The story of Oregon and its people

Front matter

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

Preface

To the student of human affairs the history of the settlement of Oregon will ever be a tale of absorbing interest. Coming as the last of those westward movements by which the American commonwealths were peopled, Oregon more closely typifies the home-seeking and the home-making spirit of the Saxon race than any of her sister states.

The early pioneers of Oregon were not driven to make the hazardous journey by the lash of religious persecution, nor were they impelled to brave the hardships of the plains and mountains by the desire for gold. Sustained only by the ambition to found a home for themselves and their children in the distant West, or led by the unselfish zeal of the missionary, they went about their task soberly and seriously, and with a resolute purpose that never faltered in the presence of danger.

Certainly the children of no land under the sun have a nobler heritage of brave and honest ancestry than those of Oregon, and if THE STORY OF OREGON AND ITS PEOPLE shall bring this fact and its message closer to the hearts of the young it will have served the purpose for which it was written.

June, 1909. O. P. Barnes.

COVER DESIGN

The design on the cover is reproduced from a photograph of Hermon Atkins MacNeil's statue, "The Coming of the White Man," which stands in the City Park at Portland, Oregon, facing the gorge through which the white man first floated down the Columbia.

"The group is that of two Indians, Chief Multnomah and a young brave. The figures have a peculiar beauty and dignity of their own . Into the figure of Multnomah the artist has put the pride of all the Indian tribes, as he has endowed the young brave with a youthful curiosity, — the strong characteristics of the two, individual, yet harmonious in their relations to each other." — Harriet Warner Chapin, in The Pacific Monthly.

Contents

Chapter Page

I Discovery of the Columbia 9

II The Northwest Company 21

Chapter I

1. The River of the West.— During the first half of the eighteenth century that part of the United States which lies west of the Mississippi River and north of the forty-second parallel of latitude was claimed by France as part of Louisiana. The province of Louisiana also included much territory south of the forty-second parallel, but the history of Oregon is not concerned with it.^ Before the close of her colonial wars with England in 1763, France ceded Louisiana to Spain, but for many years prior to that event the country between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains was diligently explored by French travelers and Jesuit missionaries. In their books of travel which are very numerous, these men repeated accounts given them by the Indians of a great river beyond the Shining Mountains.^ It was naturally said to flow into the Pacific Ocean and was known by various names such as River of the West, River Thegayo, Rio de Aguilar. One of the French explorers, Lepage Dupratz, fell in

^The forty-second parallel of latitude forms the boundary between Oregon and California.

^The Frenchmen called the Rocky Mountains "Shining Mountains" because of the glittering rock pinnacles which are visible at a great distance, or perhaps because of the white snow peaks. Later they were called Stony, and finally Rocky Mountains.

with a Yazoo Indian, who had crossed the Shining

Mountains and traveled down the River of the West

until he was turned back by a war between the tribes

dwelling on its banks, but in those days no white man

had yet seen it. Thus we owe to the French the faint

beginnings of our knowledge of the great river which

separates the states of Oregon and Washington and

drains the Inland Empire.

2, The Oregon. — The first English-speaking traveler

who had anything to say about the River of the West

was Jonathan Carver, a native of Connecticut, who

set out from Boston in the year 1766, and spent two

years in the country around the head of Lake Superior

and westward. He may have penetrated to the

sources of the Missouri, but probably not. Very

likely the Red River of the North was the western

limit of his adventures.^ In his book of travels which

was published in London in 1778, Carver speaks of the

River of the West calling it the "Oregon." He says

the Indians told him that it rose near the sources of

the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi and the Red River

of the North. The question of how Carver obtained

the name Oregon has puzzled later writers. The plain

implication from his narrative is that he heard it from

the Indians, but this is not to be beUeved because it

does not occur in any Indian language. Neither the

natives with whom Carver conversed nor those who

dwelt on the banks of the Columbia had any word

^What Carver has to say about the country west of the headwaters of the Mississippi is largely translated from the writings of French travelers and missionaries. There is but little reason to believe that he actually saw what he tried to describe.

which resembled Oregon.'* We may therefore suppose, if we like, that Carver misunderstood some name which the Indians gave him, or, to judge more harshly, he may have fabricated it. At any rate, the name "Oregon" can be traced to Carver's book of travels and to no other source. Just how it originated may always remain among those puzzles which provide historians with fertile matter for conjecture and controversy. It never came into common use for the River of the West, but was afterward applied to the whole tract of country north of California and west of the Rocky Mountains.

3. The Name Oregon. — The melodious name Oregon seems to have pleased the fancy of the world from the time when Carver first published it, though it was not by any means universally known and used for many years. Captain Gray, who discovered the Columbia, knew nothing of it or he would not have felt at liberty to bestow the name of his ship upon the great river; nor does it appear in the journal of Lewis and Clark which was written between the years 1804 ^^id 1806. Still as time passed, the name Oregon was coming into vogue among those persons who had occasion to speak of the Pacific Coast region. Jeiferson employed it in his instructions to Lewis and Clark for instance, which indicates that it was in good literary repute when he wrote. Undoubtedly, however, it was the poet Bryant who made the name Oregon popular by using its sonor-

■•Mofras, an acute and observant Frenchman who visited Oregon in 1841-2, says that the word "Oregon" is not found in the language of any Indian tribe that dwells on the banks of the Columbia.

topsis.

4. Search for the Columbia. — The vague accounts of

the River of the West, which Carver and the French

explorers had given, were confirmed by the natural

supposition that the waters from the Pacific slope of

the Rocky Mountains must find their way to the ocean

somewhere. With this thought more or less clearly

in mind, and haunted, too, by the old belief that there

was a passage across the continent from the Atlantic,

navigators who sailed along the western coast of North

America before 1792 were on the watch either for the

mouth of a great river or for a navigable channel toward

the inland regions. They sought, also, northward of

San Francisco for a good harbor, but for the most part

they sought vainly since the coast in this region is

singularly devoid of inlets which ships can enter easily.

The Pacific Coast was frequented by vessels, and it

stands to reason that many captains must have noticed

the outflow of water from the mouth of the Columbia

and wondered what lay beyond it toward the interior;

but the entrance was guarded by an array of dangerous

breakers miles in width, and before Captain Gray, none

sefem to have crossed the bar. The ships which began

the passage failed to finish it.'^ As early as 1775 the

Spanish navigator Heceta, on a voyage of discovery

along the coast, saw the mouth of the Columbia and

attempted to enter it, but the breakers and the strong

'■^The navigation at the mouth of the Columbia was beset with terrors for the early ship captains. Mofras says it was as dangerous a passage as he had ever seen. The government engineers have made the channel perfectly safe for modern vessels.

seaward current foiled him. The famous Captain Cook coasting northward passed by the river but he did not find it. In 1778 Captain John Meares, who was an EngHshman saiUng under the Portuguese flag, explored the coast with a rather definite purpose to discover the River of the West. He had seen it marked on Spanish charts under the name of St. Roque, which, of course, the mapmakers had drawn from Heceta's observations. Meares found the mouth of the Columbia in the latitude which the charts indicated, but he mistook it for a mere indentation in the coast, and made up his mind that the Spanish mapmakers had blundered and misled him. In an unforgiving spirit he changed the name of the northern cape at the mouth from St. Roque to "Disappointment" and called the inlet Deception Bay. Posterity has dealt out poetic justice to these names. The cape is still called Disappointment, which is fair enough since Meares was actually disappointed, but inasmuch as the inlet was not a bay and did not deceive him, though he deceived himself, the title he gave to it has been dropped.

5. Gray's First Voyage. — Captain Robert Gray, the American navigator who really discovered the Columbia River, made two voyages to the Pacific coast. In both of them he sailed from Boston in the employ of a firm of fur traders. Upon the first, which ended August 10, 1790, he traded with the Indians along the coast of Oregon and Washington and in a small boat explored an inlet which may have been the mouth of the Columbia.^ When his cargo of furs was complete,

^Bancroft says it was Tillamook Bay, and he may be right.

Gray sailed homeward by way of China and circumnavigated the globe. By his ship's log he had traveled 50,000 miles when he re-entered Boston harbor. Though the firm which employed him did not make a great deal of money by his first voyage, they were proud of his feat. It was something of an achievement to sail around the world in those days, and not many American sailors had done it. The fur traders were also encouraged by Gray's accounts to believe that they could build up a profitable business with the maritime Indian tribes. Accordingly they speedily sent Gray forth on a second voyage in the same ship, "Columbia" by name, in which he had sailed before. It was in the spring of 1791 that he reached the Oregon coast again. Sailing northward toward Vancouver Island he saw the mouth of the Columbia and for nine days tried to enter it.'^ The outward rush of the waters and the breakers finally bafiled him as they had earlier sailors, and he gave up the attempt until the next spring. He passed the winter of 179 1-2 at Clayoquot Harbor, Vancouver Island. During the rainy months he kept his sailors employed by building a small sloop which he named the "Adventure." This was the second sea-

^This is a necessary inference from what Vancouver says in his account of his meeting with Gray : " Mr. Gray stated that he had been some several days attempting to enter it, which at length he had been unable to effect in consequence of a very strong outset." How very British Vancouver must have been not to suspect that this strong outset implied a great river. He seems to have mistaken Sand Island for the main southern shore and to have overlooked the true mouth altogether.

going vessel built on the Pacific coast north of San Francisco.*

6. Discovery of the Mouth of the Columbia. — Early in April, 1792, Gray sailed to the southward from his winter harbor in the ship "Columbia." He was evidently determined to find out what the strong seaward current at Deception Bay signified. In the first days of May he was off the mouth of the Columbia, and on the nth he crossed the bar and entered the river. Being the first white man to behold its wide waters and to sail upon them, Gray had the right to name the stream. He called it the Columbia for his ship. The world has accepted this name for the river of the West in preference to Oregon or to any of the others by which it was formerly known, but Gray's name of "Cape Hancock" for Cape Disappointment has fallen into disuse. Gray sailed twenty-five miles up the Columbia. Then it puzzled him to find the channel among the shoals and he turned his prow to the west. On the 20th of May he crossed the bar outward and sailed away to the north on his business of buying furs. His trade with the Indians prospered and when his ship was laden he voyaged homeward, once more circumnavigating the earth. To sailors like Captain Gray, who have shrewdness in practical affairs united with keen scientific curiosity, the world owes many important geographical discoveries.

7. Vancouver's Arrival. — In the summer of 1792, while Gray was trading and exploring along the coast

^Captain Meares built the first. It was called the " Northwest America."

of 6regon and Washington, Captain Vancouver of the British navy was also there with two vessels on business for his government.* Vancouver sailed on the larger vessel, the ** Discovery," while his consort, the "Chatham," was commanded by I^ieutenant W. R. Broughton. They reached Cape Mendocino in April, 1792, and thence proceeded northward exploring minutely as they coasted along. Vancouver expressed his surprise that there should be no good harbors on such a long stretch of coast line. The reader is more surprised that when he finally found one of the best in the world he had not the judgment to recognize it. He passed the mouth of the Columbia on the 27th of April but mistook it for a petty inlet unworthy of notice. Still going to the north, leaving behind the great discovery he might have made, and with the glory of it forever lost to him and his country, he fell in with Gray near the Straits of Fuca. Gray was then on the point of sailing southward to raake his second and successful effort to enter the Columbia. He told Vancouver of his trying to make the passage for several days the year before and finally giving it up, but, with true

^Vancouver's business was to explore the coast and possibly to execute certain provisions of the Nootka Convention. This treaty between England and Spain was made on October 28, 1790. It pacified quarrels which had grown out of their conflicting claims to the Northwest Coast. Each nation pretended to derive title from the discoveries of the early navigators. Cook, for example on the English side, and Heceta on the Spanish. In 1789 both Spanish and British parties tried to settle at Nootka Sound, which brought matters to a crisis and led to the conclusion of the Nootka Convention. The general purport of this treaty was an agreement for joint occupation^ Spain's rights came down to the United States through the Louisiana

MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER

British perversity, His Majesty's Captain insisted that the inlet was of no consequence in spite of the strong outward flow of water. He admitted that the phenomenon was difficult to account for, yet he obstinately refused to account for it on the only rational hypothesis of a great river there discharging into the sea. Fortunately for America, Gray was less inclined to let his theories outweigh facts.

8. Broughton Enters the Columbia. — Vancouver lingered on the coast north of the Columbia during the summer, gradually working his way into higher latitudes. On August 28th he anchored in Nootka Sound. In the meantime after entering the Columbia, Gray had touched at Nootka and left there a chart of the river's mouth. This Vancouver obtained and took with him when he sailed southward in October. On the 19th of that month he was again off the mouth of the Columbia, but fearing to attempt the entrance with his own vessel, he sent in Lieutenant Broughton with the ''Chatham" to explore the river. ^° Broughton sailed up the channel as far as he thought his ship

Purchase, perhaps, and the Joint Occupation Treaty of 1818 between us and England may have been nothing more than a continuation of the Nootka arrangement. On January 1, 1794, Spain and England concluded another treaty which confirmed the Nootka arrangement for joint occupation. About a year later the Spaniards removed all their portable goods from Nootka, but they gave up none of their formal claims to the country. From that time to this no other white settlement has been established at the spot. It lay just north of the forty-ninth parallel and its good harbor made it in a modest way an international resort for the fur traders. Consult Schafer's History of the Pacific Northwest.

^"^When Broughton entered the Columbia he found the British brig "Jenny" there before him. Broughton named Baker's Bay after the could go safely then took to his launch and made his way to a point on the Washington side about loo miles from the mouth. To this place he affixed his commander's name, Vancouver, which it still bears.

9. Names of Points on the Columbia. — Many of the prominent places up and down the Columbia owe their names to Lieutenant Broughton. Mount Hood he named for an English Lord," Walker's Island for one of his men. Tongue Point was so called because of its shape, and Gray's Bay in honor of the discoverer of the Columbia. ^^ Thus the first systematic exploration of the Northwest Coast was made by Vancouver, a British naval officer, under the direction of his government, while Gray's discovery of the Columbia was the fruit of individual enterprise. His ship was one among many vessels which traded with the Indians along the coast for furs, and it is likely that the captains of these vessels made many discoveries which have never been recorded.^'

captain of the "Jenny." One easily conjectures that many little barks may have slipped into and out of the Columbia before 1792 without leaving any record. The tale of Dupratz's Yazoo Indian that the natives at the mouth of the river had seen ships and white men even in his day is not necessarily baseless.

"Samuel Viscount Hood an English Admiral, born 1724, died 1816.

*'Most of the historic points on the coast north of California and south of Alaska owe their names to Vancouver. His account of his explorations was published in sumptuous style in 1798. It was widely read and the names which it affixed to the places mentioned were accepted by the world once for all.

'^Some historians say that captafns who happened upon good harbors would conceal their discoveries from rival traders. This was very natural. They were seeking profit, and cared nothing for geography.

CHAPTER II The Northwest Company

10. The Northwest Company. — In 1792 and for some years later there was free competition among all comers in the fur trade with the Indians on the Northwest Coast. But even at that time the great Northwest Company of Montreal had begun to stretch its long arms toward the Pacific. It had already monopolized the fur business of the interior country from the Hudson Bay slope to the Rocky Mountains. This powerful and indefatigable company was organized in Montreal in the winter of 1783-4 by a number of Scotchmen who had taken up the fur trade in Canada after the country was ceded to Great Britain by the French. ^^ The old Hudson Bay Company, which was chartered by King Charles II in 1760, claimed indefinite rights over the whole of the British possessions north of the United States and at first asserted a monopoly of the fur trade throughout the entire region, vast as it was. The Northwest Company successfully resisted this effort of their older rival. With wonderful energy they pushed westward, building forts and laying the foundations of permanent trade with the Indians as they advanced. By the

"Canada passed over to the English in 1764. The cession from the French included the Mississippi Valley. Louisiana had been transferred secretly to Spain the year before.

22 THE STORY O^ OREGON

year 1792 the scattered posts of the Northwest Company occupied the Canadian territory to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains.

11. Alexander Mackenzie. — ^The most enterprising of their factors was Alexander Mackenzie. This ardent and tireless explorer was born in Scotland and emigrated to Canada in his boyhood. Thoroughly trained in the secrets of the fur trade, he was also an enlightened traveler whose geographical discoveries made him famous. In the year 1785 he joined the "X Y Company" of Montreal, which was formed to compete with the Northwest Company, but in 1787 the rivals united into one corporation under the name of the latter, and Mackenzie then became one of its partners and agents. His station in the year 1789 was at Fort Chippewayan on the remote and dismal shore of Athabasca Lake. Setting out from this post in the spring of 1789, Mackenzie journeyed down the river which bears his name to the Arctic Ocean, making a safe return in the fall of the same year. In the fall of 1792 he set out from Fort Chippewayan on a second exploring trip, this time going to the west. He followed up the Peace River to its sources in the Rocky Mountains and there, overtaken by the snows of winter, he lay with his men till May. By June Mackenzie reached the summit of the Rocky Mountains, and first of all white men from the beginning of the world, saw the waters parting at his feet some to reach the Atlantic Ocean and some to wander through verdant vales and yawning chasms to the Pacific. He reached the river now called Fraser and voyaged

THE NORTHWEST COMPANY 23

down its course in canoes for two hundred and fifty miles ; then he struck to the west again and finally, not far from the parallel of fifty-two degrees north latitude, stood upon the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Mackenzie was the first white man to cross the continent north of the Mexican line. Before he set out upon his return he painted this inscription in vermilion letters upon a promontory looking toward the sea: ''Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three." His journey opened a pathway to the Pacific for the Northwest Company of fur traders and their adventurous pioneers soon followed in his steps. Thus the race began between Great Britain and the United States for the possession of the Oregon country^^ with the British in the lead.^''

'^The Oregon country included all the territory from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific north of California and south of Alaska.

*^Long before 1803 the agents of the Northwest Company were building forts on the streams which finally reach the Columbia. The progress westward was continuous. When Astor began his enterprise at the mouth of the Columbia in 1810 they were prepared to combat and ultimately rout him.

CHAPTER III The Lewis and Clark Expedition

12. Origin of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. — The exploring expeditions of Sir Alexander Mackenzie developed naturally from the tendency of the Northwest Company to expand its trade. The famous Lewis and Clark expedition across the continent to the Pacific, which occurred some ten years later, developed just as naturally from the tendency of the United States to expand its territory and population. The former was conceived and executed by a single great adventurer. The latter was conceived by the most intelligent American of his generation and executed by two subordinates of consummate ability. Thomas Jefferson planned the expedition which Lewis and Clark conducted. Its course began at St. Louis and ended at the mouth of the Columbia. Like Xenophon's Anabasis, Marco Polo's journey to Cathay, and the first voyage of Columbus across the Atlantic, the exploring expedition of Lewis and Clark had excited the imagination of the world, and as time passes historians become more and more deeply impressed with its importance. It was authorized by Congress in response to a special message from President Jefferson which he transmitted on January i8, 1803.

13. Jefferson's Interest in the West. — Jefferson's alert and comprehensive intellect had long been in-

THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION 25

terested in the country beyond the Mississippi. He loved to hear of its mountains, its Indian tribes, its desert wastes and the strange beasts which roamed them." Now and then he had received for his scientific collection specimen bones of extinct monsters which formerly dwelt in those remote and almost unknown regions and he eagerly sought for more.^^ From the close of the Revolution, too, his imagination had been kindled with lofty dreams of an imperial Nation which should stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. In those early times the adventurous John Ledyard wrote,^^ "The American Revolution invites to a thorough discovery of the continent," evidently thinking of a future when the United States would cover the continent. Jefferson knew Ledyard and encouraged him in his schemes of exploration. As early as December, 1783, Jefferson in writing to George Rogers Clark to propose tentatively a trip beyond the Mississippi hinted that the English would

"The most interesting was the buffalo, then common on the plains but now almost extinct. The story of the buffalo illustrates the folly of permitting greed to operate without restraint.

^^Scientists were then making those investigations into fossil remains which later enabled Darwin and others to write the history of life from its humble beginnings to the advent of man. Jefferson took all knowledge for his field.

"Schafer gives an interesting account of Ledyard. He was a Connecticut Yankee with a strong taste for rash adventures and a brain which projected new schemes as fast as his old ones failed. He sailed with Captain Cook, published a book in 1783 which interested American merchants in the Pacific fur trade, fell a victim to the senseless tyranny of Russia, and finally died on his way to seek for the sources of the Nile.

probably try to plant colonies there. ^^ No doubt jealousy of England played a part in keeping Jefferson's interest in the western country active from the close of the Revolution to the time when he actually despatched Lewis and Clark upon their journey. No man knew better than he what was going on in the world. He was informed of Sir Alexander Mackenzie's trip to the Pacific and he knew enough of the energy of the Northwest Company to foresee what its consequences would be. Already in 1803 the British traders had invaded the country about the tributaries of the Missouri. Their occupation of the whole region west of the Mississippi was only a question of time unless American enterprise should meet and turn them back.

14. Jefferson and France. — But Jefferson's immediate anxieties concerning the Valley of the Mississippi and the entire western country related to France. By the treaty which closed the Revolutionary War, England had given up her claims to the territory east of the Mississippi and south of Canada. In 1 803 this was in the possession of the United States and it was rapidly filling with settlers from the older states. Kentucky then had a white American population of some 180,000; Ohio had 45,000. Altogether

2°This tentative project never came to anything. In 1792 Jefferson induced the American Philosophical Society to raise a subscription for western exploration. Meriwether Lewis was put at the head of the expedition, but it got no further than Kentucky. This was not Lewis's fault. The botanist Michaux who was to take an important part was a Frenchman and his government recalled him just in time to spoil the trip.

THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION 27

there were many more than 325,000 white Americans in the Mississippi Valley when Lewis and Clark set out on their journey. ^^ At the beginning of 1803 the country between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi, which was called Louisiana, belonged to France. In 1763 the French had ceded it to Spain, but in 1800 the powerful Napoleon, who then dominated European affairs, compelled the feeble Spaniards to return it. He had a wonderful project of building up a great colonial empire and making France, by means of it, the leading naval power of the world. The colonial empire would create maritime trade; this would train sailors and multiply ships. His ideas were by no means fanciful, but he had too many other things on his hands to carry them out.

15. Mouths of the Mississippi. — With Louisiana went the possession of the mouths of the Mississippi. To the settlers in the West this meant a great deal since the products of their farms and forests could reach the markets of the world only by way of New Orleans. 22 They understood that the French could shut them out from the city entirely if they chose, or could capture the profits of their labor by extortionate charges for storage, transfers and commissions. Whoever held New Orleans was commercial despot of the

2»Schafer puts the population at 325,000 in 1800. It could not have been much short of half a milHon in 1803.