla Walla Council—
An Unsatisfactory Peace—Continued
Incoming of Prospectors and Land-
seekers—Third Indian War—Disastrous
Steptoe Campaign—Garnett’s
Campaign in the Yakima—Wright’s
Campaign to Spokane and Overthrow of
Indian Power—Peace Proclaimed and
the Country Thrown Open to Settlement
—Nez Percé War of 1877—
Hallakallakeen, or Joseph, the Indian

Warchief—His Melancholy Fate—The
Bannock War.

C OLUMBIA RIVER history has had its full share of Indian wars. To
narrate these in full would transcend the limits of this chapter. Even
during the era of discovery desperate affrays with the natives were a
common experience of explorers. Captain Gray of the Columbia lost a
boat’s crew of seamen at Tillamook. The ship Boston was seized in 1803 by
the wily old chief Maquinna at Nootka.
In 1812 the Tonquin, the first vessel of the Pacific Fur Company, in
command of Captain Thorn, was captured at some point to the north of the
Columbia River, variously known as Eyuck Whoola on Newcetu Bay, or
Newity Bay, or Newcetee. She was, as a result of the capture, blown up by
the explosion of her own powder magazine. Gabriel Franchère and
Alexander Ross, of the Astoria party, are the original authorities for this
dramatic story. Irving has made the event a leading feature of his charming
Astoria. H. H. Bancroft has discussed it at length in his history of the
Pacific Coast. In recent years Major H. M. Chittenden in his valuable book,
History of the American Fur Trade, presents new testimony of much
interest. But whatever discrepencies existed in the records, the general truth
remains that the ship and all her crew, with the exception of one Indian,
disappeared, and great was the loss to the traders at Astoria as a result.
For more than three decades after the destruction of the Tonquin there were
no serious Indian conflicts. The Hudson’s Bay Company carried out
consistently the general policy of harmony with the natives. Most of the
employees were of French Canadian origin, and, with their general
sociability, they were more popular with the Indians than the Americans
usually have been. But with the incoming of American missionaries,
trappers, explorers, and immigrants, the situation changed. Conflicts of
interests, ambitions, and national aims led both Americans and British to be
somewhat more ready to encourage the hostile and suspicious disposition of
the natives. Chiefly, however, the cause of the changing attitude of the
natives must be attributed to the perception by the more intelligent of the
fact that the actual occupation of the country by white farmers, home

builders, and land owners, meant their own destruction. Though this truth
dawned on them only vaguely and gradually, they had begun to be
somewhat familiar with it by the decade of the thirties.
The founding of American missions during that decade, as narrated earlier,
at Chemeketa, Walla Walla, Lapwai, and Tshimakain, and, during the years
following, the obvious intent of the Americans to draw immigration to the
country, prepared the way for the first and perhaps the most ferocious,
though by no means the greatest, of the four principal wars which we plan
to consider. This first one was the war connected with the Whitman
massacre.
We have already described the founding of the Whitman Mission at
Waiilatpu, six miles from the present site of Walla Walla, and twenty-six
miles from the Hudson’s Bay fort on the Columbia, known as Fort Walla
Walla. We have also told of Whitman’s journey across the continent in the
mid-winter of 1842-43, of his efforts to secure the attention of Congress and
of the Executive to the importance of the Oregon country, and of his return
to Walla Walla in 1843, with the first large immigration of American
settlers.
After the incoming of this immigration, it became more than ever clear to
the more intelligent Indians that this movement of settlers portended a
change in their whole condition. Their wild life could not co-exist with
farming, houses, and the fixed and narrowed limits of the white man’s life.
Moreover, since they saw the antagonism between the Americans and the
Hudson’s Bay Company, and since the latter was obviously more
favourable to perpetuating the life of the wilderness, the natives were
naturally drawn into sympathy with the latter. Still further, since the
Americans were Protestants and naturally affiliated with the Whitman
Mission and its associated missions, and since the Hudson’s Bay people
were mainly Catholics and interested in maintaining the missionary
methods adapted to the régime of the fur-traders, there became injected into
the situation the dangerous element of religious jealousy.
Dr. Whitman perceived that he was standing on the edge of a powder
magazine, and, during the summer of 1847, he arranged to acquire the
mission property of the Methodists at The Dalles, a hundred and sixty miles

down the River, intending to remove thither in the spring. But meanwhile,
the explosives being all ready, the spark was prepared for igniting them.
During the summer of 1847 measles became epidemic among the Indians.
Their method of treating any disease of which fever was a part was to enter
a pit into which hot rocks had been thrown, then casting water on the rocks,
to create a dense vapour, in which, stripped of clothing, they would remain
until thoroughly steamed. Thence issuing, stark naked and dripping with
perspiration, they would plunge into an icy cold stream. Death was the
almost inevitable result in case of measles. Whitman, who was, it should be
remembered, a physician, not a clergyman, was skilful and devoted in his
attentions, yet many died. Now just at that time a renegade half-breed
known as Jo Lewis seems to have become possessed with the diabolical
mania of massacre. He made the Indians think that Whitman was poisoning
them. Istickus or Sticcus, a Umatilla Indian and a warm friend of Whitman,
had formed some impression of the plot and suggested the danger.
Whitman’s intrepid spirit laughed at this, but Mrs. Whitman, though equally
intrepid, seems to have felt some premonition of the swift coming doom,
for the mission children found her in tears for the first time since the death
of her beloved little girl eight years before. The Doctor tried to soothe her
by declaring that he would arrange to go down the River at once. But on
that very day, November 28, 1847, the picturesque little hill rising a
hundred feet above the mission ground, now surmounted by the granite
shaft of the Whitman monument, was observed to be black with Indians. It
was evident from various sinister aspects that something was impending.
On the next day, November 29th, at about one o’clock, while Dr. Whitman
sat reading, a number of Indians entered the room. Having gained his
attention by the usual request for medicines, one of them, afterwards said
by some to have been Tamahas, and by others have been Tamsaky, rushed
suddenly upon the Doctor and struck his head with a tomahawk. Another
wretch named Telaukait, to whom the Doctor had been the kindest friend,
then cut and hacked the noble face of the philanthropist. The work of
murder thus inaugurated went on with savage energy. The men about the
mission were speedily slain, with the exception of a few who were in
remote places and managed by special fortune to elude observation. Mrs.
Whitman, bravely coming forward to succour her dying husband, was shot
in the breast and sank to the floor. She did not die at once, and it is said by

some of the survivors, then children, that she lingered some time, being
heard to murmur most tender prayers for her parents and children. Mrs.
Whitman was the only woman killed. The other women and girls were
cruelly outraged and held in captivity for several days.
William McBean was at that time in charge of the fort at Walla Walla, and
with a strange disregard of humane feelings, he shut the door of the fort in
the face of one of the escaped Americans, and a little later served the
Osborne family in the same manner. McBean sent a courier down the River
to convey the tidings to Vancouver, but this courier did not even stop at The
Dalles to warn the people, though they were not attacked. James Douglas
was then chief factor at Vancouver, as successor to Dr. McLoughlin. As
soon as he was apprised of the massacre, he sent Peter Skeen Ogden with a
force to rescue the survivors. Ogden acted with promptness and efficiency,
and by the use of several hundred dollars’ worth of commodities ransomed
forty-seven women and children. Thirteen persons had been murdered.
One of the most distressing experiences was that of the Osborne family. Of
this Mr. Osborne says:
As the guns fired and the yells commenced I leaned my head
upon the bed and committed myself and family to my Maker.
My wife removed the loose floor. I dropped under the floor with
my sick family in their night clothes, taking only two woollen
sheets, a piece of bread, and some cold mush, and pulled the
floor over us. In five minutes the room was full of Indians, but
they did not discover us. The roar of guns, the yells of the
savages, and the crash of clubs and knives and the groans of the
dying continued till dark. We distinctly heard the dying groans
of Mrs. Whitman, Mr. Rogers, and Francis, till they died away
one after the other. We heard the last words of Mr. Rogers in a
slow voice calling “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.” Soon
after this I removed the floor and we went out. We saw the white
face of Francis by the door. It was warm as we laid our hand
upon it, but he was dead. I carried my two youngest children,
who were sick, and my wife held on to my clothes in her great
weakness. We had all been sick with measles. Two infants had
died. She had not left her bed in six weeks till that day, when she

stood up a few minutes. The naked, painted Indians were
dancing the scalp dance around a large fire at a little distance.
There seemed no hope for us and we knew not which way to go,
but bent our steps toward Fort Walla Walla. A dense cold fog
shut out every star and the darkness was complete. We could see
no trail and not even the hand before the face. We had to feel out
the trail with our feet. My wife almost fainted but staggered
along. Mill Creek, which we had to wade, was high with late
rains and came up to the waist. My wife in her great weakness
came nigh washing down, but held to my clothes. I braced
myself with a stick, holding a child in one arm. I had to cross
five times for the children. The water was icy cold and the air
freezing some. Staggering along about two miles, Mrs. Osborne
fainted and could go no farther, and we hid ourselves in the
brush of the Walla Walla River, not far below Tamsukey’s (a
chief) lodges, who was very active at the commencement of the
butchery. We were thoroughly wet, and the cold fog like snow
was about us. The cold mud was partially frozen as we crawled,
feeling our way, into the dark brush. We could see nothing, the
darkness was so extreme. I spread one wet sheet down on the
frozen ground; wife and children crouched upon it. I covered the
other over them. I thought they must soon perish as they were
shaking and their teeth rattling with cold. I kneeled down and
commended us to my Maker. The day finally dawned and we
could see the Indians riding furiously up and down the trail.
Sometimes they would come close to the brush and our blood
would warm and the shaking would stop from fear for a
moment. The day seemed a week. Expected every moment my
wife would breathe her last. Tuesday night, felt our way to the
trail and staggered along to Sutucksnina (Dog Creek), which we
waded as we did the other creek, and kept on about two miles
when my wife fainted and could go no farther. Crawled into the
brush and frozen mud to shake and suffer on from hunger and
cold, and without sleep. The children, too, wet and cold, called
incessantly for food, but the shock of groans and yells at first so
frightened them that they did not speak loud. Wednesday night
my wife was too weak to stand. I took our second child and

started for Walla Walla; had to wade the Touchet; stopped
frequently in the brush from weakness; had not recovered from
measles. Heard a horseman pass and repass as I lay concealed in
the willows. Have since learned that it was Mr. Spalding.
Reached Fort Walla Walla after daylight; begged Mr. McBean
for horses to get my family, for food, for blankets, and clothing
to take to them, and to take care of my child till I could bring my
family in, should I live to find them alive. Mr. McBean told me I
could not bring my family to his fort.
Mr. Hall came in on Monday night, but he could not have an
American in his fort, and he had put him over the Columbia
River; that he could not let me have horses or anything for my
wife and children, and I must go to Umatilla. I insisted on
bringing my family to the fort, but he refused; said he would not
let us in. I next begged the priests to show pity, as my wife and
children must perish and the Indians undoubtedly would kill me,
with no success. I then begged to leave my child who was not
safe in the fort, but they refused.
There were many priests in the fort. Mr. McBean gave me
breakfast, but I saved most of it for my family. Providentially
Mr. Stanley, an artist, came in from Colville, narrowly escaped
the Cayuse Indians by telling them he was “Alain” H. B. He let
me have his two horses, some food he had left from Rev. Eells
and Walker’s mission; also a cap, a pair of socks, a shirt, and
handkerchief, and Mr. McBean furnished an Indian who proved
most faithful, and Thursday night we started back, taking my
child, but with a sad heart that I could not find mercy at the
hands of the priests of God. The Indian guided me in the thick
darkness to where I supposed I had left my dear wife and
children. We could see nothing and dared not call aloud.
Daylight came and I was exposed to Indians, but we continued
to search till I was about to give up in despair when the Indian
discovered one of the twigs I had broken as a guide in coming
out to the trail. Following these he soon found my wife and
children still alive. I distributed what little food and clothing I

had, and we started for the Umatilla, the guide leading the way
to a ford.
Mr. McBean came and asked who was there. I replied. He said
he could not let us in; we must go to Umatilla or he would put
us over the river, as he had Mr. Hall. My wife replied she would
die at the gate but she would not leave. He finally opened and
took us into a secret room and sent an allowance of food for us
every day. Next day I asked him for blankets for my sick wife to
lie on. He had nothing. Next day I urged again. He had nothing
to give, but would sell a blanket out of the store. I told him I had
lost everything, and had nothing to pay; but if I should live to
get to the Willamette I would pay. He consented. But the hip-
bones of my dear wife wore through the skin on the hard floor.
Stickus, the chief, came in one day and took the cap from his
head and gave it to me, and a handkerchief to my child.
The Whitman massacre was a prelude to the Cayuse War. It should be
remembered that, the year before the massacre, the Oregon country had, by
treaty with Great Britain, become the property of the United States. No
regular government had yet been inaugurated, but the Provisional
Government already instituted by the Americans met on December 9th and
provided for sending fourteen companies of volunteers to the Walla Walla.
These were immigrants who had come to seek homes and their section of
land, and it was a great sacrifice for them to leave their families and start in
mid-winter for the upper Columbia. But they bravely and cheerfully obeyed
the call of duty and set forth, furnishing mainly their own equipment,
without a thought of pecuniary gain or even reimbursement. Cornelius
Gilliam, an immigrant of 1845 from Missouri, was chosen colonel of the
regiment. He was a man of great energy and courage, and though not a
professional soldier,—none of them were,—had the frontier American’s
capacity for warfare. The command pushed rapidly forward, their way
being disputed at various points. At Sand Hollows the Indians, led by Five
Crows and War Eagle, made an especially tenacious attempt to prevent the
crossing of the Umatilla River. Five Crows claimed to have wizard powers
by which he could stop all bullets, and War Eagle declared that he could
swallow all balls fired at him. But at the first onset the wizard was so badly

wounded that he had to retire and “Swallow Ball” was killed. Tom McKay
had levelled his rifle and said, “Let him swallow this.”

Grave of Marcus Whitman and his Associate Martyrs at Waiilatpu.
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.

The way was now clear to Waiilatpu, which the command reached on
March 4th. The mangled remains of the victims of the massacre had been
hastily interred by the Ogden party, but coyotes had partially exhumed
them. The remains were brought together by the volunteers and reverently,
though rudely, buried at a point near the mission, a place where a marble
crypt now encloses the commingled bones of the martyrs. A lock of long,
fair hair was found near the ruined mission ground which was thought
surely to be from the head of Mrs. Whitman. It was preserved by one of the

volunteers and is now one of the precious relics in the historical museum of
Whitman College.
The Cayuse War dragged along in a desultory fashion for nearly three years.
The refusal of the Nez Percés and Spokanes and the indifference of the
Yakimas to join the Cayuses made their cause hopeless, though there were
several fierce fights with them and much severe campaigning. In 1850 a
band of friendly Umatilla Indians undertook to capture the chief band of the
Cayuses under Tamsaky, which had taken a strong position about the head
waters of the John Day River. After a savage battle Tamsaky was killed and
most of the warriors captured. Of these, five, charged with the leading part
in the Whitman massacre, were hanged at Oregon City on June 3, 1850. It
remains a question to this day, however, whether the victims of the gallows
were really the guilty ones. The Cayuse Indians were quite firm in their
assertion that Tamahas, who, by one version, struck Dr. Whitman the first
blow, was the only one of the five concerned in the murder.
Thus ended the first principal war in the Columbia Basin. It was quickly
followed by another, which was so extensive that it may be well called
universal. This was the War of 1855-56. This was the greatest Indian war in
the entire history of the Columbia River.
As we have seen, the American home-builders had outmatched the English
fur-traders in the struggle for possession. On the 3d of March, 1853,
Washington Territory, embracing the present States of Washington and
Idaho, with parts of Wyoming and Montana, was created by Act of
Congress, and Isaac I. Stevens was appointed governor. This remarkable
man entered with tremendous energy upon his task of organising the chaos
of his great domain. The Indian problem was obviously the most dangerous
and pressing one. There were at that time two remarkable chiefs of the mid-
Columbia region, natural successors of Philip, Pontiac, Black Hawk, and
Tecumseh, possessing those Indian traits of mingled nobleness and
treachery which have made the best specimens of the race such interesting
objects of study. These Indians were Kamiakin of the Yakimas, and
Peupeumoxmox of the Walla Wallas.

Cayuse Babies 1.
(Copyright by Lee Moorehouse, 1898.)

Cayuse Babies 2.
(Copyright by Lee Moorehouse, 1898.)

In 1855 the great war broke out almost simultaneously at different points.
There were six widely scattered regions especially concerned. Four of
these, the Cascades, the Yakima Valley, the Walla Walla, and the Grande
Ronde, were on or adjacent to the River. The others were the Rogue River
region and Puget Sound. So wide was the area of this war that intelligent
co-operation among the Indians proved impracticable. This, in fact, was the
thing that saved the whites. For there were probably not less than four
thousand Indians on the war-path, and if they had co-operated, the smaller
settlements, possibly all in the country except those in the Willamette
Valley, might have been annihilated.

The first efforts of Governor Stevens were to secure treaties with the
Indians. Having negotiated several treaties in 1854 with the Puget Sound
Indians, the governor passed over the Cascade Mountains to Walla Walla in
May, 1855. There during the latter part of May and first part of June, he
held a great council with representatives of seventeen tribes. Lieutenant
Kip, U. S. A., has preserved a vivid account of this great gathering, one of
the most important ever held in the annals of Indian history. According to
Lieutenant Kip, there were but about fifty men in the escort of the daring
governor, and if he had been a man sensible to fear he might well have been
startled when there came an army of twenty-five hundred Nez Percés under
Halhaltlossot, known as Lawyer by the whites. Two days later three
hundred Cayuses, those worst of the Columbia River Indians, surly and
scowling, led by Five Crows and Young Chief, made their appearance. Two
days later a force of two thousand Yakimas, Umatillas, and Walla Wallas
came in sight under Kamiakin and Peupeumoxmox. The council was soon
organised. Governor Stevens and General Palmer, the latter the Indian
Agent for Oregon, set forth their plan of reservations, all their speeches
being translated and retranslated until they had filtered down among the
general mass of the Indians. Then there must be a great “wawa,” or
discussion by the Indians. It soon became apparent that there were two
bitterly contesting parties. One was a large faction of Nez Percés led by
Lawyer, who favoured the whites. The other faction of the Nez Percés, with
all the remaining tribes, were set against any treaty. With remarkable skill
and patience, Governor Stevens, with the powerful assistance of Lawyer,
had brought the Indians to a point of general agreement to the creation of a
system of reservations. But suddenly there was a commotion. Into the midst
of the council there burst the old chief Looking Glass (Apashwahayikt),
second only to Lawyer in influence among the Nez Percés. He had made a
desperate ride of three hundred miles in seven days, following a buffalo
hunt and a raid against the Blackfeet, and as he now burst into the midst,
there dangled from his belt the scalps of several slaughtered Blackfeet. As
quoted in Hazard Stevens’s Life of Governor Stevens, he began his
harangue thus: “My people, what have you done? While I was gone you
sold my country. I have come home and there is not left me a place on
which to pitch my lodge. Go home to your lodges. I will talk with you.”
Lieutenant Kip declares that though he could understand nothing of the
speech of Looking Glass to his own tribe, which followed, the effect was

tremendous. All the evidence showed that Looking Glass was a veritable
Demosthenes. The work of Governor Stevens was all undone.
But later the Governor and Lawyer succeeded in rallying their forces and
gaining the acquiescence of the Indians to the setting aside of three great
reservations, one on the Umatilla, one on the Yakima, and the third on the
Clearwater and the Snake. These reservations still exist, imperial domains
in themselves, though now divided into individual allotments. The
acquiescence of the Indians in this treaty, as the sequel proved, was feigned
by a number of them, but for the time it seemed a great triumph for
Governor Stevens. From Walla Walla the Governor departed to the Cœur
d’Alene, the Pend Oreille, and the Missoula regions to continue his arduous
task of negotiating treaties.
This great Walla Walla Council cannot be dismissed without brief reference
to an event, not fully known at the time, but which subsequent investigation
made clear, and stamped as one of the most dramatic in the entire history of
Indian warfare. This event was the conspiracy of the Cayuses and Yakimas
to kill Governor Stevens and his entire band, and then exterminate the
whites throughout the country. While the acceptance of the treaty was still
pending, Kamiakin and Peupeumoxmox were framing the details of this
wide-reaching plot, which was indeed but the culmination of their great
scheme of years. Kamiahkin was the soul of the conspiracy. He was a
remarkable Indian. He was of superb stature, and proportions, over six feet
high, sinewy and active. Governor Stevens said of him: “He is a peculiar
man, reminding me of the panther and the grizzly bear. His countenance has
an extraordinary play, one moment in frowns, the next in smiles, flashing
with light and black as Erebus the same instant. His pantomime is great, and
his gesticulation much and characteristic. He talks mostly in his face and
with his hands and arms.” He was withal a typical Indian in treachery and
secretiveness. Peupeumoxmox was similar in nature, but was older and less
capable.
Exactly opposite to these was Halhaltlossot, or Lawyer, the Solon of the
Nez Percés. Lawyer became convinced of the existence of this conspiracy
and went by night to the camp of Governor Stevens and revealed it. He
concluded his revelation by saying: “I will come with my family and pitch
my lodge in the midst of your camp, that those Cayuses may see that you

and your party are under the protection of the head chief of the Nez Percés.”
When it became clear to the conspiring Cayuses and Yakimas that Lawyer’s
powerful division of the Nez Percés was sustaining the little band of whites,
they did not execute their design. Lawyer and his Nez Percés saved the day
for the whites.
And yet the sequel is one of the most lamentable examples of the
miscarriage of justice in Indian affairs that we have any record of. The
friendly Nez Percés saved the whites. The unfriendly faction of the Nez
Percés, led by Joseph and Looking Glass, finally yielded and accepted the
treaty. But they did this with certain expectations in regard to their
reservation. This was set forth to the author by William McBean, a half-
breed Indian, son of the McBean who was the commandant of the Hudson’s
Bay post at Wallula. McBean the younger was a boy at the time of the
council at Walla Walla. He was familiar with all the Indian languages
spoken at the council and in appearance was so much of an Indian that he
could pass unquestioned anywhere. Governor Stevens asked him to spy out
the situation and learn what the Nez Percés were going to decide. The result
of his investigations was to show that the whole decision hinged on the
understanding by Joseph’s faction that, if they acquiesced in the treaty and
turned their support to the whites, they might retain perpetual possession of
the Wallowa country in North-eastern Oregon as their special allotment.
Becoming finally satisfied that this would be granted them, they yielded to
the Lawyer faction and thus the entire Nez Percé tribe made common cause
with the whites, rendering the execution of the great plot of Kamiakin and
Peupeumoxmox a foredoomed failure. But now for the sequel. Though it
was thus clear in the minds of Joseph and his division of the Nez Percés that
the loved Wallowa (one of the fairest regions that ever the sun shone on and
a perfect land for Indians) was to be their permanent home, yet the
stipulation, if indeed it were intended by Governor Stevens, never became
definitely set down in the “Great Father’s” records at Washington. The
result was that when, twenty years later, the manifold attractions of the
Wallowa country began to draw white immigration, the Indians, now under
Young Joseph, son of the former chief, stood by their supposed rights and
the great Nez Percé War of 1877 ensued.
And now, to resume the thread of our discourse, we may note that Governor
Stevens proceeded on his laborious mission to the Flatheads in the region of

the Cœur d’Alene and Pend Oreille lakes in what is now Northern Idaho.
After protracted and at times excited discussion, a treaty was accepted by
which an immense tract of a million and a quarter acres was set apart for a
reservation. From Pend Oreille, Governor Stevens with his little force, now
reduced to twenty-two, crossed the Rockies to Fort Benton.
But what was happening on the Walla Walla? No sooner was the governor
fairly out of sight across the flower-bespangled plains which extended two
hundred miles north-east from Walla Walla, than the wily Kamiakin began
to resume his plots. So successful was he, with the valuable assistance of
Peupeumoxmox, Young Chief, and Five Crows, that the treaties, just
ratified, were torn to shreds, and the flame of savage warfare burst forth
across the entire Columbia Valley.
Hazard Stevens, in his invaluable history of his father, gives a vivid picture
of how the news reached them in their camp thirty-five miles up the
Missouri from Fort Benton. Summer had now passed into autumn. A
favourable treaty had been made with the Blackfeet. On October 29th, the
little party were gathered around their campfire in the frosty air of fall in
that high latitude, when they discerned a solitary rider making his way
slowly toward them. As he drew near they soon saw that it was Pearson, the
express rider. Pearson was one of the best examples of those scouts whose
lives were spent in conveying messages from forts to parties in the field. He
usually travelled alone, and his life was always in his hand. He seemed to
be made of steel springs, and it had been thought that he could endure
anything. “He could ride anything that wore hair.” He rode seventeen
hundred and fifty miles in twenty-eight days at one time, one stage of two
hundred and sixty miles having been made in three days. But as he slowly
drew up to the party in the cold evening light, it was seen that even Pearson
was “done.” His horse staggered and fell, and he himself could not stand or
speak for some time. After he had been revived he told his story, and a story
of disaster and foreboding it was, sure enough.
All the great tribes of the Columbia plains west of the Nez Percés had
broken out, the Cayuses, Yakimas, Palouses, Walla Wallas, Umatillas, and
Klickitats. They had swept the country clean of whites. The ride of Pearson
from The Dalles to the point where he reached Governor Stevens is one of
the most thrilling in the annals of the River. By riding all day and night, he

reached a horse ranch on the Umatilla belonging to a noted half-breed
Indian, William McKay, but he found the place deserted. Seeing a splendid
horse in the bunch near by, he lassoed and saddled him. Though the horse
was as wild as air, Pearson managed to mount and start on. Just then there
swept into view a force of Indians who, instantly divining what Pearson was
trying to do, gave chase. Up and down hill, through vale, and across the
rim-rock, they followed, sending frequent bullets after him, and yelling like
demons, “Whupsiah si-ah-poo, Whup-si-ah!” (“Kill the white man!”) But
the wild horse which the intrepid rider bestrode proved his salvation, for he
gradually outran all his pursuers. Travelling through the Walla Walla at
night Pearson reached the camp of friendly Nez Percé Red Wolf on the
Alpowa the next day, having ridden two hundred miles from The Dalles
without stopping except the brief time changing horses. Snow and hunger
now impeded his course. Part of the way he had to go on snowshoes
without a horse. But with unflinching resolution he passed on, and so now
here he was with his dismal tidings.
The despatches warned Governor Stevens that Kamiakin with a thousand
warriors was in the Walla Walla Valley and that it would be impossible for
him to get through by that route, and that he must therefore return to the
East by the Missouri and come back to his Territory by the steamer route of
Panama. That meant six months’ delay. With characteristic boldness,
Governor Stevens at once rejected the more cautious course and went right
back to Spokane by the Cœur d’Alene Pass, deep already with the winter
snows, suffering intensely with cold and hunger, but avoiding by that route
the Indians sent out to intercept him. With extraordinary address, he
succeeded in turning the Spokane Indians to his side. The Nez Percés,
thanks to Lawyer’s fidelity, were still friendly, and with these two powerful
tribes arrayed against the Yakimas, there was still hope of holding the
Columbia Valley.
After many adventures, Governor Stevens reached Olympia in safety.
Governor Curry of Oregon had already called a force of volunteers into the
field. The Oregon volunteers were divided into two divisions, one under
Colonel J. W. Nesmith, which went into the Yakima country, and the other
under Lieutenant-Colonel J. K. Kelley, which went to Walla Walla. The
latter force fought the decisive battle of the campaign on the 7th, 8th, 9th,
and 10th of December, 1855. It was a series of engagements occurring in

the heart of the Walla Walla Valley, a “running fight” culminating at what is
now called Frenchtown, ten miles west of the present city of Walla Walla.
The most important feature of it all was the death of the great Walla Walla
chieftain, Peupeumoxmox. But though defeated and losing so important a
chief, the Indians scattered across the rivers and were still unsubdued.
In March, 1856, the sublime section of the Columbia lying between The
Dalles and the Cascades became the scene of a series of atrocities the most
distressing in the entire war. The Klickitats swooped down upon the
defenceless settlers and massacred them with revolting cruelty. They
vanished like a whirlwind, but men whom the writer has known have
related to him how the volunteers, returning to the scenes of desolation,
found all houses destroyed and the carcasses of cattle thrown into the
springs and wells. They found the naked bodies of the girls and women with
stakes driven through, and those of men horribly mutilated. In savage
humour, the Indians had killed the hogs and left parts of human bodies in
their mouths. One interesting fact connected with the campaign at the
Cascades is that General Phil Sheridan fought his first battle there. The old
Block House on the north side of the River, nearly opposite the present
Cascade Locks, existed until a few years ago, and there was Sheridan’s first
battle.
Meanwhile Governor Stevens had organised a force of Washington
volunteers. As the year 1856 progressed, it seemed more plain that the
discord which developed between the regulars under command of General
John E. Wool and the volunteers would result in fatal weakness.
Nevertheless Governor Stevens and Governor Curry kept pressing the
movements of their backwoods soldiers with unflagging energy. They were
at last rewarded with a measure of success. For Colonel B. F. Shaw,
commanding the Washington volunteers, learning that the hostiles were
camped in force in the Grande Ronde Valley, made a rapid march from
Walla Walla across the western spur of the Blue Mountains and struck the
collected force of Indians a deadly blow, scattering them in all directions
and ending the war in that quarter.
But the end had not yet come in Walla Walla. Governor Stevens determined
to hold another great council at the site of the first. Leaving The Dalles on
August 19th, he pressed on to Shaw’s camp, two miles above the present

location of Walla Walla. On September 5th, Colonel E. J. Steptoe, with four
companies of regulars, arrived at the same place and made camp on the site
of the present fort.

Col. B. F. Shaw, who Won the Battle of Grande Ronde in 1856.
By Courtesy of Major Lee Moorehouse.

And now came on the second great Walla Walla council. The tribes were
gathered as before, and were aligned as before. The division of Nez Percés
under Lawyer stood firmly by Stevens and the treaty. The others did not.
The most unfortunate feature of the entire matter was that Colonel Steptoe,
acting under General Wool’s instructions, thus far kept secret, refused to

grant Stevens adequate support and subjected him to humiliations which
galled the fiery Governor to the limit. In fact, had it not been for the
vigilance of the faithful Nez Percés of Lawyer’s band, Stevens and his force
would surely have met the doom prepared for them at the first council. The
debt of gratitude due Lawyer is incalculable. Spotted Eagle ought to be
recorded, too, as of similar devotion and watchfulness. Governor Stevens
afterward declared that a speech by him in favour of the whites was equal in
feeling, truth, and courage to any speech that he ever heard from any orator
whatever.
But in spite of oratory, zeal, and argument, nothing could overcome the
influence of Kamiakin, Owhi, Quelchen, Five Crows, and others of the
Yakimas and Cayuses. Nothing was gained. They stood just where they
were a year before. The fatal results of divided counsels between regulars
and volunteers were apparent.
The baffled Governor now started on his way down the River, but not
without another battle. For, as he was marching a short distance south of
what is now Walla Walla city, the Indians burst upon his small force with
the evident intention of ending all scores then and there. But Colonel
Steptoe came to the rescue, and with united forces the Indians were
repulsed.
That was the last battle on the Walla Walla. Colonel Steptoe established a
rude stockade fort on Mill Creek in what is now the heart of the present
Walla Walla city, and went into winter quarters there in 1856-57. Governor
Stevens returned to Olympia and launched forth a bitter arraignment against
Wool. The latter, however, was in a position of vantage and issued a
proclamation commanding all whites in the upper country to go down the
River and leave the Cascade Mountains as the eastern limit of the white
settlement. Thus ended for a time this unsatisfactory and distressing war. To
all appearances Kamiakin and his adherents had accomplished all they
wanted.
But this was not the end. Gold had been discovered in Eastern Washington.
Vast possibilities of cattle raising were evident on those endless bunch-grass
hills. Although there was as yet little conception of the future developments
of the Inland Empire in agriculture and gardening, yet the keen-eyed

immigrants and volunteers had scanned the pleasant vales and abounding
streams of the Walla Walla and the Umatilla and the Palouse, and had
decided in their own minds that, Wool or no Wool, this land must be
opened. In 1857 the Government decided on a change of policy and sent
General N. S. Clarke to take Wool’s place. General Clarke opened the gates,
and the impatient army of land hunters and gold hunters began to move in.
Meanwhile, Colonel Wright and Colonel Steptoe, though formerly they had
closely followed Wool’s policy, now began to experience a change of heart.
Out of these conditions the third Indian war, in 1858, quickly succeeded the
second, being indeed its inevitable sequence.

Fort Sheridan on the Grande Ronde, Built by Philip Sheridan in 1855.
By Courtesy of Major Lee Moorehouse.

Three campaigns marked this third war. The first was conducted by Colonel
Steptoe against the Spokanes and Cœur d’Alenes, and ended in his
humiliating and disastrous defeat. The second was directed by Major
Garnett against the Yakimas, resulting in their permanent overthrow. The
third was conducted by Colonel Wright against the Spokanes and other
northern tribes who had defeated Steptoe. This was the Waterloo of the
Indians, and it ushered in the occupation and settlement of the upper
Columbia country.
The Steptoe expedition was the most ill-starred event in the whole history
of the North-west, unless we except that of the destruction of the Tonquin.
Colonel Wright was then in command of the new Fort Walla Walla, located
in 1857 on the present ground. Perceiving his former error in giving the
turbulent and treacherous natives undisputed sway, he ordered Colonel
Steptoe to go with two hundred dragoons to the Spokane region and subject
the restless tribes centring there. Steptoe’s force was well equipped in every
way except one. The pack train was heavily laden, and an inebriated
quartermaster conceived the brilliant idea of lessening the burden by
leaving out the larger part of the ammunition. Even aside from this fatal
blunder, Colonel Steptoe seems to have had no adequate conception of the
vigour and resources of the Indians.
As before, the Nez Percés were the faithful friends of the whites. Timothy, a
Nez Percé chief living on Snake River at the mouth of the Alpowa, put them
across the wicked stream, then running high with the May freshet, and went
on with them as guide.
On May 16, 1858, the force reached a point near four lakes, probably the
group of which Silver Lake and Medical Lake are the chief ones, a few
miles west of Spokane. Here was gathered a formidable array, Spokanes,
Pend Oreilles, Cœur d’Alenes, Okanogans, and Colvilles, the hosts of the
upper country. Steptoe was soldier enough to perceive that it was time for
caution, and he halted for a parley. Saltese, a brawny chief of the Cœur
d’Alenes, declared to him that the Indians were ready to dispute his farther
progress, but that if the white men would retire the Indians would not

molest them. A friendly Nez Percé, seeing the duplicity of Saltese, struck
his mouth, exclaiming, “You speak with a double tongue.”
The force turned back and that night all seemed well. But at nine o’clock
the next morning, while the soldiers were descending a cañon to Pine
Creek, near the present site of Rosalia, a large force of Indians burst upon
them like a cyclone. As the battle began to wax hot, the terrible
consequences of the error of lack of ammunition began to become manifest.
Man after man had to cease firing. Captain O. H. P. Taylor and Lieutenant
Gaston commanded the rear-guard. With extraordinary skill and devotion
they held the line intact and foiled the efforts of the savages to burst
through. Meanwhile the whole force was moving as rapidly as consistent
with formation on their way southward. Taylor and Gaston sent a messenger
forward, begging Steptoe to halt the line and give them a chance to load.
But the commander felt that the safety of the whole force depended on
pressing on. Soon a fierce rush of Indians followed, and, when the surge
had passed, the gallant rear-guard was buried under it. One notable figure in
the death-grapple was De May, a Frenchman, trained in the Crimea and
Algeria, and an expert fencer. For some time he used his gun barrel as a
sword and swept the Indians down by dozens with his terrific sweeps. But
at last he fell before numbers, and one of his surviving comrades relates that
he heard him shouting his last words, “O, my God, my God, for a sabre!”
But the lost rear-guard saved the rest. For they managed to hold back the
swarm of foes until nightfall, when they reached a somewhat defensible
position a few miles from the towering cone of what is now known as
Steptoe Butte. There they spent part of a dark, rainy, and dismal night,
anticipating a savage attack. But the Indians, sure of their prey, waited till
morning. Surely the first light would have revealed a massacre equal to the
Custer massacre of later date, had not the unexpected happened. And the
unexpected was that old Timothy, the Nez Percé guide, knew a trail through
a rough cañon, the only possible exit without discovery. In the darkness of
midnight the shattered command mounted and followed at a gallop the
faithful Timothy on whose keen eyes and mind their salvation rested. The
wounded and a few footmen were dropped at intervals along the trail. After
an eighty-mile gallop during the day and night following, the yellow flood
of Snake River suddenly broke before them between its desolate banks.
Saved! The unwearied Timothy threw out his own warriors as a screen

against the pursuing foe, and set his women to ferrying the soldiers across
the turbulent stream.
Thus the larger part of the command reached Fort Walla Walla alive.
One of the most extraordinary individual experiences connected with the
Steptoe retreat, was that of Snickster and Williams. Some of the survivors
question the correctness of this, and others vouch for its accuracy. It
perhaps should not be set down as proven history. Snickster and Williams
were riding one horse, and could not keep up with the main body. The
Indians, therefore, overtook and seized them before they reached the Snake
River. In a rage because of having been balked of their prey, the Indians
determined to have some amusement out of the unfortunate pair, and told
them to go into the river with their horse and try to swim across. Into the
dangerous stream, two thousand feet wide, almost ice-cold, and with a
powerful current, they went. As soon as they were out a score of yards, the
Indians began their fun by making a target of them. The horse was almost
immediately killed. Williams was struck and sank. Snickster’s arm was
broken by a ball, but diving under the dead horse, and keeping himself on
the farther side till somewhat out of range, and then boldly striking across
the current, which foamed with Indian bullets, he reached the south side of
the river and was drawn out, almost dead, by some of Timothy’s Nez Percé
Indians.

Tullux Holiquilla, a Warm Springs Indian Chief,
Famous in the Modoc War as a Scout for U. S. Troops.
By Courtesy of Major Lee Moorehouse.

With the defeat of Steptoe, the Indians may well have felt that they were
invincible. But their exultation was short-lived. As already noted, Garnett
crushed the Yakimas at one blow, and Wright a little later repeated Steptoe’s
march to Spokane, but did not repeat his retreat. For in the battle of Four
Lakes on September 1st, and that of Spokane Plains on September 5th,
Wright broke for ever the power and spirits of the northern Indians.
The treaties were thus established at last by war. The reservations,
embracing the finest parts of the Umatilla, Yakima, Clearwater, and Cœur

d’Alene regions, were set apart, and to them after considerable delay and
difficulty the tribes were gathered.
With the end of this third great Indian war and the public announcement by
General Clarke that the country might now be considered open to
settlement, immigration began to pour in, and on ranch and river, in mine
and forest, the well-known labours of the American state-builders and
home-builders became displayed. The ever-new West was repeating itself.
The Valley of the Columbia now rested from serious strife for a number of
years. But in 1877, an echo of the war of 1855 suddenly startled the
country, and provided an event to which lovers of the tragic and romantic in
history have ever since turned with deep interest. This was the “Joseph
War” in the Wallowa. Our readers will recall that the so-called Joseph band
of Nez Percés opposed the Walla Walla Treaty at first, but finally
acquiesced, with what they understood was the stipulation that they should
possess the Wallowa country as their permanent home. The Joseph of that
time was succeeded by his son, whose Indian name was Hallakallakeen,
“Eagle Wing.” He was the finest specimen of the native red man ever
produced in the Columbia Valley. Of magnificent stature and proportions,
with a rare dignity and nobility, which wider opportunities would have
made remarkable, and with a career of mingled light and shade, pathos and
tragedy, Hallakallakeen will go down into history with a record of
passionate devotion from his followers and unstinted encomiums from most
of his opponents.
Joseph loved the Wallowa with a passionate affection, and made at first
every effort to maintain amity with his white neighbours. But when the
Government violated what he had regarded its sacred pledge and permitted
entrance upon the lands which he claimed, he refused to abide by the
decision and led out his warriors to battle. The Nez Percés, though few in
number, could fight face to face with white men, and could use white men’s
weapons and white men’s tactics. At a desperate battle at White Bird Cañon
they routed the detachment in command of Colonel Perry. The result was to
put arms, ammunition, and provisions in abundance into the hands of the
Indians and hope into their hearts.

General O. O. Howard, then commanding the department of the Columbia,
now assumed command and began so vigorous a campaign against Joseph
that the Indian chief plainly saw that with all his activity he could not avoid
being seized in the closing arms of Howard’s command. The interesting
details of the marches, countermarches, desperate encounters, sometimes
favourable to white man and sometimes to red, are to be found in General
Howard’s own book. At last, with marvellous skill and good fortune, Joseph
eluded capture and adopted the desperate resolution of crossing the Bitter
Root Mountains by the Lolo trail, descending the Missouri, and ultimately
reaching the Canadian line beyond the land of the Sioux. Encumbered as he
was with his women, children, and entire movable possessions, obliged to
forage and hunt on the way, and avoiding pursuers in rear as well as forces
coming to meet him in front, fighting frequent and some of the time
successful battles,—the Nez Percé chieftain exhibited qualities of
leadership and resources of mind and body which offer materials for a
historical romance equal to De Quincey’s Flight of the Kalmuck Tartars.

Hallakallakeen (Eagle Wing) or Joseph, the Nez Percé Chief.
By T. W. Tolman.

Howard’s tireless pursuit in the rear and the active and intelligent co-
operation of Gibbon and Miles, who ascended the Missouri to meet the
fleeing Nez Percés, resulted at last in their capture at Bear Paw Mountain
on the Milk River in Montana.
General Howard says that the campaign from the beginning of the Indian
pursuit across the Lolo trail until the embarkation on the Missouri for the
homeward journey, including all stoppages and halts, extended from July
27th to October 10th, during which time his command marched one
thousand three hundred and twenty-one miles. He says that Joseph,
encumbered with women, children, and possessions, traversed even greater

distances, “for he had to make many a loop in his skein, many a deviation
into a tangled thicket, to avoid or deceive his enemy.” Howard pays the
highest tribute to his Indian foe and declares that some of his operations are
not often equalled in warfare.
Joseph’s subsequent career was a melancholy one. Transported with his
band to Oklahoma, the wild eagle of the Wallowa so pined away on the flat
prairie and begged so piteously to be allowed to return to the waters of the
Columbia, that his request was granted. But so intense was the feeling
among the people who had suffered from their dangerous enemy that this
poor fragment of the Nez Percés was placed on the Colville Reservation in
Northern Washington. There the restless heart of the Nez Percé Bonaparte
was eaten out by bitter yearnings for his loved Wallowa.
He had an occasional proud and interesting hour. At the time of General
Grant’s obsequies at New York, Joseph was in Washington to see the “Great
Father” about his reservation. General Miles, who greatly admired the hero
of the Lolo trail, asked him to ride with himself at the head of the funeral
procession. Mounted on a magnificent charger, Joseph rode solemnly
through the streets of the metropolis by the side of the conqueror of Bear
Paw Mountain, and there were not wanting those who said that the Indian
was the finer horseman and the finer-looking man.
But Joseph died at his camp on the Nespilem without ever seeing Wallowa.
His last request was that he be buried there. He remained an Indian to the
last, not ordinarily living in a house or wearing civilised costume or even
speaking English, though perfectly able to do so. His life might have been
happier had he never been known to fame.

Camp of Chief Joseph on the Nespilem, Wash.
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.

The next year after the Joseph War, or in 1878, occurred the Bannock War,
the scene of which was mainly Umatilla County in Oregon and other parts
adjoining the River. Though at first, as has happened so many times, the
Indians met with successes, the end was their inevitable defeat.
With the close of the Bannock War it may be said that Indian warfare
practically ended. The war-whoop ceased to be heard and the tomahawk
was brandished no more along the Columbia.

CHAPTER X

When the Fire-Canoes Took the Place of the Log-
Canoes
Variety of Craft that have Navigated the
Columbia—The Beaver, Carolina,
Columbia, and Lot Whitcomb—
Beginning of Steamboating above the
Cascades—Steamboats above The
Dalles—Rival Companies on the River
—The Oregon Steam Navigation
Company—Great Business
Developments of the Decade of the
Sixties—Specimen Shipments in 1862
—The Steamboat Ride from Portland to
Lewiston—Some of the Steamboat Men
of the Period—Story of W. H. Gray and
his Sailboat on the Snake River—
Descending The Dalles—Captain Coe’s
Account of the First Steamboat Ride on
the Upper Columbia and the Snake—
Navigation above Colville and on the
Lakes—The Locks and Prospects of
Future Navigation—Remarkable Trips
on the River—Some Steamboats of the
Present.

W E have learned that our River has been navigated by boats of almost
every description. At one time it was the hollowed cedar-log canoes
of the aborgines. Again, the bateaux of the trappers were the chief craft to
cut the blue lakes and the white rapids. At yet other times it was the flat-
boats of the immigrants. Sailing ships of every sort—frigates, galleons,
caravels, men-of-war, full-rigged ships, barks, brigs, schooners, and sloops
—crowded early to the silver gate of the River.

In due process of time the “Fire-canoes,” as the natives called steamers, let
loose their trails of smoke amid the tops of the “continuous woods.” The
Beaver, a small steamship belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company and
sent from England, entered the River in 1836, the first steamer to ply these
waters. The Company afterwards sent her to Puget Sound, and, if we are
correctly informed, she is still afloat on the Gulf of Georgia. In 1850 the
first American steamship, the Carolina, crossed the Bar. In the same year a
little double-ender, called the Columbia, began running between Portland
and Astoria.

Tirzah Trask, a Umatilla Indian Girl—Taken as an Ideal of Sacajawea.
Photo. by Lee Moorehouse, Pendleton.

The first river steamer of any size to ply upon the Willamette and Columbia
was the Lot Whitcomb. This steamer was built by Whitcomb and Jennings.
J. C. Ainsworth was the first captain, and Jacob Kamm was the first
engineer. Both these men became leaders in every species of steamboating
enterprise. In 1851 Dan Bradford and B. B. Bishop inaugurated a
movement to connect the up-river region with the lower river by getting a
small iron propeller called the Jason P. Flint from the East and putting her
together at the Cascades, whence she made the run to Portland. The Flint
has been named as first to run above the Cascades, but the author has the
authority of Mr. Bishop for stating that the first steamer to run above the

Cascades was the Eagle. That steamer was brought in sections by Allen
McKinley to the upper Cascades in 1853, there put together, and set to
plying on the part of the river between the Cascades and The Dalles. In
1854, the Mary was built and launched above the Cascades, the next year
the Wasco followed, and in 1856 the Hassalo began to toot her jubilant horn
at the precipices of the mid-Columbia. In 1859 R. R. Thompson and
Lawrence Coe built the Colonel Wright, the first steamer on the upper
section of the River. In the same year the same men built at the upper
Cascades a steamer called the Venture. This craft met with a curious
catastrophe. For on her very first trip she swung too far into the channel and
was carried over the upper Cascades, at the point where the Cascade Locks
are now located. She was subsequently raised, rebuilt, and rechristened the
Umatilla.
This part of the period of steamboat building was cotemporary with the
Indian wars of 1855 and 1856. The steamers, Wasco, Mary, and Eagle were
of much service in rescuing victims of the murderous assault on the
Cascades by the Klickitats.
While the enterprising steamboat builders were thus making their way up-
river in the very teeth of Indian warfare, steamboats were in course of
construction on the Willamette. The Jennie Clark in 1854 and the Carrie
Ladd in 1858 were built for the firm of Abernethy, Clark & Company.
These both, the latter especially, were really elegant steamers for the time.
The close of the Indian wars in 1859 saw a quite well-organised steamer
service between Portland and The Dalles, and the great rush into the upper
country was just beginning. The Señorita, the Belle, and the Multnomah,
under the management of Benjamin Stark, were on the run from Portland to
the Cascades. A rival steamer, the Mountain Buck, owned by Ruckle and
Olmstead, was on the same route. These steamers connected with boats on
the Cascades-Dalles section by means of portages five miles long around
the rapids. There was a portage on each side of the River. That on the north
side was operated by Bradford & Company, and their steamers were the
Hassalo and the Mary. Ruckle and Olmstead owned the portage on the
south side of the River, and their steamer was the Wasco. Sharp competition
arose between the Bradford and Stark interests on one side and Ruckle and
Olmstead on the other. The Stark Company was known as the Columbia

River Navigation Company, and the rival was the Oregon Transportation
Company. J. C. Ainsworth now joined the Stark party with the Carrie Ladd.
So efficient did this reinforcement prove to be that the Transportation
Company proposed to them a combination. This was effected in April,
1859, and the new organisation became known as the Union Transportation
Company. This was soon found to be too loose a consolidation to
accomplish the desired ends, and the parties interested set about a new
combination to embrace all the steamboat men from Celilo to Astoria. The
result was the formation of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which
came into legal existence on December 20, 1860. Its stock in steamboats,
sailboats, wharf-boats, and miscellaneous property was stated at $172,500.
Such was the genesis of the “O. S. N. Co.” In a valuable article by Irene
Lincoln Poppleton in the Oregon Historical Quarterly for September, 1908,
to which we here make acknowledgments, it is said that no assessment was
ever levied on the stock of this company, but that from the proceeds of the
business the management expended in gold nearly three million dollars in
developing their property, besides paying to the stockholders in dividends
over two million and a half dollars. Never perhaps was there such a record
of money-making on such a capitalisation.
The source of the enormous business of the Oregon Steam Navigation
Company was the rush into Idaho, Montana, and Eastern Oregon and
Washington by the miners, cowboys, speculators, and adventurers of the
early sixties. The up-river country, as described more at length in another
chapter, wakened suddenly from the lethargy of centuries, and the
wilderness teemed with life. That was the great steamboat age. Money
flowed in streams. Fortunes were made and lost in a day.
When first organised in 1860, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company had
a nondescript lot of steamers, mainly small and weak. The two portages,
one of five miles around the Cascades and the other of fourteen miles from
The Dalles to Celilo Falls, were unequal to their task. The portages at the
Cascades on both sides of the River were made by very inadequate wooden
tramways. That at The Dalles was made by teams. Such quantities of freight
were discharged from the steamers that sometimes the whole portage was
lined with freight from end to end. The portages were not acquired by the
company with the steamboat property, and as a result the portage owners

reaped the larger share of the profits. During high water the portage on the
Oregon side at the Cascades had a monopoly of the business, and it took
one-half the freight income from Portland to The Dalles. This was holding
the whip-hand with a vengeance, and the vigorous directors of the
steamboat company could not endure it. Accordingly, they absorbed the
rights of the portage owners, built a railroad from Celilo to The Dalles on
the Oregon side, and one around the Cascades on the Washington side. The
company was reorganised under the laws of Oregon in October, 1862, with
a declared capitalisation of two million dollars.
Business on the River in 1863 was something enormous. Hardly ever did a
steamer make a trip with less than two hundred passengers. Freight was
offered in such quantities at Portland that trucks had to stand in line for
blocks, waiting to deliver and receive their loads. New boats were built of a
much better class. Two rival companies, the Independent Line and the
People’s Transportation Line, made a vigorous struggle to secure a share of
the business, but they were eventually overpowered. Some conception of
the amount of business may be gained from the fact that the steamers
transported passengers to an amount of fares running from $1000 to $6000
a trip. On April 29, 1862, the Tenino, leaving Celilo for the Lewiston trip,
had a passenger load amounting to $10,945, and a few trips later reported
receipts of $18,000, for freight, passengers, meals, and berths. The
steamships sailing from Portland to San Francisco showed equally
remarkable records. On June 25, 1861, the Sierra Nevada conveyed a
treasure shipment of $228,000; July 14th, $110,000; August 24th, $195,558;
December 5th, $750,000. The number of passengers carried on The Dalles-
Lewiston route in 1864 was 36,000 and the tons of freight were 21,834.
It was a magnificent steamboat ride in those days from Portland to
Lewiston. The fare was sixty dollars; meals and berths, one dollar each. A
traveller would leave Portland at five a.m. on, perhaps, the Wilson G. Hunt,
reach the Cascades sixty-five miles distant at eleven a.m., proceed by rail
five miles to the upper Cascades, there transfer to the Oneonta or Idaho for
The Dalles, passing in that run from the humid, low-lying, heavily timbered
West-of-the-mountains, to the dry, breezy, hilly East-of-the-mountains.
Reaching The Dalles, fifty miles farther east, he would be conveyed by
another portage railroad, fourteen miles more, to Celilo. There the Tenino,
Yakima, Nez Percé Chief, or Owyhee was waiting. With the earliest light of

the morning the steamer would head right into the impetuous current of the
River, bound for Lewiston, two hundred and eighty miles farther yet, taking
two days, sometimes three, though only one to return. Those steamers were
mainly of the light-draught, stern-wheel structure, which still characterises
the Columbia River boats. They were swift and roomy and well adapted to
the turbulent waters of the upper River.
The captains, pilots, and pursers of that period were as fine a set of men as
ever turned a wheel. Bold, bluff, genial, hearty, and obliging they were,
even though given to occasional outbursts of expletives and possessing
voluminous repertoires of “cuss-words” such as would startle the effete
East. Any old Oregonian who may chance to cast his eyes upon these pages
will recall, as with the pangs of childhood homesickness, the forms and
features of steamboat men of that day; the polite yet determined Ainsworth,
the brusque and rotund Reed, the bluff and hearty Knaggs, the frolicsome
and never disconcerted Ingalls, the dark, powerful, and nonchalant Coe, the
patriarchal beard of Stump, the loquacious “Commodore” Wolf, who used
to point out to astonished tourists the “diabolical strata” on the banks of the
River, the massive and good-natured Strang, the genial and elegant O’Neil,
the suave and witty Snow, the tall and handsome Sampson, the rich Scotch
brogue of McNulty, and dozens of others, whose combined adventures
would fill a volume. One of the most experienced pilots of the upper River
was Captain “Eph” Baughman, who has been running on the Snake and
Columbia rivers for fifty years, and is yet active at the date of this
publication. W. H. Gray, who came to Waiilatpu with Whitman as secular
agent of the mission, became a river man of much skill. He gave four sons,
John, William, Alfred, and James, to the service of the River, all four of
them being skilled captains. A story narrated to the author by Captain
William Gray, now of Pasco, Washington, well illustrates the character of
the old Columbia River navigators. W. H. Gray was the first man to run a
sailboat of much size with regular freight up Snake River. That was in 1860
before any steamers were running on that stream. Mr. Gray built his boat, a
fifty-ton sloop, on Oosyoos Lake on the Okanogan River. In it he descended
that river to its entrance into the Columbia. Thence be descended the
Columbia, running down the Entiat, Rock Island, Cabinet, and Priest
Rapids, no mean undertaking of itself. Reaching the mouth of the Snake, he
took on a load of freight and started up the swift stream. At Five-mile

Rapids he found that his sail was insufficient to carry the sloop up. Men had
said that it was impossible. His crew all prophesied disaster. The stubborn
captain merely declared, “There is no such word as fail in my dictionary.”
He directed his son and another of the crew to take the small boat, load her
with a long coil of rope, make their way up the stream until they got above
the rapid, there to land on an islet of rock, fasten the rope to that rock, then
pay it out till it was swept down the rapid. They were then to descend the
rapid in the small boat. “Very likely you may be upset,” added the skipper
encouragingly, “but if you are, you know how to swim.” They were upset,
sure enough, but they did know how to swim. They righted their boat,
picked up the end of the floating rope, and reached the sloop with it. The
rope was attached to the capstan, and the sloop was wound up by it above
the swiftest part of the rapid to a point where the sail was sufficient to carry,
and on they went rejoicing. Any account of steamboating on the Columbia
would be incomplete without reference to Captain James Troup, who was
born on the Columbia, and almost from early boyhood ran steamers upon it
and its tributaries. He made a specialty of running steamers down the Dalles
and the Cascades, an undertaking sometimes rendered necessary by the fact
that more boats were built in proportion to demand on the upper than the
lower River. These were taken down the Dalles, and sometimes down the
Cascades. Once down, they could not return. The first steamer to run down
the Tumwater Falls was the Okanogan, on May 22, 1866, piloted by
Captain T. J. Stump.
The author enjoyed the great privilege of descending the Dalles in the D. S.
Baker in the year 1888, Captain Troup being in command. At that strange
point in the River, the whole vast volume is compressed into a channel but
one hundred and sixty feet wide at low water and much deeper than wide.
Like a huge mill-race this channel continues nearly straight for two miles,
when it is hurled with frightful force against a massive bluff. Deflected
from the bluff, it turns at a sharp angle to be split in sunder by a low reef of
rock. When the Baker was drawn into the suck of the current at the head of
the “chute” she swept down the channel, which was almost black, with
streaks of foam, to the bluff, two miles in four minutes. There feeling the
tremendous refluent wave, she went careening over and over toward the
sunken reef. The skilled captain had her perfectly in hand, and precisely at
the right moment, rang the signal bell, “Ahead, full speed,” and ahead she

went, just barely scratching her side on the rock. Thus close was it
necessary to calculate distance. If the steamer had struck the tooth-like
point of the reef broadside on, she would have been broken in two and
carried in fragments on either side. Having passed this danger point, she
glided into the beautiful calm bay below and the feat was accomplished.
Captain J. C. Ainsworth and Captain James Troup were the two captains
above all others to whom the company entrusted the critical task of running
steamers over the rapids.
In the Overland Monthly of June, 1886, there is a valuable account by
Captain Lawrence Coe of the maiden journey of the Colonel Wright from
Celilo up what they then termed the upper Columbia.
This first journey on that section of the River was made in April, 1859. The
pilot was Captain Lew White. The highest point reached was Wallula, the
site of the old Hudson’s Bay fort. The current was a powerful one to
withstand, no soundings had ever been made, and no boats except canoes,
bateaux, flatboats, and a few small sailboats, had ever made the trip. No one
had any conception of the location of a channel adapted to a steamboat. No
difficulty was experienced, however, except at the Umatilla Rapids. This is
a most singular obstruction. Three separate reefs, at intervals of half a mile,
extend right across the River. There are narrow breaks in these reefs, but not
in line with each other. Through them the water pours with tremendous
velocity, and on account of their irregular locations a steamer must zigzag
across the River at imminent risk of being borne broadside on to the reef.
The passage of the Umatilla Rapids is not difficult at high water, for then
the steamer glides over the rocks in a straight course.
In the August Overland of the same year, Captain Coe narrates the first
steamboat trip up Snake River. This was in June, 1860, just at the time of
the beginning of the gold excitement. The Colonel Wright was loaded with
picks, rockers, and other mining implements, as well as provisions and
passengers. Most of the freight and passengers were put off at Wallula, to
go thence overland. Part continued on to test the experiment of making way
against the wicked-looking current of Snake River. After three days and a
half from the starting point a few miles above Celilo, the Colonel Wright
halted at a place which was called Slaterville, thirty-seven miles up the
Clearwater from its junction with the Snake. There the remainder of the

cargo was discharged, to be hauled in waggons to the Oro Fino mines. The
steamer Okanogan followed the Colonel Wright within a few weeks, and
navigation on the Snake may be said to have fairly begun. During that same
time the city of Lewiston, named in honour of Meriwether Lewis, the
explorer, was founded at the junction of the Snake and Clearwater rivers.
While parts of the Columbia and it chief tributary, the Snake, were thus
opened to navigation by 1860, no “fire-canoe” had yet appeared on that
magnificent stretch of navigable water from Colville into the Arrow Lakes.
From contemporary files of the Daily Mountaineer of The Dalles, we learn
that Captain Lew White launched the Forty-nine in November, 1865, at
Colville. In December the Forty-nine ascended the Columbia one hundred
and sixty miles, nearly to the head of lower Arrow Lake, whence, meeting
floating ice, she returned. From the Mountaineer we learn also that in the
early months of 1866 a steamer was constructed at the mouth of Boisé
River for navigation of the far upper Snake. At the same time also the
steamer Mary Moody was constructed by Z. F. Moody, on Pend Oreille
Lake, the first steamer on any of the lakes except the Arrow Lakes of the
Columbia.
With the close of the decade of the sixties, it may be said that the Columbia
and its tributaries had fairly entered upon the steamboat era. While many
steamers were added within the succeeding years, the steamboat business
was never so active on the upper River as during that early age. After the
building of the railroads along the River and into interior valleys and
eastward, it became apparent that the heavy handicap of rehandling freight
at two portages would forbid the steamers from competing with the
railroads. In 1879 the Oregon Steam Navigation Company sold out to the
Villard interests for $5,000,000, and the Oregon Railroad and Navigation
Company was the result.
Since that time there have been few steamboats on that part of the River
above The Dalles. The section between The Dalles and the Cascades was
joined to the tide-water section by the opening of the Government locks at
the Cascades in 1896, and since that time many of the finest steamers on the
River do an immense tourist business between The Dalles and Portland. It is
only a question of a few years till the locks at Celilo will be completed, and
then the whole vast Inland Empire, with its enormous production, will be

thrown open to the sea. Then there will come on a new age of steamboat
navigation, and with it the electric railroad. The steamer and the trolley car
will set the whole Columbia Basin next door to tide-water. When
improvements now in view by Government are completed, our River will
be one of the most superb steamer courses in the world. That may truthfully
be said already of the two hundred and twenty miles from The Dalles to the
Ocean, as well as of the three hundred miles from Kettle Falls, Washington,
to Death Rapids, B. C.
The Government engineers in Senate Document, 344, February, 1890, name
the amount of navigable water on the Columbia and its tributaries at 1664
miles. This may, perhaps, be an underestimation, since President Roosevelt
has recently referred to it as twenty-five hundred miles, in which he
probably included the lakes. Generally speaking, the rivers of the Pacific
slope descend from high altitudes in comparatively short distances, and are
necessarily swift. Hence we can expect no such vast extent of navigable
water on them as the Mississippi and its affluents offer. Aside from the
Columbia itself, the main streams, east of the Cascade Mountains offering
steamboat transportation, are the Snake, Okanogan, and Kootenai, together
with Lakes Pend Oreille, Chelan, Cœur d’Alene, Flathead, Okanogan,
Kootenai, Arrow, Christina, and Slocan. On the west side are the
Willamette, Cowlitz, and Lewis rivers.
It would fill a volume to narrate even a tithe of the thrilling tales of daring
and tragedy which gather around the subject of boating in all its forms on
the Columbia.
One of the most remarkable steamboat journeys was that elsewhere
described in this work, under command of Captain F. P. Armstrong, of the
North Star, from Jennings, Montana, on the Kootenai to Canal Flats and
thence through the canal to Lake Columbia. With that should be coupled as
equally daring and more difficult, the trip down Snake River, from the
Seven Devils to Lewiston, in a steamer piloted by Captain W. P. Gray.
Undoubtedly the most remarkable journey in any other sort of craft than a
steamboat was that undertaken by a party of eighteen miners in 1865. They
built a large sailing boat at Colville and in her ran up the entire course of the
River, never having their boat entirely out of water, though our informant

says that they must have had her on skids part of the way. They reached the
very head of the Columbia, over seven hundred miles above their starting
point, hauled their boat across Canal Flats, launched her again on the
Kootenai, and so descended that furious stream to Fort Steele on Wild
Horse Creek. The full history of that journey would be deserving of a place
in any record of daring exploration.
In concluding this chapter, it may be said that there are now upon the lower
Columbia some of the swiftest and most beautiful “fire-canoes” in the
world. These ply on the two great scenic routes, one from Portland to
Astoria, and the other from Portland to The Dalles. The most noted of these
swift steamers at present writing are the Hassalo (No. 2), the T. J. Potter,
the Charles D. Spencer, and the Bailey Gatzert.

CHAPTER XI

Era of the Miner, the Cowboy, the Farmer, the
Boomer, and the Railroad Builder
Early Gold-hunters—Gold in California—
Effects of that Discovery on the
Columbia River Country—Growth of
Towns on the Columbia—Discovery of
Gold in the Colville Country—Gold on
the Clearwater—Stampede to the Idaho
Mines—Cowboys Rush in with the
Miners—Sudden Development of
Industries at Walla Walla, Lewiston, and
Other Towns—Profits and Fare in the
Mines in 1861—The Hard Winter—
Development of the Farming Industry—
The Boomers—The Hard Times—The
Railroad Age—Beginning of
Railroading in the Willamette Valley—
Ben Holladay—Transcontinental
Railways—Henry Villard—His Great
Building and his Downfall—The
Present Railroads on the River—Dr. D.
S. Baker and the Pioneer Railroad on
the Upper River.

T HE age of gold in the Columbia pressed hard upon that of the trappers.
But it dawned first far south.
The Spaniards had sought the precious metals with boundless energy.
Richly had the treasures of the Montezumas and the Incas rewarded their
reckless cupidity. But as they moved northward they met with nothing but
disappointment. The El Dorados of their ardent fancy had vanished as they
turned toward Oregon and California.

In 1848 the guns of Stockton and Fremont thundered the salvos of
American occupation over the Sierras. Just as the sovereignty of Uncle Sam
was acknowledged, the long-sought discovery of gold startled the world.
In 1838 a gay, mercurial Switzer, Captain Sutter, had made his way with a
band of trappers across the plains to Oregon, and thence had gone to
California. A dashing adventurer, without money, but with boundless sang-
froid and bonhommie, Sutter had marvellously interested all whom he met
and in some inexplicable manner had got money and credit sufficient to
build a fort and start an immense ranch on the Sacramento, almost on the
site of the present capital of the Golden State. “Sutter’s fort” became one of
the most notable places in California. In 1844 James W. Marshall went to
the Columbia, but after only a year’s stay made his way to California. In
1847 he entered into partnership with Sutter in a sawmill enterprise at
Coloma on the south fork of the American River. There, while at work in
the mill-race on the 19th of January, 1848, Marshall discovered shining
particles. Gold!
The discovery was made, and soon the secret was out. And then—! There
never was anything quite comparable to what followed. The first and
greatest of the great stampedes for gold took place.
When the tidings reached Oregon it was as though a prairie fire were
running over the country. Men went fairly mad. Throngs, hardly stopping to
take their ploughs from the furrow, mounted their horses, galloped off up
the Willamette, through the lonely valleys of the Umpqua and the Rogue
River, over the Siskiyou, and down the Sacramento, where a fortune could
be had for the digging.
All the stress and strain of American life and history reached the utmost
intensity in the fever strife for gold on the Sacramento. The Willamette and
Columbia were almost equally stirred. During the first two years of the gold
excitement homes on the Columbia were well-nigh deserted. Then the
Oregonians began to drift back again. Some came with gold-bricks in their
pockets and sacks of gold-dust in their packs. Some came broken in health
and spirits, sick with disappointment. Some did not come at all, and their
bones found unmarked graves in the pestilential ditches of the Sacramento.

But the shrewder Oregonians perceived that they had better than a gold
mine in the trade with California. Grain, fruit, eggs, lumber,—these were in
such demand that frequently twenty ships at a time were moored by the
dense forests of the lower Willamette waiting for cargoes. Gold-dust was
the universal medium, and it seemed to be cheaper than anything else. Four
bushels of Oregon apples brought five hundred dollars in gold-dust in San
Francisco. Tons of eggs were sold for a dollar apiece in the gold mines.
Portland, the lonely little village on the Willamette, with just enough of a
foothold by the edge of the forest to keep from rolling into the River, sprang
at a bound into the rank of a city. The huge firs were dug out, and wharves
went in. The face of nature, even, as well as that of industry and politics,
was transformed by that gold-dust in Marshall’s mill-race on the
Sacramento.
But, most of all, the disposition of the people was changed. The serene,
idyllic, pastoral age passed, and the fierce lust for wealth, the boundless
imagination, the fever in the veins, came on. Why should there not be gold
as well by the Columbia as by the Sacramento! The men who had come
down the Columbia in search for homes and grass-land for cattle, now
began to retrace their steps and turn again up the River in search of the
precious metals. Nor was it long before discovery of gold in the region
tributary to Colville was made known. The first discovery was at the mouth
of the Pend Oreille River. A regular stampede ensued. Other discoveries on
a greater scale were soon to follow. During the early days of the gold
excitement of California, a Nez Percé Indian had wandered on to the
Sacramento. He made acquaintance with a group of miners, who became
impressed with his general force and dignity. Among these miners was E.
D. Pearce, and to him the Indian gave a vivid account of his home in the
wilds of what is now Idaho. He told also a tale of how he with two
companions were once in the high mountains, when they beheld in the night
a light of dazzling brilliance, with the appearance of a refulgent star. The
Indians looked at this with awe as the eye of the Great Spirit. But in the
morning they summoned courage sufficient to investigate, and found a
glittering ball that looked like glass. It was so embedded in the rock that
they could not dislodge it. It was clear to them that this was some great
“tomanowas.” On hearing this fantastic story, the mind of Pearce was
kindled with the idea that perhaps the Indians had found an immense

diamond. He determined to seek it. After several years he made his way up
the Columbia and reached Walla Walla. From that point he ranged the
mountains of Idaho, but for a long time met no success. With a company of
seven men, he entered upon an elaborate search, which finally so much
aroused the suspicion of the Indians that they ordered him from the country.
Nothing daunted, however, he induced a Nez Percé woman to guide the
party from the Palouse to the Lolo trail, from which they reached an
unfrequented valley on the north fork of the Clearwater. There one of the
party, W. F. Bassett, tried washing a pan of dirt, with the result that he got a
“colour.” This was the first discovery of gold in Idaho, and the spot was
where Oro Fino afterwards stood.
Fall was coming on, and after digging out a small amount of dust, the party
deemed it wise to return to the settlements for a more thorough outfitting.
Accordingly, they went to Walla Walla and located with J. C. Smith, to
whom they imparted their secret. So impressed was Mr. Smith with the
tidings that he organised a party of fifteen, with whom he returned just at
the opening of the winter of that same year, 1860. Soon shut in by deep
snows in inaccessible mountains, the little company built five rude huts, and
in the intervals of the storms they dug for gold along the streams, meeting
with such success that in March Mr. Smith made his way to Walla Walla
with $800 in gold-dust. The dust was sent to Portland. Now ensued another
gold excitement and stampede almost equal to that of ’49 in California.
As the miners rushed into Idaho, every other species of industry rushed up
the River with them. The cowboy came side by side with the miner. In fact,
already following close on the heels of the Indian war, had come an inrush
of cattle, horses, and sheep. During the last years of the decade of the
fifties, stockmen had driven from the Willamette Valley thousands of head
of stock to the rich pasture lands of the Walla Walla, Umatilla, and Yakima.
When the gold discoveries of 1860 and 1861 became known, the activities
of the cowboys were multiplied, added bands of stock were driven in, all
the wild and extravagant features of a combined cowboy and mining age,
vendors of “chain-lightning and forty-rod,” gamblers, prostitutes,
murderers,—and with them missionaries and teachers,—became
reproduced again on the shores of the Columbia, Snake, Clearwater,
Salmon, Walla Walla, and other rivers of the Inland Empire. It was another

of those wild eras in which the worst and the best that are in human nature
jostled each other at every turn.
Transportation problems followed close upon the cowboy and the miner.
The Oregon Steam Navigation Company, organised in 1860, began within a
year to run steamboats from Portland to Lewiston, with portage railroads
around the Cascades and the Dalles. Stage lines were started from Umatilla,
Walla Walla, and Lewiston, within a year or two after the gold discoveries
of Oro Fino. Prairie-schooners, huge waggons, sometimes three in tandem
fashion, drawn by a team of twenty mules, with jingling bells, driven with a
“single line,” formed the approved system of hauling freight over the
mountain roads. In addition to the stages and prairie-schooners, however,
thousands of mules and horses were driven with pack-saddles over the trails
and roads. Then was the time when “throwing the diamond hitch” became a
fine art. Then was the time, too, when it behooved stage-drivers and packers
to be handy with a “gun,” for “road-agents” were plentiful and vigilant.
Many a man with a pack-saddle loaded with gold-dust, or sometimes with
whiskey or even “canned goods,” “passed in his checks” under some over-
shadowing tree or behind some sheltering rock.
Both the distresses and the successes of that epoch are well illustrated by
extracts from some of the newspapers of the time. From issues of the
Washington Statesman of Walla Walla, we learn that flour was at one time a
dollar a pound; beef, thirty to fifty cents a pound; bacon, sixty; beans,
thirty; rice, fifty; tea a dollar and a half; tobacco, a dollar and a half; sugar,
fifty cents; candles, a dollar. Some of these staples could not be had at all.
Physicians, when they got into the mines, would charge twenty dollars a
visit. Board was from five to ten dollars a day, frequently more.
But as an offset to the expense and frequent positive suffering, we gather
the following item from an issue of the Statesman in December, 1861:
S. F. Ledyard arrived last evening from the Salmon River mines,
and from him it is learned that some six hundred miners would
winter there; that some two hundred had gone to the south side
of the river, where two streams head that empty into the Salmon,
some thirty miles south-east of the present mining camp. Coarse
gold is found, and as high as one hundred dollars per day to the

man has been taken out. The big mining claim of the old locality
belongs to Mr. Weiser of Oregon, from which two thousand six
hundred and eighty dollars were taken out on the 20th, with two
rockers. On the 21st, three thousand three hundred and sixty
dollars were taken out with the same machines.
The Statesman for December 13, 1861, contains the following:
During the week past not less than two hundred and twenty-five
pack animals, heavily laden with provisions, have left this city
for the mines. A report in relation to a rich strike by Mr. Bridges
of Oregon City seems to come well authenticated. The first day
he worked on his claim (near Baboon Gulch) he took out fifty-
seven ounces; the second day he took out one hundred and fifty-
seven ounces; the third day, two hundred and fourteen ounces;
and the fourth day, two hundred ounces in two hours.
As an ounce of gold was worth sixteen dollars, it will be seen that Mr.
Bridges of Oregon City had truly “struck it rich.”
Within a year, a million and a half dollars in gold-dust had been taken from
those mines. Anticipated demands led cattlemen to rush still larger numbers
of stock into the upper Columbia Basin, and traders brought in yet larger
supplies of goods into Walla Walla and Lewiston, as well as the mining
camps themselves. A considerable part of these goods, we regret to narrate,
consisted of material for spirituous refreshments. That the said refreshments
were of a stalwart character may be inferred from a reminiscence of a
traveller to Walla Walla, who relates that upon going into one of the
numerous saloons, he found the floor covered with sawdust, and upon
asking for whiskey, he received with it a whisk-broom. Feeling puzzled as
to the intent of the latter, and not wishing to reveal his ignorance, he waited
till another man came in. Waiting for developments, he found that the object
of the broom was to sweep off a place on the floor to have a fit on, for the
whiskey was sure to produce one. After having got through his fit, the
happy (?) purchaser would return the broom and go on his way.

An Oregon Pioneer in his Cabin.
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Just as miners, cowboys, and traders were plunging eagerly into every form
of enterprise, the famous “hard winter” of ’61 descended upon the country.
It was almost a Minnesota winter. There was snow on the ground from
December 1st to March 22d, something never known before or since in the
Columbia Basin. Cattle could find no food and perished by the thousands.
Miners were found frozen into the stiff crust. In the rude cabins, with wide
cracks into which the snow drifted, the few women and children in the
Inland Empire fought a distressing and frequently losing fight. Even in the
Willamette Valley where houses were more comfortable, supplies more
plentiful, and the weather less severe, the conditions were hard enough. At

Portland the price of hay was eighty dollars a ton. In Eastern Oregon it
could not be obtained for any price, and the maintenance of life by cattle
depended entirely on their endurance.
But with the coming on of tardy spring, the rush up the River was resumed,
and the game went on. Seven millions in gold was reported in 1862, besides
almost as much, as was estimated, taken out in ways of which no record
was reported.
At Florence in February, 1862, flour was a dollar a pound; butter, three
dollars; sugar, a dollar and a quarter; coffee, two dollars; boots, thirty
dollars a pair.
The enormous profits, as well as enormous expense, of developing those
mines hastened the coming of the farmer. Among the throng that passed
madly into the mountains for gold, and among the throng that drove the
wide-horned cattle over the bunch-grass hills, there were a few keen-eyed
observers who asked themselves if wheat and corn and potatoes and barley
and fruit-trees might not grow on those broad prairies, and especially along
the numerous watercourses descending from the Blue Mountains.
A farm here and there at some favourable point beside some favouring
stream, followed in two or three years by a flour-mill, then a few apples
whose bright red cheeks and fragrant smell showed that the upper Columbia
lands could match those of the Willamette, then an experimental wheat-field
or barley-field on the high bunch-grass prairies,—and, almost before people
realised it, the farmer was standing up beside the miner and the stockman,
as tall and broad and important as either. The plough and the hoe and the
mowing-machine took their places beside the pick and gold-pan and quirt
and schapps and spurs as symbols of Columbia River nobility.
The “boomer” was the logical result of the development of mine and range
and farm and garden and orchard. If people were going to eat and travel and
raise wheat and cattle, they must inevitably buy and sell. And if they were
going to buy and sell, they must needs “boom.” The decade of the eighties
was the great age of the boom in real estate along the Columbia and its
tributaries. Then, as also upon Puget Sound, cities were founded with most
extravagant size and expectations—on paper. Farm lands changed hands
rapidly. If a man could raise nothing else on his land, he could at least raise

the price. That was the time when the boomer boomed, the promoter
promoted, and the sucker sucked. It was a great age, but alas, it was
followed by an awakening, similar to that which follows a night of carousal,
when the next day brings a dark-brown taste in the mouth and a very heavy
head. The decade of the nineties was dolorous along the River and in the
mines and forests and farms and town-lots and additions and suburbs
adjoining.

Old Portage Railroad at Cascades in 1860.

A Log-boom Down the River for San Francisco.
Photo. by Woodfield.

Interlocked with the days of miner, cowboy, rancher, and boomer, was
another age of equal importance and one that was both result and cause of
the others. This was the age of the railroad builder.
Transportation by the River was a great feature of traffic in the fifties and
sixties. But, during the second of those decades, the people of Portland
began to realise that the time had arrived for rails as well as sails. The first
great transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, was in
active process of building between California and Omaha. A fever of
railroad building spread to the Columbia River people. Railroads were
projected from Portland on both sides of the Willamette, up the valley, with
the view of ultimate connection with California. Surveys were made by S.
G. Elliott from Marysville, California, to Portland in 1863. It was October,
1870, when the first train reached Salem, the capital of the State. The road

was known as the Oregon Central Railroad, and its manager and ultimately
its chief owner was Ben Holladay, the most famous railroad man of that
period in Oregon. In 1871 and 1872, railroad building was extended on the
west side of the Willamette. The lines on both sides were reorganised under
Mr. Holladay’s control as the Oregon and California Railroad.
Meanwhile the air was full of discussion of a transcontinental line to the
Pacific Northwest. The conception of a Northern Pacific railroad was
nothing new. Away back in 1853, Governor I. I. Stevens and Captain
George B. McClellan had made a reconnaissance across the Rocky and
Cascade Mountains and over the great plains of the Columbia, for the
purpose of ascertaining a route for a northern line. They pronounced the
route feasible, but the time had not yet come for such an undertaking. In a
letter to McClellan of April 5, 1853, Governor Stevens states the route to be
from St. Paul to Puget Sound by the great bend of the Missouri River. It is
interesting to note that this is nearly the course afterwards followed.
Work on the Northern Pacific was begun in the vicinity of Kalama on the
Columbia in 1870. The financial panic of 1873 resulted in the failure of Jay
Cooke & Company, the backers of the enterprise, and for several years
railroad work was at a standstill.
In 1879 there came to Oregon the greatest railroad builder of that era,
Henry Villard. He was a true financial genius, daring, far-seeing, persistent,
and self-reliant. With the quick grasp of a statesman, Mr. Villard perceived
that the Columbia River was the key to a boundless opportunity. He saw
that a central line up the Columbia with branches north, east, and south-
east, might be thrust like a wedge between the Northern Pacific and the
Union Pacific and control both. In pursuance of this conception he made
three rapid moves. The first was the incorporation of the Oregon Railway
and Navigation Company. The second was the formation of the “blind pool”
and the Oregon and Transcontinental Company. The third was the
acquisition of a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific Railroad. The
three years up to and including 1883 were years of almost feverish activity
along the River. The line of the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company
between Wallula and Portland was pushed on with tireless energy. Rock
bluffs were split off by enormous charges of dynamite, or were tunnelled

through. The road was indeed built so hastily and the curves were in some
cases so extreme that much work had to be done over at later times.

Lumber Mill and Steamboat Landing at Golden, B. C.
Photo. by C. F. Yates.

A part of Villard’s plan in pushing the work so hastily was to divert the
Northern Pacific system to the River, and make Portland rather than Puget
Sound the western terminus. The undertaking seemed to be crowned with
success. The connection was made. A gorgeous celebration, the greatest
ever held in the Columbia River country, commemorated, in October, 1883,
the completion of the transcontinental railroad to tide-water on the
Columbia River. But in the very hour of victory, the sceptre fell from
Villard’s hands. His downfall was as sudden and dramatic as his rise. By
clever jobbing of the market, the Wright interests regained possession of the

majority of the Northern Pacific stock, the transcontinental pool broke, and
at the very time that Mr. Villard was being worshipped at Portland as the
financial god of the North-west, he learned that his gigantic enterprise had
fallen into the hands of the enemy. But in spite of defeat the work of Villard
was assured, and his name and fame as the champion railroad builder of the
Columbia River was established.
After the Wright interests had regained possession of the Northern Pacific,
that great system was pushed to Puget Sound. The Oregon Short Line was
carried to a connection with the Union Pacific system. Thus two
independent transcontinental lines reached the River. Yet later the Southern
Pacific system acquired control of the Oregon and California Railroad, and,
by joining the sections, connected the Columbia River with the Golden
Gate. Through connecting lines the Canadian Pacific Railroad gained access
to the Columbia River. There are, therefore, four distinct transcontinental
railroad systems into the valley of our River. Two more are rapidly
approaching completion. As a logical result, too, many local and connecting
lines have been built. The Astoria and Columbia River Railroad, on the
Oregon side of the River, joins Portland to Astoria and Seaside and the
other resorts of the ocean beach. The Oregon Railway and Navigation
Company has continuous connection on the south side of the Columbia and
Snake rivers to Riparia on the latter stream, and thence by a road on the
north side, owned jointly with the Northern Pacific, to Lewiston, Idaho. The
most remarkable of all these connecting and joint roads is the Portland,
Seattle, and Spokane Railroad, commonly called the “North Bank Road.”
This is supposed to be the joint property of the Northern Pacific and Great
Northern railroads. It is one of the many monuments in the West to the
financial genius and tireless energy of James J. Hill. It was completed in
1908, between Pasco and Portland, and at the first of the year following,
from Pasco to Spokane. It is said to be the most expensively and
scientifically built road in the United States, having curves and grades
reduced to a minimum, being, in fact, a continuous descent from near
Spokane to tide-water. Its builders evidently expect stupendous traffic, and
every feature of the line is adjusted to such expectation.

A Typical Lumber Camp.
Photo. by Trueman.

Any account of the great railroads joining the Inland Empire to the River
and thence to the seaboard would be incomplete without reference to the
pioneer of them all, the “Strap-iron” narrow-gauge from Walla Walla to
Wallula. This line was forced by the exigencies of the times, but it
commemorates the rare commercial foresight and ability of a man, who, in
native business genius, ranks with the foremost in the history of the
Columbia Valley. This man was Dr. D. S. Baker, a native of Illinois, an
immigrant to the Columbia in 1848, and a settler in Walla Walla in 1860.
Perceiving the vast latent resources of the Inland Empire, he invested in
land, founded a bank, became a partner in a store, and during much of the
time was also actively engaged in his profession of medicine.
In 1863, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company was running boats from
Portland to Lewiston, over four hundred miles, having short railroad

portages at the Cascades and The Dalles. That was the most active era of
the mines in Idaho. Rates from Portland to up-river points were as follows:
freight from Portland to Wallula, $50.00 per ton; to Lewiston, $90.00; fare
from Portland to Wallula, $18.00; to Lewiston, $28.00. (The rates had been
much higher a year or two earlier.) From Wallula to Walla Walla, freight
was hauled by prairie-schooners at from $10.00 to $12.00 a ton, thirty
miles. Needless to say, the company piled up a fortune.
Dr. Baker saw the possibilities of the region and, almost unaided, with
every difficulty and discouragement, constructed a narrow gauge, with
wooden rails, on which strap-iron was fastened. An astonishing amount of
business was soon developed, steel rails were substituted, and the business
made a fortune for its builder. It was absorbed by the Oregon Steam
Navigation Company. But Dr. Baker’s strap-iron road may be considered
the true progenitor of the railroads of the upper Columbia.
During these first years of the twentieth century, the shores of the River
have echoed with the sound of whistles on many a new road, but the
distinguishing mark has been the construction of electric roads. The lower
Willamette Valley, centring at Portland, has become fairly swarming with
electric roads. Spokane has become almost an equal centre of electric lines,
while Walla Walla is following close behind her larger sisters in the
procession. When lines already constructed from Spokane southward are
joined to a system projected from Walla Walla northward and westward,
there will be a complete system of independent electric lines from all parts
of Eastern Washington and North-eastern Oregon to steamboat connections
on the River, and thence to tide-water. The significance of this as a
commercial fact cannot be realised as yet.

A Logging Railroad, near Astoria.
Photo. by Woodfield.

CHAPTER XII

The Present Age of Expansion and World Commerce
Population and Productions of the Region on
the River and its Tributaries—Extent of
its Navigability—Improvements Needed
—Kinds of Traffic—Local Traffic—
Transcontinental Traffic—World Traffic
—Advantages of the River Route for
these Kinds of Traffic—The Bar—The
Competition of Puget Sound—The
Combination of River Route and Sound
Route.

W E have traced the successive eras which have brought the land of the
Oregon from a wilderness to a group of powerful young American
States, abounding in resources and filled to the brim with hope and
enthusiasm. We have followed the River through its eras of canoe, bateau,
flatboat, sail-ship, and steamboat, and we have seen railroads built along its
banks. It remains only to cast a brief final glance at the River in its present
age, and to forecast something of what seems its sure future.
It may be said that the population of those parts of Oregon, Washington,
Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, which are embraced in the watershed of the
Columbia, is probably nearly a million and a quarter. The population of the
area in British Columbia is scanty, but rapidly increasing.
The productive capacity is very great. A rough estimate of production in the
valley of the Columbia for the year 1908 would probably give a grain
production of seventy million bushels, a lumber output of three billion feet,
a mineral output worth sixty million dollars, and a combined output of
pastoral, horticultural, fishing, and miscellaneous industries of fifty millions
of dollars.
Such figures indicate that the Columbia River is already a factor in world
commerce. Yet its development is but begun. What is to be its part in the

world commerce of the future?
Inspection of a map will show that the Columbia possesses the only water-
level route from the vast productive regions of the Inland Empire to the
seaboard. As has been shown in the course of this volume, the River is
navigable throughout the larger part of its course from Revelstoke in British
Columbia to the ocean. In that distance there is one canal, with locks. That
is at the Cascades, sixty-five miles from Portland. Before the River can be
continuously navigable it will be necessary that a canal be constructed to
overcome the obstructions at the Dalles, a few miles above the city of that
name, another at Priest Rapids, seventy miles above Pasco, and still another
at Kettle Falls. The Government is already engaged in the first of these
works. The second seems comparatively near of accomplishment by reason
of work done and projected by a powerful irrigation company. Nothing has
yet been done at Kettle Falls, but it would be comparatively a light task to
provide canal and locks at that point. Besides these larger obstructions there
are several rapids at points between Kettle Falls and the Dalles which
impede navigation at certain stages of water. The Government has made
surveys of these sections of the River, and has announced that with
comparatively small outlay the rocks and reefs may be removed, the
channels deepened and straightened, and the River made navigable. One
thing may be emphasised in this connection, and this is that the Columbia
River has mainly a rocky bed, and hence work on the channels is
permanent. It will not cut and fill, nor pile up islands and bars as does the
Missouri.
In view of the capability of the River to carry great water traffic, and in
view of the fact that railroad traffic is seeking and will still more seek the
down-hill grade to the sea, it becomes a question of great interest what the
future commerce of the River will be.
It is evident that there will be three kinds of traffic: local, transcontinental,
world-wide. Each is bound to be vast beyond the calculations or even the
imagination of the present. The local traffic is sure to be immense, for it is
estimated that there is a million acres of land immediately contiguous to the
River, irrigable and adapted to intensive farming. Present experience shows
that five or ten acres of such land are sufficient to support a family. Many
cities and towns are sure to grow upon the banks of the River. Its banks will

sometime become populated like those of ancient Nile. Besides the
immediate region of the River, there are millions upon millions of acres of
land more remote, the great wheat fields and stock ranges and valley lands
of tributary streams, and these broad areas will seek the river route. Much
of this immense local traffic of the future will be conveyed by steamboats
and barges.
The second class of traffic will be the transcontinental. All the railroads
across the continent, except those down the Columbia, are obliged to climb
the Cascade Mountains, four thousand feet or more in height. With
difficulty two powerful locomotives pull a freight train of forty cars up the
grades, and at some points even a third is needed. But a single locomotive
will pull eighty cars on the level grades of the River roads. In the even
keener competition bound to come, this advantage of grades and curves will
be a factor of immense importance.
The third class of future commerce is the world-wide. No western American
can contemplate the future of the world without being persuaded that the
Pacific Ocean and its shores will be the scene of the greatest problems of
the twentieth century. If this prove true, that world commerce of the Pacific
will seek that point of the American continent which most swiftly and
cheaply communicates with the eastern side of the continent and with
Europe. Granting that a large part of world commerce will pass through the
Panama Canal, there will still be, without question, an immense trade
between the Orient and such points in our own country as are so far from
the Atlantic seaboard that a transcontinental route is a necessity. Moreover,
even for our Atlantic seaboard and for Europe, there will be large amounts
of products, for the transit of which time will be a great object. Hence we
may be sure that there will be extensive world commerce across the
American continent. If so, where will it cross? Inspection of a globe
demonstrates that the Columbia River route is shortest, and, for reasons
already given, it is cheapest of all.
Puget Sound is its only present competitor. But the water-grade through the
Cascade Mountains, along the banks of the Columbia, constitutes an
advantage beyond the reach of permanent competition. Here, however, the
critic comes in and claims that the Bar at the mouth of the River forbids
entrance of the largest ships. This in a measure is true, though the

difficulties of the Columbia Bar have been grossly exaggerated. There are
over twenty-five feet of water on the Bar at the lowest tide. The flood-tide
adds from six to twelve feet. In any ordinary weather, forty feet of water is
safe enough for any vessel. But if marine architecture is going to keep pace
with growing commerce, we may soon have ships drawing forty or fifty feet
of water. If so, the Bar may indeed seriously block the heaviest commerce.
Some observers have, therefore, believed that the big freights of the future
will enter the Straits of Fuca, go to some one of the Puget Sound ports,
thence pass by rail across the low tract of country between the Sound and
the Columbia River, and proceed thence by the River route to the interior
and eastward. This would combine the advantages of the two great routes of
the Pacific North-west, abundant depth of water, low altitudes, and easy
grades. This would, in truth, come nearest to realising the dream of the old
navigators, the Strait of Anian. In any event, the future world will look to
our River as the goal of markets as well as of vision, and as a highway of
nations both for freights and for tourists.

PART II
A Journey Down the River

CHAPTER I

In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies
Extent of Navigation on the River—
Attractions of a Canoe Journey—The
Canadian Pacific Railroad—Banff and
Lake Louise—Summit of the Rockies—
The Continental Divide and its Western
Descent—Field and the Wapta River—
Golden and the Upper Columbia—
Peculiar Interlocking of the Columbia
and the Kootenai, and Professor
Dawson’s Explanation of this—Views
of the Selkirks and the Rockies—Some
Steamboat Men and their Tales—
Captain Armstrong’s Adventures on the
Kootenai—The Picture Rocks—Lake
Windermere—The Location of the Old
Thompson Fort—Baptiste Morigeau and
his Stories of Pioneer Days—The War
between the Shuswaps and the
Okanogans—Down the River from
Golden—Rapids and Navigation—By
the Canadian Pacific through the
Selkirks—Glacier and the Illecillewaet
—Revelstoke and the River again—
Wise Management of the Canadian
Government and the Railroad.

A JOURNEY upon the River may best begin with its source and end with
the ocean. It is about fourteen hundred miles by the windings of the
stream from its origin in the upper Columbia Lake to the Pacific. It
descends twenty-five hundred feet in that distance. It is therefore swift in
many places. Yet it would be possible to descend almost the entire length of
the River in a small boat. Nor can one imagine a more fascinating journey,

especially if he could conjure back the shades of the great voyageurs of
seventy years ago, as Monique and Charlefoux, famous in Dr.
McLoughlin’s time, and listen to their gay song, mingling with the plash of
oars:
Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,
En roulant, ma boule roulant.
The way of approach for the Eastern tourist to a journey down the
Columbia is by the Canadian Pacific Railway, a magnificent road in a
gallery of masterpieces. Wonders begin before he reaches the western
watershed. He will see Banff, with its hot springs, its immense hotel, its
Bow River and Falls and Valley. He will see the gem of the Canadian
Rockies, one of the gems of the earth, Lake Louise. Imagine a glistening
wall of purest white, Mts. Lefroy and Victoria, with a vast glacier
descending from them, great bastions of variously tinted rock closing on
either side as a frame of the snowy picture, and in front a lake, small
indeed, but of perfect form, a mirror in which the snowy wall, the glacier,
the rocky ramparts, find a duplication as distinct as themselves.
A few miles farther west, and the traveller will find himself at one of the
most significant of all places, the Continental Divide. Eastward the water
flows into the Bow, thence into the Saskatchewan, and ultimately into the
Atlantic. Westward the springs find their way to the branches of the Wapta,
thence to the Columbia and the Pacific. The long westward ascent which we
have followed all the way from Winnipeg ends at last. The track becomes
level. We are at the summit. Looking southward we can see descending the
steep slope, a clear mountain stream, which is parted into two branches by a
little wall of stone. One branch goes east to the Atlantic, the other west to
the Pacific.
It must have been of some such place, though farther north, that Holmes
was imagining when he wrote:
Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble’s edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun,
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.

The slender rill had strayed
But for the slanting stone,
To evening’s ocean, with the tangled braid
Of foam-flecked Oregon.
At the parting of the streams, a pretty rustic framework has been erected,
bearing the words, “The Continental Divide.”
We are now on the Columbia’s waters. We are also in the heart of the
Canadian Rockies, and in the midst of a perfect sea of mountains. It has
been said that British Columbia is “fifty or sixty Switzerlands rolled into
one.” Here are five distinct ridges, up and down, and through and around
which, the Columbia and its affluents chase each other in a dizzy dance.
The descent of the west side of the Divide is appallingly steep. From
Stephen to Field is a drop of one thousand two hundred and fifty-seven feet
in ten miles. In that distance are several places which reach two hundred
and thirty-six feet to the mile. Most explicit directions are given to
engineers in respect to handling trains on this grade. A speed of only six
miles an hour is allowed, and frequent stops and tests of air-brakes and
signals are required. By reason of the exceeding care, no serious accident
has ever occurred. In ascending three locomotives are required for an
ordinary train.
There are several splendid resorts on the line of the Canadian railroad.
Banff and Lake Louise are the resorts on the east side of the Divide. The
first one west of that point is Field. There, as at all the other resorts, the
hotels are managed by the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company. They are
conducted with great skill and elegance, and may well be regarded as a
tribute to the business ability and artistic taste of the managers.
As we descend the steep grade from Stephen to Field, we catch glimpses of
peak after peak, range after range, valley after valley, glacier after glacier,
purple, saffron, red, dazzling white, glistening greens and blues. Mt.
Stephen lifts its great wall over a mile of almost perpendicular height, and
nearly opposite is the spire of Mt. Burgess. Mountain wonders and
attractions of every sort lie in all directions from Field. Perhaps the finest is
Yoho Valley. There are the Takkakaw Falls, twelve hundred feet high. There
is the Wapta Glacier, itself a part of a prodigious ice-field, known as

Wahputekh, lying between the towering heights of Mts. Gordon, Balfour,
and Tralltinderne.
Leaving Field, the road runs between two chains of mountains, the Ottertail
on the north and the Van Horne on the south. The former is bold and spire-
like in outline, with the snow-fields and ice pinnacles of Mt. Goodwin
closing the vista. The latter is less bold in contour, but has a colouring of
yellow rock-slopes in beautiful contrast with the rich purple of the lower
forests.
Passing between those sublime mountain chains, we soon plunge into the
Wapta cañon, with its perpendicular walls of rock rising hundreds of feet on
either side. The Wapta is more commonly known as the Kicking Horse. It
received that name in this wise. The Palliser exploring expedition of 1858
had been seeking unsuccessfully a feasible route through the Rockies. In the
progress of the search, Sir James Hector, then in charge of the party, pitched
camp on the Wapta. While there a vicious horse kicked him with such effect
that he was left on the ground apparently dead. The three Indians with him
had, in fact, dug his grave. But while they were conveying him to it, he
suddenly came to himself. Having recovered, he became curious to follow
the stream where he had met with the disaster. As a result he discovered the
cañon and a short route through the main chain. Upon the pass he bestowed
the name of “Kicking Horse,” and this has latterly been bestowed upon the
river itself. The river is one of the most remarkable of the tributaries of the
upper Columbia. It drains a cordon of glaciated peaks, from which it bears a
vast volume of water, foaming and frothing with frequent cataracts down
the steep descent, from fifty to a hundred feet to the mile.

Natural Bridge Kicking Horse or Wapta River, and Mt. Stephen, B. C.
Photo. by C. F. Yates.

Sunrise on Columbia River, near Washougal.
(Copyright, 1902, by Kiser Photograph Co.)

Forty-five miles west of the Divide we reach Golden on the Columbia. It is
indeed a thrilling moment to the traveller when he first sets eyes upon these
head-waters of the River of the West. Golden is a pleasant little town, a
hundred and fifty miles below the upper Columbia Lake and twelve
hundred and fifty by the windings of the River from its destination in the
Pacific.
At Golden we must pause and make ready for our first journey on the River.
The greater part of the tourist travel passes by Golden, not realising that
between that pretty town and the lakes lie some of the most charming
scenes in all the vast play-ground of British Columbia.
We find at Golden several steamboats in command of captains who are very
princes of good fellows, as Captain Armstrong of the Ptarmigan and
Captain Blakeney of the Isabel, with whom we may journey from Golden to
Lake Windermere. Over the hundred miles between these two points the
Columbia is a slack-water stream, having a descent of but fifty feet in the
distance from the extreme head waters to Golden. Over considerable part of

this distance the River runs in bayous. These bayous or channels wind their
serpentine courses through low flats, flooded at high water, and exposing
fair expanses of vivid green at the subsidence of the waters.
Professor Dawson, the eminent Canadian geologist, made a study of this
section of the River some years before his death, and as a result expressed
the opinion that the section of the Columbia above the mouth of Blue River,
some thirty miles below Golden, formerly united with the Kootenai. But
owing to some convulsion of nature, the surface was tilted just sufficiently
to turn the section of the stream from Columbia Lake toward the north
instead of the south, with the result that we have this slack-water system of
lagoons and lakes constituting this marvellously picturesque division of the
River. Now in confirmation of this theory of Professor Dawson we have in
the relations of the Columbia and Kootenai the singular geographical
phenomenon already referred to in an earlier chapter. The Kootenai runs
through “Canal Flats,” in which the upper Columbia Lake is situated, and
comes within a mile of that lake. It is nine feet higher than the lake, but
there is no high land there, and at one time a canal joined the Kootenai with
the lake. This canal was wrecked in the great flood of 1894, but steamboats
had run through it from the Kootenai to the Columbia, and it would be
entirely feasible to reconstruct it. After having thus passed within a mile of
each other and evidently having once been actually connected, the two
rivers part company. The Columbia flows north and the Kootenai south.
Each makes a vast bend. Again they reverse directions, the Columbia
flowing south and the Kootenai north, and then come together many miles
from their point of separation.
Aside from the unique beauty of the lagoons and the grassy shores, the eye
of the traveller is delighted with the two mountain chains which confront
each other across those glassy channels throughout the entire stretch from
Golden to Windermere. On the east side is the main chain of the Rockies,
and on the west are the Selkirks.
As we proceed on the deep, still stream, gliding from channel to channel,
we may find ourselves mightily entertained by the conversation of such a
navigator as Captain Armstrong or Captain Blakeney. For each can
command a fund of historical and descriptive matter of rare interest.

Captain Armstrong was one of the earliest pilots on the Kootenai. In 1894
he built the North Star at Jennings, Montana, ran her up the wild stream to
Canal Flats, thence through the canal to the Columbia lakes, and into the
River itself. A more exquisite stretch of river navigation than that through
Columbia Lake, Lake Adela, and Lake Windermere, and from them into the
lagoons of the River, can scarcely be found or even imagined, and it was the
lot of the North Star to ply upon that route until her unhappy destruction by
fire in 1900.
There is little danger of accident on the placid water of the uppermost
Columbia, but it is far different on the Kootenai. We heard many a tale of
steamboating adventure from these pilots.
One of these so well illustrates those old-time conditions that we repeat
here its chief points. Captain Armstrong owned two steamers, the Ruth and
the Gwendoline. Both were engaged in transporting freight by way of
Jennings to Fort Steele and the various mining camps in that district. The
business was enormously profitable, for the boats received two and one half
cents a pound. At that particular time there were twenty-six cars on the
Great Northern Railway awaiting shipments.
From his two steamers Captain Armstrong sometimes made two thousand
dollars a day in gross receipts. But though profitable, the business was also
correspondingly risky. The Jennings Cañon, above Bonner’s Ferry, is,
perhaps, the worst piece of water that has ever been navigated on the
Columbia or its tributaries. A strip of water, foaming-white, down-hill
almost as on a steep roof, hardly wider than the steamboat, savage-looking
rocks waiting to catch hold of any unwary craft that might venture through,
—so forbidding in fact was that route that Captain Armstrong found no
insurance agent that felt disposed to insure his boats and cargo. At last he
induced a San Francisco agent to make the trip with him and to offer a rate.
After sitting in silence on the deck while the steamer whirled down the
Jennings Cañon, the agent stated that his rate would be twenty-five per cent.
of the cargo. The daring captain decided to take the risk himself. He had
made a number of trips with entire success and immense profit. But just at
the height of the season, when the twenty-six cars were on the track and a
sack full of gold was waiting for him, the captain got into too much of a
hurry. He was running the Gwendoline; one of his best pilots, the Ruth. The

Ruth was ahead. Both were making their best possible time down the cañon
to get a cargo. Captain Armstrong, at the wheel of the Gwendoline, was
whizzing down the cañon at a rate which made stopping impossible, when
to his dismay he saw the Ruth right ahead of him in a narrow turn, lying
across the channel, wedged in the rocks. To stop was impossible. To select
any comfortable landing-place was equally so. The Gwendoline piled right
on top of the Ruth. Both were total wrecks, without a dollar of insurance. A
two-thousand-dollar cargo gone in five minutes, to say nothing of boats and
business that could not be replaced and a fortune within grasp that would
never be so near again.

Lake Windermere, Upper Columbia, where David Thompson’s Fort was
Built in 1810.
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

But such were the risks of steamboating on the Kootenai.

There are two historical notes of special interest to be made in connection
with the journey to Windermere. One of these is a prehistoric drawing in
some kind of red pigment on the smooth surface of a rock on the upper
Columbia Lake. It seems to represent a battle scene, and, though rude,
denotes some conception of picture art. The Indians think that it was made
prior to Indian times. Apparently it belongs to the same order of pictures as
the drawings on the rocks of Lake Chelan and other places in the north-
west, furnishing a worthy theme for the antiquarian.
The other object of historical interest is the remains of the temporary fort
built by David Thompson of the North-west Fur Company in 1810.
Thompson crossed the Rockies in that year in order to descend the
Columbia and gain possession of its territory for his fur company. He was a
brave, intelligent, and enterprising man with considerable knowledge of
astronomy. But he waited one season too long. For, finding it late in the
year 1810 when he had reached the sources of the Columbia, he decided to
winter there and descend the River in the spring. He selected a beautiful
spot capable of defence on all sides on Lake Windermere and there built a
rude fort, the trench and mound of which still remain. In the spring of 1811
he went down the river (and this was the first party to traverse the entire
course of the Columbia) full of hope that he might take possession for Great
Britain and the North-westers, only to find that the Astor party of
Americans had preceded them by three months in effecting what might be
called permanent occupation.
This was one of the important links in the history of the control of the
North-west. Doubt has been raised as to the authenticity of this Windermere
location, but there are certainly the remains of mound and trench, and the
tradition has it that here was the place of the Thompson party of 1810, the
first place located by white men on the upper Columbia.

Mt. Burgess and Emerald Lake, One of the Sources of the Wapta River. B.
C.
Photo. by C. F. Yates.

An interesting character lives on the shore of Lake Windermere in the
person of Baptiste Morigeau. He is a man of sixty-six, the son of a French
father and Indian mother. The father, Francis Morigeau, was born at Quebec
in 1797, and came to the upper Columbia region as a free trapper in 1820.
He trapped up and down the Columbia for many years, selling his catches
to the Hudson’s Bay Company, usually at Fort Colville. Baptiste was born
at Windermere in 1842. Three years after that the father with his numerous
family went to Colville. He had a number of horses and cattle, a large
supply of valuable furs, ammunition, and traps. He located at Colville at
just the right time. For, having taken up a large body of the rich land in that
valley, he began raising hay and grain. His stock increased. He was
surrounded with every species of rude plenty, and just at the most profitable
time for him the gold discoveries began in 1854, followed the next year by

the great Indian war. The fat cattle, the horses, the grain, hay, and
vegetables of the Morigeaus were in great and immediate demand. Money
came in to them by the handful. Baptiste states that they took in one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars during the five years of Indian wars and
settlement. Their lives were often in peril, but with good fortune, aided by
their own connection with the natives, they escaped any serious harm.
On one occasion Indians were about to plunder them of their valuables and
take possession of the barn where several of the family were thrashing grain
with flails, when the oldest son, Aleck, suddenly turned his flail upon the
marauders. So vigorously did he lay about him and so astonished were the
Indians at the novel assault that they gave way and retreated.
Morigeau told us the interesting fact that there were practically no Indians
living in the Windermere district until about a century ago. At that time
some branches of the Shuswaps and of the Kootenais came in. Their
relations were usually very amicable, but between the Shuswaps and the
Okanogans was deadly and long-continued enmity. This was ended in a
curious and interesting manner by the following event. The Shuswaps had
captured the only daughter of the Okanogan chief. She was led with other
captives into the Shuswap camp. The boasting warriors were gloating over
the poor victim, and the squaws were discussing the greatest possible
indignities and tortures for her, when an aged, white-haired chief got the
attention of the crowd. He declared that his heart had been opened, and that
he now saw that torture and death ought to end. He proposed that instead of
shame and torture they should confer honour on the chieftain’s child. He
said: “I can hear the old chief and his squaw weeping all the night for their
lost daughter.” He then proposed that they adorn the captive with flowers,
put her in a procession, with all the chiefs loaded with presents, and restore
her to her father.
The girl meanwhile, who did not understand a word of the language, was
awaiting torture or death. What was her astonishment to find herself
decorated with honour, and sent with the gift-laden chiefs toward her
father’s camp. On the next day the mourning chief of the Okanogans and
his wife, looking from their desolate lodge, saw a large procession
approaching, and they said: “They are coming to demand a ransom.”

Bonnington Falls in Kootenai River, near Nelson.
Photo by Allan Lean.

As the procession drew nearer, one of their men said that it looked like a
woman adorned with flowers in the midst of the men with presents of robes
and necklaces. Then they cried out: “It is our child, and she is restored to
us.” So they met the procession with rejoicing and heard the speech of the
old Shuswap chief. And after that there was peace between the Shuswaps
and the Okanogans.
Having returned from Lake Windermere to Golden by small boat,—one of
the most charming of all water trips,—we are prepared to make a new start
down the River.

The River from Golden holds a general north-westerly course to its highest
northern point in latitude 52 degrees. There having received its northmost
tributary, Canoe River, a furious mountain stream, it makes a grand wheel
southward, forming what is known as the Big Bend. This section of the
River was navigated by the bateaux of the trappers and the canoes of the
Indians. There are, however, several bad rapids, of which Surprise Rapids,
Kimbasket Rapids, and Death Rapids, are the worst. These cannot be passed
by steamboats. The voyageurs seem to have run them sometimes, though
they ordinarily made portages. A Golden steamboat captain assures us that
none but fools ever ran Death Rapids,—and they were mostly drowned.
The Canadian Pacific Railroad follows the Columbia from Golden to
Beavermouth, then turns up the Beaver to cross the Selkirk Mountains. The
Beaver is a magnificent mountain stream, and from the railroad, high on the
mountain side, the traveller can at many points look down hundreds of feet
upon the river. Though the Selkirks are not quite so high as the main chain
of the Rockies, they are even grander. The snowfall is materially greater in
the Selkirks, and the glaciers are vast in extent. It is said that the snowfall at
Glacier averages thirty-five feet during the winter, and that it lies from four
to eight feet deep from October to April. There are thirty immense
snowsheds on this section of the railroad.
Glacier is the great resort in the Selkirks. This splendid resort has
attractions in some respects superior to those of Banff, Lake Louise, or
Field. It is in the very heart of the Selkirks. The Great Glacier is only a mile
and a half distant, a glacier which is said to cover an area of two hundred
square miles; more than all the glaciers of Switzerland combined. From the
watch tower at Glacier, this mass of ice, twisted and contorted, with all the
colours of the rainbow playing upon it, is one of those visions of elemental
force which only great mountains reveal. Like all the glaciers of the
Northern Hemisphere, this is receding at a rapid rate. A record on the rock
indicates the point to which the ice attained in July, 1887, and the ice is now
over seven hundred feet distant from that point.
The Asulkan Glacier is a more beautiful sight, as viewed from Abbott
rampart, than the Great Glacier. Every traveller should climb the trail to
Abbott in order to get that sight. And with it he will view the twin peaks of

Castor and Pollux yet farther south, while to the north the splendid peaks of
Cheops, Hermit, and Cougar dominate the majestic wilderness.

Bridge Creek, a Tributary of Lake Chelan, Wash.
Photo. by F. N. Kneeland, Northampton, Mass.

But the most striking single sight is the granite monolith of Sir Donald. This
is almost a counterpart of the Matterhorn of Switzerland, though not so
high. It rises in one huge block to a height of 10,808 feet. It has been
climbed, though this is one of the most daring and difficult of climbs. From
the dizzy spire there is visible a perfect map of peaks, rivers, valleys, and
lakes. It is said that a hundred and twenty glaciers can be seen.

From Sir Donald and the Great Glacier issues the Illecillewaet River, well-
named, for this means the “swift flowing.” From its source in the Great
Glacier to its entrance of the Columbia it descends thirty-five hundred feet
in forty-five miles. It is swift. One of the most interesting places on this
section of the road is the “Loops,” a place where the track has to descend
five hundred and twenty-two feet in seven miles. To accomplish this, it has
been carried in a “double S” around the bases of Mts. Ross and Bonney. So
close are the tracks that the two parts of the loop a mile in length are not
more than eighty feet apart, one being almost perpendicularly above the
other. Some miles farther down is the Albert Cañon on the Illecillewaet. On
this point the distinction has been conferred of a complete pause of the
train, while from it the passengers hasten to a platform to gaze down the
perpendicular walls three hundred feet to the white torrent tearing its way
through the rock.
Soon Revelstoke is reached, and we are again on the navigable waters of
the Columbia. Every traveller, as he leaves the line of the Canadian Pacific
Railroad, must pay his tribute of respect to the skill, energy, and intelligence
with which this superb road is conducted. It has been said that English
money supplied this road, Scotch energy built it, and Irish keenness and
adaptability run it. Sir Thomas Shaughnessey, the manager, is certainly
entitled to the respect and gratitude of thousands of tourists.
With the railroad, all tourists will associate the Canadian Park managers.
The Canadian Government is a singularly intelligent one. It has grasped the
possibilities in these vast and varied scenic charms, and has used
exceedingly good judgment in rendering them accessible to the travelling
public. This entire mountain area bordering the railroad, to an extent of five
thousand seven hundred and thirty-two square miles, has been set apart as a
park, in charge of the Department of the Interior. Superb roads are
constructed in available places, and improvements are continually in
progress about the springs and falls and lakes and other points of interest.
The Government, in fact, exercises entire control, but grants concessions to
the railroad company in the matter of hotels and other conveniences.
As we bid good-bye to the Canadian Rockies, we may say that perhaps the
world offers nowhere else such a sea of mountains, such knots and clusters
and cordons of elevations, as in this strange and sublime region where the

Columbia and its tributaries, the Kootenai, the Illecillewaet, the Wapta, the
Beaver, the Canoe, seem to be playing hide-and-seek with the Thompson
and the Fraser. There are not less than five distinct snowy ridges between
the head waters of the Saskatchewan and the Pacific Ocean. The existence
of this immense watershed of snowy mountains accounts for the vast
volume of the Columbia. Although not half as long as the Mississippi, the
Columbia equals it in volume.

Kootenai Lake, from Proctor, B. C.
Photo. by Allan Lean.

Well joined, in truth, are the sublime River and the sublime mountains. One
cannot fully understand the River unless he has seen its cradle and the

cradle of its affluents beneath the shadows of the great peaks of British
Columbia.

CHAPTER II

The Lakes from the Arrow Lakes to Chelan
The Lake Plateau—The Glacial Origin of the
Lakes—Down the Arrow Lakes from
Revelstoke—The Fine Steamers—
Characteristics of the Scenery—By Rail
from Robson to Nelson—Agricultural,
Mineral, and Lumbering Resources
around Nelson—Kootenai Lake and its
Charms—On the River from Robson to
Kettle Falls—Historic Features around
Kettle Falls—On Lakes Cœur d’Alene,
Pend Oreille, and Kaniksu in Northern
Idaho—From Kettle Falls to Chelan—
Appearance of Chelan River—First
View of the Lake—Delights of a Boat
Ride up the Lake—Comparison of
Chelan with other Great Scenes—Storm
on the Lake—Goat Mountain—Views
from Railroad Creek—The Red
Drawings—Rainbow Falls and Stehekin
Cañon—The Wrecked Cabin and its
Story—Railroad Creek and North Star
Park—Cloudy Pass and Glacier Peak.

I N the progress of our journey down the River on the route of the old-time
fur brigades, we have passed over what may be considered the first two
stages of the stream. The first is the lagoon-like expanse of the section from
Canal Flats to Golden, one hundred and fifty miles. The second is the more
swift and turbulent part from Golden to Revelstoke, two hundred and fifty
miles. At the latter place we enter upon a third stage of the River, the lake
stage.
The region of the lakes constitutes one of the most unique and delightful of
all parts of the River. Let the reader consult the map and he will find an area