Early days in old Oregon

Front matter

iiliili I

Class

Book_^

Preface

the famous old fort — a tiny thing for a protection in the wilderness — has been built in memory of the old days of a century ago.

"When my grandfather came across the plains" — even now one hears that remark; and romance brings to sight the long line of white-winged prairie schooners winding their slow way over the endless green waves of the prairies, then over the long level of the plains, and the crashing and bumping as they plunged up and down the mountain sides — bound for Oregon.

But what do the children of the present day know of the days of these grandfathers? What books have they to tell them of the old romance? None whatever. They know only that which they glean from someone else's remembrance of what their grandfathers said. One or two time-table histories, written entirely from secondary sources, and with many faulty statements, especially with regard to the claims of the British and Americans to the Old Oregon country — that is all they have.

I have given four years of devoted study to Oregon history, three of them among the special collections of the Northwest, and over a year in London. In England I had full access to the documents of the Public Record Office, including unpublished accounts of the various explorations, and also, what was a far rarer privilege, access to the journals, diaries, and letters of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Simple as this book is, every statement is based on original authority. Comment on the British and Amer-

PREFACE

lean claims to the country Is founded entirely upon sources. These sources Include journals written by fur-traders In the mountains and on the march, private letters between themselves, official reports of chief factors to their Company in London, diplomatic correspondence of American and English diplomats, and published works, in original editions, of exploration and discovery.

It has been my aim to make this volume a clear, straightforward account of the romantic discovery and settlement of Old Oregon, especially intended for children. Yet teachers of much higher grades, and perchance even those in college work, will find in the "Summary" at the end, as well as in the two chapters, "Who Owned the Oregon Country," and "Fort Vancouver and Dr. John McLoughlin," material from sources which have never before been made accessible.

K. B. J.

Sub-Librarian of History,

New York State Library, Albany, N. Y.

CHAPTER PAGE

I The First White Man's Ship i

II Captain Cook's Adventures 5

III Captain Meares at Nootka Sound. Launching of

the Nort Invest America 13

IV The Battle in the Straits of San Juan de Fuca . . 22 V When Captain Gray Crossed the Terrible Bar . . 25

VI The Adventures of Lewis and Clark 31

VII How They Built Astoria 47

VIII That " Indian " Thief 58

IX An Exciting Horse Race 66

X Adventures in the Yakima Valley 72

XI Danger at Fort Walla Walla .- 83

XII Fort Vancouver and Dr. John McLoughlin ... 96

XIII The First Apple in the Oregon Country .... no

XIV The Adventures of the Whitmans 113

XV The Oregon Trail 127

XVI Who Owned the "Oregon Country"? .... 143

XVII Through the Nachess Pass 167

XVIII The Beginnings of Cities 178

XIX Early Adventures in Seattle 188

XX The Life of the Children 197

XXI The Great Council at Walla Walla 205

XXII The Battle of Seattle 216

XXIII How the Indians Lived 224

Appendix — A Brief Summary of the History of the

Old Oregon Country from Original Sources . . 237

Index 261

JUufitrattona

PAGE .

A Blackfeet Indian travois Frontispiece '^

Captain Meares in San Juan de Fuca Straits 22 \/^

Launching of the Northwest America 22 t^

The Lewis and Clark line of exploration 41 1^

Fort Okanogan 56 ^

An Indian buffalo hunt 56 '^

Indians stalking buffalo 74 ^

Reclaiming Eastern Oregon 74 \/^

A war party 90 >^

An Indian dance 90 >^

Falls of the Willamette 126

The Oregon Country 128

The Dalles 142

The Willamette Valley 150

Mt. Hood from The Dalles of the Columbia 150

Old Oregon and the disputed section 157

American pioneer cabin 178

Oregon City in early days 178

Oregon City in 1845 179

Hauling the logs 182

Transportation by ox team 182

The fallen monarch of the woods 183

Ocean-going log raft 183

Snoqualmie Falls, Washington 204

Indian houses 226

An Indian canoe tomb 226

Mt. Rainier 236

Chapter I The First White Man^s Ship

AN Indian woman was one day walking along the shore, near Seaside, Oregon, on her way back to the Clatsop village. Her son had been killed in battle the year before, and she often walked along this beach, wailing for him, as Indians wail for their dead. Suddenly she saw something lying on the beach. She thought it might be a whale and went toward it, because at that point her tribe caught many whales. When she came near it, she saw two trees standing up in this Thing. She thought: "Behold! It is no whale! It is a monster!"

Then she reached that Thing that lay on the beach. All the outside was shining, as copper shines. Ropes were tied to those trees, and there were many pieces of iron sticking into it.^ Then a bear came out of it. He stood on the Thing, near the trees. He looked just like a bear, yet his face was like that of a man.

The woman was amazed. She thought this strange Thing had come from the Ghost-Land, because Indians believe In ghosts. So she at once turned away and went

* Indians along the Northwest Coast used to pull out with their teeth from the planking of a ship any nails which had become at all loosened, so eager were they for metal.

home, for she was afraid. As she walked on, she began to weep for her dead son. She wailed, "Oh, my son is dead, and the Thing we hear about in tales is lying on the beach!"

As she neared the Clatsop village, her people heard the long, wailing cry. The Clatsops said, " Oh, a person comes crying! Perhaps someone has struck her!" They took down their bows and arrows, thinking an enemy must be near.

An old man said, "Listen!"

The Indian woman was still weeping. She wailed, "Oh, my son is dead, and the Thing we hear about in tales is lying on the beach ! "

The Indians said, "What can it be?" They went running toward her, and said, "What is it?"

The woman replied, "A Thing lies on the beach. And there are two bears in it; but they look like people."

At once the warriors ran down the beach to this Thing. There it lay! Then the two "bears" came out of it with copper kettles in their hands. They put their hands to their mouths and pointed inland, giving their kettles to the Indians. They were asking for water.

S. me of the Indians took the kettles and ran inland to a spring or stream, but others hid themselves behind logs because they were afraid. A few were brave enough, however, to climb up into this Thing. They found it like a very large canoe, and when they went down inside it seemed full of boxes. One man who went down into the hold found there a string of brass buttons. Brass buttons

THE FIRST WHITE MAN'S SHIP

had great value to his tribe, and he excitedly went outside to call his relatives. But they had already set the ship on fire. They burned this ship because they wanted the metal In It.

All the Indians along the Northwest Coast knew metal

— knew brass, and iron, and copper — and were very eager for It. Where they learned about it no one knows, for the earliest explorers found them willing to trade furs for bits of metal of any kind. When, therefore, they saw this ship, with its copper bottom and the nails in it, and the ironwork in the ropes, they at once set it afire to get the metal. It burned to the water's edge In a very short time

— burned just like fat, so the Indians said.

The Clatsop Indians also made prisoners of the two "bears." They looked at them very hard. One of the chiefs went up to them as they stood on the beach. He looked at their faces. He looked at their hands, and then put out his own hand. Soon he said to his people that they were not bears, but men. The Indians had thought they were bears because they were bearded men. No Indian ever wears a mustache or a beard — at least not until he becomes civilized.

There was great excitement among the near-by tribes when they heard about the strange canoe with two trees In It, and all the metal. Other tribes wanted some of it. They came down in their canoes and began trading. Much of the metal was used for ornaments, for bracelets and anklets and great heavy eardrops. A strip of copper two fingers wide and long enough to go around the arm was valuable enough to buy a slave. A nail would buy a good dressed deerskin. Several nails would buy a string of hiaqua shells, which were the Indian money.

The two sailors, of course, were made slaves. The Clatsop chief thought he ought to have both of them, but the Willapa chief demanded one, and the tribes almost went to war over it. At last the Willapa chief took one slave, and the Clatsop chief kept the other.

Whose ship was this? No one knows. Ships were blown across the ocean from Japan, but it does not seem likely these men were Japanese. They might have been Spaniards, or possibly Englishmen. Indeed, no one would ever have known anything at all about this ship except that when the white men came into Oregon, the Indians themselves told them the story of this Thing which lay on the beach many, many years before.

CHAPTER II CAPTAIN cook's ADVENTURES

DOWN from the north came a rip-roaring wind, and the two little sailing ships that, in March, 1778, were off the Oregon coast had to turn and run. Reef their sails and scud before the mighty blasts — that was all captains could do in those days. The ships were very small. Without steam power, the wind blew them this way and that; and wind and tide together often sent them crashing on the rocks amidst roaring breakers.

So Captain Cook's two sailing ships, the Resolution and the Discovery, went scudding to the south, under bare poles, while the Storm King of the North blew the waves of the Pacific mountain-high. Then when the storm was over, the doughty captain unfurled his sails and let another breeze blow him north again. But squalls came, so tacking was necessary. Captain Cook had to stay far out at sea lest the wind and tide should send him among the white-capped breakers he saw through his telescope on the Oregon shore. "Our ships complained," wrote one of the officers of the creaking, groaning ships, blown by high winds and waves.

Stop and think of the date. It was 1778. Over on the North Atlantic coast the American colonies were fighting the Revolutionary War with Great Britain. But of the North Pacific coast no one knew anything at all. It is true a few Spanish explorers had been sent up this coast, but their reports were poor. Worse yet, they had not been printed; so the world knew little enough about the Spanish explorations on this coast.

We know now, however, that one Spanish explorer was sure he saw a river mouth, or a "bay," on that North Pacific coast. There were sand bars across the mouth of this bay, and the waves broke high over them. He did not dare to cross the bar. Still, he named it the Rio San Roque; that is, the River of Saint Roque.

Besides this rather uncertain river, it was thought that there was an inlet, or strait, somewhere along this coast. All that anyone knew was that some two hundred years before, in 1592, an old Portuguese named Juan de Fuca had said that he had been in this part of the world, and that there was an inlet there which connected the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific. But no one else had ever seen it, and no one knows to this day whether Juan de Fuca really saw those straits or not.

All nations were looking at this time for an inlet called the "Straits of Anian" — some water passage between the two great oceans which lie east and west of America. No such straits ever existed. Yet not many years ago an Arctic explorer found straits far north leading into the Arctic Ocean, so that a ship actually can go from the Atlantic to the Pacific now, if it goes by way of the icebergs and bitter cold of the Arctic Ocean.

CAPTAIN COOK'S ADVENTURES

Now, Captain Cook had been sent out to look for these straits, and also to look for a rumored " River of the West" which the Indians said flowed toward the setting sun and emptied Into the Bitter Waters. That was why he watched the shore so closely with his spyglass. All he could see of Oregon was that it was hilly, covered with trees, with low valleys between. But he could see no river. As he sailed farther north, he thought he saw a broad stretch of water leading toward the east. At first he flattered himself he had found those straits. Then he decided It was only a low, marshy land. But he was so disappointed that he called a projecting point of land Cape Flattery — and Cape Flattery It Is today, on the southern shore of the Straits of San Juan de Fuca.

On he sailed northward, this time with a breeze from the south, until he found himself at the entrance of a large sound. Just at sunset the ship sailed in. So far as Captain Cook knew, It had no name, so he called it King George's Sound, although it was later called Nootka Sound. Yet the Spanish had already seen it and they had called It San Lorenzo.

Nootka Sound was a beautiful place after weeks on the stormy ocean with those "complaining" ships. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. The water rippled softly on many little Islands, which were fresh and green in the early spring. On the shore were dense forests of tall straight trees which came down to the water's edge. The water was too deep to anchor. The sailors tied the ships to the trees with great hawsers.

The Indians had been watching them, but paid little attention to them that evening, though many canoes paddled around them. The next day they welcomed the ship in great state. Three canoes first came out. In the foremost were ten men, in the second six, and in the last were two. All were dressed in long robes of sea-otter skins, reaching from their necks to their knees. There were no sleeves of course. The robes were only skins fastened together. Their faces and legs were painted with red and black, in stripes and squares. Their long black hair was bunched up in club fashion on the top of their heads, and mixed in with it were spruce twigs. The green leaves of the spruce showed through the black hair. Over all this, downy white feathers were strewed. An English boy, who was a prisoner among them some years later, tells us exactly how they dressed when visitors came.

As these canoes neared the ship, a chief arose in the foremost one to make a speech. He had a rattle in his hand which he shook when he talked. He talked a long time, indeed, in a very loud voice, and strewed the water about him with downy white feathers. That was a ceremony of welcome. Other Indians in the two canoes behind him strewed the water with a reddish powder. By all this, the Englishmen understood they were invited to come on shore.

When the first chief became tired, another arose and talked in the same loud tone, still motioning the white men to the shore. These Indians were not in the least afraid of their white visitors. Then after a while the men began

CAPTAIN COOK'S ADVENTURES

to sing one of their songs. It was a soft, pleasing melody, sung in perfect time, and they kept time to it by striking the canoes with their paddles.

The English planned to stay in this pleasant harbor for a while. They needed fresh water and new masts; they needed also fresh meat, such as game and fish, and vegetables or greens of some kind. Besides this, the ships were going into the Alaskan waters where it was bitterly cold. When they saw the Indians with many furs they began to trade for them, for the men would need warm clothing and warm bedding such as bearskin rugs.

When Cook and his officers began to trade for furs, to their astonishment the Indians would not accept as payment the bells and beads and looking glasses which the South Sea Islanders and the Hawaiians had taken. Nothing was accepted by these Nootka Sound Indians but metal. Like the Indians who burned the first white men's ship they saw for the metal in it, so these red men were eager for brass and copper and iron. And for a little metal they were willing to give many furs.

You can guess what happened. The sailors sold the metal buttons off their coats; the brass handles were taken off their bureaus; candlesticks, tin cans, copper kettles, small knives, bits of Iron, everything that was metal on the ship was sold to the Indians for furs. And some things were not sold; for the Indians would steal many bits they could not buy. They cut the blocks out of the tackle; even heavy iron pieces were cut from the ropes and tossed to a near-by canoe.

They were clever thieves, the captain said. One Indian would talk to the sentinel on duty, while another, at a little distance, would pull the ironwork off and toss it overboard to some friend.

But the Indians sold quantities of furs of all kinds — wolf, bear, fox, deer, marten, and many others, besides the beautiful sea otter skins and robes. The sailors bought more than they needed because the Indians were so eager to sell; and they knew that at least they would be warm in the north.

So when all repairs were made, new spars put in place, fresh water in all the water casks, fresh game and fish on board for a few days, the men rested by their stay on land, and all was ready, the two little ships sailed out of the harbor northward.

After a long time in the north, exploring, they went over on the Asiatic side. There, at Kamschatka, they found Russian fur traders who wanted to buy their furs. As Captain Cook was going to China then, the men and sailors did not need the furs longer and many were sold to the Russians. But the sailors did not know the value of these furs and did not ask high prices. Besides there were no shops in which to spend the money, and they did not know what to do with it. Russian silver roubles seemed of so little value that these pieces of money were kicked about the decks like chips of wood.

Then the ships sailed southward and some time after reached China.

Now the Chinese were just as anxious for those furs as

CAPTAIN COOK'S ADVENTURES

the Indians of Nootka Sound had been for bits of metal. The sailors were amazed at the prices paid to them, and yet very few of the furs were perfect. Some had been used for blankets in their bunks, some were partly worn when they bought them from the natives, and others again had been worn on deck and were spotted with tar and grease. Yet the Chinese bought them.

Now when the sailors learned the high value of the furs, they were eager to return to Nootka Sound for more. They could make their fortunes so easily! They almost mutinied when the officers refused to allow them to go back. But this was a royal exploring expedition, not a fur-trading voyage. So back to London they went, arriving there in 1780.

Captain Cook had been killed at the Sandwich Islands, but the journals of the expedition were published at once. Besides that, the sailors told everyone they met of the great wealth to be secured by trading with the Indians at Nootka Sound — how the Indians would sell furs for bits of metal, and the Chinese would pay high prices for the furs. That was the beginning of the fur trade along the north Pacific coast.

Soon after these journals were published, ships began to go to Nootka Sound for furs. The first were English ships sailing from India and China. Captain Meares, of whom we will hear later, was an English trader from India. Immediately after, Yankee captains began to go from Boston and from other cities on the north Atlantic coast. The Revolutionary War was over and the vessels

[II]

were almost Idle. Captain Robert Gray was one of these New England captains. Both he and Captain Meares had some interesting adventures, as the next few chapters will show.

Chapter III

CAPTAIN MEARES AT NOOTKA SOUND. LAUNCHING OF THE "northwest AMERICA"

ON a bright May day in 1788 two little trading ships sailed Into Nootka Sound. It was just ten years after Captain Cook, with his two exploring ships, had entered this same Sound. All the world by this time knew about this fur trade, and ships were beginning to go up the Northwest Coast of America on trading voyages.

The larger of these two trading ships was commanded by Captain John Meares, though both were owned by his company and under his control. This was the captain's second voyage. His first had been up to Alaska, where he had been caught in the ice all winter and with all his men had come near dying from the cold. But two other English captains had found him there and helped him out.

On his way south in that first voyage, after getting out of the ice, Meares had stopped at Nootka Sound, and again at the Sandwich Islands, as the Hawaiian Islands were then called. At Nootka Sound he found a chief called Co-me-ke-la, a brother of the great chief Maqulnna, who wanted to see the world. Meares took Co-me-ke-la on board. At Oahu he found a Sandwich Island chief,

Tianna, who also wanted to go sight-seeing. So Meares took him also and they sailed away for China.

Now, on this bright May day in 1788, Captain Meares was entering Nootka Sound on his second fur-trading voyage, and Co-me-ke-la and Tianna were both on board; so were many Chinese carpenters. His crew were Lascars from the Asiatic coast. Meares had a curious shipload with him.

They came to anchor In that same Friendly Cove in the Sound where Captain Cook had found shelter ten years before. Maqulnna, the chief, came to welcome him with all his people. Captain Meares went on shore. He said Co-me-ke-la would shortly land. So the Indians all stood about to see this much-traveled chief.

When he did step off shipboard, he was a wonderfully dressed Indian. His tribesmen gasped with astonishment. Co-me-ke-la wore a red military coat, with many brass buttons on It. On his head was a turned-back military hat with a big bright cockade on It. His shirt was linen and his trousers of dark cloth. But the most wonderful thing was this: many scraps of bright copper, gleaming like gold — pieces which he had begged and stolen — were fastened all over that bright red coat. A half sheet of shining copper formed a breastplate. Copper ornaments hung from his ears. His hair was long and black and braided. Fastened to this long black queue were so many copper handles from sauce-pans and frying-pans that he could not bend his head. By their weight and stiffness they bent his head back until his neck ached, and he was

LAUNCHING OF "NORTHWEST AMERICA"

most laughable to look at. Last of all, he had taken out of the cook's galley, after a real fight with the cook, a great steel meat-spit — a spit on which the cook roasted his meats before the open fire. Oh, Co-me-ke-la was a wonderfully dressed chief! The Indians thought him gorgeous. But who shall say what the cook thought, when he looked at the pile of sauce-pans and frying-pans with the handles all broken squarely off, or when he wanted to roast his meats?

Tianna was also finely dressed, but he was only a Sandwich Islander and these Nootka Indians did not care anything about him.

Captain Meares began to build a house, after Chief Maquinna said he might, so the Chinese carpenters, with their funny blue blouses and their long black queues, clambered down off the ship and landed on the island. What Meares really wanted was a trading post, where his men could live and buy furs from the Indians; but as a fur-trading fort it was very different from those which the great fur companies built in after years.

Captain Meares's house had two stories. On the ground floor were to be stored the furs, the rope and sails and ships' stores, besides the food supplies. In the second story were sleeping rooms for the men and for the officers, and also a large dining-room. Then a low barricade of brushwood and logs was put around the house, so that Indians could not surprise it too easily. But of course if they had wanted to fight, the fort would not have stood long.

After the house was finished, the Chinese carpenters were put to work building a small ship, of forty or fifty tons. This was to be a "coaster" — to run into and out of little harbors and creeks along the coast and buy furs at the Indian villages. While they were building this, Captain Meares sent the smaller of his two sailing ships north to explore and buy furs, while he went south in the larger one to do the same thing. Chief Maquinna said he would take care of the carpenters and the few white men left behind.

Coasting slowly southward, on a pleasant June day in 1788, Captain Meares came to the entrance of a great inlet. It stretched far to the eastward, and one could not see land at the other end. It had been seen the year before by Captain Barkeley, who named it, told other captains about it, and wrote about it in his log book. Captain Barkeley thought it might be the Straits of Juan de Fuca; he also called this broad inlet by that name. Both captains thought this inlet must lead either straight across to the Atlantic Ocean, or else connect with rivers that emptied Into that ocean. Look at the map and see if it does this.

This was the very same inlet which Captain Cook had looked for, but could not see. He thought it low marshy ground.

The breeze blew Captain Meares slowly southward, until, near Cape Flattery, he came to a rocky island. Canoes soon were all about them, filled with savagelooking redskins. The faces of these men were grim

LAUNCHING OF "NORTHWEST AMERICA"

enough, but red and black ochre and whale oil made them grimmer yet. Their large canoes held from twenty to thirty men, and each warrior was armed with bow and arrows, the arrows tipped with bits of ragged bone. Their large spears were also tipped with knife-like edges of mussel shell. Yet these savage, red-painted, oily Indians wore superb robes of beautiful sea otter skins, which they refused at all times to sell.

The chief's name was Tatoosh, and his name was given to this rocky island. He came on board, a surly-looking fellow, not at all like the handsome, dignified Indian chiefs of many of the land tribes. Meares made gifts to him. The surly Tatoosh did not even thank the Englishman, let alone returning gift for gift, as was the Indian custom. More than that, he would not allow any of his people to sell furs to the traders.

The captain looked about him. It was a wild scene. This little island was crowded and swarming with Indians, yet aside from fishing there could be no way of getting food. Even roots would not grow on these barren rocks. The surf beat on the rocky shores of the straits, both north and south. Above the dense black forests, which came down almost to the water's edge, rose the snowy ridge of the Olympic Mountains.

Captain Meares sent the longboat to find an anchoring place, as he wanted to trade for sea otter robes. But at once war canoes gathered around the longboat, while Indians tried to jump Into it and steal the small trading articles lying there. They jeered at the sailors, who were so enraged they wanted to fight. But the officer kept them quiet, else perhaps not a man on either the ship or in the longboat might have escaped. The boat was recalled immediately.

But now the breeze had died down. Meares spread his sails and hoped to go farther south, but the sails hung lifeless. The next morning the ship was not four hundred feet from where it had been the night before. Tatoosh and his warriors, four hundred strong, came out in their war canoes and paddled around and around the ship. They seemed to admire it very much, but the captain took pains not to invite any of them on board. Then the Indians began to sing. It was a simple little melody, yet sung in exact time, and with so many voices, in the open air, it was very sweet. It almost made the Englishmen homesick.