# History of Oregon (Bancroft)/Volume 1/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII.
CLOSE OF THE METHODIST RÉGIME.
1840–1841.
As soon as information of the arrival of the Lausanne reached him, McLoughlin sent fresh bread, butter, milk, and vegetables to meet the vessel in the river; and on her arrival at Fort Vancouver, he invited the whole ship's company to take tea with him. The invitation was accepted by Captain Spaulding and several others. On the following day rooms were made ready for the whole fifty-three persons, who were quartered and fed at Fort Vancouver during the several weeks unavoidably spent before places could be assigned them.
Having acquainted himself with the existing condition of the Mission and the territory, Jason Lee allotted to the colonists their several fields of labor. The points selected covered the places likely to be of most importance in the country when the United States should extend jurisdiction over it.
​Before returning from the mouth of the river, Daniel Lee had already accompanied Solomon Smith and wife to Clatsop plains, where were good farming and pasture lands, though not conveniently situated, being eighteen miles from Astoria, and reached by eight miles of rather rough water in Meriwether Bay, or as it is now called, Young Bay, and ten miles of land journey among alternate marshes and sand-dunes. But as Americans foresaw that a city would be built at the entrance of the Columbia, few considerations would weigh against the importance of securing this location. Daniel Lee and Frost were accordingly detailed to erect a station on the Clatsop plains. Lee seems to have preferred staying at the Dalles, and Frost spent most of the summer between the missions and the forts of the fur company, apparently waiting for some one to provide a pleasant place for him.
At length, after his family had been a long time the guests of Mr Birnie at Astoria, Kone was sent as associate, and they set to work with the aid of Solomon Smith to prepare a residence among the Clatsops; but having only Smith to assist them, and Frost being afraid of canoes, bears, savages, and, in a general way, of everything not to his liking, they made little progress, and the autumn rains came on before the green log house was ready for use, or the Mission goods had been brought from Astoria. However, by the time the December storms had set in, with the strong south-west winds and floods of rain, they had comfortable covering; but at night their floor was often covered with sleeping Indians of the filthiest habits, and through the leaky roof the water came down upon their beds. These trials were increased by the difficulty of getting to Astoria for supplies, the marshes being overflowed and the plains a quagmire Fortunately, about Christmas they were reënforced by Calvin Tibbets, who had determined to settle near the sea-coast, and by a negro named Wal​lace, a deserter from the American brig Maryland, then in the river.
With this help the missionaries began to explore for a road to the landing which should be on firm ground; instead of which, they found upon the shore of the Columbia, about half-way between Young Bay and Point Adams, four miles from their house, a convenient place for building; and it was decided that it would be better to remove to this place, where supplies could be brought all the way in boats, than to make a road to the locality first selected. Upon this idea Frost, Kone, Smith, and Tibbets at once commenced preparations for building. By the 10th of February, 1841, a one-story log house, twenty by thirty feet, floored and roofed with rough lumber from the Fort Vancouver mill, was ready for occupation, ​and thither the families and goods were removed. Mrs Kone, who had been ill, was carried in a chair the greater part of the way, while Mrs Frost and the children walked, there being as yet no horses or cattle on the plains, and the distance by the beach, the only practicable route, being seven miles.
As soon as the household goods were transported to the new place, Smith and Tibbets put up cabins near the mission house, and the settlement of Clatsop may be said to have begun, especially as Smith set about cultivating a vegetable garden on the plains as soon as spring opened; and with much difficulty brought down two horses by boat from the Willamette settlements.
During the summer, Frost and Solomon Smith explored a route to the Willamette by way of the coast and the Tillamook country. So far as known, no white men had visited this part of the coast since 1806, when Captain Clarke partially explored it, and the trail from Tillamook Bay to the Willamette Valley was then known to the Indians only. But Smith and Frost, with an Indian guide, reached the settlements in safety at the end of two weeks, and drove back to Clatsop by the same route some cattle and horses, to stock the plains of that excellent grazing region.
In November of this year, in view of his wife's health, Mr Kone applied for permission to return to the states, which was granted, and he took leave of Oregon after a residence of a year and a half, leaving no grand achievement, and harboring in his breast no regrets for his lost occupation. Before leaving, he had been detailed to superintend the mission farm opened at Clatsop, and a house was in process of erection for him, at the original spot chosen by Lee and Frost, on the plains. In 1842 Mr Raymond and family, with Miss Phillips, occupied this house, and took charge of the farm. Frost also removed thither ​in August of this year. Another settler at Clatsop arriving about this time was Peter Brainard, a young man who came from California with Calvin Tibbets, who brought thence a small band of cattle which was driven to Clatsop plains. This was the second cattle expedition in which Tibbets had been concerned, and it added much to the prosperity of that portion of the country. Tibbets and Smith now built themselves houses on the plains, which with the farming improvements gave the place an air of permanent occupation.
In February 1843, Frost requested and received his discharge from the Mission. He was suffering from a disease of the throat, which unfitted him for exposure, besides which Mrs Frost, a kindly and cheerful woman by nature, was much broken down and discouraged. They sailed for California and the island of Oahu, August 14, 1843, on the bark Diamond, Captain Fowler, of Scarborough, England, leaving J. L. Parrish as principal of the Clatsop mission.
The actual mission work performed among the Clatsops was small, for what has been said of the Willamette people is true of the Clatsops, nothing could exceed their degradation. When Frost and Kone had been long enough among them to discover their character, they were glad to avoid them, though when they came in the way, which was seldom, they were instructed for conscience' sake.
During the previous year a mission station had been begun near Fort Nisqually, on Puget Sound, by Willson. And now Richmond and family are sent thither, Miss Clark accompanying them. It is meet that Miss Clark and Willson should marry; therefore they marry. The site of the Nisqually mission was well chosen for an American settlement north of the ​Columbia, particularly if the primary object was to curb the pretensions of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company.
A comfortable log house was ready for the reception of Richmond's family, and a tract of land was claimed on the creek between the fort and the sound. The place had many attractions, lying on the borders of a beautiful prairie skirted with flowering wild shrubbery, and divided from the sound by a belt of magnificent timber. In the vicinity was a picturesque lake where Wilkes celebrated the Fourth of July in 1841, and gave it the name of American Lake, which it still bears.
The neighborhood of the fort, and of the large Steilacoom farm, held for sheep-raising by an Englishman named Heath, under a lease from the Hudson's Bay Company, redeemed the spot from the loneliness and savagery which made the Clatsop plains at first such an uninviting field. But for agricultural purposes the plain on which the mission was situated was almost worthless, being a bed of gravel covered with a light soil, soon exhausted, and requiring more rain to bring a crop to maturity than fell there during the summer.
It was not the want of success in farming which caused Richmond to ask for his discharge at the end of two years; but because the prospect of usefulness among the natives would not warrant his remaining as a missionary, and he had not enlisted to spend his time and talents as a farmer. His family had suffered from the acclimatizing process, aggravated by the inconveniences of their rude manner of living; and on the 1st of September, 1842, he left for home in the American vessel Chenamas, bound for Newburyport, and the Nisqually mission was not long afterward ​abandoned. In the same vessel sailed Mr Whitcomb and family of the Willamette mission, his health being so broken that it was doubtful if he would live to finish the voyage.
At the Dalles, Lee, Brewer, and Mrs Perkins continued to labor at mission work and farming for three years after the arrival of the great reënforcement; but in August 1843, Daniel Lee with his wife went east in the same vessel with Frost. At the same time Dr Babcock dissolved his connection with the Mission, and went with his family on a voyage to the Hawaiian Islands. Toward the close of the summer of 1844 Perkins, after Shepard the most faithful missionary of the Methodists in Oregon, also returned to the United States, and the station at the Dalles, now no longer by any construction worthy to be called a mission, was placed in charge of the Rev. A. F. Waller.
Mrs Shepard, after a year or more of widowhood, married J. L. Whitcomb, superintendent of the mission farms, a worthy man. Mrs Leslie, who had had two daughters since her arrival in the country, lingered in a feeble condition until February 1841, when she died, leaving to her husband the care of five girls, the oldest of whom was fourteen. Had the missionaries been as well acquainted with the needs of their bodies as they were with those of their souls, it would have been better for themselves, their families, and their undertakings altogether. But they knew no more of hygiene, and its influence on the human spirits, than most other excellent people of the same day and cultivation, and they suffered accordingly.
Let us now return to the parent Mission, and follow its fortune from the year 1840. It was soon evident to the mind of Jason Lee that a better locality than French Prairie, for both missionary and colonization purposes, might be found. The French Canadians still owed allegiance to Fort Vancouver. A society of ​low, illiterate half-breeds was not the best soil in which to plant American institutions. Let him have something apart from all the world, plenty of room, plenty of agricultural land, with some commercial facilities if possible, and he would clear the ground for a commonwealth of intelligent freemen such as God would delight to prosper. If there were another Columbia River that he might occupy like McLoughlin, placing the natives under tribute, temporal and spiritual, holding the key to the interior by means of a metropolis on the bank of a stream into which ocean vessels might easily enter and depart, with a nobler ambition than to collect the skins of wild beasts, with loftier aims than to keep the country and its inhabitants wild and primitive, and stay the hand of progress—in such a case, on this western shore he might rival Raleigh, Smith, Penn, or any of the great founders of empire on the eastern seaboard.
But unfortunately the River Umpqua was not like the Columbia; it offered no safe refuge for the fleets of nations, no site suitable for a commercial metropolis. It is true, there were savages present, however averse to conversion, and these might serve as capital in enlisting money and recruits among the religious people of the east. But something more than money and recruits was needed if success was to attend his efforts; there must be good land, and pleasant surroundings, and all the conditions stimulating to progress. Thus in pursuance of the grand scheme, more and more possessing him, prior to his departure for the east Jason Lee had selected his position where there was land enough, and all other absolute requirements of the ambitious superintendent, the fine harbor, the magnificent river, alone forgotten by nature, being wanting.
The spot thus chosen was a large and fertile plain, south of the original site, and only ten miles distant. The place was called by the natives Chemeketa, that is to say, 'Here we Rest.' In front, on the west, ​flowed the Willamette between banks verdant with lowland vegetation. Beyond rose the beautiful Polk county hills, while to the south-east was the line of the Waldo heights, whose softer crests melted into the horizon. On the east a forest stretched away toward the purple shadows of the Cascade Range, overtopped here and there by a snowy peak; groves of fir and oak at intervals studded the great plain toward the north. A stream furnished mill privileges; and the whole was central to the great Valley Willamette. The late reënforcement, except the portion detailed elsewhere, as hereinbefore narrated, had been reserved for service at French Prairie, and to his new and charming Place of Rest, on his return from the east, Jason Lee immediately removed his people. Between two thousand and three thousand acres were selected, and a part put under cultivation, but owing to the scarcity of men accustomed to farm labor and to the inexperience of those present, they were obliged to leave the larger part untouched. A mill was greatly needed, and nearly the whole summer was consumed in getting milling and farming machinery on the ground. And when the mill was there, the missionaries could not put it together. The stones were set running the wrong way, and when at work threw out all the wheat. The sagacious superintendent had ​feared some such results from the employment of preacher-mechanics, and had insisted on bringing out a majority of laymen; but the board had thought preachers were wanted for missionary work, and missionary work was their first consideration, while the dominant idea in the mind of Jason Lee was now material development.
As soon as possible the manual-labor school was removed to the new location, that the Indian boys might be made useful on the farm. This school now numbered twenty-five, and the colonists were too busy to instruct these young natives, had they so desired.
It was impossible to complete the work of removal the first year, or even the second, or until a saw-mill should be in operation, it being the intention to build larger and better houses than those at French Prairie. Of those at the latter place the largest and the best was the hospital, now completed, a frame edifice two stories high, with a double piazza, in which the Mission steward, Abernethy, and three other families, were comfortably domiciled.
After starting the new settlement of Chemeketa plain, which went by the name of "The Mill," for want of a better, Jason Lee set out to select a location among the Umpquas, intending even yet to make a settlement at the mouth of their river. In company with White and Hines he proceeded without difficulty or adventure as far as Fort Umpqua, at the junction of Elk Creek and the Umpqua River, where they were entertained at the house of Gagnier, agent in charge ​of the fort From this point White returned to the Mission, and Lee and Hines continued their journey toward the coast.
Hines, who is the journalist of this expedition, particularly mentions that Gagnier was unwilling that they should go alone amongst the coast tribes, telling them of Jedediah Smith's adventure near the mouth of the river. It happened, however, that while the subject was under discussion, a party of natives arrived at the fort from the coast, in charge of a brother of Gagnier's Indian wife; and Lee proposed that this fellow should go with them as guide, and to explain the object of their visit. It was finally agreed that the wife of Gagnier should also be of the party; and ​with these two guides and interpreters Lee and Hines proceeded.
The observations upon the river, the scenery, and the facilities for settlement in Hines' journal are clear and to the point. No difficulties were found in reaching their destination, the natives seeming well disposed toward their visitors, who held their devotional services with the bands among whom they encamped, and found them easily impressed, and apt at imitating the forms of devotion.
On arriving at the coast, where were three small villages, they pitched their tent at a little distance from the larger one, and through their interpreter asked an audience. Mrs Gagnier delivered the address of Lee, explaining the character and purpose of his mission to them, and asked for an expression of their wishes in the matter.
Hines says the natives appeared solemn and showed a desire to learn; but he hardly dared hope they understood much, though they appeared interested. The prayers impressed them, and the singing of Heber's missionary hymn drew fixed attention. Lee promised them a teacher in the following summer, and the two missionaries then returned to Fort Umpqua, where they found Gagnier much alarmed for their safety.
A chief of the tribe at the fort had seen a patent ​shot-pouch which Lee wore about his neck, and believed it a bad medicine with which he intended to kill them all. Gagnier's wife knew this, and with her brother kept watch through the whole night, never permitting the camp-fire to go out, or her eyelids to close. It was not strange that these savages should be alarmed at the shot-pouch. Like the tribes of the Columbia, they had suffered from such fatal diseases since white men came as to have been nearly swept from the earth. Hines tells us that all he could obtain knowledge of in that part of the country were no more than three hundred and seventy-five souls, and expresses his conviction that the doom of extinction is over this wretched race; and that the hand of Providence was removing them to give place to a people more worthy of so beautiful and fertile a country—a doctrine comforting to the missionary who fails to perceive its unfair reflection on Providence.
With such convictions, it was scarcely to be expected that a mission should prosper anywhere; so after a hasty exploration of the Umpqua Valley, the missionaries returned home, and the subject of a station in that quarter was dropped.
Soon after his return from the Umpqua country, a misunderstanding arose between Jason Lee and Elijah White. The reason of the rupture remains somewhat of a mystery. White himself said it was an honest difference of opinion in relation to the best way of carrying on the Mission work. The truth is, ​that White, who was prone to take the upper hand, led Leslie, the superintendent of the work, to spend more money in building the hospital than was approved of by Lee, who had other uses for the money. The disagreement ended in the resignation of White, who took passage for home in the Lausanne, in the summer of 1840. As a penalty for being too much influenced by White, Leslie was left without an appointment, and consequently without a salary, when the next annual meeting of the society came round. The affair was unfortunate for the superintendent. White presented himself to the board, and pleaded his cause, which resulted in having his expenses paid, though he was censured for deserting his post without leave from the board. Then he quietly resumed his former practice. Letters received by the Lausanne from Richmond, Kone, and others, comfirmed the unfavorable impression which White was able to give of the superintendent's course.
In these dissensions, which arose soon after the assignment of the reënforcement to their several places, Hines, Waller, Abernethy, and Parrish, with the laymen employed in the Willamette Valley and in the more favorable locations, appeared on the side of the superintendent, while the others arrayed themselves against him. Probably dissatisfaction with their circumstances had much to do with this ill feeling. Some complained that they were not allowed to visit the Mission in the Willamette, or their missionary predecessors, before being sent to the wilderness to hew out uncomfortable homes. But Lee knew the value of time, and the necessity of providing shelter and getting established before winter, and had cause, besides, to fear that if they saw the Willamette Valley they might not go so willingly to another quarter. The misunderstandings which disturbed ​the harmony of the Methodist colonists arose to a great degree from the unavoidable trials of a new settlement in the hands of inexperienced persons.
It does not appear, from anything discovered in the writings of the missionaries, that Jason Lee told his associates of his correspondence with agents of the government. Had the disaffected members of the Mission known that they had been used to carry out a colonization project, some expression of their resentment on finding themselves the victims of so worldly an artifice would somewhere appear. But the colonization scheme is never alluded to as a cause of their disappointment.
White having resigned, Babcock was called from the Dalles to the Willamette, where the usual summer sickness was disabling the Mission. Chills and fever, ending in a low typhoid, prostrated the white population and carried off the natives.
​About the 1st of September of this year, Cornelius Rogers, who had removed from the Presbyterian missions of eastern Oregon to the Willamette Valley, married Satira Leslie, a girl of fifteen years, eldest daughter of David Leslie. The marriage took place under circumstances at once trying and romantic. Mr Leslie, having lost both his wife and his salary as a member of the Mission, was much concerned about his future, and thinking that in some way a voyage to the Islands, where he would place his elder daughters in school, would help to settle matters for him, made arrangements to embark with his family in the brig Chenamas, the same vessel in which Richmond, Whitcomb, and Bailey, with other families, left Oregon in September 1842. Rogers' proposal came at the last moment, and the marriage took place on board the Chenamas; and it was there arranged that the two older girls should accompany their father, while the two younger should remain in the country with their married sister.
Rogers returned to the Mission with his wife and the two children, and prepared to remove to the Willamette Falls. During the winter Raymond arrived from Clatsop to procure supplies for that station, which were to be carried in a large canoe belonging to the Mission, and in which Rogers determined to embark for the falls, with his wife and her youngest sister. Dr White, who had lately returned to Oregon, and Nathaniel Crocker, of Lansingville, New York, who ​had also lately arrived in the country, being desirous of seeing the mouth of the Columbia, decided to accompany Raymond to Clatsop.
A sad calamity awaited them. The Willamette was running with great force, the winter rains having swollen its flood. On coming to the rapids above the falls the passengers all left the canoe, which was thereupon let down with a rope to a point near the landing, where Mr and Mrs Rogers, Aurelia Leslie, White, and Crocker, with four Indians, again entered it. Raymond and three Indians remained on shore to hold the line while the canoe dropped down to the proper landing. It passed this by a short distance, and was brought alongside a large log, used as a landing. As White touched the shore with one foot he endeavored to hold the canoe with the other, but the slight impetus given it by his first movement, and the force of the current catching the bow, which was up stream, threw the canoe out into the river, which was moving on toward the cateract with resistless power.
It was in vain that those on shore endeavored to cling to the rope. They were drawn into the water, and forced to relinquish their hold to save themselves. Then the freed craft darted like an arrow toward the fatal verge; a cry of anguish went up from the doomed, the plunge was made, and five white persons and two Indians descended into the rocky vortex from which none of them ever issued alive. Only two of the bodies were recovered, those of Rogers and Crocker. Two of the Indians sprang into the water when the danger was first perceived, and gained the shore.
This event occurred February 4, 1843, and threw a gloom over the whole Mission colony. The previous December James Olley, local preacher and carpenter to the Mission, while endeavoring to raft some logs to the mill, to make lumber for finishing his house, had been drowned in the Willamette. The loss of life by ​sickness and accident in the Mission circle in the space of five years was thirteen, ten being in the flush of youth and prime of life, while three of them were children. When to these is added the mortality among the Indians and half-breeds, the impression might be that the climate was deadly. Yet the climate of Oregon has since been proven exceedingly salubrious; and to the causes of disease already enumerated, there seems nothing more to add except the theory advanced by some writers, that a disease when newly introduced into a country is most virulent.
Meanwhile the superintendent is perfecting his plans for the foundation of a Methodist state. At the first annual meeting of the Methodist society in May 1841, a committee is appointed to select a location for the manual-labor school, which is chosen not far from the Mission mills, on the southern border of the Chemeketa plain. Here a building costing ten thousand dollars is erected, in which an Indian school is kept for about nine months, beginning in the autumn of 1842, which comes to a close through the causes long tending in this direction.
The education of the children of the missionaries and settlers, now twenty in number, is a subject more pleasing to contemplate than the education of the natives. On the 17th of January, 1842, a meeting is held at the house of Jason Lee, who is now living at the new settlement, to prepare for the establishment of an educational institution for the benefit of white children, and a committee appointed to call a public meeting and prepare the way; the committee to consist of J. L. Babcock, Gustavus Hines, and David Leslie, the last named having returned from the Islands in April, by the fur company's vessel Llama, Captain Nye. The meeting is held on the 1st of February following, at the old mission house on ​French Prairie, and it is decided to begin at once to lay the foundation of this institution. The name selected is the Oregon Institute; and the first board of trustees are Jason Lee, David Leslie, Gustavus Hines, J. L. Parrish, L. H. Judson, George Abernethy, Alanson Beers, Hamilton Campbell, and J. L. Babcock.
Present at this meeting is the Rev. Harvey Clark, an independent Presbyterian missionary, who is then living on the Tualatin plains, and about whom more will be said by and by. This gentleman exhibits much interest in education, and is put upon a committee with Lee, Hines, Leslie, and Babcock to select a location. Their choice falls on a beautiful situation, at the southern end of French Prairie; but owing to a deficiency of water, this spot is abandoned for a plain known as the Wallace Prairie, about three miles north from the mill, on an eminence half a mile south of the farm of one Baptiste Delcour, and near a fine spring of water.
Having Proceeded thus far, a prospectus is drawn up on the 9th of March, and a constitution and by-laws on the 15th. Soon $4,000 is pledged, in sums ​ranging from $10 to $500, all but $350 being subscribed by the missionaries. On the 26th of October it is resolved at a meeting of the Methodist society of Oregon, to make the pledge required by the constitution of the proposed institution of learning, and assume proprietorship of the property in the hands of the board, which is done. A building is commenced soon after, under the superintendence of W. H. Gray, formerly of the Presbyterian mission; and in the course of the year following $3,000 has been expended in its construction.
There was one more scheme in which the superintendent of the Oregon missions was deeply interested, but to which he did not care publicly and personally to commit himself. This was no less than the acquisition for the Methodist colony of the water-power at the falls of the Willamette. To this place, as we have seen, John McLoughlin held the prior claim, and the unsettled condition of the Oregon boundary allowed him to maintain it; but from this the Methodists were plotting to drive him, standing ready to take his place when he should have been forced to abandon it.
It was a plan worthy of persons who, professing piety, had turned the sanctified gold of their supporters into personal profit.
Their intention was made known by report to McLoughlin soon after the arrival of the great reënforcement. He at once notified Lee of facts with which every one was already well aware, namely, that possession had been taken of the place by him in 1829, at which time, and since, improvements had been made, consisting of several houses and a ​mill-race. Furthermore, he declared his intention to hold the property as a private claim when the boundary should be finally determined. The ground claimed was "from the upper end of the falls across to the Clackamas River, and down where the Clackamas falls into the Willamette, including the whole point of land, and the small island in the falls on which the portage was made."
The correspondence appears to have been begun in July 1840, soon after Waller had been sent to establish a mission at the falls, in which he was generously assisted by McLoughlin, who gave him permission to erect a house out of some timbers that had been previously squared by himself for a mill. After giving the notice mentioned, McLoughlin concluded his letter with these words: "This is not to prevent your building the store, as my object is merely to establish my claim. "
A satisfactory reply was returned, and Waller proceeded in the erection of a building, divided into two apartments, one of which served as a dwelling and the other as a store-room for the goods of the Mission. And yet Hines tells us that Waller was left without an appointment by Lee in 1840, in order that he might assist "in the erection of mills on the Wallamette River."
For some reason no mill was begun at the falls at this time; but in 1841 Felix Hathaway, in the employment of the Mission, began to build a house on the island, at which McLoughlin again took alarm and remonstrated with Waller in person. At this interview Waller, without directly denying the intention of the Mission to hold the site at the falls, quieted the apprehensions of McLoughlin by stating that he had taken a claim on the Clackamas River below McLoughlin's claim. At the same time Hathaway desisted from his building operations on the island, ​while McLoughlin himself put up a small house, and matters ran smoothly until the autumn of 1842, when a report was again brought to McLoughlin that Waller intended to dispute his claim at the falls; but on speaking to Lee on the subject, the superintendent assured him that Waller had no such design.
By this time, however, McLoughlin had caught the drift of missionary operations in Oregon, and began again improving his claim, having it surveyed and laid off in lots, some of which he gave and some he sold to persons who arrived in the country that season. The first to select a lot in Oregon City, as the site of the first town in Oregon was named by its founder, was Stephen H. L. Meek, a mountain man who had desired to settle in the Willamette Valley. When Meek proceeded to select a spot on which to build, he was interrupted by Waller, who asserted that he claimed thereabout a mile square, within which limits building-lots were at his sole disposal.
Informed by Meek of Waller's position, McLoughlin appealed to Lee, who replied, modifying his former denial of such intentions by alleging that he had only stated that he understood Waller to say that he set up no claim in opposition to McLoughlin's; but that if the doctor's claim failed, and the Mission put in no claim, he should consider his right paramount to that of any other; adding "from what I have since heard, I am inclined to think I did not understand Mr Waller correctly, but I am not certain it is so. You will here allow me to say, that a citizen of the United States by becoming a missionary does not renounce any civil or political right. I cannot control any man in these matters, though I had not the most distant idea, when I stationed Mr Waller there, that he would set up a private claim to the land."
According to the recommendation of Lee, McLoughlin next sought an interview with Waller, who reiterated his former assertion that he set up no claim ​in opposition to him, but should, in case he withdrew, be the next claimant. He further requested leave to keep possession of some land he had cleared, and allow some persons to whom he had given lots to retain them; a proposition to which McLoughlin agreed, provided an equal amount of land should be given to him out of Waller's claim adjoining, to which Waller consented. But before the survey was completed, Waller retracted, saying, before two or three witnesses, "Do you keep yours, I will keep mine. But the next day he had again altered his mind, and wished to make the exchange. When McLoughlin declined, Waller returning several times to the subject, the doctor at length paid him for clearing the land in question, and again the matter rested. In this transaction Lee, thinking the charge made by Waller extortionate, appeared in his character of superintendent, and refused to accept more than half the amount demanded, the negotiations being conducted through McLoughlin's agent, Hastings, an American lawyer, who came to Oregon in company with White, two months previously.
Waller's vacillating course could only be explained upon the hypothesis that he was endeavoring to hold the falls claim for the Mission, and the land at the Clackamas for himself, and was unwilling to trust the Mission to make good the land he had agreed to exchange with McLoughlin. Meantime the purpose of the missionaries was being developed by the formation of the Island Milling Company in 1841, three fourths of whose members belonged to the Mission and the remainder were settlers, who were allowed to take that amount of stock in order that it could be said that the enterprise was a public one, and not a missionary speculation. But had it in reality been to benefit the settlements, a site thirty or forty miles ​up the valley would have been preferable. In October 1842, the Island Milling Company had erected a saw-mill on the island part of McLoughlin's claim, intending to follow it as early as possible with a grist-mill.
McLoughlin now became satisfied that it was the intention of the missionaries to seize his land, and deprive him of his rights. Hence to save his interests he built a saw-mill on the river bank near by, and gave notice that a grist-mill would soon be added. Indignant at what they chose to term the arbitrary proceedings of the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly, a petition to congress was framed. This was done by George Abernethy, who kept the Mission store at Oregon City, and from notes furnished chiefly by Robert Shortess, a convert of the Mission before Lee had turned his attention to colonization and self-aggrandizement. The memorial is known as the Shortess petition, for Abernethy was unwilling to have his own name connected with it, and to avoid this it was copied by Albert E. Wilson, employed in an American trading-house established in Oregon City in 1842.
This petition was of considerable length, and set ​forth the manner in which the British fur company opposed American enterprises. The futile Wyeth attempt to establish trade on the Columbia was cited, and the failure of the Island Milling Company to drive McLoughlin from the possession of his claim; the milling company had commenced operations on the island before being informed by McLoughlin that the land was claimed by him; so they affirmed. McLoughlin held a number of claims in the Willamette Valley, and American settlers feared to let him know they had taken up land lest their supplies should be cut off Besides, a house had been erected at the falls by order of Mr Slacum, to secure the claim for him.
McLoughlin was further charged with refusing to allow the fur company's vessels to become common carriers between the Hawaiian Islands and the Columbia River, and with paying one Hastings, a lawyer, five dollars for drawing a deed of a lot in Oregon City. McLoughlin had no right, they said, to the land he granted or sold, and could not have any until congress gave it to him. They also complained that United States officers of distinction were entertained at Fort Vancouver with lavish attentions, and even a credit was granted to the sub-Indian agent, then in the country, furnishing him with funds and supplies to carry on his business.
The real motive of the memorial was betrayed in that paragraph which complained that when the milling company had, with much exertion, built a saw-mill at the falls, McLoughlin had done the same with ease; and asserting that now competition had been introduced in the lumber and flour trade, their business would be practically worthless, because McLoughlin would be sure to undersell them. To cure these evils and others, they asked congress to take immediate action, and that good and wholesome laws should be enacted for the territory.
​The petition was signed by about sixty-five persons, half of them not having been more than six months in the country. The signers knew little of the underhand war waged on McLoughlin by the missionaries and those whom they controlled in the Willamette Valley; they affixed their names without caring to know the tenor of the document, and because they were asked to do so.
While neither Jason Lee nor Abernethy signed the petition, for which they were ashamed to become responsible, nevertheless their influence was felt. Shortess, having secured signers enough to present a respectable showing, made a forced voyage to overtake William C. Sutton, then on his way to the States. He came up with him at the Cascades, and delivered to him that absurd document which afterward figured in the reports of congress as the voice of the people, to the great annoyance of McLoughlin. The doctor ​addressed a letter to Shortess, April 13, 1843, asking for a copy of the petition circulated by him, and which he was informed contained charges injurious to himself and the company he represented; but Shortess refused his request. Such were the methods by which the members of the Methodist Mission exhibited their hostility to the man who had pursued one unvarying course of kindness to them and their countrymen for eight years, with no other cause than their desire to deprive him of a piece of property which they coveted. "As might well be imagined," says one, "many of the brethren fell into temptation after buffeting Satan some years in Oregon."
White was the only one who openly protested against this treatment. He wished to prevent the petition from being sent, and that it might be partly deprived of its force, wrote to the United States commissioner of Indian affairs that had any one not connected with the fur company been at half the pains and expense to establish a claim at the Willamette falls, there would have been few to object. Some who signed the petition with too little care, or under the influence of its framers, years afterward wholly repudiated the sentiments therein contained. The constant defamations with which he was pursued under the name of patriotism, for years after the arrival of the great Methodist reënforcement, must have warped any character less strong and generous than McLoughlin's, but with him it was not suffered to change his settled policy of benevolence toward all men, though it sometimes betrayed him into exhibitions of resentment, or of helpless protest against ​the devices of his enemies. Little of that gratitude did he receive which is the heartiest praise to man. the holiest prayer to heaven. "Nil homine terra pejus ingratio creato," says Ansonius. Well might the settlers on the Willamette have profited by the jurisprudence of Lilliput where ingratitude was a capital crime. Informed of the accusations brought against him and the Hudson's Bay Company in the petition of 1843, he exclaimed indignantly: "Really, really, the citizens are themselves the best judges if we did so or not, and I am certain if they are so lost to a sense of what is due to truth as to make such an assertion, it is useless for me to say anything." "I am astonished," he adds, "that there should be one person in the country to say such a thing of me."
The milling company continued to make improvements upon the island part of McLoughlin's claim, while Abernethy, Waller, and others still resided on the site of the town. In the autumn of 1843 there arrived the first large immigration overland, of families, many of whom remained at Oregon City acquiring building-lots and making improvements. This aggregation of people and means at this place increased the determination of the missionaries to secure the land to themselves, and alarmed McLoughlin still more lest they should succeed.
Among the immigrants was one John Ricord, of tall, commanding person, insinuating address, and some legal knowledge, all shown off conspicuously by personal vanity. He signed himself "Counsel of the Supreme Court of the United States," whatever that might mean, and was both admired and laughed at by his fellow-travellers.
​The question of legality of claims at Oregon City was every day growing more important to the contestants. They now took the ground that McLoughlin as a British subject was precluded from holding land by preëmption. Thereupon McLoughlin consulted Ricord on points of American law, but found him unwilling to give advice. Not long after, however, he visited Vancouver in company with Jason Lee and made a proposition in writing to the following effect: He would become McLoughlin's legal adviser, provided the doctor should so alter his preemption boundaries as to exclude the island part of his claim, on which had been erected the saw and grist mills of the Island Milling Company, conceding to them as much water as was necessary for their mills; that Waller should be secured in the ultimate title to two lots in Oregon City, already in his possession, and other lots, not to exceed five acres, to be chosen by him from lots unsold; and that Jason Lee should be in like manner secured in the possession of certain lots in Oregon City not described or numbered, to be held for the Methodist Episcopal Mission; all of which conditions he considered necessary to an amicable arrangement.
For his services in attempting to establish McLoughlin's preëmption rights, Ricord demanded the sum of three hundred pounds sterling, to which was added the request that the fact should not be made public that he had been retained by McLoughlin, and the suggestion that some person not directly connected with the Hudson's Bay Company should be appointed as McLoughlin's agent at Oregon City. Should these terms not be complied with, he should proceed, at the earliest opportunity, to the Hawaiian Islands. "These terms of Ricord's," says McLoughlin, "appeared to propose an amicable arrangement, when all the sacrifices were to be made by me." Ten days were asked in which to consider this proposition, at the expiration of which McLoughlin wrote to Ricord ​that some of his proposals were inadmissible, as he could not dispossess certain persons of lots already deeded, to give them to others; and that he did not see how he could accept his services on the conditions offered. To this Ricord replied that it was the only proposal he could make in respect to his friends at the falls, and affecting to regret the circumstance for McLoughlin's sake and the sake of the peace of the community, expressed the hope that the matter might be arranged by an interview with Waller.
Soon afterward McLoughlin offered to compromise, by yielding to the Mission eight lots for church and school purposes in Oregon City, to be chosen out of unoccupied property, the Mission to restore certain lots held by them which were necessary to his business, on one of which Abernethy was living; he offered to pay for Abernethy's house whatever it should be adjudged to be worth by five commissioners, two chosen by the Mission, two by himself, and the fifth by the four. In addition, he would allow the Mission to retain one lot on which they had built a store, and one on which Waller's house stood; these lots to revert to him in case the Mission should be withdrawn, by his paying for the improvements; or he would take them and pay for the improvements, giving two lots in closer proximity to the eight lots offered, in their place.
He proposed also to permit the milling company to retain possession of the island until the boundary question between the United States and Great Britain was settled, when if his claim should be allowed, he would purchase their property on the island at the price agreed upon by five commissioners, or sell them the island in the same way, the choice to be optional with him which course to pursue.
The proposal here given was made to Ricord and Lee at Fort Vancouver, the latter expressing himself satisfied with it, as being fair and liberal, but regretting ​that he had no power to treat for Waller, always the Mission superintendent's most convenient scape-goat.
I would not present Jason Lee as a bad man, or as a good man becoming bad, or as worse now while tricking his eastern directors and cheating McLoughlin out of his land, than while preaching at Fort Hall or seeking the salvation of the dying Indian children. He was the self-same person throughout, and grew wiser and better if anything as the years added experience to his life. He was endeavoring to make the most of himself, to do the best for his country, whether laboring in the field of piety or patriotism; and it on abandoning the missionary work and engaging in that of empire-building he fell into ways called devious by business men, it must be attributed to that specious line of education which leads to the appropriation of the Lord's earth by ministers of the Lord, in so far as the power is given them. In all things he sought to do the best, and he certainly was doing better work, work more beneficial to mankind, and more praise-worthy, as colonizer, than he had formerly achieved as missionary. He had passed through his five years of silence during which time Pythagoras had been washing out his mind and clearing his brain of rubbish, and being now in a position to learn something, he was fast learning it.
While pretending so much concern over what he termed the obduracy of Waller, he was plotting deeply ​to accomplish more than Waller, as his secret agent, ever aimed at. He had determined to again visit the United States, to secure, if possible, from the government a grant, conditioned on the sovereignty of the United States, of all the tracts of land settled upon as missions, which would include Oregon City, and a gift of $5,000 in money toward the endowment of the Oregon Institute. With this purpose in view he had resigned the presidency of the board of directors of the institute in September, and had offered his services as an agent for the collection of money in the States, with which to furnish chemical and other apparatus to the school, an offer gladly accepted by the other members of the board.
The visit to Fort Vancouver, before mentioned, was while he, in company with Ricord, and Hines and family, was on his way to the mouth of the river to embark in the fur company's bark Columbia, Captain Humphries, for the Sandwich Islands. Before leaving the Willamette Valley, Ricord had penned a caveat against McLoughlin, in which he called Waller his client, and in which McLoughlin was warned that measures had been taken at Washington to substantiate Waller's claim to Oregon City as the actual preemptor upon six hundred and forty acres of land at that place; and that any sales which McLoughlin might make thereafter would be regarded by his client and the government as fraudulent.
Waller founded his claim on the grounds of citizenship of the United States, prior occupancy of the land, and improvement. He denied McLoughlin's claim for the following reasons: that he was an alien, and so not eligible; that he was officer of a "foreign corporate monopoly;" that he did not reside and never had resided on the land; that while he pretended to hold it for himself, he was in fact holding it for a foreign corporate body, as was proved by the employment of individuals of that company as his agents; and as no ​corporate body in the United States could hold land by preëmption, so no foreign corporation could do it; and lastly, that if his claim had any validity at all, it arose more than two years subsequent to Waller's.
In addition to the caveat prepared for McLoughlin, Ricord framed an address to the citizens of Oregon, in which he counselled them to resist the aggressions of McLoughlin, and talked grandiloquently of the rights of his client; going so far into this missionary enterprise as to declare that he had read a correspondence, which never took place, between McLoughlin and Waller, in which the latter asserts his rights "in modest and firm terms," offering, however, to relinquish them if McLoughlin would comply "with certain very reasonable and just conditions." These documents had been prepared, and left in the hands of the missionaries, to be made public only when Lee and Ricord were embarked for the Islands.
It was on the 3d of February, 1844, that they sailed, and the caveat was served on McLoughlin on the 22d. Lee was well informed of all these things, when he earnestly and with every appearance of sincerity expressed the hope that Waller would agree to McLoughlin's proposition before mentioned; he also drew a promise from McLoughlin to take no measures to dispossess the Mission at the falls before his return from the United States; which having obtained, he departed, satisfied that he would return armed with an assurance from the government of the United States, which would bring heavy loss on McLoughlin, and triumph to himself and the Methodist Mission.
​As to the actual merits of the opposing claims to Oregon City, the facts on the side of McLoughlin were these: The improvements at the falls of the Willamette were begun in 1829 for the Hudson's Bay Company. But the company objected to the location of a mill south of the Columbia River, for the reason that in the settlement of the boundary question it would almost certainly be found on the American side of the line; for at that time, and for many years thereafter, it was understood from the official announcements of the British government that England would insist only on the country north of the Columbia being conceded to her in the future boundary treaty, and that no claim would be made of any territory south of the Columbia, in Oregon.
McLoughlin, however, who had a fondness for farming, after agreeing to settle some of the released servants of the company in the Willamette Valley, which he foresaw would be a great wheat-raising country, determined to build the mill with his own means for himself; but being strenuously opposed by some of his friends in the company, he decided about 1838 to relinquish the land and the water-power at the falls to his step-son, Thomas McKay. He finally yielded to his own strong inclination in favor of the place, however, and determined to keep it, putting up a house to replace those destroyed by the Indians, and openly claiming a preëmption right to the land, keeping himself informed of the proceedings of the United States congress in the matter of Oregon lands.
Linn's land bill, which was suggested by Jason Lee himself, had no clause preventing foreigners of any nation from becoming citizens of Oregon, but bestowed ​on every white male inhabitant six hundred and forty acres of land. McLoughlin accordingly had that amount surveyed to himself in 1842, and although Linn's bill never passed the house, he with the Americans confidently believed that this, or some similar law, would follow the settlement of the boundary of Oregon, and he intended to take advantage of it. The opposition he met with in his endeavor to hold his claim occasioned increased expenditure. The improvements made by both claimants drew settlers to Oregon City, and made it more valuable as a town site. Strictly speaking, neither McLoughlin nor Waller had any legal right to the land in question. But in justice, and by a law of common usage among the settlers of Oregon, McLoughlin's claim, being the elder, was the stronger and the better claim. His right to it would be decided by the future action of congress. The greatest difficulty he experienced was that of meeting the untruthful representations made to the government, and the efforts of his enemies to mould public opinion in Oregon. As Ricord has already given the points in Waller's case, they need not be repeated here.
Lee and Ricord were within four days' sail of Honolulu when the truth was made known to McLoughlin concerning their covert proceedings. But that mill of the gods which slowly grinds into dust all human ambitions held Jason Lee between the upper and the nether millstone at that identical moment, though he knew it not. On reaching Honolulu, and before he stepped ashore, he was met by Dr Babcock with the intelligence that he had been superseded in the superintendency of the Oregon Mission by the Rev. George Gary, of the Black River conference, New York, who was then on his way to Oregon to investigate Lee's career since 1840, and if he thought proper, to close the affairs of the Mission. The reports of White, Frost, Kone, Richmond, and others had taken effect, ​and an inquiry was to be instituted into the financial affairs of the Mission in Oregon.
When Lee left Oregon it was with the intention of waiting at the Islands for a vessel going to New York or Boston, and with the expectation that Mr and Mrs Hines and his little daughter would accompany him. He had been superintendent for ten years, and just at the time when the position seemed most important to him he was to be deposed. For a while he was staggered, but after the first revulsion of feeling he determined to make at least a protest. After consultation with Hines and Babcock, it was settled that they should return at the earliest opportunity to Oregon, and do what they could in his interests there. Without waiting for an American vessel, and leaving his child, he hastened on to New York by the Hawaiian schooner Hoa Tita, for Mazatlan, and thence proceeded to Vera Cruz and to his destination.
In the work of colonization the way was oftentimes difficult, and seemed at times exceedingly slow, yet he could not but feel that though the soft air bites the granite never so gently, the rock will crumble beneath constant effort.
He felt uneasy at the thought of meeting his brethren. Surely there were enough redskins in the west who knew not God. What should he say to those who had sent him forth, when they should ask why he had not converted the heathen? Though he might wrap himself in a newly slain bullock's hide, after the manner of the Scotchman, and lie down beside a water-fall or at the foot of a precipice, and there meditate until the thoughts engendered by the wild surroundings should become inspiration, yet could he not fathom the mystery why God's creatures, whom he had been sent by God to instruct, should wither and die at his touch!
​Lee arrived at New York in May, but what transpired between himself and the missionary board is unknown. He employed himself during the year in soliciting funds for the Oregon Institute, which he was destined never to see again, for he died March 2, 1845, at Lake Memphremagog, in the province of Lower Canada. His last act was to make a small bequest to the institution for which he was laboring, and for the advancement of education in the country of his adoption.
In the books of the missionary writers, "Jason Lee of precious memory" is alluded to only in his character as director of a religious mission, no reference ever being made to his political schemes. The reason is obvious. To impute to him all that belonged to him would be to acknowledge that the missionary society in New York was right in dismissing him for misrepresentation of the requirements of Oregon, and a misappropriation of a large amount of the funds of the society; therefore, that part of his career which best illustrates his talents is left entirely out of the account, and appears only in the reports of congress and the private manuscripts of McLoughlin. That he had the ability to impress upon the Willamette Valley a character for religious and literary aspiration, which remains to this day; that he suggested the manner in which congress could promote and reward American emigration, at the same time craftily keeping the government in some anxiety concerning the intentions of the British government and Hudson's Bay Company, when he could not have been ignorant of the fact that so far as the country south of the Columbia was concerned there was nothing to fear; that he so carefully guarded his motives as to leave even the sagacious McLoughlin in doubt concerning them, up to the time he left Oregon—all of these taken together exhibit a combination of qualities which were hardly to be looked for in the frank, easy-tem​pered, but energetic and devoted missionary, who in the autumn of 1834 built his rude house beside the Willamette River, and gathered into it a few sickly Indian children whose souls were to be saved though they had not long to remain in their wretched bodies. How he justified the change in himself no one can tell. He certainly saw how grand a work it was to lay the foundation of a new empire on the shores of the Pacific, and how discouraging the prospect of raising a doomed race to a momentary recognition of its lost condition, which was all that ever could be hoped for the Indians of western Oregon. There is much credit to be imputed to him as the man who carried to successful completion the dream of Hall J. Kelley and the purpose of Ewing Young. The means by which these ends were attained will appear more fully when I come to deal with government matters. Taken all in all, and I should say, Honor to the memory of Jason Lee!
Hines and Babcock returned to Oregon in April by the brig Chenamas, Captain Couch, and Gary, the new superintendent, arrived at Oregon City on the 1st of June, 1844. Early on the 7th of that month a meeting of the missionaries took place at Chemeketa, for the purpose of consultation upon affairs of the Mission, and an investigation by Gary. "Such was the interest involved," says Mr Hines, "that the investigation continued until daylight the next morning." The result of the conference was the dissolution of the Mission; the laymen being offered a passage for themselves and families to their former homes, or its equivalent out of the property owned by the Mission, an amount, in each case, reaching $800 or $1,000. With one exception the laymen all preferred to remain, and were discharged, except Brewer, who was retained at the Dalles. The Mission farm, buildings, and cattle at Clatsop were ordered to be sold. The property of the Willamette Mission, consisting of houses, farms, cattle, farm-tools, mills, and goods of every descrip​tion, was likewise sold. Many of the immigrants of the previous year would have been glad to purchase part of the property, but the missionaries secured it for themselves.
Hamilton Campbell purchased, on a long credit, all the Mission herds, and was thereafter known among the indignant immigrants as Cow Campbell, a sobriquet he always continued to bear. George Abernethy came into possession of the Mission store, and bought up at a discount all the debts of the French settlers, to whom a considerable amount of goods had been sold on credit. In a similar manner houses and farms were disposed of to the amount of over $26,000, or at less than half the original cost, the sales amounting to little more than a distribution of the society's assets among the missionaries.
The manual-labor school building, which had cost the Mission between $8,000 and $10,000, with the farm belonging to it, and the mill site, was sold to the trustees of the Oregon Institute for $4,000, and that institution was removed from the site first selected on Wallace Prairie by Jason Lee, to the larger and better building on Chemeketa plain, where in the autumn of 1844 a school for white children was first opened by Mrs Chloe A. Clark Willson, from which has grown the Methodist college known as the Willamette University. Soon afterward the trustees developed a plan for laying out a city on the land belonging to the institute, which was accordingly surveyed into lots and blocks, and named Salem by Leslie, president of the board of trustees. Here, for the present, I leave the history of the ​Oregon Institute, to follow Gary in his efforts to close up the business of the Mission.
Gary seems to have become imbued with the spirit of his advisers, and to have eclipsed his predecessors in rapacity. Before his advent, some time in the month of April 1844, at the suggestion of White indorsed by Major Gilpin, who had arrived in the country the previous autumn, McLoughlin was induced to attempt once more to come to a final understanding with Waller, and agreed to leave the matter to White, Gilpin, and Douglas as arbitrators on his side, and to Leslie and Waller on the side of the Mission. After much discussion, White and Gilpin considering the demands exorbitant, to settle the matter McLoughlin consented to allow the Mission fourteen lots, and to pay Waller five hundred dollars and give him five acres of land out of his claim. This bargain would not have been consummated had it been left to White and Gilpin, but Douglas thought it better for McLoughlin "to give him one good fever, and have done with it."
But this was not the last, and he had not yet done with the missionaries. On the 13th of July Gary offered to sell back to him the lots he had donated to the Mission. To this offer McLoughlin replied that, considering the extortionate manner in which the lots had been obtained, and the fact that they were those he required in his own business, the demand upon him to pay the Mission for them and whatever they might ask seemed unreasonable; but if he could make an exchange of other lots for those, he would do so. It was not land, however, that the Mission wanted now, but money. "It would be the fairest way," said Mc​Loughlin, "for you to give me back my lots, since the Mission has no longer any use for them, and let me pay you for the improvements."
To this Gary had a ready reply. The lots were Mission property; there were those who stood ready to purchase them; and he was only giving their original owner the first offer. Six thousand dollars was the estimate put upon the property, two lots being reserved for the Methodist church edifice besides; and he would not consider himself pledged longer than a day or two to take that amount. Stung and worried, and suffering in his business on account of the uncertainty of his position, McLoughlin once more yielded, and agreed to pay the six thousand dollars, a part of it in the autumn and the remainder in ten years, with interest annually at six per cent. Had he known all the inside history of the scheme to deprive him of the whole of the Oregon City claim, which had met a check in the dismissal of Jason Lee, he would have thought himself fortunate to recover and retain it at that price.
The Methodist Missions in Oregon were now closed, the Dalles station only being occupied with the object of securing a valuable land claim when congress should enact the long-promised land law. When Waller was no longer needed to hold any part of the Oregon City claim, he was sent to the Dalles, but the Indians there becoming troublesome, and Whitman wishing to purchase that station, it was sold to him; and Waller returned to the Willamette Valley.
Thus ends the history of ten years of missionary labor, in which nothing was done that ever in the least benefited the Indians, but which cost the missionary society of the Methodist Episcopal church a quarter of a million of dollars. As colonists the seventy or eighty persons who were thrown into Ore​gon by the society were good citizens, and exercised a wholesome moral influence, which extended from missionary times down to a much later day. Not having to struggle for an existence as did the early immigrant settlers, and being furnished with the means without any exertion of their own, they were enabled to found the first school, and do many other things for the improvement of society, for which this generation has reason to be grateful.
* ↑ Journal of Spaulding, in U. S. H. Rept. 830, 27th Cong., 2d Sess.; Anderson's Northwest Coast, MS., 263; McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., 2d ser. 9; Hines' Oregon Hist., 90.
* ↑ See Portland Daily Oregonian, Dec. 29 1854; Roberts' Rec., MS., 100.
* ↑ Wilkes' Nar., U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 344.
* ↑ Lee and Frost's Or., 324.
* ↑ Wilkes Nar., U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 344. Parrish, who succeeded Frost, but who is an extreme advocate of the excellence of aboriginal character, says: 'I have seen as bright converts among the Indians as the whites, and that, too, among the Clatsops.' Or. Anecdotes, MS., 37.
* ↑ The lake was never formally named; but on account of the American celebration and the residence of the missionaries, was called American Lake, and sometimes Richmond Lake, by the settlers of the Puget Sound Company. The prairie was also called the American Plains; and by the natives, 'Boston Illehee.' Evans' Puyallup Address, in New Tacoma Ledger, July 9, 1880.
* ↑ Lee and Frost's Or., 323.
* ↑ Browns Willamette Veil, MS., 12
* ↑ 'We were three or four months before we had any of the conveniences of living, though we had a fleet of five canoes plying between the Mission and Fort Vancouver, where the cargo of the Lausanne was lying. There were so many of us, and the cargoes had to be so light in the canoes, that it was a little for this family and a little for that family, and a little for the other. We did not fetch any furniture of any amount, because we brought a cabinet-maker, a chair-maker, and such like. There was not a board in the country. Everything had to be taken out of the fir-trees. Our supplies were brought in the canoes to Champoeg, and then we had to get them up by horses and wagons to the Mission, twenty miles above. Well, you start one of those men down with a team to Champoeg, and if after loading up, a whipple-tree broke, or the hold-back to the wagon, or anything of that kind, he had not the first idea of how to fix it up, and abandoned the whole thing on the prairie.' Parrish's Or. Anecdotes, MS., 10, 26. Wilkes reported finding farm machinery and other valuable property, which the society in the east had paid for, exposed to the weather and uncared for about the Mission premises.
* ↑ Parrish says further, that for a long time he used to get as good flour out of a large coffee-mill he had brought with him as could be made at the mill; and that 'half the men who came to Oregon ought to have stayed at home. They knew nothing about the hardships of a new country; and the hardships were such that they could not endure them.' He pays a handsome tribute to the women, saying that they were 'noble, splendid women, who stood right up to their duties as well as the men.' Having to eat boiled wheat for a year was nothing compared to the loss of society, which was their greatest trial. Or. Anecdotes, MS., 26.
* ↑ Wilkes says that in 1841 no fixed plan of operations had yet been digested, and that the boys, nearly grown up, were ragged and half-clothed, lounging about under the trees. Wilkes Nar., U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 378–9.
* ↑ White relates that on arriving at the top of Elk Mountain, a very sharp and rough ridge, Hines arose in his stirrups, and exclaimed in a very earnest manner: 'My wife never climbs this mountain!' White's Ten Years in Or., 127.
* ↑ Fort Umpqua at this period was a substantial storehouse of hewn slabs, a miserable dwelling, and a barn enclosed in a stockade. About eighty acres of land were enclosed, but very little improvement of any kind was ever made at this post, the farming being confined to cultivating a few vegetables and raising cattle. U. S. Ev., H. B. Co. Claims, 12–14, 21–3.
* ↑ The chief's troubled conscience seems to present itself, as he says: 'Great chief! we are very much pleased with our lands. We love this world. We wish to live a great while. We very much desire to become old men before we die. It is true we have killed many people, but we never have killed any but bad people. Many lies have been told about us. We have been called a bad people, and we are glad you have come to see for yourselves. We have seen some white people before, but they came to get our beaver. None ever came before to instruct us. We are glad to see you. We want to learn. We wish to throw away bad things and become good.' This was spoken with violent gestures and genuflections, rising on tiptoe, and stretching his hands above his head, then bending almost to the earth. Hines' Oregon Hist., 104–5.
* ↑ Hines remarks upon the country: 'We found but little land along the river which holds out any inducement to emigrants, the country on both sides becoming more and more mountainous. Whatever the country may be back from the river, it is certain that along the stream it can never sustain much of a population. Hills upon hills and rocks piled upon rocks characterize almost the whole distance from Fort Umpqua to the Pacific Ocean.' Hines' Oregon Hist., 103.
* ↑ Gray, that most mendacious missionary, makes Gagnier an agent of the Hudson's Bay Company for the killing of Hines and Lee, and to render more plausible his horrible hypothesis, he twice falsely quotes from Hines.
* ↑ A newspaper at the Sandwich Islands, commenting on the secular nature of the work in the Willamette Valley, said: 'As settlers we wish them every success, but advise them to drop the missionary in their communications, nowadays.' Polynesian, Nov. 27, 1841.
* ↑ White's Ten Years in Or., 131. Parrish more pointedly ascribes it to a misappropriation of the Mission funds in Lee's absence Or. Anecdotes, MS., 108. Gray, who hated White, assigns dishonesty, treachery, libertinism, etc., as the reasons which brought about the difference. Hist. Or., 175; and Raymond accuses him of improper relations with the Indian girls of the Mission school. Notes of a Talknn, MS., 4. Wilkes says that he was told, when in gon, that White had been of much service to the country. Wilkes' Nar., U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 375.
* ↑ A Copy of a Document, in Or. Pioneer Assoc. Trans., 1880, 50.
* ↑ Frost says that he does not in the least regret that he embarked in the enterprise although in the three years he remained in Oregon he ruined his health for life, for he believes he accomplished some good to the Indians by preventing murders, which were formerly frequent amongst them. Lee and Frost's Or., 331–2. Hines, who wrote later, when more was known about the facts, excuses the fraud on the missionary society by explaining that the Indians Lee expected to teach nearly all died during his visit east. Oregon Hist., 236.
* ↑ Parrish says 500 Indians died in the Willamette Valley in 1840. Undoubtedly an over-estimate, as this number of Indians could not be found within the range of observation of the missionaries in that valley. Or. Anecdotes, MS., 35. Of the personal affairs of the missionaries from 1840 to 1843, I have gleaned the following: In the summer of 1840 J. L. Parrish lost his eldest son by the prevailing fever. On the 18th of January, 1841, a daughter was born to Mr and Mrs Perkins. On the 16th of February of the same year David Carter of the late reënforcement married Miss Orpha Lankton of the same. Miss Lankton was daughter of Abra and Thankful Lankton of Burlington, Connecticut, born October 2, 1806. Mr Carter died in 1849 or 1850, and Mrs Carter again married Rev. John McKinney of the Methodist church. She had three sons by her first husband. She died at Sodaville, Linn County, September 26, 1873. Portland P. C. Advocate, Nov. 13, 1873. On the 23d of March Mrs Daniel Lee presented her husband with a son, who was named Wilbur Fisk. It was about this time that Mr Whitcomb married Mrs Shepard. On the 6th of May, a young man named Joseph Holman, whom I shall have occasion to mention in another place, and who arrived at Fort Vancouver on the day the reenforcement landed, married Miss Almira Phelps of the mission family. Miss Phelps was born July 29, 1814, at Springfield, Massachusetts, and educated at Wilbraham Academy in that state. Mrs Holman died at Salem, Oregon, October 23, 1874. Salem Mercury, Oct. 23, 1874; Portland Advocate, Nov. 13, 1874. On the 28th of February, 1842, Mrs Jason Lee gave birth to a daughter, soon after which she died, leaving to the superintendent only his infant girl as the fruit of two marriages. This child was named Lucy Anna Maria, after both of Lee's wives, and was taken charge of by Mrs Hines, to whom she became as a daughter. Her own mother, whose maiden name was Lucy Thompson, and who was from Barre, Vermont, was buried in the cemetry at the new mission, to which place and to the same grave were removed the remains of that Anna Maria after whom the child was named. Miss Lee was educated at the Oregon Institute and Willamette University, in which she was employed as a teacher for several years. When about twenty-two years old she married Francis H. Grubbs, another teacher, and taught with him in the university and several other Methodist schools. Her constitution was delicate, and she died in 1881 at the Dalles, at the age of thirty-nine years. Hines' Or. Hist., 316; Hines Or. and Institutions, 240, 247, 257; Independence, Or., Riverside, June 13, 1879; S. I. Friend, iv. 53.
* ↑ Darwin's Voyage round the World, 434–6.
* ↑ Crawford's Missionaries, MS., 4; Hines' Or. and Institutions, 160.
* ↑ This constitution and by-laws may be found in full in Hines' Oregon and its Institutions, 143–51, a work of 300 pages, devoted to advertising the Willamette University. It was published in New York in 1808. By the first article the institute is placed forever under the supervision of some religious denomination. By the second it is made an academical boarding-school, until it shall be expedient to make it a university. The third declares that the object of the institution is to educate the children of white men; but no person shall be excluded on account of color who possesses a good moral character, and can read, write, and speak the English language intelligibly. The religious society which shall first pledge itself to sustain the institution is by article fourth entitled to elect once in three years nine directors, two thirds of whom shall be members of this society, whose duty it shall be to hold in trust the property of the institution, consisting of real estate, notes, bonds, securities, goods, and chattels; and any person subscribing $50 or more shall be entitled to a vote in the business meetings of the society relating to the institution. The school is divided into male and female departments, to be taught and controlled by male and female teachers; and placed in charge of a steward, whose duty it is to provide board and to direct the conduct of the resident pupils; besides which a visiting committee of the society shall examine all the departments, and make public reports. Annual meetings are to be held to fill vacancies in the board of trustees, appoint visiting committees, and transact other business. Should no society pledge itself before the last of May 1842 to sustain the institution, then the business shall be transacted by those who subscribe $50 or upwards, until such time as some society shall so pledge itself. The by-laws provide that no subscription is binding until some society has come forward and assumed the responsibility of maintaining the Oregon Institute, and as nothing can be done without funds, and as there is no other Protestant religious society in the Willamette Valley able to take charge of the proposed school, it falls, as it was intended to do, to the Methodist Episcopal church.
* ↑ McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., 1st ser. 12.
* ↑ Hines' Or. Hist., 90.
* ↑ Letter of Jason Lee, in McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., 1st ser. 5, 6.
* ↑ The witnesses were L. W. Hastings, J. M. Hudspeath, and Walter Pomeroy, immigrants of 1842. Crawford's Missionaries, MS. 20–1. Hudspeath laid off Oregon City as far as Eighth street in the autumn of 1842. Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 24.
* ↑ 'This is the best site in the country for extensive flouring or lumber mills.' Farnham's Travels, 172.
* ↑ Crawford's Missionaries, MS., 25–6; McCrackens Early Steamboating, MS., 6.
* ↑ Robert Shortess was a native of Ohio, but emigrated from Missouri. He arrived in 1839 or 1840 alone, or nearly so. I find him writing a letter to Daniel Lee in January 1841, in which he announces his conversion to God from a state of gloomy infidelity. He was a man of good attainments and extensive reading, but possessed an ascetic disposition and extreme party feelings. He immediately adopted the anti-Hudson's Bay tone, and maintained it, as it suited his temperament. He invented the phrase 'salmon-skin aristocracy,' as applied to the gentlemen of that company. Gray, who thoroughly sympathized with his anti-British spirit, says that he and many others should have a pension for maintaining the rights of Americans on the west coast. Shortess and Gray represented the extreme of American fanaticism. Shortess died in 1877 near Astoria, where he had lived as a recluse. Gray's Hist. Or., 297; Strong's Hist. Or., MS., 35; Applegate's Views, MS. 38; Ashland, Or., Tidings, Sept. 14, 1877; Crawford's Nar., MS., 135; White's Emigration to Or., MS., 5, 6.
* ↑ Such is the statement of Shortess made to Elwood Evans by letter in 1867. Abernethy was afraid that his standing with the fur company would be injured if his connection with the petition was known. Evans' Hist. Or., MS., 260.
* ↑ The petition contained several flagrant misrepresentations, among others that when a cow died, which had been loaned to the settlers, they were required to pay for it. McLoughlin refers to this statement in A Copy of a Document, in Trans. Or. Pion. Assoc., 1880, and says that cattle were sometimes poisoned by eating a noxious weed that grew in the valley, but that no attempt was ever made to recover their value from the settlers. In all the statements made, it was intended to create a feeling in the congressional mind that the British fur company was directly and maliciously oppressing American citizens, and to gain credit themselves for the patriotism with which these tyrannical measures were resisted.   Then followed in a puerile strain a recital of injuries inflicted upon American trade by the fur company. An instance of this was in the Canadian practice followed by McLoughlin of having the wheat-measure struck to settle the grain in purchasing wheat from the settlers; forgetting to state that when it was found that Oregon wheat weighed 72 lbs. instead of 60 lbs. per bushel, a difference of sixpence was made in the price. In regard to the charge concerning Hastings, they neglected to state that he was an American, or that the deeds he drew up were for lots freely given to American citizens; nor did they remember that they had no legal claim themselves to the land in Oregon. It was forgotten that Slacum had promised the Canadians that their rights to their lands should be respected; and that McLoughlin was not different from any other settler, except that they asserted that he held the Oregon City claim for the Hudson's Bay Company, and not for himself, which he denied. McLoughkn's Private Papers, MS., 1st ser. 30. And they seemed to forget that in times past they had been the recipients of the very favors that they now complained were bestowed on their countrymen.
* ↑ In a letter to McLoughlin, written by L. W. Hastings, the latter expresses his surprise that the petition should have been signed, not only by many respectable citizens, but by several of Ins party who arrived in the previous autumn; and that on inquiry they were ready to affirm they had been imposed upon, and that they supposed they were only petitioning the United States to extend jurisdiction over the country. McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., 1st ser. 38.
* ↑ Gray's Hist. Or., 292–6; Niles' Reg., lxv. 26; Roberts' Recollections, MS., 21.
* ↑ Mrs Edwards, in Or. Sketches, MS., 23–4.
* ↑ White's Ten Years in Or., 200–1; Evans' Hist. Or., MS., 260.
* ↑ Says Medorum Crawford: 'The universal sentiment of the country then and now is, that Dr McLoughlin was a good man, . . . that his heart was right, and that he never did wrong; that he encouraged society to a greater degree than any other man in the country.' Missionaries, MS., 6, 7; Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 20.
* ↑ Letter to L. W. Hastings, in Private Papers, MS., 1st ser. 41. This brings to mind the remarks of a clerk of the Hudson's Bay Company, John Dunn, referred to in a previous chapter. 'The patriots,' at Vancouver, he says, 'maintained that the doctor was too chivalrously generous, that his generosity was thrown away, that he was nurturing a race of men who would by and by rise from their meek and humble position, as the grateful acknowledgers of his kindness, into the bold attitude of questioners of his own authority and the British right to Vancouver itself.' Dunn's Or. Ter., 177.
* ↑ The duplicity practised in the affair of the Oregon City claim, and other matters, reflects seriously on Jason Lee's character for truthfulness. McLoughlin affirms that in the summer of 1843 he spoke to Lee about the pretence of the milling company that they did not know of his claim when they commenced building; and Lee replied, that they must have known of it, as he had himself told them before they began operations. Not long afterward, Lee and Parrish being together at Fort Vancouver, the latter at the public table declared he had never heard of the doctor's claim before the mill was begun, when Lee replied, 'I attended your first or second meeting, and it is the only meeting I attended, and I told you that McLoughlin claimed the island.' This must have been rather hard for Parrish, who was acting according to instructions: but Jason Lee had his part as superintendent to play, which was not to allow himself to be implicated, or he would lose his influence with the fur company.
* ↑ White's Ten Years in Or., 222; Hines' Or. and Ins., 155.
* ↑ Letter of John Ricord, in McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., 1st ser. 17–19. If no corporate body could hold land by preëmption, how could Mr Waller hold Oregon City for the Mission?
* ↑ The Private Papers of John McLoughlin, from which the history of the Oregon City claim is chiefly obtained, consist of several documents, with his comments and explanations. They are divided into series, as they relate to different matters—to the settlement of the country; to early efforts at trade by the Americans; to the milling company, and the Oregon City claim in missionary and afterward in territorial times. McLoughlin was no writer, in a literary sense; but every sentence penned by him is endowed with that quality which carries conviction with it; direct, simple, above subterfuge. The care with which letters and historical data were preserved by McLoughlin renders these papers of great value. They were furnished by Mrs Harvey to the fund of material out of which this history has been made. Without them, many of the secrets of missionary ingratitude would never have come to light; with them, much that was obscure is made plain.
* ↑ A Copy of a Document, in Trans. Or. Pioneer Assoc., 1880, 49.
* ↑ Twenty-seventh Annual Report of the Managers of the Missionary Society of the M. E. Church, in White's Ten Years in Or., 132. Sec also Hines' Oregon Hist., 235–7.
* ↑ Hines' Or. and Institutions, 156.
* ↑ Buck's Enterprises, MS., 10; Lovejoy's Portland, MS., 41. Campbell, although he amassed money, was not respected. He lost most of his property later in life and went to Arizona, where about 1863 he was murdered by a Mexican for gold. Portland Oregonian, July 29, 1863.
* ↑ Roberts' Recollections, MS., 39; Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 31; M. P. Deady, in S. F. Bulletin, July 6, 1864.
* ↑ Mrs. Willson, née Clark, was born April 16, 1818, in the state of Connecticut, and educated at Wilbraham Academy. She died June 29, 1874. P. C. Advocate, June 30, 1874.
* ↑ In his younger days Gilpin was sent to West Point from the state of Delaware, and belonged to a regiment of dragoons. He came to Oregon with Frémont, but not under orders, for he had resigned. It is not certain when he went away; I think in 1844. One thing is certain, that his pretensions made in the New York Tribune of March 22, 1879, where he claims to have organized the provisional government, and founded the town of Portland, besides being a 'sofa delegate' to congress from Oregon, are without any foundation in fact, as the reader of this history will perceive. In 1861 Gilpin was appointed first governor of Colorado, by President Lincoln.
* ↑ McClane's First Wagon Train, MS., 9, 10; Crawford's Missionaries, MS., 4, 5.
* ↑ Applegate's Views of Hist., MS., 29; Hines Or. and Institutions, 222.
* ↑ Strickland's Missions, 144–5. Among the missionary writers who take an exalted view of the merits of his class is Gustavus Hines, born in Herkimer County, New York, September 16, 1809. He was appointed to preach by the Genesee conference in 1832, and appointed to the Oregon Mission by Bishop Hedding in 1839. He returned to New York in 1846, but in 1852 was sent back to Oregon by Bishop Waugh. During his residence east, between 1846 and 1852, he published his Oregon, its History, Condition, and Prospects, containing a description of the geography, climate, and productions, with personal adventures among the Indians, etc. Buffalo, 1851. This book is not without some faults of style, aside from its verbosity; but is in the main truthful, its errors of statement being traceable to hearsay. Without being bitterly partisan, it contains allusions which betray the bent of the Methodist and American missionary mind of the period. As a narrative of early events and adventures it is interesting. In 1868 Mr Hines published a second book, under the name of Oregon and its Institutions; Comprising a full History of the Willamette University. New York. This work is half descriptive and half historical, containing in the latter portion much fulsome laudation of the missionary society and the founders of the Willamette University, about which very full particulars are given. After Hines' return to Oregon he continued to reside in the country up to the time of his death, December 9, 1873 Three years before, March 14, 1870, his wife, Mrs Lydia Hines, an exemplary Christian woman, died at the age of 58 years. Portland P. C. Advocate, Dec. 11, 1873; Salem Statesman, Dec. 13, 1873; Id., March 16, 1870; Salem Willamette Farmer, March 19, 1870. Waller returned to the Willamette Valley where he resided up to the time of his death, in December 1872. He acquired riches, and occupied honorable positions in the Methodist church and Willamette University. Hines' Or. and Ins., 276; Portland P. C. Advocate, Feb. 27, 1873. Rev. L. H. Judson continued to reside at Salem, where he died March 3, 1889. S. F. Bulletin, March 22, 1880. J. L. Parrish, who was sent to Clatsop when Frost returned to the states, remained on the Mission farm until it was sold, when he returned to Salem, where he continued to reside. He was a circuit preacher, and special Indian agent in territorial times. He acquired a comfortable fortune, and owned a pleasant home in the outskirts of Salem. His first wife, Mrs Elizabeth Parrish, née Winn, died August 30, 1869, soon after which he contracted a second marriage. There are several children by both unions. In 1878 Mr Parrish furnished, for use in this history, his Oregon Anecdotes, a manuscript book of more than one hundred pages, illustrative of pioneer life and Indian characteristics, with narratives of his adventures as Indian agent. His views are, that to benefit the Indians it is necessary to be let down to the level of their comprehension, and to learn to think and reason from their standpoint. Mr Parrish was born in Onondaga County, New York, January 14, 1806.