Full text of "An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens"

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ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

OF THE

^>tATE OF ^\^SHINGTON

Containino- a History of the State of Washington from the Earliest Period of its Dis-
covery to the Present Time, together with Glimpses of its Auspicious Future,
Illustrations and Full-page Portraits of some of its Eminent Men
and Biographical Mention of many of its Pioneers
and Prominent Citizens of to-day.

BY REV- H- K- HINES, D- D-

'A people llial take no piicle in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to he
remembered with pride by remote descendants." — Macatilny.

CHICAGO:
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.

1893.

V ^■■'^n= =- = == ^ = = ^^

rin-

INTRODUCTORY.

1381519

ll P to 1853 the history of what now constitutes the great State ol Washington was the common history of all the
Pacific Northwest, then known as Oregon. All the facts and incidents that went to make up the story of the
one entered into that of the other. In some respects, indeed, they were more intimately connected with
the territory now embraced in Washington than v/ith that now included in Oregon. This was especially true with
many of the early discoveries, and with the entire course of international diplomacy involved in the Boundary Question.
It was needful, therefore, to the unity and completeness of our history, to give a somewhat extended account of the
events that led up to the Washington Territory of 18.5o and the State of Washington of 1.S98. From first to last,
through all the era of discovery and all the finesse of diplomacy, as well as through the adventures of immigration
and the tragedies of Indian warfare, every change was but a part of the germ and seed whose consummate fruit will
be the ultimate Washington. By the necessity of the case the most of the history of Washington has been of this
character. Long, indeed, were the years of her struggle with the wild elements of barbaric life, and with the rugged-
ness of a native condition almost without a parallel in the rugged West; but magnificent was the outcome of that
struggle. Many volumes, treating in special detail different departments of her thrilling and varied story, would be
required to cover all its ground, or to bring into view all the names and deeds that are entitled to remembrance, and
even to fame, as builders of this now great commonwealth. Beyond the compass of the design of this book this could
not be here attempted. We could only choose what seemed essential to the continuity of narrative, and the interpre-
tation and illustration of the times and deeds of those who builded so bravely and so well. Whatever of continuous
history may be found lacking in the narrative will be largely supplied in the rich and ample biographical department
of the book. If " history is biography teaching by example," surely there is abundant history in the lives recorded in
our biographical department. Those whose names are here enrolled, and the unnamed thousands like them, were the
true l)uilders of this Western world, who, " with high face held to her ultimate star," lived and wrought and died for
her greatness. We are sure that those who read their story will feel that these people fought

"Braver battles than ever were fought
From Shiloh back to the battles of Greece."

AVith the hope that somesvhat has b?eu said to eahanoe the patriotic appreciation in which those whose work is here,
celebrated is held by their countrymen, and to make the great State they have founded better known among them
this work is submitted to the people of Washington.

THE PUBLISHEHS.

November, 1893.

CONTENTS

Chapter. Page.

I. — Topograpby— Climate - Productions 13

II. — Earliest Discoveries 20

III.— Earliest Discoveries, coDtimied 27

IV. — Overland Explorations 37

V. — Rival Claims and Pretensions 48

VI.— Rival Claims and Pretensions, continued 57

VII. — First American Settlement 63

VIII.— Missionary Occupancy 74

IX.— Hudson's Bay Company 85

X. — Missions and the Americanization of the North-
west 95

XI.— Immigrations 103

XII.— Immigrations, continued 113

XIII. — Provisional Government 120

XIV.— Territorial Era 133

XV. — Opening History North of the ( 'olumbia 141

XVI.— Separate Political Existence 147

XVII. — Territorial Government Organized 151

XVIII.— Territorial History, continued 155

XIX. — Territorial History, continued 158

XX.— Settlement of Eastern Washington 163

XXL— Territorial History, continued 167

XXII.— Territorial History, continued 172

XXIII.— Territorial History, continued 177

XXIV.-Progress to Statehood 183

XXV.— Indian Wars 189

XXVI.— Indian Wars, continued 198

XXVII.— Indian Wars, continued 203

XXVIII.— Indian Wars, continued 206

XXIX.— Indian Wars, continued 209

XXX.— Indian Wars, continued 215

XXXI.-Indian Wars, continued 220

XXXII.-Principal Cities of Washington— Olympia. 337

XXXIII.— Principal Cities, continued— Spokane 233

XXXIV.— Principal Cities, continued -Tacoma 242

XXXV.— Principal Cities, continued -Seattle 250

XXXVI.— Principal Cities, continued— Walla Walla..259

XXXVII.— The Mineral Wealth of Washington 264

XXXVIII.— Early Washington Bar 26!)

XXXIX.— Washington at the World's Fair 27!»

BIOGI^APHIGAL SI^ETGHES.

Abbott, L. G 7G6

Abbott, Sabine 571

Abrams, D. K 791

Adair, G. B 906

Adams, A. H C73

Adams, M.I. 690

Ahola, Peter 843

Aldrich.M 415

Alexander, C. E 450

Alexander, E. S. (South Bend). .693

Alexander, G 842

Alexander, J. H 64i

Allan, H «48

Allen, Albert. 305

Allen, G. S 748

Allen, . I. H 604

Allen, Watson 573

Allison, G. S 297

Alvord, C. C S61

Anders, T. ,1 751

Anderson, A.J 591

Anderson, A. L 780

Anderson, A. W 832

Anderson, V. M 823

Anderson, 1. W 854

Anderson, T. McA 355

Anderson, W. R 623

Andreson, J. P. W 474

Andrews, L. B 457

Andrews, Wm 881

Annis, O. M 831

Ansberi^er, S 459

Applegate.J 499

Armstrong, 6. S 852

Armstrong, J 795

Armstrong, J. M 380

Arnold, A. W .fi87

Arthur, John 549

Arthur, S. T 474

Ashley, J. K 366

Atkinson, J. D 614

Attridge, R. D 676

Auer, Conrad 857

Babcock, G. W 373

Backus, C. F 304

Baer, H. P 336

Bailey, Edmund 682

Bailey, Wm. E 001

Baillargeon, J. A 590

Baker, C. H 528

Baker, Sarah L 814

Balabanotr, C. P 765

Ballard, W.U 453

Ballinger, R. A 660

Barnard, F. J 456

Barnett, J. W 493

Barthrop. B. B 730

Barllett, F. A 821

Bartlett, F. A 905

Bash, Henry 827

Beardsley, J. F 911

Becker, J. C 444

Beckett, D 431

Beckett. Henry 738

Beecher, H. F 718

Beek.i, L. H 639

Beeks, W. W 341

Bennett, \V. 293

Berger, Charles 908

Bergstrom, A. P 476

Bernier, Julien 778

Berry, L. P 723-

Bigelow, I. N 861

Billings, C. A 870

Billings, Wm 679

Bioudi, Eugene 833

Bishop, M. S 495

Blaine, D. E 721

Blalock, J. B 303

Blalock, Y. C 749

Blandford, H. S 464

Blootnfield, N. H 348

Blowers, A. D 565

Blyth, J. R 613

Bonney, F. W 849

Bonney, L. W 611

Botheil, George 903

Bostwick, A. C 369

Bosworth, N 516

Bowles, C. U 499

Bowman, J. H 576

Bowman, W. J 925

Boyd, James 731

Bovd, Wm. F 917

Boyd, Wm. P 624

Brace, J. S 483

Braden, Joseph 403

Branaui, K. F 610

Brant, J. A. C 445

Braun, Albert 630

Brawley, D. C 870

Brawley, W. R 870

Bredemeyer, Wm 835

Bresemanu, G 708

Brewster, Wm. II 432

Briggs, Albert 8B3

Brigg.s, B. F 583

Brook, Henry 420

Brooks, Q A 714

Brown, Amoi 545

Brown, F. A 476

Brown, F. R 663

Brown, Frilz 38.!

Brown, F. W 809

Brown, H.J 333

Brown, J. S 410

Brown, S. W 308

Brown, Z. D 317

Browne, J J 760

Bryan, R. B 675

Bryant, W. J 606

Bucey, Henry 930

Buck, Norman 436

Bucklin, E. F 693

Biillene, G. W 761

Bunker, J. E 653

Burke, Thomas 733

Burleigh, A. F o85

Burlingame, 1 574

Burnett,Hiram 556

Buroker, D 414

Burr, S. F 696

Burrows, C. E 404

Burt A. K 426

Burt, J. M 462

Bush, J. S . . .378

Butler, Hillory 717

Butterworth, E. R 514

Byrd.G. W 617

Byrd, J. C 417

Byrne, C. C 3iS

Caesar, P. V 391

Cain, N. F 811

Caluwell, K. G 683

Callioun, (J. V 779

Call'>wav, T. M 619

Caiii.Ton, A 40.

C;ui,ei.m, A. R 491

Cameron, II. J 798

Campbell, S. S 310

Campbell, Thomas 343

Canby, E. L 436

Caples, H. L a48

Caples, H. R 475

Carr, E. M o -3

Carr, O. J 602

Carrier, B. N 314

Carson, J. M 486

Carter, Harry 656

Carter, P. B 860

C^arty, James 820

Carwell, I'liilip 794

CattHrson, T. I. 511

('liainli.'ilin, II. G 735

ChainliHis, .\ II sn

C'liaii.ll.T, W. .M ..494

nifiipy Knllei- .Mills 353

ChilhAi-, .InsHph .'!'.937

Cliiiinaseio, A. (' 461

Clnnch, A. il 733

C'liunhill, K. A 431

Cbristophfr, T ^93

Claoton, Levi _ . , .7(;7

Clapp, C. F 515

Clark, A. J 376

Clark, C. E 456

Clark, F. L 434

Clark, Nelson 210

Cleveland, G. E 3S3

Clode, A. J 635

Close, W. D 637

Clough, C. F 431

Clough, L. B 439

Cochran, J. W 329

Cole, G. E 349

CONTENTS.

Collius, D. W 776

Colman, J. M 333

Colvin, 1 650

Compton, 1 340

Connell, Joseph 879

Conover, S. B 703

Cook, A. J 451

Cook, A. R 087

Coombs, S. F 513

Cooper, A. AV 7S3

Copeland, G 406

Copland, H. S 756

Coppin, Charles 882

Corell, H. A 772

Corey, R. C 9i5

Corkrum, U 757

Corkrum, W. J 755

Corawell, J. M 385

Costly, Wm 426

Cottouoir, D 790

Cowles, A. B 659

Cowley, JI. M 322

Cox, H. R 921

Coyne, W. E. S 507

Cram, Daniel 294

Cramer, John 861

Cranney, Thomas 567

Crawford, S. L 583

Crawford, \\ . P 455

Cristman, John 922

Crockett Hugh 007

CroftOD, George 811

Croll, Samantha 750

Crosby, C 325

Crosby, Waller 667

Cross, W. N 357

Crotly, J. L 500

Crowder, Reuben 620

Crowley, D. J 077

Cummin, G. F 352

Curry, A. P 390

Curry, M. T 508

Gushing, C. W 427

Daniels, W.B 468

Darland, G. II 692

Davenport, S 4;!5

Davis, B. \V 670

Davis, H. C 542

Davis, AV. N 411

Dawson, Charles 910

Dawson, L. R 813

Day, B. F 305

Dean, AVm. M 757

Delauev, T. R 884

DeLanty, R 891

Dennis, G. B 338

Dennis, t^. D 450

Dennison, B. F 175

Denny, A. A 169

Denny, D. T 541

Desor, L. G 460

Dewey, H. AV 340

Dickenson, J. R 709

Dieringrii, J. C 585

Diller, L 592

D'Jorup, Jlrs. H 601

Dobbins, J. S 880

Dodge, J. AV 503

Dodge, R. B 790

Dodge, J[. M 772

Domer, S. P 296

Donworth, George 533

Dorfner, George 705

Dorr, James 752

Drew, M. S 825

Drewry, D. T 496

Druraheller, D. M 298

Duback, J 929

Dueber, G. F 785

Duffield, T. J 469

Dumon, J. H 420

Dunbar, R. 394

Dunning, C. B 320

Durr, H. A 741

Du Vail, C. M 791

Dyer, E.J 3-30

Dyer,T. P 424

Dysart, George 3.50

Eadon, W. A 710

Eagan, H. AV 366

Eagleson, J. B 488

Eakin, D. F 484

Earle & Engelbrecht 875

Eastman, AVm 425

Eaton, J. E 768

Eckard, G. H 400

Edwards, H 402

Eggert, E 390

Eisenbeis, C 533

Eisenbeis, F. E 888

EUesperman, G. A .588

Elliott, H. S 851

Ellis, Arthur 817

Ellison, Isaac 056

Elmer, AV. AV 422

Emery, CD .526

Ennis, N. Otl

Everette, AV. E 740

Ewing, Thomas 7«6

Fairfield, John 547

Farquhar, A 067

Fawcett, A. V 907

Fawcett, J. T 680

Fay, Mis. Hattie L 665

Feighan, J. AV 442

Ferguson, Jesse 367

Fernandez, J. X 872

Ferrel, B 409

Ferry, E. P 641

Fishback, C. F 430

Fisk, D. H 419

Flint, Fred 3-55

Flyer, The Steamer 655

Foote, E. B 684

Foraker, L. N 401

Forbes, C. L 742

Ford, C. L 564

Ford, T.N 061

Forrest, AA^m. T (i94

Fortson, G. H .524

Foss, LAV 536

Foster, J. AV 398

Fotheringham, D B 288

Freeman, B. R 297

French Bros 6;0

Frink, J. M 518

Frost, A J 502

Frost, Robert 739

Furnell, Mrs. S. M 829

Furih, Jacob 555

Gabel, Harry 832

Galloway, J. A 795

Galloway, J. S 449

Galvin,John 832

Gano, B. J 650

Gardiner, W.T 734

Gasch, Fred 538

Gatch, T. M 849

Gatzert, Bailey 671

Gazzam, W. L 700

Geiger, Charles 785

Geiger, H. O 770

Geoghegan, J. I) 473

Geoghegan, N 434

George, J. AV 519

Gerber, AVm. F 742

Gerlach,P.J 411

Gibson, J. A 739

Gibson, Joseph 470

Gilbert, John 311

Gilkerson, Thos 416

Gillam, J. D 848

Gillette, E.P 336

Gilliam. M 706

Glass, AV. S 843

Glidden, S. S 387

Glockler, Charles 780

Goddard, J. H 672

Goelz, Jacob 288

Goode, Adam 755

Goodnight, S 475

Gordon, M.J 716

Gordon, T. AV 511

Gould, John 563

Gowey, J. F 651

Graham, A. R 346

Qrambs, AV J 384

Graves, F. H 461

Graves, J. P 418

Green, E. M 441

Geeen, Joseph 497

Green, T. C 690

Greeuleaf, S. N 902

Gregory, D. AV 351

Gridlev, C. C 449

Gridley, H.H.. 444

Griffin, Perry 500

Griffiths, James 699

Gritfitts, T. C 353

Griggs, C.AV 247

Grove, C. E 434

Grubb, S G 344

Gruber. Joseph 422

Gunu, Peter 516

Gunther, E 478

Guye, F. M 017

Hale, C. E 323

Hale, VV. H 496

Hall, George AV 413

Haller, G. 354

Hallett, S 401

Hamilton, E. S 897

Hamlen, E. S 710

Hammond, AV. R 763

Hancock, E.J 568

Hanford, C. H 559

Hauford, Clarence 509

Hanna, J. W 845

Hannah, B. C 566

CONTENTS.

Hanse, J. JI 867

Hanson, W. H 909

Hai-bert, J. W 403

Ilarman, Wm .873

Harris, Emery . . .744

Harris, J. D 920

Harris, J. F 753

Hart, J. i\I 5B2

Harwood, J. W 350

Hastings, F. W 499

Hastings, L. B 286

Hastings, O. C 723

Hatcli, Z.J 633

Hauser, A. E 736

Hays, James 757

Hays, J. P 798

Hays, W. F G28

Healy, J. J 498

Healy, M. J 471

Heath, S 34;j

Heilbron, G. H .521

Hein, E. T 437

Held,B 318

Helmold, John 770

Hemrich, A 485

Henry, F 702

Henslee, M. (' 440

Hess, J. M 643

Hetzel, Selden 381

Hiddleson, W. I' 462

Higdon, J. B 777

Hill, G. A 525

Hill,N.D 865

Hill, K. C S26

Hill, S. G 539

Hill, W. L 621

Hiuckle}', T. D 544

Hogan, F. P 385

Hclderiiiau, G 579

Hole, LP 322

Hollenbeck, H. 864

Holmes, M. M 599

Hooper, J 758

Hopkins, C. B 305

Hornibrook, J 509

Horr, J. C -747

Horton, E. S 803

Horton, G. M 295

Hortou, Julius 751

Hoska, A. F 641

House, J. C 705

Ruber, Oskar 300

Huggins, E 597

Hughes, Peter 477

Hull, J. S 358

Humes, T.J 413

Hunt, A. B 558

Hunt, L. S. J 346

Huntington, Wm 713

Huson, H. S 793

Hutu, Anton 765

Hyde, S. C 764

Hylak, Anton 778

Ingraham, E. S 598

Izett, J. M 595

Jackel, John 689

Jackman, T 553

Jackson, Andrew 465

Jack.son, Samuel 483

Jacobs, Orange 179

J acobson, G 647

Jacobus, J. R 789

James, G. W '836

James, Wm 565

Janicke, J. G 712

Jelich, B ,^40

Jennnings.Jetf 4O6

Jessee, l3. AI 2C0

Jessen, J. N 840

Jewell, T. R 311

Johns, B. W 724

Johnson, ('. M (188

Johnston, J 025

Jones, Jacob (i46

Jones, S. H .477

Jones, Wm. J ' .806

Jordison, J 656

Katz, Israel 530

Kaufman, I. S 238

Kayser, A 463

Kees, A. F 420

Kelleher, D 331

Kelley, F. P '...881

Kelley, W. B 631

Kellogg, G 359

Kellogg, J. C 654

Kelly, George 892

Kelly, M. A 6ll5

Kennedy, J 758

Kenney,John 753

Kilbourne, E. C 397

King, C. D ,572

Kirby, J. F ,569

Kirschner, Fred 486

Kistenmacher, H 871

Kleber, J. C 721

Klee, Joseph 673

Kline, J.N 498

Kloeber, J. S 816

Knapp, J. B 918

Krieghk, G. P. M (172

Kuhn, J. A 287

Kummer, G. W '. 330

Kurtz, John 694

Laiferty, I.N 473

Laidler, W. R 759

Lama, James 790

Lambert, D. H 347

Lambert, V. D 374

Lammon, J. M 707

Landes, Henry 551

Landon, C. C 395

Lane, Albert 886

Lansdale, R. H 657

Laraway, J. T 929

La Roche, F 539

Latimer, N. H 543

Laubach. J. N. 766

Laughlin, A. W 741

Laughton, C. E 764

Lavery, T 327

Leach, L. H 458

Lefevre, A 343

Lemon, Millard 743

Leo, John .771

Leonard, J. E 674

Lewis, H. H 818

Lewis, J. K 548

Lewis, P. H 785

Libbey, G. A 889

Libby, J. B 826

Lichtenberg, I. J 393

Lieser, H. C 383

Liftchild, C "3.57

Light, E. A (i09

Lillis, H.M 7(HJ

Lindsley, A. A 858

Lindsley, H. E 4->,5

Lisher, M. G 445

Lister, David 8:^7

Littell, O. B 810

Lively, J. M 725

Llewellyn, W, H 909

I-"el'. ^- ^ 743

Long, J. H ,527

Loreuz, E. A \\ 739

Louden, F. M .308

Lowe, J. P 460

Lo wman, J. D 423

Lyall, Robert 906

Lynch, O. W ,547

Lyon, J. M ,506

Lyon, J. P 600

Lyons. Patrick 407

Macey, D. C 446

MacFarlane, C. E 433

Mack, P. L 768

Mackintosh, A 5.37

Maddocks, M. R 913

Maggs, J. S '.'.'.'. .^724

Maier, C 701

Maloney, R. W 896

Malony, T sou

Mankin, Henry 448

Man well, John 300

Manwell, T. L 921

Mapel, E. B 608

Marsh, S. P 490

Martin, M 493

Mason, C. Z SI7

Mason, Darius 331

Maxson, S. R 416

Mc AUep, J. W 600

McBralney, T. .J 915

McBride, Gabiiel 776

McBride, J. R 239

JIcBroom, A. K 494

McCabe & Hamilton 897

McClelan, Mrs. Ann . .808

McClintic, E. M 480

McDonald, J. M 715

McDonald, J. R 429

McDouall, C 341

McElroy, J. F 463

JIcEvoy, Joseph 405

McFarlane, P. (' 373

McGilvra, J. J 284

McHargue, R. H 290

Mclnroe Charles 396

Mclnroe, James 398

Mclrvin, J. W 802

Mclrvin, M. K 920

Mclrvin, W. S 920

McKee, A. G 742

McKenny, T. J 837

McKinnev, T. M 343

McLaugiriin, A. li 883

McLouuhlin, John 88

McMicken, Wm 553

McMillan, A mv,

McMillan, H. H 452

McNaugUt, J. F 537

McNeill, H 483

McPherson, A. D 368

McWilliams, J. A 894

Meacham, J Tdd

Mead, H. L 361

Meade, E. C 799

Meeker, E. M 915

Meeker, P. S 868

Meeker, J. P 869

Meeker, J. V 799

Meeker, Nancy 711

Meloy, P. B 850

Melville, J. I 350

Mercer, Thomas 5!«9

Merdian, George 358

Merriam, C. K 493

Merrill, T. H 854

Metcalf, J. W 466

Melcalf, W. H 438

Metcalfe, J. B 301

Metzler, P.. 873

Meydenbaner. Wm 885

Michigan Lumber Co 373

Miles. Z.C 463

Miller, A.J 715

Miller, A. N 713

Miller, A. S 491

Miller, Edward 582

Miller, F. P 564

Miller, J. F 818

Miller, P. B. M ...911

Mills, A. J 893

Mills, Elkanah 790

Milroy, V. A 681

Mize, H 868

Mockel, G. H 422

Monaghan, D 800

Monaghan, J 303

Moore, E.J 505

Moore, F. li 453

Moore, J. E 577

Moore, M. C 260

Moore, P. D 688

Morgan, H. E 916

Morris, C. E 586

Mount, J. S 344

Mliller, J. A 698

Munday, C. F 375

Munday, J. A 438

Munson, C 625

Murphy, J. M 937

Myers, Joel 640

Neel,C. W 8.30

Neely, A. S 887

Neilson, E 653

Nelson, H 385

Nelson, Wm 395

Nerlon,G. A 451

Nesbit, Thomas 566

Nesbitt, J 479

Nevil, W. C 777

Newland, Berry & Co 443

Newland, Isaac 633

Newman, D. C 441

Nicol, A. R 504

Niedergesaess, R 581

Noack, A 353

Nolan, S. M 898

Norman, W.S 335

Northcraft, P. D 709

Nuzum, N. E 333

O'Brien, R. G 662

O'Connell, M 451

Ogle, Van 914

O'Keane, J 443

O'Keane, Patrick 399

Oliver, Thomas 855

Olmsted, E. D 477

O'Neill, James 319

Orchard, J. 9i8

Osborn, Richard 781

Osgood, P. H 554

Ostrander, J. Y 497

Ostrander, N 233

Overlook, Wm. H 309

Ouellette, L. P 813

Pacific Navigation Co 924

Packwood, Wm fe89

Padden, T. W 45n

Paddock, J. A 878

Pagett, C. C 900

Paiae, F. W 364

Palmer, J. W 704

Palmer, Thomas 923

Parker, E. N 698

Parker, Isaac 923

Parker James 630

Parrish, S. B 890

Patten, B. F 679

Patton, T. F 847

Patterson, N. A 417

Pattison, James 618

Pattison, James .■ 678

Paul, Frank 859

Paul, Thomas 404

Paulson, Paul 730

Payne, J. H 369

Payne, M 643

Payne, Wm 883

Peebles, H. G 433

Peel, J. J. L 306

Penfield, C. 8 410

Percival, D. F 344

Pelerman, T. F 899

Peterson, Arthur 619

Peterson, F. H 892

Petkovits. R 488

Petlit, B. W 484

Pettygrovp, B. S 312

Pickens. J. M 851

Pickering, Wm 829

Pierce, C. L 792

Pierce, D. W 853

Pierce, McDonald 454

Piles, S.H 833

Pinkney, A. R 428

Pitchford, C. W 543

Plomando, S 791

Plummer, A. A 530

Plummer, W. H 296

Port Townsend Sleel Wire &

Nail Co 726

Powell, F. A 347

Power, Mrs. M. J 594

Prather.L.H 237

Prather, Thomas 746

Pratt, J. W 295

Prescott, D. S 380

Prevost & Pfeiffer 771

Preusse, II 505

Price, G. W 636

Prosch, Charles 391

Provine, A. G 774

Puget Sound Flouring Mill Co.910

Puget Sound Pipe Co 813

Pugh, F. M.K 478

Pumphrey, Wm 789

Pumphrey,Wm. H 616

Pusey, V. A 315

Rasmusson, J. R 298

Rawson, G. A 917

Rayburn, I. N. E :568

Redhead, W. W 317

Redman, J. T (iSS

Redpath, N.J 933

Reed, C. C 578

Reed, G. K 332

Reed, T. M 613

Reed, T. M.,Jr 543

Reeder, J. W 797

Reeves, Wm. H 520

Reich, G. A 550

Reinhart, 0. S 695

Reitzig, C 789

Remington, A. J 359

Reni, T. B 240

Ren wick, W. G. V 483

Reynolds & Stewart 370

Richardson, W. E 379

Richter, A 887

Ricker, C. H 863

Riley, W. W 816

Ritchie, W. A 362

Rilz, Mrs. C. J 262

Robb, Robert 514

Robbins, C. W 373

Roberts, G. E 805

Roberts Shingle Co 913

Roberts, W. E 913

Roberts, W. H 658

Robertson, Wm. B 510

Rogers, N. L 648

Rogers, J. S 745

Rohlfs, D 574

Rohn. J. J 413

Romaiue, F. S 569

Ronald, J. T 291

Root, O. G 620

Ross. D. M 828

Ross, E. J 923

Ross, K. J. L 453

Ross, R. D 775

Rothschild, L 900

Rowland, I. W 876

Rumsey, J. W 546

Russell, \V. L 292

Ryan, G. H 796

Ryman, C. M 346

Sachs, M.B 703

Sales, J. E 882

Saltar, John 645

Sampson, R 615

Sanders, John 411

Sandys, Wm 426

Sanderson, J. H 913

Saunders Bros 401

Saunders, J. C 711

Schadewald, F 784

Scheuchzer, J. F 649

Scholl, J. D 933

Seal, C F 697

Secrist, S. N 4^2

Sellwood, J. J 413

Semple, Eugene 393

Semple, J. M 319

Sbadle, J. A 843

Shane, C. W 482

Shannon, G. D 811

Shannon, James ,527

Sharpstine, B. L 178

Shaw, A. F 845

Shaw, C. G 875

Shaw LeF A 373

Sheafe, C. M 526

Sheehan, J. F 878

Shelton, L. D. W 575

Shepard, T. R 438

Shepherd, D 354

Shields, H. E 895

Shobeit, Frederick & Stephen. 803

Shorey, O. U 774

Shoudy, W. H 745

Sbullz, I. W 351

Siburjr, Wm 769

Sloan, T. VV 502

Smith, C. F 896

Smith, D.C 740

Smith, E. L 642

Smith, E. S 815

Smith, Everett 345

Smith, H. A 467

Smith, J. A 775

Smith, J. B 400

Smith, Lewis 737

Smith, Peter 888

Smith, R. J 475

Smith, P. .J 907

Smith, W. P 315

Smith, W. U 773

Snipes, B. E 579

Snodgrass, T. D 780

Sohus & Norval 383

South Bend 693

Spalding, C H 493

Sparling, F. W 869

Sparling, G. H. T 844

Spauldiug, A. P 375

Spencer, D. A 533

Spencer, John 586

Spencer, W. B 859

Spinning, B. M 555

Spinning, C. H 814

Spinning, F. W 871

Sprague, J. W 245

Spriggs, J. W 528

Spurgeon, M 732

Starrett, G. E 843

Steadman, CM 371

Steamer "Flyer" 655

Stearns, W. L 860

Steinmann, H 834

Stepwalt, J. H 801

Stevens, D. K 748

Stevens, Hazard 540

Stevens, I. 1 328

Stevens, J. E 349

Stevenson, J. M 686

Stevenson, R a58

Stewart, A. W 614

Stewart, C. W 786

Stewart, Daniel 261

Stewart, R. E 381 i

St. John, H. H 433 '

Stoneman, G.J 517

Stoughton, J. A 419

Stout, J. A 487

Stout, J. K ...418

Stoul, R. B 446

Strack, J. W 448

Stratton, E. M !i24

Strickland, R. E M 495

Street, S. F 857

Stumer, H. E 034

Sturdevani, R. F 596

Sullivan, P. C 603

Sutton, Samuel 656

Sutton, W.J 345

Swan, J. G 535

Swan, J. M b04

Sweeney, E. F 503

Sweeney, J. P 289

Swetland, Scott 849

Talcott, L. L 668

Tallman, B. J 560

Tate, John 318

Taylor, A.J 656

Taylor, J. A .364

Taylor, J. M 386

Thomas, A 763

Thomas, C. W 669

Thomas, H. L 770

Thomas, J. S 601

Thompson, GB 639

Thompson, J. K 727

Thompson, S 815

Thompson, VVm. H 619

Thomson, R. H 334

Thomson, R L 501

Thornton, John 720

Tibbetts, G. W 819

Tilton, F. A 307

Tilton, H. L 307

Toussaint, A. F 447

Town, I. A 904

Tracy, John 408

Trask, H. P 470

Tripp, Bartlett 836

Tucker, A. H 897

Turner, D.J 637

Tuttle, H. P 294

Twichell, F. A 316

Upton, Wm. H 389

Van Aresdale, T. F 784

Van Asselt, H 522

Vaughn, Wm. D 808

Vincent, Benj 750

Votaw, H. L 795

Waggoner, W. E 396

Wagner, G. C 874

Wald, F. W 474

Waldo, S. S 895

Walsh, C. A 479

Walsh, P. P 827

Walsworth, C. B 880

Ward, Moses 640

Ward, W. H 759

Washburn, P. S 481

Wasson, A .534

Waterhouse, F 034

Watson, A. L ...790

Watson, Robert .487

Waughop, J. W .'.'.'.'.' .' ' '683

Wear, R. C a32

Weavei-, D. L 507

Webb, w. T........;;;;;.;;'437

Webster, A ' '48!)

Webster, E. J ""313

Weed G. A ::::877

Weinberg, A rSb

Weir, Allen 664

Weir, W. G 69'^

Wei ler, Godfrey (j,5,

West, C.S 33i3

Weston, AT... '""90

Wheeler, H. AV. . . 099

White, C. L ,518

White, O. C 933

White, S.M '. ..'■••389

White, W. J "516

White, Wm.H.. . .533

Whitham, R. F 807

Whitworth, F. H ,531

Whit worth, G. F "57

Whyte, Albert 377

Willey,S '....■.■.'.■."696

Williams, S. C 362

Willis M.W ""570

Willis, S. P ""..'"' "719

Wilson, A. G '303

Wilson, G.R ."..'.'.■.•.•638

Wilson, W.E 632

Winslow, F. H ' ' .501

Winstock, M. G 616

Wintermute, J. S ! .874

Wissinger, D '788

Witt, P. S '"409

Wittier, E. F 513

Wolcolt, J. R ... ' "sso

Wold, I. A "773

Wold, L.A ;.'..'.635

Wolverton, A. P 336

Wolverton, G. S ... 318

Wood, E. L . .729

Wood, James R .310

Wood, James R 652

Wood, James R 853

Wood, M. D 778

Wood, Wm. D 529

Woodard, A. B 691

Woodhouse, C. C, Jr 903

Woodin, Ira ...447

Woods, Andrew '.".'. .647

Woods, Salem 561

Woolery, A. H 5.54

Woolery, J. H 699

Wyckoir, Wm. H 734

Wyman, H. M 846

Yates, Edward 443

Yeaton, C. F 8i4

Yesler, H. L 252

Yocom, J. R 427

Yoder, Moses 371

Young, Antonio 885

Young, A. B 685

Young, B. F 716

Young, E. T 8.53

Young, M. H 731

Z
Zabriskie, C. B 683

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Bigelow, I. N 861

Blalock, Y. C 749

Burke, Thomas 733

Burleigh, A. F 685

Butler, Hillory 717

Clark Springs 233

ColmaD, J. M 333

DawsoD, L. H 813

Day, B.F 365

First House in Jeffrson County.US

Fort Nisqually 84

Gordon, T. W 511

Graves, F. H 461

Haller, G. O 254

Hanna, J. W 845

Hill, G. A 525

Hill, W. L 621

Indian Camp 19

Indian Hop Pickers 19

Jacobs, Orange 179

Llewellyn, W. H 909

Mackintosh, Angus 557

Maier, Christian 701

McBride, J. R 239

McDonald, J. R 429

McGilvra, J.J 284

McLoughlin, John 88

Mercer, Thomas 589

Merriam, C. K 493

Metcalfe, J. B 301

Olympia and Harbor 227

Osborn, Richard 781

Pickering, Wm 829

Port Townsend 145

Prather,L. H 237

Thomas, C.W 669

Washington State Building 279

Weed, G. A 877

Whitworth, G. F 257

ISTORY OF WASHIDGTOI

CHAPTER I.

Topography — Climate — Productions.

T'lIE State of Wasliingtou is, with the ex-
ception of Alaska, tlie most northwestern
of the political divisions of the United
States. Its form is a broad parallelogram,
fronting westward on the Pacific Ocean for a
distance of 245 miles, and having a length from
east to west of aljoiit 300 miles. On the north
the magnificent straits of Jnan de Fuca, separ-
ating it from British Colnmbia, forms its boun-
dary until it reaches the point where the 4:9th°
of latitude strikes that strait, when the line
follows that parallel eastward for a distance of
250 miles. Thence the line goes due south to
the 46th° of latitude, then west until that de-
gree strikes the Columbia river about 300 miles
from the ocean, and then follows the channel of
that river to the sea. On the whole, the outlines
of the State are regular, but within these out-
lines there is probably a topography more diver-
sified in surface, and more varied by land and
water than can be shown by any other State of
the Union. It has an area of 69,994 square
miles, of which 3,144 square miles are water.
It is over three-fourths the size of New York
and Pennsylvania combined. Compared with
the Western States its area is about equal to that
of Ohio and Indiana.

The most prominent feature of the topography
of Washington is its immense extent of ocean
and strait and sonnd and navigable river lines.
The Pacific Ocean washes its entire western
shore. In that extent are Shoalwater Bay and
Gray's Harbor, each a deep inlet sweeping many
miles into the land, and cacii affording safe and

accessible harbors for a large commerce. The
Straits of Fuca, from twenty to forty miles in
width, and carrying the depth of the sea, de-
scribes a semi-circle projecting into the north-
east corner of the strait with an are of nearlv
200 miles in lengtli. Breaking southward from
the eastern center of this arc, about lOO miles
from the ocean, Puget Sound, with its innumer-
able bays, and inlets, and canals, extends more
than a hundred miles, reaching the very center
of the State, and furnishing in all a shore-line
of not less than a thousand miles washed by the
ebb and flow of the tide. Besides this, the Co-
lumbia river coming down from British Colum-
bia on the north, enters the State a few miles
west of its northeastern corner, and crosses its
whole breadth diagonally to the southwest,
swinging in great bends through its vast prairies
east of the Cascade mountains, until it reaches
the 46th° of latitude, when it flows along its
soutiiern line to the ocean. The Snake river,
the great southern branch of the (Columbia,
comes into the State from the east near its
southern border, and after flowing for nearly
200 miles within it joins the greater river aijout
twenty miles north of the Oregon line.

These are great rivers, — among the greatest
of the continent, and together furnish within
the State and along its line well nigh a thousand
miles of steamboat navigation. An almost iij-
numberable number of smaller rivers flow down
from the great mountain ranges towards the
Columbia and Snake rivers, and toward Puget
Sound, some of which are navigal)le for tniall

BISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

steamers for many miles. East of the Cascade
mountains tlie most important of tliese are the
Spokane and the Yakima, both of which drain
large valleys and immense mountain slopes, and
empty into the Columbia. West of the Cas-
cade the Skagit, the Snohomish, the Puyallnp,
the Chehalis, and the Cowlitz, are the chief,
liltlioiigh there are many others approaching
tliese in size and importance.

This brief and incomplete statement will suf-
fice to show that there is no State of the Union
so plentifully watered by rivers and smaller
streams as is the State of Washington.

Topographically, Washington is divided into
two very distinct departments, namely, the
Fiiget Sound basin and the great valley of the
Upper Columbia. Between these, running
north and south through the entire State, is the
great range of the Cascade Mountains. This
mouiitain range is the grandest and most im-
posing in North America. Commencing near
the extreme southern portion of the continent,
it grows mre and more imposing as we move
northward until in Mount St. Elias, far up
toward Behring's Straits, it reaches its highest
altitude. It has more of the great, snow-capped
volcanic cones that rise from 12,000 to 20,000
feet in height than any other range of
North America, and has a breadth and rugged-
ness that can scarcely be paralleled elsewhere
among mountain ranges. In Washington the
range is swelling toward its grandest dimen-
sions, and several of its mightiest pinnacles are
within the limits of this State.

Beginning near the southern line. Mount
Adams and Mount St. Helens sentinel the
mighty gates of the Columbia river. Further
north and overlooking the upper region of
Puget Sound, Mount Rainier lifts its broad
shoulders and its hoary head clear against the
sky, presenting one of the most remarkable
expressions of physical majesty and power that
the eye ever looked upon. Still to the north,
and near the watei-s of the Straits of Fuca,
Mount Baker almost rivals Ranier in majesty
and grandeur. Between them are summits in-

numerable, that in any land but this would Ite
famed for their sublimity; and, stretching
away east and west the whole width of the
range, not less than fifty miles in any place,
and reaching a hundred in others, is in view of
from the slopes or summits of these higher
peaks. The gorges that cleave the sides and
separate the bases of these mountains are as
deep and awful as the mountains are high and
sublime. Down them pour roaring rivers that
rush madly away from the imprisonment of
the mountain barriers as though eager to find
their eternal freedom in the level of the sea.
The great glaciers of the snowy mountains
move slowly down the immense clefts of the
icy pinnacles, grinding the granite to powder
under their crush, and bearing great boulders
on their white bosom until the sunshine of
the plain unlocks their fetters of frost and
leaves them miles and miles away from where
the avalanche wrenched them from their gran-
ite pedestals. Power, majesty, sublimity, eter-
nity are all symboled by the vast ranges and
mighty pinnacles, and no one can contemplate
them without a feeling of overwhelming awe:
a feeling that increases rather than diminishes
as he dwells in communion with them through
the years and the decades.

West of Puget Sound and between it and
the Pacific ocean is the Olympic range. This
range terminates at the north against the
Straits of Fuca, and extends southward a full
hundred miles, well toward the Columbia
river. Lower and narrower than the Cascade
range, yet it is one that, seen from Puget
Sound or from the ocean coast, presents many
most striking and beautiful scenes. Indeed,
true to its happily selected name, it presents
much most alluring scenery, and charms the
eye with its classic ruggedness and beauty. It
rises in pinnacled abruptness on the one side
from the sea and on the other from the Sound,
and its clear outline is sharply cut against the
summer sky, holding the imagination in a
pleasing thrall, as the lights and shadows of the
evening and morning play and troop along its

UISJOHY OB' WASHINGTON.

piilfs and over its al]iine gorges and precipices.
Tlierc is more of tlic sharp outline, the steep
rnggeil grandeur, and the calm, reposei'ul
strength of the Alps of Switzerland in it than
in auj other of tlie Amei'ican ranges.

Between these two ranges, — the Cascades and
Olympic, — lies the basin of Puget Sound. The
pinnacles of these ranges are probaLly nearly a
hnndred miles apart. More than half of this
distance is taken up by the tnountain slopes,
and the remainder by the Sound itself and the
rolling and heavily timbered nplands that stretch
away from its shores. The peculiar and dis-
tinguishing characteristic of this basin is the
body of water that gives it name — Puget
Sound. Let us, in a few sentences, endeavor to
give it some limning to the eye of the reader.

We will imagine ourselves sailing in from
the ocean between the bold headlands of Cape
Flattery and Point San Juan, and entering the
vast system of inland seas constituted by the
Straits of Fnca, the Gulf of Georgia and Puget
Sound. We enter a passage nearly half a de-
gree of latitude in width, which carries its full
volume, with the depth and appearance of the
ocean, eastward for a hundred miles, when the
innumerable islands of the San Juan archipelago
divide its broadened waters into as innumerable
narrow channels, which swing and sway away
among them in an infinitude of graceful curves
and angles, always changing as the tides are
pressed and turned by their bold precipices or
their sloping shores. Just south of this, and
breaking away from the main Straits, are many
channels, also separated by many of the most
beautiful islands that ever dimpled the face of
a sea. Puget Sound stretches its sea-deep tides
into the far recesses of the ever-frowning and
embosoming mountains. Measured across all
its surface, including the islands that everywhere
stud its bosom, the Sound cannot average less
than from ten to twenty miles in width. Pro-
jecting into the rounded, wooded shores every-
where, bays and harbors without number afford
safe anchorage for vessels of any draft. For a
hundred and twenty miles southward, clear to

Olyiupia. the capital of the State, it also carries
the depth and semblance of the sea, — in fact, is
the sea in all its characteristics of tides and pro-
ductions of every kind. It is alive with sea-
tish, and marine plants tioat everywhere upon
its surface.

As to scenery, with all the possible combina-
tions of land and water, of sea and island, of
plain and mountain, of lake and river, it is
doubtful whether a spot can be found on earth
that rivals Puget Sound. Something more of
of this will be noted when we come to speak of
its cities, and so we shall pass it by with this
slight notice at this place.

The country bordering the Sound, on both
sides, and extending to the slopes of the mount-
ains, with small exceptions, is very densely tim-
bered. It bears the grandest growth of fir and
cedar that can be found upon the continent.
Untold thousands of these giant trees are from
five to ten feet in diameter, and will reach from
200 to 300 feet in length. Their roots draw in
naarvelous support from the rich soil in which
theyare planted, and their leaves drink growing
life from the moist and sea-salted atmosphere
always breathed over them. The exceptions to
this statement are found in the tide-fiats that
margin the lower portion of tlie Sound, and in
the comparatively small prairies which island
the great woodland that sweeps around its
head. The tide-flats are exceedingly rich in
soil, and, when dyked and cultivated, marvel-
ously productive. The prairies are mostly of a
light, gravelly soil, and are not of great worth
for agriculture.

It will be obvious to the reader at once that
the rivers entering the sound are generally
small. So near are the mountain ranges on
either hand that they must needs be so. For
the most of their courses they are mountain
torrents, and then they broaden, near the sound,
into streams up which the tides push for some
miles. Some of them are rated as navigable
streams although some small steamers ply on
their tide-waters for a few miles. They all
water valleys, of greater or less width, of very

IIISTOnr OF WASHINGTON.

rich i^oil, which wlien the grand forests are
cleared away are remarkably productive, es-
pecially in vegetables and fruits and hops; and
it is in this line mostly that the lands of Paget
Sound basin can be set down as agricultural.

That portion of the State which lies directly
on the Pacific coast is separated from that
margining Puget Sound by the Olympic range,
of which mention has already been made. These
mountains crowd the sea so closely that there is
coniparativelj little agricultural land between
them. The streams that flow down from them
either to the ocean or the sound are small and
short. The first one from the straits of Fuca
southward that cleaves the range is the Che-
halis, which enters the head of Gray's Harbor,
more than 100 miles south of the Straits. This
river and its tributaries drain a very lai-ge region
of rich, though mostly heavily timbered, coun-
try, rather level for this portion of the coast,
yet in places rising into ridges and hills that
would be considered mountains in the Middle
States. Its wealth of forest is incomputable.
Of timber available for lumber it is not likely
that any portion of the United States ever fur-
nished such an abundant supply. Cedai', fir
and spruce attain a size and quality that are re-
markable. Along all the streams, up all the
hill-slopes, over all the valleys, the tall spires
of these evergreens climb skyward from 200 to
300 feet, often reaching a diameter, twenty
feet from the ground, of from eight to twelve
feet.

What is said of the region of the Chehalis
and Gray's Harbor is alike true of that surround-
ing Shoalwater Bay, a few miles further to the
south. Indeed, Gray's Harbor and Shoalwater
Pay really belong to one great indentation in the
Coast range of mountains which continues still
to the south, and about fifteen miles from the
Bay also receives the vast flood of the Columbia
river. The great break in this range iu which
the Columbia, Shoalwater Bay and Gray's Harbor
are iound, is the only one from the straits of
Fuca to the " Golden Gate." It is not less than
fifty miles iu width, and is the distinguishing

topographical feature of the coast within the
State of Washington.

Our readers would not fully understand the
topographical character of the western part of
the State without some speciflc notice of that
part of it that lies on the Columbia river, from
the n^outh of that mighty stream to the Cascade
range, — a distance of 125 miles. The head of
Puget Sound is separated from the Columbia by
a stretch of heavily timbered country, inter-
spersed with occasional small prairies, 100 miles
in length. Half of that distance is traced by
the CoM-litz river, a bold, dashing stream that
comes down from the icy gorges of Mount St.
Helen's westward, as though it had started for
the sea at the head of Gray's Harbor, but meet-
ing the obstruction of a lateral spur of hills that
projects from the Cascade range between itself
and the Chehalis river, concludes to turn to the
south in its quest for the ocean, and finds the
tidal level by the way of the Columbia. The
valley of the Cowlitz strikes the Columbia from
the north about half way from the mountains
to the sea. Between this point and the ocean
the country is very rough, even mountainous,
and bears the characteristic growth of timber
which distinguishes all Western Washington.

Immediately east of this point, and up the
Columbia, the Cascades shoot down a lateral
spur of mountains clear against the river. Still
further east this range sweeps far back from the
river to the north, then circles eastward and then
southward again, forming a great valley, ap-
proaching a circle in form, of at least fifty miles
in diameter. The southern arc of the circum-
ference of the valley is formed by the Columbia
river, — a vast tidal flood of from one to two
miles in width, and deep enough for the largest
ships; and the northern by the mountain range.
This is not a level valley, but one of variable
surface, traced by numerous small rivers and
creeks, and in its natural growths repeats the
topographical conditions of all Western Wash-
ington. Its soil is very excellent, combining
disintegrated basalt and granite with alluvial
deposits and vegetable mold in fine proportions,

BISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

and making it remarkably productive for cereals
and fruits. Enframed by the mountains on the
north, thus securing a southern exposure, and
margined by the river on the south, its climatic
conditions could hardly be more perfect for the
productions named.

Having thus, in general terms, given our
readers some idea of the topography of Western
Washington, we will now lead them across the
Cascade range into the vaster area of the State
that lies east of it.

AVhen one has crossed the Cascade mount-
ains from the low altitudes and moist climate
of Puget Sound and the lower Columbia into the
high altitudes and dry atmosphere of the great
interior, he has entered a new world. Every
form is changed, every condition modified and
even transposed. The immense vegetable
growths have given place to treeless plains. The
green hills and mountain slopes are succeeded
by brown or gray piles of basalt and sand. The
rivers flow no longer through the great forests
of fir and cedar, but wind down through sandy
gorges, or swing across wide sage plains, with
only here and there a clump of willows, or it
may be a solitary cotton wood, to mark the course
of their flow. The atmosphere is not softened
by the touch of the sea wave, but is fervid with
the heat of the shimmering plain, or cool from
the breath of the snowy ranges. If the traveler
has come suddenly into it, without previous
knowledge of its peculiar characteristics, its
strangeness steals on him like a vast, weird
dream and he gazes upon it with a wonder quite
akin to awe. Its skies are so deep and silent,
its vistas so endless, its mysteries so unfathom-
able, its surprises so frequent that he is inclined
to move in the silence of a dreamer over it.
These are the elements that render it diflicult
to give its common characteristics in words that
will make it real to the mind of the reader. But
we must try.

In area Eastern Washington comprises about
two-thirds of the land surface of the State. Its
chief topographical characteristics are connected
with the fact that it is almost wholly within the

I great valley of the upper Columbia. The waters
of this majestic river and its tributaries drain
its entire surface. There is not a drop of wate'
from any plain or pinnacle of this great region
that flows seaward through any other channel.
Coming down from the north through British
Columbia this stream enters the State near its
north-eastern corner, flowing first south nearly
a hundred miles, then westerly about the same
distance, then south and southeasterly twice as
far, and then southwesterly 150 miles on the
southern boundary of the State before it enters
the mighty gateway of the Cascade range. Com-
ing into the State from the east about twenty five
miles north of its south-eastern corner. Snake
river, hardly smaller than the Columbia itself,
swings its serpentine way through its basaltic
gorge for more than a hundred miles, when it
unites with the latter in the midst of a broad,
open valley, about ten miles before it reaches
the southern line of the State. On both sides
of the main stream are countless tributaries,
many of them large, though none are navigable,
but all of which drain large areas of country
and water vast tracts of land that else would be
desert. Among these on the east, beginning at
the north, are the Pend d'Oreille, the Colville,
the Spokane, the Palouse, the Tukannon, the
Touchet and the Walla Walla. On the north
and west are the Okinagan, Chelan, Wenatche,
Yakima and Klickitat. All these with the ex-
ception of the Klickitat, flow towards the
common center of the great valley of the Co-
lumbia, where that and Snake river make their
junction for their last great movement out of
the mighty basin which their myriad years of
flow has washed out between the Kocky and Cas-
cade rano-es. A vaster, more concentrated, uni-
fied, yet at the same time diversified, river basin
does not mark the map of the world than is
Eastern Washington, and through none does a
more wonderful river pour its floods. It is from
this one fact, as an initial point, that any writer
must start if he would understand, or intelli-
gently write of the topography, or even the
climate of this part of the State.

UlsrORT OP WASUINGTON.

Tlie next fsiet is the system of mouutain
ranges that either hem in this vast valley, or else
cut it into sections as their spurs push eastward
from the Cascades or westward from the Rocky
mountain system, and the nuraerons short
ranges and isolated peaks that seem to have no
connection with the great continental systems,
that are scattered through it. "With the size of
this great basin, 200 miles each way, and these
two great dominating topographical features in
our minds, it will not be ditiicult, perhaps, for us
to understand its )iiore subordinate character-
istics.

Although we have called this region a " basin "
and a " valley," these words must be taken as
relating only to the fact that it is drained by
the single river course which we have named.
Within the uppermost rim ot this "basin" there
are mountains and hills innumerable. They
swell into every form of rugged grandeur and
sublimity. They soften into every outline of
beauty and peace. They are rough and pin-
nacled with jagged basaltic pillars, with great
granite peaks, on which the pine trees nod and
sigh to the mountain winds, or they are rounded
into grassy knobs smooth and beautiful as
though an artist's hand had moulded them.

Below these are the plains and the valleys
that touch the brink of the streams. The latter
are generally narrow, but the former stretch
away for miles, bordered at either side by some
creek or river.

The soil of all this region is mineral in its
composition, being composed mostly of granitic
and basaltic sand, ground and worn out of the
mountain sides by the abrasion of rivers, or dis-
solved by frost and snow and rain from the
faces of the precipices. There is little of vege-
table sediment in it. Even the great river hears
little of this, as its flow for a thousand miles
above is through the same open, treeless region,
and between basaltic and granite walls. Such
soils need only water to make them break forth
into a very harvest of plenty.

Over a large portion of this vast area this can
only be procured from irrigating ditches or

artesian wells, as, notably, in the Yakima val-
ley and in the region known as " the Great
Bend country." Still the reader must not sup-
pose that this remark applies to the vast wheat-
growing i-egion in what has long l:>uen cele-
brated as the " Palouse country," and, indeed,
all the region east of the Great Bend country
from the northern to the southern line of the
State. This is an empire in extent, and is one
of the finest wheat-producing regions of Amer-
ica. Yet in even this abundant irrigation, would
soon double the grain production and increase
many fold its fruits and vegetables. And the
millions of arid and serai-arid acres that now
lie fallow under the cloudless skies of this sun-
lit land will one day, and that day not far
away, give its tens of millions of bushels into
the garners of the world.

The climate of all this " Inland Empire "' is
as sui generis as its topography.

The seasons are pronounced, but they are not
differentiated like those on the coast, nor like
those of the Eastern States. There is little fall
of moisture either in the form of rain or snow.
Skies without a cloud bend over the rales and
hills for months together. This is especially
true of the center of the Columbia basin and of
its western slope. On the eastern slope of the
basin the conditions are different and the fall
of moisture greater. This is easily accounted
for. The winds from the western sei are drained
of all their vapors by their contact with the
cold summits of the Cascade range, and they
pass on eastward absolutely without moisture.
Hence the valleys of the eastern slope of tiiat
range receive but very little rain. Passing down
these valleys and across and along the great
Columbia, they take up soine vapor and bear it
onward until they touch the sides of the cist-
ern ranges, when tiiey yield that up also, and
it falls in showers on the plains, or in snow on
the hills. Southerly winds, which west of the
Cascades are the -rain winds, here bring but
little moisture. Eastern winds, which are not
very frequent, are almost a consuming sirocco
if long continued. The western and the north

Indian Camp.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

western are those that bear the most moisture.
The causes are in the topography of the conn-
try, especially in the trend of the mountain
ranges. These causes are permanent, and their
resultant conditions must be as permanent as
the causes that produce them.

There is a wider range of the thermometer
here than there is west of the Cascade mount-
ains. The summers are hotter and the winters
are colder. Probably the average seasons will
register a variation oF nearly 100 degrees in
most parts of this region, and extreme seasons
will increase that variation. Still the dryness
of the atmosphere is such that this great varia-
tion is not so obvious to the senses as a much
smaller variation where there is more moisture.
Then its altitude is such that the actual degree
of heat or cold is considerably less than it would
be with the same mercury registration on the
seacoast. All these considerations enable us to
write down the climate of Eastern Washington
as, on the whole, a desirable rather than an
undesirable one, and it is one, certainly, that
receives the most encomiums from those who
have longest tested it, — which is no mean
proof of its excellence.

As the climate and the soil of Eastern Wash-
ington has a remarkably uniform average, so its
productions are quite uniform in character and
quality. The cereals, especially wheat, produce
at their best both of quantity and quality nearly
everywhere, if we except some of the drier por-
tions where irrigation must be resorted to.
Some of the warmer valleys, like the Yakima,
Snake river and Columbia river, are wonderfully

prolific in peaches, grapes, melons and hops.
The strawberry, blackberry, currant, etc., thrive
abundantly everywhere; and, indeel, to sum
up all that needs to be said of the productions of
the country without going into statistics, all the
staple cereals and fruits of the temperate lati-
tudes; those cereals and fruits that grow in
company with the strongest manhood, and upon
which that manhood grows; grow as abundantly
and ripen as perfectly within the bounds of the
country thus indicated as anywhere between the
seas. So, with its magnificent scenery, its pure
atmosphere, its crystalline waters, its abundant
and healthy food, Eastern Washington should
and doubtless will contribute some of the best
and noblest to the " crowning race of human
kind."

In treating of the climate of Washington, it
is proper that we notice the fact that no part
of the State is subject to those violent changes
in temperature and atmospheric currents that
result, in the States east of the Rocky mountains,
in tornadoes and cyclones, that are so destruc-
tive to property, and often to human life. They
are, in fact, unknown there; and while the moun-
tain ranges stand where they are, and the Pa-
cific rolls over its present bed, they never can be
known. The same may be said of the terrible
thunder storms that shake and startle the Mis-
sissippi and Missouri valleys. They are un-
known in all the region west of the Rocky
mountains. It is too much a broken surface,
and the soft breath of the great sea is wafted so
genially over all even to permit it.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

CHAPTER II.

Eaeliest Discoveeies on the N0ETHWE8T Coast — Spain Leads Discoveries — A. Northwest
Passage Sought — Magellan — Coetez in Mexico — Spain Mistress of the Pacific — The
Bdccaneees — SiE Feancis Deake — Cavindish — Steaits of Aman — Russian Exploeations
— Vitus Beheing — Russia's Failure — Captain Cook — First English Exploeations —
Cook's Death — Spain Again Essays Discoveey — Feancisco Elisa — Discoveries of 1791
— A New Flag on the Seas^Spanish Efforts Cease.

THE earliest discoveries on the American
continent made by any portion of the
civilized world, if we do not count the
somewhat mythical ones attributed to
Northmen on the coast of Greenland, were made
in 1492, under the auspices of Spain; at that
time one of the most powerful and aggressive
nations of Europe. The discovery of a New
World behind the western seas kindled an age
already tired with a spirit of romantic adventure
and religious zeal to a much greater enthusiasm
of conquest and subjugation. As Spain had led
in the discoveries that had thus opened the new
continent to the ambitions of the enterprising
and adventurous, it was only natural that her
sailors should haste to follow the path that the
galleys of Columbus had marked for them over
the seas, and her soldier adventurers should
enter on a course of conquest in the countries
discovered. The stories of the sailors who had
returned to the ports of Spain invested the new
lands visited by them with a glory of fabulous
wealth that could easily be gathered from the
semi-civilized savage tribes found there by the
stronger arms of the men of Castile.

Inspired by these marvelous stories, three years
had not passed before they had begun the con-
quest of the islands off the southeastern coast of
the American mainland by the subjugation of
Hayti. In 1511 the island of Cuba was invaded
and conquered in tliename of the king of Spain.
Three years afterward Vasco Nunez de Balboa
crossed the Isthmus of Darien and discovered
the great south sea, of which such knowledge
had been communicated by the natives that it
had already been designated on tlie maps of
European geographers. Seven years later Ma

gellan entered it by the straits that bear his
name and gave it the name of the " Pacific."
In 1519 Cortez landed in Mexico at the head of
an army of 950 men, arid invaded the ancient
kingdom of the Montezumas. Two years suf-
ficed for its subjugation. In 1587, Cortez,
seeking further conquests to the westward of
Mexico, landed at Santa Cruz, near the lower
extremity of the peninsula of California.
Finding nothing to tempt his cupidity or his
chivalry, he soon abandoned the country and
returned to Mexico. This was the beginning
of discovery by the nations of Europe on the
Pacific coast of the American continent. But
such had been the unpropitious results of the
attempts of Cortez to find tempting food for
adventure west and north of Mexico, that it is
likely discovery would have stayed its progress
in that direction, had not othermotives prompted
its advance from another quarter. These were
the hopes and efforts of European discoverers
to find a Northwest passage from the Atlantic
Ocean through the American continent to the
Indian seas.

Before 1500 one of the adventurous naviga-
tors of Portugal, Vasco de Gaina, had reached
the Indian Ocean by sailing eastward from Lis-
bon around the Cape of Good Hope. Gaspar
Cortereal, another eminent Portuguese discov-
erer, explored the Atlantic coast of North
America in 1500, and sailing around Labrador
entered the straits which opened westward
under theOOth degree of north latitude. Through
these he passed into what is now known as
Hudson's Bay, and believed that he had en-
tered waters which led into the Indian ocean,
and had accomplished, by sailing westward

UIST0R7 OF WASniNOTON.

from tlie west coast of Europe, what Vasco de
Gaiua had hy sailing eastward, — the discovery
of a passage to the wealth of Asia; so little was
then known of the geography of the world.
To the straits through which he )iad passed he
gave the name of Anian, and the land south of
them he called Labrador.

When Magellan, in 1520, sailed into the Pa-
cific through the straits to which his own name
was given, and continued his voyage westward
until the wiiole world was circumnavigated, the
belief of navigators in the e.xistence of the
straits of Anian was greatly strengthened. This
arose from their belief that the straits of Ma-
gellan were only a narrow passage piercing the
heart of the continent where it was much nar-
row^er than elsewhere; and they supposed the
same thing would exist to the north, especially
since Cortereal had reported its discovery. For
many years the chief efforts of explorers were
put forth for its real discovery. The efforts of
Spain were mainly directed from the Pacific
side of the continent, while England, France,
Portugal and Holland made theirs from the
eastern. It is not necessary to our history to
follow the course and story of these expensive
and continued efforts, as they had but a remote
bearing on the history of the northwest coast;
but this fable of the northwest passage kept up
the spirit of discovery for many years, and the
search for it was participated in by all the lead-
ing maritime nations of the world. The first
knowledge of the countries on the Pacific coast
was not to come, however, from any passage of
the Straits of Anian, but from the spirit of
adventure that the conquest of Mexico had
kindled in the South.

After the subjugation of Mexico, Cortez be-
gan the construction of vessels on the coast of
Central America for use on the Pacific. After
these vessels had been employed for some time
on the lower coasts they were sent directly
across the Pacific, but he constructed others in
which he directed expeditions along the Mexi-
can coasts and in Lower California. He dis-
covered the Gulf of California and the Colorado

river. He made an attempt at colonization at
Santa Cruz, in Lower California. The first at-
tempt to pass around the peninsula of Califor-
nia was made in 1539 by Francisco de Ulloa,
the energetic and capable assistant of Cortez in
all his operations on the west coast of Mexico.
He succeeded in reaching the twenty-eighth
degree of latitude, but was so baffied by head
winds and sickness among his men that he was
compelled to return to Mexico.

Don Antonio de Mendoza, a Spanish noble-
man of high rank, succeeded Cortez as Viceroy
of New Spain. He dispatched an expedition of
two small vessels, commanded by Juan Rodri-
guez Cabrillo, and dispatched it in 154:2 to
search for the Straits of Anian, and incidentally
to discover any of those civilized nations that
the traditions of the Indians or the imagination
of the Caucasians located in the northwest.
He followed the coast as far north as thirty-
eight degrees, but encountered a violent storm
which drove them several degrees backward.
He found shelter in a small harbor on the
island of San Barnardino, lying near the coast
in latitude thirty-four degrees, which he called
" Port Possession," and which was the first
point on the California coast of which the
Spaniards took possession. Here Cabrillo died,
in January, 1543, and the command devolved
on Bartolome Ferrelo, who again headed the
vessels to the northward and voyaged up the
coast. He reached, on the 1st of March, a
point as high as forty-four degrees, as given by
some authorities, and without doubt should be
credited with having first discovered the coast
of Oregon, though he made no chart of its out-
line, and made no landing upon it. The re-
sults of the voyage, and of some expeditions
sent inland under Alcaron and Coronado, satis-
fied the viceroy that the wealthy nations of the
coast and country north of Mexico existed only
in Indian fables, and that if any straits of
Anian existed they must be far north of the
fortieth parallel of latitude, and all effort to ex-
plore the country to the northward was aban-
doned. But Spain was complete mistress of

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

the Pacific. Her flag dominated that mighty
ocean, and her enemies were unable to attack
her in that vital source of her wealth, and
power. Ijiit this could not long continue when
tlie rivals and enemies of Spain were buch pow-
ers as England and France. And, besides, this
was the era of the ''buccaneers," who roved the
seas, even in times of peace, under the privity
and encouragement of their sovereigns, and
they were not less interested than the naval
forces of the government of western Europe to
find a way to reach and capture the richly-
laden galleons of Spain on their way from the
mines of Mexico to the treasuries of Lisbon and
Madrid. These also sought the Straits of
Anian, but despairing at last of finding them,
invaded the Pacific by the dreaded way of Ma-
gellan. With their appearance on the Pacific
the security of Spanish shipping on the south-
ern seas ceased forever.

The man who led this crusade of freebooters
against the ships and wealth of Spain on the
Pacific was Sir Francis Drake. He was an
English seaman of much fame, a daring adven-
turer and an expert mariner. Witli tiiree ves-
sels he entered the Pacific through the Straits
of Magellan. One was soon wrecked, another
returned to England, but with the third he con-
tinued up tlie coast, scattering terror among the
Spanish shipjiing and levying heavy contribu-
tions on the defenseless ports. Loaded with plun-
der, he continued northward on the same boot-
less search for the Straits of Anian that had be-
guiled all the navigators of England and Spain
80 long, and which, of course, returned to him
only their disappointment. How far he sailed
northward it is hard to determine, some authori-
ties placing his highest latitude at 43°, and
some at 48°. The English writers claim the
latter, and the American the former. Doubt-
less the question of title to the country on the
ground of discovery, as between Spain and
England, in which the United States was in-
volved by her purchase of the rights of Spain,
accounts for that disagreement. If he reached
only the forty-third degree, his discoveries were

anticipated by the Spaniard, Ferrelo, by thirty-
five years. If he reached the forty-eighth de-
gree, then England's right, by discovery of the
coast far north of the mouth of the Columbia
river, was undeniable. The accounts published
of this voyage of Drake bear so little evidence
of reliability that the fair-minded historian finds
it difficult to reach a satisfactory conclusion as
to the fact in the case. There is little differ-
ence which was the fact, since it will be forever
impossible to adjudicate the dispute, and hence
the honor of the discovery of the Oregon coast
will remain divided between the Spaniard,
Ferrelo, and the Englishman, Sir Francis Drake.

In the month of June Drake lay in a harbor
of refuge, probably in the small bay north of
the bay of San Francisco, now known as Drake's
Bay. Following the example of the Spanish
navigators, he landed and took possession of the
country in the name of Great Britain, giving it
the title of " New Albion," as the Spaniards had
called the southern point of the coast " New
Spain."

Following Drake, and encouraged by his suc-
cess, came Thomas Cavendish and other English
adventurers, having the same purposes in view
as Drake himself, namely, the capture of the
richly loaded galleons of Spain, and the discov-
ery of the Straits of Anian. "Without any reason-
able compensation it would greatly lengthen a
narrative only collateral to our main design, to
follow the story of their depredations or dis-
coveries. Besides, there was so much that sub-
sequent information has proven to be fiction in
the published narratives of these expeditions
that the historian is sometimes led to wonder if
any part of them, as recorded, is credible. In
some of them places and water passages are
minutely described that have long ago been
proved to have had no existence. History can-
not afford space even to catalogue these roman-
ces. Such stories as those of Maldonado and
of Juan de Fuca must be classed with these, and
thus passed by.

There is really nothing of authenticated dis-
covery on the northwest coast to relate until 1602,

Illarour OF WASHINOTON.

when Sebastian Viscaiiio, under peremptory
orders from Philip III, sailed north from Aca-
pulco, entering the ports of San Quintin, San
Diego and Monterey. Nothing of importance
having been added by hiui to geographical
science, he soon after returned to Acapulco. In
January, 1B03, he again sailed northward. On
this voyage he reached and named " Cape
Blanco," about the 43° of latitude. The histo-
rian of the voyage of the little craft on which
he sailed says: " From that point the coast
begins to turn to the northwest, and near it was
discovered a rapid and abundant river, with ash
trees, willows, brambles, and other trees of Cas-
tile on its banks." An unsuccessful attempt to
enter this river, which was probably theUmpqua,
was made, and as a large number of the crew
were sick with the scurvy, the commander de-
termined to return to Acapulco. He and his
pihjt, Antonio Flores, both died of scurvy on
the way, and were buried in the deep.

Still the Sti-aits of Anian remained the fable
for the solution of which the navigators of
Europe continued to search on both coasts of
America. Gradually, but generally, the belief
came to be entertained that these straits could
be found only in a search in Hudson's Bay. To
aid in their discovery, in 1699, Charles II, then
king of England, granted to a company of his
subjects a charter guaranteeing most royal priv-
ileges in consideration of their agreement to
search for the Sti-aits of Anian. This charter
created " The Company of Adventurers of Eng-
land Trading into Hudson's Bay.'' The object
expressed in the charter was, " For the dis-
covery of a new passage into the South Sea, and
for the finding of some trade in furs and other
considerable commodities." This is the organ-
ization known in history as " The Hudson's Bay
Company." As its history, as well as its rela-
tions to the story of the Pacific coast, will be
continued later in this book, we make only this
brief reference to it here, simply to identify it
as one of the links in the chain of discovery on
the Oresfon coast.

It seems strange that from the time of the
return of the little vessel of Aguilar from Cape
Blanco back to Mexico in 1603, a century and
more elasped before the prow of another vessel
cleft the waters of the North Pacific. But
suddenly interest in these regions revived again.
In the north of Europe, Russia rose, by the
genius of her enlightened monarch, Peter the
Ureat, from an almost unknown condition to a
high rank among the nations of the world. He
extended the bounds of his empire eastward
across Siberia until they reached the borean
peninsula of Kamtchatka. Then he sought to
carry them still farther eastward until they
touched the western confines of the provinces
of England, Spain and France, on the American
continent. How far that might be he knew
not, but his was a mind not to be daunted by
ditiicultiesnor distracted by doubts. He ordered
vessels to be built at Archangel, on the White
Sea, for the purposes of cruising eastward and
endeavoring to pass into the Pacific through
the Arctic ocean. Before his plans were com-
pleted Peter died, and was succeeded on the
throne by the Empress Catharine.

Though there was some delay in prosecuting
the designs of Peter the Great, as soon as pos-
sible, Catharine, whose ability was equal to that
of her great husband, began to push them for-
ward. In 1728, in accordance with her in-
structions, vessels were built on the coast of
Kamtchatka, and dispatched in search of the
passage supposed to exist between the Arctic
and Pacific oceans. Vitus Behring, a Danish
navigator of experience and skill, had been des-
ignated by Peter to command the expedition,
and his selection was confirmed by Catharine.
He sailed in July, and followed the coast north-
westerly until he found it bending steadily to
the west. He became convinced that he had
already entered the Arctic, and was sailing
along the northern coast of Asia, having
reached the 67° of latitude. Neither going nor
returning through the straits did he discern the
west lines of America, as the prevalent cloudy

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

and foggy weather obscured it. Being unpre-
pared to winter in tlie ice, or to make along
and exposed voyage in the open sea, he returned
to the port of his embarkation.

The next year he made another voyage, in
which he endeavored to find the coast of America
bv sailing directly eastward, but baffled by con-
trary wind was obliged to take refuge in the
bay of Okotsk, and abandoned the effort and re-
turned to St. Tetersburg. Other Eussian expe-
ditions followed, but withoiit decisive result
until in 1732, one of the vessels employed was
driven by the winds and currents on the Alaska
coast, when it was discovered that but a narrow
strait separated North America from Asia.
Upon this was bestowed the name of Behring.

Other expeditions from Russia there were, but
with little result to geographical knowledge.
One in 1741, under Behring, commanding the
8t. Peter, and Tchirkoff, commanding the St.
Baul, came to a most disastrous end; Tchirkoff
himself finally returning witli but a few of his
men, the remainder having been butchered by
the savages or hung, or died from the scurvy;
and Behring's vessel being wrecked on a little
granite island between the Aleutian Archipel-
ago and Kamtschatka, and where Behring and
many of his men died and were buried. The
island is known as " Behring Isle" to this day.

These fugitive efforts of Russia to make dis-
coveries on the American continent came to very
little, and, as the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury was reached, the geography of the American
coast from Behring's straits to the Spanish pos-
sessions in the south consisted of mere imagina-
tive lines drawn on the charts which navigators
had made of seas over which they had never
sailed and of lands they had never visited. The
fact was that Russia was not a martirae na-
tion, and she had no seamen of sufficient scien-
tific attainments to lead the discoveries which
she was in a most favorable situation to prose-
cute. Hence, after four official expeditions had
been made into these northern seas, and private
individuals had been engaged in the fur-trade
for a third of a century, the Russian idea of the

seas between northern America and Asia was
that they were large seas of islands, of which
the largest was Alaska. It was reserved for
Captain Cook, an Englishman, and a skillful and
scientific navigator, to reveal their error.

Captain James Cook commanded the first
English vessel to visit the north Pacitic seas. He
was already the most renowned navigator of
England, if not of the world. He had achieved
his great distinction in recent voyages of dis-
covery in the South Sea and the Indian Ocean.
The desire and purpose of England to plant
colonies on the Pacific coast naturally turned
the eyes of the Lord of Admiralty to him as
the one man whose past success guaranteed
brilliant results in the new expedition contem-
plated by the British government. Cook did
not wait to be invited, but volunteered at once
to command the expedition. It consisted of
two vessels, the Resolution, in which Cook had
already passed around the world, and the Dis-
covery, commanded by Captain Charles Clarke.
These vessels were well suited to their intended
use, and were furnished for it as perfectly as
science and experience could provide. Cook's
charts, though very erroneous in the light of his
own subsequent discoveries, were the most per-
fect that geographical knowledge at that day
could devise. There was on them a compara-
tive blank between latitude 43° and 50°, or be-
tween the point reached by the Spanish explora-
tions in the south and those of Russia in the
north. Conjecture had placed somewhere with-
in these limits the Great River, the straits of
Fuca and the river of Kings. Cook was instructed
very particularly to prosecute his researches on
the Pacitic coast of America within these limits,
and especially to do nothing that could be con-
strued into any trespass on the assumed rio-hts
of Spain or Russia. He was directed to reach
the coast of New Albion, as the English called
California, and not to touch upon any part of
the Spanish dominions unless driven to it by
necessity, and then to treat the people with
"civility and friendship." He was to thor-
oughly e.x;amine the coast, and with the consent

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

of the natives to take possession, in tlie name of
tbe king of Great Britain, of convenient sta-
tions in such countries as he might discover that
had not already been discovered or visited by
any other European power, and to distribute
among tiie inhabitants such things as would re-
main as traces of his having been there, but if
he should find the countries so discovered to be
uninhabited, he was to take possession of them
for his sovereign by setting up proper marks
and descriptions as first discoverers and pos-
sessors. Thus prepared and commissioned Cap-
tain Cook set sail from Plymouth, England, on
the twelfth day of July, 1776.

Eight days before, an event had occurred in
Philadelphia on the eastern coast of America
that had more to do with wresting from Great'
Britain the ultimate results of Cook's explora-
tions, and those of all other Englishmen on tlie
Pacific coast, than all others in history. It was
the Declaration of American Independence, by
which the new nation, destined to dominate the
American continent, was born into history.

Cook sailed for the east, rounded the cape of
Good Hope, explored the coasts of Van Die-
men's Land and New Zealand, and the Society
and Friendly islands. Continuing his eastern
course, on the 18th of January, 1778, he dis-
covered the Hawaiian group, which he named
in honor of Lord Sandwich, the " Sandwich
Islands." Remaining here but a short time, he
still sailed eastward, and on the 7th of March,
1778, sighted the coast of New Albion, near
the forty-fourth parallel in what is now
Oregon, near the mouth of the L^mpqua river.
Head winds forced him south, but as soon as
possible he turned to the north, but sailed so
far ofl; shore that he did not again see land un-
til he reached the 48° of latitude, when he
saw a bold headland which he named "Cape
Flattery," because of the encouraging prospects
of his expedition. He was directly off the
mouth of the Straits of Fuca, but his charts
misguided him by placing that opening south
of the forty -eighth parallel, and he turned south
to find it. Disappointed here, he turned again

northward, but lay too far off shore and
the Straits without observing them, and finally
cast anchor in Nootka Sound. From this port
he still kept his northward course, and on the
4th of May sighted Mount St. Elias, when he be-
gan a most thorough search for the Straits of
Anian. His explorations about the extreme
northern portion of the American coast, in
Behring Straits, and the Asiatic coast on the
Arctic side as far as cape North, were full of
painstaking fidelity, and he so charted those re-
gions that many of the fables of the Russian ex-
plorers were entirely disproved. On the 9th of
August he reached the extreme northwestern cor-
ner of America, and named the point " Cape
Prince of Wales." Without attempting any
further explorations on the coast of America,
he sailed directly to the Sandwich Islands for
the winter. Here, on the 16th of February,
1779, in an encounter with the natives, he was
slain. This for a time terminated British dis-
coveries on the North-Pacific coast. When the
Resolution and Discovery reached England, in
October, 1780, she was in the midst of her
strife with her American colonies and her two
immemorial antagonists and rivals across the
channel, and had neither time nor inclination
to engage in further geographical or colonial
enterprises.

It has been seen by those who have carefully
followed the line of our record that as yet little
or nothing was known of the Oregon coast.
The sweep of discovery and explorations by the
maritime powers of England and Spain had been
far to the north and far to the south. The golden
dreams that the vivid imaginations of the Span-
iards had woven about New Spain, and the hope
of England to find a direct passage from west-
ern ports to tiie Pacific through the fabled Straits
of Anian easily account for that fact. The prow
of the Englishman's vessel turned toward that
fabled passage; the Spaniard's toward the land
of gold. Oregon lay between these objective
points, and thus remained unknown. But the
time was at hand when the land of verdure be-
tween the ice-land of the north and the sun-

BISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

seared plains of the south should hecoine the
object of the explorer's t^earcli, as well as the
subject of the ruler's covet.

In 1790, ten

years

after the return of the

Resolution and Discovery from their eventful
voyage, the Spaniards again, under the direction
of the Viceroy of Mexico, dispatched a fleet of
their vessels to the north, under the command
of Lieutenant Francisco Elisa, with directions
to take possession of Nootka Sound, fortify and
defend it, and use it as a base of explorations.
This was done, and a series of explorations
were at once entered upon. Lieutenant AHerez
Manuel Quimper, in the Princess Real, in the
summer of 1790, left Nootka and entered the
Straits of Fuca, examinincf both shores for a
distance of 100 miles. He turned southward
into what was afterward called Puajet Sound.
Mistaking it for an inlet, he called it Enceiiada
de Caamano. He gave Spanish names to vari-
ous points in that region, all of which now bear
names afterward given by Vancouver and oth-
ers, except the main channel leading north,
which he named "Canal de Lopez de Haro;"
which retains its Spanish cognomen, a monu-
ment of this tirst visit of a civilized keel in the
'waters of this great Mediterranean of the Pacitic
coast. On the 1st of August, 1790, Lieutenant
Elisa took formal possession of that region in
the name of the Spanish sovereign at port
"Nunez Guona," now known as Neah Bay.

In 1791, Elisa again entered the Straits of
Fuca, in the San Carlos, and made more exten-
sive and particular explorations of the Gulf of
Georgia, as far nortli as latitude 50". (Observ-
ing many passages extending inland, Elisa con-
cluded "that the oceanic passage so zealously
sought by foreigners, if there is one, cannot be
elsewhere than by this great channel."

The most satisfactory explorations ever made
by the Spanish in the Xorthwest were those
made during 1791. But they had no longer a
monopoly of discovery or trade on the coast.
Other and more energetic nations had entered
the lists of adventure in these seas. The new
Aug which the successful revolt of the British

colonies of the Atlantic coast had nailed to the
mast of einpire — "thestnrs and stripes" — was
floating from the masts of a large number of
vessels which were hovering along the coast and
looking into every bay and iulet of their waters.
Great Britain, too, having lost her colonial pos-
sessions on the Atlantic south of the St. Law-
rence, w<is more aTi.xious than ever to secure
others on the Pacific seaboard, and nine of her
vessels, under the command of her boldest and
most enterprising seamen, were guarding her
interests and prosecuting her purposes all along
the coast. With the nine English and seven
American and one Spanish vessels, vigilant and
keen-eyed, and filled with a spirit of national
competition for new empire, added to the vigor-
ous explorations of the Spanish ships, there
could certainly little remain unknown along the
coast line of the Northwest for many months
longer. So when the year 1791 had gone and
1792 had come, the time for the fulfillment of
the prophecy of these preparations for decisive
discovery had come. 'We shall follow only the
story of these vessels which, during this year,
made important discoveries, and established, or
attempted to establish, national rights that in-
fluenced the course of after history. By the
vessels representing them the governments of
the United States, Great Britain, Spain, France
and Portugal were all on this coast. Their con-
flict, however, was not that of guns, but of en-
terprise and discovery; one greater than that of
broadsides, and determining the future of a vast
empire.

The movements of the Spanish vessels were
mainly limited to a repetition of the already oft
repeated eft'ort to discover a northwest passage.
Spain reasoned, and correctly enough, that if
her vessels were compelled to double the Cape
of Good Hope and then sail around Asia to
reach the northwest coast of America; or, on
the other hand, to pass around Cape Horn to
reach the same point, it was not worth her
while to seek for possessions in northwest Amer-
ica. Hence, if the Straits of Anian were a myth
she was ready to give up her attempts at north-

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

west colonization. True, the Mexican Viceroy,
representing the Spanisli throne, directed his
vessels in these waters to thoronghly explore
the Straits of Fuca and the connecting waters,
and to ascertain if there were not convenient
points south of the entrance of those Straits for
the establishment of Spanit-h settlements, but
these objects were subsidiary to the main pur-
pose of finding the connecting passage between
the Atlantic and the Pacific. Lieutenant Sal-
vador Fidalgo, commanding the Princesa, in
pursuance of this subsidiary purpose, landed at

Port Nunez Guona — now Neah Bay — Just with-
in the entrance of the Straits of Fuca and on its
south side, where he erected buildings and for-
tifications; but the main purpose failing, he re-
ceived orders to abrndon the post, and he re-
moved everything to JSootka. With the surren-
der of this purpose Spanish efforts at discovery
and colonization on the northwest coast practi-
cally ended, leaving only Great Britain and the
United States as rivals and contestants in these
fields between the fifty-second and fifty-fifth de-
grees of north latitude.

CHAPTER III.

EARLIEST DISCOVERIES, CONTINUED.

The United States Begin Explokations — 1791-'92— The Northwest Sp:as Filled With Ex-
plorers — Spain Still Seeking foe the Straits of Anian — She Retires From the Contest

Great Britain and the United States Sole Rivals — Vancouver— His Careful Examina-
tion OF THE Coast — Passes the Mouth of the Columbia — -His Journal — Captain Gray
Meets Vancouver — Vancouver's Voyage Northward into Puget Sound — Returns
Southward — Lieutenant Broughton Enters the Columbia — Discovery of the Columbia

BY Captain Gray — Antecedent Motives — Boston Association for Discovery The

Columbia and AVashington Dispatched — Their Voyage — The Columbia Returns to Bos-
ton — Her Second Voyage — Reaches the Northwest Coast — Meets Vancouver They

Part Company — Gray Discovers Bulfinch Harbor — Attacked by Indians — Enters the
Columbia River — His Journal — First Real Knowledge of the Existence of the Great
River — The Ship Columbia.

THESE two rival powers were in the field:
England with the stored and storied vigor
of her Saxon thirst for empire; the United
States with the flush and fervor of youth-
ful nationality firing her to action, each eager,
confident, determined; and each realizing the
immense value of the stake for which this game
of discovery was being played on these northern
and western seas. First, let us read the story
of Britain's cruisers and captains in 1792.

The two vessels that represented e'speciaily
the interests of Great Britain in the Northwest
were the Discovery, commanded by Captain
George Vancouver, and the Chatham, com-
manded by Lieutenant W. R. Broughton.

Captain Vancouver was already acquainted with
the northwest coast, having served as a mid-
shipman with Captain Cook in his voyages of
discovery, to which reference has already been
made. His services had been so eminent that
he had readied the post of captain in the royal
navy, and such was the confidence his govern-
ment reposed in him that he was made com-
missioner to carry out the provisions of the
Nootka treaty between England and Spain.
For this purpose he was on the coast; but Eng-
land, ever awake to ulterior advantages, di-
rected him to connect discovery with diplo-
macy, and especially to examine the "supposed
Strait of Juan de Fnca, said to be situated be-

HISTORY OF

tweeu the forty-eiglith and forty-iiintli degrees
of iiortli latitude." He liad arrived off the
coast of California, near Cape Mendocino, in
April, 1792. He lost no time in entering on a
very careful examination of the coast from the
point of his arrival northward; and, as so much
of the subsequent history of the Northwest
turned on the discoveries of the English cap-
tain, George Vancouver, and the American
captain, Roliert Gray, we shall follow the story
of their voyages more minutely than we liave
those of any other navigators.

Captain Vancouver with his lieutenant,
Broughton, sailed slowly northward. Their ex-
aminations of the shoi-e-line were minute. Near
the forty-third degree of latitude they sought
carefully for the river wl)ich the Spanish navi-
gators had represented on their charts as enter-
ing the Pacific at tha£ point, but could not find
it. On his way up the coast Vancouver ob-
served very carefully the "Deception Bay" of
Mears, which the Spanish charts represented as
the mouth of a river. That our readers may
see just the conclusion reached by this really
great English navigator as he passed up the
Oregon coast, and by the mouth of the great
Eiver of the West, we give quotations from
his carefully and ably written journals. He
writes under date of April 27:

" Noon brought us up into a conspicuous

poi

nt of land.

compr

of a cluster of hum-

mocks, moderately high and projecting into the
sea. On the south side of this promontory was
the appearance of an inlet, or small river, the
land not indicating it to be of any great extent;
nor did it seem to be accessible for vessels of
our burden, as the breakers extended from the
above point two or thi-ee miles into the ocean,
until they joined these on the beach, nearly
four leagues further south. On reference to
Mr. Mears' description of the coast south of
this promontory, I was first induced to believe
it was Cape Shoal water; but, on ascertaining
its latitude, I presumed it to be that which he
calls Cape Disappointment, and the opening
south of it Deception Bay. This cape we found

to l)e in latitude of forty-six degrees nineteen
minutes, longitude 236 degrees 6 minutes east.
The sea had now changed from its natural to
river-colored water, the probable consequence
of some streams falling into the bay or into
the opening north of it, through the low land.
Not considering this opening worthy of more
attention, I continued our pursuit to the north-
west, being desirous to embrace the advantages
of the now prevailing breezes and pleasant
weather, so favorable to an examination of the
coasts."

Thus Captain George Vancouver swept by
the mouth of the great river only two weeks
before Captain Eobert Gray turned the prow of
the Columbia into its crystal waters, having, as
he believed, ascertained that "the several large
rivers and capacious inlets, that have been de-
scribed as discharging their contents into the
Pacific, between the fortieth and forty-eighth
degrees of north latitude, were reduced to
brooks insufficient for our vessels to navigate,
or to bays inaccessible as harbors for refitting.
As justifying this conclusion, on the 29th of
April he gave the following somewhat elaborate
statement of his reasons for making it:

" Considering ourselves now on the point of
commencing an examination of an entirely new
region, I cannot take leave of the coast already
known, without obtruding a short remark on
that part of the continent, comprehending a
space of nearly 215 leagues, on which our in-
quiries have been lately employed, under the
most fortunate and favorable circumstances of
wind and weather. So minutely has this ex-
tensive coast been inspected that the surf has
been constantly seen to break on its shores from
the mast-head; and it was but a few small
intervals only our distance precluded its being
visible from the deck. "Whenever the weather
prevented our making free with the shore, or on
our heading off for the night, the return of fine
weather and of daylight uniformly brought us,
if not to the identical spot we had departed
from, at least within a few miles of it, and
never beyond the northern limits of tlie coast

II I STORY OF WASHINGTON.

we lia'l previously seen. An examination so
directed, and eircunistancei so concurring to
permit its l)eing so executed, afforded tlie most
complete opportunity of determining its various
turnings and windings, as also tlie position of
all its couspicuous points, ascertained by merid-
ional altitudes for the latitude, and observa-
tions for tlie chronometer, which we had the
good fortune to make constantly once, and in
general twice, every day, the preceding one only
excepted. It must be considered a very singu-
lar circumstance that, in so great an extent of
sea-coast, we should not until now have seen
the appearance of any opening in its shore
which presented any prospect of affording a
shelter, the whole coast forming one compact
and nearly straight barrier against the sea."

The day on which Vancouver had written
these statements had not passed before a sail
was discovered to the westward, standing in
shore. She soon hoisted the stars and stripes
and fired a gun to leeward. At six she was
within hail, and proved to be the ship Colum-
bia, Captain Robert Gray, nineteen months
from Boston. Captain Vancouver requested
him to " bring to," and sent Mr. Fuget and
Mr. Menzie on board the Columbia to obtain
such information as might be serviceable 1o the
English captain in his future operations. This
mainly relating to the Straits of Fuca and the
waters connecting therewith, was very cour-
teously communicated by Captain Gray. He
also communicated another piece of information
to which Vancouver gave little or no credit, and
to which he makes the following reference:

"He likewise informed them — Mr. Pngetand
Mr. Menzie — of his having been off the mouth
of a river, in the latitude of 46° 10', where the
outset or reflux was so strong as to prevent his
entering for nine days. This was probably the
opening passed by us on the forenoon of the
27th, and was apparently inaccessible, not from
the current, but from the breakers that extended
aci-oss it."

But the English captain's mind was not at
rest, and it is plain to be seen from the tone of

his journal that he was both asking himself,
" What if I have made a mistake?" and at the
same time trying to justify his conclusions by
arguments that would palliate his doubts. So
he recurs to the subject again on the day after
his meeting wdth the Columbia, as follows:

"The river mentioned by Mr. Gray should,
from the latitude he assigned to it, have exist-
ence in the bay south of Cape Disappointment.'
This we passed in the forenoon of the 27th, and,
as I then observed, if any inlet or river should
be found, it would be a very intricate one, and
inaccessible to vessels of great burden, owing to
the reefs and broken water, which then appeared
in its neighborhood. Mr. Gray stated that he
had been several days attempting to enter it,
which, at length, he was unable to effect, in con-
sequence of a very strong outset. This is a
phenomenon difficult to account for, as, in most
cases, where there are outsets of such strength
on a seacoast there are corresponding tides set-

ting in.

that, however, as it may, I was

thoroughly convinced, as were most persons of
observation oi: board, that we could not possibly
have passed any safe, navigable opening, harbor,
or place of security for shipping, on this coast
from Cape Mendocino to the promontory of
Classet [Cape Flattery], nor had we any reason
to alter our opinion, notwithstanding that theo-
retical geographers have thought proper to assert
in that space the existence of arms of the ocean
communicating with a Mediterranean sea, and
extensive rivers with safe and convenient ports."

Having thus apparently argued himself into
the assurance that he was right and the Ameri-
can captain wrong in regard to the existence of
an important river on that portioti of the coast,
the 15ritish navigator proceeded to his survey of
the Straits of Fuca, and the American captain
bore toward the opening of " Deception Bay."

Before taking up the story of Gray's voyage,
we need to follow Vancouver and Broughton in
their survey of the Straits of Fuca and the adja.-
cent and connecting waters, as their survey of
these fall within the limits of country and time
to which our history is intended to be confined,

HISTORY OF WASaiHGTON.

On tLe lirst of May tliey sailed from (]ape
Flattery eastward, along the coast, following the
track of the Spanish navigators. Vancouver
named the Port Quadra of Qnimper, Port Dis-
covery, after the name of his vessel. Just east-
ward of this port he entered the mouth of the
Canal de Caamano, as it was called by the same
Spaniard, which he called Admiralty Inlet. T'ms
he ex])lored to its head, more than a hundred
miles from the straits, and the southernmost
extension of it he named Pnget's Sound, while
its western branch he called Hood's Canal, and
its eastern Possession Sound. On the shore of
Possession sound the English landed on the 4th
of June, and celebrated the birthday of their
sovereign by taking possession in his name, and
"with the usual formalities, of all that part of
New Albion, from the latitude of 89 degrees 20
minutes north, and longitude 230 degrees 20
minutes cast, to the entrance of the inlet of the
sea, said to be the supposed Strait of Juan de
Fuca, as also all the coasts, islands, etc., within
the said Strait, and both its shores." To this
region thus claimed they gave the appellation of
New Georgia.

After completing his survey of these waters,
Vancouver sailed to Noofka to attend to his duty
as royal commissioner, as before explained.
This attended to he again turned his vessel
southward, for the story of Captain Gray about
the mouth of a great river was still exciting, if
not troubling him. On the 20th of October
he was again off Deception Bay. Lieutenant
Broughton in the Chatham entered the mouth
of the river on that day, but Vancouver was
unable to take in the Discovery, and being still
of the opinion that the stream was inaccessible
to large ships sailed for the bay of San Fran-
cisco, which he had appointed as the rendezvous
for his vessels in case of separation.

This was the close of Captain Vancouver's
work on the north Pacific coast. Lieutenant
Proughtou spent some time in the river, I'each-
ing in a row-boat a point of land he named
Point Vancouver, in honor of his captain, a place
which has retained the name of the English

navigator through all the changes of discovery
and history.

We are now ready to turn to the story of the
discovery of the great River of the West by
Captain Robert Gray. As the expedition which
resulted in this most important event was dis-
tinctively American, and was undertaken so soon
after the United States had achieved independ-
ence and became a recognized force among the
woi-ld's great powers, it seems proper that we
give it a somewhat particular setting forth. Be-
sides it was that one venture that thus early
gave the United States high place in the his-
tory of maritime adventure and discovery, and,
so far as claims from discovery and prior occu-
pancy of any regions can, under international
reasons, give any country a right to the posses-
sion and ownership of newly discovered uncivil-
ized lands, furnished the decisive ground for
America's claim to (Jregon. It will be well,
therefore, if we, as Americans, pause long
enough here to get both the antecedent motives
and the real story of this expedition clearly set
in our minds.

For the unknown ages " The Oregon" had
rolled unseen "through the continuous woods" to
the sea. From the middle of the sixteenth cen-
tury the discoverers and adventurers of France
and Spain and Portugal and England, as well as
the "Freebooters" of all climes, had been sailing
all oceans and spying all shores in keen quest
of new lands to add to old dominions, or of
treasures of gold and silver and precious stones
to make more plethoric their national treasuries,
or add new luster to their jeweled crowns. The
independent rovers soughtfor any prizeon ship or
shore that could add to their accumulated spoils,
either of " beauty or booty." The Pacific ocean
was the great field of their unrestrained roam.
From the capitals of Europe it was across the
Atlantic ocean and the American continent on
the one side, and on the other behind the Indian
seas and Asia; the largest continent of the
globe. There they were secure from the direct
interference of courts or kings, and limited
only by their own wills or strength came and

HlSIOItY OF WASHINGTON.

went at their pleasure. From island to main-
land tliey coursed the ocean. From the Behring
foas to PatagoDia they traced the shore-lines of
America. Tney discovered capes and liead-
lands, baj-s and straits until tliey supposed they
liad charted all the coast. Thus their woi-k went
on until 1780, and even later, and still "The
Oregon" rolled unseen to the sea.

A story that liad come at last to seem a myth
oi some great " River of the West" that went
down from the mountains toward the west, had
floated, in some mysterious way, into the thoughts
of geographers and explorers, and even a: name
— Oregon — had been given to it; but no eye save
that of whatever barbarous hordes might dwell
in its primeval solitudes liad ever seen its
springs or traced its course or noted its issue
into tiie ocean. Faith in its existence was well
nigh lost. How could it have been otherwise?
It had been one great object of the quest of the
navigators along the western coast. Mears and
Cook and Vancouver, and all the navigators of
the Pacific coast had songlit for its mouth every-
where from San Diego to where the Russian
Bear guarded the bleak headlands of Muscovian
America, and it could not be found. For them
it did not exist. Still, in another quarter and
among another people, events were drawing
toward a conclusion that would greatly change
international relations on the western coast, and
instate a specifically American power among the
European claimants of its soil and sovereignty.
Let us tee what tliey were.

The puhlieation in 1784 of Ckptain Cook's
journal of his third voyage awakened, not in
England only, but in New England as well, a pro-
found interest in the possibility of an impor-
tant and profitable trade on the Northwest coast.
In Boston a number of gentleman took up the
matter seriously, and determined to embark in
the enterprise on their own account. The lead-
ing spirit among them was Joseph Barrell, a
gentleman of cultivated tastes, wide knowledge
of affairs, high social standing, and acknowl-
edged influence. Associated with liim in close
relationship was Cliarles Bui finch, a recent

graduate from Harvard, atid who had just re-
turned from pursuing special studies in Europe.
The other patrons of the enterprise conceived
by these gentlemen were Samuel Brown, a pros-
perous merchant; Jolm Derby, a shipmaster of
Salem; Captain Crowell Hatch, a resident of
Cambridge; and John Mintard Pintard of the
New York house of Lewis Pintard & Co.
These six gentlemen subscribed over $50,000,
and purchased the ship Columbia, or, as it was
afterward often called, Columbia Pediviva.

The Columbia was a full-rigged ship, eighty-
three feet long and of 212 tons' burden. A
consort was provided for her in the Washington,
a sloop of ninety tons, designed for cruising
among the islands and in the inlets of the coast
in the expected trade with the Indians. Small
as these vessels seem to us in this day of pon-
derous steamships, they were staunclily built,
and manned by skillful navigators. As captain
of the Columbia the company selected John
Kendrick, an experienced officer, forty-tive years
of age, who had done considerable privateering
in the Revolutionary war, and had since com-
manded several vessels in the merchant service.
For the charge of the Washington Captain
Robert Gray, an able seaman, who had been an
officer in the Revolutionary navy, and a personal
friend of Captain Kendrick, was chosen. These
able and experienced leaders had equally able
subordinates. These were Simeon Woodruff,
who had been one of Captain Cook's officers in
his last voyage to the Pacific. Joseph Ingraham,
destined to be a cotispicuous figure in the trade
they were to inaugurate; and Robert Haswell,
son of a lieutenant in the British navy.

On the 30th day of September, 1787, the two
vessels in company sailed out of Boston harbor
on their long voyage. It is not necessary to
our history to trace that voyage by the Cape
Verde and Faulkland Islands, around Cape Horn
and up the Pacific sea. On the way, on the
morning of April 1, 1788, the vessels were
separated in a storm, and each pursued the voy-
age on its own account. The Washington with
Captain Gray first saw the coast of New Albion,

HISTORY OF WASHINOTON.

in latitude 41 decrees, near Cape Mendocino, on
the 2d day of Anj!;ii8t. Sailing up the coast, in
latitude 44° 20', they entered a harbor, which
they took to be " the entrance of a large river,
where great commercial advantages might be
reaped." Still farther up the coast they " made
a tolerably commodious harbor " and anchored
half a mile off shore. Here they were assailed
by the Indians and the vessel very narrowly es-
caped capture. They gave the [dace the appro-
priate name of "Murderers' Harbor." It was
probably Tillamook Bay. Ilasweli, who kept
a very circumstantial journal of the e.xpedition,
thought it " must be the entrance of the River
of the West," though he considered it " by no
means a safe place for any but very small ves-
sels to enter." Captain Gray was glad to get
safely rid of "Murderers' Harbor" and pursue
his northward voyage. He had so good a breeze
that he "passed a considerable length of coast
without standing in, thus sweeping directly by
the month of the Great River, of the existence of
which his maps and charts had only some vague
and entirely supposititious suggestions. The
chronicler of his voyage made no allusion to any
circumstances that would indicate that they had
the slightest idea that any such river really
entered the ocean in this "length of coast."
Farther north, on August 21, they saw "ex-
ceedingly high mountains covered with snow."
They pass the Straits of Fuca without noting
them, although their journalist says: " I am of
the opinion that the Straits of Juan de Fuca do
exist, though Captain Cook positively asserts
they do not." On the 16th day of August the
Washington reached its destined harbor in
Nootka Sound; finding two English vessels un-
der Portuguese colors at anchor there, the Felice
under Captain Means and the Iphigenia under
Captain Douglas, both of whom received the
little sloop with hospitable friendliness.

Three days later the Englishmen launched a
small schooner, which they named "North
West America." This was the first vessel ever
built 01) the coast. It was g;ila day, English-

men and Americans cordially joining in its
salutes and festivities.

On the 23d of August the Columl)ia, which
liad been separated from the Washington for
nearly five months, appeared in the ofKng; and
thus after nearly eleven months from tiieir clear-
ance from Boston these historic vessels were re-
united again on the other side of the continent,
and Captain Kendrick again assumed charge of
the expedition.

Although, in this expedition, the mouth of
the mythical Great River was not discovered, yet
the knowledge gained of the coast by Captain
Gray stood him in good stead, when four years
later, in command of the Columbia, he was
again upon the northwest coast.

AVhen the vessels had fulfilled their intended
stay on the coast, Captain Kendrick, as com-
mander of the expedition, decided to put the
ship's property on board the sloop and go on a
cruise with her himself, while Captain Gray
should take the Columbia to Boston by the way
of the Sandwich Islands and China. The in-
cidents of her voyage are interesting, but they
are not in the course of our narrative. It
suffices to say that she left the harbor of Clay-
oquot July 30, 1789, and reached her destina-
tion on the 10th of August, 1790, having sailed,
by her log, 50,000 miles.

Tills voyage of tiie Columbia gave the ves-
sel, her officers and owners great eclat. Gov-
ernor John Hancock gave an entertainment in
their honor. Though the profits of the voyage
were small, it was an achievement to be proud
of, and had prepared the way for more profit-
able trade in subsequent years. The owners of
the ship therefore immediately projected a sec-
ond voyage for her. She was put in perfect
order, with new masts and spars and a com-
plete outfit, and again left Boston on the 28th
of September, 1790, with Captain Gray in com-
mand and a well-selected corps of officers and
a complete crew. Stopping only at the Faulk-
land Island for a few days, Captain Gray sailed
directly to Cloyo(^uot, arriving there on the 4th
day of June, 1791.

inSTORT OF WASHINGTON.

The instructious of Captain Gray contem-
plated a season's trade with tlie natives on the
coast, then a visit to China for the sale of the
furs he might obtain. He was charged not to
visit any Spanish port, not to trade with any
of the subjects of his Catholic majesty "for a
single farthing." Gray found tiie natives very
treaciierous and cruel. Three of his men were
massacred. In July Captain Kendrick in the
Washington arrived from China, and the two
vessels and commanders were reunited near
where they separated two years before, — the
one. Columbia, having made the circuit of the
world.

In February, 1792, a plot was laid by the In-
dians for the capture of the ship. The crafty
chiefs had endeavored to bribe Attoo — a Ha-
waiian lad, who had been taken by Captain Gray
from the Sandwich Islands when on his way to
China, and who had remained with him until
now — to wet the ship's firearms and give them
a lot of musket balls; promising to make him
a great chief. He informed the captain of the
plot. Gray was greatly excited. His heavy
guns were all on shore, but he ordered the
swivels loaded, the ship's people to come on
board, and the ship to be unmoored from the
shore and moved out from the bank. At mid-
night the warwhoop of the Indians resounded
through the forests. Hundreds of the savages
had assembled, but on finding their plans frus-
trated by Gray's precautions they instantly dis-
persed.

On the 23d of February, a sloop, which was
built by the men of the Columbia and named
the Adventurer, was launched. This was the
second vessel that was built on the coast. She
was fitted up, secured her stores, and went
northward on a cruise under the command of
Haswell. And by this course of events we are
brought up to a date and an incident that took
the name of the Columbia, and of Captain Gray,
her commander, out of the list of ordinary ships
and ordinary commanders and fixed them in a
place of transcendent and enduring fame. To
this incident let us now carefully attend.

Captain Gray now started on a cruise south-
ward. On the 29th of April, 1792, lie fell in
with Vancouver, who had been sent from En-
gland with three vessels of the royal navy as
commissioner to execute the provisions of the
Nootka treaty, and to explore the coast. Van-
couver said he had made no discoveries as yet,
and inquired if Gray had made any. Gray re-
plied that he had; that in latitude 46° and 10'
he had recently been off the mouth of a river,
which for nine days he had tried to enter, but
the outset was so strong as to prevent it, but
he was going to try it again. Vancouver said
this must bo the small opening he had passed
two days before, which he thought might be a
small river, inaccessible because of the break-
ers extending across it. Of it Vancouver wrote
in his journal: "Not considering this opening
worthy of mention, I continued our pursuit to
the northwest."

What a turn was this in the affairs of men
aTid the destiny of the world. Had the British
navigator really seen the river it would certainly
have had another name, and the Pacific coast
another history.

The two navigators, the Briton and the Amer-
ican, parted here, Vancouver continuing his
"pursuit to the northwest," and Gray sailing
southward in the track of destiny and glory.

On the 7th of May lie saw an entrance into
a bay, in latitude 46 degrees 58 minutes, " which
had a very good appearance of a harbor," and
bore away and ran in. This he called Bultinch
Harbor, but it was soon after designated as
Gray's Harbor as a deserved compliment to Gray,
by which name it still is and always will be
known. Here on a moonlight night he was at-
tacked by the natives and was obliged to fire
upon them in self-defense. On the 10th of May
he resumed his course to the south, and at day-
break on the lltli saw the entrance of his de-
sired port. As he drew near, about eight o'clock,
he bore away with all sails set, ran directly in be-
tween the breakers, and to his great delight
found his ship in a large river of fresh water

which he steered ten mil

Here, rather

UISTOBT OF WASUINGTON.

tlian cliaiiae the phraseology of Captain Gray,
we crivetlie exact language of the Colnrabia'slog
from May 7th to May 21, 1792, at \fhich date
she was again on her way to the north, and sail-
ino- away fi'Oin the hold headland of "Cape
HaneoL'k: "

May 7, 1792, a. m.: Being within six miles
of the land, saw an entrance in do., which had a
very good appearance of a harbor; lowered away
the juUy-boat and went in search of an anchor-
ing place, the ship standing to and fro, with a
very strong weather current: at 1 p. m. the boat
returned, having found no place where the ship
could anchor with safety; made sail on the ship
— stood in for the shore; we soon saw, from our
masthead, a passage in between the sand bars;
at 8:30 bore away and ran in northeast by east,
having from fonr to eight fathoms, sandy bot-
tom; and, as we drew in nearer between the
bars, had from ten to thirteen fathoms, having
a very strong tide of ebb to stem; many canoes
alongside. At 5 r. m. came to in live fathoms
of water, sandy bottom, in a sate harbor, well
sheltered from the sea l)y_ long sand-bars and
spits; our latitude observed this day was 46°
58' north.

May 10: Fresh breezes and pleasant weather.
Many natives alongside; at noon all the canoes
left us; at 1 p. m. began to unmoor; lookup
the best bower anchor and hove short on the
small do.; at Bnlfinch's Harbor, now called Whit-
by's Bay, 4:30 being high water, hove up the
anchor and came to sail and a beating down the
harbor.

May 11, 7:30: We were out clear of the bars,
and directed our course to the southward, along
shore; At 8 p. m. the entrance of Bulfinch's
Harbor bore north, distance four miles: the
southern extremity of the land bore south south-
east one-half east, and the north do. north north-
west; sent up the main topgallant yard and set
all sail; at 4 a. m. saw the entrance of our de-
sired port, bearing east southeast, distance six
leagues in steering sails, and hauled our wind in
shore: at 8 a. m., being a little to windward of
the entrance of the harbor, bore away, and in

east northeast between the breakers, having from
five to seven fathoms of water. When we were
over the bar we found this to be a large river of
fresh water, up which we steered; many canoes
came alongside. At 1 p. m. came to, with small
bower, in ten fathoms; black and white sand;
the entrance between the bars bore west south-
west, distance ten miles; the north side of the
river half a mile distant from the ship, the
south side do., two and a half miles distant; a
village on the north side of the river, west bv
north, distant three-quarters of a mile. Vast
numbers of natives came alongside; people em-
ployed in pumping the salt water out of our
water-casks in order to fill with fresh while the
ship floated in. So ends.

May 14: Fresh gales and cloudy; many na-
tives alongside. At noon weighed and came to
sail, standing up the river northeast by east.
We found the channel very narrow. At 4 p.m.
we had sailed upward of twelve or fifteen miles,
when the channel was so very narrow that it
was almost impossible to keep in it; having
from three to eighteen fathoms of water, tandy
bottom; at 4:40 the ship took ground, but she
did not stay long before she came off without
any assistance; we backed her off stern fore-
most, into three fathoms, and let go the small
bower, and moored ship with kedgeand hawser;
the jolly-boat was sent to sound the channel
out, but it was not navigable any farther; so,
of course, we must have taken the wrong chan-
nel. So ends, with rainy weather; many na-
tives alongside.

Tuesday, May 15: Light and pleasant weather;
many natives from different tribes came along-
side. At 10 A. M. unmoored and dropped down
with the tide to a better anchoring place.
Smiths and other tradesmen constantly em-
ployed. In the afternoon Captain Gray and
Mr. Hoskins, in the jolly-boat, went on shore to
take a short view of the country.

May 16: Light airs and cloudy. At 4 a. m.,
hove up the anchor and towed down about three
miles with tiie last of theebbtide; carae into six
fathoms, sandy bottom, the jolly-boat sounding

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

the channel. At 10 a. m. a fresh breeze came
up the river. With the first of the ebb-tide we
got under way and beat down the river. At 1,
from its being very sqnally, we came to, about
two miles from the village of Chinook, which
bore west-northwest. Many natives alongside;
fresh gales and squally.

May 18 — Pleasant weather; at 4 in tlie morn-
ing, began to heave ahead; at 4:30, came to sail
standing down tiie river with the ebb-tide; at 7,
being slack water and the wind flattering, we
came to in five fathoms, sandy bottom; the
entrance between the bars bore southwest by
west, distance three miles, the north point of the
harbor bore northwest, distance two miles; the
south bore southeast, distance two miles; the
south bore southeast, distance three and a half
miles; at 9 a breeze sprung up from the east-
ward; took up the anchor and came to sail, but
the wind soon came flattering again; came to
with the kedge and hawser; veered out fifty fath-
oms. Noon, pleasant; latitude observed, 46°
17' north. At 1 came to sail with the first ebb-
tide, and drifted down broadside, with light airs
and strong tide; at three-quarters past, a fresh
wind came from the northward ; wore ship and
stood into the river again. At 4 came to in six
fathoms; good holding ground, about six or
seven miles up; many canoes alongside.

May 19: Fresh winds and clear weather.
Early a number of canoes came alongside; sea-
men and tradesmen employed in their various
departments. Captain Gray gav^e this river the
name of Columbia river, and the north side of
entrance Cape Hancock, the south side Adams
Point.

May 20: Gentle breeze and pleasant weatiier.
At 1 p. M., being full sea, took up the anchor
and made sail, standing down river; at 2 the
wind left us, we being on the bar with very
strong tide, which set on the breakers; it was
not possible to get out without a breeze to shoot
her across the tide, so we were obliged to bring
up in three and a half fathoms, the tide running
five knots; at 2:45 a fresh wind came in from
the seaboard, we immediately came to sail and

beat over the bar, having from five to seven
fathoms of water; a breeze came from the south-
ward; we bore away to the iiortliward, set all
sail to the best advantage. At 8 Cape Hancock
bore southeast, distant three leagues; the iiortii
extreme of the land in sight bore north by
west. At 9, in steering and topgallant sails.
Midnight, light airs. 1 '-JQ-l rr-l Q

May 21: At 6 a. m. the nearest lancl m siglit
bore east southeast, distant eight leagues. At 7
set topgallant sails and light stay-sails; At 11
set steering sails fore and aft. Noon, pleasant,
agreeable weather; the entrance of Bnlfinch's
Harbor bore southeast by east half east, distant
five leagues."

This departure of the ship Columbia, with
her gallant captain and crew, from the mouth
of the great river henceforth to bear the name of
the vessel whose keel first cleft its bosom, closes
the most eventful and thrilling chapter of
American discovery and adventure on the north-
west coast. Up to this time the "Great River of
the West'' had been but a dream, a vague and
uncertified conjecture. Henceforth it is an
ascertained and certified reality; and after all
the efforts of jealous rivals for the fame of the
important discovery, it must forever remain
true that on the 11th day of May, 1792, the
first real knowledge of the existence of this
mighty stream was gained by a civilized man,
and the name it bears tVirever monuments the
day and the deed and the name.

Undoubtedly Carver, to whom the word Ore-
gon is traced, may have heard of the river in
1767 from the Indians of the Rocky Mountains;
and Heceta in 1775 was near enough to its
mouth to believe in its existence; and Mears
in 1788 named Cape Disappointment and De-
ception Bay; but none of these saw the river,
nor really knew it existed. Mears, whose claim
as its discoverer England maintained so long
and strenuously, showed by the very names
he gave the cape and the bay that he was de-
ceived al)out it. And, to conclude the argu-
ment against himself, he gave not the slightest
suggestion of the river on his map. The honor

JIISTOnr OF WASHINGTON.

of discovery must foiever rest with Gray. -His
was tlie first- ship to cleave its waters; his the
first chart ever made of its shores; liis the first
landing ever effected there by civilized men,
and the name he gave it has been universally
accepted. The flag he there threw to the breeze
was the first ensign of any nation that ever
waved over these unexplored banks, and the
ceremony of occupation that he performed was
something more than a meaningless pastime.
It was a serious act performed of national sig-
nificance, and was by liim reported to the world
as soon as possible. And when we remember
that as a result of this came the expedition of
Lewis and Clarke in 18U4 and 1S05, and the
American settlement of Astoria in 1811 — to say
nothing of the diplomatic acquisitions of the
old Spanish rights by the United States — we
may safely say that the title of the United States
to the Columbia river and the country drained
by its waters becanae incontestable. And hence
the outcouje of the "Oregon question" in 1846.
Though with their departure from the river
the Columbia and her officers and crew ceased
to have any active association witl) the history
and development of the region for which they
had done so much, yet patriotism as an Ameri-
can requires that in a few sentences we trace
their history to its end.

Tlie Columbia remained upon tiie northwest
coast during the summer of 17U2, and Captain
Gray pursued an industrious trade in furs witii
the Indians under many disadvantages and at-
tended by ma,ny dangers. In the autumn he
hoisted sail for home, by the way of the Sand-
wich Islands and China, amid the cheers of his
crew, who sang a joyous " homeward bound" as
they spread the canvas to the breeze. At last,
after all her rovings, the good ship reached
Boston July 29, 1793, havingimmortalized, if not
enriched, her owners, officers and crew, — which
is, after all, the greatest possible enricliment.

In a few years the ship was worn out and
dismantled, and soon her chief oflicers all passed
away. Xendrick never returned to America.
Gray comnianded several vessels after this and
died at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1806.
Ingraham became an officer in the navy, and
went down with the ill-fated brig Pickering in

1800. Davidson was lost on the Rover in -the
Pacific, and Haswell sailed for the last time in

1801, and was also lost on the return voyage.
Their names, however, will always be associated
with the ships they sailed and served so well,
and as long as the " Great River of the West"
flows to the sea so long will the " Columbia"
be gratefully and proudly remembered by the
A.merican people.

UI8I0RT OF WASHINGTON.

CHAPTER IV.

OVERLAND EXPLORATIONS.

■AiN Led Maritime Discoveries — France Led Land Explorations — New Conditions and Com-
binations — England's Position — McKenzie's Journeys — Important Coincidence — Jeffer-
son's Proposition — Lewis and Clarke — Instructions to Them — LouisiANAt^EDED —Lewis and
Clarke Set out — Trip over the "Stony Mountains" — Vottage down Snake Kiver — Reach
THE Ocean — Winter Quarters — Start Homeward — Discovery of the Willamette River
— Yellept — Travel up the Nez Perces Trail — Reach the United States — Me. Jefferson's
Statement — Lewis made Governor, and Clarke General and Indian Agent — Captain
Jonathan Carver — First Uses the Name '-Oregon" — Captain J. C. Fremont's Expeditions
— Route of Travel — Visits Salt Lake — Reaches the Dalles — Visits Vancouver— Win-
ter Journey to California.

THE course of our narrative, during the
long period of time in which the Pacific
coast of North America was being slowly
brought to the knowledge of civilized man
shows that the Frenchman and the Spaniard
were the pioneers of exploration in that region
both by sea and land. Spain led the maritime
nations in distant and successful voyages. The
voyage of Columbus under the auspices of Fer-
dinand and his noble queen Isabella, whose reign
over the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon
gave Spain so much glory in that adventurous
and chivalrous age, had kindled every maritime
Spaniard into a very knight of the seas, and
inspired the whole nation with a burning zeal
for discovery and conquest of distant lands.
For Spain the times were propitious. Her
rulers were among the greatB»t and most re-
nowned of all ages of the world. Ferdinand
and Isabella were succeeded by Charles the Fifth,
one of the most enlightened and powerful inon-
archs that ever sat on any throne. He was suc-
ceeded by his son Philip, who, though haughty
and imperious, so carried forward the ideas and
purposes of his great father that his kingdom
reached the very zenith of power and influence
in the councils of the European monarchs. The
woe pronounced upon a "land whose king is a
child" could not fall upon Spain during this
period. Weak and lusterless as may now be
the condition of the Spanish nation, and little as

her power is felt or feared in the world to-day,
then even the Saxon asked privileges of the
Castilian, and measured his own power by the
standard of the other's greatness. Under the
impulse thus pervading the Spanish nation, her
banner was pushed into every sea, and her
cavaliers led all armies of distant conquest, es-
pecially in the new world. Other portions of
our history illustrate what liere we need only
announce.

While Spain led maritime discoveries, the
facile and plastic Frenchman led the land ex-
plorations into the interior of the western con-
tinent. France had a strong holding on the
eastern shore of America north of the St. Law-
rence, — a point of great advantage in inter-con-
tinental explorations. In addition to this she
had planted her colonies at the mouth of the
Mississippi, and stretched a cordon of posts
southeastward from Quebec to the Ohio, thus
hemming the English into a comparatively
narrow belt of country on the Atlantic sea-
board, and leaving free to her adventurous
roamers the vast and as yet unknown regions
that stretched westward and northward, no one
could tell how far or how wide. The French
pushed their advantages by land, as did Spain
hers by sea, and as early as 1743 their explora-
tions had reached the heart of the Rocky
mountains. From Canada and from Louisi-
ana, up the lakes and up the Mississippi

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

and Missouri rivers, the FreTichman's pi-
rogue kept movement with the voyageurs'

songs

as these care-t'ree men from France

pushed their trade and travel into the middle of
the continent. The French and Englisli war of
1756, however, by giving England tlio oppor-
tunity to wrest (Jauada from the weakened grasp
of France, put a sudden stop to her movements
in the line of explorations from that province,
and opened the same opportunity to England
that France had previously enjoyed. But, though
the opportunity was hefore her, Great Britain
was so fully occupied with lier European diffi-
culties, and the care of her American colonies,
already growing restive under the grievances of
her misrule, demanded so much of the attention
of her parliament and rulers, that she could at-
tempt nothing further than to hold her " coign of
vantage" securely for at least a quarter of a cen-
tury.

During the progress of this quarter of a cen-
tury new conditions and combinations had
arisen. England lost all her colonies on the
Atlantic coast south of the St. Lawrence. France
had sold Louisiana to Spain. Thus England's
opportunities were contracted, those of France
were destroyed, and the new republic of America
was as yet unable to enter the Held of explora-
tion and colonization. At this period the con-
tinental position was this: Spain, after her
purchase of Louisiana from France, had pro-
prietary claim to all the country west of the
Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, with no
very clearly defined northern limit to her claims.
England held the country northward of the great
lakes and the St. Lawrence river, extending in-
definitely westward, above the forty-ninth paral-
lel of latitude. The United States held actually
only the country east of the summits of the Al-
leghany mountains, including the six New Eng-
land States and New York, and had ownership
of all the country westward of the AUeghanies
which England had conquered from France in
the war of 1756. These were the powers that,
after the American Revolution, stood looking
to the yet unknown West as the place for the

future aggrandizement of their respective for-
tunes, and this was the condition in which
they looked to the future and prepared for its
issues.

The advantages of the condition were with
Great Britain. She had grown to be the lead-
ing power of Europe. Already the swing of
conquest was in the movement of her legisla-
tion and her peoples. While the wars of the past
twenty years had taxed, they had not paupered
her. She was strong, consolidated, ambitious,
courageous; and she was Saxon, — the blood of
endurance and conquest.

Spain held her position in the south and west
by a precarious tenure, and she so felt the
feebleness of that tenure that she neither tnade
nor cared to make any vigorous movements to
extend her possessions or to strengthen her
holding in America The United States, geo-
graphically, held the center of opportunity, but
the almost chaos of the era that followed the
close of the Revolutionary war was over the face
of her political history, and she needed time in
which to gird herself for the strain of the future.
But she had the strength to wait, for she, too,
was Saxon. And sn, with the parties in direct
interest in the movements that were so surely
to follow preparing for the race of empire west-
ward, we come to the real opening of the era
of discoveries by land westward of the great
mountains.

These were begun solely by private enter-
prise for individjial gain. They early reached
the Athabasca and Saskatchawan. But the
field was too great for individual resources, and
besides the Hudson's Bay Company entered the
field with a combination which could only be
met by combination. So the Northwest Com-
pany of Montreal was formed in 1781 for the
express purpose of meeting and overcoming the
comjjetition of the Hudson's Bay Company,
which had proved so ruinous to the individual
traders who had ventured into the country be-
fore. In a very few years this became a most
prosperous and powerful organization, and its
traders and explorers filled all the country east

BISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

of tlie Koeky inouiitHins as tar" north as the
Arctic and as far south as tlie Missoiyi.

The great headquarters of this company was
at "Fort Cliippewyan" on Lake Athabasca, and
were under the cliarge of Alexander Mackenzie,
a very resolute and able man, whose enterprise
.in explorations stamped his name on the geogra-
phy of all the west and north. In 1791 lie or
ganized a small party for a western explora-
tion, intending to prosecute his journey until he
reached the Pacific ocean. He had, two years
before, discovered the river that bears his own
name, and followed it from its source in Great
Slave lake to where it discharges its waters into
the Arctic ocean. Having thus ascertained the
character and extent of the country to the north-
west, he was determined to develop the charac-
ter of that to the west by the expedition on
which he was now entering. He left Fort
Cliippewyan on the 10th of October, 17U1, and
with much ditiiculty ascended the Peace river
from Lake Athabasca to the foot of the Rocky
nK)Uiitaiiis, where the party encamped for the
winter. In June of the following year he re-
sumed his journey, still following up the same
stream, which he traced to its source near the
fitty-fourth parallel of latitude and distant about
1,000 miles from its mouth. Only a short dis-
tance from the springs of the Peace river he
came upon those of another stream flowing
westward, called by the natives Tacoutchee Tes-
see, down which he floated in canoes about 250
miles. Leaving the river, he 'then proceeded
westward ovei-land, and on the 22d of July,
1792, reached the Pacific ocean, at the mouth
of an inlet in latitude 52° 10'. This inlet had,
only a few weeks previously, been surveyed by
the fleet of Vancouver; and thus Mackenzie
had connected the land and water explorations
of Great Britain on the Pacific coast.

Mackenzie reached the coast far north of the
month of the river on w'hich he had sailed in
his canoes so far to the southwest. On his re-
turn to Fort Ohippewyan, late in August, 1792,
he learned of the discovery of the mouth of the
Colnmbia by Captain Gray, when he at once

concluded that the stream he had followed so
far was the upper part of that river, and it was
so considered by geographers until 1812, or
twenty years after Mackenzie's journey, when
Simon Fraser, of the same company as Macken-
zie, traced it to its mouth in the Gulf of Geor-
gia, a little north of the forty-ninth degree of
latitude. Since that time it has been known as
Fraser's river. To Alexander Mackenzie doulit-
less belongs the honor of making the first jour-
ney down the western slope of the great Rocky
mountain chain to the Pacific ocean, though it
was made wholly north of the parallel that was
subsequently fixed as the boundary line between
the British possessions on the American conti-
nent and the United States.

It is a somewhat striking coincidence that
the first important American movement for an
exploration by land of the country lying on the
north Pacific coast was made the same }ear that
Mackenzie accomplished his journey to the Pa-
cific and that Captain Gray sailed into the
mouth of the Columbia river. Thomas Jeffer-
son, at that time the representative of the
United States Government at the court of Ver-
sailles, became deeply interested as an Ameri-
can in this great western region. He proposed
to the American Philosophical Society that a
subscription be raised for the purpose of defray-
ing the expenses of an exploration, and a per-
son be employed competent to conduct it. He
wished it to "ascend the Missouri river, cross
the Stony mountains, and descend the nearest
river to the Pacific." His suggestion was acted
upon by the society, and Captain Meriwether
Lewis, on the recommendation of Jefferson,
was selected to lead the expedition; and Andre
Micheaux, a distinguished French botanist, was
chosen to accompany him. They proceeded as
far as Kentucky, when Mr. Micheaux was re-
called by the French minister at Washington
and the expedition was given np.

The next movement for the accomplishment
of the same purpose was while the treaty was
pending between Mr. Jefferson, then President
of the United States, and Napoleon, then ruler

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

of France, for the transfer of the claims of
France to tlie whole Northwest to tlie United
States. On the 18th of January, 1803, the
president transmitted a special message to Con-
gress in which he incorjjorated a recommenda-
tion that an ofHcial expedition be dispatched on
the same errand contemplated in tiie one that
had been abandoned. An ample appropriation
was made, and again Captain Lewis, then private
secretary to the president, was chosen to con-
duct it. He selected William Clarke as his
associate.

The instructions issued to these gentlemen
by Mr. Jefferson, while specitic as to purpose,
were broad as to geographical extent. In them
he says:

"The object of your mission is to explore the
Missouri river and such principal stream of it
as, by its course and communication with the
waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Colum-
bia, Oregon, Colorado, or any other river, may
offer the most direct and practicable water com-
munication across the continent for the pur-
poses of commerce."

They were directed to thorouglily inform
themselves of the extent and number of the In-
dian tribes, their customs, and degrees of civil-
ization, and to report fully upon the topography
of the regions through which they passed, to-
gether with the character of the soil, natural
products, animal life, mineral resources, climate,
and to inquire particularly into the fur trade
and the needs of commerce. "When these in-
structions were given, Louisiana had not been
ceded to the United States, and hence Mr. Jeffer-
son continued:

"Your mission has been communicated to the
ministers here from France, Spain and Great
Britain, and through them to their governments,
and such assurances given them as to its objects
as we trust will satisfy them. The country of
Louisiana having been ceded by Spain to
France, the passport you have from the minister
of France, the representative of the present
sovereign of that country, will be a pi-otection
with all its subjects; and that from the minister

of England will entitle you to the friendly aid
of any tra^Jers of that allegiance with whom you
may happen to meet."

A few days befoi-e the expedition was ready
to start the joyful intelligence was received that
France had formally ceded Louisiana to the
Lhiited States; hence the passport of the repre-.
sentative of the French government at Wash-
ington was not needed.

Captain Lewis left Washington on the 5th
day of July, 1803, and on arriving at Louis-
ville, Kentucky, was joined by Clarke, They
selected their party, went as far as St. Louis,
near which they went into camp, and remained
until the tiual start was made, on the 14th day
of May, 1804. The party now consisted of
Captains Lewis and Clarke, nine young men
from Kentucky, fourteen soldiers, two French
Canadian voyageurs, an interpreter and hunter,
and a negro servant of Captain Clarke. The
party ascended the Missouri river as far as the
country of the Mandan Indians, with which tribe
they remained all winter.

Their westward journey was resumed in the
spring of 1805. They followed up the Mis-
souri, of whose course and tributaries and
characteristics they had obtained very accurate
information from the Mandans. Passing the
mouth of the Yellowstone, or Roche Jaune of
the French Canadian trappers and voyageurs
who had already visited it, they continued up
the Misso'uri, passing its great falls and cas-
cades, and ascending through its mighty canon
crossed the Rocky mountain divide and de-
scended its western side to the stream now
known at different points on its course as
" Deer Lodge," '• Hellgate," " Bitter Root,"
" Clarke's Fork," and " Pend d'Oreille.'" Upon
this stream they bestowed the name of "Clarke's
river." From this river the advance party,
under Clarke, crossed the Bitter Root mountains
by what is now known as the Lolo trail. On
these rugged heights they suffered intensely
from cold and hunger. On the 20th day of Sep-
tember they came to a village of Nez Perces In-
dians, situated on a plain al)out fifteen miles

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

from the south fork of CMearwater river, wliere
they were received with great hospitality.

When they reached the Nez Perces village
the party was nearly famished, and they partook
of such quantities of the food so liberally pro-
vided by their Indian hosts that many of them
became too ill to proceed until the second day,
and among that number was Clarke himself.
As soon as they were able to proceed, they ■went
to the village of the chief, Twisted Hair, situated
on an island in the streatn. To this river
Clarke gave the name "Koos-koos-kee," doubt-
less slightly misunderstanding the words used
by the Nez Perces in distinguishing it from the
Snake river, into which it enters, — " Koots-
koots-hee," — which those acquainted with the
N"ez Perces tongue say is a descriptive term,
and means " This is the smaller."

Here the two parties were united, and after
resting a few days, journeyed on down the
Clearwater. The company was now utterly ex-
hausted. Many found it difficult to sit upon
their horses. Captain Lewis was very ill. The
weather was hot and oppressive. They felt that
they could proceed no farther in their former
manner of traveling, and the commanders re-
solved to prepare canoes and prosecute the re-
mainder of their journey in them. With
Twisted Hair as gnide, Clarke proceeded about
five miles, where suitable timber was found,
and encamped on the low ground opposite the
forks of the river.

When their canoes were constructed, leaving
their horses and equipage witii Twisted Hair,
they embarked on the Clearwater on their jour-
ney toward the Pacific.

They were not long in reaching Snake river,
which, in honor of Captain Lewis they called
" Lewis river.*' Down that stream to the Co-
lumbia was a quick and rapid passage. Down
the Columbia it was not less rapid, and they
reached the cascades of that stream on the 21st
day of October. Making the portage of the
cascades they embarked again, passed the mouth
of the Williamette without ol)serving if, and on
the 15tli day of November reached Cape Disap-

pointment and looked out on the great ocean,
which had been the goal of their journeying
for more than a year.

They remained near the ocean, wintering in a
log dwelling which they erected on the south
side of the Columbia and they called "Fort
Clatsop," in honor of the Indians who inhab-
ited that region. Hoping that some trading
vessel from which they could replenish their
stores would visit the river they delayed their
departure homeward until the 23d of March,
1806. Before leaving they gave the chiefs of
the Clatsops, and also of the Chinooks, who re-
sided on the north side of the river, certificates
of hospitable treatment, and posted a writingon
the wall of their cabin in these words:

" The object of this last is, that through the
medium of some civilized 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 of
America to explore the interior of the continent
of North America, did penetrate the same by
the way of the Missouri and Columbia rivers to
the discharge of tlie latter into the Pacific ocean,
where they arrived on the 14th day of Novem-
ber, 1805, and departed the 23d day of March,
1806, on their return to the United States by
the same route by which they had come out."

To this paper were appended the names of
the members of the expedition. Several copies
of the paper were left among the Indians and
the following year one of tiiem was handed by an
Indian to Captain Hall, an American trader,
whose vessel, the Lydia, had entered the Colum-
bia river. By him it was taken to China and
thence to the United States. Therefore had
the party perished on their return, evidence of
the completion of their purpose would have
been left behind them.

Their journey out had been so long and its
expense so great that, on taking an invoice of
their possessions on starting on the return jour-
ney, they found that they had available for traffic
with the Indians only six blue robes, one scarlet

n I STORY OF WASHINGTON.

robe, one United States artillery hat and coat,
five robes made from the national ensign, and
a few old clothes trimmed with ribbons. Upon
this scant store mnst they depend for pnrchas-
ing provisions and horses, and paying tribute
to stubborn chieftains through whose domin-
ions they might pass on their long homeward
journey.

On their return they proceeded up the south
side of the Columbia, coming unexpectedly
upon a large river flowing into it from the
south. On an island at its month was a
large Indian village called " Multnomah,"
which name they understood to apply to the
river they h^d discovered, of the course of
which they made careful inquiry. The result
of these inquiries was noted in the map of the
expedition, making the river tu flow from Cali-
fornia to the north and west, and the Indian
tribes that actually resided on tlie waters of
Snake river to reside upon its banks. Their
journey up stream was far more tedious witli
their canoes than had been their passage down
owing to the numerous rapids aud cascades; and
at the mouth what they called Lapage river —
now "John Day" — they abandoned their canoes
and packing their baggage on the backs of a few
horses that they had purchased from the In-
dians proceeded up the southern bank of the
Columbia on foot. Crossing the Umatilla river,
called by them the You-ma-lo-law, they arrived
at the mouth of the Walla Walla on the 27th
day t)f April.

The greatest Indian chief of tlie Pacific coast,
at that time, if not indeed of all tradition, was
then at the head of the Walla nation. His
name was Yellept. The story of his life and
death, as handed down by the traditions of his
people, is of the most thrilling and romantic
character, but belongs rather to such writings
as Cooper's than to the sober chronicles of history.
This powerful chieftain received the company
with most generous hospitality, which charmed
the travelers into some lingering before they
ventured farther into the wild gorges of the
mountains. The jiuirnal of the expedition re-

cords the kindness of the>e Indians with many
appreciative words and closes its notice of them
by saying: " We may indeed justly aflirm that
of all the Indians that we have seen since leav-
ing the United States the Walla Wallas were
the most hospitable, honest and sincere."

Leaving these hospitable people on the 29th
of April the party passed eastward on the great
" Tsez Perces trail." This trail was the great
highway of the Walla Wallas, Cayuses and Nez
Perces eastward to the buffalo ranges, to which
they an]iually resorted for game supplies. It
passed up the valley of the Touchet, called by
Lewis and Clarke the "White Stallion," thence
over the high prairie ridges, and down the
Alpowa to the crossing of Snake river, then up
the north bank of Clearwater to the village of
Twisted Hair, where tiie exploring party had left
their horses on tlieir way down the previous
autumn. It was worn deep and broad, and in
many stretches on the open plains and over the
smooth hills twenty horsemen could ride abreast
in the parallel paths worn by the constant rush
of the Indian generations from time immemo-
rial. The writer has often passed over it when
it lay exactly as it did when the triljcs of
Yellept and Twisted Hair traced its sinuous
courses, or when Lewis and Clarke and their
companions first marked it with the heel of
civilization. But the plow has long since oblit-
erated it, and where the monotonous song of
the Indian's march was droningly chanted for
so many barbaric ages, the song of the reaper
thrills the clear air as he comes to his garner
bringing in the sheaves. A more delightful
ride of a hundred and fifty miles than this that
the company of Lewis and Clarke made over
the swelling prairie upland and along the crys-
tal streams between AYalla Walla and the village
of Twisted Hair, in the soft May days of 1806,
can scarcely be found anywhere on earth.

For the purposes of this narrative it is not
necessary to trace the explorations of these trav-
elers farther, interesting as they would be, for
they scarcely belong directly to this history.
With the usual adventures of explorers in the

HISTORY OF M'AsUINOTOy.

unfrequented regions which tliey traversed tliey
followed homeward the path of their ontward
advance, and reached St. Louis on the 25tli of
September, 1806, having been absent nearly two
years and a half.

Their safe return to the United States sent a
thrill of rejoicing through the country. Mr.
Jefferson, the great patron and inspirer of the
expedition, says of it:

" Never did a similar event excite more joy
throughout the United States. The humblest
of our citizens had taken a lively interest in the
issue of this journey, and looked forward with
impatience to the information it would furnish.
Their anxieties, too, for the safety of the corps
had been kept in a state of excitement by lugu-
brious rumors, circulated from time to time on
uncertain authorities, and uncontradicted by
letters, or other direct information, from the
time they had left the Mandan towns on their
ascent up the river in April of the preceding
year, 1805, until their actual return to St. Louis.

Captain Lewis, soon after his return, was
appointed governor of Louisiana, and Captain
Clarke was made general of militia of the same
Territory and Indian agent for the vast region
he had so successfully explored. Eoth had per-
formed inestimable services for their country and
were well worthy of generous reward. For
themselves they had achieved a lasting fame.
Their names will be remembered as long as the
crystal waters of " Clarke's fork " or deep flow
of " Lewis river " roll to the Pacific sea.

There is another incident of exploration
which, perhaps, should have a place in our narra-
tive, and which may appear here, jiarenthet-
ically, as suitably as elsewhere.

The name of Captain Jonathan Carver, of
Connecticut, who, ten years before the Ameri-
can revolution, visited the regions of the upper
Mississippi, has become connected with the his-
tory of the Northwest, not so much from what
he really did in the way of exploration and dis-
covery as for what he desired or intended to do.
Captain Carver has won some credit in the war
against the French in which England has

wrested from France her American possessions,
and was inspired with zeal to establish English
ascendency over the entire northern part of the
American continent. From all that appears
Carver's actual travels were limited to a visit to
the regions of the upper Mississippi, which he
reached by the way of Detroit and Michilimack-
inac. His object, as stated in the introduction
to his book, which was published in London, in
1778, was: "After gaining a knowledge of the
manners, customs, languages, soil, and natural
productions of the different nations that inhabit
the region back of the Mississippi, to ascertain
the breadth of the vast continent which extends
from the Atlantic to the Pacitic oceans, in its
broadest part, between the forty-third and forty-
sixth degrees of northern latitude. Had I been
able to accomplish this, I intended to have pro-
posed to the Government to establish s post in
some of these parts, about the strait of Anian,
which, having been discovered by Sir Francis
Drake, of course belongs to the English. This,
1 am convinced, would greatly facilitate the
discovery of a northwest passage, or a commu-
nication between Hudson's Bay and the Pacific
ocean." Being unable to prosecute his pur-
pose and to proceed " to the headwaters of the
Great River of the "West, which falls into the
strait of Anian," he gathered what little infor-
mation he could from the tribes with whom he
came in contact; made somewhat large extracts
from French journals and histories, and gave
all to the world under the title of Travels
Throughout the Interior Parts of North Amer-
ica in 1766-'68." A notice of his work be-
longs to these pages only because of a brief
reference to the "Great River of the West,"
and the fact that he, so far as can be ascertained,
first uses the word "Oregon" as the name of the
somewhat mythical "Great River."

It is due to history, perhaps, that we tran-
scribe the brief passage in which he speaks of
the great stream which he thus designates. It
is as follows:

"From these nations [called by him Nando-
the Assinopolis, and the Killislionorsj,

UI8T0RT OF WASHINGTON.

togetlier with my own observations, I have
learned that the four most capital rivers of
North America, — the St. Lawrence, the Missis-
sippi, the river Bourbon, and tiie Oregon, or
Eiver of the West, have their sources in the
same neighborliood. The waters of the three
former are within thirty miles of each other;
the latter, known as rather farther w«st. This
shows that these parts are the highest in North
America; and it is an instance not to be paral-
leled in the other three-quarters of the world,
that four rivers of such magnitude should take
their rise together, and each, after running sep-
arate courses, discharge their waters into differ-
ent oceans, at a distance of 2,000 miles from
their sources; for in their passage from this
spot to the bay of St. Lawrence, east, to the
bay of Mexico, south, to Hudson's bay, north,
and to the bay at the straits of Anian, west,
— each of these traverse upward 2,000 miles.''

It would hardly seem to the historian of the
present, that there was enough in this para-
graph, which embraces all Carver says respect-
ing the Oregon, or the "Great Eiver of the
West," to associate his name in any way with
Oregon history, and there really is not, except
for his first using the name "Oregon." Though
iiis use of that name was not such as clearly to
identify it with the river whose mouth was dis-
covered by Captain Gray in 1792, and which
he appropriately called the Columbia, it really
did furnish the name for this vast region west-
ward of the Rocky mountains, lying between the
42d degree of latitude and 54° 40', and includ-
ing tiie present three great northwestern States
of the American Union. Carver gives no ac-
count of the origin of the name Oregon, and no
authority for its use, and up to this time no
research has been able to discover them. There
is little doubt but that it was invented by Car-
ver, and that it has no historic or scientific sig-
nificance whatever, except that it is associated
with the mythical Great River of the West, and
from that passed to represent the vast country
through which it was believed to fiow. At

length Bryant made it classic in his Thanatop-
sis when he sang of

"The continuous wood where rolls the Oregon,
And hears no sound save its own dashing."

So we trust to be jjardoned for not pursuing a
wearying investigation into the derivation or
meaning of the name Oregon, since all the
studies of antiquarians have failed to do more
than reach the conclusion we have announced
in a single sentence.

These two early expeditions, that by Macken-
zie in 1772, under the auspices of a company
wholly British, and that of Lewis & Clarke in
1805-'06, under the direction of the Government
of tlie United States, are, perhaps, the only ex-
peditions across the American continent entitled
to be classed as exploring. Those that followed
these entered more into the fabric of the history
of the regions by them brought to the knowl-
edge of the civilized world; and they will, as
far as necessary, be treated of as such in their
proper places. If any exception to this is al-
lowed it should refer to the expeditions of Cap-
tain Fremont, to which, as they were under the
auspices and at the expense of the United States
Government, it seems proper that a brief refer-
ence shall be made. They had for their oliject
geographical and topographical information in
relation to Oregon.

John C. Fremont was a member of the Corps
of Topographical Engineers of the United States,
appointed from civil life, and hence not enter-
ing that service through the door of West Point.
He was restlessly ambitious, in love with adven-
ture and anxious to distinguish himself. For
his fame he fell on auspicious times. Public
attention was strongly directed toward Oregon.
He solicited an appointment to the command
of an expedition, which he had devised himself
to explore and map out the country west of Mis-
souri as far as the South Pass in the Rocky
mountains. In accordance with his request
Colonel J. J. Abert, chief of the Corps of the
Topographical Engineers, ordered the expedition
and gave its command to Captain Fremont. As

iii.sroRy OF wAsuiNoroN.

this expecJitioii of 1842 had little more to do
witli Oregon than to prepare the way for the one
of tlie loliowiug year whicli was continued in
force to tlie Dalles of the Columbia, and by Cap-
tain Fremont himself to Fort Vancouver, we
can dismiss it with this brief reference.

The second expedition, that of 1843, like that
of the preceding year, was organized at Captain
Fremont's own solicitation. He dictated its
object, marked out its route and selected its
personnel. Its object was to connect his own
survey of tiie previous year, which reached as far
west as the South Pass, with that of Commander
Wilkes on the coast of the Pacific ocean. He
selected a company of thirty-three men, princi-
pally of Creole and Canadian French, with a
few Americans, and, leaving Kansas landing on
the Missouri river on the 29th of May, reached
the termination of his former reconnoissance in
the South Pass, by the way of the Kansas, Ar-
kansas and upper Platte rivers, passing over the
spot where Denver now is, on the 13th of Au-
gust. Here he entered Oregon, making this
frank record: that "the broad, smooth highway
where the numerous heavy wagons of the emi-
grants had entirely beaten and crushed the
artemisia, was a liappy exchange to our poor
animals for the sharp rocks and tough shrubs
among which they had been toiling so long."
This, it will be remembered, was the great emi-
gration of 1843, and Cajitain F'remont makes
no claim in his reports to have had anything to
do with pioneering its way or contributing to its
safe conduct, as his was a purely scientific and
topographical expedition, and, in pursuance of
these purposes often led him far aside from
the road of the emigrants. We speak of this in
simple justice, as some writers have ridiculed
him as claiming to be the " pathfinder" to OrCr
gon, — a claim which he nowhere makes, but which
was only a political catch-word of his friends
when he was the first candidate of the liepublir
can )>arty for president of the United States It
was like "Fifty-four forty or fight" of the can-
didacy of Mr. Polk in 1844, although it did not
serve so successfully its purpose as that.

From the South Pass Captain Fremont con-
tinued his course along the well-beaten emigrant
road to Green river and then to Bear river,
making careful annotations of the topography
and geology of the country over which he
passed. His exhaustive description of the lo-
cality and character of Soda or Beer Spi-ings has
been the authority of all writers on the topogra-
phy and mineralogy of that region from that
day to this. It is worth observing that his as-
tronomical observations here place Soda Springs
in latitude 42° 39' 57", or less than fifty miles
north of what was then Mexico, and conse-
quently the same distance in Oregon. These
are the " Soda springs" now on the line of the
Union Pacific railroad in eastern Idaho.

The intention of Captain Fremont being to
explore the Great Salt Lake, which up to this
time had been almost a myth so far as science
was concerned, about five miles west of Soda
Springs he turned to the left, while the emi-
grant road bore away over the hills to the right,
and, after ten days' travel, mainly down the Bear
River valley, on the afternoon of September 5th
encamped on the shore of a great salt marsh
which he correctly concluded must be the margin
of the lake. He reached the bed of the lake
near the mouth of the Bear river, but skirted
along it to the south until he reached the mouth
of Weber river, near which the party encamped
and made preparations for an exploration of
some portions of the lake in an infiated india^
rubber boat. Finally, on the morning of Sep-
tember 9, the party launched out on the then
calm surface of this ocean-like se^, aijd about
noon reached the shore of an island where they
remained that and the following day.

The account given by Fremont of Salt Lake
and its surroundings is exceedingly particular
and interesting, but of too great length for these
pages. He remained upon the lake until the
12th of September, when he resumed his jour-
ney toward the Columbia, returning along the
line of his previous travel. His company was
entirely out of food, making one snpper out of
sea-gulls, which Kit Carson had killed near the

BISTORT OF Washington:

lake. Another evening Captain Fremont re-
cords the fact that hunger made his people very
quiet and peaceable, and there was rarely an oath
to be heard in the camp. Certainly those ac-
quainted with the habits of the men of the
mountains and plains in those days will believe
these must have been very hungry. He restored
them to gayety, and probably profanity too, by
permitting them " to kill a fat young horse"
which he had pui-chased of the Snake Indians.
Their course led northward, through the range
of monntains that divide the Great Basin of
Salt Lake from the waters that flow to the Pa-
cific through the Snake and Columbia rivers.
From these mountains they emerged into the
valley of what he calls the Pannack river, other-
wise known as the Raft river, down which they
followed until they emerged on the plains of
Snake river in view of the " Three Buttes," the
most prominent landmarks of these great plains,
and reached Snake river on the evening of Sep-
tember 22d, a few miles above the American
Falls.

From this point the reconnoissance of Captain
Fremont was down the valley of Snake river,
along the course afterward so familiar to the
emigrants, sweeping to the south along the foot
of the Goose Creek mountains several miles
distant from Snake river for all the distance in
which it runs throngh the deeply cut basaltic
gorge, in which are situated its greatest curiosi-
ties, the Twin Falls and the great Shoshone
Falls, the existence of both of which was un-
known to white men until ten years later than
Captain Fremont's explorations. He crossed
the river, to the north side some miles below
" Fishing" or Salmon Falls, thence to the Boise
river, striking that stream near the present site
of Boise City, and via old Fort Boise, where he
recrossed the Snake river to the south, and so
westward through Powder river valley and
Grande Ronde valley to the Columbia river,
which he reached at Walla Walla, now Wallala,
on the 25th day of October. In this entire dis-
tance many careful and frequent astronomical
observations were taken, latitudes and longitudes

were fixed, and the country very accurately de-
scribed topographically. The only part of this
stage of his journey on which Captain Fremont
did not follow the usual route of the emigrants,
was from near where La Grande now stands in
Grande Ronde valley, over the Blue mountains,
to where Milton is now located on the Walla
Walla river Just below where it issues from the
mountains. Here he sought a new route, pass-
ing the head of the Umatilla river to the east
and north; but, though he succeeded in forcing
his way throngh the Blue range there, it has
not been adopted as a feasible line of general
travel.

Fremont continued his journey down the
banks of the Columbia, and on the 4th of No-
vember reached The Dalles. Leaving most of
his party at this point. Captain Fremont himself
continued his journey down the river, and in a
few days reached Vancouver, where his westward
journey terminated.

The reception Mr. Fremont met at the hands
of Dr. McLoughlin, at that time governor of
the Hudson's Bay Company, was such as that
eminently hospitable and courteous gentleman
always extended to those who visited that place.
The record made by Captain Fremont fully
evinces this, and is like the common record of
visitors there. He says: " I immediately waited
on Dr. McLoughlin, the executive oificer of the
Hudson's Bay Company west of the Rocky
mountains, who received me with the courtesy
and hospitality for which he has been eminently
distinguished, and which makes a forcible and
delightful impression on a traveler from the
long wilderness from which we had issued. I
was immediately supplied by him with tlie
necessary stores and provisions to refit and sup-
port my party in our contemplated winter jour-
ney to the States." Dr. McLoughlin also fur-
nished Captain Fremont with a letter of recom-
mendation and credit for any oflicers of the
Hudson's Bay Company into whose posts he
might be driven by unexpected misfortune.

As an item of history recorded by Captain
Fremont at this time the following is worth the

IIISToItY OP WASHINGTON.

qiKiting, ;)s it reveals Dr. Mc.Lougliliirs treat-
ment of the emigrants in a soinewiiat different
and niuie honorable light than that iu which
some writers have presented it. Mr. Fremont
says: •■ I found many einii^rants at the fort,
others iiad already crossed over into their land
of promise — the Willamette valley. Others
were daily arriving, and all of them had been
furnished with shelter so far as it could be af-
forded by the buildings of the establishment.
Necessary clothing and provisions (the latter to
be afterward returned in kind from the produce
of their labor) were also furnished. This
, friendly assistance was of very great value to
the emigrants, whose families were otherwise
exposed to iriuch suffering in the winter rains
which had now commenced, at the same time
that they were in want of all the common neces-
saries of life." This record is honorable both
to the man who made it and the man of whom
it was made, especially when we consider that
the relations of the two governments of which
they were severally representative citizens, and
in some sense official representatives, were then
in the stress of urgent and somewhat strained
diplomatic controversy over the very country in
which they had met.

Completing the outfit for his proposed winter
journey toward the States, Captain Fremont re-
turned up the Columbia to The Dalles, arriving
at that place on the afternoon of the 18th of
Novemlier. From this point he proposed to be-
gin his return expedition. The route selected
would lead him southward, east of the Cascade
range, clear through the territory of the United
States, and then, by a south and eastward wheel,
through the Mexican territory, including a con-
tinued survey of the valley of the Great Salt
lake, back again to the frontiers of Missouri.
Those acquainted with the region he expected
to travel need not be told that few explorers
ever ventured on a more perilous expedition
than was this at the season of the year in which
he iindertook it. The country was unknown,
except that it was a vast region of bleak and
open deserts, of vast and rocky ranges of niount-

I ains; that its inhabitants were among the low-
est and most savage of human beings, and that
there was in it little that could be used for the
support of life. It was a bold, brave venture
these men made.

It was the 25th day of November before
they were ready to set out from The Dalles. Up
to this point, besides a mountain howitzer,
some wheeled vehicles had been brought with
them, but the last, except the howitzer, were
here abandoned, and in flurries of snow they
took leave of the Columbia river and turned
away into the great southern wilderness.

Their route lay high up on the eastern slope
of the Cascade mountains, at times touching
the points of timber that project eastward along
the rocky cliffs, or in the gorges of the streams.
Proceeding southward they passed between the
Des Chutes river and the mountain range,
across the Tigli river and over the Tigh prairie,
finding that high and sandy plain covered with
snow, with the thermometer on the 27th at two
degrees live minutes l)elow zero. On the 29th
they passed the Hot Springs, near which are
now the buildings of the Warm Springs Indian
Agency. From the elevated plain to the south
of Warm Springs river, Fremont records the
view of six of the great snowy peaks of the
mountains at one time. He makes the mistake
that nearly all the travelers of that day made of
recording St. Helen's as one of the peaks visible
from the various points east of the main range,
whereas there is no place on the eastern plains
from which it can be seen. Doubtless the
summit of Mount Adams, which can be seen
from many points, was mistaken for the former.
On the 5th of December their route led them
somewhat down from the mountain slope to the
main branch of the Des Chutes river, crossing it
the next day; and after a day or two more
crossed it and entered on the high plateau which
separates the waters of the Columbia from those
which flow westward and southward, and en-
camped on Klamath lake, on the evening of
December 12. They were now nearly on the
line betwejn the territory of the United States

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

and that of Mexico, and consequently we sliall
not follow their explorations fnrther. Yet it is
proper that we remark that Captain Fremont
continued on to the southward amid ever in-
creasing difficuities of travel on account of the
roughness of the mountains and the depth of
accumulating snows, until he was forced to at-
tempt the passage of the Sierra Nevada mount-
ains into the valley of the Sacramento. He
hegan this eifort on the 3d day of February,
and after a chapter of hardships which have few
parallels in the history of explorations, reached
Sutter's Fort, in California, on the 8th day of
March, 1844.

The publication of the journal of these ex-
peditions of Captain Fremont, in 1845, awak-
ened a niucli deeper interest in the Paciiic coast
than ever before existed, and his descriptions
of the route from the Missouri river to Fort
Vancouver, in the very heart of the Paciiic
northwest, was of great value to the emigrations
that crossed the plains from 1843 onward. His
descriptions were remarkably accurate, and his
maps of the routes traveled most scientifically
correct, and-these considerations entitle his ex-
plorations to this brief reference in a history of
the Northwest.

CHAPTER V.

RIVAL CLAIMS AND PRETENSIONS.

Claims of European Nations — Claims of Spain— Rctssian Enterprise — Edict of Pope Alex-
ander — Mazy Boundaries — Extent of the Old Spanish Claim — Of the French Claim —
Parties to the Struggle CnANaED — France and Great Britain — Results of the War of
1759 to France — State of the Case — What the United States Purchased — Claims of
Great Britain — Tedious Diplomacy — Two Treaties at Once — Negotiations of 1807 —
Of 1813 — "Joint Occupancy" Treaty— Britain the Advantage — Influence of Sir
Alexander McKenzie — Session of Congress in 1820-'21 — First Proposition for the
Settlement of Oregon — "Oregon Question" — Senator Benton's Bill— Propositions of
1828 — Joint Occupancy Renewed — Webster- Ashburton Treaty — The Boundary Question
Adjourned — Treaty Ratified and Proclaimed — Taken up by the People — Two Views —
Views of Rufus Choate — Senator Benton's Speech — Benton's Bill Passes the Senate.

THE claims of the European nations to
ownership of the lands and resources of
America rested on a somewhat flimsy
basis in right. Its morality was that of
might. There was a quasi yielding to these
claims as against each other on grounds of dis-
covery and formal occupancy. At the same
time not one of these powers stopped for a
moment to consider what rights of the people
that were found there when they came would
be violated by their assumptions. Barbaric
natioTis never had any rights that nations call-
ing themselves civilized have felt bound to
respect. England, France and Spain were, as

relates to what were termed barbaric nations,
the freebooters of the world. America was a
field for civilized rapine worthy of the struggle
of these racial giants. Under some fonns of
treaty, designed mostly by either party to limit
the pretensions of the other, but as far as pos-
sible leaving itself free to enlarge its own claims
as it might have power to enforce them, these
powers moved forward, first in the agreed di-
vision of the area of North America among
themselves, and then in using the allotted areas
as the small change that settled the balances of
peace and war in Continental Europe. Pleni-
potentiaries sat in European capitals, 5,000

UISTOBT OF WASHINGTON.

miles away from tlie regions most interested,
and arbitrated American destinies. In this
way America became tiie real, though passive,
ai-biter of the world's new era. It was what
Providence had thrown into tlie balances of
history to poise ultimately its beam for the
equities and liberties of humanity. Let us see
how the question stood 200 years after the
Spanish navigator had lifted the veil of the sea
from the fair face of this new laud.

When the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, gave
some definition to the claims of France and
Spain and Russia in the New World, Spain
claimed as her share of North America all the
Pacific coast from Panama to Nootka sound,
or Vancouver island. Her pretentions cov-
ered the coasts, bays, islands, fisheries, and ex-
tended inland indefinitely. Part of this claim
was alleged on the ground of discovery by the
heroic De Soto and others; and all of tliem
were based on discovery under the papal bull
of Alexander VI, in 1493. The bull or decree
gave to the discoverer all newly discovered
lands and waters. In 1530 Balboa, the Span-
iard, discovered the Pacific ocean as he came
over the Isthmus of Panama, and so in har-
mony with the pretentious decree of Alexander
VI Spain assumed rights of proprietorship
over it. France held advantageous positions in
America for the mastery of the continent; but
as they were outside of the limits of what was
afterward known as "Oregon" they need not be
discussed. Russia at this time held no posses-
sions in North America. But Peter the Great
was her emperor, and his plans were already
matured for entering the list of contestants for
empire in the New World. Before his plans
could be fully consummated Peter the Great
had died, and his widow, Catherine, was on the
throne of Muscovy. With an enterprise not
less aggressive than his, she pushed forward his
plans of commercial and territorial aggrandize-
ment until northern Asia as well as northern
Europe had been made commercially tributary
to the designs of Russia. It was but a step
from the Asiatic shores of the northern Pa-

cific to those of the American mainland of
Alaska, and Russia was in a position to take
that one step. The fur trade furnished the oc
casion. Prominent, if not indeed chief, among
the agents of Russian aggression in this direc-
tion was Behring the Dane, who made three
voyages through the straits that now bear his
name, and on the third gave up his life on a
desolate little granite island whose name still
monuments his memory. But he, and those as-
sociated with him, had given, by visitation and
trade, a color of title to Russia to this North-
western America.

At this time England made absolutely no
pretense to territorial or even commercial rights
on the Pacific coast, and none on the American
continent anywhere except on the Atlantic
slope from Charlestown to Peuol)SCot north-
ward, and inland to the watershed of the AUe-
ghanies.

Thus stood the pretended foreign ownership
of the New World at the conclusion of the
treaty of Ryswick in 1697. The intelligent
reader cannot but have observed how shadowy
were these pretensions, and how vague in terri-
torial limits, but they were the basis of claims
that afterward became more tangible and real,
and in their ultimate settlement cost long con-
tinued struggles of the ablest diplomats of the
world, and were no mean elements in setting
nations in array of arms against each other.

Though it would be deeply interesting to trace
the movements of the struggling forces that
sought for mastery ou this " Armageddon " of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, our
limits preclude much more than the merest out-
line, and this confined to what relates to the
subject of our history. In doing this we must
refer ohce'more to the edict of Pope Alexander
VI, who, on the 4th of May, 1493, immediately
after the return of Columbus from his voyage of
discovery, published a bull in which he drew an
imaginary line from the north pole to the south,
a hundred leagues west of the Azores, assigning
to the Spanish all that lay west of that bound-
ary, and confirming to Portugal all that lay

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

east of it. One can scarcely fail to recall an
incident that occurred on a mountain of Galilee
about fourteen centuries earlier, when a land-
less pi-etender drew the vision of the Christ to
all the kingdoms of the world, and all the glory
of them, and said, "All these things will I give
thee, if thou will fall down and worship me."

"While the act of Alexander VI had as little
authority as the other, it did have a greater in
fluence on those to whom it was made, and
Spain and Portugal, in the glory of discovery
and in the pompous " gift " of the JPope, ruled
the splendid hour. In the strain of the spirit of
that earlier hour when St. Augustine, Florida,
was founded, and the bigoted Philip II was pro-
claimed monarch of all Korth America, this
edict was made. Such, also, was the supersti-
tions awe with wiiich the pretensions of the
Pope were then regarded in Europe that this
edict did very much to control the actions of
all the powers of that continent in regard to the
New World. Of course very little was known
of the geography of America at this time, and
there could really have been no prescience of
the great part it was to play in the future his-
tory of the world. Something, therefore, of the
indifference with which these pretences were
viewed mnst be set down to this fact.

Through the maze of boundary lines, fixed on
imaginary maps by the negotiations of contend-
ing parties, rather than run by the compass on
the solid earth, and which involved to a greater
or less extent the ultimate title to this whole
region, we shall not attempt to lead our read-
ers. It is sufficient to say that France and En-
gland began to crowd Spain southwardly and
westwardly on the eastern slope of the conti-
nent.

France had established some mythical right
to "the western part of Louisiana," which she
secretly conveyed to Spain in 1762. Thirty-
eight years thereafter Spain reconveyed the same
to France. In 1803 France sold the same terri-
tory to the United States, and practically dis-
appeared from the list of contestants for the
possession of the empire on the western conti-

nent. Spain, however, still held Florida, but
when in 1819 the United States purchased that,
she also disappeared from the same list, the
rights and claims of both having passed into
the hands of the United States.

It is important that we now restate the fact
that the old Spanish claim, which had been ac-
corded some international authority, extended
on the Pacific from Panama to Prince William
sound, and this entirely covered, not only the
Oregon of to-day, but Oregon, Washington,
Idaho, and British Columbia of to-day up to
54' 40". Presumptuous as it was, this claim
became one of the most determining elements
in the final settlement of what is historically
known as the "Oregon question."

The claims of France to American territory
were hardly less ambitious and pretentious than
those of Spain. They covered more than the
size of all Europe. The treaty of Ryswick con-
ceded these claims. But the peace of liyswick
was brief. War soon followed, and the titles to
empire were written again by the point of the
sword.

Though the parties to the struggle for the
possession of the country of the Pacific North-
west had changed, yet the struggle went on.
Little of it was in the territory in question. It
was in the plots and counterplots of European
capitals: in Paris and Loudon and St. Peters-
burg. It was about the tables of diplomats.
Within sixteen years of Ryswick came Utrecht,
when the issues of war between France and Eng-
land, waged chiefly in North America, brought
Anne of England and Louis XIV of France face
to face in the persons of their embassadors. The
aged and humbled Louis XIV gave up to Great
Britain the possessions of France on the Atlantic
slope, and tlius yielded the morale of position
to the Saxon. Thus Great Britain became re-
instated in place of France over the Hudson's
Bay basin. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. But
France still held the Canadas, though they were
sandwiched between the northern and southern
possessions of (xreat Britain. The grain be-
tween the upper and nether millstones could re-

niSrOBT OF WASHINGTON.

main unbrokeo when the stones were whirring
as easily as these French provinces could j-emain
in peace in sucli a position. In the struggles
that followed the execution of fhe treaty of
Utrecht in the old world and in the new, more and
more the tide of battle turned against France and
in favor of England. At last the culmination of
events came. In Montcalm and Wolfe the
hopes, and even in a large measure the destinies
of France and England, were impersonated.
When they looked into each other's faces at
Quebec, standing at tiie head of their armies on
that great September morn in 1759, each felt
that was the morn of duty — the moru of destiny
for themselves and for their country. The issue
of that day on the Plains of Abraham gave each
general to immortal fame, but it gave to Eng-
land all the territorial treasures of France east
of the Mississippi, except three small islands off
the coast of Newfoundland. Had France not
already, by secret treaty with Spain, executed
about one hundred days before the great transfer
to Great Britain, alienated her Paciiic coast pos ■
sessions. Great Britain would have taken all, and
this would so have changed (he relations of things
that the atlas of the world would have had an
entirely different lineing. Either the whole must
have gone without controversy to the United
States of America at the close of the Kevolution,
or the title of Great Britain would have been
conceded and unquestionable to all the territory
between California and the Eussian possession.
In either event the story of the history of this
coast would have been quite another book.

With the transfer of all the claims of France
and Spain to the territory on the Paciiic coast to
the United States, which was concluded in 1803,
it would seem that there was no rightful con-
testant with the United States for any portion
of that territory, — certainly not as far north as
the 49th degree of latitude. None had appeared
in the negotations through which this transfer
was made. The state of the case seems to have
been this: In the treaty of Utrecht in 1713,
between the English and the French, the bound-
arv between Louisiana and the British territory

north of it was fixed by commissioners appointed
under it to run from the Lake of the Woods
westward on latitude forty-nine indefinitely.
When France conveyed the territory of Louis-
iana, whose line had been thus fixed, to Spain in
1762, she also conveyed up to and along this
same line westward, indefinitely, on to the Pacific
coast. If she did not convey to the coast, it was
because Spain already had a more ancient claim
than herself along the coast. When Spain, in
1800, reconveyed the same to France, it was, in
the language of the third article of the treaty:
"The colony or province of Louisiana, with the
same extent which it now has in the hands of
Spain and which it had when France possessed
it." As Spain had not alienated any of the
territory she had received from France, of course
she retroceded to that power all that she had re-
ceived from her. When, therefore, the United
States made the purchase of Louisiana she pur-
chased clear through to the Pacific on the line
of the 49th parallel if that was a part of the
original cession of France to Spain, or, if not, as
Spain had never ceded it to another power, then
to the Spanish possessions on the Pacific. It
was then either American territory, made such
by the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, or it was
still Spanish territory. From 1800 to 1819
Spain made no changes of ownership, sov-
ereignty or jurisdiction touching this territory.
In the "Florida Treaty" of 1819, Spain ceded to
the United States all her possessions north of a
line beginning at the mouth of the Sabine in the
Gulf of Mexico and running variously north and
west until it reached the Pacific m latitude forty-
two, or the southern boundary of Oregon. The
third article of the treaty said: "His Catholic
Majesty cedes to the United States all his rights,
claims and pretensions to any territory east and
north of said line, and for himself, his heirs and
successors renounces all claims to the said ter-
ritory forever." Therefore, by the purchase of
1803 from France and by the purshase of 1819
from Spain, the United States gained all pre-
tended titles to sovereignty on the Pacific coast
between the forty-second and the forty-ninth

HISTORY OF WASniNOTON.

parallels of north latitude, — the exact Pacilio
limits of the earlier Oregon. England at this
time advanced no claim to 80verei(i;nty. As late
as 1826 and 1827 her plenipotentiaries formally
said; -'Great Britain claims no exclusive sover-
eignty over any portion of that territory. The
present claim, not in respect to any part bnt to
the whole, is limited to a right of joint oc-
cupancy in common with the other States, leaving
the ri^iht of exclusive dominion in abeyance."
This, with the history already recounted, leaves
the title of the United States to Oregon beyond
any question of doubt. And with this statement
our reader will be willing to follow us through
the story of diplotnatic negotiations between the
United States and Great Britain in regard to the
"Oregon question" as well as the actions of the
National Legislature through the quarter of a
century during which Great Britain succeeded,
in some way, in so beclouding the title of the
United States to the territory in question and
in bewildering our diplomats as to well nigh
secure this vast Pacific empire to the crown.
We shall make this story as brief as we reason-
ably can, and be faithful to the facts of history
concerning it. The diplomacy was tedious and
intricate, and the action, tentative or completed,
of the American Congress, often doubtful and
inconsequent; yet a careful resiime of both is a
need of this history.

Negotiations by the United States with Spain
or France in regard to this country are now at
an end. Henceforth they will be with Great
Britain.

At the precise moment tiie United States
was negotiating the treaty with France, in Paris,
for the acquisition of Louisiana, her commis-
sioners were also negotiating one in London
for the definition of the boundary line between
the possessions of the two countries in the
Northwest. The negotiators of the two treaties
were each ignorant of the action of the others.
When the two treaties were remitted to the
Senate of the United States for ratification, that
for tiie purchase of Louisiana from France was
ratified without restriction. That defining the

northwest boundary was ratified with the ex-
ception of the fifth article, which fixed the
boundary between the Lake of the Woods to the
head of the Mississippi. The treaty was sent
back to London, the article expunged, and then
the British Government refused to ratify it.

In the year 1807, another effort was made at
negotiation between the two countries. A
treaty was agreed upon by the commissioners,
tixitig the line of the forty-ninth parallel as the
boundary between the territory oF the two
countries as far as their possessions might ex-
tend, but with a proviso making this provision
inapplicable west of the Rocky mountains.
This treaty was never ratified, Mr. Jefferson re-
jecting it without reference to the Senate.

In the treaty signed at Ghent, in 1814, the
British plenipotentiarie.s offered the same arti-
cles in relation to the boundaries in question as
were offered in 1803 and 1807, but nothing
could be agreed upon; and hence no provision
on the subject was inserted in that treaty.

In 1818 negotiations upon this subject were
renewed in London. The plenipotentiaries of
Great Britain, Mr. Goulborne and Mr. Robin-
son, for the first time in all the negotiations,
gave the grounds of the pretensions of Great
Britain to the country in controversy. They
asserted that " former voyages, and principally
that of Captain Cook, gave to Great Britain
the rights derived from discovery; and they al-
luded to purchases from the natives south of the
Columbia, which they alleged to have been made
prior to the American Revolution. They made
no formal proposition for a boundary, l>ut inti-
mated that the Columbia river itself was the
most convenient that could be adopted, and de-
clared that they would not agree upon any
boundary that did not give England the harbor
at the mouth of that river in common with the
United States. Messrs. Gallatin and Rush, the
American plenipotentiaries, made a moderate if
not a timid reply to the intimations of Great
Britain. The final conclnsions reached on this
suljject were announced in these words: ' That
any country claimed by either on the northwest

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

coast of Ameriua, together with its harbors,
bays, and creeks, and the navigation of all riv-
ers within the same, be frue and open, for the
term of ten years, to the subjects, citizens and
vessels of the two powers, without prejudice to
any claim which either party might have to any
part of the country." This was the celebrated
" Joint Occupancy " treaty.

It must be confessed that the adoption of this
article of " joint occupancy " gave Great Brit-
ain a decided advantage in the Oregon contro-
versy. First, it conceded that she had some
sort of a claim to the country, a claim that
stood for no less, even if it stood for no more,
than that of the United States. Secondly, she
was on the ground in much greater force in her
Hudson's Bay Company and her Northwest Com-
pany, united into one of the strongest commer-
cial corporations in the world, and having all
the elements in itself of political propagandism.
With her advantages in trade, her strong semi-
political occupation of the country by the Hud-
son's Bay Company, Messrs. Gallatin and Rush
should have known that she would be able to
drive all American enterprises from the country
before the ten years were gone. Great Britain
knew this; intended to do so, and did it. One
of the wonders of the historian is that such a
treaty could ever have been approved Ijj an
American president, or ratified l)y the Senate
of the United States.

In the history and results of this negotiation,
it is easy to detect the influence of the advice
of Sir Alexander Mackenzie — whose journey
across the continent to the Pacific nortli of the
forty-ninth parallel we have already recorded —
over the minds of the British negotiators. He
proposed the forty-fifth parallel of latitude as
the boundary between the possessions of Great
Britain and the United States west of tlie Mis-
sissippi. His words were: " Let the line begin
where it may on the Mississi|)pi, it must con-
tinue west until it terminates in the Pacific
ocean to the south of the Columbia river." It
was this purpose which plainly dominated the

British plenipotentiaries in the propositions
they made to the United States.

Tlie session of the Congress of the United
States for 1820-'21 was made remarkable, es-
pecially in the light of subsequent events, as
the first at which any proposition was made for
the occupation and settlement of the country
acquired from France and Spain on the Colum-
bia river. It was made by John Floyd, a
representative from Virginia, an ardent and
very able man, and strongly imbued with west-
ern feelings. His attention was specially called
to the subject by some essays of Thomas H.
Benton, just then appearing in the field of
national politics as senator-elect from Missouri,
and he resolved to bring the matter to the at-
tention of Congress. He moved for the ap-
pointment of a committee of three to consider
and report on the subject. The committee was
granted, more out of courtesy to an influential
member of the House than with any expectation
of favorable results. General Floyd was made
chairman, with Thomas Metcalf, of Kentucky,
and Thomas V. Swearingen, of Virginia, asso-
ciated with him. In six days a biU was re-
ported, "To authorize the occupation of the Co-
lumbia river, and to regulate trade and inter-
course with the Indian tribes thereon." They
accompanied the bill with an elaborate and able
report in support of the measure. The bill was
treated with parliamentary courtesy, read twice,
but no decisive action was taken. But the sub-
ject was before Congress and the nation, and
that was much gained.

In studying the reasons assigned at that time,
by the committee, and by such men as Benton
and Linn, why the proposed action should be
taken, one is impressed with the clear foresight
of their prophetic minds as to the future history
of this great Northwest. To the greater part of
their contemporaries their views were wild
vagaries and their propositions extravagant and
chimerical; to us they are a fulfilling and ful-
filled history.

The Oregon question slumbered in Congress
until 1825, when Senator Benton introduced a

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

bill into the Senate to enable the President, Mr.
Monroe, to possess and retain the country. The
bill proposed an appropriation to enable the
president to act efficiently with army and navy.
In the discussion of this bill the whole question
of title to Oregon came up, and, in reply to Mr.
Dickinson, of New York, who opposed the bill,
Mr. Benton made a speech which entirely met
all objections against the proposed action, and
thoroughly answered all the pretensions of
Great Britain in relation to the country. The
bill did not pass, but fourteen Senators voted
for it, namely: Barbour, Benton, Boligny, Cobb,
Hayne, Jackson (the general) Johnson of Ken-
tucky, Johnson of Louisiana, Lloyd of Massa-
chusetts, Mills, Noble, Ruggles, Talbot and
Thomas. These names deserve an honorable
record on the pages of the history of this coast.

The action of Senator Benton on the bill
showed very clearly that the sentiment in favor
of asserting the rights of the United States to
Oregon was rapidly increasing. The ten years
of joint occupancy, provided for in the treaty
of 1818, were drawing toward a close, and a
strong and intelligent part of our national leg-
islators, under the lead of Senator Benton, was
opposed to renewing that provision. The rea-
sons on which these views were based were
never invalidated, but were the final grounds on
which the United States won her case and se-
cured Oregon. They were these:

The title to Oregon on the part of the
United States rests on an ' irrefragable basis.
First: The discovery of the Columbia river by
Captain Gray in 1792. Second: The purchase
of its territory of Louisiana, which included
Oregon, from France in 1803. Third: The
discovery of the Colnmbia river from its head
to its month by Lewis and Clarke in 1806.
Fourth: The settlement of Astoria in 1811.
Fifth: The treaty with Spain in 1819. Sixth:
Contiguity of settlement and possession.

The next step in the negotiations between
Great Britain and the United States was the
proposition, in 1828, at the end of ten years
of joint occupancy, to renew the terms of the

convention for an indefinite period, determinable
on one year's notice from either party to the
other. Mr. Gallatin was the sole negotiator of
this renewed treaty on the part of the United
States, and his work was sustained by the ad-
ministration then in power, — that of John
Quincy Adams. The treaty met strong oppo-
sition in the Senate, led by that steadfast and
intelligent friend of Oregon, Thomas H. Ben-
ton, but it was ratified; and thus England was
indefinitely continued in her position of advan-
tage over the United States in the territory in
question.

From 1828 to 1842, '■ joint occupation " was
the law of the land so far as Oregon was con-
cerned, while "British occupation "was the fact
so far as the country was concerned. As we have
seen elsewhere, every attempt of the citizens of
the United States to establish commercial en-
terprises in the valley of the Columbia had
been frustrated and defeated by the Hudson's
Bay Company, the potent representatives of
British interests on the Pacific coast. Astor's
great plans, conceived in a broad intelligence,
prosecuted at enormous expense, and represent-
ing American interests in Oregon, had failed.
Wyeth had sunk a fortune between the Kocky
mountains and the Pacific, and all other Ameri-
cans who had adventured kindred enterprises
had been equally unfortunate, and after a quarter
of a century of "joint occupancy " England had
almost exclusive possession of the country.

What is known as the " Ashburton-Webster
Treaty" was negotiated at Washington, in 1842,
Lord Ashburton being the sole negotiator on
the part of England, and Mr. Webster, then
secretary of State under President Tyler, on
the part of the United States. Lord Ashburton
was Mr. Alexander Baring, head of the great
banking house of Baring & Brothers, and was
a very astute and able man, and a finished
diplomat. His mission was special, and though
Mr. Fox was then the resident British minister
at Washington, so thoroughly did the Govern-
ment trust Lord Ashburton that even Mr. Fox
was not joined in the mission. Neither did

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

the president associate any one with Mr. AYeb-
ster. The Englisli pleiiipoteutiarj came, profess-
edlj, to settle all questions between the United
States and England, a chief one of which was
the " Oregon question." The United States
wished it settled. England wished it adjourned;
and the wishes of England prevailed. What
conferences, if any, were held between Mr.
Webster and Lord Ashburton about anything
further than the adjournment of this question,
does not appear in any record, and abont the
only reference to it made of record is the state-
ment of the president that there were some
" informal conferences " in relation to it, and in
his message communicating the treaty to the
Senate, that "there is no probability of coming
to any agreement at present."

The treaty was ratified by the Senate on the
26tli day of August, 1842. After its ratifica-
tion by the Queen of England, audits proclama-
tion as the supreme law of the land on the 10th
day of November, England was more firmly in-
trenched, so far as the law was concerned, in her
claims and pretensions to Oregon than ever be-
fore. But while plenipotentiaries temporized
aud compromised, and executives and senates
moved at a laggard pace on such great questions,
events hastened. The people took up the ques-
tion aud went before the Government. What
they determined, the Government must soon
affirm. So fully did the question which the late
treaty had postponed occupy the public mind,
even during the pendency of the negotiation of
that treaty, that, had the ear of Mr. Webster
l)een nearer the heart of the people he would
surely have understood that adjournment of the
question by himself and Lord Ashburton meant
anytiiing rather than a suppression, or even a
postponement, of it from public debate. The
newspapers took it up, and it was thus brought
to the boys and girls, fathers and mothers on
the hearthstones of the million homes of the
country. The sentiments of the leaders of po-
litical action in our National Legislature, as
those sentiments appeared in the debates of the
Senate on the question of the ratification of the

Webster-Ashburton treaty, were criticised, ap-
proved or condemned by the people in all the
land. One sentiment was for the ratification,
with postponement of the Oregon question and
its easy forbearance with the crafty and insid-
ious policy of England; the other was for the
rejection of the treaty, a withdrawal of the
United States from joint occupancy, and an act
of colonization which would assume the full
sovereignty of the United States over the terri-
tory in question by granting lands to emigrants,
and otherwise encouraging their settlement in
Oregon. Representing the first class, and speak-
ing for it, as well as for Mr. Webster the nego-
tiator of the treaty, was Mr. Rufus Choate, sen-
ator from Massachusetts, who spoke in his place
in the Senate as follows: "Oregon, which a
growing and noiseless current of agricultural
immigration was tilling with hands and hearts
the fittest to defend it — the noiseless, innumer-
ous movement of our nation westward. * *
We have spread to the Alleghanies, we have
topped them, we have difl'used ourselves over the
imperial valley beyond; we have crossed the
father of rivers; the granite and ponderous gates
of the Rocky mountains have opened, and we
stand in sight of the great sea. * * * Goon
with your negotiations and emigration. Are
not the rifles and the wheat growing together,
side by sidel Will it not be easy, when the in-
evitable hour comes, to beat back ploughshares
and pruning-hooks into their original forms of
of instruments of death? Alas, that that trade
is so easy to learn and so hard to forget!"

This was beautifully said, and it had a certain
amiability about it that commended it to the
favorable thought of many. Still it was far
from representing the views of those who, from
the beginning of the diplomatic struggle with
Great Britain, had been the steadfast and radi-
cal advocates of the right of the Unittd States
to the possession of Oregon. Their views were
better expressed by Senator Benton, who on
the "Oregon Colonization Act" closed a speech
of great vigor and power by saying:

'•Time is invoked as the agent that is to help

EISTOnr OP WMUINGTON.

US. Gentlemen object to the present time, refer
us to the future time, and beg us to wait, and
rely upon time and negotiations to accomplish
all our wishes. Alas! Time and Negotiations
have been fatal agents against us in all our dis-
cussions with Great Britain. Time has been
constantly working for her and against us. She
now has the exclusive possession of the Colum-
bia, and all she wants is time to ripen her pos-
session into a title. For above twenty years
* * the present time for vindicating our
rights on the Columbia has been constantly ob-
jected to, and we were bidden to wait. Well,
we have waited, and what have we got by it?
Insult and defiance! — a declaration from this
British ministry that large British interests
have grown up on the Columbia during this
time, which they will protect, and a flat refusal
from the olive-branch minister [Lord Ashbur-
tonj to include this question among those which
his peaceful mission was to settle! No, sir;
time and negotiations have been bad agents for
us in our controversies with Great Britain.
They have just lost us the military frontiers of
Maine, which we had held for sixty years, and
the trading frontier of the Northwest, which we

had held for the same time. Sixty years' pos-
session and eight treaties secured these ancient
and valuable boundaries; one negotiation and a
few days of time have taken them from us!
And so it may be again. The Webster treaty
of 1842 has obliterated the great boundaries of
1783 — placed the British, their fur company
and their Indians within our ancient limits;
and I, for one, want no more treaties from the
hand which is always seen on the side of the
British. I now go for vindicating our rights
on the Columbia, and, as the first step toward
it, passing this bill, and making these grants of
land, which will soon place the thirty or forty
thousand rifies beyond the Kocky mountains,
which will be our effective negotiators."

The bill of Mr. Benton passed the Senate by
a A'ote of twenty-four to twenty-two. It went
to the House, where it remained unacted upon
during the session. But its moral effect was to
assure the enterprising people of the West that
the period of national procrastination and timid-
ity was well-nigh over, and that it would be
hut a very short time before such decisive action
would l)e taken as would compel a settlement
of the controversy with England.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON. 57

CHAPTER \L

RIVAL CLAIMS AND PRETENSIONS, CONTINUED.

Presidential Election of 1844— Watciiwords of the Campaign — Negotiations again — "Why
NOT Settled in 1S44 — Negotiations between Secretary Buchanan and Mr. Fackenham —
Action of Congress — Forty-ninth Farallel Agreed upon — An Annoying Error — The
Codfish Story — -Dk. Whitman and the Treaty of 1842 — Webster's Statement — Con-
tinued Disagreement about the Line Along the Straits of Fuca — Danger of War—
The Pacific Pioneers Take up the Question — Action of the Oregon Legislature— San
Juan Island Held by the Military — General Scorr on the Field — -Agreement between
Scott and Douglas — Arbitration Froposed — Declined by the United States — -Emperor
William Finally Selected as Arbiter in 1871 — His Decision.

FOLLOWING immediately in the train of
the events just related, came the j>resi-
^ dential election of 1844. The Oregon
question was too available a question for the
uses of a political campaign to be kept out of
the preliminary canvass. Besides, there were
too many Americans, and they were too intelli-
gent and patriotic, already settled in the valley
of the Willamette, whose letters to tlieir friends
at home and to the public through the periodi-
cal press extolled the beauty and salubrity- of
the country, not to thoroughly awaken the
public mind on the entire issue involved.
"America for Americans," "The Monroe Doc-
trine," " Fifty-four Forty or Fight," became
the catch-words, if not the watchwords of the
hour. The politicians of one party took their
cue from the obvious tendency of this popular
cry. The annexation of Texas and the imme-
diate occupation of Oregon were very skillfully
united together in the platform of the conven-
tion that nominated James K. Polk for presi-
dent. On the Oregon question it declared that
our title to tlie whole of Oregon up to 54° 40'
north latitude was "clear and indispntable,"
thus denying and defying the pretensions of
Great Britain to any ten-itory bordering on the
Pacihc. The nominee of the Democratic party
for president, Mr. James K. Polk, indorsed the
platform, and the canvass for him proceeded on
that issue. Mr. Folk was elected over Henry
Clay, who, although the idol of his party and
one of the n)<)st popular of American states-

men, conld not overcome the excited state of
the public mind on these questions. Thus the
verdict of the people of the United States at
the election was unquestionably in favor of
Oregon, even up to 54° 40' north latitude. It
was well known, however, that the leading
statesmen of the Democratic party believed the
forty-ninth degree to be the line of our rightful
claim. Mr. Benton had already demonstrated it
on the floor of the Senate. ,Mr. Calhoun, as
Democratic secretary of State for Mr. Tyler,
at the very moment when the Democratic con-
vention was making its platform and nomi-
nating Mr. Polk upon it, was engaged in a

negotiation with the British minister in Wash-
ington, and offering to him a settlement of the
entire question on the line of the forty-ninth
parallel. Only some item in regard to the right
of Great Britain to navigate the Columbia river
prevented the acceptance of this proposition by
the British minister, and the settlement of the
whole question at that time.

While, doubtless, Mr. Calhoun himself would
have been glad to have concluded the Oregon
question as secretary of State, and as he evi-
dently might have done, politically he did not
dare to do so. The annexation of Texas was a
Southern question, and the South could be car-
ried for Mr. Polk on tliat issue. Oregon was a
Northern question, and the North could be car-
ried in the same way by keeping up the cry of
"Fifty-four Forty or Fight." To settle on 4'.)°
would be to yield the question, and with it the

niSrORT OF WASHINGTON.

election to the Whigs, and make Mr. Clay
president. So the Oregon question was not
settled, as it might have been before the elec-
tion of 1844, on exactly the same line as was
adopted two years later, after it had achieved
the political i-esults for which it was kept in
the air during the political canvass of 1844,
namely, electing Mr. Polk president, and finally
defeating the aspirations of Mr. Clay for that
eminent position.

With this result achieved, and on this ground
this question could not slumber. Mr. Polk
brought it promptly forward in his inaugural
address, reaffirming the position of the platform
on which he was elected. The position of the
inaugural threw the public mind of Great
Britain into a ferment, and the English nation
thundered back the cry of war. For a year
the two nations stood face to face like gladi-
ators, with uplifted swords, waiting for a word
that would send them breast to breast in the
tierce grapple of war. History must record
that the United States must retreat, in her
diplomacy and in her legislation, from the
political decision of her people, or the inevi-
table war must come. It was an embarrassing
and mortifying position for the new govern-
ment, but it had to be endured and met as best
it could be.

James Buchanan was now Secretary of State.
He waited for some time for a proposition from
the British minister at Washington to renew
tiie negotiations on the Oregon question, but
none came. On the 22d of July, 1845, he
therefore addressed a note to Mr. Packenham,
the British minister at Washington, resuming
negotiations where Mr. Calhoun liad suspended
them, and again proposed the line of forty- nine
to the ocean. This the British minister re-
fused, but invited a "fairer'' proposition. The
knowledge of this proposition on the part of
the Secretary of State raised a political storm
in his party, before which the administration
cowered, and, as Mr. Packenham had not ac-
cepted it, it was withdrawn. The president
recommended strong measures to assert and

secure our title, and the political storm was
measurably appeased. Meantime the with-
drawal of the proposition of Mr. Buchanan,
coupled with the recommendation of the presi-
dent, somewhat alarmed the British people, and
it began to be rumored that England would
propose the line she had before rejected. The
position of the dominant party absolutely re-
required that it should make a demonstration
according to its iterated and reiterated promises
to the people. Accordingly a resolution de-
termining the treaty of joint occupancy, and
looking to the maintenance of that position,
was introduced into the House of Representa-
tives, most ably debated — John Quincy Adams
taking strong grounds in its favor — and, on the
9th of February, 1846, adopted, by the decisive
vote of 163 to 54.

The resolution thus passed in the House
went to the Senate. Here, in the fo'-m in which
it passed the House, it encountered violent op-
position, a strong contingent of the Democratic
party taking position against it. Among these,
if not their leader, was Senator Benton. Gen-
eral Cass, E. A. Hannigan and William Allen
led the debate in its favor. Besides Benton,
Webster, Crittenden and Berrien made exhaus-
tive arguments against it. It was well under-
stood in the Senate that President Polk thought
it necessary to recede from the position of his
party — the position on which he had fought the
campaign in which he was elected to the presi-
dency — and accept of the line of 49° without a
"fight." So the resolution of the House was
defeated in the Senate. But the Senate adopted
another resolution, authorizing the president
"at his discretion" to give notice to Great
Britain for the termination of the treaty. The
Senate resolution was conciliatory, its preamble
declaring that it was only to secure "a speedy
and amicable adjustment of the differences and
disputes in regard to said territory."

When this resolution went to the House that
body receded from its former position, and,
with even a greater unanimity than had char-
acterized their action on that which tbe Senate

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

had rejected, adopted it, — only forty-six, and
they almost entirely Northern Demoo.rats, vot-
ing against it.

With this action the danger of the war with
Great Britain was dispelled. It was immedi-
ately followed by a treaty between Mr. Buch-
anan, Secretary of State, under the direction of
the president and British minister at Washing-
ton, adopting the forty-ninth parallel as the
boundary between the two countries, with cer-
tain concessions touching the line westward of
where that parallel strikes the Gulf of Georgia,
and, for a definite period, the rights of the
Hudson's Bay Company and the navigation of
the Cohimbia river by the British. Thus closed
a controversy with Great Britain that came

very near mv

the two nations in a conflict

of arms. In a war England could havi
and it may not be too much to suppose, would
have possessed Oregon, but, perhaps, at the cost
of the Canadas. Had the settlement been post-
poned a few years longer, it is not irapi-obable
that American emigrants would have so filled
the country even up to 54° 40', that all the
country would have been ours. In the discus-
sion both sides were partly right and partly
wrong, as history clearly demonstrates. The
"80,000 rifles" theory of Senator Benton, in
the hands of emigrants, was correct. The "time
and patience" theory of Mr. Webster and Mr.
Calhoun was also correct. Tliese acting to-
gether solved the "Oregon question," and on
the whole, as matters stood in 1846, solved it
honorably and justly to both the high contract-
ing parties.

It is probably due to the justice of history
that wo should not dismiss finally the subject
of the rival claims and claimants to Oregon,
and of the diplomatic negotiations through
which those claims were led to a final settle-
ment, without some notice of a curious and
annoying error into which the people of the
Pacific coast were led in regard to what was
contained in the Webster-Ashburton treaty.
It was not only annoying to the feelings of the
])eople, but it led to the Avriting of a great dale

of fictitious history, the writers not stopping to
ascertain the truth or falsity of the rumors
which they adopted as fact. The error was
this: That in the negotiations between Mr.
Webster for the United States and Lord Ash-
burton for England a proposition was discussed
and well nigh adopted for the United States to
cede to Great Britain her claim to Oregon for
extended fishing privileges on the banks of
Newfoundland, and some other privileges con-
trolled by the English on the northeast coast.
This statement was brought to Oregon by the
emigrants of 1842 and raised a great excite-
ment among the people. It was widely claimed
that it was this that prompted, or rather im-
pelled, Dr. Whitman to make his perilous
winter journey to the Eastern States in order
that the Government should be prevented from
making that fatal trade. Dramatic incidents
have been recited as veritable history connected
with these supposed facts, which have had no
being but in the excited imaginations of care-
less writers, or the partial and overwrought
eulogies of admiration and friendship.

The truth of the matter is clearly ascertained
to be that the subject" of the Oregon boundary
formed no part of the formal negotiations of
that occasion. There is no reference to it in
the treaty, or in the documents accompanying
it when it was transmitted to the Senate for
ratification.

The statement so often made that ]\Ir. AVeb-
ster and President Tyler were prevented from
committing this blunder by the timely arrival
of Dr. Whitman in Washington just before the
treaty was to be signed, has not a shadow of
foundation. As before shown the treaty was
signed August 8, 1842, two months before Dr.
Whitman started from his home in Oregon.
On the 11th it was submitted to the Senate.
On the 26th it was approved, and Lord Ash-
burton started with it the same day ibr Eng-
land, where it was ratified, returned to the
United States, and proclaimed on the 10th of
November. Dr. Whitman arrived in Washing-
ton in March following;.

HInrURY OF WASHINGTON.

So plain a statement of fact renders it un-
necessary to balance probaljilities or weigh ar-
guments; the facts are more convincing tlian
either. As the United States had ne\-er offered
to yield any territory to England south of the
49th parallel, and had always peremptorily re-
jected any offer from Great Britain to com-
promise on a lower line, or the line of tiie Co-
lumbia river, so now Mr. Webster and Mr.
Tyler could not and did not depart from the
oft-repeated position of the United States on
tliat question, and Mr. Webster's own statement
that " the United States had never offered any
line south of forty-nine, and it never will," con-
cludes it.

Although the Oregon treaty was made, and
had been proclaimed as the law of tlie land, one
thing remained to be done wliich became a mat-
ter of infinite disagreement, and came very near
involving the two countries in war before its
final conclusion. The line was Agreed upon,
but it was not ran. The trouble arose from a
long-continued perversion, on the part of Great
Britain, of the application of the description of
the line from where the forty-ninth parallel of
latitude strikes the gulf -of Georgia. Thence,
as it was worded in the treaty, it was to follow
" the middle of the channel which separates the
continent from Yauccuver's island," and follow
it through the Straits of Fuca to the ocean. No
map or chart was attached to the treaty on
which the line could be traced, and so little was
really known of the geography of the gulf of
Georgia that it would have been difficult for the
commissioners to have traced the middle of the
channel had one been present. This left open a
ground for dispute and diplomatic finesse.

Between the continent and the island of Van-
couver lies an archipelago, a stretch of sea fifty
or more miles from east to west, and sixty or
more from north to south, in which are thirty-
nine islands that have come under description
and name. These range from sixtten miles to
one-fourth of a mile in length and from fifty-
four to one-half a square mile in area. Through
these islands there run ten channels southward,

but combine in three as tliey enter into the
Straits of Fuca. The one to the eastward is the
Rosario, the one to the west is the Canal de
Ilaro. Great Britain insisted on the line tak-
ing the eastward, or Eosario channel; the United
States claimed that the real channel was the
Canal de Haro, or westward channel. What
was between these channels was the real object
of desire on the part of both the contending
parties. This was an area of about 400 square
miles, in which are a number of prominent
islands, and some small ones, all comprising in
land area about 170 s-qnare miles. The owner-
ship and sovereignty of these were what was in-
volved in the settlement of the channel question.
The most valuable of these was San Juan, con-
taining fifty-five square miles, mostly good
grazing land, which the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany, whose center of trade was now Victoria
on Vancouver island, had been accustomed to
use as a jjasture for tiieir sheep. The difference
between the two channels was about this: Ro-
sario had about four miles width of channel and
sixty fathoms of water in its greatest depth,
while the Canal de Haro had about six and a
half miles of maximum width of channel, and
its greatest depth is 183 fathoms.

The debate over this question was hardly less
tedious and perplexing than that which fixed
the terms of the line at first. That de Haro
was the channel intended as the line, was too
plain for rational dispute, as no other was
known at the time the treaty was negotiated.
It was expressly mentioned, more than once, at
the very time and by the very persons that con-
ducted the negotiations.

When the commissioners appointed by the
two governments to nm the line agreed upon
in the treaty met to accomplish their task,
Captain Brevost, for the British Government,
declared Rosario to be the "channel" of that
instrument. Of course this claim was met by
Mr. Campbell on the part of the United States
with rejection. Then Lord Russell proposed as
a compromise the middle, or President's chan-
nel. This was suggested because, while it

Ilf.STOnr OF WASHINGTON.

yielded a little in area of water, it still retained
San Jnan island on the r>ritieli side of the line.
Lord Russell instructed Lord Lyons, the British
envoy to the United States, that no line would
be agreed upon that did not leave that island
on the British side of it. Mr. Lewis Cass, oui*
Secretary of State, met this menace — for such
it really was — with words equally decisive.
This ended the effort to fix the line geographi-
cally through this archipelago. Then the Pa-
cific pioneers again took it up. Twelve years had
passed sinpe the treaty, and ministers of State
had invited difficulties and postponed decisions.
These pioneers were as clear of head as they
were resolute of heart. They knew how to set-
tle it; and they tried their knowledge on.

If the line was not determined they had as
good a right on San Juan island as had the
Hudson's Bay Company. They would go there.
Twenty-five Americans and their families were
there, — for when was there ever a pioneer man
60' bold and brave that he could not find a
woman as bold and brave as he to accompany
him and brace his armor to his breast? The
arrogant Hudson's Bay people were all about
them. Collisions were imminent. Of this
condition Sir Robert Peel declared in the Brit-
ish Parliament it " must probably involve both
countries in an appeal to arms unless speedily
terminated."

The Oregon Territorial legislature, in the
session of 1852-'53, included San Juan and all
the islands in the archipelago in a county. Soon
after the Hudson's Bay Company took formal
possession of the island, Oregon levied taxes on
the property of the company, and when payment
was refused, the sheriff sold sheep enough to pay
them. This was the ready method of the pio-
neer; open the conflict on the ground for which
the battle is to be fought. Of course recrimi-
nations and reprisals followed. This was ex-
pected. The local excitement increased. General
Harney, commander of the Department of the
Pacific, in 1859, landed 461 troops on the
island, and instructed Captain Pickett — he of
the charge of Gettysbni-g — to protect Americans

there. English naval forces, to the nuiiilier of
five ships of war, conveying 167 g\ins, and 1,940
men gathered near the little island. The
Americans threatened to resist by force any
attempted landing of English troops. The
English commander protested against military
occupation of San Juan, but to this Captain
Pickett responded: " I, being here under orders
from my government, cannot allow any joint
occupation until so ordered by my commanding
general. In this he had the approval of his
commander. But General Harney had acted
without instructions from Washington, and the
president withheld his official approval of the
act of taking possession of the island in this
manner, and expressed the hope that General
Harney had done so for the protection of Ameri-
can citizens and interest alone, and with no
reference to territorial acquisitions. Still it was
obvious that the Government at Washington
was not unwilling that an issue should be forced,
so that the question woulil be settled. Certainly
the pioneers of the Northwest approved it.

In the emergency General Scott was sent to
the field of action, arriving late in 1859. On
his way he called *at Portland, and conferred
with leading citizens and Territorial officers.
The writer remembers him well as he appeared,
as he walked the deck of the Massachusetts, as
she lay at the Portland wharf, on his way to the
north. He had met him once before, on the
hill at the head of " Lundy's Lane," but si:^
years before. General Scott went out under
pacific instructions, directed to bring about
'•joint occupation" of San Juan until tiie
boundary line was settled. General Harney
was withdrawn from command in the Worth-
west. It was agreed between General Scott and
Governor Douglas of Vancouver, that 100 armed
men of each party should occupy the island;
and thus again the case was remanded to di-
plomacy. But the act of General Harney had
forced a spegdy adjustment.

The next resort wf^s a proposal on the part of
Great Britain to submit the question at issue
between the two governments to arbitration, aijd

IIISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

she named the king of the Netherlands, or of
Sweden and Norway, or the president of the
Federal Council of Switzerland, as the arbiter.
This proposition was declined by the United
States, and for ten years the question lingered.
At length, on the 8th of May, 1871, the ques-
tion was given for final arbitration, without ap-
peal, to Emperor William of Germany.

For twenty-five years, under the finesse of
British diplomacy, the treaty of June 15, 1846,
had waited for its execution. Its interpretation
was the last question of territorial right between
Great Britain and the United States. It was
eminently fitting that George Bancroft, who was
secretary of the navy when the treaty was ne-
gotiated, and was now the only remaining mem-
ber of the administration that negotiated it,
should be chosen to expound the treaty to the
German emperor on the part of the United
States. His memorial of 120 octavo pages is
one of the most finislied and unanswerable di-
plomatic arguments ever produced. Each party
presented a memorial setting forth its case.
These memorials were then interchanged and re-
plies were presented by each. These four papers

the emperor laid before three eminent jurists,
besides giving them his personal attention.
After a full and faithful examination of the
submitted case the emperor decreed this award:

" Most in accordance with the true interpre-
tations of the treaty concluded on the 15th of
June, 1856, between the Government of her
Britannic Majesty and of the United States of
America, is the claim of the Government of the
United States, that the boundary line between
the territories of her Britannic Majesty and the
United States should be drawn tlinuigh the Haro
channel. Authenticated by our autograph sig-
nature, and the impression of the Imperial
Great Seal. Given at Berlin October the 21st,
1872." Thus the end of the long controversy
came.

For over ninety-two years, the two great
English-speaking nations of the world had beeu
trying to decide upon a line that should divide
between them from sea to sea, and at Berlin,
and by the Emperor William, the last and defi-
nite word was spoken, and the controversy was
ended.

HISTORY OF WASUINQTON.

CHAPTER VII.

FIRST AMERICAN SETTLEMENT.

Astoria — Charactee of Early Trade — John Jacob Astoe — Jefferson's Letter to Astoe —
The Pacific Fur Company — Its Members — The Ship Tonqdin — Aeeival at the Colum-
bia — Overland Company — Wilson Price Hunt — Up the Missouri — Over the Mountains —
Wrecked on Snake River — In Snake River Desert — Appalling Obstacles — Company
Reach Astoria — The Ship Tonquin Again — Landing at Astoria — Tonquin Sails North —
Trading with the Natives — Destruction of the Tonquin — Irvinq's Account — Alexan-
der McKay' — Affairs at Astoria — The Northwestern Company' and McBougal — Arri-
val OF Ship Beaver — Mackenzie and the Northwestern Company — Gathering of the
Partners at Astoria — British Wae Ship Expected — Expedition foe the Relief of As-
toria Abandoned — Negotiations with Northwestern Company — Astoria Suerendered
TO THAT Company — Aeeival of Me. Hunt — Astoeia Returned to the United States

AFTER THE ClOSE OF THE WaR.

I[ T will be hanl to pnt into a brief chapter a his-
tory which the genius of an Irving has woven
-^ into a volume that has become a classic of
romance and adventure; but the integrity of
our purpose demands that the trial be made.
Other chapters of this book have related the
events that led up to the magnificent enterprise
of John Jacob Astor in his attempt to found a
colony and establish a great commerce on the
Pacific coast, and hence it is not needful even to
recapitulate. It may, however, be proper to
state, in an introductory paragraph, that the
trade of the Pacific coast, including that on the
Columbia river, during the first decade of the
present century, was largely of a fugitive char-
acter, or in other words, was the commerce of
individual adventure rather than of organized
companies recognized by national law and sus-
tained by national authority. The individuals
that conducted it, might, and indeed often did,
represent wealthy and long-established houses in
cities on the other side of the world, but their
field of operations were so distant and their trade
was encompassed by so many contingencies in-
cident to the character of the people with whom
they dealt, that they might well be considered
"adventurers." France, having transferred all
lier interests of territory and trade to the United

States, was out of the line of competition, either
for place or profit. England, with her usual
greed, grasped eagerly at both. The United
States had legitimately inherited the loftier
part of English ambition for greatness and gain,
and of course she claimed, as of right, freedom
for trade and the occupancy of her citizens in all
the westward regions to the sea. Her technical
claim was, as wir have seen elsewhere, founded
on the discovery of the Columbia river by Cap-
tain Gray in 1792, on the explorations of Lewis
and Clarke, continued from the springs in the
mountains to the discharge between the capes
into the ocean of the mighty Columbia in 1805,
and by later purchase, from the Government of
France, in 1804, of all her rights of territory, and
every other right she held, in the vast Louisiana

country
Pacific.

Btretcl;

from the Missouri to the

England's technical rights were based
on alleged discoveries by Captain Sir Francis
Drake, Captain Cook, Captain Vancouver, and
the explorations of Alexander Mackenzie. Thus,
in the assertion of these technical claims to
Oregon, and in the effort of each to validate
these claims as against the other, the United
States and Great Britain stood face to face in
the opening of the long and final struggle that
woiild forever determine whether that region

HISTORY OF WASniNOTON.

should be American or British — the struggle
for actual possession, during the iirst decade of
the century.

The influence of Mr. Jefferson, as our readers
know, was then potent in American affairs, and
he earnestly sought American supremacy' on the
Paciiic coast. John Jacob Astor was then a cen-
tral figure in American commercial enterprises,
and had already extended his ventures beyond
the great lakes and the headwaters of the Mis-
sissippi. His attention was attracted to the
vast region westward of the Rocky mountains,
and he resolved to carry into them the commer-
cial force of an organized company to supplant
the fugitive trade of the independent rovers of
the wilderness and the sea. With the prescience
of a statesman, as well as with the genius of the
merchant, he resolved to establish a great cen-
tral post at the mouth of the Columbia, where
the drainage of ahnost half a continent meets
the waters of the mightest ocean of the globe,
and forms a port for the world's greatest flow of
trade. Mr. Jefferson and the most intelligent
and far-seeing statesman of the country gave
him encouragement and counsel. They foresaw,
as in the vision of a clear prophecy, what we
read now as a marvelous history. Later, Mr.
Jefferson, in a letter to Mr. Astor, thus ex-
pressed his own views of the enterprise the
latter had undertaken, in these words:

"I considered it as a great public acquisition,
the commencement of a settlement in that part
of the western coast of America, and looked for-
ward with gratification to the time when its de-
scendants had spread themselves through the
whole length of the coast, covering it with free
and independent Americans, unconnected with
us but by the ties of blood and interest, and
enjoying like us the rights of self-government."

The pen is moved to draw the contrast between
this forecast of this great American statesman
and the fulfillments of history, but must forbear.
In these influences and under sneli inspirations
■was the inception of Astoria.

Mr. Astor's plan for the organization of tlie
Astoria Company- -or, as it was called, the Pa-

cific Fur Company — was broad and comprehen-
sive. It contemplated both a land expedition
to cross the continent, and the dispatch of a
vessel around cape Horn, and the two were to
meet at the mouth of the Columbia. Every con-
tingency that money could provide for was an-
ticipated. There was, however, an element of
weakness introduced in the organization that,
from an early date, seriously interfered with its
work, and we think finally proved its overthrow.
It was this:

Though tl)is was an American enterprise Mr.
Astor did not sufficiently appreciate the neces-
sity of making the personnel of his company
American. He himself was a German by birth,
and, chough he had achieved his great commer-
cial success under the fostering freedom of
American institutions, and was personally an
American in the purpose and spirit of his life,
hardly realized that all of foreign birth who are
in America are not of America. Hence, in se-
lecting his partners, though he chose men of
great experience and ability in the kind of trade
upon which he was adventuring, he selected for
leading partnert-hips several who had belonged
to the Northwest Campany, which was always
distinctively British in purpose as well as in
relation. While for trade alone they were ade-
quate, to any patriotic American purposes they
were alien in thought and sympathy. They
were in the company of Mr. Astor for profit,
not American patriotism. These men were
Alexander McKay, who had accompanied Mac-
kenzie on both his great journeys, Duncan
McDougal, David Stuart, Robert Stuart and
Donald McKenzie. As a providence against
future difliculties between the United States and
Great Britain, in the regions whither they were
bound, these gentlemen provided themselves
with proofs of their British citizenship, while
they trusted to their association with an Ameri-
can enterprise to shelter them under the
eagle's wings. Only one American, Wilson
Price Hunt, of New Jersey, was an interested
partner from the first; hut to him was instructed
the management of the enterprise. So far these

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

details of the organization are necessary if we
would understand the causes that produced re-
sults to which we shall presently come.

In carrying forward his plans Mr. Astor pur-
chased and equipped the ship Tonqiiin, com-
manded by Captain Jonathan Thorn, a lieuten-
ant of the American navy on furlough. She
mounted ten guns, had a crew of twenty men,
and was freighted with a large cargo of supplies
for the company and of merchandise for trade
with the people of the coast. She carried also
the frame of a small schooner for use in the
coastwise trade. As passengers she had McKay,
McDongal, the two Stuarts, twelve clerks,
several citizens and thirteen Canadian voya-
genrs. The Tonquin sailed from New York
for the mouth of the Columbia river, on the 2d
day of August, 1810. Nothing in her voyage
is to be specially noted, except it may be some
conflict of authority between Captain Thorn, a
thorough American, and the Scotch Mc's and
Stuarts on board, whom he persisted in treating
as mere passengers, while they claimed the con-
sideration of owners and employers. In this
there was a slight omen of the trouble that was
to follow.

The Tonqnin arrived off the bar of the Co-
lumbia on the 22d day of March, 1811. The
bar was rough and the breakers rolled high.
Captain Thorn ordered Mr. Fox, the first mate
of the ship, to take a boat's crew of one seaman
and three Canadian voyageurs and explore the
channel. The boat was launched and put forth,
but soon disappeared and all on board wei-e lost.
The next day another boat was sent out on the
same errand, but was swept out to sea and only
one of its crew reached the shore. Just as the
second night of gloom was settling down on the
dreaded bar the Tonquin succeeded in crossing,
and anchoring just within. But the night was
an anxious and fearful one. The wind threatened
every moment to sweep the vessel on the sands
among the rolling breakers. But the night
passed with the anchors of the ship still safely
holding, and in the morning she passed safely
in and again cast her anchors in a good harbor.

With the Tonquin safely moored in the Colum-
bia river, we turn to trace the course of that part
of the great expedition that had directed its
course over the Kocky mountains for the same
point.

This party was entrusted to Wilson Price
Hunt. It was composed of McKenzie and
three new partners in the company, — Rumsay
Crooks, Hobert McClellan and Joseph Miller.
Besides were John Day, a noted Kentucky hun-
ter; Pierre Dorion, a French half-breed, who
was taken as interpreter; and enough trappers
and voyageurs to make up a complement of sixty
men. They left the frontier settlements west
of the Missouri in the spring of 1811, and pur-
sued the usual course of travel up the Missouri
river in canoes and barges to the Mandan coun-
try, thence with horses across the Rocky mount-
ains to the waters that flow toward the Pacific.
To accomplish this required all the summer and
part of the autumn, and the party reached Fort
Henry, on Snake river, on the 8th of October,
1811. After detaching some small parties of
hunters and trappers, who were to use Fort
Henry as their base of supplies, the main ])arty
under Mr. Hunt, embarked in canoes, which
they had constructed on the banks of the river,
and continued their journey down that treach-
erous and turbulent stream. Without much
trouble, and cheered by the wild notes of their
Canadian boatmen's song, they swept swiftly
down the river between the willowed banks that
channel its fiow, for a few days, when their
frail canoes were suddenly swept into the roar-
ing rapids of what is now known as " American
Falls," and their voyaging came to a quick and
disasti'ous end. Just below them the river
dropped into a great, black chasm, through
which it roared and foamed for many miles,
making leap after leap over the edge of basaltic
precipices into the deeper depths that seemed
ever opening below. In this one moment the
expedition seemed to be hopelessly defeated,
and all sat down for the time gloomy and dis-

irited. One of their best men

been lost

in the roai'ing rapids, and some of their canoes

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

huDg broken wrecks upon the rocks in ilie midst
of the Falls. But with such men iu such enter-
prises, despair soon gives place to new resolu-
tion, and so Mr. Hunt was soon rallying his
men for new and more desperate effort.

They were now in a most inhospitable coun-
try; a dreary desert without tree or fruit or
game, and winter was settling rapidly down
upon them. Nothing renjained for them but
to cache their baggage and merchandise, and,
separating into smaller parties the better to
obtain food in their journeyings, each make the
best of its way toward the coast on foot. How
far they were from the goal of their journey
they did not know. It was a dark and desperate
venture that they looked in tlie face, but it were
better than to lie quiet where they were, for
that wvve sure and speedy death by starvation.
One party under McKenzie struck off toward
the north, hoping to reach the Columbia, which
tliey l.ielieved must lay in that direction; one
under Crooks pursued its way down the south
bank of Snake river, and one under Hunt down
its northern shore. The company of McKenzie
disappeared under the dim horizon of the great
and terrible desert to the north and west of the
dread "Cauldron Linn," as the shipwrecked
party called the place where their canoe voyage
so fatally ended. The mountain ranges crowded
them to the west of their intended course, but
put them on the arc of a circle described by
Snake river, and thus brought them to that
stream again about 250 miles from their start-
ing point. The other parties, by following the
stream, described the circle, and hence McKen-
zie's party came out ahead, and after reaching
the river in the vicinity of the Blue mountains,
followed it down until they reached the Colum-
bia. The parties of Hunt and Crooks toiled
wearily down over the seamed and cinereous
lava plains that border Snake river, in a great
rent of which the river itself flows a thousand
feet below the general surface of the plains,
famishing for water and almost starving for
food. The most of the way only this impassa-
ble gorge was between them. Sometimes they

were in sight of each other, and when they
reached the point where the river enters its
iron gorge through the Blue mountains they
encamped with only its turbulent current sep-
arating them. Both parties were in a starving
condition, but that of Mr. Hunt had that day
captured a horse that belonged to a small camp
of Indians, who fled at their approach, and had
killed and was cooking it for supper. After a
canoe had been constructed out of skins some
of the meat was taken across to the other party.
On its second voyage a man, rendered delirious
by famine, upset the canoe, was swept away and
drowned. This was on the 20th day of Decem-
ber, 1811. On the 23d day Mr. Hunt's party
crossed to the west side of the river, and the
two parties, numbering thirty-six men in all,
were again united, not far from where the Union
Pacific Kailroad now crosses Snake river, near
the town of Huntington. Appalled by the
apparently insujjerable obstacles before them,
three of tlie men wished to remain where they
were rather than venture the snowy passes of
the mountain ranges that stood liKe battlements
of ice before them. The remainder struggled
wearily on, reaching the valley of Grande Ronde
on the last day of 1811. In a forlorn way the
company celebrated the festival of the new year
in the beautiful valley of Grande Ronde — a
paradise of green in the midst of a wilderness
desert of ice and snow. With great difliculty
and suffering the Blue mountains were passed,
and on the 8th day of January they came down
upon the (Jmatilla river, and found food and
hospitable entertainment at an Indian village
on its banks. The mountain barriers were now
passed, and their route was now down the open
way of the Umatilla and Columbia rivers to the
ocean. They arrived at Astoria on the 15th day
of February, 1814. The party of McKenzie
having gained some days on those of Hunt and
Crooks by its shorter route and easier traveling,
had passed down the Snake river to the Colum-
bia, and down that to the ocean; and, having
reached Astoria a month before those of Hunt
and Crooks, stood on the banks of the river as

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

the latter landed, the first to welcome their old
companions to the rest and bounty of Astoria.

When we began to trace the jonrney of the
land portion of Mr. Astor's great exposition,
we left the good ship Tonquin at anchor in the
bay at the mouth of the Columbia. It is suit-
able that we return now and take up her thrill-
ing story.

Early in April, 1811, the partners who had
come out in the Tonquin began the erection of
a fort on the south side of the river. Lieuten-
ant Broughton, of Vancouver's expedition, with
the usual British partiality to royal nomencla-
ture, had given it tiie name of "Point George;"
but this party, ostensibly rejjresenting the
American spirit and purpose, called it "As-
toria," in honor of the founder and chief pro-
moter of the enterprise. This was the first real
step in the actual possession of Oregon by the
American people. Though there was much
disagreement among the partners of the com-
pany in regard to points of authority and
etiquette, as well as between them and Captain
Thorn, by the Ist of June a storehouse was
built and the supplies landed. Captain Thorn
was impatient to pi-oceed up the northwest
coast to open communication with the Russian
settlements and engage in trade with the In-
dians, and accordingly as soon as his vessel was
cleared of her load, on the oth day of June,
even before the fort was completed, he got
under weigh, sailed out of the mouth of the river,
and turned the prow of the Tonquin to tiie
north. With him was Mr. McKay, one of Mr.
Astor's partners, probably the most considerate
and thoughtful of all tliose thus intimately and
prominently associated with Mr. As tor in this
great venture. The vessel proceeded on her
voyage, and in a few days came to anchor in
one of the numerous harbors on the west shore
of Vancouver Island. Mr. McKay went on
shore. During his absence the vessel was sur-
rounded by a vast number of the savages.
Soon the deck of the vessel was covered by the
swarthy multitude. They were eager to trade,
but demanded a higher price for their furs than

Captain Thorn was willing to pay. Their
stubbornness provoked the irascible captain to
to anger, and he refused to deal with them at
all. Seizing the chief of the band who had
been following the captain about the deck and
taunting him with his stinginess, he rubbed an
otter skin in his face, and then somewhat vio-
lently ordered the whole band to leave the
vessel, enforcing his command by blows. Dur-
ing this misadventure Mr. McKay was on shore
— an ill-starred fact for the vessel and expedi-
tion. Wiiat followed is related with such cir-
cumstantial fidelity by Mr. Irving in his
"Astoria," and it bears such an important, if
not decisive, relation to the ultimate result of
the whole enterprise, that we transcribe it for
these pages. Mr. Irving says:

When Mr. McKay came on board, the inter-
preter related what had passed, and begged him
to prevail on the captain to make sail, as, from
his knowledge of the temper and pride of the
people of that place, he was sure that they
would resent the indignity offered to one of
their chiefs. Mr. McKay, who himself possessed
some experience of Indian character, went to tlie
captain, wiio was still pacing the deck in moody
humor, represented the danger to which his
hasty act had exposed the vessel, and urged
upon him to weigh anchor. The captain made
light of his counsels, and pointed to his cannon
and firearms as a sufficient protection against
naked savages. Further remonstrances only
provoked taunting replies and sharp altercations.
The day passed away without any signs of hos-
tility, and at night the captain retired, as usual,
to his cabin, taking no more than usual precau-
tions. On the following morning, at daybreak,'
while the captain and Mr. McKay were yet
asleep, a canoe came alongside in which were
twenty Indians, commanded by young Shewish.
They were unarmed, their aspect and demeanor
friendly, and they held up otter skins, and made
signs indicative of a desire to trade. The cau-
tion of Mr. Astor in regard to admitting In-
dians on board the ship had been neglected for
some time past, and the officer of the watch.

BISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

perceiving tliose in the canoe to be without
weapons, and having received no orders to the
contrary, readily permitted them to mount the
deck. Another canoe soon succeeded, the crew
of whicli was also admitted. In a little while
other canoes came off, and Indiana were soon
clambering into the vessel on all sides.

The officer of the watch now felt alarmed, and
called to Captain Thorn and Mr. McKay. By
the time they came on deck it was thronged
with Indians. The interpreter remarked to Mr.
McKay that many of the Indians wore short
mantles of skins, and intimated a suspicion that
they were secretly armed. Mr. McKay urged
the captain to clear the sliip and get under
weigh. He again made light of the advice, but
the augumented swarms of canoes about the
ship, and the numbers still putting off from the
shore, at length awakened his distrust, and he
ordered some of the crew to weigh anchor, while
some were eent aloft to make sail. The Indians
now offered to trade with the captain on his own
terms, prompted apparently by the apjiroaching
departure of the ship: accordingly a iiurried
trade wae commenced. The main article sought
by the Indians in barter were knives; as fast as
some are supplied they moved off, and others
succeeded. By degrees they were thus dis-
tributed about the deck, and all with weapons.
The anchor was now nearly up, the sails were
loose, and the captain in a loud and peremptory
voice ordered the ship to be cleared. In an in-
stant a signal yell was given; it was echoed on
every side, knives and war clubs were brand-
ished in every direction, and the savages rushed
upon their marked victims.

The first that fell was Mr. Lewis, the ship's
clerk. He was leaning with folded arms on a
bale of blankets, engaged in bargaining, when
he received a deadly stab in the back, and fell
down the companion-way. Mr. McKay, who
was seated on the taffrail, sprang to his feet,
but was instantly knocked down with a war
club and Hung backward into the sea, when he
was dispatched by the women in the canoes.
In the meaiitinie Captain Thorn made a desper-

ate tight against fearful odds. He was a pow-
erful as well as a resolute man, but he came on
deck without weapons. Shewish, the young
chief, singled him out as his peculiar prey, and
rushed upon him at the first outbreak. The
captain had hardly time to draw a clasp-knife,
with one blow of which he laid the young sav-
age dead at his feet. Several of the stoutest
followers of young Shewish now set upon him.
He defended himself vigorously, dealing crip-
pling blows right and left, strewing the quarter-
deck with slain and wounded. His object was
to fight his way to the cabin, where there were
firearms, but he was hemmed in with foes, cov-
ered with wounds and faint with loss of blood.
For an instant he leaned upon the tiller wheel,
when a blow from behind with a war club felled
him to the deck, when he was dispatched with
knives and thrown overboard.

While this was transacting upon the quarter-
deck, a chance-medley was going on throughout
the ship. The crew fought desperately with
knives, handspikes, and whatever weapons they
could seize upon in the moment of surprise.
They were soon, however, overpowered by num-
bers and mercilessly butchered. As to the seven
who had been sent aloft to make sail, tliey con-
templated with horror the carnage that was
going on below. Being destitute of weapons
they let themselves down by the running rig-
ging, in hopes of getting between decks. One
fell in the attempt and was immediately dis-
patched; another received a death-blow in the
back as he was descending; a third, Stephen
Weeks, the armorer, was mortally wounded as
he was getting down the hatchway. The re-
maining few made good their retreat into the
cabin, where they found Mr. Lewis still alive,
though mortally wounded. Barricading the
cabin door, they broke holes through the com-
panion-way, and, with muskets and ammunition
which were at hand, opened a brisk fire that
soon cleared the deck. Thus far the Indian
interpreter, from whom these particulars are
derived, had been an eye-witness of the deadly
conflict. He had taken no part in it and had

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

been spared by the natives as being of their race.
In the confusion of the inonient he took refuge
with the rest in the canoes. The survivors of
tlie event now sallied forth and discharged some
of the deck guns, wliich did great execution
among the canoes and drove all the savages to
tlie shore.

For tlie remainder of tlie day no one ventured
to put off to the ship, deterred by the effects of
the firearms. The night passed away without
any furtlier attempt on the part of the natives.
When day dawned tlie Tonquiu still lay at an-
chor in the hay, her sails all loose and flapping
in the wind, and no one apparently on board of
her. After a time some of the savages ventured
to reconnoiter, taking with them the interpre-
ter. They huddled about her, keeping cautiously
at a distance, but growing more and more em-
boldened at seeing her quiet and lifeless. One
man at length made his appearance on the deck
and was recognized by the interpreter as Mr.
Lewis. He made friendly signs and invited
them on board. It was long before they ven-
tured to comply. Those who mounted the deck
were met with no opposition, for Mr. Lewis,
after inviting them, had disappeared. Other
canoes now passed forward to board the prize;
the decks were soon crowded and the sides
covered with clambering savages, all intent on
plunder. In tiie midst of their eagerness and
exultation, the ship blew up with a tremendous
explosion. Arms, legs and mutilated bodies
were blown into the air, and dreadful havoc was
made in the surrounding canoes. The interpre-
ter was in the main chains at the time of the
explosion, and was thrown unhurt into the
water, when he succeeded in getting into one of
the canoes. According to his statement the bay
presented an awful spectacle after the catastro-
phe. The ship had disappeared, but the bay
was covered with fragments of the wreck, with
shattered canoes and Indians swimming for
their lives and struggling in the agonies of
death, while those who had escaped the danger
remained aghast and stupetied, or made with
frantic panic for the shore. Upward of 100

savages were destroyed by the explosion, maT)y
more were shockingly mutilated, and for days
afterward the limbs and bodies of the slain were
thrown upon the beach.

The inhabitants of Newectec were over-
whelmed with consternation at the astounding
calamity which had burst upon them at the very
moment of triumph. The warriors sat mute and
mournful, while the women filled the air with
loud lamentations. Their weeping and wailing,
however, were suddenly changed into yells of
fury at the sight of four unfortunate white men
brought captive into the village. They had
been driven ashore in one of the ship's boats,
and taken at some distance along the coast.
The interpreter was permitted to converse with
them. They proved to be the four brave fel-
lows who had made such a desperate defense
from the cabin. The interpreter gathered from
them some of the particulars already related.
They told him further, that, after they had
beaten off the enemy and cleared the ship, Lewis
advised that they shoxild slip the cable and en-
deavor to go to sea. They declined to take his
advice, alleging that the wind set too strongly
into the bay and would drive them on shore.
They resolved, as soon as it was dark, to put off
quietly in the ship's boat, which they would be
able to do unperceived, and to coast along back
to Astoria. They put their resolution into effect,
but Lewis refused to accompany them, being
disabled by his M^ound, hopeless of escape, and
determined on a terrible revenge. On the voy-
age he had frequently expressed a presentiment
that he should die by his own hands, thinking
it highly probable that he should be engaged in
some contest with the natives, and being resolved
in case of extremity to commit suicide rather
than be made a prisoner. He now declared his
intention to remain on tiie ship until daylight,
to decoy as many of the savages on board the
ship as possible, then set fire to the pow-der
magazine and terminate his life by a simple act
of vengeance. How well he succeeded has been
shown. His companions bade him a melan-
choly adieu and set off on their precarious ex-

HISTORY OF WASEINGTON.

pedition. They strove with might and main
to get out of the bay, but found it impossible
to weather a point of land, and were at length
comjieiled to take shelter in a small cove, where
they hoped to remain concealed until the wiad
should be more favorable. Exhausted by fatigue
and watching, they fell into a sound sleep, and
in tliat state were surprised by the savages.
Better had it been'for these unfortunate men
if they had remained with Lewis and shared his
heroic death; as it was they perished in a more
painful and protracted manner, being sacrificed
by the natives to tiie manes of their friends,
with all the lingering tortures of savage cruelty.
Some time after their death, the interpreter,
who had remained a kind of prisoner-at-large,
effected his escape and brought the tragical
tidings to Astoria.

Thus ended the career of the Tonquin and
her able but obstinate and hot-headed Captain
Tliorn, and here too closed the career of Alex-
ander McKay, a man to whom Mr. Astor had
justly looked as one most able to direct the
vasts interests that he had committed to this
commercial venture on the Pacific coast. Mr.
McKay, however, left a representative in Ore-
gon in the person of his son, who became cele-
brated in the annals of adventure on the trails
of the fur trader and in the campaigns of the
Indian wars of Oregon. At a later period his
descendants, in the persons of Dr. W. C. Mc-
Kay, of Pendleton, Oregon, and Donald Mc-
Kay, the celebrated scout in all the Indian wars
of forty years, have won for his name continued
distinction, and been of great service to the re-
gion in the interests of whose foundations their
forefather died.

Affairs at Astoria were, meantime, progress-
ing slowly toward a settled condition. The
fort was completed, and everything put in readi-
ness for the large trade which was reasonably
anticipated with the surrounding tribes. Dur-
ing the summer only one event occurred to
ruffle the smooth flow of the somewhat monot-
onous life of the past. It was this:

On the loth of July a canoe, manned by

nine white men, was seen descending the, river,
and in a short time they landed on the beach.
They proved to be a party sent by the power-
ful Northwest Company, a British corporation,
commanded by David Thompson, a partner in
the company. He had been dispatched from
Montreal the year before to anticipate the ar-
rival of the Astor party, and take possession of
the mouth of the Columbia before that party
should arrive. Hi>: journey had been greatly
hindered, many of his men had deserted, and
now, with the few who remained faithful, he
had arrived too late for the purpose for which
he had made the long and perilous journey.
The flight of the eagle had been too rapid for
the crawl of the lion, and America had first
possession in Oregon. Still there was that in
the reception that McDougal, who had charge
at Astoria, tendered to Thompson, the agent of
an opposing and foreign corporation, that, if it
could have been understood, boded no good to
the interest of Astoria,. McDougal had him-
self been formerly connected with the North-
west Company, and still cherished the warmest
sympathy with it, and a still warmer sympathy
with the principles and purposes of the British
Government. Hence Thompson's welcome was
cordial; his wants were bountifully supplied;
and, notwithstanding the fact that the very
purpose of his presence was to thwart the very
designs for which McDougal and his company
were there, he was sent on his return journey,
eight days later, with the benefactions, if not
the benedictions of McDougal thick upon him.
This visit of Thompson's was a most sinister
one, and he is blind reader of history who can-
not connect it, and the information and im-
pressions he obtained in it, with events toward
which our story hastens, and which will not be
long to appear.

It is hardly necessary for us to trace the
story of the various efforts of the company to
extend its trade and establish outposts during
the summer and autumn of 1812. They were
but parts of this general historic enterprise
which had its heart and pivot at Astoria, and,

HISTORY OF WASllINOTON.

however interesting as individual incidents of
adventure tliey might be, they did little to affect
or change the current of events that was so
raj)idly flowing toward a historic point of great
importance.

On the 9th of May, 1812, the ship Beaver,
i^ent by Mr. Aster with re-enforcements and
supplies, arrived at Astoria. Her arrival put
the Pacific Fur Company in the best condition
for vigorous and profitable service. After the
discharge of her cargo, Mr. Hunt, who it will
be remenjbered was Mrs. Aster's immediate rep-
resentative in the charge of the company, set
out in her for Alaska to fulfill the mission on
which the ill-fated Tonquin had sailed, leaving
Mr. Duncan McDougal in charge at Astoria.
The Beaver sailed on her voyage up the coast
in the month of August. As the closing
months of the year passed by, and the first of
the next was following them, and she did not
return, gloomy apprehensions of her fate settled
down on xVstoria. McDougal, especially, gave
way to the most unmanly despondency. He
liad nothing but evil forebodings and prophecies
for the whole enterprise. At this juncture ho
was surprised on the 16th of January by the
appearance of McKenzie, way-worn and weather-
beaten from a long winter journey, from his
post on Snake river, with intelligence which
brought to McDougal confusion of mind, if not
dismay of heart. It had been bi-ought to the
post of McKenzie by Mr. John George McTav-
ish, a partner of the Northwest Company, and
commanding a post of that company in the vi-
cinity of that commanded by McKenzie. While
McTavish was delighted by it McKenzie was as
much alarmed, and lost no time in breaking up
his establishment and hastening with all his
people to Astoria. The substance of the news
that thus delighted McTavish and dismayed
McKenzie, "was that war had been declared be-
tween England and the United States; that as
the representative of the English company he
was prepared for the vigorous opposition to the
American, and he capped the climax of this,
to him very pleasing intelligence, by saying

that the armed ship, Isaac Todd, was to be at
the mouth of the Columbia river about the be-
ginning of March, to get possession of the trade
of the river, and that he was directed to join her
there at that time.

The intelligence brought by McKenzie com-
pleted the dismay of McDougal. All hope of
maintaining Astoria was abandoned, and the
partners resolved to give up the post in the
following spring, and return across the Rocky
mountains. Meantime all trade was given up,
and after a short stay at Astoria McKenzie set
off for his post on Snake river, to prepare for
its intended abandonment, and also for the
contemplated journey to the States. When the
party was some distance above The Dalles of the
Columbia, they met Mr. J. G. McTavish with
two canoe-loads of white men, in the employ-
ment of the Northwest Company, on their way
down the Columbia to meet the Isaac Todd.
The parties encamped together for the night
like comrades rather than rivals, the two lead-
ers holding very friendly consultations, and in
the morning each proceeded on his way. With
the exception of McKenzie the partners in com-
mand of posts in the interior did not agree with
McDougal's determination to abandon the coun-
try. They had been very successful in their
trade with the Indians, and considered it un-
manly to break up an enterprise of such magni-
tude and promise on the first difficulty. In this
they were more faithful and courageous than
their chief at Astoria.

The time for the annual gathering of partners
with the products of the year's trade at Astoria
was in June. Accordingly, on the 12th of that
month, Mr. McKenzie, Mr. Clark, and Mr.
David Stuart arrived from the posts on the
upper Columbia and Snake rivers, bringing a
very valuable stock of peltries. They found
McDougal, representing the Pacific Fur Com-
pany, and McTavish, representing the Northwest
Company, rivals both in trade and, nationality,
in closest fellowship. McDougal's hospitality
to McTavish was altogether uncalled for, and
the more especially when the nation which he,

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

as a member of the Northwest Company, really
represented, was at war with the United States,
and McDoiigal well knew that he was there for
a hostile purpose. He treated McTavish and
his party as allies rather than enemies and ri-
vals. McDoiigal had but to leave them to their
own resources, and they must have abandoned
the country immediately. The moral evidence
of McDougal's treason to his company is con-
clusive, and the results soon justitied the belief.

The ship Isaac Todd, which McTavish ex-
pected to meet at the mouth of the river, not
arriving, that gentleman applied to McDougal
for a supply of goods with which to trade his
way back. They were furnished, and on the
proposition of McUongal the posts of the Pacific
Fur Company on the Spokane were conveyed to
the Xorthwest Company. This established that
company in the very garden of the trade of the
Pacific Company.

McDougal and McKenzie, who were at one
in their sinister purpose, at length succeeded in
influencing the minds of Clarke and Stuart, and
the two other partners present, and the four
sicrned a manifesto to Mr. Astor setting forth
the most desponding representations of the con-
dition of affairs at Astoria, and formally an-

nouncing

their determination to dissolve the

concern on the 1st of the following June. This
instrument was delivered to McTavish, who de-
parted from Astoria on the 5th of July, to be
forwarded to Mr. Astor at New York by the
Northwest Company.

Wiiile these events were occurring on the
Pacific, others of not 4ess moment to Astoria
were transpiring on the Atlantic. On the 6th
of March, 1813, Mr. Astor dispatched tlie ship
Lark with supplies for Astoria. She had scarcely
sailed before it became known to him that the
Northwest Company had for tlie second time
memorialized the British Government, repre-
senting Astoria as an American establishment of
great strength, with a vast scope of purpose, and
urging that it be destroyed. In answer to the
memorial that government ordered the frigate
Phoebe to convoy the armed ship Isaac Todd,

of the Northwest Company, which was ready to
sail with men and supplies for a new establish-
ment at the mouth of the Columbia. They were
to proceed together to the mouth of that river,
capture or destroy whatever American fortress
they should find there and plant the British flag
upon its ruins.

To meet this new and alarming condition of
affairs, Mr. Astor appealed to the Goverment,
and the frigate Adams, with Captain Crane com-
manding, was ordered to the mouth of the Co-
lumbia, and Mr. Astor immediately proceeded
to fit out the ship Enterprise, with supplies and
re-enforcements to sail in her company for As-
toria. Just as the two ships were ready for sea
the exigencies of the American naval service on
lake Ontario called for more seamen, and those
of the Adams were transferred to the squadron
of Commodore Chaneey, and the expedition was
abandoned.

It would needlessly lengthen our work to at-
tempt to trace the complicated movements of
the different parties in one way or another con-
nected with the various expeditions, by both sea
and land, that in some way affected the history
of the great enterprise of Mr. Astor. On the
whole, taking into account the fact that the un-
dertaking had such vast and wide ramifications
touching all the possibilities of Indian trade in
half a continent and of trade with China and
Russia and other parts of the world, and that
purchases, sales and returns over the world-wide
sweep of Mr. Astor's plans would needs re-
quire at least two years before any intelligent
estimate of success or loss could be made, the
conclusions of McDougal and McKenzie at
Astoria, with which even Mr. Hunt had at last,
with much difficulty, been persuaded to agree,
appear to have been childishly hasty, or else
wickedly disloyal to their patron and chief.
"Whichever it was, the result to the enterprise
was the same, and its record can soon be made.

On the 7th of October a squadron of ten
boats under the command of S. G. McTavish,
who had with him Mr. J. Stuart, another part-
ner of the Northwest Company, with some

niSJOBY OF WASUINGTON.

clerks and sixty-eight men, swept around Tongue
Point, and soon after landed and encamped un-
der the guns of the fort, displaying the Eritisli
colors. There were some young men in the
fort, native Americans, who desired to run up
the "stars and stripes," but McDougal forbade
them. They were astonished and incensed, as
they would gladly have nailed the national en-
sign to the staff even at the cost of a battle, but
their protest had no influence with McDougal.
He had determined on a surrender of Astoria,
and to prepare the way for it read to the young
men of the fort a letter from his uncle, Mr.
Angus Shaw, one of the principal partners of
the Northwest Company, announcing the com-
ing of the Phojbe and Isaac Todd " to take and
destroy everything American on the northwest
coast." This did not dismay nor convince the
patriotic American youth, but they were power-
less. McDougal and McTavisli hastened nego-
tiations. On the same day the former agreed
to transfer Astoria and all it contained. It was
to be transferred to the Northwest Company on
terms that were entirely satisfactory to the
latter. Before the stipulations were signed,
however, Mr. Stuart and the reserve party of
the Northwest Company arrived and encamped
with the party of Mr. McTavish. He insisted
on a reduction of prices and McDougal obse-
quiously complied, and on the 16th of October,
1813, an agreement was executed by which the
furs and merchandise of all kinds in the entire
country belonging to the Pacific Fur Company
passed into the possession of the Northwest
Company at about one-third of their real value.
Soon after the British sloop-of-war, Raccoon,
arrived in the river, having come with high
hopes that in the capture of Astoria her oflicers
and men would be enriched by the trophies the
Americans had gathered. They found instead
that already the establishment had passed into
the hands of the British subjects, and were sorely
disappointed. On the 12th of December the
formal raising of the British flag over the fort
took place, and in the name of His Britannic

Majesty its name was changed from Astoria to
Fort George.

About two months after tlys transaction, Mr.
Hunt, in the brig Pedlar, arrived at Astoria,
finding McDougal a partner of the Northwest
instead of the Pacific Fur Company, and acting
under the British instead of the American flag.
It was too late to remedy the grievous error
and wrong, and it remained for him only to
gather up the fragments that remained of the
interests of Mr. Astor and his great company;
and on the 13th of April, 1814, he sailed away
from the Columbia, sadly leaving the flag of
Great Britain floating where should have
streamed the ensign of America.

In concluding this chapter of Oregon-Amer-
ican history the writer can hardly help adding
the reflection that the key to the failure of Mr.
Astor's grand enterprise is found in the fact
that the most of its leaders were so largely for-
eigners. Their very names had a foreign accent
and orthography, and they loved the cross of
St. George more than the stars and stripes of
Columbia. They were not great enough to be
true to principle and ol)ligation against appeals
to feeling and profit. And so the American
establishment of Astoria became the British
post of Fort George.

Matters at Astoria — now for a time to be called
Fort George — remained the same until the war
between the United States and Great Britain was
terminated by the treaty of Ghent, in 1815.
This treaty stipulated that "all territory,
places and possessions whatsoever taken by
either party from the other during the war, or
which may be taken after the signing of this
treaty, shall be restored without delay." The
commissioners, however, could not agree upon a
line of division between the possessions of
England and the United States west of the
Rocky mountains, and no action was taken in
regard to Fort George. In July, 1815, in ac-
cordance with its understanding of the terms of
the treaty, the United States Government noti-
iied the British minister at Washington that it

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

would immediately re-occupy the captured fort
at the mouth of the Cohimbia river. Great
Britain made no ^fficial reponse to this notice,
and for two years no further action was taken.
At last, in September, 1817, the American
sloop-of-war Ontario, commanded by Captian J.
Biddle, was despatched to the Columbia, and
the captain and Mr. J. B. Prevost were consti-
tuted a commission instructed to assert the
claim of the United States to sovereignty over
the region of the Columbia. This decisive act
compelled a decision also on the part of Great
Britain, and resulted in negotiations which
finally terminated in a formal transfer, in 1818,

of Fort George to Mr. Prevost as representative
of the United States, thus putting that power
again, at least nominally. and formally, in the
possession of the Pacific Northwest. Still the
Northwest Company remained in actual posses-
sion of the property of Fort George by virtue
of its purchase of the same from the agents of
Mr. Astor, as heretofore recorded. It was now
a strongly built and thoroughly armed fortress,
and remained practically as much a British post
as before, until the final adjustment of the
boundary question, in 1846. But it had no
history of its own separate from the general
history of the coast.

CHAPTER VIII.

MISSIONARY OCCUPANCY.

Indian Embassy to St. Louis — Disappointment — Indian's Speech — George Catlin — Letter
Published — Churches Respond — Jason Lee and Coadjutors Cross the Continent —
Mr. Lee and Dr. McLouohi.in — Lee Establishes His Mission — Work of the Mission
— Decay of the Indians — Action of the A. B. C. F. M. — Missionaries Appointed —
First White Woman to Cross the Continent — Roman Catholic Missions — Their Char-
acter — (Conflicts with the Protestants — Blanchet's Statement.

\E have traced the history of the north-
west coast through the traditions of
its ante -civilized state. It is now time
that we turn to its initial occupancy for civil-
ized purposes and life, without, at this point,
discussing motives or philosophies of civiliza-
tion, but giving a plain narration of facts.

In the year 1832 the attention of the churches
of the United States was called, in a somewhat
romantic and startling manner, to the country
west of the Rocky Mountains as a promising

r missionary work among the native

field fo

tribes. It occurred in this wise:

In some manner the Indians of the far north-
west had become impressed with the great su-
periority of the white man. With the natural
superstition of uncivilized races, or, it may be,
with the true instinct of universal humanity,
they assigned that superiority to the marvelous

power of the white man's God. To find that
God and avail themselves of the advantages
that a knowledge of Him would give them, be-
came the subject of earnest and repeated con-
sultation among them. They had also heard
that the white man had a book that communi-
cated that knowledge, and they earnestly desired
its possession. How these glimmerings of fact
had come to their minds we cannot tell, though
it was doubtless through some stray American
trappers, or some wandering Iroquois who had
come into contact with Christian teachings in
Canada or New York. They were crude at
best, invested with the charm of supernatural-
ism, always exciting and attractive to an In-
dian's mind, and of course stirred their imag-
inations to the very deepest. In the councils
of the Flathead nation it was at last determined
that an embassy should be sent on the long

IT I STORY OF WASHINGTON.

■75

trail — they knew not liow long — if liaply tliey
might find the Book and bring back the cov-
eted light.

An old chief, celebrated among liis people for
bravery and judgment, and an old brave skilled
in war were selected, and with them were asso-
ciated two young braves for daring and perilous
feats during the long Journey, as the chosen
embassadors of the waiting and expectant tribe.

The route tliey took was never recorded.
They disappeared in the defiles of the Kocky
mountains, stole their ■way through hostile
tribes, traversed the M-ide, treeless plains that
stretch between the mountains and the Missouri
river, and finally appeared before General AVill-
iam Clarke, who had led the exploring expedi-
tion over the Kocky mountains to the sea seven-
teen years before, with the story of their peo-
ple's desire and of their own journey for its
gratification, in St. Louis, then a hamlet on the
uttermost borders of civilization. General
Clarke was then superintendent of the Indian
affairs in the great West, and the man to whom
they would naturally apply for the information
they sought.

Without following the romantic speculations
of many writers as to what was done and said
by these Indians, it is necessary to add but
little more than that their mission to them was
a sad failure. The old Indian chief and his
companion died in St. Louis, and after long and
sad inquiry the two young men prepared to
depart for their distant home. Before their
departure they took a ceremonious leave of
General Clarke, and one of them delivered a
speech that for sad pathos and wild eloquence
may safely be quoted as the equal of Logan's
plaintive words. One who was present and
listened to it thus puts in English its words:

"I come to you over a 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 one eye partly opened for more light
for my people, who sit in darkness. I go back
with both eyes closed. How can I go back
blind to my 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. The two fathers who came with us —
the braves of many winters and wars — we leave
asleep here by your great water and wigwam.
They were tired in many moons of journey, and
their moccasins wore out. My people sent me
to get the white man's Book of Heaven. You
took me where they worship the Great Spirit
with candles, but the Book was not there. You
showed me the images of good spirits and pict-
ures of the good land beyond, but the Book
was not among them to tell us the way. I am
going back the long, sad trail to my people in
their dark land. You make my feet heavy with
your burdens of gifts, and my moccasins will
grow old in carrying them, but the Book is not
among them. When I tell my poor, liliiid jx'o-
ple, after one more snow, that I did not brinn-
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 go out on the
long path to the 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."

The interview ended, the two remaining In-
dian messengers turned their faces homeward.
One died on the way, and the other, returning
to his people, disappeared from historic record.

The fact of the coming of this embassy, and
its disappointed return to the distant regions
whence it came, was soon noised abroad as a
very romance of religion. A young clerk in
the office of General Clarke, having witnessed
the interview and noted its sad disappointing
end, detailed an account of it to friends in
Pittsburg. George Catlin was then pursuing
his studies and investigations in Indian lore,
and enriching his gallery with Indian portraits
and paintings. To him the letter was shown.
He had met the two returning braves, traveled
with them on the Yellowstone, and even taken
their portraits for his gallery, and they had said

HISTORY OF WASEINGTON.

nothing to liim of the object of their visit to
St. Louis and its failure. He tlierefore asked
that the letter be uot published until he had
written to General Clarke and ascertained the
facts in the case. The reply from the general
came at length, saying: "It is true; that was
the only object of their visit, and it failed."
On Catlin's advice the letter was given to tlie
world. In his " Indian Letters," Mr. Catlin
speaks of the matter thus: "When I first heard
the report of this extraordinary mission across
tlie mountains, I could scarcely believe it; but
on consulting with General Clarke I was fnlly
convinced of the fact. * * They liad been
told that our religion was better than theirs,
and that they woidd be lost if they did not em-
brace it."

The publication of the letter detailing these
events stirred the heart of the Christian people
of America as a call from God, — as who shall
say it was not? — for, though the one lone sur-
vivor of this embassy returned sad and disap-
pointed to his more disappointed people, his
mission was far from being a failure, and, as we
read history backward from to-day, this event
seems a divine pivot on which turned not only
some of the most thrilling chapters of individ-
ual history ever recorded, but much of the des-
tiny of the Indian people, and probably all of
that of Oregon.

It was forever contrary to the genius and
spirit of Christianity to leave a call so clearly
within the limits of the Christian's idea of
Providence unanswered. So, while all the
churches of the land felt the thrill of this
providential call, the Methodist Episcopal
Church was the first to respond. She did not
stop to experiment and explore, but through
lier constituted authorities sotight for a man to
lead the vanguard of the forces of civilization
and Christianity over the Rocky mountains and
down toward the western sea a full 2,000 miles
beyond the westernmost fringe of American
settlement. In a church whose typical legend
was a man on horseback bearing a banner in-
scribed, "Tlio world is my parish," it could

not be far nor difBcnlt to find such a man, and,
having found the leader, to find coadjutors and
helpers in the work he adventured.

After due and diligent search the authorities
of the church decided that Jason Lee, a young
man of thirty-one years, who resided in Stan-
stead, Lower Canada, only just across the line
of the United States, born of New England
parents, educated in Wilbraham Academy, Mas-
sachusetts, under Wilbur Fisk, the most re-
nowned educator of early Methodist history,
was the man for the hour that had thus struck.
The reasons for this conclusion were decisive.
Mr. Lee was of unusual physical dignity and
prowess. He was six feet three inches in
height, and of most stalwart and manly mold.
Erect, with open and manly and frank counten-
ance, a clear blue eye, light complexion and
hair, he was the impersonation of Saxon vigor
and will. Upon him the seal that gave the
world assurance of a man was set. Withal, his
own heart was moved in the direction of the
work to which the church, through her consti-
tuted authorities, was thns calling him. When,
therefore, his former tutor at Wilbraham, Dr.
Fisk, put the question before him in behalf of
the church, and also in behalf of the waiting
Indian tribes west of the Rocky mountains,
"immediately he conferred not with flesh and
blood" but stepped resolutely through the open
door thus unexpectedly opened before him, and
gave himself to history as the pioneer of civil-
ization and Christianity west of the Rocky
mountains. Others, kindred in purpose, and of
similar heroic quality, were soon associated with
him. These were his own nephew. Rev. Daniel
Lee, and Mr. Cyrus Shepard. of Massachusetts,
who were also, under the appointment of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, designated to share
the honor as well as the peril of a missionary
expatriation among the western tribes.

It does not enter into the purpose of this his-
tory to give a detailed account of the personnel
and work of the various missionary companies
that pioneered the work of Anierican civiliza-
tion on the Paciiic coast, further than is neces-

IIlSTOnr OF WASHINGTON.

sary to show the relations they sustained to the
history of the country into which they entered.
It would belong rather to ecclejiastieal than
general history to do that. Still that personnel
was so great and heroic, and that work so funda-
mental, that neither can be dismissed with a
paragraph. Hence we take up the history of
these missionary companies in the chronological
order of their occupancy of this field, premising
the remark that the essence of the importance
of their work in every respect that bore upon
the settlement of questions of national and in-
ternational rights was in the time, as well as in
the fact, of their coming. With this explana-
tory remark, and within this limitation, we re-
sume the story of the missionary work of tlie
Methodist Episcopal Church under the direction
of Jason Lee.

Mr. Lee received his appointment as " Mis-
sionary to the Flathead Indians" in 1833, from
the New England Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. Leaving his home in Can-
ada on the nineteenth day of August of that
year, he spent the following autumn and winter
in traveling through the cities and villages of
the Xorth from Portland, Maine, to Baltimore,
stirring up the hearts of the church everywhere
by his fervent appeals for the Indians of the
West, and inspiring the confidence of the peo-
ple by his evident sincerity as well as his com-
mauding ability. Under the influence of his
speeches Oregon began to rise out of a mythi-
cal into an actual existence in the thoughts of
the people. To Ansericans even, up to this
time, it was as unknown as Hindoostan, — a
name standing only for unexplored regions be-
tween the summits of the Rocky mountains and
the western ocean, of unsurveyed limits and
unknown conditions. Although it had served,
in Congress and in Parliament, as a text for
vaporing political discourse, yet so little did
Britain or America know of it that the one sought
it only as a preserve for the fur hunter, and the
other believed it to be but a barren and inhos-
pitable waste tit only to appear on his maps as
the "Great American desert." The appoint-

ment of Jason Lee to evangelistic work within
it, and tlie evident intention of the great church
whose commission he bore to sustain him in
the tield to which she had assigned him, meant
the lifting up of a veil that for the ages had
hidden that vast region from human sight.

In the spring of 1834 this company of mis-
sionaries joined the company of Mr. Nathaniel
Wyeth, of whose trading adventures west of the
Pocky mountains we have elsewhere written, at
Independence, Missouri, prepared to accompany
them on their journey over the mountains. At
Independence Mr. Lee secured the services of
Mr. P. L. Edwards, a young man of tine abilities
and excellent character, afterward a prominent
lawyer of Sacramento, California. All his as-
sociates were men well adapted to sustain their
chief in his arduous undertaking. Notwith-
standing there was so much of the history of the
Pacitic coast wrapped under the coats of these
four men, it would occupy too much of the space
that is needed for other events to record the in-
cidents of their journey of two thousand miles
on horseback to their field of selected toil.
Suffice it here to say that through all the inci-
dents and perils of the journey among such
Indian tribes as the Pawnees, the Sioux, the
Shoshones, the Blackfeet, the Bannacks, the
Nez Perces and the Cayuses, wild freebooters of
the plains, they bore themselves like brave men,
ready to do all their part in every emergency of
travel or danger. Mr. Lee, in a very special
manner, won the conlidence and respect of such
mountain leaders as Sublette, Wyeth, Fitz-
patrick, Walker and others. Prof. Townshend,
a naturalist who accompanied the party for
scientific purposes, speaks of him in his journal
in most flattering terms.

Mr. Lee and his company reached Vancouver,
the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company,
and the residence of Dr. McLoughlin, its gover-
nor, on the 15th day of September, 1884. He
was received with great respect by Dr. Mc-
Loughlin. The moral and political casuist will
readily see that in the meeting of these two men
on that day there stood face to face causes and

UISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

destinies of wonderful import to Oregon, and
even to civilization itself the world over. They
were both typical and representative men. They
were both Canadian born. One was a Scotch-
Englishman with all the stalwart grip and force
of that splendid blood. The other was of pure
New England parentage. They were both over
six feet in height and looked level into each
others eyes. Seldom indeed have two such
representatives of opposing foi-ces and antago-
nistic purposes stood face to face with each
other, and yet met so calmly, and so entered at
once into ench other's personal friendships, as in
the case of these two men. One is tempted to
stand long and gaze npon this strange moral
and intellectual tableau thrown against the fore-
ground of an opening and against the back-
ground of a departing era; for when their two
liauds clasped it was the old greeting, perhaps
unconsciouslj, the better new, and the new, per-
haps as unconsciously, bidding the old depart.
Dr. McLonghliii, as the representative of the
Hudson's Bay Company, and hence of the power
and purpose of Great Britain in Oregon, could
not meet Mr. Lee as he could and did meet Mi-.
Nathaniel Wyeth. The etses and the causes
were entirely dissimilar. Mr. Wyeth came with
merchandise as a trader, came to set up a rival
establishment within hearing of the morning
gun of Fort Vancouver. Mr. Lee came as a
missionary of help and moral uplift to the de-
graded tribes that swarmed in the valleys and
roamed over the hills. Mr. "Wyeth had arms
in his hands; Mr. Lee had ideas and moral pur-
poses in his mind and heart. The lirst could
be met with stronger and older commercial
power or with more numerous arms if necessary;
the other could be met only with ideas and moral
purposes better than his own. Therefore the
first was hemmed in, circumscribed, thwarted,
finally defeated, and within a year compelled to
leave the country a broken and ruined nian.
But Mr. Lee and his ideas had come to stay.
One cannot shoot an idea to death. He cannot
kill a moral impulse with gunpowder. Besides,

those who knew Dr. McLoughlin in his lifetime
know very well that his moral nature was far
superior to the purposes and work of the soul-
less corporation of which he, by a providence
very gracious to the work Mr. Lee came to
Oregon to perform, was then the executive
head. In the case of Mr. Lee, therefore, his
heart became the guide of his actions, and hence
he not only did not attetnpt to hinder, but
really extended ethcient help in the establish-
ment of his mission and the opening of his work
in Oregon. Still justice requires us say that
it is not probable that Dr. McLoughlin was
enough skilled in moral casuistry, or well
enough acquainted with the history of the re-
su'ts of missionary enterprises in other parts of
the world, to fully comprehend the meaning of
the future history of this coast that was wrapped
up witiiin the white folds of Mr. Lee's commis-
sion. So he helped where otherwise he might'
have hindered; he counseled where he other-
wise might have opposed and defeated.

It was under the advice of Dr. McLoughlin
that Mr. Lee finally decided to establish his
missionary station in the heart of the Willam-
ette valley. Two motives seemed to prompt
that advice. First, the piitting of the American
establishment south of the Columbia river, which
the Hudson's Bay people expected would be-
come the boundary between Great Britain and
the United States on this coast, and secondly
having it near enough to Vancouver to be under
its watchful eye. Mr. Lee, having carefully ex-
amined every point that would suggest itself as
a suitable one for his work, finally, on Monday,
the sixth day of October, 1834, with Daniel
Lee and P. L. Edwards, pitched his tent on the
banks of the Willamette river, about ten miles
below the present city of Salem, where he had
determined to establish his mission. On Sun-
day, the 19th of October, he delivered the first
formal sermon ever preached in the Willamette
valley, at the residence of Mr. Joseph Gervais,
near where the town of Gervais now stands;
his unpublished journal says: '■ From these

UISTOltY OF WASHINGTON.

words, 'Turn ye from your evil ways,' to a mixed
assembly, few of whom understood what I said;
but God is able to speak to their hearts."

From this time forward, ever increasing, be-
coming more and more a molding force in the
intellectual and moral life of the country, his
work went forward. It is not the province of
this history to follow it in detail, — only far
enough to show how potentially this and suc-
ceeding missionary establishments became the
nucleus around which accreted whatever there
was of American thoujj;ht and purpose and life
in Oregon for nearly ten years following this
date, for this reason the men, and the work
they performed, as makers and molders of his-
tor}', are of first importance in estimating the
conditions out of which history is made.

Though Christians, Mr. Lee and the three
men who wrought with him were plain, practi-
cal, solid men. All the pictures of the writers
who paint them as pietistic recluses, or even
religious zealots, expecting to save the heathen
and renew a people by exhortations and prayers
and moral incantations, are sheer rhetorical cari-
catures, to say the least of them, instead of real
descriptions, and show^ either the ignorance or
perversity of those who painted them. These
men knew well that their work, to be ultimately-
productive of the results for which they were
here, must lay its foundations in the very ele^
ments of intellectual and physical culture. They
had placed but half a shelter over their lone
heads before they proceeded to the establish-
ment of an Indian manual-labor school, into
which Indians, both youth and adults, were
gathered, and where they were taught husbandry
and mechanics, as well as song and prayer.
As showing the result of this teaching in these
earlier years of their work, the testimony of
Captain VV. A. Slocum, of the United States
Navy, commanding the brig Loriot, who visited
Mr. Lee's mission about two years after its es.
tablisliinent, may properly be quoted. He says:
" I have seen children who two years ago were
roaming over their own native wilds, jn a state
of savage barbarism, now being brought within

the knowledge of moral and religious instruc-
tion, becoming useful members of society, by
being taught the most useful of all arts — agri-
culture — and all this without the least compul-
sion." So favorably did the work of this mis-
sion impress him that he made to it the con-
siderable donation of S30, as a testimony of his
appreciation.

After two years of successful work by these
four men in the missionary field, so promising
did the future appear that six others, three men
and three women, were added to their number
by the missionary authorities of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, arriving in Oregon in May,
1837, and these were succeeded in Septeuiber of
the same year by four others, two ujen and two
women. One of the last named gentlemen,
Rev. David Leslie, was attended by his wife
and seyeral children — a thoi-ough New England
family, having sonie of the best blood of old
Massachusetts flowing in their veins; the first
real family transplanted from the New England
of the Atlantic coast to the better New England
to the Pacific coast; the real beginning of
American home life in the valley of the Willa-
mette. Does not thjs mean something for
American civilization on the Pacific coast?

It should be noted that up to this time the
Indian tribes were maintaining tjieir old nu-
merical strength- They were deejily impressed
with the superiority of that form of civilized
life that they saw in the missionary homes about
them. They could not but see the difference
between them and the trappers and trail-men of
the fur companies. So they were calling for
missionary establishments elsewhere,— east of the
Cascade mountains, at Clatsop, in the Umpqua,
among the Cayuses and Nez Perces. An emer-
gency of civilization and Christianity was upon
the land. Jason Lee, the Corypheus of this
band of Christian civilizers, returned to the
east by the trail by which he came out, to se-
cure help adequate to the great emergency.
His appeals from fSoston to Charleston, from
St. Louis to New York, on the rostrum and
through the press, in the winter of 1838 and the

HISTORY OF WASUINGTON.

summer of 1839, awakened profound and wide-
spread interest, not only in his special work bnt
in Oregon itself. He asked for four or live
missionary helpers. The great church to wliich
he appealed judged that the demands were
greater. Five clerical missionaries, one physi-
cian, six mechanics, four farmei-s, one steward
or business-manager, four female teachers, —
thirty-six adults in all, together with seventeen
children, constituted the reinforcement which the
church, in whose employ Mr. Lee was laboring,
judged not too large to meet the emergency of
the hour. It was a missionary company, but it
was not that only. It was an American colony;
an educated, refined, patriotic colony of Ameri-
can citizens. When, in the early summer of
1840, these fifty-three people united in the
Williamette valley with the sixteen who had
preceded them, there was a truly American
colony west of the Cascade mountains of nearly
four-score souls, — a nucleus of civilization
around which the elements of a great history
might gather and enlarge and crystallize until a
great apd prosperous State should be the result.
*' JVIan proposes; God disposes." So it was
here. A single year while Mr. Lee was absent
from the country had touched the Indian tribes
as with a pestilence. They were wasting out of
being. The beautiful valleys of the west were
to be dedicated to something greater and grander
than even Indian missionary establishments.
A stronger race, Avith a purpose and a power
that could carry the country to the highest
forms of civilized society and life was to have
and to hold it. Their vanguard of cl:o.-i!ii me?i
and women, chosen for their personal ] owerand
purpose, was here to fix and drive the initial
stake from which should be traced the founda-
tion measurements of the history of a thousand
years. Nor was this altogether an unexpected
condition. This great enterprise had the count-
tenance of the national authorities with some
reference to its political as well as its moral and
religious significance. Of course it was known
that, sooner or later, the Indian tribes here, as
everywhere else, would disappear. Tlie men in

authority at Washington did not know this bet-
ter than did the men who constituted this mie-
sionary company. Indeed they did not know
it as well. But it came sooner than was antic-
ipated, though not too soon for the safety of
American interests, as the pressure of events in
Washington and in London were hurrying the
two nations toward a final issue of their strug-
gles for Oregon. With the coming of tliis fate
— sad, it would seem, to the Indian tribes —
there was a necessary failure, comparatively, of
these Indian missions. But that failure was
one of the conditions of the iticoming of that
after civilization the germ of which was in that
colony of American men and women that had
thus strangely .been set down here just in time
to give it most potent relation to what was to
be. Still, for three years, the work of this
company of people was, as far as those immedi-
ately about them were concerned, endeavoring
to do good to tlie decaying remnants of the In-
dian tribes. Besides the missionaries and those
immediately connected with them, the Indians,
few and feeble as they were, were all upon
whom they could bestow labor or sympathy.
As to themselves they were waiting, becoming
acquainted with the geography and resources of
the country. They were young people. Hardly
a person forty years of age among them. They
could afford to wait and be ready for what was
I'eady for them.

Our readers will see when they reach and
study the history of " Immigration" as treated
hereafter in this book, that the autumn of 1843
dates a change in the population of the country
of such a character as necessarily to close, in
large measure, the era of Indian missions in
Oregon. It is true there were local interlap-
pings and overlappings, but after that date the
white and the American predominates in the
country over the red and tiie Hudson's Bay.
Hence we do not trace the history of this first
established and strongest mission farther than
that period, but consider its personnel as after-
ward absorbed into the larger life of a common-
wealth of which itself had been a most jiotent

HI STOUT OF WASHINGTON.

creator. As we conclude our distinctive refer-
ence to this individual mission, the fairness of
liistory requires us to give the names of the gen-
tlemen then constituting it, or had been prom-
inently connected with it. They were Jason Lee,
Daniel Lee, Cyrus Shepard, who had died, P. L.
Edwards, who had returned to the States, David
Leslie, H. K. W. Perkins, Elijah White, who
had also returned to the States, A. Beers, W.
H. Wiilson, Alvin ¥. Waller, Gnstavus Hines,
George Abernethy, Hamilton Campbell, H. B.
Brewer.

The same incidents that at the beginning
awakened such an intense interest in the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church in America for the In-
dians of the Kocky mountains and beyoiid,
thrilled with the same intensity the other
churches of the land. They began to project
missionary work in that region at the same time.
The American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions, then representing the Pres-
byterian, Congregational and Dutch Reformed
Ciuirches, was not backward in its purposes.
Early in 1834 initial steps were taken. A com-
mission to explore the country preparatory to
the establishment of a mission was appointed,
consisting of Rev. Samuel Parker, Rev. J. Dun-
bar, and Mr. S. Ellis. They left Ithaca, New
York, in May, but reached St. Louis too late to
join the caravans of fur traders for the Rocky
mountains, and were obliged to defer the con-
templated exploration until another year. Mr.
Parker returned to New York, and Messrs. Dun-
bar and Ellis engaged in missionary labors
among the Pawness. In the spring of 1835
Mr. Parker was joined by Dr. Marcus Whit-
man, and they reached St. Louis in April. In
company wnth the annual caravan of the Amer-
ican Fur Company they proceeded westward as
far as Green river, about fifty miles west of the
summit of the Rocky mountains, the rendezvous
of that company. Here they met a large num-
bers of the Indians of the Columbia, and the in-
formation they received from them, together
witli that from trappers, traders and travelers
whom they met here, was such as decided them

to establish a mission on or near the middle
Columbia. In t'lirtlierance of that decision Dr.
Whitman returned to the East, and Mr. Parker
continued his journey to the Columbia. He
visited Walla Walla, Vancouver, the mission of
Mr. Lee in the Willamette, and after completing
his observations returned to New York by the
way of the Sandwich islands and cape Horn in
1837.

Two Nez Perces Indians accompanied Dr.
Whitman on his return to New York, where
their appearance as specimens of the tribe
among which it was proposed to establish a
mission excited the greatest curiosity and
interest.

In the spring of 1836 Dr. Whitman and his
wife, to whom he was but recently married,
with Rev. H. H. Spaulding and his young wife,
and Mr. W. H. Gray as secular agent of the
mission, proceeded to the frontier of Missouri,
and uniting themselves to the American Fur
Company's convoy proceeded across the conti-
nent to the place fixed upon for their mission-
ary work among the Cayuses at Waiiletpu and
among the Nez Perces at Lapwai.

This journey is justly celebrated in history
as the first ever made by white women across
the Rocky mountains. That alone was sufficient
to make the names of Mrs. Whitman and Mrs.
Spaulding historic. It writes them on the page
of history as heroines. They were the first
white women whose blue eyes ever looked into
the black orbs of the aboriginal daughters of
the Columbia. That makes their arrival date
an epoch in our history. While they were
coming by land, others were on the way by sea,
but these were first by a few months, and no
fair hand has ever been raised, or ever will be
raised, to pluck the crown of this great distinc-
tion from their brows. They were personally
worthy of it, and we are glad to study them in
their imique and magnificent isolation in his-
toric story. Full as was this journey with
thrilling incident, we can do no more than, with
these few sentences, conduct these missionaries
to their place where, two years after Jason Lee

Ul STORY OF WASHINGTON.

had established the Methodist missiou in the
Williatiiette, they began theirs in interior
Oregon.

The same gCHeral course of incident inarlced
the work of these missions as did that already
desci'ibed in the Willamette Valley. There
was, however, a difference in one important
respect. The Indians of the interior were very
superior, physically and intellectually, to those
nearer the coast. Hence, while the tribes of
the Willamette were smitten with decay these
were yet vigorous and comparatively numerous.
Seven years, therefore, after the Indian mission
work was almost or entirely abandoned in the
AYillamette, that in this region was enjoying
its greatest prosperity. But it was only to
meet the same fate at last, except as the Indians
themselves have proved capable, of so far re-
sisting the enfeebling and destructive contact
with a miscellaneous white population, and
have maintained an existence as a people even
until this day; while those of the Willamette
as tribes and nations have long since disappeared.

From time to time these missions of the Amer-
ican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis-
sions were re-enforced by the addition of a class
of men and women worthy to be what their
position made them, founders of a civilization.
Some of the gentlemen composing the mission
became most important and honored instru-
ments in the settlement of great questions of
State, and in the final establishment of the in-
stitutions of civil society here. Notably this
was true of Dr. Whitman, the record of whose
heroic efforts to benefit his adopted home, as
well as of his tragic death as a martyr to his
steadfast purpose of life, is given elsewhere,
and need not be repeated here. Like those
whose work in the Willamette we have partially
recorded, these were among the best of men.
We make no attempt to enshrine them, nor
even to exalt them above other men who came
after them. They had weaknesses and defects,
but they are the weaknesses of strong natures,
the defects common to humanity. Without a
question any impartial history of the times from

1834 to 1847 will write the names of Whitman,
Spanlding, Eells, Walker, Gray, and their com-
panions and co-laborers among the few dozens
of names that were foremost in laying deep
and broad the foundation of the great common-
wealth that is now what it is because the men
whose lives and work projected it were what
they were.

The history of the institution and work of
the missions of the Roman Catholic Church on
this coast is more difficult to trace than is that
of the Methodist Episcojial Church, or of the
American Board. The reasons are obvious to
those who have made the methods of that
church at all a study. Their work is more dis-
tinctly a church work than is that of any other
bndy of Christian people. It consists more
exclusively of catechetical instruction, and the
observance of certain forms of ritual observ-
ances, than any other. There is less publicity
to it. They do not organize communities with
a public life outside of the ecclesiastical and
church life they inculcate. Their missionaries
come and go unheralded and unannounced.
Without a family life themselves, they appear
for a day or a year, then move forward and
another takes the vacated place. What has
been done or has not been done is not pro-
claimed. Silent, self-contained, with the air
and aspect of men who are moved by another,
instead of moving themselves with a self-pur-
pose, except it be a purpose to obey what is
commanded, they do their work with a patience,
a devotion, a self-forgetfulness that is worthy
of all praise as a method of ecclesiastical pros-
elytism. These methods and peculiarities are
not mentioned as derogatory to them, but only
to account for the dilBculty a %vi-iter experiences
in following the lines of their history. And if
these peculiarities render it difficult to do this
in established conditions of society, they render
it much more difficult when the field is such as
Oregon was when they entered into it.

The Roman Catholics were the third to enter
the missionary field in Oregon. Their first
priests. Rev. Francis N. Blanchet and Kev

HISTORY OF WASaiNOTON.

Modest Deraers, came overland from Montreal
with the regular Hudson's Bay Express, reach-
ing Vancouver on the 24th of November, 183S.
They came at the instance of the Hudson's Bay
Company. They were British subjects, altliough
French themselves, and the servants of the
Hudson's Bay Company were mostly French
Canadians, and Roman Catholics in their re-
ligious belief and sympathies. Many of these,
at first, received the Protestant missionaries
gladly, and attended upon their ministry, but
the very presence of these sngi^estel and
awalceuei a desire in their hearts for teichers
of their own faith. This was but natural. The
influence of these French Canadian subjects of
Greit Britain ovar the Indiana was very greit,
and it was soon felt agiinst tlie Protestant
missions. As we have shown in our chapter on
"The Hudson's Bay Company and the Protest-
ant Missions," the leading men of that com-
pany did all they could to encourage their
coming and facilitate thsir work when here,
because they were British subjects, and because
they were Roman Catholics, and therefore most
against the only American influence then in the
country — the Protestant missions. This they
had a right to do, and our duty is only to
record it.

But the coming of the R )man Catholic priests
introduced an element of discord and trouble
in the country that bore very bitter fruit in
after years, and this seems the only proper place
to fairly consider it. This we shall try to do
both judiciously and judicially, "with malice
toward none, with charity for all."

It is necessary to observe that there had been
no controversies between, nor Ijecause of, the
missions of the A. B. C. F. M. and those of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. There were two
reasons for this. First, the religious ends before
both wore the same; they were not aiming to
make sectaries of the Indians, but to make
Christians of them. Second, they were all
Americans, and therefore there was no division
on political or national gronnds. The priests of
the Romish Church differed from the Protest-

ants at both th'3se points, and that difference
was at the basis of all th? bitter CDntroversies of
that period of Orjgon history, ami of thusa that
have beei continue! from it d )wa to the pres-
ent by s)me writers on both sides, — a c:)ni'ro-
versy into which we shall not enter further than
to state it historically.

It is exceeding difiiault to discuss religious
differences so that the discussion itself does not
become a special plea on tlig side of the writer
himself. It is equally difficult to mak^ such
discussion reasonably intelligent to the un-
churched reader. But we will try to do both.

Of course the original basis of the contro-
versy was theological, churchly, — Romanism vs.
Protestantism, — which is true and which is
false? This we do not debate, but it was the
core of the trouble. Out of the convictions of
either party and both parties on this subject
came their intense zeal and bitterness against
each other.

The Protestant mission and missionaries on
the whole took too much counsel of their preju-
dices and desires. They did not suffijiently
consider that the Romish priests hal the same
rights in the country, either religiously or po-
litically, as they had. Their loing first gave
them no pre-emptive right to control the religion
of the people. To a very great degree they for-
got or ignored this very obvious and fundamen-
tal principle of human freedom: consequently
they met the priests with protests against their
presence, and probably a somewhat acrimonious
denunciation of their teachings if not of them-
selves. It is very clear to any candid reader of
the historical literature of this period that such
was especially the spirit of the missionaries of
the American Board, as it was, to a less extent,
of those of the Methodist Board. Instances
might be given and language quoted to evidence
this, but its concession by a Protestant writer is
sutlicient.

On the other hand, the priests made it a special
purpose to break down and destroy the Protest-
ant missions. Instead of opening new fields to
any considerable extent, they established their

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

missions almost by the very doors of the Protest-
ant missions. Tliey declared it to be their pur-
pose to antagonize and destroy them. This was
in entire consistency with their beliefs as church-
men, and we do not write of it as a crime, but
simply as a fact, leaving the reader to his own
conclusions. Kev. F. N. Blanchet, afterward
archbishop of Oregon City, with whom the
writer had a personal acquaintance, wrote his-
torically, at a later day, of the work of their
priests at that time, thus:

" They were to warn their flocks against the
danger of seduction, to destroy the false im-
pression already received, to enlighten and con-
tirm the faith of the Avavering and deceived
consciences, * * * and it was enough for
them to hear that some false prophet [meaning
Protestant missionary] had penetrated into a
place, or intended visiting some locality, to in-
duce the missionaries to go there immediately,
to defend the faith and keep error from propa-
gating itself."

In another place, and in reference to the par-
ticular mission of the Metbodist Church at
Nesqually, north of the Columbia river, the
same eminent ecclesiastic wrote:

'• The Hrst mission to Nesqually w-as made by
Father Demers, who celei)rated the first mass in
the fort of the Hudson's Bay Company, on April
22 (1839), the day after he arrived. His visit
at such a time was forced upon him by the
establishment of a Methodist mission for the
Indians. * * * After having given orders
to build a chapel, and said mass outside the
fort, he parted with them, blessing the Lord for
the success of his mission among the whites
and Indians, and reached Cowlitz on Monday,
the 30th, with the conviction that his mission
at Nesqually had left a very feeble chance for a
Methodist mission there.

This statement of this most influential and
controlling man in regard to the modes and pur-
poses of the work of the Eoman Catholic mis-
sions, certainly justifies the statement we have
made in regard to them, historically.

Among the Indians the Catholic missionaries

were more successful than the Protestant, in the
sense of gaining more adherents. Their meth-
ods and principles made this inevitable. "With
them Christians were constituted by sacraments;
with the Protestants, by life. With them bap-
tism opened the door of the kingdom of heaven;
with the Protestants, a renewed nature. The
difference was radical and w^ith uninstructed
and unreasoning Indians, altogether in favor of
the Romanists. The symbols and ceremonies of
that church were far more alluring to the In-
dian, easily approachable through his sensuous
organs, but harder to reach through reason and
conscience, than were the high idealism and
lofty spirituality of Protestant teaching. Mr.
Blanchet was right when he said: "The sight of
the altar vestments, sacred vessels and great
ceremonies were drawing their attention a great
deal more than the cold, unavailable, long lay
services of Brother Waller;" and this fully ac-
counts for the greater influence of the priests
over the Indian mind. There was, however,
another reason that should be noted, namely^
the influence of the Hudson's Bay Company
over the Indians, which was very great and
always favorable to the Romanists, while the
Protestants were in close affiliation with the
Americans, — indeed, at this time constituted
the American element of the country. It can
hardly be necessary to draw this parallel and
contrast further.

From the time of the arrival of Messrs.
Blanchet and Demers, in 1838, priests continued
to arrive and scatter over the country. In
1847, nine years after the first arrival, the Ro-
man Catholic Church had so increased that Ore-
gon City was constituted an episcopal see,
with Rev. F. N. Blanchet as its bishop. The
otal number of clergymen employed was
twenty-six, with five churches in the Willam-
ette valley, three north of the Columbia river,
with quite a number of Indian missions in
different parts of the country. It can hardly
be needful to follow the history of these mis-
sions, as separate departments of the life of the
common northwest, farther.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

CHAPTER IX.

THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY.

How Constituted — Sib Alexander McKenzie — ATriTUDE Toward the Country — -Extent of its
Operations — The Northwestern Company — Union of the Companies — Stakes Played fob
— Dr. John McLoughlin — Growth of the Company — Captain Bonneville and the Hud-
son's Bay Company — Captain Wyeth and the Hudson's Bay Company — Erection of Fort
Hall — Reaches Vancouver — Fort William Built — Sale to Hudson's Bay Company — All
Rivalry Crushed — Ruling Policy of the Company — Statement of a Chaplain — ^The
Hudson's Bay Company Socially.

THE Hudson's Bay Company was consti-
tuted l:)y royal charter, given by Charles
II. on the 16th day of May, i670. It
gave the "government and company and
their successors the exclusive right to trade, fish
and hunt in the waters, bays, rivers, lakes and
creeks entering into the Hudson's straits, to-
gether with all the land and territories not
already occupied or granted to any of the king's
subjects or possessed by the subjects of any
other Christian prince or State." The company
had eighteen original incorporators, at the head
of whom was Prince Rupert; hence the name
Eupert's Land was once given to that region.
The first object of the company, as named in its
charter, was "the discovery of a new passage
into the South Sea," as the Pacific ocean was
then generally called.

Some curious and interesting facts touching
the pretended ownership of the region in which
these "exclusive rights" were thus presumptu-
ously ceded, appear both before and after this
time. In 1631, Charles I. of England had re-
signed to Louis XIII. of France tlie sovereignty
of the country, and the French king gave a
charter to a French company who occupied it,
and it was called Acadia, or New France. Not-
withstanding Great Britain, by this act of
Charles I., had thus given up its right to tlie
somewhat mythical region indicated, the second
Charles reasserted that right in the giving
of this charter to tlie Hudson's Bay Company.
Still, in the terms of the treaty of Ryswick, in

1697, twenty-seven years aft^r the Hudson's
Bay Company received its charter, the whole
country was confirmed to France by Great
Britain, and no reservation of British rights, or
of the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company,
was made. This, at the present time, since all
question of rights, real or pretended, have been
definitely settled, is of interest only as showing
upon what flimsy pretexts the sovereigns of
western Europe asserted ownership of vast
regions of country on the American continent,
and how they used these "rights" as the small
change that settled balances in their accounts
with each other, not more than 200 years ago.
For 100 years little comparatively of interest
attached to the company, and a few results of
public importance are recorded. Something
was done in the line of geographical discoveries
in the noi'thwestern parts of America, and the
leaders of the company were growing hopeless
of the discovery of an inland channel from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. About 1778, Frobisher
established a trading post on lake Athabasca,
about 1,200 miles from lake Superior. Ten
years later it was abandoned and Fort Chippe-
wyan was built on the southwest shore of the
same water. From this post Sir Alexander
Mackenzie made an expedition down the river
that bears his name, to the Arctic, and returned
in 102 days. In the autumn of 1791, he started
to explore a route to the South Sea, — the Pacific
ocean. He ascended Peace river to its head in
the Rocky mountains, and in thatdreary solitude

BISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

made his winter quarters witli liis ten men.
They were snowbound until May, when tliey
resumed their journey, and in June came to the
divide, and saw for the first time the waters
that flowed toward the Pacific, — a sight that no
white man had ever before beheld. In July
they came in sight of the sea and were soon
upon its shores. There, on a bold rock, facing
Asia, this great explorer painted in vermilion
these words: "Alexander Mackenzie, from
Canada by land, the twenty-second of July, one
thousand seven hundred and ninety-three."
This was the first expedition of white men
across the continent to the Pacific ocean. It
was a great feat, and had in it the presage of
great events, to which our history will soon
come. So valuable were his discoveries con-
sidered to Great Britain that lie was rewarded
for them by the honor of knighthood in 1801.
Mackenzie was a man of far more than or-
dinary ability. He had a statesmanlilie grasp
of mind, unconquerable determination, clear
and penetrating foresight, and by his personal
explanations and recommendations laid a foun-
dation for md.ch of the subsequent claims of
Great Britain to the i-egions west of the Eocky
mountains, and to more of the future progress
"and prosperity of the Hudson's Bay Company on
that field. The point he reached on the Pacific
coast was within the present limits of British
Columljia (latitude 53° 21'), and clearly within
the limits of the claim made by the United
States, which afterward became the slogan of a
great national party in one of the most exciting
presidential contests in our history, when "The
whole of Oregon or none," " Kilty- Four Forty
or Fight," streamed on banners and were
shouted by the people all over the land. He
was the first and ablest representative of Great
Britain in her quest for other empire on the
American continent as a compensation for that
wiiich had been snatched from her grasp by the
American Eevolution that had closed but ten
years before.

The attitude of the Hudson's Bay Company
toward the vast region over which its charter

assumed to give autliority was actually that of
sovereignty. They legislated for it, governed
it, made war and peace w ithin it, and all other
people were forbidden to " visit, haunt, frequent,
trade, trafiic, or adventure" within it. There
was, of course, a confession of allegiance to the
crown of Great Britain, in tlie fact that their
charter was from it, but the power of the com-
pany was practically absolute. For all these rights
and prerogatives the company was to pay an an-
nual revenueof "two elks and two black beavers,"
to be collected on the grounds of the company.

With such unlimited prerogatives, in such a
vast and productive field of trade, the company
could not but rapidly increase in wealth and
power. With these came a grasping avarice
and a bold and inexorable spirit. The company
stretched out its arms like a huge commercial
octopus, and drew into itself all opposing and
rival interests from the Yukon to the Sacra-
mento, from the Arctic to Salt Lake, and from
the St. Law'rence to the mouth of the Colum-
bia. What came in and what went out of the
country was at its dictation. Tlie Indian and
the European alike did the bidding of the giant
monopoly. Not to do it was to perish. This
power was reaching out and preparing to enfold
in its grasp all of the Pacific Coast from Amer-
ican Russia to Spanish California.

The original stock of this company was only
$50,820. In fifty years it had made its stock-
holders rich, besides trebling, its stock twice by
profits alone. In 1821 its capital stock had
gone up to $457,380, and in that year it ab-
sorbed the Northwest Company of Montreal,
with a capital equal to its own.

The Noi-thwest Company was the Canadian-
British rival and competitor of the Hudson's
Bay Company. It was organized by the prin-
cipal merchants of Montreal in 1787, especially
to control and monopolize the fur trade over the
boundless forests of the Canadas, and stretch-
ing westw^ard and northward along lakes Huron
and Superior to the chain of great and small
lakes, to lakes Winnipeg and Athabasca, and
along the Saskatchewan and the Red River of

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

the North, following up the game and the In-
dians wherever they could be found. Though
these were both British companies, yet the riv-
alry and hostility between them was as radical
as they could have been between either of them
and any rival American company.

There were many reasons for that hostility.
The Hudson's Bay Company was the older and
more powerful, and held lettei's patent from the
British crown, and its organization and personnel
were more distinctively English than the other,
M'hich was largely of the French-Canadian type.
Besides, the great profitableness of the fur
trade at that time made it a prize for commer-
cial adventure eagerly to contend for. Hence,
as tiie Northwest Company was reaping a ricii
harvest from its trade in the.se regions, and was
pushing that trade farther and farther west-
ward and southward and northward, the Hud-
son's Bay Company began to set up rival estab-
lishments and place rival traders by the side of
theirs. Personal friendship could not long
continue where commercial interests came into
such sharp competition. The result was open
M'ar between the two companies. Forts were
captured, prisoners taken atid held in captivity:
natives of the same country and subjects of the
same king. Earl Selkirk, of the Hudson's Bay
Company, resolved to establish a colony of
Scotch and Irish Hudson's Bay people on the
Red river, where was the great depot of the
Northwest Company, and which that company
considered its own ground. His first attempt
was a partial I'ailiire, but he was skillful and de-
termined enough to detach some of the most
important partisans of the Northwest Companj'
from its service, and to unite them to that of
the Hudson's Bay Company. Among them
was Colin Robertson, one of the most success-
ful traders and astute administrators of the
company, to whom he committed the control of
the interests of the Hudson's Bay Company in
all that region. He pursued a most vigorous
policy against the company with which he was
so lately identified. The colony at Red river
was re-established. Tiiis only intensified the

strife, and finally led to several severe battles,
ill one of which Governor Semple of the Red
River colony and five other officers of the colony
and fifteen men were killed. The result of
these conflicts, on the whole, was favorable to
the Hudson's Bay Company, but they left the
companies exhausted, and in 1821, to save any-
thing from the wreck of the conflict, tiie com-
panies amalgamated, and the name of the
Northwest Company was lost, all becoming the
Hudson's Bay Company.

The strongest play of this now twice-grown
giant for the heaviest stakes was yet to be cast.
While in London and in Washington diplomats
were debating, and governments trying to foil
each other by a play of technicalities, this giant
corporation was nurturing all its powers and
gathering up all its resources ready to cast them
into the scale, when at last the contending
nations should poise the beam for a last de-
cision. Its play was first for itself, after that
for great Britain, but always against America.

AVhat this company first desii-ed was to hold
the country over which it ruled with such abso-
lute sway in its old condition of liarbarism. It
had no instinct of civilization in it. It cared
nothing for humanity — for man — only as man
could be made a machine for the use of its
money-making greed. For its j^urposes a stolid
and unreasoning Indian, with bow and steel-
trap, roaming the hills or trapping the water
courses for bear or beaver, was worth far more
than the scholar in the schoolroom, or the plow-
man in tlie field. The Indian's wigwam was
better than marble palaces. The silent prow of
the birchen canoe was far more to be desired
than the rush and roar of the wheels of the
steamer. The sharp crack of the huntsman's
rifle in the dark forest was far more musical to
their ears than the roar of the paved streets of
the metropolis. All these, and everything
kindred to these, were what the Hudson's Bay
Company thus sought for itself.

Let the reader pause a little here and remem-
ber that the region this company was thus en-
deavoring, by the unscrupulous use of all its

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

power, to save to itself, and for that end tokeep
in its old barbaric state, was all that wonderful
land in which now the four great States of the
American Dnion — Oregon, Washington, Mon-
tana, and Idaho — then all called Oregon — now
holding a population, a wealth and a culture
greater than the entire thirteen States at the
close of the Revolution. Let him add to this
all of British Columbia, itself a very empire of
prosperous and cultivated civilization, and he
will see for what enormous stakes this powerful
company was playing its desperate game from
the time of its union with the Northwest Com-
pany for at least a quarter of a century. Surely
the prize for which it struggled was well worth
all its ventures.

Next to the keeping of the country for its
own purposes of trade, it was the wish of this
company to put enough vested interests in it to
swing the scale of ultimate ownership in favor
of Great Britain. Indeed it early became ap-
parent to the company that this was the only
means of saving it to itself. Of disinterested
patriotism — country for country's sake — it had
none. Notwithstanding many of its leaders
and managers were eminent in abilities, and
even high in the confidence of the English gov-
ernment, they lived and wrought and wrote
with this ultimate end forever in view, — subor-
dinating country to company and patriotism to
pelf.

We do not mean to say that in this these
men were worse than other men. They were
like other men; and in their very faithfulness
to the ends for which their company existed
there was much that the historian must admire,
though he may not commend the end for which
they so strongly strove. No company's affairs
were ever more ably administered, nor were
means ever more wisely adapted to ends, than
here. The agents of the company were every-
where, watchful, vigilant; friends, if friendship
would serve their jjurposes best, but enemies as
readily as friends, if enmity better secured the
object for which the company existed. Such
was the Hudson's Bay Company when history

brings us to the verge of the decisive conflict of
diplomacy, almost of arms, for the ultimate
ownei-ship of Oregon.

With the union of the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany with the Northwest Company in 1821,
there came into the consolidated and greatly
enlarged Hudson's Bay Company a gentleman
destined to a larger place and greater influence
in its history, and the history of the country

Dr. JOHN McLOUGHLIN.

for a full quarter of a century, than any other
man. It was Dr. John McLoughlin. The
position he occupied and the influence he ex-
erted in the country fully justifies us in paus-
ing in the midst of our story to give some brief
characterization of this historic personage.

Dr. John McLoughlin was by birth a Cana-
dian, by blood a Scotch-Englishman. He was
an educated physician, and early entered the
service of the Northwest Fur Company as such,
and served in that capacity at Winnipeg. Such
was his zeal and intelligence, however, that he
exercised a very commanding influence over the
counsels of the company, and at length, when

HISTORT OF WMHJNOTON.

liis company was merged into the Hudson's
Bay, lie became a factor in tliat company, in
which his abilities received their legitimate
appreciation, and he was made governor of all
its territory and business west of the Rocky
mountains. This made him practically a dic-
tator in a country 1,200 miles long and 1,000
miles broad.

In person Dr. McLonghlin was of most im-
posing mien. He stood six feet and three
inches in his moccasins — for he wore the Indian
moccasin generally to the end of his life, — was
erect as a fir tree, and moved with a stately
and even majestic tread. His face was full and
fl(n-id and cleanly shaven, and his eye a clear
blue When the writer's personal acquaintance
with him began, in 1853, his full hair was like
a silver crown, and worn full and flowing, reach-
ing nearly to his shoulders, and his eye had yet
a quick and darting fire. His movements were
decisive, if not quick. His voice in ordinary
conversation was low, and his speech somewhat
slow, but when excited it rang sharply and de-
cisively out, like that of a man who was accus-
tomed to his own way in all that he cared to do
at all. The writer was then a young man, just
entering npon his life-work in Oregon, while
Dr. McLoughlin had then for some years been
a private citizen; but his appearance was so
venerable and august, his position in the coun-
try had been so commanding and his history so
I'einarkable, that he seemed to my imagination
the most impressive personality I had ever
beheld. To this day I doubt whether a more
imposing physical presence ever walked the
streets of this great Northwest than that of
Dr. John McLoughlin.

His character was as marked as his presence.
He had a very high sense of personal honor,
and his integrity was beyond question. He was
generous and humane to an unusual degree.
Quite a number, now among our wealthy and
distinguished citizens, owe their first commer-
cial positions in the trade of this coast to his
helpful hand. And, after the acrimonies aris-
ing from the position of the Hudson's Bay

Company, of which he was chief factor, as the
overwhelming monopoly of the coast, have
passed largely out of the personal remembrance
of the people, and Dr. McLoughlin is remem-
bered only as the man and the citizen that he
appeared after he closed his connection with
that gigantic corporation, there is no name held
in higher veneration by the citizens of Oregon
than his.

With the Hudson's Bay Company, the period
from 1821 to 1833 was an era of growth, and
yet of consolidation. Nothing occurred to dis-
turb the equanimity of its rule. Its power
touched every center and circumference of the
vast territory of its operations. True, some
American fur companies, like that of Sublette,
Smith and Bridger, or some independent trad-
ers and trappers like Bonneville and AVyeth,
now and then ventured over the line of its
assumed rights along the gorges of the Kocky
mountains, but the Hudson's Bay Company
had only to speak and they disappeared. Even
before this era it had absorbed Astor's com-
pany, as we have before noticed. It would
extend this portion of our work unduly were
we to follow in detail the adventures of the
gentlemen and servants of this company through
this decade of its greatest power and prosper-
ity. During this time the diplomatic debate
between Great Britain and the United States as
to the ownership of Oregon passed through
many changes, but seemed not to advance
toward any settlement. Both parties were
claimants of the country, but both were wary,
procrastinating, and fearful of a final tender of
terms. Gieat Britain seemed to have justest
reason to postpone decision. The Hudson's
Bay Company was British. It held the situa-
tion with a grasp it seemed nothing could un-
loose. Its brigades of boats were on every
stream and its hunters and trapjiers on every
trail. There were literally none to oppose
tliem. Their small but wonderful circle of
leaders like Simpson, McLoughlin and Douglas,
were planning with marvelous foresight and
ability to retain for England what their former

niSTORT OF WASHINGTON.

enterprise and courage had apparently gained,
all the Pacitic coast fi-om California to the
Knssian possessions, — a region they well knew
to be among the fairest and most fruitful on
the globe. Tliej held a first mortgage — that of
possession upon it. Give them but time and
they would do the rest. So diplomacy waited
upon possession, trusting that might would
make right, and the young republic on the
Atlantic shore would in some critical and nerv-
ous hour surrender to power what was clearly
her own right in law. Biit both Britain and
the Hudson's Bay Company had left out of
their account the element most determinative
of history, as we shall subsequently see. Mean-
while the relations of the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany with competitors in its field, whether
associated or individual, require some consid-
eration.

Subsequent to the defeat of the grand project
of John Jacob Astor, as already related, the ex-
pedition of Captain Bonneville was the first that
held within itself any real threat to the suprem-
acy of the Hudson's Bay Company in the region
then known as Oregon. As it seems needful,
to maintain the continuity of history, and en-
able our readers to understand the latent, as well
as the obvious, causes that finally wrought out
the history of the Pacific Northwest, to give
some brief account of that expedition, a few
sentences regarding Captain Bonneville hei-e
will be acceptable to the reader:

He was of French parentage, born in the city
of New York about the close of the American
Revolution. He inherited all the French vola-
tility and fervor of imagination, though it was
disciplined in his early years by mathematical
studies. He was educated in the United States
Military Academy at West Point, from which
he entered the army, and was for a number of
years stationed on the far western frontier. The
inactive and uneventful life of a soldier in time
of peace ill suited his active and adventurous
temperament, and naturally his eyes turned to-
ward the unexplored regions of the Rocky
mountains as the field offering incident and ex-

citement enough to gratify his atnbition. He
obtained leave of absence from the army, and
secured from the major-general commanding it,
from the secretary of war and from the presi-
dent more than a quasi-indorsement of his
plans. He succeeded in interesting with him-
self Alfred Seaton, of New York, a gentleman
of high respectability and influence, and formed
an association with adequate means for the
prosecution of his expensive project. Mr. Sea-
ton was the more ready to aid Captain Bonne-
ville from having been associated with Mr.
Astor's enterprise, as he was one of the patriot-
ic American youths who were at Astoria at the
time of its surrender to the British. He hoped
to contribute to the raising again of the flag of
his own country on the shores of the Columbia.
Captain Bonneville was also on close terms with
Mr. Astor himself.

Prepared for his adventurous expedition,
Captain Bonneville found himself in the early
spring of 1832 on the western frontier at Fort
Osage, Missouri, where he enlisted a force of
110 men, mostly experienced in the craft of the
plains and mountains, and ready for any enter-
prise of profit or danger. On the Istof Mayof
that year he began his march westward.

To Captain Bonneville belongs the historic
distinction of first conducting wagons to and
over the summit of the Rocky mountains. This
was a distinct gain for civilization, as it intro-
duced civilized methods of locomotion in the
place of those of the barbarous Indian or the
white marauder. These first meant every suc-
ceeding wheel of trader or emigrant or locomo-
tive; and, though the world did not see it, they
meant the Pacific coast for the Americans instead
of the English.

The exciting adventures of his journey west-
ward cannot be followed here. His route was
across the then uupathed solitudes where now
are the wonderful States of Kansas and Ne-
bi-aska, and he opened for wagons the identical
road traveled by emigrants from western Mis-
souri to Oregon until the rail-car displaced the
ox-wagon, nearly forty years after he had pio-

BISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

Tieered the way. From tlie 1st of May to the
24th of July his long cavalcade of wagons and
horsemen moved slowly westward and upward.
At noon of that day he was beyond the divide
of the Kocky mountains and encamped on a
branch of Green river, then called Seeds-Kee
Agio, or Sage Hen river. On the 27th of July
he reached Green river — the "rendezvous" of
the trappers and traders of the Rocky mountains
for that year, — at least a hundred miles within
the limits of Oregon as the maps then described it.

He had now entered a region of indescribably
wild and broken mountain ranges, and hence
he determined here to abandon his wagons —
the first, we repeat, ever to pass the gates of the
Kocky mountains — and on the 22d of August
packed his horses and began his march still
westward, having selected the valley of Salmon
river, near where Salmon City, in Idaho, is now
situated, as the place for his winter's cantonment.

A full year was spent in the region contiguous
to this place, and the following December he
established his winter quarters on the Portnenf
river. But his main piirpose in coming to the
mountains was yet unfultilled. When all was
settled for bis people in their winter encamp-
ment, with three trusted and hearty mountain-
cheers he mounted his horse on Christmas morn-
ing of 1833, for an expedition of great peril, as
well as of great historic importance, namely,
to penetrate the Blue mountains, visit the
establishments of the Hudson's Bay Company
on the Columbia river, and gain such informa-
tion as he could of the country itself and of the
great company that controlled it.

There is a temptation to the pen of the writer
to follow this wonderful midwinter jouiney of this
wonderfully resolute explorer down the storm-
swept plains of the Snake river, amid the snow-
clad summits of the Blue mountains, across the
alway interesting "Grande Ronde" valley, then
along a devious way among the heights of
"Immaha," as Bonneville writes it, and finally,
of the Columbia and to Fort Walla Walla, the
Columbia river east of the Cascade mountains;
but space forbide the thrilling account.

Captain Bonneville reached Fort Walla AValla
on the 4th day of March, 1884. Though re-
ceived politely, as a man, by Mr. Pambrun, in
charge for the Hudson's Bay Company, when
he sought to purchase some supplies for his re-
turn journey to the Portneuf, he was plainly
told he could have nothing. The policy of that
company was to discourage all trade and all
traders but its own. While Captain Bonneville
was a guest he could have food and polite at-
tention as such, but when Captain Bonneville
was on the trail, a trader representing an Amer-
ican interest, he was to the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany a foe, and it were better to that great
British corporation if he perished than if he
lived. He could therefore have nothing. Piqued
and irritated, and disdaining to receive courtesies
as a man thatwere forbidden him as an American,
on the 6th day of March, having received tiie
hospitality of the Hudson's Bay Company only
two days, he set out on his return to his people
in the valley of Snake river. After many vicis-
situdes among the snows of the Blue mountains
he reached the place of their encampuient on
the 1st of June.

The result of this exploration of Captain Bon-
neville was to satisfy him of two things: First,
that an American trade could profitably be
opened in the valley of the Cohimbia; and, sec-
ond, that any such attempt would meet the
determined and unscrupulous opposition of the
Hudson's Bay Company. Future events demon-
strated that in the first judgment he was mis-
taken, while in the second he was unhappily
correct. Still such was the conviction of his
own mind that, one year later, he prepared to
put his opinions to the test by a second visit to
the Columbia at the head of a trading company
of twenty- three men. He left his encampment
on Bear river on the 8d day of July, 1834. again
traversed the dreary plains of Snake river, pene-
trated the Blue mountains near the line of the
old "emigrant road" and reached the Umatil-
la river (called "Ottolais" by him) about the
middle of September. Being now within thirty
miles of Fort Walla Walla, he sent forward a

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

detachment of his company to procure food, as
he was in danger of famine. They met with a
peremptory refusal of the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany, who added to the inhospitality of refusing
food for the almost famishing camp, an attempt to
seduce the men from the service of Captain Bon-
neville by most temptingoffers of employment if
they would abandon his employ. They refused,
and returned to the camp of the captain empty-
handed. He instantly broke up his camp, fol-
lowed down the Umatilla river to the Columbia,
and endeavored to open a trade with the Indians
for fish and other food, but the Hudson's Bay
Company had forbidden them to liold any com-
munication with the Americans, and they kept
almost entirely out of his sight. He endeavored
to force his way down the Columbia river to the
Willamette, where he intended to establish his
winter quarters, but it was everywhere the same:
not an article of provisions could be obtained.
To keep his men from starvation two of his
horses were killed for food. But to unhorse his
company even to sustain life here was certainly
to lose all their lives. An enemy he could not
see confronted him everywhere, and inhospitable
nature seemed in league with thac enemy to de-
stroy him. The reader need not be told that
that unseen enemy was the dread and deadly
influence of the Hudson's Bay Company, poison-
ing the suspicious and timid minds of the In-
dians against all that was American. The way
before him to the Willamette was unknown.
That valley itself was only a fable to his men,
lovely and rich indeed as a fable, but they dared
not venture farther. Nothing seemed to remain
to him but a hasty return to the Blue mountains,
where deer and elk could be found for food, or death
by starvation on the driving Columbia sands.
The alternative of return and life was chosen, and
reluctantly he faced his company eastward for
the mountains. Thus Bonneville's struggle to
establish an American traffic on the Columbia in
opposition to the Hudson's Bay Company ended
in utter failure. Few among the men of the
mountains and plains at that time had the
courage and caution and will of Bonneville,

and where he failed none need hope to succeed.

In subsequent years Bonneville, then a major
in the United States army, was put in command
of the troops of the United States stationed at
the old Hudson's Bay post of Vancouver, and
there the writer met and conversed with him in
the autumn of 1853, suave, intelligent, filled
with pioneer memories, and delighting to re-
count the incidents of his three years in the
mountains of eastern Oregon from 1832 to 1835,
where, though ostensibly a mere trader, lu^Was
really under the sanction of the president of the
United States as an observer of the attitudes and
power of the Hudson's Bay Company, the rep-
resentative and embodiment of the British Gov-
ernment in Oregon.

After the power of the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany had compassed the defeat of Bonneville's
well-laid schemes, the next to try his prowess
against it was Mr. NathanielJ. Wyeth, of Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts. Indeed, Mr. Wyeth 's
adventure was partly contemporaneous with
Captain Bonneville's, though its disastrous cul-
mination was somewhat later. Like all men
who assay such gigantic undertakings, Mr.
Wyeth was ardent, enthusiastic, determined and
capable of inspiring others with his own spirit.
In 1832 he organized an emigrating company
of twenty-two persons in Massachusetts, for the
purpose of pi-oceeding to Oregon, and, together
with establishing a trade with the Indians, oc-
cupy portions of the country as settlers.

With this company he started westward.
Knowing little of practical life on the frontier,
it was not until they reached St. Louis and be-
gan to come in contact with such men as the
Sublettes that the true character and great diffi-
culty of their undertaking began to dawn upon
their minds. Some of his party turned back,
but Mr. Wyeth was made of hardy stuff, and
with others he pushed forward, and finally
reached the Columbia river and Vancouver;
and, having made a somewhat cursory examina-
tion of the country, and being greatly impressed
with its beauty and resources, returned to Bos-
ton and immediately entered on preparations to

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

forward a ship load of suitable merchandise the
foUowincr year for the Columbia, while he, with
an associated compuny of men, should return to
Oregon by land and enter the list of competition
with the Hudson's Bay Company in the very
center of its power.

In connection with this journey of Mr. Wy-
etli occurred an event that incidentally illustra-
ted the ability and disposition of the Hudson's
Bay Company to do anything at any cost neces-
sary to control the trade of all the West. It
was this:

On his return eastward the year before, Mi'.
Wyeth had entered into a contract with one of
the Sublettes in the Kocky mountains for the
deliver}' of a large invoice of merchandise at the
rendezvous of the following year. Mr. Wyeth,
true to his part of the contract, brought forward
the goods and had them at the rendezvous on
Green river the latter part of June. Mr. Sub-
lette is said to have violated his part of the con-
tract under the urgent advice of others, and Mr.
Wyeth found himself in the middle of the con-
tinent with a large invoice of merchandise for
which he had no market. He was highly and
justly indignant, and told Mr. Sublette and his
associates, who were trying to monopolize the
American trade with the Indians, that he "would
roll a stone into their garden that they would
not be able to get rid of." He immediately
packed his goods, went on westward a few days'
journey and erected Fort Hall, on Snake river,
where he deposited his goods and opened a trade
with the Indians and mountain men. The
Hudson's Bay Company immediately established
Fort Boise, farther down Snake river, as a rival
to Fort Hall. Unable to cope with that com-
pany, Mr. Wyeth accepted an offer from it for
the purchase of Fort Hall, and thus in a few
months fulfilled his justifiable threat to Mr.
Sublette and his associates by installing the
Hudson's Bay Company several hundred miles
farther east than it bad ever established a post
before. No rival could stand before that company
west of the summits of the Rocky mountains.

This done, Mr. Wyeth proceeded westward to

Vancouver to await the arrival of his vessel, the
brig May Dacre, that was expected in Septem-
ber. In due time she arrived, anchored in the
lower mouth of the Willamette river, and be-
gan discharging her cargo on Wapatoo, now
Sauvies, island, where Mr. Wyeth ei'ected a
trading post called Fort William, in which he
deposited his goods, and where he assayed to
open up a traffic. His position was both well
and poorly chosen. It was central to the lower
Columbia and to the tribes that dwelt upon its
banks, who traveled mostly in canoes. It was
easy of access from the tribes of the Willamette.
It was where sea-going craft could easily reach
it. In these respects his position was well
chosen. But it was within fifteen miles of
Vancouver, the headquarters of the Hudson's
Bay Company, and in immediate rivalry with
its most astute and accomplished leaders. In
this respect his location was poorly chosen, and
a very short time made it necessary for him
here, as at Fort Hall, to accept the best terms
he could obtain of that company and abandon
his enterprise, and even the country itself. Mr.
Wyeth, in a memorial to Congress on the Ore-
gon question in 1839, says of that company:
" Experience has satisfied me that the entire
weight of that company will be made to bear on
any trader who shall attempt to prosecute his
business within its reach. * * * No sooner
does an American concern start in this region
than one of its trading parties is put in motion.
A few years will make the country west of the
mountains as completely English as they caq
desire."

With this complete failure of Mr. Wyeth's
enterprise terminated the last organized eifort
of American traders to establish a successful
rival to the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon,
either for trade or the protection of American
interests and the advancement pf American
claims to the country itself; and 1834 closed
and 1835 was ushered in with British suprem-
acy, represented by the Hudson's Bay Company,
apparently assured in all tlie country of the
Columbia.

lIIbTORY OF WASHINGTON.

At tliis time, 1834, the Pludson's Bay Com-
pany had more than twenty posts in Oregon,
and over 2,000 men in the various branches of
their employ. There were probably not a hun-
dred Americans in the same territory, and tliey
were hunters and trappers, isolated and wander-
ing over a vast region of country, too few to be
formidable, and too dependent on the hospi-
tality of that company to be dreaded as rivals.
This showed Mr. Wyeth's statement to be true,
that " tlie United States as a nation are un-
known west of tlie mountains." The Hudson's
Bay Company ruled stipreme, and there seemed
no probability to those on the ground that its
supremacy would soon, if ever, be shaken. It
is well, therefore, that we pause here and take a
brief survey of what Oregon was in this su-
preme iiour of Hudson's Bay domination.

It will be remembered that we are now writ-
ing of Oregon as it was understood in 1834, ex-
tending from the 42° to 54° 40' of north lati-
tude, and from the Pacific ocean to the Rocky
mountains. It was the distinct and avowed
policy of tlie ruling company to keep back all
settlement and hold the country only for the
production of game. White men, therefore,
were unwelcome intruders, unless they were of
those races ready to intermarry with Indian
women, and thus render themselves fit for the
barbaric purposes of that company. They would
have no civilization, as we understand civiliza-
tion. The greatest and ablest and best men
among them were interman-ied with the native
women, and half-breed children swarmed aroimd
their habitations. These conditions were a
necessity of their policy, and that policy was
the only means of securing the ends for which
the Hudson's Bay Company was organized, and
for which it existed. "VYe are speaking of this
policy of the company as we saw it in the last
days of its existence in Oregon, when it seemed
to us so strange that intelligent and educated
English, Scotch, and Canadian gentlemen could
ever have fallen into such barbaric modes of
domestic living. But we were then comparing
their life with the ideals of our own New York

training, and were ignorant of the history and
avowed purposes of the company whose best
social products we saw. When these were
studied we plainly saw that this was not per-
verse criminality in the people we saw around
us, but a commercial necessity in their relations
of life. Anything that meant or typed the
civilization of an American village would of
necessity have been tiie germ of its destruction
to the end for which all this system lived and
wrought. Illustrating this, a statement of a
chaplain at Moose Factory may be quoted. lie
said: " A plan I had devised for educating and
training to som.e acquaintance with agriculture
native children was disallowed. * * * ^
proposal for forming a small Indian village near
Moose Factory was not acceded to, and, instead,
permission only given to attempt the location of
one or two old men no longer tit for engaging
in the chase, it being carefully and distinctly
stated by Sir George Simpson that tlie company
would not give them even a spade to commence
their new mode of life! "

Coming to understand that this policy was
the wisest, indeed the only means of perpetu-
ating the company itself, we soon found that
the "gentlemen of the company," as they were
called, personally were indeed gentlemen, while
as officers of the company they were necessarily
opposed to all that made for civilization. Hence
we are able to write of Dr. McLoughlin as a
man as we have truly written. Let the reader
himself apply these reflections to the Oregon of
1834, and he will understand what, socially and
commercially, the Hudson's Bay Comjwny, at
its very best estate, and in the day of its su-
premest power, had made of one of the finest
lands upon which shines the universal sun; and
in this knowledge he will understand just what
the Hudson's Bay Company meant to do for
humanity. Almost necessarily its life was en-
tirely hid behind the lids of its own ledger, and
to quote the language of Hazlit, it -'had no
ideas but those of custom and interest, and that
on the narrowest scale."

HISTORY OF WASniNOTON.

We have said that the supremacy of the
Hudson's Bay Company on the Columbia, and
tiirough that company the ultimate ownership
of Oregon by Great Britain, was "apparently
assured" in 1834. But the genius and prophet
of the downfall of the great company, and the
defeat of British plans for the possession of the

country, was then surveying Oregon, looking
through the blue eyes of a pioneer missionary,
who landed at Vancouver within a few days of
the arrival of Mr. Wyeth, of whose coming and
going we have previously spoken. Our next
chapter will tell something of influences that
proved too mighty for that power.

CHAFTEK X.

THE MISSIONS AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NORTHWEST.

The Gkeat Rivals-Eaely Foem of the Contest — A New Element Inteoduoed — The Newly
Matched (Contestants —Hudson's Bay Company at the Zenith of its Fowee — Oeegon's only
Occupants — Aeeival of Foue Men — Theie Suppoet and Fateonage — Theie Ameeicanism
— The Geowth of the Missionary Fowee — Two Classes — The Methodist Missions — Mis-
sions OF THE American Board — Independent Missions — Facts — What the Hudson's Bay
Company is Doing — The Feople of the Hudson's Bay Company — The American Feople — ■
Jason Lee, the Corypheus of American Sentiment — His Visit to the East and Return —
Missions the Centers of American Sentiments and Feople — Contest Morally Closed.

rJROM the time that the claims of France
and Spain to the Oregon country were
^ finally transferred to the United States in
1803, there was, as our readers have seen, no
claimant contesting with the United States for
the ownership of the country but England. Its
final possession by one or the other of these
great powers was evidently in the way of the
destiny of empire. They were nations of one
blood, except that in the United States there
was a deeper tinge of the cavalier in the veins
of the people than in England. Their very re-
lationship and similarity of origin and of char-
acter, made them essentially rivals, jealous of
each other's power, and anxious to place bar-
riers in the way of each other's advancement.
Besides, the United States were not far enough
removed from the close of a successful rebellion
against the misgovernment of England, in wiiich
rebellion this country had snatched the guerdon
of her nationality from the dismemljered em-
pire of Great Britain, for either to have come
to an era of real friendliness and national fra-
ternity. The very actors in the events of 1776
and 1784, both in England and America, were
yet in places of power in the two countries.

They had not foi-gotten, and they had not for-
given. The Americans were the most forgiv-
ing, for they had won the most, and hence could
most easily forgive. The British had lost the
most, and hence were the sorest and most un-
relenting. It was to he expected, therefore, that
the struggle for what botii so greatly desired,
and each believed it owned, would be long and
tenacious, and that it would be led through
every possible chance and change Ijefore it
would be finally decided.

We have seen how, in commerce by sea and
river, and in the rivalries of the trail and the
mountains, the fur companies that represented
severally these two nationalities had met each
other, and how in every contest of that character
the representatives of England had defeated,
thwarted and driven away the representatives of
the United States, until, though there was a
legal joint occupancy, there was no real occu-
pancy but that of Great Britain. From 1813,
when the British flag was raised over Astoria,
for a full score of years the stars and stripes
waved in the skies of Oregon only as a transient
visitor, while the cross of St. George symboled
the real ruling power over the country from the

UISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

niountaiiis to the sea. Tlie Hudson's Bay Com-
pany, wholly representative of the designs and
spirit of the British crown, and intensely loyal
to thein, held supreme dominion over the -whole
country. It seemed a foregone conclusion that
this pow^erful organization, with its great wealth,
and its nnrivaled facilities for transplanting its
own numerous- people into the fruitful soil of
these Pacific valleys, would win for England the
" nine points of law," — possession of the coun-
try. So the issue and the probability stood up
to 1834.

In 1834 the contest was re-opened in another
form. Another wholly American element was
introduced. It came noiselessly, unheralded,
without display of march- or flaunt of ensign.
It was so small in numbers, and so humble in
pretense, that it scarcely arrested the attention
of the powerful men who were then at the head
of the British power on the banks of the Colum-
bia. Its ]U-ofessed and real purpose so com-
mended itself to every gracious sentiment of
the liuman heart, that men so really humane as
were they could not but give it encouragement
and blessing. This element, thus introduced,
was what, technically, in the early history of
the country was known as the " missionary ele-
ment." It came in the persons of four men
whose names have been elsewhere mentioned in
this book, but which will bear repeating here,
namely: Jason Lee, Daniel Lee, Cyrus Sliepard
and P. L. Edwards, and they were the types and
forerunners of all the missionaries, who, for the
following decade, practically alone embodied
and expressed the American sentiment and the
American citizensliip, in contrast with the Brit-
ish spirit and the British citizenship embodied
and expressed by the Hudson's Bay Company.

The one thing that distinguished these men
in the relation in which we are now writing of
them, and the missions established by them and
by those who came subsequently, was their
Americanism. They not only came to this coast
by the direction of the most intensely American
church in the country, but they came under the
passport and permit, and hence under the [H'o-

teetion of the Government of the United States,
certified to Mr. Lee and his coadjutors by Gen-
eral John H. Eaton, the honorable secretary of
war under Andrew Jackson, president of the
United States at that time. This, with their
own personal citizenship, gave them a character
not less distinctively American than it was
missionary. The same statement, in substance,
would be true of all the Potestant missions es-
tablished in the counti-y, whether by the great
denominational or interdenominational societies,
or by individual citizens of the United States.
They were all Americans — intensely, radically
and loyally American.

We are not ignoring the fact that tlie mis-
sionaries who came to Oregon from 1834 up to
1840 came primarily for the purpose of evan-
gelizing the pagan tribes of this great North-
west. We are only bringing to view the other
fact tliat in doing or attempting this they never
forgot and never slighted or temporized with
their national relationship. Patriotism, in its
true sense of love of the country that fostered
and encouraged their works, and spread the
broad aegis of its protection over then:selves
personally, was a part of their religion. Their
feelings were never isolated from the country
that thus protected and cherished them, but
tliey "loved its rocks and rills, its woods and
templed hills," with a great, venerating, patri-
otic love. They might not have done this, the
more because they were missionaries, in a land
where at that time an American citizen could
have but a doubtful and precarious sojourn, but
tliey certainly did not do this the less for that
reason. Here, then, were the matched contest-
ants for the possession and consequent owner-
ship of Oregon, — the Hudson's Bay Company
on the one side, with the confidence of its past
successes and its present power upon it; the mis-
sionary stations and missionaries, with their
higli moral purpose and their American senti-
ment, on the other. Providence had thus handed
over the conflict of enrpire on the northwest
coast to these contesting elements, and then
awaited the issue.

Ul STORY OF WASIHNQTON.

At this time the Hudson's Bay Company
was at tlie very zenith of its power. Its lead-
ers were kiiiors of men. Its cavalcades were on
every inter-monntain trail over half a continent.
Its ileets of batteaux and canoes were on every
lake, and its voyageiirs sung to the music of
every cascade fram Winnipeg to California, and
from the mountains to the sea. A contest of
force, of brawn, or even of trade and commerce
with it at that time would have been simple
madness. Indeed the latter was adventured at
this very time by at least two of the ablest and
most determined leaders that the history of such
commercial partnership among Americans ever
produced, — Wyeth and Bonneville, — and both
were compelled to hastily retire from the field,
Wyeth bequeathing his fortune, with Forts Hall
and William, to the Britain, and Bonneville was
compelled to fly from starvation on the banks
of the Columbia because the very fish of the
rivers and game of the hills were denied him
by the lordly barons who ruled at Vancouver
for themselves and Britain only. So intrenched
was this British power behind the great mount-
ain ranges of the raid-continent that armies
could not march against it if they would; and
on the thither side 3,000 leagues of ocean,
roamed by the prowling cruisers of the British
navy, kept eternal watch and ward over them.
Thus they stood, and thus Britannia ruled, not
the wave only, but the land as well, when these
avaunt couriers of the mighty host of Ameri-
cans that ten years later began to follow in their
footsteps sat calmly down before this mountain
power of commercial supremacy, and that other
mountain power of paganism intrenched in the
superstitious legends of a hundred generations
of petrified intellectual and moral darkness, and
began, in their thoughts, if not in their speech,
to prophesy to them: •' O, thou great mount-
ain, be thou plucked up and be thou cast into
the midst of the sea."

These men were not a power in themselves to
enter this vast contention for the possession of
a mighty empire, for there were but four of
them ; but they were the seed of a power, the

germ of a force, that was to win that empire to
American civilization, and plant it in the blue
field of our country's banner.

It is now time that we begin to note and
measure the growth of that new force that thus
confronted the old. The task is difficult, for
who can weigh or measure such forces? — but
we must attempt it.

We have before remarked the fact that these
mission establishments were of two classes:
First, those organized and sustained by great
missionary societies, like the Missionary Society
of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the
American Board of Commissioners of Foreign
Missions; and, second, personal and indepen-
dent missions, established and sustained by the
men who themselves wrought in them. But
they were all Americans, and nearly all of New
England blood, if not of New England birth.
That our readers may the better understand the
relations, both of men and events, to resultant
history, we shall consider these classes separ-
ately; and it is the logical order to consider
fii'st the class that itself was the first in the
order of time. This was the missions of the
Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 18.34 the four men already named — Jason
Lee, Daniel Lee, Cyrus Shepard and P. L.
Edwards — under the direction of that society,
established themselves in the very heart of the
Willamette Valley, the great agricultural para-
dise of Oregon. These were followed, in 1836,
by Dr. Elijah White and wife, with two chil-
dren; Mr. Alansou Beers and wife, with three
children; with Mr. William H. Willson and
Misses Anna M. Pittman, Susan Downing and
Elvira Johnson. Wlien these arrived, in May,
1837, the first American home was planted in
the Willamette Valley. There had scarcely
been even the semblance of a home, as we under-
stand that word, in Oregon previous to that
time. Even the able and cultivated leaders of
the Hudson's Bay Company had consorted with
the Indian women, and their abodes had the
odor of the wigwam, and their progeny the
taint of Indian blood. But here were educated

HISTOBT OF WASHINGTON.

and cultured white women, accustomed to the
refinements of the parlors of Boston and Lynn,
of Newark and New York, able to grace any
social life, as well as to aid in lifting up a fallen
and degraded race. Before only pioneer Ameri-
can manhood had been here; now pioneer
womanhood and childhood, and with them pio-
neer home lite, were added, and an American
community, with all the elements of perpetuity
and increase in itselt, was established in the
very heart of Oregon. Nor should the state-
ment be omitted here that, with these men and
women and children, the Missionary Board had
forwarded a large amount of stores of various
kinds to render its community practically inde-
pendent of all others. Within six months of
the arrival of this company the community was
further strengthened, both in its numbers and
its character, by the arrival of Rev. David Les-
lie and wife with three children, Miss Margaret
Smith and Rev. H. K. W. Perkins. Thus, be-
fore three years from the arrival of the first
company of four men, the Missionary Society
of tlie Methodist Episcopal Church had planted
an American community in the Willamette
valley, consisting of men, women and children,
with homes and schools and worship, with flocks
and herds and plows and harvests, peaceably,
but mightily confronting the rule of the Hud-
son's Bay Company over the fair realm which
it so long had governed. In less than three
years more fifty-one more persons were added
to this American community by the same mis-
sionary authority. These consisted of Revs.
J. P. Richmond, Gustavus Hines, W. W. Kone,
A. F. Waller and J. H. Frost, and Messrs. Dr. I. L.
Babcock, and Messrs. George Abernethy, H. B.
Brewer, W. W. Raymond, L. H. Jndson, H.
Campbell, Josiah L. Parrish and James Olley,
all of whom had families, and Misses M. T.
Ware, C. A. Clark, E. Phillips, A. Phelps and
O. Lankton. So, in less than six years after its
first small contingents had reached Oregon, the
Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society had
not only planted an American community in
Oregon, but had made it so strong and so estab-

lished it on strategetic grounds all over the
Northwest as to make it ineradicable, — doing
what the United States Government and fur-
traders and commercial adventurers had faileii
to do in fifty years of effort.

We turn now to the work of the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
in the same general field and with a like result.
Its first mission in Oregon was established in
1H36, two years later than that of the Method-
ist society, though the country had been quite
thoroughly e.\plored the preceding year by Rev.
Samuel Parker, of New York, a very intelligent
and careful observer. The persons who for this
society established this mission were Dr. Marcus
AVhitman and wife and Mr. W. H. Gray, all
from the State of New York, and all, like those
connected with the Methodist community, in-
tensely Atnerican in training and sentiment.
This company of five persons, including the
two ladies, crossed the continent from the Mis-
souri river on horseback, a distance of nearly
2,000 miles. Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spauld-
ing were the first white women of any nation
who ever made a home in Oregon, and are for-
ever monuraented as such in the history of
civilization of the Northwest. The American
heart lingers over their deeds and their memory
with a great love and a great reverence, and
is glad to give them the crowning place, of
which personally they were so worthy, and
which with such bravery they won that of the
first American home-makers between the Rocky
mountains and the eastern sea. The missions
of these people were established in the very
heart of what has since become known as the
great •' Inland Empire," at Waiiletpu, on the
Walla Walla river, and at Lapwai on the Clear-
water, among the Cayuses and Nez Perces, the
two strongest and most promising tribes of the
entire coast. In 1838 Messrs. Eels, Walker •
and Smith, with their wives, joined them, and
they enlarged their work and broadened their
field. So, at the close of 1838, the American
Board had six American families, representing
the best forms of American life and sentiment.

niSTOBT OF WASHINGTON.

tirinly iixed on the soil of the Oregon of that
period; its contribution to the double result of
the evangelization of a pagan people and the
the Americanization of Oregon.

In addition to these there were wiiat we have
called independent missions, establishedon the
individual responsibility of those conducting
them, that contributed no slight influence to the
gi-eat aggregate of American sentiment and life
that was now beginning to repress and neutral-
ize the sway of the Hudson's Bay Company.
In 1838 Rev. Harvey Clarke, Mr. Littlejohn
and Mr. Smith, Presbyterian self-supporting
missionaries, with their wives, came over the
mountains, and in 1839 Messrs. Griffin and
Munger and their wives entei'ed ^the country
with similar intentions. What we have said of
the gentlemen and ladies of the missions of the
two great boards would be true in character of
all these. They were of the same type of repre-
sentative Americans, stood in the same relation
to the Hudson's Bay Company, and were as
thoroughly at one with the plans and hopes of
the United States in regard to the country as
were the others. In a sense, indeed, their in-
dependence gave them a vantage ground not
possessed by the others, and which they were
prompt and faithful to use for the cause of the
country they loved so tenderly.

Having thus summarily noted the beginning
and traced the development of this entii-ely
American force in Oregon up to the autumn of
1840, a period of but six years, we are in pos-
session of the following facts:

The entire number of adult men and women
that these missionary boards had transplanted
from the best life of the old States into Oregon,
together with those of the independent missions,
was sixty-one, constituting not far from thirty
American homes. Probably these homes held
at that time not far from 100 children, born to
an inheritance of American patriotism which
certainly would not diminish when they con-
trasted their own with the homes of those who
disputed with them the dominion ot Oregon.

But it was not numbers only, nor indeed was

it numbers chiefly, that gave these American
people the prestige of conquest. Tiic names of
Lee and Leslie, of Whitman and Waller, of Hines
and Parrish, of Abernethy and Gray, of Spauld-
ing and Walker, of Clarke and Griflin, of Bab-
cock and Campbell, of Eels and Hall sufficiently
attest that, for no writer of early Oregon history
can fail to give them honorable mention, or to
recognize their great influence in moldino- that
history.

Two other facts, of a somewhat material char-
acter, illustrate the eminent service of the mis-
sions in making civilization a possibility in
Oregon. One was the establishment of mills,
both for the production of lumber and the
grinding of grain for bread, by the missions of
both boards; the other was the introduction of a
printing press in 1839, by Mr. E. O. Hall, who
set up his press in Lapwai, in the mission of
Mr. Spaulding, and published elementary books,
both in the Nez Perces and Spokane tongues.
And so we are bi'ought to the close of 1840.

Meantime we should know what the Hud-
sou's Bay Company, as representing British
pretensions to Oregon, has been doing durino-
the six years that the American missions have
been developing into this formidable and op-
posing force. Surely such astute leaders as Mc-
Loughlin and Douglas could not fail to com-
prehend the threat against the position and
power of their company that was in the very
presence of these missionary establishments near
them. Two things were done, both in them-
selves well chosen for the end contemplated.
First, they introduced in 1838 two French Ca-
nadian Roman Catholic priests. These were
British subjects, and it was expected, of course,
that the influence their profession and character
gave them would be exerted against the Ameri-
can and in favor of the British rule in Oregon.
This the company had a perfect right to do; and
this also Messrs. Blanchet and Demers, the two
priests, had a perfect right to do. They placed
these priests at most important strategetic
points; one in the Willamette valley, very near
the Methodist missions, and the other was a

HISTORY OF WASIIINGTON.

faithful itinerant, visiting the diiferent posts of
the company alternately. Also in 1840 tlie
company brought an emigration of 125 persons,
men, women and children, from Winnipeg, to
settle on Pnget Sound. Thus, at the two points
where tlie leaders of that great company feared
theinfluenceof the American missions the most,
they made the most strenuous effort to counter-
vail that influence. They knew the greatness of
the prize at issue, and they were not the men to
neglect any fair means they could use to win
that prize for the government of the country
they represented.

"We do not blame them for this. On the
contrary there is a measure of honor that we
accord them. They were faitliful to the trust
their country leposed in them. They did
what they could, and in tlie best way they
could, to counteract the influence that, tliey
could not bnt see, left unchecked must givetiie
long disputed Oregon, coveted equally by both
England and the United States, to the Ameri-
can nation. And here it is proper to say that,
though the men whose acts we are here record-
ing were both British and Romanist, and this
writer is both American and Protestant, there
is no record, certainly not up to this date, of
any action on the part of either the British or
American party that was discolored by criminal
unfriendliness. On the contrary, while doing
their duty for the caiise they represented,
neither forgot that broader duty they owed to
universal humanity. Still tiie results on the
one side were much more effective and deter-
mining than on the other. Can we tell why?
Let us see, although the observant reader has
already caught the drift of the reason in what
we have previously said.

The claims and interests of Great Britain in
Oregon were sustained on the whole, by a con-
glomerate mass of people, of various colors and
cultures, and with very little of moral and so-
cial adhesiveness. The Briton and the Scotch-
man, it is true, were at their head, but the
French Canadians constituted the larger por-
tion of their followers. What they had of

home life, from the highest to tlie lowest, was
an admixture of these with the females of the
various Indian tribes, and servetl to weaken,
rather than to strengthen, the moral and intel-
lectual flber of the best men among them. The
traders', the chief factors, and even the gover-
nor himself, were as the voyageurs and trail-
men in this regard. Their children were, as a
body, witiiout any large and worthy ambition:
too high to be Indians and too low to be white
men. A home and social life thus tainted
never was and never can be a strong politi;al
life, and no men could know this better than
the really able men whose lives had fallen into
these evil coils. One need, therefore, not look
beyond this fact for an explanation of the his-
toric anomaly so patent here, namely, that the
strorger in numbers and positions and oppor-
tunity should prove the weaker in a conflict of
intellectual and moral, or even political ])oten-
cies.

On the other side, — the side of the American
community, as embodied, up to this time, in
missions and missionaries — there was a homo-
geneity of moral and intellectual and national
idea that gave it the strength of welded steel,
while it had the elasticity of a three-fold cord.
They were picked men and women, chosen
from among the hardiest and most aspiring
people of the new world. They had been
trained on the farms and in the shops and at
the forges where human frames are annealed
into endurance and tempered into elasticity'.
They were educated, in the best sense of that
word. There was neither illiteracy nor ignor-
ance among them. They were isolated from
contaminating and degenerating contacts. Many
of them, both men and women, had high liter-
ary ability and culture. They had ambition, —
that supreme propulsion that forever lifts great
sonls from the victories of to-day into the wider
triumphs of to-morrow. They comprehended
their responsibility and accurately measured
their opportunity. It may be doubted if the
Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock as uni-
versally endowed and thorouglily equipped body

UISrOBY OF WASHINGTON.

of einpire-bnilders as the inissiouary boards of
the United States placed in Oregon from 1834
to 1840. And this was the body of men who
stood here alone for American interests and
supremacy over against the Hudson's Bay
Company, representing English interests and
supremacy.

We are not to be understood as saying that
there were absolutely no Americans here before
1840 but the missionaries and their families.
There were a few, possibly twenty-five in all,
but they were mostly of that floating class that
linger on the fringes of society, or that wander
over the world without a fixed and definite aim.
Some of them remained in the county, and
under the influence of tiie stronger power of
the missionary organizations became highly
useful members of society, and left an honor-
able record in its early history. Not strong
enough in numliers to constitute a community,
it was beyond the possibilities of tlieir condi-
tion that they should uphold and make ulti-
mately successful the American cause in Oregon.

The wi-iter would not detract from the credit
or fame due any man, or any class of men, from
their work for and in our early Oregon; nor
would he add to the laurels of any one more
than is due. But up to this date the American
interest here owed more to the influence and
work of Jason Lee than to those of any other
one man, if not indeed to all the men in the
country combined. He was as fully the Cory-
pheus of the American cominuiiity as was Dr.
McLoughlin of the Hudson's Bay British influ-
ence. He was a man strong in purpose, vigor-
ous in execution, reticent and self-contained.
Being first in the field, he very early made him-
self well acquainted with the country from tlie
Umpqua to Puget Sound, and from the ocean
to the Rocky mountains. His manuscript
journal, now open before the writer, shows that
he placed a very high estimate on the agricul-
tural capabilities of the country, and especially
of the Willamette valley, and as early as 1835
believed that it would soon be occupied by a
civilized people. His correspondence with the

Board of Missions in whose service he was em-
ployed, which was published in New York in
1835-'36-'37 and '38, showed the same thing.
Following up his belief on this point, in 1838
he returned overland to the States, and before
the missionary board in New York, in the pub-
lic prints, and in the presence of great audi-
ences in every great city from Maine to South
Carolina, and from New York to St. Louis, he
set forth the character, needs and advantages of
Oregon. He spent a full year in this employ-
ment, visiting Washington and conferring with
the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War,
and receiving substantial help from the officers
of the general Government for the furtherance
of the purpose for which he was in the East, —
the organization and equipment of a strong re-
enforcement for his missionary work. His pur-
pose was completely successful, and in October
of 1839 he sailed from New York in a ship
chartered by the missionary board, with what
was really an American colony; ministers,
mechanics, farmers, teachers, and with supplies
for the work in which they had engaged, to the
value of 125,000. It was the largest and best
furnished company that, on such a purpose, had
over sailed from any port; and when it reached
the Columbia in 1840, with Mr. Lee at its
head, it morally fixed the national status of
Oregon, because it put the American influence
far in advance of the British. The inception,
organization and cultivation of that influence
was more directly the result of 'the work of
Jason Lee than that of any other one man.

A single other point in our view of the rela-
tions of these missionary stations to the Ameri-
canization of Oregon it is necessary to notice.
It is this: The stations became the centers around
which accreted whatever there was of American
sentiment or American people in the coimtry.
This was especially true of the Willamette sta-
tion. True to its purpose, and the nation under
whose charter it pursued that purpose, the Hud-
son's Bay Company would do nothing to induce
or Ibstei' American settlement. While it would
sell its goods to Americans, it would buy noth-

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

ing from them. This was the surest system of
antagonism it could possibly have adopted. It
had forced the Americans out of the country
before the missionary stations were established,
and, until an organization able to cope with
itself in mercantile operations could take up
work of colonizing the country, it could keep
them out. Eivalry in trade it did not fear, for
that it could easily destroy. But the mission-
ary establishments, while independent and self-
supporting, were not trading posts. Even
their object in the country commended itself to
the better feelings of the gentlemen of that
company, and, without turning absolute bar-
barians, they could not molest them. This
they would not, perhaps could not do. Hence
they could not prevent the ministry of hospi-
tality, which the missionaries were always ready
to exercise toward their countrymen, and all

others, indeed, who came to their doors or
pitched their tent under the shadows of their
sanctuary. And so, thoiigli the missionaries
were not traders, nor their stations depots of
commerce, they were, in the only way in which
rivalry could have been successful against the
Hudson's Bay Company, the rivals of tliat erst
and mighty monopqly; and, by the time any
considerable number of American citizens were
prepared to follow the path they had blazed out
into the valleys of Oregon in 1842, they had
prepared an asylum for them, and broken tlie
right arm of the power of the Hudson's Bay
Company, and never afterward did it, or the
British nation, which it had so ably repre-
sented, recover supremacy in Oregon. Morally
the contest was ended, and Oregon was Ameri-
canized.

>_»^^3Wb-

CH AFTER XI.

IMMIGRATIONS.

Germs of History — Question of Immigration Discussed — Hall J. Kelley — His Memorial to
Congress — Society Organized— Its Plan Outlined — Kelley's Efforts to Open Trade —
His Failuke — From 1835 to 1841 — Immigration of 1841 — Americans — Hudson's Bay —
Immmigeation of 1842 — Its Importance — Dr. E. White — Other Important Characters —
Me. Crawford's Stoey' — Immigeation of 1843 — Its Important Place in History— Causes
that Impelled it — General Direction of Negotiations — Impulse of Emmigration.

I[ N the story of emigration to the Pacific coast
from the Atlantic slope and the valleys of
-1 the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers,
are found the real germs of its history. There
is in this story a romance of enterprise, patriot-
ism, adventure and ambition, finely illustrating
the genius of the American people as it has ex-
hibited itself since Jamestown in the South and
Plymouth Rock in the North became the early
altars of its consecration to the service of sub-
duing a wild continent and building up within
it a splendid empire of lilierty. It \v;is (inly a

continuation of the activity of that genius of
free conquest that first sent the hardy sons and
daughters of Plymouth out over the Hudson
and Genesee, and over the plains of western
New York and Ohio, and the not less hardy and
more volatile sons and daughters of Jamestown
over the AUeghanies and down across the blue
and green hills and vales of Kentucky and
Tennessee to the shores of the Mississippi even
before the Revolutionary war had ceased to echo
on the hills of the Carolinas. It is not neces-
sary to claim that these who passed, in the '30s

Ul STORY OP WASUINOTON.

and '40s, the gates of the Rocky mountains
were greater and nobler than those wlio, before
the beginning of the century, had forced those
of the AUeghanies to give these a title to all the
honor that bravery and hardihood and patriot-
ism can possibly confer upon mortals. It were
honor enough that these sons were worthy of
their sires, and that the daughters, whose pres-
ence graced and illuminated the mountain biv-
ouacs of a two or three thousand miles emigrants'
trail to Oregon, and were the lone settler's cabin's
chief charm and glory on the prairie shores of
the Willamette during the decade of 1840 and
1850, were worthy of the mothers whose com-
pany was alike the joys and inspiration of the
two or three hundred miles' trail to the Ohio
and the Tennessee in the decades of 1790 and
1800. There was, indeed, more of danger and
more of deprivation in the earlier than in the
later hegira, but both fully paralleled any great
conquering movement of humanity in any period
of the world's history. If there was in these
less of the noise of battles, and less of the ban-
nered heraldry of war, there was not necessarily
less of real victory, but rather the more, for the
victories of peace are always nobler than those
of war. An American must needs dwell with
peculiar pride on the fact that this great, resist-
less, on-sweejjing flow westward of the most
strongly impulsed of the great mass of the
"common people" of this continent, was what
finally settled the most vexing and troublesome
questions of international dispute that this coun-
try ever encountered. Diplomacy must needs
wait on immigration, and a nation's claim must
wait on the people's possession. Nothing can
be settled without the people. The grants of
kings long since discrowned, the edicts of par-
liaments in capitals far beyond the seas, the
charters of corporations and companies given by
assumed owners are nothing. It is the people
that assure ultimately all claims and pretenses
by their own presence and will and work. So
it was on the Pacific coast, and in tracing the
hic-tory of immigration thither we trace the
movement of the people that finally and poten-

tially settled all "Oregon questions," and gave
the United States her most magnificent seaboard
and h«r fairest and most fruitful realm.

The question of the possibility of peopling
this coast by emigration was settled by a move-
ment that was somewhat beyond the calcula-
tions of the mere political economist. It was
the religious, the missionary, the faith element
that opened the way, not as an end, but as a re-
sult of its adventure. The subject of emigra-
tion to the Pacific coast had been long debated
in the Eastern States, but until these avaunt
couriers had actually, in a singl-e summer, passed
to the western shores, it was deemed impractica-
ble if not impossible. In 1804-'05-'06 Lewis
and Clarke and their company of men, schooled
in the hardest discipline of woodcraft, had needed
three or four years to make the journey and re-
turn. In IsiO-'ll Wilson Price Hunt, with
the land portion of John Jacob Astor's great
mercantile association, had suffered famine,
starvation, almost death in the wild mountains
and amid the thirsty deserts of Snake river, and
had finally reached the mouth of the Columbia,
more dead than alive, after two seasons of the
most desperate effort. To carry women and
children and household goods and gods over
such mountains and across such deserts was felt
to be the scheme of enthusiasts. Still the en-
thusiasts were right, and their enthusiasm, as is
often the case, was the highest and most fore-
sighted reason.

The first effort to induce emigration to Oregon
of which we can find any record was made .in
1817 by Hall J. Kelley, of Boston. The ques-
tion of the restoration of Astoria to the United
States, under the provisions of the treaty of
Ghent, was then pending between the United
States and Great Britain, and Mr. Kelley, with
the instinct of true statesmanship, urged the
immediate occupation of the country in dispute
by American settlers. There was no response,
and yet, undismayed, he continued his appeals
and efforts until, in 1829, he organized a com-
pany called "The American Society for the Set-
tlement of the Oregon Territory," which was

BISTORT OP WASHINGTON.

incorporated by the legislature of Massachu-
setts. In 1831 the society presented a memorial
to Congress, ably setting forth its designs, de-
scribing the beauty and value of the country,
showing the evident designs of Great Britain
upon it, and closing with this rather remarkable
and impressive appeal:

" Now therefore your memoralists, in behalf
of a large number of the citizens of the United
States, would respectfully ask Congress to assist
them in carrying into operation the great pur-
pose of their institution; to grant them troops,
artillery, military arms and munitions of war,
for the security of the contemplated settlement;
to incorporate their society with the power to
extinguish the Indian title to such tracts and
extent of territory, at the mouth of the Colum-
bia and the junction of the Multnomah with the
Columbia, as may be adequate to tiie laudable
aim and pursuits of the settlers, and with such
other rights, powers, rights and immunities as
may be at least equal and concurrent to those
given by Parliament to the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany, and such as are not repugnant to the
stipulations of the convention made between
Great Britain and the United States, when it
was agreed that any country on the Northwest
coast of America to the westward of the Eocky
mountains should be free and open to the citi-
zens and subjects of the two powers for a term
of years; and to grant them such other rights
and privileges as may contribute to the means
of establishing a respectable and prosperous
community."

Congress gave no heed to this prayer — whether
wisely or unwisely may be subject of debate.
Whether its non-action deferred or changed the
ultimate decision of the " Oregon question " can-
not be told. The writer is inclined to the opin-
ion that the time had not come for decisive
measures, — that at this juncture the advantages
of the situation were with England insfead of
the United States, and England was better pre-
pared to assert and maintain lier authority over
the country then than was the United States.
"While, therefore, Mr. Kelley's theory was wise

and statesmanlike, and the only one that could
ultimately win, the time had not yet come for
tiie decisive action by Congress that was asked
in that petition. The " Society," however, was
not discouraged. Mr. Kelley was appointed
its general agent, and continued his enthusiastic
efforts and appeals. In 1831, Mr. Kelley, for
the society issued a "circular" to persons de-
siring to unite in an " Oregon settlement to be
commenced in the spring of 1832, on the de-
lightful and fertile banks of the Columbia
river." The circular stated that "it has been
contemplated for many years to settle with the
free and enlightened but redundant population
from the American Republic, that portion of
her territory called Oregon, bounded on the
Pacific ocean and lying between the forty-
second and forty- ninth parallels of north lati-
tude."

The plan of the company thus outlined was
to have been carried into effect in 1832, but the
failure of Congress to provide for any assistance
for the enterprise caused it to be abandoned for
that year. One of its agents however, Mr. Na-
thaniel J. Wyeth, of whose history and -work
mention is made elsewhere in this history, did
cross the continent with a small body of Boston
men in 1832 and returned the following year to
prepare for a large personal venture in the line
of emigration and trade. So clearly did Mr.
Kelley comprehend the geographical and com-
mercial relations of Oregon at that time that he
had laid out upon paper splendid city plats at
the mouth of the Columbia, where Astoria now
is, and at the junction of the Multnomah — or
Willamette — and the Columbia river where
Portland now is, and in these cities yet to be
each immigrant was to have a "town lot," and
somewhere else a farm.

Mr. Kelley's personal connection with Oregon
was but slight and short. Attempting to freight
a vessel and failing, he sought to open avenues
of overland trade through Mexico whose reve-
nue officers confiscated the greater part of his
goods. He finally reached Vancouver October
15, 1834. His health soon failed and in March,

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

1835, lie departed for liis home, having lost
$30,000 in his efforts to colonize Oregon. But
while losing this he gained a place in history,
and his name is gratefully mentioned as the
earliest and one of the truest friends of the
" Americanization of Oregon." No history of
Oregon can be written that does not thus record
the name of Hall J. Kelley. Many men have
found a much lower place in history at much
greater cost and efl'ort, so that, to him, his finan-
cial loss for Oregon was moral and historic gain
for himself.

From 1835 to 1841 there was little that
might be called immigration to the Pacific coast.
True, various missionary companies arrived in
the country, as noted elsewhere, but few of these
contemplated at first a permanent residence, al-
though many of the persons comprising these
companies did remain and took place among
the most intelligent, patriotic and enterprising
citizens. Also quite a number of persons
who had formerly been connected with the
various trapping and trading companies in the
Rocky mountain regions had grown tired of
their precarious and dangerous employment, and
came down into the "Willamette valley and set-
tied upon land claims. Some of these, too, held
honorable and useful places in the subsequent
history of the country, and did much to help
forward the cause of the Americanization of
Oregon. The records of both these classes will
appear in their proper places in their history.

In the autumn of 1841 the first regular emi-
gration to the country, constiting of 111
persons, came through the fastnesses of the
mountains, thus nearly doubling the white pop-
ulation at once. Probably at the end of 1841,
in all the region that now constitutes the
States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho,
there were not over 300 whites, not counting
those connected with the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany. The emigration of this year, believing
it impossible to cross the mountains with
wagons, made no attempt to do so, but per-
formed the laborious journey of 2,000 miles
troui the Missouri frontier on horseback. How

they could have been so misled in regard to the
ditficuities of the way appears a mystery, since
Bonneville eight years before, and Dr. Whit-
man six years before, had each taken wagons
far beyond the crests of the Rockies, and
the American Fur Company had frequently
taken them as far as Wind river, but a little
eastward of the crest. But as they were misled,
so determined was their purpose of emigration
that they cheerfully performed the herculean
task of packing all their goods on horses and
mules, loading and unloading them morning
and evening, for tiie entire 2,000 miles.

Meantime while the first spray of the rolling
sea of American emigrants that was soon to
follow was touching the shores of Oregon, the
Hudson's Bay Company, seeing the danger to
their own purposes of permitting the people of
the United States to gain a preponderance in the
country, organized a scheme of emigration from
their own Red river colonies. Sir George Simp-
son, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company,
who crossed the country from Montreal to Van-
couver during the summer of 1841, described
this emigration as consisting of twenty-three
families, the heads being generally young and
active. They reached Vancouver in Septem-
ber, and were located by the company near
their (]owlitz farm, in the vicinity of the head
of Pnget Sound. Quite a number of them,
being dissatisfied with their location, moved
the next year to the Willamette valley, not-
withstanding the desire of the company to
strengthen the pretensions of Great Britain to
the country north of the Columbia river by
retaining them there.

The emigration of 1842, for various reasons,
took a very important place in the early history
of the coast. It consisted of only 109 persons
in all, hut nearly half of them were adults, and
many of these were men who subsequently at-
tained considerable prominence in the country
and contributed not a little to its prosperity.
With this company came Dr. Elijah White,
who bore a commission as sub-Indian agent for
the region west of the Rockv mountains, and

II I STOUT OF WASIIINOTON.

lias the historical distinction of beiii^ the first
commissioned representative of the Government
of the United States resident west of the Kocky
mountains. Dr. Wiii^e's place in Oregon his-
tory is somewhat unique. He came to the
country first as a physician to the Methodist
mission, but on account of a disagreement with
its superintendent, Rev. Jason Lee, and other
members of the mission, returned to the East-
ern States. His residence of some years in
Oregon and his general intelligence in regard
to the country itself, had made it easy for him
to secure the attention of the Government,
and, though his mental and moral character-
istics did not commend him to the people of
Oregon, he now returned commissioned to the
most important place in the colony. While
Dr. White personally was obnoxious to many
of the people whose relations to the Indian
tribes he was to arbitrate, yet the fact that he
returned bearing a Government commission
went far to reconcile the people toward him,
as it was a proof that the Government was not
entirely forgetful of the feeble Pacific colony,
however slow it seemed to be in asserting its
interest in them. He had also been one of
the main promoters of the emigration, using
his prominence as ati appointee of the govern-
ment to gain recruits to the standard of the
emigrants, and the people were gratefully glad
for any influence that added white faces to
the dark visage of humanity on the western
coast. So, much of the antipathy of the people
to Dr. White as a man and a missionary was
allowed to slumber, or was kept out of sight,
and the good he could do them as an offieer of
the Government the rather thought of. The
justice of history, which neither criticises with
prejudice nor praises with partiality, compels
the statement that his work was often useful to
the rising commonwealth, although on the
whole he sadly disappointed the hopes, if not
the expectations, of tlie people.

With this emigration came L. W. Hastings
and A. L. Lovejoy, two men who became prom-
inent ill the history of the Territory, and also

F. X. Matthieu and Medornm Crawford, men
who for half a century- in political and civil life
exercised a molding and salutary influence.

As this was the the first emigration that at-
tempted the entire journey across the plains
with wagons, it is proper that we let one of its
number, Hon. Medoruni Crawford, tell a part of
the story of the journey in his own way, pre-
mising that at Green river it was deemed liest
to dismantle half the wagons and resort to the
more primitive method of packing for the re-
mainder of the journey. Of the journey from
Green river Mr. Crawford says:

" Horses, mules and oxen were packed with
such clothing, utensils and provisions as were

indi

;pene

for our daily wants, and with

heavy hearts many articles of comfort and con-
venience which had been carefully carried and
cared for during the long journey were left be-
hind. About the middle of August we arrived
at Fort Hall, then an important trading post
belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company. From
Captain Grant, his officers and employes we
received such favors and assistance as can only
be appreciated by worn-out and destitute emi-
grants. Here the remaining wagons were left,
and our company, no longer attempting to keep
up an organization, divided into small parties,
all traveling as fast as their circumstances
would permit, following the well-beaten trail of
the Hudson's Bay Company from Fort Hall to
Walla Walla, now Wallula. The small party
to which I was attached was one month travel-
ing from Fort Hall to Dr. Whitman's, where
we were most hospitably received, and supplied
with flour and vegetables in abundance, a very
acceptable change after subsisting almost en-
tirely on buffalo meat from Fort Laramie to
Fort Hall, and on salmon from Fort Hall to
Whitman's. In fact, there had not been in any
mess a mouthful of bread since leaving Laramie.
" From Walla Walla Dr. White and some
others took passage down the Columbia river on
the Hudson's Bay Company's boats or canoes,
and still others, and the larger portion of the
emigrants, crossed the Cascade mountains on

HfSTORT OF WASniNaTON.

the old Indian trail. From Fort Hall to the
Willamette no precaution was taken against, nor
slighest apprehension felt of, Indian hostility;
nor were we in any instance molested by them;
on the contrary they furnished ns with salmon
and game, and rendered us valuable assistance
for very trifling rewards. From Walla Walla
to the AVillamette falls occupied about twenty
days, and, all things considered, was the hardest
part of the entire journey. What with the
drifting sands, rocky cliffs and rapid streams
along the Columbia river, and the gorges,
torrents and thickets of the Cascade mountains,
it seems incredible how, with our worn-out and
emaciated animals, we ever reached our desti-
nation."

Those who in later years and under more fa-
vorable conditions traversed the same road, when
they read this description of the disorganized
and careless journey of the emigration of 1842,
wonder how a single one of that company sur-
vived the perils of that 1,000 miles journey
from Fort Hall to the Willamette settlements
arising from Indian hostilities, lack of food, and
the incidental dangers of wilderness travel.
That they did seems little less than a miracle.

When this immigrant company had become
blended with the former white population, the
entire census showed less than 500 souls.

In the history of immigration into Oregon
we come now to the one that, historically, has
had greater prominence and wider consideration
than any other, namely, that of 1843. It will
require a somewhat broader treatment than any
other, because so many personal elements have
entered into its consideration, and because some
names, dear to the people of this coast, and of
the whole country, were identified with it.
There has been much controversy about the part
played in its history by Dr. Whitman, and many
of the ablest writers of the coast have ventured
history and criticism and opinion upon it, —
perhaps all tinged, more or less, with the hues
of romance, which the acts of so chivalrous and
determined a leader as Dr. Whitman were well
.calculated to throw over it. It came, too, in

the crisis of our national controversy with Great
Britain in regard to the ownership and boundary
of Oregon, and seemed, at least to a superficial
observation, the decisive factor in its determi-
nation in favor of the United States. For these
reasons it becomes necessary to discuss both the
motives and the facts that distinguished this
above all other immigrations. In doing so we
shall endeavor to leave out of sight claims made,
for the first time, by writers a quarter of a
century after the events recorded transpired,
conceived, it may be, under the influence of very
partial friendship and companionship; or if not
that, then in the prejudice of opposition and
personal rivalry, either of which cannot assist
careful and judicial historic conclusions. Only
as we carefully mark the trend of events and
discussions relating to Oregon, both in Oregon
itself and the Eastern States, around the firesid' s
of the people and in the halls of Congress, and
study them in relation to the philosophy of
human action as we understand it, can we arrive
at a just and satisfactory conclusion. And, in
writing the history of the immigration of 1843,
if we cannot write thus it will be impossible to
give any adequate and proper understanding
of it. First of all, then, the causes that im-
pelled it.

With the conclusion of the treaty between
Great Britain and the United States, which ter-
minated in an agreement of " joint occupancy "
of the country by the citizens of the two powers
with equal rights and privileges, the public
mind in the United States settled into the con-
clusion that the ultimate ownership of the
country would be determined by real occupancy.
It was tolerably evident that the people, whether
English or American, would decide the question
that negotiation could not settle, and that neither
party felt willing to submit to the decision of
arms: that homes and herds, plows and factories,
schoolhouses and churches, would become the
determining factors in the conflict. In the
light of this conclusion the immigration of
1843, far more than those preceding it, must be
studied.

UlSTORT OF WASHINGTON.

The people of the western frontier had be-
come familiar with Oregon. The praises of its
mild climate and the stories of its wonderful
productiveness had been recited in their ears by
returning travelers and adventurers, and many
of their own kinsmen had already settled in it
and written back the same wonderful recitals.
In consequence the frontiersmen who are always
trembling with the excitement and love of ad-
venture, felt the thrill of desire to try the en-
ticing journey — enticing to them because of
its very perils — to the better land and brighter
clime beyond the western mountains. Besides
the " Oreo-on bills," which had been introduced
into Congress by Senator Linn of Missouri, in
the fall of 1842, making provision for the estab-
lishment of a line of "stockaded forts from some
point on the Missouri and Arkansas rivers into
the best pass for entering the valley of the Ore-
gon; and also at or near the mouth of the Co-
lumbia river;" and also to '* secure the grant of
640 acres of land to every white male inhabitant
of the Territory of Oregon of the age of eight-
een years and upward," besides other provisions
hicrhly advantageous to the settlers, had given
assurances to the people that their action in re-
moving to and settling in Oregon would cer-
tainly receive the strong support of the Govern-
munt.

The course of negotiation on the part of the
Government relating to Oregon had been such
before this time that this proposed movement
by Congress came not too soon, nor was it too
favorable for the end desired. Let us glance at
that course for a moment.

The general direction of the treaty stipula-
tions into which our Government had entered
with that of Great Britain in regard to Oregon
was plainly, in its result, inimical to the inter-
ests of the United States. The first great false
step was the "treaty of joint occupancy," as it
was called, in 1818, under the administration of
Mr. Monroe, by which, in effect, our Govern-
ment put into the hands of the Hudson's Bay
Company, which already flanked the country,
the power and right by treaty to enter into it

with their drilled and armed " servants," and
took from itself the right to enter any protest
against that really armed invasion. That treaty
was for ten years, and expired by limitation in
1828, and in that year by another treaty the
provisions of the former were extended until
one or the other party should give notice for its
termination. This was, if possible, a greater
blunder than the former, for it perpetuated
what else were dead by limitation, and made all
subsequent action much more difficult and for-
midable. Then the Ashburton negotiation
which defined the boundary between the
United States and Canada as far west as the
summit of the Rocky mountains, should, and
unquestionably might, have been pressed to a
settlement of that boundary to the Pacific ocean
on the same degree of latitude, namely, the
forty-ninth. Then, most unphilosophic and
unreasonable of all, came President Tyler's rec-
ommendation to discountenance emigration to
Oregon, by withholding land from the emigrants
until the two Governments had settled the title
— a contingency too distant and doubtful to be
counted on, and which could only inure to the
advantage of the Hudson's Bay Company, re-
presenting, and in that sense personating, Great
Britain. Thus, by a course of vacillation and
timidity, if not incompetency, the Government
put in imminent peril its title to Oregon, and
nearly lost the stars of our great Northwestern
States from the banner of our national Union.

But in America the people are always greater
than the Government, and they took up the
work of saving what the Government had so
nearly lost, and they succeeded where it had
failed.

All these facts and influences converged at
once on the minds of the people in the autumn
of 1842. The newspapers of the land heralded
them everywhere. Oregon, the title of the
LTnited States to it, and the purpose of immigra-
tion into it both as a personal and patriotic im-
pulse, were the themes of conversation in the
cabins of the frontiersmen of the West and in
the homes of the East. The writer heard it,

HISTORY OF WASHINOrOJS.

109

talke.1 it, felt it in his hoine iu central New
York. It was everywhere, — an impulse, an in-
spiration, a movement of the great lieart of the
American people. By and by we shall see its
outcome.

Coincident with this impulse toward Oregon
wliich was moving the heart of the East, Ore-
gon itself was thrilling with the same interest
for her own destiny. The emigrants of former
years were writing flaming and exciting letters
to their friends in the East. The missionaries,
both of the Methodist and American Boards, as
well as the independent missionaries, filled
column after column of the great church papers
in the Eastern cities with religious and patriotic
appeals. For the number of its people at that
time, no iiew country, if ever any old country,
had a larger proportion of men of marked ability
and higli character than Oregon. Among the
immigrant civilians were those already named
in this chapter with others, with such laymen
in the mission work as Whitman, Abernethy,
Gray, Campbell, and Brewer; and in the minis-
terial field such men as Lee, Leslie, Walker,
Griffin, Hines, Waller, Eels, and others, all of
whom were men before ttiey were missionaries,
and Americans before they were churchmen.
These were all employed from within the coun-
try itself in awakening, by their private corre-
spondence and tlieir published letters, a wide-
spread public interest in all the nation on the
" Oregon question," and thus it became the
question of tlie hour. These reisons alone are
sufficient to account for the large emigration
that stood ou the banks of the Missouri river in
the early spring of 1843 with tiie'r faces look-
ing toward the west.

Still there was one personal incident, and one
person having such a romantic, if not such a
vital, connection with this emigration as to re-
quire a candid and somewhat extended discus-
sion before we consider the emigration itself.
That person was Dr. Marcus Whitman, and the
incident was his perilous winter's ride over the
frozen deserts and through the snow-blocked
mountain passes, from the mission station near

Fort Walla Walla to St. Louis, with the pur-
pose of awakening the Goveinment of the United
States to some just idea of the value of Oregon,
and of the danger of its alienation, as well as to
organize and lead back an emigration to take
possession of the country as settlers in the inter-
est of its Americanization. While something
of romance has been thrown about this " ride,"
— and it may have been invested by some wri-
ters with greater results than it really accom-
plished, — -it was certainly a bold and romantic
venture, and its results entitle Dr. Whitman to
a unique place in the history of this coast.
Narrated as briefly as possible, the facts of his
journey seem to be about these:

His work among the Indians, like all the In-
dian missionary work on the coast, had proved a
comparative failure. The board under whose
direction he wrought iiaving become dissatisfied
with the meager results of that work, had de-
cided to abandon that station and had given di-
rections accordingly. Dr. Whitman disagreed
with the judgment of the board, and sought the
approval of his fellow- missionaries in the field
of his desire to return to the States, and repre-
sent before the board the importance of continu-
ing it. After some delay, and the exhibition
of a determination on his part to go with or
without their approval, their consent was given,
and October 3, 1842, fixed as the time for his
departure.

Meanwhile the subject of the struggle be-
tween the United States and Great Britain for
the actual possession of Oregon was at its
height Dr. Whitn)an was an intense Ameri-
can, and must have felt keenly the need of early
and earnest action in behalf of his own country.
He could be of great value to Oregon, coming
just from the field, and possibly put the Govern-
ment into truer relations to the questions pend-
ing than any man then in Washington. Besides,
at this juncture the emigration of 1842 was
arriving, and the tenor of the news they brought
was, tlie negotiations looking to the surrender of
apart or the whole of Oregon to Great Britain,
in consideration of certain privileges and rights

niSTOJRT OP WASUINGTON.

on the lisliiiig banks of Newfoundland, were
pending in Washington. This added new force
to Dr. Whitman's resolution, and unquestion-
ably broadened the purpose of liis own mind in
his journey. But, it is worthy of remark that,
before this intelligence from the immigrants
had reached liim, his plans were formed and the
date of his departure fixed. Circiitnstances en-
abled him to anticipate that date by a couple of
/ays, — an important consideration to his jour-
ney, as winter was already near at band. While,
therefore, the intelligence brought by the immi-
gration served to confirm Dr. Whitman in the
wisdom of the resolution he had taken, it could
not have been the reason of that resolution, as
some writers have endeavored to make it appear.
Nor does this in any manner depreciate the
ralue of the services of Dr. Whitman nor de-
iract. from his true fame as one of the most de-
voted of missionaries, the most ]'atiiotic of
citizens, and the most noble and chivalric of
men.

Space cannot be given to tlie details of Dr.
Whitman's winter journey over the Rocky
mountains to St. Louis; yet as it has a connec-
tion with the history of the emigration of 1843,
and incidentally with Oregon history in a broader
sense, some notice of it mnst be given.

On the 3d of October, with a single com-
panion, he left his mission station at Waiiletpu,
on the Walla Walla river, about twenty-five
miles from the Hudson Bay fort, and began his
perilous ride. His companion was Mr. Abbot
Lawrence Lovejoy, a Massachusetts man, as his
name snfiiciently indicates, who was a member
of the immigration of that season, and had only
reached Waiiletpu about a week before. He
was young and vigorous, of compact and sinewy
form and well adapted to brave the hardships
that were before him. The writer had a some-
what intimate acquaintance with Mr. Lovejoy
subsequently, for at least twenty-live years, and
often conversed with him in regard to Dr.
AVhitman's mission to the East at that time,
and the circumstances attending their journey.
Dr. Whitman himself left no record of it, so

that Mr. Lovejoy's is its authentic story. Ac-
cording to that account, after leaving W^aiiletpu
they traveled rapidly tlfrough the Blue mount-
ains and up the valley of the Snake river,
reaching Fort Hall, a distance of 400 miles, in
eleven days. Here the direct line of travel, as
pursued by the emigrants who had made a
plain wagon road to the Missouri river, led
over comparatively low mountain spurs until it
leached tiie high mountain plain that borders
Green river, and then through the wide de-
pression in the Rocky mountains known as the
"South Pass," thence directly down the waters
of the riatte river to the Missouri. For some
reason the Doctor, instead of following the
beaten road, which would have taken him at
his rate of travel beyond the South Pass in two
weeks from Fort Hall, took a more southern
route, via Salt Lake Taos and Santa Fe, and
thence to St. Louis. This took him out of the
open way into the wildest and most snowy of
the Rocky mountains, and at least doubled the
necessary travel. To add to the difficulty and
danger of the way selected, the winter storms
came on unusually early. While they were yet
involved in the mountains between Fort Hall
and Fort Uinta, the snows lay deep around
them; and between Fort Uinta and Fort Un-
compahgre, on the waters of Grande river, the
main eastern branch of the Colorado, in the
Spanish territory and yet west of the mountain
summits, it was hardly possible for them to
make headway. At this fort they recruited
their supplies, and procuring a guide started
for Taos across the main divide of the Rocky
mountains, and nearly a thousand miles by the
way of their travel from Fort Hall. Four or
five days from Fort Uncompahgre they en-
countered a terrific storm, when their guide
became confused and Dr. Whitman was com-
pelled to return to Fort Uncompahgre to pro-
cure a new one, Mr. Lovejoy remaining alone
in the mountain camp with the animals for
seven days before his return. Recovering their
way, it was yet thirty days before they reached
Taos, and they suffered greatly on the way from

mSTORY OF WASRINGTON.

cold and scarcity of food, being compelled to
use mule meat, dogs and such other animals as
came in their way. After remaining at Taos a
few days they started for Bent's Fort, on the
headwaters of the Arkansas river. Still mis-
fortunes attended their way. Desiring to
reach Bent's Fort more speedily than his loaded
pack animals could make the journey, the
Doctor selected the best horse, and with blank-
ets and a little food rode forward alone. In
four days Mr. Lovejoy and the guide arrived,
but the Doctor had not been seen or heard of.
Mr. Lovejoy returned a hundred miles on the
trail, but could only hear from the Indians that
a lost white man had been inquiring the way to
Bent's Fort. About the eighth day from the
time he left his companions he reached the
fort, worn, weary and desponding, as he believed
God had bewildered him for traveling on the
Sabbath — a thing that he had always consci-
entionsly avoided.

Leaving Mr. Lovejoy at Bent's Fort, he im-
mediately pushed forward with a company of
mountaineers, and reached St. Louis in Febru-
ary. He had been over four months on the
road. Why he should have left the plain road
leading through a comparatively open country,
fi'ee from precipitous mountain ranges, over
which he himself had traveled, most of it three
times, and taken one so much longer, leading
through the most rugged portion of the Rocky
mountains, and with which he was entirely un-
acquainted, has never been decided.

On reacliing St. Louis Dr. AVhitrnan found
that the occasion for his perilous winter's jour-
ney, so far as it related to the matter of nego-
tiations between Great Britain and the United
States for the sale of Oregon to the former in
any way, did not e.xist. The treaty between the
two powers known as the Webster-Ashburton
treaty had been signed on the 9th of August,
preceding, nearly two months before his jour-
ney. The Oregon boundary had not been in-
cluded in the treaty, nor even discussed by Mr.
Webster and Mr. Ashburton, representing the
tw'o governments. Consequently the danger of

the loss of Orego',1 by the LTnited States had
not been so imminent as he had supposed. His
purpose, however, was none the less patriotic,
nor his bravery in endeavoring to carry it out
the less admirable, but this fact certainly dem-
onstrates that all attempts to claim for him the
honor of saving Oregon to the United States
must prove failures. The danger of losing
Oregon was fully averted by the postponement
of the boundary question. His presence in
Washington, beginning six months after the
treaty was signed, and nearly as long after its
ratification by the Senate, could not have in-
fluenced the decision of the question in the
remotest degree. Nor is there any evidence
that he personally ever made such a claim.
Indeed it is clear that he did not, but that it
was made many years after the occurrences
narrated, and long after his tragic death at the
hands of the Indians had invested his name
with the halo of martyrdom by those who had
been associated with him in his missionary
work, and grew out of their admiration of his
character and their memory of the purpose that
largely actuated him, as they understood it, in
projecting and performing his celebrated jour-
ney. It is not needful to attempt further ex-
planation of the claim that was, for a time,
strongly current, that Dr. Whitman " alone
saved Oregon to the United States." He did
his part, others did theirs, but if Dr. AVhitrnan
had not lived Oregon would have been, as it
now is, a great State of our glorious Union.

On Dr. Whitman's arrival on the frontier he
found that great preparations were being made
for an emigration to Oregon in the opening
spring. The desire and purpose to find a home
in the Willamette Valley, the fame of whose
climate and productiveness had already spread
far and wide, was becoming a contagion. Re-
sponding to that sentiment. Dr. Whitman wrote
a small pamphlet describing the country and
the route thither, urging people to emigrate,
and assuring them that they could take wagons
through to the Columbia, and promising to
join the emigration and act as its pilot on his

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

return from the Eastern States. His pamphlet,
::dded to his personal appeals, added somewhat
to the numbers, and largely to the courage and
confidence of the emigrants, but he was too
late to initiate the great public movement that
resulted in the large emigration of that year, —

historically the most important that ever en-
tered Oregon, as it put such a preponderance
of American people and American sentiment
into Oregon as to assuredly settle the position
Oregon itself would take in the pending inter-
national controversy.

CHAPTER XII.

IMMIGRATIONS, CONTINUED.

Great Pkeparations for Emigration — Incidents of Emigration — Mr. Nesmith's Account — A
New Era — Lieutenant Fremont's Expedition — Emigration of 1844 — Divided into Com-
panies — Settlement North of the Columbia — Emigration of 1845 — Prominent Members
— A New but Disastrous Road — Emigration of 1846 — Party Taking a New Route —
Much Suffering — The Donner Party — Wagon Road Across the Cascade Mountains — •
Caught in the Snows — Winter in the Mountains — Barlow and Rector — Emigration of
1847 — Valuable Additions — '-Traveling Nursery."

IfT is as well, once for all that we give some
account of the circumstances attending the
-i gathering, departure and journey of an emi-
gration over the mountains to the Pacific coast;
and as the emigration, of 1843 was so pro-
minent in its early history, we have chosen this
as the place in which to do so. As to the gather-
ing of this emigration on the western frontier
of Missouri we shall permit Hon. J. W. Nes-
inith, a young member of the emigration, after-
ward for many years one of the most promi-
nent public men in the Territory and State, and
for six years senator in the Congress of the
United States for Oregon, to tell the story in
his own well-chosen words. He says:

"Without order from any quarter, and with-
out preconcert, promptly as the grass began to
start, the emigrants began to assemble near In-
dependence, at a place called Fitzhue's Mill.
On the seventeenth day of May, 1843, notices
were circulated through the different encamp-
ments that on the succeeding day those who
contemplated emigrating to Oregon would meet
at a designated point to organize. Promptly at
the appointed hour motley groups assembled.
They consisted of tlie people from all States

and Territories, and nearly all nationalities,
the most, however, from Arkansas, Illinois,
Missouri and Iowa, and all strangers to one
another, but impressed with some crude idea
that there existed some imperative necessity
for some kind of an organization for mu-
tual protection against the hostile Indians in-
habiting the great unknown wilderness stretch-
ing away to the shores of the Pacific, and which
they were about to traverse with their wives
and children, household goods and all their
earthly possessions.

'• Many of the emigrants were from the west-
ern tier of counties of Missouri, known as the
Platte Purchase, and among them was Peter H.
Burnett, a former merchant, who had aban-
doned the yardstick and become a lawyer of
some celebrity for his ability as a smooth-
tungued advocate. He subsequently emigrated
to California, and was elected the first governor
of the Golden State. Mr. Burnett, or as he was
familiarly designated, '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 was

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

over-crowded by a redundant population, wLo
had not sufficient elbow room for the expansion
of their enterprise and genins, and it was a duty
they owed to themselves and posterity to strike
out in search of a more extended lield and a
more genial climate, where the soil yielded the
richest return for the slightest amount of cul-
tivation, where the trees were loaded with per-
ennial fruit, and where a good substitute for
bread, called Za Ccmiask, grew in the ground,
salmon and other fish crowded the streams, and
where the principal labor of the settlers would
be confined to keeping their gardens free from
the inroads of buffalo, elk, deer, and wild tur-
keys! He appealed to our patriotism by pictur-
ing forth the glorious empire we should estab-
lish on the shores of the Pacific; bow, with our
trusty rifles, we would drive out the British
usurpers who claimed the soil, and defend the
country from the advance and pretensions of
the British lion, and how posterity would honor
us for placing the finest portion of our country
under the dominion of the stars and stripes.
He concluded by a slight allusion to the hard-
ships and trials incident to the trip, and dangers
to be encountered from hostile Indians on the
route, and those inhabiting the country whither
we were bound. He furthermore intimated a
desire to look upon the tribe of 'noble red men,'
that the valiant and well-armed crowd around
him could not vanquish in a single encounter.
" Other speeches were made, full of glowing
description of the fair land of promise in the
far-away Oregon, which no one in the assem-
blage had ever seen, and of 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 Ore-
gon. On the 20th of May, 1843, after a pretty
thorough military organization, we took up our
line of march, with Captain John Gantt, an old
army officer who combined the character of
trappers and mountaineer, as our guide. Gantt
had in his wanderings been as far as Green

river, and assured us of the practicability of a
wagon road thus far; Green river, the extent of
our guide's knowledge in that direction, was
not half-way to the Willamette valley, the
then only inhabited portion of Oregon. Beyond
that we had not the slightest conjecture of the
condition of the country. "We went forth
trusting to the future, and would doubtless
have encountered more difficulties than we ex-
perienced had not Dr. Whitman overtaken us
before we reached the terminus of our guide's
knowledge. He was familiar with the whole
route, and was confident that wagons could
pass through the canons and gorges of Snake
river and over the Blue mountains, which the
mountaineers in the vicinity of Fort Hall de-
clared to be a physical impossibility.

" Captain Grant, then in charge of the Hud-
son's Bay Company at Fort Hall, endeavored to
dissuade us from proceeding farther with our
wagons, and showed us the wagons that the
emigrants of the preceding year had abandoned
as an evidence of the impracticability of our de-
termination. Dr. Whitman was pei-sistent in
his assertion that wagons could proceed as far as
the grand Dalles of the Columbia river, from
which point he asserted they could be taken
down by rafts or batteaux to the Willamette
valley, while our stock could be driven by an
Indian trail over the Cascade mountains near
Mount Hood. Happily Whitman's advice pre-
vailed and a large number of wagons with a
portion of the stock did reach Walla Walla and
the Dalles, from which points they were taken
to Willamette the following year. Had we fol-
lowed Grant's advice and abandoned the cattle
and wagons at Fort Hall, much suffei-ing must
have ensued, as a sufficient number of horses to

carry

the women and children of the

party

could not have been obtained: besides wagons
and cattle were indispensable to men expecting
to live by farming a country destitute of such
articles.

"At Fort Hall we fell in with some Cayuse
and Nez Perces Indians returning from the
buffalo country, and as it was necessary for Dr.

UIHTORT OF WASHINGTON.

Whitman to precede U8 to Walla Walla, lie
recommended to us a guide in the person of an
old Cay use Indian called ' Sticcus.' He was a
faithful old fellow, perfectly familiar with all
the trails and topography of the country from
Fort Hall to the Dalles, and although not speak-
ing a word of English, and no one in our party
a word of Caynse, lie succeeded by pantomime
in taking us over the roughest wau;on route I
ever saw."'

This quotation from Mr. Nesraith must give
our readers a fair idea of the courage and deter-
mination necessary in this early day to face the
dangers and endure the discomforts of a half
year's journey, with oxen and wagons as the
means of travel, over the desolate plains and
thrungli the rugged mountains that lay wide
and dark lietween the Missouri river and the
Pacific ocean, a distance of a round two thou-
sand miles. But the daily march over dusty and
sunbrowned leagues, the night's weird bivouac
under the stars, the fording of rushing rivers,
the ascent and descent of precipitous mountains,
the lone camp-guard, the thundering stampede
of horses and oxen, the warning and warding off
of Indian attacks amid the crouching of fright-
ened children, or the suppressed sobbing of
timid women, — these must have been seen and
experienced ti; be understood as they existed in
reality from 1841, when emigration began, to
1860, about which time the pioneer emigrant
era may be considered to have closed.

In the emigration of this year were many
men whose names became very prominently
connected with the history of the country.
Among these may be mentioned the Apple-
gates, Burnett, Cason, Chapman, Dement, the
Fords, the Garrisons, the Hunters, the Howells,
the Matheneys, McCarver, Nesmith, Parker,
and the Waldos. When the company reached
Oregon, besides the gentlemen connected with
the various missionary stations, and fifty or
more of the former Hudson's Bay Company
employes settled on French prairie, there were
resident in Oregon about eighty American men,
making in the autum of 1843, with the newly

arrived emigrants, a total adult male population
of about four hundred, and a total white popu-
lation of not far from two thousand souls.

The introduction of this number of American
people, many of whom were educated and re-
fined and all of whom were strong in purpose,
and had wealth both of brain and brawn, lifted
Oregon at once from a camping-ground for fur
hunters and mountain mefi, and even from a
field of mere missionary occupancy, to the con-
dition of a civil community — a commonwealth
— with the needs of a cominnnity, and with
ability and dispositions to supply those wants.
So the autumn and emigration of 1843 brought
a new era to Oregon, the era of government,
which will be considered in its proper place in
this woi-k.

The impulse of emigration to Oregon did not

exhaust itself in 1843. The last em

igrant wagon

of that year had hardly disappeared westward of
Missouri before the frontier was astir again with
moving preparations for the emigration of 1844.
This was nearly as greatas that of the preceding
year. It added about 800 to the American
population of Oregon, 234 of them strong, able-
bodied men. The emigration of 1843 came in
a single column, under one captain, and with a
semi-military organization. That of 1844 started
from various points, under different leaders, and
divided up more and more as it progressed on
the journey. Tliis greatly added to the ease
and facility of travel, and the various companies
had comparatively little difficulty in their long
journey. Besides, the several hundred wagons
of the preceding year had broken down the sage
of the plains, and made a clearly marked road as
far as The Dalles. The larger divisions of the
emigration started, one from Independence, one
from near the mouth of Platte river, and one
from near St. Joseph, and Cornelius Gilliam,
Nathan Ford and Major Thorp commanded these
divisions respecti /ely. In this emigration were
many names that have beconie honored in vari-
ous departments of western history and that
are worthy of notable record. Without any in-
vidious selections we name the Eadses,the Fords,

HISTORY OF WASUINGTON.

the Gilliams, Holinan, Miiito, Eees, Simmons,
tlie Shaws, the Thorps, J. S. Smith and many
others whose industry made tlie country to
bloom like a rose tree, and who in many ways
contributed to its material growth and moral
and intellectual progress.

Of the immigration of 1845 comparatively
little record has been preserved, although it was
larger than that of either of the two preceding
years. The population of the Territory was
now becoming so large that a thousand or two
of people could melt away into the font er ag-
gregate without such manifest e.xpansion of the
population as before. And besides, when so
many had preceded, it was not considered so
strange that many others should follow. Hence
the 2,000 people constituting the immigration
of 1845 arrived, dispersed over the country
fi'ora the California mountains to i'nget sound,
and became integral parts of the body politic,
without having taking pains to make a roster
for the benefit of history, on the perpetuity
of their own deeds. Still a few can be mentioned,
culled here and there from fugitive archives,
whose names must ever stand connected with
some departments of the deeds of the pioneers
of the coast. We instance T. Vault, the Way-
raires, the Riggses, Gen. Joel Palmer and
Wilcox.

The road from the Missouri to tlie Columbia
iiad now become a broad and beaten track.
There was no difficulty and little danger in
traveling it except such as arose from deficient
preparation before starting or poor judgment
in traveling. All that was to be done was to
travel steadily onward, day after day, quietly
and persistently moving forward as the patient
ox swings slowly onward, and in due time the
goal would surely be reached. But such pa-
tience and endurance of effort are not common
virtues. To face a horizon that never comes
nearer, to push into space that never seems to get
shorter, to lift at a burden that never grows
lighter, are the severest tests of the strongest
natures. So it was not wonderful that many of
the weary and foot-sore immigrants became rest-

less of their seemingly endless travel, and felt
inclined to listen to any one who came with
the promise of a shorter road and speedier ar-
rival at the goal of their desires.

Tills year this was painfully, almost tragically
illustrated. When the immigi-ants readied
Fort Boise Stephen H. Meek, a man who had
been a " free-trapper " in the mountains, and for
some years employed by the Hudson's Bay
Company as such, and who had served as a guide
to some small companies in 1842, offered to
show them a shorter and more eligible route
over the mountains, and one by which wagons
could be taken into the Willamette valley with-
out the costly and troublesome transportation
by water from The Dalles. The route he pro-
posed to travel, leading through southeastern
Oregon, and into the Umpqua valley far .=outh
of the head of the Willamette river, ho had
never traveled himself, but the country through
which it passed was known to be open and far
less mountainous than the country farther to
the north. Quite a number were pursuaded to
follow his lead. These left the old and traveled
road at the mouth of the Malheur river, near
Fort Boise, and turned southward up the valley
of that stream, while the larger portion kept
steadily onward in the beaten road, and in good
time reached the end of their journey. The
company that followed Mr. Meek soon became
convinced that he himself was traveling by
guess instead of knowledge. Of course they
were in a panic at once. Mr. Meek became
alarmed and deserted the people he had led
astray and fled to save his life, as many had
threatened to kill him on sight. The company
undertook to return to the old road by turning
to the north and traveling down the valleys of
John Day and Des Chutes rivers, and at last;
after the most exhausting efforts, and the great-
est sufferings from hunger and thirst, reached
the Columbia at The Dalles, and were thus res-
cued from their vei"y perilous condition.

This diversion of a portion of the immigrants
from the old line of travel, and the sufferings
they endured in consequence, has caused con-

116

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

siderable very acrimonious discussion, seriously
involving the motives of those who persuaded
them into what proved such disastrous action.
Still such discussion has failed to demonstrate
that there was any specially wrong motive in
them, but that they acted without any very ac-
curate knowledge of the country to be traversed
and consequently not with good Judgment, and
thus betrayed those who trusted their advice into
a very costly and dangerous experiment. Many
thrilling accounts of cases of individual suffer-
ing and hardship and loss on the treeless and
waterless wastes of the Klamath and Humboldt
regions have been published, but it would serve
no important purpose to transfer them to these
pages. Certainly we cannot subscribe to the
charge made by some writers that these parties
were led astray under the inspiration and advice
of the Hudson's Bay Company for the sole pur-
pose of destroying them. Had such ever been
the methods of the heads of that company in
tlieir dealings with the American immigrants,
certainly they could not but see that the de-
struction of a comparatively small portion of an
immigration would have no other effect on the
tinal settlement of the " Oregon question " than
to hasten and make it more absolute against
themselves. But such never was their method,
as impartial liistory must determine.

Like the emigration of 1845, that of 1846
was divided into small companies, whicii reached
the country at various times and by different
routes, so that no record of names was kept.
When it left the Missouri river it consisted of
2,000 souls. However, by this time California
was beginning to divide with Oregon the at-
tention of intending emigrants, and on reach-
ing Fort Hall about one-half took the southern
route down the Humboldt river and across the
Sierra Nevadas into the Sacramento valley.
The greater portion of those destined for the
Willamette valley pursued the old route down
Snake river, and reached Oregon City, then the
goal of the journey, in good time, and without
unusual incidents. However, about 150 people,
with forty-two wagons, were induced, at Fort

Hall, to undertake a new route in the same
general direction as tlie disastrous one selected
by Meek the year before, and despite the un-
fortunate outcome of that venture. The mis-
adventure this year was induced by the presence
at Fort Hall, on the arrival of tjie trains, of a
number of men from among the most reputable
and iniluential citizens of Oregon, mainly resid-
ing toward the southeim end of the Willamette
valley, who claimed to have looked out a road
from the point where they met the emigrants to
that valley by the way of the Humboldt, Klam-
ath lake. Rogue river and Umpqua valleys,
much more feasible tiian the old one by the
valley of Snake river. These men had actually
passed over the route they outlined to the emi-
grants on their way out; but, being on horse-
back, and traveling without any incumbrances,
it probably seemed much shorter to them than
it really was, and certainly much shorter than it
proved to the worn and weary emigrants, im-
peded in their travels by wagons and all the
incumbrances of camp life. It certainly cannot
be supposed that such men as those who led the
party that surveyed the new route could have
had any sinister or selfish motives in leading
these families into the terrible straits through
which they were compelled to pass. Still it
cannot be possible for the historian to relieve
these gentlemen from all blame, as they were
all acquainted with the peculiar difficulties of
emigrant travel, having themselves crossed the
continent but a year or two before as emigrants,
and knew that water and grass were prime con-
ditions of safety with ox teams, and where these
could not be found in abundance there could be
no excuse for venturing, unless the necessity
was absolute. From fifteen to twenty miles
was an average full day's journey with oxen on
the emigrant roads, and there were stretches of
grassless and waterless desert of from twenty to
fifty miles in width, over which they attempted
to lead the forlorn party that had intrusted itself
to their guidance. Of course there was much
suffering. Many teams perished. Men, women
and children were compelled to go on foot over

UISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

burning sands and cinereous rocks, to climb
timbered summits and ford the roaring torrents
of the mountains. The consuming thirst of the
deserts of the sterile interior was at last relieved,
it is true, by the springs and streams of tlie
Sierras, but then gaunt hunger paralleled their
earlier thirst. At last, however, man by man,
or family by family, the worn and strengthless
emigrants straggled down from the Siskiuas
into the Rogue river valley, or emerged from
the Utnpqua caiion into Umpqua valley, almost
without cattle, or wagon, or clothing, welcomed
to the end of their sad pilgrimage only by the
chills of an Oregon midwinter. Taken all in
all this was the most deeply shadowed page in
the history of our immigration, and has left a
heritage of more acrimonious and bitter discus-
sions and heart burnings to the historian.

But, sad as is this record, it is a bright one
compared with the fate of a large party known
as the "Donner party," that separated from the
Oregon immigrants on Humboldt river, and
attempted to scale the winter-clad Sierras into
the Sacramento valley. These became entangled
in the labyrinths of the mountains, were over-
taken and overwhelmed by snow-storms, and,
unable to proceed or return, many perished
miserably by starvation, and the remainder
were rescued more dead than alive by the cour-
age and energy of a party from Sacramento
valley. The place of the occurrence of this
sad event bears the name of "Donner lake,"
which will forever monument this tragic climax
in the history of the emigration of 184(3 to
the Facitic coast.

The immigrants of this year also signalized
their courage and determination by an attempt
to open the first wagon road into the Willamette
valley across the Cascade mountains. Very
seldom, indeed, in the history of exploration or
adventure has a braver and more resolute deed
been done. We hazard nothing in saying that
in all the distance between the Missouri river
and the Cascades there is no stretch of 100
miles that presented to the primitive engineer-
ing of the emigrants anything like the difficul-

ties of the 100 miles between the open country
east and the Willamette valley west of the
Cascade mountains.

This is one of the most rugged and lofty
ranges of the continent, and, unlike the Eocky
mountains, it is everywhere most densely tim-
bered. It is cut and gashed by fearful chasms
worn down by the waters that break from be-
neath the glaciers of Mount Hood and kindred
peaks thousands of feet into the volcanic debris
of untold ages. The average altitude of the
wide, swampy summit of the range is not far
from 10,000 feet. From foot to summit and
from summit to foot again the whole surface of
the earth is covered with the largest and loftiest
firs, cedars, pines, tamarack and larch, and its
undergrowth is an impenetrable forest of alder,
vine maple, laurel, dogwood, hemlock and un-
named varieties of rough and gnarled and inter-
laced shrubs and ferns and brush. The ax,
wielded by a strong arm, must cut a way into,
through and out of this indescribable wilder-
ness, or it cannot be passed.

Up to the autumn of 1846 all the wagons
taken to Western Oregon were conveyed not
far from 100 miles down the Columbia from
The Ualles into the mouth of the Willamette
and up that stream a few miles on rafts or in
Hudson's Bay batteaux. To add to the diffi-
culty a portage of three miles had to be made
at the Cascades, and the wagons were taken
piece by piece across it and reshipped again
below. This 100 miles was the most perilous
and difficult part of the journey to the Willam-
ette valley, and came to the emigrants when
they were wearied and enfeebled by months of
constant toil and care.

To relieve subsequent emigrants of this diffi-
culty a few gentlemen of this siimmer's com-
pany resolved to attempt crossing the mount-
ains with their teams and wagdus. At the
head of this company were Mr. Samuel K. Bar-
low and Mr. W. H. Rector. Turning south-
ward from The Dalles along the eastern base of
the range, they sought a promising place to
enter it to the south of Mount Hood. After

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

about forty miles travel over a very rough and
hilly, though untimbered region, tliey turned
westward up a gentle slope that appeared to
lead south of the great snowy cone of Mount
flood, and began to cut their way into tlie
dense forest. Some explored the route in ad-
vance and blazed their way, others cut out
obstructions and worked grades down and up
the impassable precipices, and others drove the
teams and cared for the families. Progress was
very slow. It was late in autumn. The rains
and snows beat upon them in the deep ravines
and on the stormy heights. But they were
resolute men, and resolved to push onward at
every peril. After much effort they conducted
their wagons about twenty miles into the
wilderness, when the snow became so deep that
to go forward or to go back was alike impos-
sible. And besides they were not the men to
go back even if they could. Nothing remained
for them but to build cabins in which to hou.=e
their families for the long winter, which was
fully upon them, and provide as best tliey could
against starvation. This they did in the deep
gorge of White river, a few miles below where
its waters flow from beneath the glaciers of
Mount Hood. A wilder place can hardly be
imagined. On either hand the great mountain
sides were covered with giant firs, with close
around a dense black pine forest. The little
river, whose dashing waters, whitened by the
volcanic ashes washed down from the great
mountain cone, rushed stormily by. Lone,
desolate winter covered all.

Tile only possible supply of food these win-
ter-imprisoned men, women and children had
for the months before them was their emigrant
oxen, worn and poor from the long summer's
journey from the Missouri river. These they
slaughtered and dressed, covered their carcasses
with the snow which was sure to remain until
May, and resigned themselves to the awful task
of keeping alive for the long -winter. To live
just for the purpose of living is the hardest
task a human being ever performed. This was
all there was for them to do. So they waited

and ate their scant rations of poor beef, drank
water from tlie river or from melted snow, cut
fire-wood from the pines about them, and wore
away the weary months.

When the winter snows were ten or lifteen
feet deep on the mountains, two or three of the
men undertook to scale them on snow-shoes and
reach the Willamette valley, and there procure
help to work their way backward with supplies
before those left behind had perished from star-
vation. The distance to Oregon City was not
less than sevent^'-tive miles, and fifty of that
was untracked mountains. With a little beef
wrapped up in a blanket on the back of each
they left the lone cabins and their lonelier in-
mates and started on their journey, hoping, yet
only half expecting, to succeed. Rector was a
remarkably strong, compact and sinewy man,
Barlow was of slighter and sparer build, and
less able to endure fatigue; and the stress of the
long journey had already weakened him. He
came near fainting, and one day when he felt he
must succumb to his troubles and die he said to
Eector, " What would you do with me if I
should die here?" " Roast and eat you," growled
the stronger Rector. Barlow burst into feeble
teirs. " Come, come," said the really kind-
hearted Rector, "you are not going to die: rouse
up, be a man and come on." He cheered and
helped him, and these resolute " pathfinders"
toiled on over the snowy waste of mountains for
many weary days before they descended from
their western slopes and entered the Willamette
valley. Such men, rather than those who trav-
eled in their wake under Government commis-
sions, and with all the abundance and comforts
of Government equipments, were the true path-
finders of the Rocky mountains and the Pacific
coast.

On reaching Oregon City, Rector and Barlow
obtained supplies for their families yet impi-is-
oned in the snowy gorge of White river, and re-
turned for their rescue. After the winter snows
had gone they yoked up the oxen which they had
brought back with tliem, and again began their
slow and tiresome movement westward. Their

BISTORT OF WASHINGTON.

winter's camp was some miles east of the sum-
mit of tlie range, and up the steep ascent tlirough
one of the stateliest and darkest forests that
stands on the earth they cut their toilsome way.
Then after the summit was passed they floun-
dered tlirongh a terrible cedar morass that
covers the summit plateau for miles, when they
reached a western crest that stood sheer above
the valley of a mountain river, whose upper wa-
ters cleave the southwestern glaciers of Mount
Hood. Into the fearful gorge into which it runs
they dropped, rather than traveled, over the
face of Laurel Hill, probably the most tremen-
dous descent down which wagons ever rolled.
And so they toiled on, day after day, week after
week, until the last mountain was crossd, the
last forest passed, and the brave remnant of the
emigration of 1846 entered Oregon at full mid-
summer of 1847.

Quite a number of gentlemen, who in various
departments of civil life became prominently
associated with the progress of the country, at-
tended this immigration. Among them was Mr.
J. Qninn Thornton, a man of decided ability
and line acquirements, who became Chief Jus-
tice under the provisional government. ' Unfor-
tunately no roster of this immigration was ever
kept, and hence our personal notices of those in
it must be omitted.

We have now reached a period in the history
of the immigrations into Oregon from which it
becomes more and more difficult to trace any
one of them in anything like a separate story.
Still a few sentences must be given to that of
1847, as that was the last one that left the fron-
tiers of Missouri for the farthest West, that
serves to present much of an individual history.
Those coming subsequently started on their
journey over the now well-worn emigrant road
in small companies, at different times, traveled
at their individual convenience, and when they
reached the end of iheir journey melted away
into the mass of the people almost impercep-
tibly, as streamlets from the hills blend into the
currents of widening rivers toward the sea.
The immigration of 1847 was about 4,000.

California had begun to allure many toward her
newly opened and sunny plains, and probably
as many of those who started from the Missouri
river for the West turned thitherward into the
vallty of Snake river as crossed the Blue and
Cascade mountains into Oregon. But, in many
respects, both as to men and things, it was one
of the most marked and important of all the
emigrations. Its members brought more prop-
erty, more of those things necessary to make a
home-like civilization than any that had pre-
ceded it. Bands of fine cattle, including pure
Durham stock, and of the best breeds of horses,
as well as fine bands of sheep, were driven from
the Western States. A stock of merchandise
was brought by Thomas and William Cox, and
a store opened by them at Salem, the now capi-
tal of the State. Apple seeds, peach seeds and
many other seeds of plants of which the
country had been destitute before were brought.
But that which attracted most attention, and
was really of most importance, was what was
called the " Traveling Nursery" brought by Mr.
Henderson Lneling. He constructed bo.xes
about one feet deep and just long enough to fill
his wagon bed, filling them with a compost of
earth and charcoal, in which lie planted about
700 trees and shrubs, of the best improved va-
rieties, from tiventy inches to four feet high.
This wonderful " nursery" thus transplanted
2,000 miles was tlie parent stock of those mag-
nificent varieties of apples, pears, plums, cher-
ries, peaches, and other fruits that have given the
Pacific coast a name and fame as the finest
fruit country on the continent.

The immigration of 1847 contained quite a
number of gentlemen who became quite promi-
nent in the industrial and political history of
the coast. Among these was the Hon. Samuel
H. Thurston, who became the first delegate
from the Territory of Oregon to the Congress
of the United States, of whom we shall speak
more at length in the appropriate place.

With this notice of the immigration of 1847
we close our notices of immigrations as separate
from the general course of Oregon history.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

CHAPTER XIII.

PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.

A New Era — Summary of Arrivals fob Five Years — Political Tendencies of the People —
The Questions of Government — " Inalienable Rights " versus Foreign Control — Petition
to Congress — Meeting at Champoeg in 1841 — Death of Ewing Young — Another Meeting
— Incidental Circumstances — Dr. Elijah White, Indian Agent — Arrival oe the Immi-
gration of 1842 — Artificial Antagonisms— Proposition for an Independent Government
— Meeting at Willamette Falls — Resolutions of Mr. Abernethy — The "Wolf Meet-
ing" — Plots and Counterplots — Canadian Citizens' Address — Meeting in Mat — A Close
Division — Canadians Withdraw — Provision foe Government — Fourth-gf-Jult Celebra-
tion — Report of Legislative Committee — "Organic Laws'* — Officers Chosen — First
Election — George Abernethy Elected Governor— Form of Oath of Office — -First Legis-
lature — Documents to Congress — Dr. White — Result of the Memorials — Characteris-
tics of Governor Abernethy — Second Election — Abernethy Re-elected — Territorial
Government Organized.

\l \\ ^^ Iiave now reached a period in our his-
\lrv// ^'^^y when Oregon began to assume
■1 ■1 the form of a political coinmonwealth.
Heretofore its history was mainly that of the
aboriginal tribes, the various fur companies that
operated within its boundary, of the missionary
establishments that had been founded among
the Indian tribes, and of individual action and
adventure. That part of the story that relates
to the presence and action of white men wlio
had any civilized or civilizing object in their
presence in the country covers but a single dec-
ade. This was the era of the missionary or-
ganizations, and the period when tiie results of
their presence were crystallizing into social con-
ditions that called for civil and political order.
The dreamy story of the Indian tribes simply
changed into the story of fur traffic, scarcely
less dreamy, and hardly more a civilization than
tlie other. How little there was of anything
that had the fragrance of civilization rather than
that of the wigwam about it up to the close of
1840, will be seen by the following summary of
the arrivals in the country up to that time. In
1834, the four gentlemen of the Methodist mis-
sion and six other men. In 1835 there were

none. In 183G, Dr. Marcus Whitman and four
other missionaries of the American Board. In
1837, sixteen additional members of the Meth-
odist mission and three settlers. In 1838, eight
persons reinforced the missions of the American
Board and three white men from the Rocky
mountains came into the country. This year
also two Jesuit priests, F. N. Blanchet and
A. Demers, arrived. In 1839, four independ-
ent Protestant missionaries and eight settlers.
In 1840 a reinforcement of thirty-oue adults
and fifteen children came to the Methodist mis-
sion, and four independent Protestant mission-
aries. P. G. De Smet, Jesuit missionary, and
thirteen or fourteen settlers, mostly Rocky
mountain men with Indian wives, arrived, —
making in all eighty-five connected with the
three mission establishments, and twenty-eight
settlers; a total of 118 at the opening of 1840.
Besides these were a small number of the super-
annuated employes of the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany located at various points, and yet holding
legal as well as social relation to that body. In
the classification of population thus presented
it will be seen that the one predominating in-
fluence in the country up to the close of 1840

HISTORY OF WASIIJyOTON.

was necessarily tliat of the Protestant mission-
aries. Civilly and politically there were two
sentiments: one American and the other British.
The Protestant missionaries uniformly repre-
sented the American sentiment in the country,
and the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company
and the members of the Roman Catholic mis-
sions could always he relied upon to further the
cause of British possession of Oregon. So far
as we have been able to trace the lines of in-
fluence and action in connection with these dif-
ferent missionary establishments, there was not
even an individual exception to this statement.
If at this time the claim of the United States to
Oregon was receiving any help at all, it was by
the unanimous action of the Protestant mission-
aries, while the jnst as unanimous action of the
iionnan Catholic missions aided and abetted the
pretensions of Great Britain. By the relations
of missionaries to patronizing societies, as well
as the individual nativity and training of the
men constituting them, this was inevitable.
The Protestant missionaries were mainly from
New England and New York, all Americans by
birth, by education, and by civic and political
afBliations. The Roman Catholic missionaries
were all of foreign birth, educated and trained
under governments opposed to republicanism
and under an ecclesiastical system that cultured
all their convictions away from it. Their social
relations were with the Hudson's Bay Company,
and they gave that company and its pretensions
the most thorough support. Thus, at the close
of 1840, it happened that the forces in array
against each other for the ultimate possession of
the country were, on the one side the Hudson's
Bay Company and the Roman Catholic missions,
on the other side the Protestant missions and the
small number of Americans who had rolled down
from the mountains or floated up from the sea
and made Oregon at least a temporary home.

The first question that fairly and clearly drew
the lines of demarkation between these forces
was that of government. The British party,
consisting of the Hudson's Bay people and the
Catholic missionaries, naturally desired to re-

main as they were, since all pretended authority
of law was that of the Dominion of Canada,
which had been, in pretense at least, extended
over all the country west of the Rocky mount-
ains. Just as naturally the American party,
consisting of the Protestant missionaries and
American settlers, desired some forms of law
according to the American idea of self govern-
ment. They had no idea of submitting them-
selves to the authority of the Hudson's Bay
Company or the Canadian Parliament. An
American always carries his "inalienable
rights" with him, and on all proper, and per-
haps on some improper, occasions is prepared
to assert and defend them. Laws or constitu-
tions enacted for him in a foreign parliament,
or by a foreign corporation, are not sacred in his
eyes, especially when it is attempted to enforce
them over what he believes to be American
soil. It was so here; i;nd accordingly, in March,
1838, the first public step was taken looking
toward the establishment of a Territorial gov-
ernment over the country claimed by the
United States west of the Rocky mountains.
This was in the form of a inemoiial to Congress
signed by J. L. Whitcoinb and thirty-five
others, which was presented to that body by
Senator Linn January 28, 1838. This memo-
rial was read, laid on the table, and was never
taken therefrom. In 1838 the subject was
again brought to the attention of the Govern-
ment by another petition to Congress, ably con-
ceived and forcibly written, and signed by Rev.
David Leslie, of the Methodist mission, and
abont seventy others. The petition set forth
very clearly the condition and needs of the
country as seen by those upon the ground, and
is of such importance historically, and exerted
so much influence upon the action of Congress,
and also npon the feelings of the Hudson's Bay
Company toward the American settlers, that
its full text is here inserted. It is as follows:

To the Honorable, the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress Assembled:

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

Your petitioners represent unto your honor-
able bodies that they are residents in the Ore-
gon Territory, and citizens of tlie United States,
or persons desirous of becoming such.

They further represent to your honorable
bodies that they have settled themselves in
said Territory under the belief that it was a por-
tion of the public domain of said States and
that they m\^]ii rely upon the Government
thereof for the blessings of free institutions,
and the protection of its arms.

But your petitioners further represent, that
they are uninformed of any acts of said Govern-
ment by -which its institUL'ions and protection
are extended to them; in consequence whereof
themselves and families are exposed to be de-
stroyed by the savages around them, and others
tJiat would do them harm.

And your petitioners would further represent
that they have no means of protecting their
own lives and the lives of their families, other
than self-constituted tribunals, originated and
sustained by the power of an ill-instructed
public opinion, and the resort to force and
arms.

And your petitioners represent these means of
safety to be an insufficient safe-guard of life
and property, and that the crimes of theft,
murder, infanticide, etc., are increasing among
them to an alarming extent, and your petition-
ers declare themselves unable to arrest this
progress of crime and its terrible consequences
without the aid of law, and tribunals to ad-
minister it.

Your petitioners therefore pray the Congress
of tlie United States of America to establish, as
soon as may be, a Territorial government in the
Oregon territory.

And if reasons other than those presented were
needed to induce your honorable bodies to grant
the prayer of the undersigned, your petitioners,
they would be found in the value of tliis terri-
tory to the nation, and the alarming circum-
stances that portend its loss.

Your petitioners, in view of these last consid-
erations, would represent that the English Gov-

ernment has had a surveying party on the Ore-
gon coast for two years, employed in making
accurate surveys of all its rivers, bays and har-
bors, and that recently the said government is
said to have made a grant to the Hudson's Bay
Company of all lands lying between the Colum-
bia river and Pnget sound, and that the said
company is actually exercising unequivocal acts
of ownership over said lands thus granted, and
opening extensive farms upon the same.

And your petitioners represent that these
circumstances, connected with other acts of said
company to the same effect, and their declara-
tion that the Engli-'ih Government owns and will
hold, as its own soil, that portion of Oregon
territory situated north of the Columbia river,
together with the important fact that the said
company are cutting and sawing into lumber
and shipping to foreign ports vast quantities of
the finest pine trees upon the navigable waters
of the Columbia, have led your petitioners to ap-
prehend that the English Government do intend,
at all events, to hold that portion of this terri-
tory lying north of the Columbia river.

And your petitioners represent that the said
territory north of the Columbia is an invaluable
possession to the American Union, that in and
about Puget Sound are the only harbors of
easy access and commodious and safe upon the
whole coast of the territory, and tliat a great
part of this said northern part of the Oregon
territory is rich in timber, water power and val-
uable luinerals. For this and other reasons
your petitioners pray that Congress will estab-
lish its sovereignty over said territory.

Your petitioners would further represent that
the country south of the Columbia river and
north of the Mexican line and extending from
the Pacific ocean 120 miles into the interior is
of nneqnaled beauty. Its mountains, covered
with perpetual snow, pouring into the prairies
around their bases transparent streams of pur-
est water, the white and black oak, pine, cedar,
and fir forests that divide the prairies into sec-
tions convenient for farming purposes, the rich
mines of coal in its hills, and salt springs in its

HISTORY Oh' WASniA'OTON.

valleys, its quarries of limestone, sandstone,
chalk and marble, the salmon of its ri%-ers, and
the .various blessings of the delightful and
healthy climate, are known to us and impress
your petitioners with the belief that this is one
of the most favored portions of the globe.

Indeed the deserts of the interior have their
wealth of pasturage, and their lakes, evaporat-
ing in summer, leave in their basins hundreds
of bushels of the purest soda. Many other cir-
cumstances could be named showing the im-
portance of this territory in a national, com-
mercial and agricultural point of view. And
although your petitioners would not undervalue
considerations of this kind, yet they beg leave
especially to call the attention of Congress to
their own conditions as an infant colony with-
out military force or civil institutions to pro-
tect their lives and property and children, sanc-
tuaries and tombs from the hands of uncivilized
and merciless savages around them. AVe re-
spectfully ask for tlie civil institutions of the
American republic. We pray for the high
privilege of American citizenship, the peaceful
enjoyment of life, the right of acquirincr, possess-
ing and using property, and the unrestrained
pursuit of rational happiness. And this your
petitioners will ever pray.

David Leslie,
and about seventy others.

It is ditlicult to fix the exact personal author-
ship of this remarkable document. Its honor
appears to be somewhat divided between David
Leslie, at that time ^ro tern superintendent of
the Methodist mission in the absence of Jason
Lee, then on his return from the States by sea
to Oregon at the head of what is known in the
history of the mission as the "great re-enforce-
ments," and Mr. Robert Shortess, an immi-
grant of the same year in which the petition
was written. It is probal)le that both had to
do with its preparation. At all events it re-
fleets honor upon the small American colony,
not then reaching 100 persons in all, and shows
how clearly and fully from the beginning our

people comprehended tiie issues pending be-
tween their own country and Great Britain, and
how thoroughly American were their sympa-
thies and purposes.

There is one phrase in the petition, given in
italics, which was understood by all to refer to
the Hudson's Bay Company, and shows with
what jealousy that company was watched by
the American. Doubtless the phrase had its
justification, and was not intended to convey
the sense of extreme enmity by that company
against tha Americans that some writers have
supposed. At all events, while the company
was faithful to itself, there is no evidence that
it did intentionally incite its own people, or the
Indian tribes, who were thoroughly under its
control, to acts of violence against the Ameri-
cans. And besides the humane Dr. McLough-
lin was then at the head of the company, and
no unprejudiced man who ever knew him could
believe him capable of any such sinister action.

The above quoted petition had gone on to
Congress. A year or two must certainly pass
before any relief could come from it, even if
any ever came. Meantime the necessities of
the people in Oregon, or, more accurately, in
the Willamette valley, where all the American
settlers and most of the Protestant missionaries
resided, were growing more and more urgent.
To meet them a meeting of some of the inhab-
itants was held at Champoeg, not far from the
Methodist mission, on the 7th of February,
1841, for consultation on the steps necessary to
be taken for the formation of laws and the
election of oflScers to execute them. Rev. Jasou
Lee was called to the chair and asked to express
his opinion of the step required. He advised
the appointment of a committee to draft a con-
stitution and by-laws for the government of
that portion of the country south of the Colum-
bia river. Nothing of moment was done fur-
ther at this meeting.

A few days later an event occurred which
served to I'cvive the matter in a new and more
imperative form. Mr. Ewing Young, a gentle-
man of prominence in the country and possess-

HIbTORT OF WASHINGTON.

ing a considerable estate, suddenly died. He left
no heirs in the country, and no one had any
authority to care for or administer upon his
estate. His funeral was held on the 17th of
February, at which most of the people of the
valley were present. At the close of the funeral
services a nieeting was held, over which Rev.
Jason Lee presided, when it was resolved to
hold another the next day at the Methodist
mission. Nearly all the people of the settle-
ment were present. Kev. David Leslie was
chosen to preside, and Rev. Gustavus Hines and
Mr. Sidney Smith were secretaries. A com-
mittee was chosen to draft a constitntion and
code of laws, of which F. F. Blanchet, after-
ward Roman Catholic archbishop, was chair-
man. After much discussion it was finally
decided to elect a person to serve as judge with
probate powers, and Dr. Ira L. Babcock was
chosen. The meeting adjourned to meet again
on Thursday, June 11, at the Catholic mission.
At that meeting it was found that the chairman
of t!ie committee appointed at the previous
meeting to draft a constitution and laws had
not called the committee together, and so this
meeting adjourned to meet on the first Thurs-
day in October. Before that time arrived the
feeling had become somewhat prevalent amung
the people that it would be unwise to establish
any permanent form of government so long as
the peace of the community could be preserved
without it, aud consequently the meeting was
never held. Thus ended the first attempt to
establish a government west of the Rocky
mountains.

Incidental to, and having no little influence
upon, the final action of the people in the estab-
lishment of the provisional government, it must
be mentioned that in 1842 Dr. Elijah White,
who had formerly held the position of physician
to the Methodist mission, and who had returned
to the States after some disagreement with its
superintendent. Rev. Jason Lee, appeared sud-
denly in the country holding a government
commission as sub-agent for the Indians in the
region west of the Rocky mountains. He

claimed plenary power over all questions be-
tween the settlers and the Indians, as well as all
civil and criminal cases that might arise in the
country. He appointed temporary magistrates
to try cases that might occur in his absence.
The people received him joyfully, their thank-
fulness at any proof that the Government had
not entirely fcirgotten their necessities probably
disposing them to a too generous credence of
his pretensions. At a mreting called to receive
him a series of highly complimentary resolu-
tions were passed, and ordered transmitted to
the Government of the United States, in order
that the views and wishes of the people in rela-
tion to this country might be made known.

The course of Dr. White in the relation
which he claimed as de facto governor of the
colony, provoked violent criticism, us well as re-
ceived emphatic defense. While it would an-
swer no valuable purpose to trace the one or the
other, it seems needful to say that Dr. White
doubtless claimed much more authority than
the Government ever designed he should exer-
cise. At the same time he was zealous and
active in the discharge of his duties, visiting
every part of the country wherever his presence
seemed to be required, and contributed in many
ways to the quiet of the Indian tribes. Still
the infirmities of his disposition and temper
were such that he could not retain the confi-
dence of masses of the people however desirous
he might be of doing so. His letters to the
Government earnestly urged that the country
might be taken possession of by the United
States, and the laws extended over it. A far
more fortunate selection for Indian agent in
Oregon might iiave been made: at the same
time impartial history must record that the
presence of Dr. White as such, albeit neither
the man nor his work was ideal, did something
to prepare the country for the rule of law which
was now soon to be instated.

The arrival of the immigration of 184:2,
bringing as it did a great increase of American
settlers, decidedly influenced the sentiment of
the country in favor of the immediate organiza.

HI STORY OF WASHINGTON.

125

tion of a government. What form it should
take, whether it should be entirely independent
of both nations claiming jurisdiction over the
country, or provisional, looking to an ultimate
supersedence by the extension of the laws of
the United States or Great Britain over Oregon,
became subjects of warm and often acrimonious
debates. That this should lie so was but natural,
as it was not easy to harmonize the sentiments
of those who yet expected the supremacy of
England on the Pacific coast with those who
confidently believed that the United States
rightfully owned the country. And besides
there were those who fostered an artificial an-
tagonism between the Protestant missionary
settlements and the distinctively American
population. We have called this antagonism
"artificial" because there was no ground for it
in reality, since all these missionary establish-
ments were intensely American, and their real
views could not but be in harmony with the in-
terests of Oregon's Americanization. Probably
a careful analysis of the causes lying liack of
this particular phase of the questions at issue
would discover that tl)ey were largely of a social
nature, and came out of tiie fact that a great
preponderance of the capacity and training for
pulilic affairs then in the colony was found among
the gentlemen connected vvitli these missions,
and it was but natural that, in emergencies like
the present, they should appear more conspicu-
ously than others. Of course, in addition to
these divisions of sentiment, there was the Ro-
man Catholic element, always most anxious for
that which would most subserve the plans and
purposes of the hierai-chy of Rome. It were
no small feat to so far harmonize these variant
elements as to secure an organization at all; for
there would needs be plots and counterplots,
and no one knew where the majority would
stand when the final count should come.

Dr. John McLoughlin gave the great weight
of his name to the plan of an independent gov-
ernment; one entirely separated from either the
United States or Great Britain. With him, as
a matter of couise, went the men of the Hud-
8

son's Bay Company, now settlers south of the
Columbia, and almost as much a matter of
course the Roman Catholics. This presented a
formidable combination, one that it proved not
easy to overcome.

The first public indication of the result oc-
curred at Willamette Falls (now Oregon City),
then the chief town of the colony, in the dis-
cussion, in a public lyceum, of a resolution in-
troduced by L. W. Hastings, as attorney for Dr.
McLoughlin, in the following words:

" Eesolved, That it is expedient for the set-
tlers of the coast to organize an independent
government."

At the close of the discussion the vote was
taken, and the resolution was adopted. At this
point Mr. George Abernethy, afterward gov-
ernor under the provisional government,
introduced another resolution for discussion
the following week, in the following words:

" R,:«oh'eil, That if the United States extends
its jurisdiction over this country during the next
four years, it will not be expedient to form an
independent government."

This resolution was very skillfully drawn.
Its passage would do two things: First, tenta-
tively pledge the people against an "independ-
ent" government; and, second, clearly express
their faith in the ultimate extension of the laws
of the American Union over the Pacific coast.
It was not against any government at the present
time, but against what Avas then understood as
the scheme of an '• independent government;"
that is, one looking to its own perpetuation as
an independent power among the governments
of the world.

At the close of an earnest debate the resolu-
tion of Mr. Abernethy was adopted. This set
at rest the scheme of an " independent govern-
ment," but it left the question of the formation
of a provisional government, looking to its own
supersession by the authority of the United
States at some future date still an open one.
In regard to this the discussion went on with
undiminished interest.

Meanwhile some of the leaiiinii' men of the

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

settlement had called a public meeting to be
held at the house of Joseph Gervais, where
tlie town of Gervais now is, on the first Monday
in March, to consider measures for the protec-
tion of the herds of the settlers from the depre-
dations of wild beasts. This was a subject that
appealed to all strongly, for savage beasts were
numerous and destructive. The attendance was
large, for it had become bruited about that some
other matter of importance would be Ijrouglit
forward at the meeting. This gathering was
known among the settlers as the " wolf meet-
ing."

The result of tliis gatliering, ovei- which
James O'Neil presided, was the adoption of a
series of resolutions providing for the payment
of bounties for the destruction of predatory ani-
mals. After this was done, a motion was made
by W. H. Gray that a committee of twelve per-
sons be appointed to take into consideration tlie
propriety of taking measures for the civil and
military protection of the colony. This was
unanimously adopted, the committee was elected
and the " wolf meeting" had gone into history.

Between the time of the adjournment of this
meeting and the assembling of another at Cham-
poeg on the 2d day of May, 1843, those opposed
to the organization of any form of government
were not idle. These were notably the people
of the Hudson's Bay Company and those who
called themselves " the Canadian citizens of
Oregon." They held public meetings at Van-
couver, at Willamette Falls, and at the Catholic
Church on the French Prairie. An " Address
of the Canadian citizens of Oregon to the meet-
ing at Champoeg," prepared by the Romish
priest, F. N. Blanchet, was circulated, and every
inflnence possible from these quarters were ex-
erted to prevent affirmative action at the meet-
ing of May 2.

The address of the Canadian citizens of Ore-
gon, writtf^n as it was by a man who, though a
master of dialectics in one tongue, the French,
was unable to intelligently Anglicize his speech,
is a unique specimen of literary work. Still
it discovers the entire nn-American sentiments

of those for whom it was penned at that time,
and their great wish to hold the country un-
committed on all questions that might have an
influence in finally settling the dispute for pos-
session of Oregon between England and the
United States in favor of the United States. A
quotation of paragraphs 11 and 12 of the " Ad-
dress" will disclose these facts. Tliey are as
follows:

" 11. That we consider the country free at
present, to all nations, till government shall
have decided; o])en to every individual wishing
to settle, without any distinction of origin, and
without asking him anything, either to become
an English, Spanish or American citizen.

" 12. So we, English subjects, proclaim to
be free, as well as those who came from France,
California, United States, or even natives of this
country; and we desire unison with all the re-
spectable citizens who wish to settle in this
country; or we ask to be recognized as free
among ourselves to make such regulations as
appear suitable to our wants, save the general
interest of having justice from all strangers who
might injure us, and that our reasonable cus-
toms and pretensions be respected."

This shows, as well as such phrases can show,
that the real conflict was the old one of rival
claims to Oregon, now assuming, so far as the
people of Oregon themselves were concerned,
only another form of expression.

According to call the settlers gathered at
Champoeg on the 2d of May. Dr. I. L. Bab-
cock was chairman, and G. W. Le Breton was
secretary. The committee of twelve appointed
at the previous meeting made its report. A
motion to accept it was lost; the Hudson's Bay
men and the Catholics, vinder the lead of Rev.
F. N. Blancliet, voting " No " on the motion to
accept. There was mnch confusion, if not some
consternation, at this result, for it seemed that
all the iiopes of those who desired the establish-
ment of some order of government were to be
blasted. A motion made by Mr. Le Breton,
however, rescued the meeting from its unhappy
dilemnja. It was that the meeting divide: those

BISTORT OF WASHINGTON:

in favor of an organization taking the right,
and those opposed to it taking the left. This
motion prevailed withont opposition. "Joe
Meek," an old Rocky mountain man, of tall,
erect and commanding form, fine visage, with
a coal-black eye, and the voice of Stentor, a
thorough American, stepped out and shouted,
■' All in favor of the report of the committee
and an organization, follow me." The Ameri-
cans were immediately in line by his side.
More slowly the opposition with Blanchet went
" to the left." The lines were carefully counted.
Fifty-two stood with Meek; fifty with Blan-
chet, — -so narrow was the margin of sentiment
in favor of the organization of any form of gov-
ernment. Promptly the chairman called the
meeting to order again; but the defeated party
withdrew, leaving only those who voted in the
affirmative to conclude the proceedings of the
day.

This was easily done, for now the cause was
in the hands of its friends. The report of the
committee of twelve was taken up. discussed,
amended and adopted. It provided for the
election of a supreme judge, with probate power,
a clerk of the court, a sheriff, three magistrates,
three constables, a treasurer, a major and three
captains. A. E. Wilson was chosen to act as
supreme judge, G. W. Le Breton as clerk of the
court, J. L. Meek as sheriff and W. II. "Wilson
as treasurer. The other offices were tilled and
a " Legislative Committee " of nine was ap-
pointed, consisting of Messrs. Hill, Ivobert
Shortess, liobert Newell, A. Beers, Hubbard,
W. H. Gray, J. O'Neil, R. Moore and Dough-
erty. The session of the " Legislative Com-
mittee" was limited to si.x days and their per
diem fixed at SI. 25, which they immediately
contributed themselves. This committee as-
sembled at the Falls on the 10th of May and
was furnished a room gratuitously by the Meth-
odist mission at that place, which, though the
best that could be had, was certainly humble
enough to suit even frontier views of economy
in the work of State building. It was a build-
ing 16 X 30 and divided into two rooms, one of

which accommodated the first legislature of
Oregon. As the discussions of this legislature
were tentative, and to be reported to a meeting
of the citizens to be held at Charapoeg on the
5th of July, it is not necessary to record them
in e.xtenso here. The session continued but
three days.

The meeting to consider the report of the
legislative committee was to be on the 5th day
of July. Showing the thorough American senti-
ment that prevaded the entire movement a cel-
ebration of " Independence Day " had been ar-
ranged for at the same place on the 4th, and
an oration in honor of that day so dear to every
true American was delivered by Rev. Gustavus
Hines. On the 5th the meeting of the citizens
was held and the orator of the previous day was
chosen to preside over it. Quite a number of
those who had opposed organization at the pre-
vious meeting were present at this and an-
nounced themselves as favorable to the objects
sought to be attained by the Americans. Others,
however, including the Catholic missionaries and
the Hudson's Bay Company, not only did not
attend, but publicly asserted that they would
not submit to the authority of any government
that might be organized. The representatives
of the Hudson's Bay Compauy addressed a
communication to the leaders of the movement,
stating that they felt aljundantly able to defend
both themselves and their political rights.
With affairs in this attitude Mr. Hines an-
nounced that the report of the legislative com-
mittee was in order. The report w'as accord-
ingly read by Mr. Le Breton. It consisted of a
body of what was styled by the committee " or-
ganic laws," prefaced by the following pre-
amble:

" We, the people of Oregon Territory, for the
purpose of mutual protection, and to secure
peace and prosperity among ourselves, agree to
adopt the following laws and regulations until
such time as the United States of America ex-
tend their jurisdiction over us." Then follows
the usual form of a constitution, with the usual
definitions and restrictions of the powers of

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

the goverimieut. It provided for an Executive
Committee of three instead of a governor, and a
Legislative Committee of nine, and in the main
followed the order adopted liy the preliminary
meeting in March. It provided that the laws
of Iowa should be the laws of Oregon Territory
in cases not otherwise provided for, and made
definite provision on the subject of land claims.
The portion of the report that elicited the most
controversy was that constituting an executive
committee of three, some desiring a single ex-
ecutive and some wishing to leave the govern-
ment — if government it could then have been
called — without an executive head. On the vote
being taken the body of "organic laws" re-
ported by the committee was adopted, M'ith only
slight amendments by the meeting. It was re-
solved that the persons chosen to officiate in the
several offices at the meeting held in May should
continue in office until the following May.
This left only the Executive Committee to be
elected, and on a ballot being taken Alanson
Beers, David Hill and Joseph Gale were chosen,
and these tiiree constituted the first executive
of the Territory of Oregon. In this manner
Oregon passed from a condition where every
man was a law unto himself into the condition
of an organized political commonwealth, and a
new era had dawned upon her.

The first election under the provision of the
organic law adopted by the people at Cham poeg,
July 5, 1843, was held on the 14th of May,
1844. At this election P. G. Stewart, Osboru
Eussell and W. J. Bailey were elected members
of the Executive Committee: Ira L. Babcock,
supreme judge, John E. Long, clerk and re-
corder, Philip Foster, treasurer, and Joseph L.
Meek, sheriff. The legislative districts had
been organized, covering all of what now con-
stitutes the States of Oregon, Washington and
Idaho, and a part of the State of Montana. That
was the Oregon Territory of the days of the
provisional government and np to 1853, when
Washington Territoi-y was organized by act of
Congress,

The plan of government proved so defective
that at their meeting at Oregon City in Decem-
ber, 1844, tlie legislative committee passed
several acts amendatory of it providing for their
submission to the people, among which was a
ciiange from an executive committee of three
to a governor, and from a legislative committee
elected by the people en masse to a legislature
representing legislative districts. These amend-
ments were adopted by the people, and at the
first annual election held under the amended
organic law on the 3d of June, 1845, George
Abernethy was elected the first governor of
Oregon; John E. Long was elected secretary,
Francis Ermatinger, treasurer; J. W. Nesmith,
district attorney; S. W. Moss, assessor; and
Joseph L. Meek was continued as sherifi'. The
total vote cast for governor was 504. The ques-
tion of holding a convention to frame a consti-
tution had also been submitted to the people,
but the plan was defeated by a vote of 283
against to 190 in favor of it.

At the time of his election as governor, Mr.
Abernethy was absent from the country on a
visit to the Sandwich islands, and until his re-
turn the old executive committee officiated as
the executive of the Territory.

When the Legislature met at Oregon City on
the 24th of June, Mr. Jesse Applegate prepared
a form of oath to be administered to the mem-
bers elect, the terms of which indicate the pecu-
liar condition of society existing in the country
at that time. The oath was as follows:

Oatu of Office. — I do solemnly swear that
I will support the organic laws of the provis-
sional government of Oregon, so far as the said
organic laws are consistent with my duties as a
citizen of the United States, or a subject of
Great Britain, and faithfully demean myself in
office. So help me God.

This form of oath, it will be seen, left much
to the judgment of the individual legislator as
to what was or was not "consistent" with his
duties " as a citizen of the United States, or a
subject of Great Britain." Still it is worthy

HISTOnr OF WASHINGTON.

of remark that, so far we have have been able
to ascertain, tliere was no case of even alleged
conflict between snch duties and obedience to
tlie organic law of the Territory. Indeed
tliere ^^•as no danger of tliis so far as those wlio
wei-e citizens of the United States were con-
cerned, as tlie organic law was entirely the prod-
uct of the spirit of American citizenship, and
was the act of American citizens. This form
of oath was doubtless designed to disarm, as far
as possible, opposition to provisional govern-
nioiit on the part of those who, from tiieir re-
lations to the British government and the Hud-
son's 13a^ Company, yet persisted in opposing
it. Practically so far as the members of the
Legislature were concerned, it had no applica-
tion, as they were all citizens of the TTnited
States, and hearty supporters of the organic law.

As this was the first legislature elected in
the usual manner by the ballots of the electors
of Oregon, it seems proper tliat their names be
given here. They were:

Clackamas District: 11. A. J. Lee, llirain
Straight, W. IL Gray.

Tualatin District: M. M. McCarver, D. Hill,
J. ^\. Smith.

Champoeg District: J. ]\[. Garrison, M. G.
Foisy, Barton Lee, Robert Newell.

Clatsop District: John McClure.

Yam Hill District: Jesse Applegate, A. Hen-
dricks.

To those acquainted with the geography of
the country it is hardly necessary to say that
they were all residents south of the Columbia
river, for, though there had been a section called
Vancouver district designated the year before,
including the country north of the Columbia, it
had elected no representative, and really there
was hardly any settlement in it except by the
Hudson's Bay people, and these coivld hardly be
called settlements in the understanding of that
term by an American.

The new legislature met at Oregon City on
the 24th of June, and elected M. M. McCarver
speaker. The first and most important business
of the session was the passing of a memorial to

Congress, asking for a Territorial government
according to the usual forms of Congressional
action. On the 28th of June this memorial
was signed by the acting executivej in the ab-
sence of Governor-elect Abernethy, namely;
Messrs. Russell and Stewart of the old execu-
tive committee. Supreme Judge Nesmith and
the members of the legislature; and Dr. Elijah
White was delegated to convey it to Washing-
ton. This being done the legislature took a re-
cess until August 5, awaiting the vote of the
people on the adoption of a revised and amended
organic law wliich had been duly submitted to
them. The vote being strongly in favor of the
new law, the legislature began its action under
it at the appointed time. After some disagree-
able wrangling the action of the body at its flrst
session electingM. M. McCarver speaker, was
reconsidered, and Jiobert JS'ewell was elected in
his place. A spirit of personal partisanship is
disclosed by the records of the session, perhaps
not greatly to be wondered at, and still not
commending the body to any special eulogy.
The previous appointment of Dr. White as
messenger to convey the memorial asking tlie
organization of a Territorial government for
Oregon to Congress, became a great cause of
contention. The methods and spirit of Di-.
White, as we have previously stated, were such
tliat he did not command general pul)lic confi-
dence, though he did not fail to secure a warm
personal and partisan support. Whether the
action of the legishiture in first appointing him
its messenger and placing its memorial in his
hands, and afterward, by a unanimoTis vote,
comm.itting to him also a copy of the amended
organic law to be conveyed with the memorial
to Congress, and then, in a few days, demand-
ing their return, was taken with becoming dig-
nity and intelligence, is a question we will not
discuss. Certain it is, howe\-er, that at this
point in the legislative history of Oregon tliere
was an amount of personal politics intermincrfed
with all public politics not conservable of the best
interests of the new commonwealth. Further
than this we need not here draw aside the veil.

130

ttlSTORY OF WASHINGTON.

The ostensible reason for the action of the
legislature demanding of Dr. White the return
of the docutneuts entrusted to him, was that
thej had not been "attested and dispatched ac-
cording to the directions of this house;" or, in
other words, that Mr. McCarver had signed the
memorial as speaker of the house, which, it
seems, was not what that body desired. It one
at this day can truly read between the lines of
the recorded action of the legislature concerning
these matters, a belief that the prominence that
body had given Dr. White as bearer of these
documeats to Washington, and its consequent
quasi indorsement of him after his service as
sub-agent of Indian afiairs in Oregon, would
give him a strong moral claim for any oifice of
honor or profit he might desire in the hoped-for
Territorial organization, was the real reason for
that action. The members believed, too, that
he would use his position for that end, which is
not only likely, but what, probably, most of
them would have done under the same circum-
stances.

Dr. White, in a singularly characteristic note,
refused to comply with tiie demand of the legis-
lature to return the documents, and proceeded
on his way to Washington. Not to be foiled in
its purpose, the legislature caused to be for-
warded to Congress, through the American Con-
sul at the Sandwich Islands, a copy of the or-
ganic law of tlie provisional government signed
by the governor and attested by the secretary,
and also of all resolutions adopted by that body
relating to the sending of the same to Congress
by the hand of Dr. White, and also a copy of
the letter of Dr. White declining to return the
same to it. On the arrival of the documents
thus forwarded in Washington, Dr. White, who
had reached that city before them, was con-
fronted by then), and they effectually destroyed
all his chances for political preferment in
Oregon.

The result of these memorials and petitions
to Congress, in the then attitude of the inter-
national dispute regarding the ownership of
Oregon, could only be to keep the question con-

stantly and influentially before the Government
of the United States, and inapress it with the
vast importance of the great country in dispute.
This they effectually did. But of course no
Territorial government could be erected over it
until all the antecedent questions of sovereignty
were settled. For this the people of Oregon
waited impatiently. The Government seemed
mncli too tardy and indifferent in pressing these
questions to a settlement, and the people of
Oregon were long left in suspense as to whether
they were really rega