# Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders/Volume 1/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.
1634—1834.
The settlement of the west, northwest and southwest, from the earliest times proceeded from the Atlantic to the Pacific on two separate and characteristically different lines.
First: The French from the Canadas, succeeded by the English Canadians. Second: The English from the colonies, succeeded by the American rebels of the colonies. These currents of differing populations, ideas and ideals impinges one against the other, first in the wilderness of Old Fort Du Quesne, where the city of Pittsburg now stands, resulting in war between France and England, and finally on the Columbia, a half century later, between the United States and England, for possession of Old Oregon, of which this city is the most strategic point.
In this chapter will be sketched the men and movements which seem to have been in their inception, more devoted to fur trading, or religious interests, than to the political aspect of permanent settlements. Having, in tracing the development and conclusion of the seacoast exploration of the northwest, gone only so far as that exploration resulted in locating and pointing out, as its final result, the great interior water way line across the continent, that was to locate and build this city. While it may be true that the discovery of the Columbia river had some influence in deciding the title to the country, yet the city would have been located and built at this point, no matter what nation had secured the tributary territory. But now, we come to a chapter which presents the dramatis personae of the great work of civilization in the settlement of this vast region by the white race; and which wrought the mould and cast the future giant which is to rule the commerce of the great Pacific. From the timid and tentative adventurings out from the Atlantic sea coast into the unknown western wilderness, two distinct and diverse lines of thought and purpose characterize two separate and independent movements of population to take possession of the vast unknown West. And that these diverse lines of thought and separated independent movements of people, did as surely and definitely converge upon, select and build up this Oregon people and Portland City, as did the many sided sea-rovers exploration of unknown seas, finally converge upon and select the great Columbia river, will be the thought and conclusion of this chapter.
​The French being in possession of Canada, were the first to make the plunge into the boundless wilderness. And this final and successful effort to get into the interior of the continent, was made only after a long and bitter war with the Iroquois Indians, who had destroyed the previously established Catholic missions along Lake Huron, and driven back the French to the gates of Quebec. Protection being finally guaranteed to the Jesuits, and a regiment of French soldiers being sent out to overcome the Indians, the five nations finally made a peace which assured an end of further hostilities. Starting from Old Fort Frontenac, at the outlet of Lake Ontario as early as 1665, we find the faithful pirest, Allouez, braving all the dreaded dangers of the unknown, and following up through the chain of Great Lakes, and finally reaching Lake Superior, with Marquette, establishing the mission of St. Mary, the first settlement of white men, within the limits of our northwestern states. Following this, various other Missions were established, and explorations made. Fired by rumors of a great river in the far distant west, Marquette was sent by the superintendent. Talon, to find it. Marquette was accompanied on this exploration of the trackless wilderness by Joliet, a merchant of Quebec, with five Frenchmen and two Indian guides. Leaving the lakes by the way of Fox river, they ascended that stream to the center of the present state of Wisconsin, where they carried their canoes across a portage, until they struck the Wisconsin river. Here the Indian guides, fearful of unknown terrors in the wilderness beyond, refused to go farther, and left the white men to make their own way alone. For seven days the Frenchmen floated down the Wisconsin, and finally came out on the mighty flood of the Mississippi—the "Great River"—for such is the meaning of the name. With the feelings of men who had discovered a new world, they floated down the great river, charmed and delighted with the wondrous scene, passing through vast verdant meadow-land prairies, covered with uncounted herds of bufifalo, with the unbroken silence of ages they passed the outpouring floods of other rivers—the Des Moines, the Illinois, the Missouri, the Ohio, and on down to the Arkansas. Here they landed to visit the- astonished natives on the shore, who received them with the utmost kindness, and invited them to make their homes with them. And it was from these Indians, as we shall see further along, that was bred the first man who crossed the continent from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, and gave an intelligible account of his trip. But leaving the Arkansas, Marquette and his companions floated on down the Father of Waters, until greeted by a different climate, by cottonwoods, palmettos, heat and mosquitos. Marquette was satisfied that to follow the river they must fall into the Gulf of Mexico; and fearful of falling into the hands of the Spaniards, reluctantly turned the prows of their canoes up stream and made their way back to Canada over the same route. Leaving Marquette at Green bay on Lake Michigan, Joliet carried the news back to Quebec. Shortly after this Marquette's health gave way, and while engaged in Missionary work among the Illinois Indians, died May 18, 1675, 3-t the age of thirty-eight. He had fallen at his post, and his self-appointed work of enlightening and blessing the benighted American Savage, and unselfishly consecrated his life to the highest and noblest impulses of the human soul. No higher or greater encomium of praise or honor could have been bestowed on any man.
And now we strike a different character, Robert Cavalier de La Salle, a dashing young Frenchman who had shown great energy and enterprise in explorations of Lakes Ontario and Erie, was roused to great interest and resolved at once that he would explore the course of the great river to its outlet in the ocean, wherever that might lead them. Leaving his Fort Frontenac, and his fur trade, he hurried back to France to get a commission from the government to explore the Mississippi river. Nothing could be done in those days by the French, Spanish or English, without government license. It was different on the American Colonial side of the line after the Battle of Bunker Hill. La Salle ​got his commission; returning to Canada, accompanied by the Chevalier Tonti, an Italian veteran, as his lieutenant, he made haste to build a small sloop with which he sailed up the Niagara river to the foot of the rapids below the great falls. Transporting his stores and material around the falls, he began the first rigged ship that ever sailed the Great Lakes. In this ship of sixty tons, which he named the Griffin, with a band of missionaries and fur traders, La Salle passed up Lake Erie, through the strait at Detroit, across St. Clair, and Lake Huron, through the Straits of Mackinaw, into Lake Michigan, and finally came to anchor in Green bay in the present state of Wisconsin, October, 1679. From this point, after sending the ship back for fresh supplies, La Salle and his companions crossed Lake Michigan, to the mouth of St. Joseph's river in the present state of Michigan, where Father Allouez had established a mission, with the Miami Indians, and where La Salle now added a trading post which he called the Fort of the Miamis. Here the party labored and waited in vain for a year, the return of their ship, which had been wrecked, and lost on its way back to Lake Erie. Tiring of his troubles in camp, and vexatious of delay, with a few followers they shouldered their muskets and packed their canoes and set out on foot from St. Joseph in December, 1679, tramping around the southern end of Lake Michigan, and across the frozen prairie to the head waters of the Illinois river, finding which they floated down the river to Lake Peoria, where the city of Peoria now stands. There they got into trouble with the Indians, large numbers of whom inhabited that part of the country. They had every imaginable kind of trouble with the Indians, with half-hearted followers, and open deserters. But La Salle, well named, "the lion hearted," was equal to every danger and emergency, and kept his grand ship of enterprise and exploration afloat under circumstances that would have overwhelmed any other man. But receiving no news from St. Joseph, and knowing nothing of the loss of his ship, and destitute of the tools, implements or supplies to enable him to go forward and compass the great scheme of exploration to the mouth of the great river, he resolved to return to Canada with only three men, painfully and tediously making their way by land across the vast wilderness from the heart of the present state of Illinois to Frontenac, in Canada, where the city of Kingston now stands, taking sixty-five days of foot-sore travel to accomplish the trip. But before leaving Peoria lake. La Salle detached one of his men, Tonti, who had only one arm, and the priest. Father Hennepin to make further explorations of the country in his absence. Hennepin was to explore the upper Mississippi, and Tonti, the Illinois country. Hennepin has always had credit of being the first white man to explore the upper portion of the river. He claimed to have gone up the Mississippi from the mouth of the Illinois to the falls of St. Anthony, where St. Paul now stands; and when he returned to France, he published an account of such explorations. But the correctness of Father Hennepin's story has been disputed by the historian. Sparks, who, after receiving the report of Hennepin says: "These facts, added to others, are perfectly conclusive, and must convict Father Hennepin of having palmed upon the world, a pretended discovery, and a fictitious narrative."
Leaving Father Hennepin, and coming back to his one armed co-laborer, Tonti, we find that the Illinois promptly banished him on the departure of La Salle, so that he had to take refuge at the old camp on Green bay. And from which point, Tonti sent back to Canada, a dismal report of all his troubles, and the destruction of the fort at Peoria, and the probable death of La Salle at the hands of Indians. But La Salle was not dead. The lion-hearted hero of the great American wilderness was alive and equal to the great reverses of his fortune. On reaching his old home and establishment at Frontenac, he found it plundered and all his property and fortune wrecked, stolen, lost and ruined. But the dauntless man refused to be defeated. To raise money in a wilderness, and outfit a new expedition, seemed an impossibility. There are a thousand promoters of all sorts of schemes in this city today, where there is forty million dollars of ​money. But if all these thousand promoters were boiled down into one man (he) they could not do in Portland what La Salle did in the wilderness of Canada two hundred and thirty years ago. With his eloquence of speech, his courage, his desperate determination to succeed and his refusal to accept defeat, he gathered a new party of men, he procured supplies for a year, he laid in arms and ammunition to fight Indians, if fight he must, and again sallied forth to claim and conquer the mightiest empire of rich land on the face of the earth, for his God and his king. The grandeur and heroism of the man is simply paralyzing.
With his new company of men and ample supplies, he returned, collected together his old men, went on to Peoria lake, to find his fort destroyed and all the Indian camps in ruins, and the ground covered with the bones and corpses of the slain Illinois who had been literally wiped out by the merciless Iroquois. Then La Salle constructed a barge—not a ship with sails as he had told the Indians — but a barge like what may be seen in Portland harbor loaded with wood or ties to-day and with this comfortably outfitted, he floated down the Illinois from Peoria lake to the "Father of Waters" and thence day after day on down, down, down, until he came to the point where the great river divides into three branches to discharge its vast flood into the Gulf of Mexico. The party divided. La Salle followed down the Western outlet, D'Autray the East, and Tonti, the Central. They came out on the great gulf where not a ship had ever disturbed its waters, and where there was no sign of life. The three parties assembled, and re-united, proceeded to make formal proclamation, April 9, 1682, of the right of discovery of all the lands drained by the mighty river, and the ownership of the same by the king of France. They erected a cross as a signal that the country was devoted to the religion of the Holy Roman Catholic church; and buried a tablet of lead with the arms of France; and erected a slab on which were engraved the arms of France and the inscription:
LOUIS LE GRANDE, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE_, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME, AVRIL, 1682.
The Frenchmen fired a volley, sang the Te Deum and then La Salle raised his sword and in the name of his king, claimed all the territory drained by the Mississippi. A region "watered by 1,000 rivers and ranged by 1,000 warlike tribes; an empire greater than all Europe, passed that day beneath the sceptre of the king of France by this feeble act of one man," And now we can see on what slight and trivial circumstances the titles to continental empires of land turned in the easy going times 228 years ago. When Columbus discovered America, Pope Alexander VI. of bad repute, gave the whole of it to Spain, and that disposition of the continent was acquiesced in for a long time. When Hermando Soto discovered the Mississippi river in 1539, he claimed the river and all the regions that it drained for the king of Spain. How the Holy Father ever settled the matter between the two loyal Catholic nations has probably never been ascertained.
The sad fate of so great a man as La Salle should not be omitted from this record. Gathering up his followers, being unable to take his barge back, he turned his canoes up stream and for many months paddled his way back; stopping to build a fort at where the city of St. Louis now stands, and organizing the Illinois Indians into an effective force to withstand the attacks of the Iroquois, and hold the country for France. Of all the explorers of the west, La Salle seems to have been the only man who appreciated or tried to organize and utilize the nations in reclaiming the wilderness for the purposes of civilization.
After thus rapidly bringing the Illinois Indians to his support and the defence of the interests of France, he returned to Canada to find his friend and supporter. Governor Frontenac recalled to France and the weak and ​foolish old man, La Barre, in his place. And this man wholly unable to comprehend the great work La Salle had accomplished, treated him with cruel ingratitude, denouncing him as an imposter. He ridiculed the explorer's story of his explorations as a base fiction, saying the country was utterly worthless even if he had found such a country. Stung with mortification and exasperated by insult, La Salle at once sailed for France to lay his case before the king in person. The king met La Salle for the first time, and the great explorer made the speech of his life, detailing with a passionate eloquence, the grandeur of the great river, the beauty of the great countries it passed through, the value of the forests, and the future of its commerce; and captured the king and court of what was then the most powerful government on the earth. Too much could not be done for him. What did he want? He should have anything he asked for. He asked for ships and men to found a colony at the mouth of the great river. They were granted. The ships, the men, and women with them. The ships were good enough,. but their commander turned traitor to La Salle, and the colonists to found a new state, were the scum of all France. They sailed for the Mississippi, but on the way, the Spanish captured one of the ships, and the other missed the mouth of the great river, and landed at Matagorda bay in the territory of what is now Texas. The ships sailed away leaving La Salle and his worthless colonists. They started a settlement where the town of Lavaca now stands. Sickness broke out among them, and they died off like sheep. Of the one hundred and eighty men and womten who landed from the ship, one hundred and thirty-five perished within six months. La Salle made two efforts to get away from the doomed settlement and find the Mississippi, but failed. Then made the third attempt and got as far as the Teche river in what is now St. Laudry county in the state of Louisiana, where he was brutally murdered by the mutiny and treason of three of his men, firing upon him from an ambush. And the murderers, quarreling over the spoils of their leader, hastily suffered the same retributive fate at the hands of their associates; while one Jontel, the narrater of these bloody deeds, and only five others of all that ship's load of people, ever lived to reach the great river. La Salle was killed on the 19th of March, 1687. And the good priest, Anatase who had faithfully followed to the last sad end, dug his grave, buried him, and erected a cross over the remains of the greatest land explorer the world ever saw, at the place where the town of Washington in Louisiana is now located.
La Salle had literally given his life to his king, to France, and to the extension of the Catholic religion. According to the supposed law of nations two hundred years ago, La Salle had given France a good title to all the lands drained by the Mississippi river. And as it turned out in the current of historical and political events, that title was made good to France by the subsequent action of President Thomas Jefferson; thus showing what a great work and a great gift La Salle had conferred on his country. From that territory, and founded upon the title which the acts and labors of La Salle had given to France, and for which the United States paid France fifteen million dollars more than a hundred years ago, the following American states have been peopled and organized: Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Indian Territory, and parts of Montana and Colorado.
But we must not forget that this was not all of the empire which the discoveries of La Salle conferred on France. La Salle had claimed all the lands drained by the Mississippi. In addition to the states named above, this claim covered Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi. France had aready claimed the whole of lower and upper Canada, and for two hundred and thirty years, running from 1524 down to 1753, had held exclusive possession of the same, ​and from La Salle's advent on the Mississippi, had held a like exclusive possession of the whole of the Mississippi valley for more than seventy years.
The relation and connection of this city of Portland with this chapter of the life of the great La Salle consists in the influence which these acts of the explorer gave to the extension of American settlements and exploration towards the Pacific northwest. It may be adverted to now, and enlarged upon hereafter, that the French nation and the French people have always been, whenever occasion offered, friends of American ideas and institutions on the American continent as against other nations. And this friendship has more than once been effective to confer great benefits not only on the United States, but also on the people of Oregon.
In 1753, England, by virtue of the possession of the colonies on the Atlantic coast, and especially the colony of Virginia, put forth a claim to all the territory west of Virginia. The first public assertion of this claim by England was when Dinwiddie, colonial governor of Virginia, on the 30th of October, 1753, sent a young man named George Washington over the Alleghany mountains to the forks of the Ohio to find out what the French were doing in that region. Young Washington, then only twenty-two years of age, took along with him an old soldier that could speak French, engaged a pioneer guide and struck out into the vast wilderness. Reaching an Indian camp twenty miles below where the city of Pittsburg now stands, he held a pow-wow with the red men, and they furnished him an escort and guides to go up the Allegheny river and find the Frenchmen. This was then in the middle of a bad winter. But nothing could stop Washington. He found the French prepared to hold the country by military force if necessary. He 'got their reply to Dinwiddie's letter, and returned to Williamsburgh, the then capital of Virginia. Washington Irving has drawn out the story of this first expedition of George Washington in his unsurpassed style and adds: "This expedition may be considered the foundation of Washington's fortunes; from that moment he was the rising hope of Virginia."
To make a long story short, this was the challenge to France, and the prelude to the war which raged for six years on American soil to decide whether France with the Catholic or England with the Protestant Episcopal faith should rule America. It is one of the remarkable things of history that this war so decisive and far-reaching in its results should have been begun under the leadership of this young Virginian surveyor; and that it had hardly been closed by a treaty which gave nearly all of America to the English, until the colonies themselves, under the leadership of this same Virginian surveyor, should have disputed the rights of England and successfully made good their claim by a subsequent treaty which gave to Washington's work, nearly everything the English had wrested from the French; and thus verifying the prophecy of the French statesman, Count Vergennes, "The colonies (said he) will no longer need the protection of the English; England will call on them to contribute toward supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking for Independence."
By the treaty of Paris, made February 10th, 1763, the whole of upper and lower Canada and all of Louisiana claimed by La Salle, east of the Mississippi river, had been ceded to England, and the island and city of New Orleans and all of Louisiana west of the Mississippi had been ceded to Spain. By this treaty French rule disappears from America, but French influence remained actively fomenting discord between the colonies and England.
Having thus traced out the impulse given to the exploration of the west by the French, we turn to the American colonies and find that no sooner than the treaty of Paris had been signed, that the hardy pioneers of the border poured over the Alleghany mountains into western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The only Englishman we find in this flood of immigration is Jonathan Carver, who left Boston in June, 1766, intending to penetrate the western wilderness to the head of the Mississippi river. It is ​
CARVER'S MAP, 1778
Carver's idea in this exploration, besides studying the Indians, was to cross the continent and ascertain its breadth from east to west between the fortythird and forty-sixth parallels of latitude, after which he intended to have the British government establish a post somewhere on the straits of Anian. In his first promised support, the supplies never reached him; and when afterwards he revived the scheme with a wealthy member of the British parliament, their plans were upset by the breaking out of the American rebellion and the war for Independence. The British government had sanctioned the Carver plan, which was to take fifty men and ascend the Missouri river to its headwaters, cross over the Rocky mountain divide and then descend the river of the west to the Pacific ocean, and build a fort at some strategic point. And it is perfectly clear from this chapter of Carver's that the British did not intend to respect the rights of Spain under the treaty of Paris to the country west of the Mississippi. England was even then within three years after signing the treaty of Paris making .plans and taking steps to drive Spain out of her possessions west of the Mississippi, just as they had driven France out of Canada. But now they were counting without their host. In driving France out of Canada, they had Washington and the colonists to help; but now they were to have Washington and the colonists to oppose them.
We cannot realize that at the opening nineteenth century the interior of the North American continent, now so familiar to every reader of public journals, was less known to the world than is the heart of Africa today. French fur traders had penetrated its wilderness depths to the base of the Rocky mountains; but what they found, or what they knew, they jealously kept to themselves, so that there could be no inducement to other venturesome spirits to go searching for peltries and poaching on their preserves. In addition to this trade reason, they had been able to make doubly sure the silence of the Indian, ​as to what the rivers and forests contained. Of all the people brought in contact with the American Indians, the French were the most successful in getting and holding his good will.
Indians had no doubt crossed the continent from the Ohio river to the Pacific ocean. M. La Page du Pratz, in his history of Louisiana, gives a long account of an Indian having become endued with a burning desire to find out from whence came the American Indians, crossed the continent from Natchez on the Mississippi to the Pacific ocean and then returned. And there may have been others. We have authentic history to prove that Sacajawea (the blind woman of the Lewis and Clark expedition) crossed the mountains from the valley of the Snake river to the Mississippi, and remembered the country well enough to guide that expedition back over the same route. But explorations of this kind prove nothing to our purpose—the development of the country.
We come now to the first white man that ever crossed the Rocky mountains from the east to the west for a great purpose, and set foot on the shores of the Pacific ocean. He was neither French, English, or American—but Scotch, and Alexander MacKenzie was his name. He was a native of Iverness, knighted by George III, for distinguished services, migrated to Canada, and entered the service of a fur trader in the year 1779, while yet a young man. and while the British were in the midst of their fight with Washington and his rebels. This Scotchman possessed every qualification to make him a successful leader and governor of men; a fine mind, clear head, strong muscular body, lithe and active, great resolution, invincible courage, tireless and patient energy, with the capacity to comprehend and manage all sorts of conditions of men. Remaining in the fur trade for five years as a hired man, saving his wages, and, biding his time, he cut loose for himself, and became a partner in the Great Northwest Fur company, which to distingush it from others, was known as the Canada company; for many years the most prosperous and aggressive of all the fur traders.
The great interior of northwest America, was at that time but little known. In fact, nothing was known of this vast region beyond the incomprehensible accounts of roving Indians and the meagre reports of adventuresome trappers. It was just such a state of incomprehension and imperfect knowledge of a vast country filled with great riches, as appealed to the keen apprehension and profound mind of Alexander MacKenzie, and he resolved to find out the great secrets which the boundless forests beyond Canada contained. To prepare himself for this self-appointed task, he studied astronomy enough to find his way in untraveled regions, by the guidance of the stars, and to take care of himself and men in all sorts and conditions of circumstances in distant explorations by land.
The trappers and fur traders had gradually worked west and north from the upper end of Lake Superior until they had reached the western end of Lake Athabasca, where Peace river coming west from an opening in the Rocky mountains, discharges its waters into channels which carry it to the Arctic ocean. MacKenzie knew that up to that point, clear back to the Mississippi, there was no Strait of Anian, or water course from the east side of the Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean, and that if he would follow that water, then running due north, it would take him either into the great frozen sea of the north, in which case he would find the Strait of Anian if there was one, or the water would turn west at some point short of the Arctic sea, and carry them to the Pacific. So, that with a birch bark canoe, four Canadians (two with their wives) and two smaller canoes with English Chief, and Indian, and his family, and followers of MacKenzie set out on June 3rd, 1789, to float down with the current of great Slave river into Great Slave lake and thence on down, down, north, wherever the waters took them until they had solved the great mystery of the unknown Arctic. Passing from one lake to another, hunting, fishing, trapping as they went, the adventurous party finally in the month of July, found themselves in the Arctic ocean where they chased the whales and paddled ​around miles and miles of icebergs, under a starless sky, and a never setting summer sun. This expedition was one of the most important in the annals of discovery. MacKenzie had proved the non-existence of the Strait of Anian, and established the fact for all time that no such passage way across the continent existed, and found that the water shed to the north was wholly separate from the water shed to the west. They had suffered no hardships or hairbreadth escapes, and they had found a great waterway to the north in the same month that Captain Robert Gray had sailed through the Straits of Fuca for the first time, two thousand miles to the southwest.
After an absence of one hundred days, MacKenzie returned with his party to his starting point, loaded with fine furs and having found both coal and iron, ore at great Bear lake. MacKenzie was not satisfied with his first venture, regarding as something of a failure that which was in fact a great success. He had penetrated the mystery to the north, and put an end to the quest for the Strait of Anian which the sea captains had believed in and vainly sought to find for nearly three hundred years. It was one more dark corner of the mystery which enshrouded the Oregon country cleared up. And we see how the enlightening agencies of exploration and discovery were gradually creeping in on the core of the mysterious region, "Where rolls the Oregon."
But MacKenzie was not satisfied. Such a man is never satisfied as long as there are other regions to explore and other obstacles to overcome, and other duties to be performed. Three years after this trip to the north we find him again at the old starting point at the mouth of Peace river. But this time instead of floating down with the water, he resolved to go up stream, follow the river to its fountain head and find, if possible a pass through the Rocky mountains, and a stream on the west side that would carry him down to the Pacific ocean as had Peace river and his own MacKenzie carried him to the Arctic ocean. And so on the loth day of October, 1792, five months after Captain Gray had found and entered the Columbia river, MacKenzie starts westward for an exploration to find this river. In ten days MacKenzie had reached the most western post of the Northwest Fur company at the base of the Rocky mountains. Here the natives and trappers received their big chief with great eclat amidst the firing of gims and general rejoicing of the people; and many was the bottle of good old Scotch emptied on that auspicious occasion. There were three hundred natives and sixty professional trappers and hunters congregated here. MacKenzie not only treated them liberally to rum and tobacco, but he preached them a good sermon as to the proper manner they should demean themselves for their own good and that of the white man. From this point MacKenzie kept on west for sixty miles until he reached the point named Fort York, and to which men had been sent the previous spring to prepare the ground and timbers for a new post, which was to be their winter quarters previous to their last plunge into the wilderness, over the mountains and down to the Pacific ocean the next spring. This Fort York came to be called York factory under the Hudson Bay company ownership, and from which point all the travel, messengers and officers as well as employes of the H. B. Co., came over the mountains on their way to Vancouver on the Columbia. And Ebberts, Octchen, Baldra and all the old Hudson Bay men of Oregon were perfectly familiar with that route and could give many interesting tales of its surprises and dangers.
Here MacKenzie put in the winter of 1792-3; and by spring had all things in readiness for the final advance to the Pacific. With one canoe, twenty-five feet long, four and three-quarters feet beam, and twenty-six inches hold, seven white men and two Indian hunters and interpreters with arms, ammunition, provisions and goods for presents weighing in all about three thousand pounds, these explorers started for the Pacific ocean on mountain streams. The canoe was so perfectly made, and so light that two men could carry it over portages for miles at a time without stopping to rest. Where is the white man boat ​builder that could equal that canoe carved out of a great cedar tree by the untutored red men?
On the 9th day of May, 1793, the little party left Fort York, pointed their little vessel up stream and was off for the great Pacific. Before them everything was in _ its native wildness; unpolluted streams, untouched forests, and verdant prairies covered with buffalo, elk, deer and antelope. Nothing could have been more exciting or entrancing to these lovers of the woods and waters of our primeval forests. With paddle and pole they propelled their craft up the swift flowing mountain stream day after day against every manner of obstructions and difficulties. Rocks beset their way on every side, beavers dammed the streams, perpendicular cliffs and impassable cataracts compelled them to take boat, provisions and everything from the stream and carry all around obstructions for miles, to gain calm water on upper levels. Rain and thunder storms were frequent, and the men worn out by unexpected and exhaustive toils, openly cursed the expedition with all the anathemas of the whole army in Flanders or any other place. But the great soul of MacKenzie was unmoved. He reminded them of the promise to be faithful and remain with him to the end. He patiently painted in glowing colors the glory of their success — and he opened a fresh bottle and all went merry again—merry as wedding bells.
On the 9th of June, they were nearing the broad flat top of the Rocky mountains in that latitude. They were short of provisions, and had to eat porcupine steaks and wild parsnip salads or starve. Here they found a tribe of wild Indians who' had never seen white men before. They were now surely beyond the limits of all previous explorations. Assured at length of the peaceful intentions of the explorers, the Indians ventured near enough to talk to the interpreters. They exhibited scraps of iron, and pointed to the west. Further efforts elicited from them the fact that their iron had been purchased from Indians further west who lived on a great river, and who had obtained the iron from people who lived in houses on the great sea—white men like these—and who got the iron from ships large as islands that come in the sea. And now we see these children of the forest beset by the white men behind and before — and there is no longer any secret the white men does not find out, and the fateful terrors of these white men have followed them to their land-locked mountain retreat. Terror as it was to the Indian, it was a god-send to MacKenzie. He could now, from these incoherent descriptions of places, rivers, mountains, and marshes, reckon that he could reach the great river, which he at once supposed to be Carver's Oregon or Columbia, in ten or twelve days, and from the great river, reach the sea coast in a month. MacKenzie got the Indian that told him the story to draw a map on a piece of birch bark, which proved to be a very good map of the region to be traversed. The Indian made the river run into an arm of the sea, and not into the great ocean. MacKenzie was sure the Indian was either mistaken or deceiving him. But he was doing neither. MacKenzie did not know of the existence of Frazer river. He did not know of Gray's discovery of the Columbia, but he did know of Carver's reported account of the "Oregon River of the West" running directly into the ocean, and this was the only great river he supposed could exist on the west slope of the Rocky mountains. He recalled Carver's prediction that from the "Height of Land" flowed four great rivers, one the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, another south into the California sea, another north into the icy sea, and the fourth west into the Pacific. MacKenzie had been down the north river to the icy sea, and he was sure he would now go west to the "Oregon River," and find his Indian map maker mistaken.
On the 12th of June, 1793, MacKenzie crossed the narrow divide of the Rocky mountains and found it only eight hundred and seventeen paces (about half a mile) between the headwaters of Peace river and the headwaters of the Frazer. From there on to the Frazer the stream was a succession of torrents, cascades and little lakes, making traveling very bad. But not a word was said ​about turning back. The voyagers had imbibed some of the spirit of the intrepid and irresistable leader as well as much of the spirit they carefully packed from one portage to another as a most previous treasure; and on the 17th day of June, 1793, after cutting a passage through drift wood and underbrush for a mile and dragging their canoe and goods through a swamp, they landed on the margin of the Frazer river of British Columbia. Simon Frazer for whom the river was named, after this route had been opened by MacKenzie, afterwards passed over it and pronounced it the worst piece of forest traveling in North America. We here include a copy of the map the explorer made of this region, which not only shows by the dotted line his course from the Frazer river across to Salmon bay on the Straits of Georgia. MacKenzie did not follow the Frazer to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia, or he would not have dotted in the lower course of the river as entering the ocean down by our Saddle mountain near Astoria. But this mistake arising wholly from making a short cut across the land to the ocean instead of following the river to its mouth, was confirmed by Lewis and Clark who also supposed that MacKenzie had been upon the upper waters of the Columbia. Simon Frazer made the same mistake when he first saw the Frazer, and remained thus mistaken until 1808 when he followed the river down to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia, three hundred miles north of the mouth of the Columbia.
Having given important facts developed by the explorations of the French and Canadians, we may now turn our attention to the Americans. The next year after Lewis and Clark started with their world-renowned expedition to the Pacific coast. Lieutenant Zebulon Pike of the United States army was ordered by the U. S. government to explore the sources of the Mississippi river, and established friendly relations with the Indians whose territory had but lately been included within the boundaries of the new born republic. Taking twenty men from his military camp near St. Louis, and a keel-boat—no steamboats on the great river in those days—seventy feet in length. Pike ascended the Mississippi to its source and hoisted there the United States flag. This exploration, and this act of Pike's determined the point to which distance north the United States could, under treaty of peace with England, claim and maintain the northern boundary of this nation east of the Rocky mountains. Pike had not only settled that disputed point but he had made known the course of the river itself from St. Louis to its fountain head. Pike made other important explorations and discoveries among which is the mountain peak in Colorado, which bears his name. He also mapped the sources of the Platte, the Kansas and the upper reaches of the Arkansas rivers.
And now we reach a period when private enterprise enters the field, primarily for furs and trade with the Indians, yet making important discoveries, beneficial to the nation and useful to the western pioneers and especially to the emigrants to Oregon.
In 1808 the Missouri Fur Company was organized at St. Louis, by Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard. During the years 1809 and 10 Lisa sent out numerous parties and established trading posts at important points coming as far west as the head waters of Snake River; and here Alexander Henry, in charge of the post, erected the first house built within the Oregon country not given up to the British. In consequence of the hostility of the Indians and its great distance from the base of supplies, it was abandoned in 1810.
The next year after Lisa's venture. Captain Jonathan Winship of Brighton, Massachusetts, organized a trading expedition to the Columbia river by the way of Cape Horn, and two ships were secured, one of which the O'Cain, was commanded by himself, and the other the Albatross, was commanded by his brother Nathan Winship. They sailed from Boston July 6th, 1809, and the Albatross reached the mouth of the Columbia river May 25th, 1810, being over ten months on the way. The ship was provided with a complete outfit, and to her original company of twenty-five white men, were added twenty​five Kanakas, picked up at the Islands, and being the first of those islanders imported into the United States. For want of charts which did not exist on the Columbia one hundred years ago, and from ignorance of the channel and the stiff current of the spring floods, the passage up the Columbia was beset with much trouble and delay. But after ten days cruising around on the broad river, Winship selected Oak Point on the south side of the river for a suitable place for a settlement. This was so called from the oak trees growing there, and it is located opposite the place called Oak Point landing in the state of Washington. Here Winship cleared a tract of land, prepared it for a garden and planted it with a variety of seeds; and set his men to work cutting logs for a house for a dwelling and trading post and they had the structure well up to the roof when the rising waters of the river overflowed their garden, house location and all, and compelled their removal to a point farther down the Columbia. Here the party stayed in a temporary camp until July 18th, 1810, when they sailed from the Columbia river, and having learned at Drake's bay of Astor's contemplated adventure to the river gave up the project of making a settlement on the Columbia. Winship's garden at Oak Point, was the first cultivation of the soil in Oregon for garden or agricultural purposes, and his was the first attempt to construct a house in Oregon by civilized men.
On the 23d of June, 1810, John Jacob Astor, the founder of the wealthy Astor family of New York, a native of Heidelberg, Germany, and a citizen of the United States, then residing at New York city, organized the Pacific Fur Company; and while a private corporation in name, it was nothing more than a general partnership. Astor had been very successful in the fur trade in the regions east of the Rocky mountains, and this latest venture was planned on a scale far more extensive _ than any other American enterprise. A ship was to be dispatched from New York to the Columbia river at regular intervals with all the necessary goods for the Indian trade and supplies for a fort and corps of outheld trappers. And after discharging cargo at the fort and station to be established at the mouth of the Columbia, the ship was to take in the furs there on hand and then proceed up the northwest coast visiting all the stations of the Russian Fur Company, cultivating their friendship, trading for their furs, and after securing a ship's cargo, proceed to Canton, China, sell their furs, and take in a cargo of tea and China goods for New York city. It was a grand scheme, and here was the commencement of the present vast ocean-going commerce of the city whose history we are now recording. It is worth considering that from this humble commencement of one or two ships, handling only the pelts of fur bearing animals, just one hundred years ago, when I write this paragraph, that commerce has developed into an importing and exporting trade of nearly fifty millions of dollars, and of which Astor's big item of pelts does not now amount to more than one hundredth part of one per cent.
| RAMSEY CROOKES | RUSSELL FARNHAM |
| WILSON PRICE HUNT | JOHN BAPTISTE CHARLES LUCAS |
| | President Jefferson's secret agent at St. Louis and New Orleans |
The articles of co-partnership provided that Mr. Astor, as head of the company, should remain at New York and manage its affairs, and supply vessels, goods, supplies, arms, ammunition and every other thing necessary to the success of the enterprise at first cost, providing that such advances should not at any one time require an outlay of more than four hundred thousand dollars. The stock of the company was divided into one hundred shares of which Astor held fifty. The business was to be carried on for twenty years; Astor to bear all the losses of the first five years, after that, losses to be borne ratably by the partners; but if not profitable for the first five years, it might be dissolved at the end of that period. The chief agent of the company on the Columbia was to hold his position for five years, and Wilson Price Hunt was selected for the first term. Four of the partners, twelve clerks (among whom was Gabriel C. Franchere who wrote a narrative of the voyage) five mechanics, and thirteen Canadian trappers, were to go to the mouth of the Columbia by the way of Cape Horn and the Sandwich islands and commence work until Hunt, the chief agent, with his party, should go overland to the same point. The ship Tonquin, two hundred and ninety tons burthen, commanded by Jonathan Thorne, a lieutenant of the U. S. navy, on leave, was made ready for the trip and sailed for the mouth of the Columbia on the 8th day of September, 1810. The ship carried a full assortment of Indian trading goods, supplies of provisions, timbers and naval stores for a schooner -to be built on the Columbia for coastwise trading, tools, garden seeds, and everything else, to start a self-sustaining settlement. And as our good friend, John Bull, was then dogging the infant republic to pick a quarrel for the war of 1812, and Mr. Astor had got an intimation that his ship designed for peaceful commerce, and settlement in distant Oregon, might be intercepted by a British privateer, the secretary of the Navy sent Captain Isaac Hull, with the U. S. frigate Constitution, to escort the Tonquin beyond danger. The Tonquin reached the Columbia on the 22d of March, 181 1, and anchored in Baker's bay. This first ship had sad luck in getting into the river on this first voyage to start the mighty current of commerce that was to ebb and flow from the great river of the west, for eight of the crew were lost in examining the shores and bays of the river to mark out its channel. On the 12th day of April, the ship's launch, with sixteen men and supplies crossed over the river from Baker's bay to Point George, and there and then commenced a settlement on the present site of the city of Astoria, and gave it the name it bears in honor of the projector of the enterprise. It was nine months after the arrival of the Tonquin before Hunt, with a remnant of his party, reached Astoria; having been harassed by the bitter opposition of the Canadian Fur Company, which had contrived to send a party ahead of him and arouse the opposition of the Indians to him, and which party under the lead of David Thompson, reached Astoria in a canoe, flying the British flag just ninety days after the American flag had been hoisted on Point George.
We have given this much of the founding of the first American settlement in Oregon, and the fortunes of the first commercial venture to open commerce with this state and the future city of Portland, and the struggles of the brave and invincible men, who did this pioneering, so that those now here in great prosperity from that feeble beginning of trade, and those who go down to sea may see how the great work was started, and all the more appreciate and honor the sturdy men who started it. Persons who would like to read the whole story of Astor's venture to the Columbia and the betrayal and loss of his property at Astoria, will find it most interesting reading and fully and graphically portrayed in Franchere's narrative, and in Washington Irving's Astoria. Mr. Elwood Evans, in his history of the northwest, fairly and justly sums up the character of Astor's enterprise as follows:
​"The scheme was grand in its aim, magnificent in its breadth of purpose, and area of operation. Its results were naturally feasible and not over anticipated. Aster made no miscalculation, no ommission; neither did he permit a sanguine hope to lead him into any wild or imaginary venture. He was practical, generous, broad. He executed what Sir Alexander MacKenzie urged as the policy of British capital and enterprise. That one American citizen should have individually undertaken what two mammoth British companies had not the courage to try, was but an additional cause which had intensified national prejudice into embittered jealousy on the part of his British rivals."
The war of 1812 with England breaking out soon after, and before any sufficient effort could be made to prove the practical success of the enterprise, and while Mr. Hunt was absent to Alaska on a trading expedition with the Beaver—a second ship that Astor had sent out with supplies and men—two of Astor's partners, MacDougal and MacTavish, turned traitor to the enterprise and sold it out to the Canadian Company for fifty-eight thousand dollars, property which had cost Astor over two hundred and fifty thousand together with a large amount of furs that had been accumulated. They not only betrayed and robbed their partner of his property in the absence of his American agent, but they conspired to turn the fort and all its property and advantages over to the British government, prohibiting the young American employees from raising the stars and stripes over their own fort. The whole disgraceful chapter of treachery and dishonesty to Astor and enmity to the United States ending with the seizure of the fort by the British man-of-war. Raccoon, on December 1, 1813.
This chapter of perfidy to Astor and seizure of an American fort, and commercial post, practically put an end to all American settlement in Oregon for thirty years. There were independent American trappers who sold their furs to the Hudson Bay company which succeeded the Canadian company, but there was not a single American trading post, merchant or establishment in all Oregon, that dared fly the American flag until Joe Meek led off at Champoeg, in an appeal to "Rally around the flag boys."
But while the American enterprise was thus crushed out west of the Rocky mountains, the hardy pioneers were pushing out from St. Louis, to the east side of the Rocky mountains. In 1823, General William H. Ashley, led an expedition across the plains. He met with resistance from the Indians, and lost fourteen men in battle. In 1824 Ashley discovered a southern route through the Rocky mountains, led his expedition to Great Salt lake, explored the Utah valley, and built a fort. Two years later a six-pounder cannon was hauled from the Missouri river across the plains and over the mountains, twelve hundred miles to Ashley's fort. A trail was made; many loaded wagons passed over it, and within three years Ashley's men gathered and shipped back to St. Louis over two hundred thousand dollars worth of furs. Ashley was a native of Virginia, commenced selling goods and trading in the west before he was eighteen years of age, and manufactured saltpeter for powder before he went into fur trading to the west. The Indians in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, made war on him, on the upper Missouri, and he gathered an army of border men and drove the Indians, Hudson bay men and all over into Montana.
There were many others engaged in pioneering into the western wilderness toward Oregon for furs and Indian trade. There were the four Sublette brothers, all able energetic men in their manner of life. Captain Sublette served with Ashley, and brought him out. He had a rare faculty of managing the Indians, but when he had to fight them, they always got the worst of it. Sublette was the first man to tame the Blackfeet. After a desperate fight with them at Pierre's hole, renowned among the Rocky mountain men as the greatest battle with the Indians, the Blackfoot submitted to Sublette and helped him celebrate a sort of Roman triumph on his return to St. Louis with a pack of Indian ponies, a mile long, laden with peltries. One of the Sublettes drifted as far west as California, as one of the forty-niners, and there got into a fight with a grizzly bear, killed the bear but died afterwards from the wounds inflicted by the beast.
And about this time we find two men floating through the history of Oregon, whose careers were quite as much that of diplomats as fur trading explorers. Russell Farnham, was a New Englander, had been a clerk for Astor, and dropped into St. Louis about the opening of the war of 1812. Farnham visited Indians and fur traders and made confidential reports to Astor. One of his forest trips took him up to the British boundary line in the territory of Minnesota. On returning to civilization, he was arrested as a British spy, but on being identified as an Astor man, was released. Farnham conferred with Wilson P. Hunt, and found his way to the Pacific, still confidentially looking out for the interests of Mr. Astor. After the ruin of the Astoria enterprise, Farnham undertook to carry an account of it to Astor by crossing over to Siberia in the ship Pedler, and then making his way across Siberia, Russia and Europe to catch a ship going to New York. Of this trip, Elihu Shephard, the pioneer historian of St. Louis says:
"On entering Siberia, Farnham crossed the eastern continent to St. Petersburgh, where the American minister to the Russian court presented Farnham to Emperor Alexander, as the bold American who had traveled across his empire. The Emperor received him with great kindness and consideration, and sent him on his way to Paris. After great exposure to dangers, toils and sufferings, such as no other man voluntarily submitted himself to for his countrymen, he reached New York, delivered his papers to Astor, apprising him of his losses and the ruin at Astoria, and then made his way back to St. Louis, where he was received as one risen from the dead."
And about this time there were scores of adventurous spirits pushing out from St. Louis to all points ranging from the headwaters of the Missouri down to Santa Fe. and on to California. Kit Carson was probably the most noted ​of these hunters and Indian fighters. The most notable venture was made by Captain Bonneville, of the U. S. army on leave, who led a party of one hundred and ten men in 1832 into Utah, Nevada and Oregon. Want of experience in the business he had undertaken resulted in many errors and severe losses which were increased by the active and unrelenting opposition of the Hudson Bay Company, already established in this field. Bonneville had projected his expedition on the basis of making scientific observations as much as for trade. And the government had given him a furlough for two years on the condition that he should not only pay all the expenses of his expedition, but also that he must provide suitable maps and instruments, and that he should be careful to find out how many warrior Indians there were in the regions he might explore, and ascertain the nature and character of these natives, whether warlike or disposed to peace, their manner of making war and their instruments of warfare. Proceeding on this basis, Bonneville got as far west as the present city of Walla Walla, with twenty wagons in the year 1832. Bonneville found out a good deal about the country all of which is most charmingly written up by Washington Irving; but he lost his entire investment in goods from the opposition and sharp practices of the Hudson Bay Company.
In the same year another successful expedition was started to Oregon by Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Massachusetts. This was next to Astor's, the second purely commercial venture to Oregon by American citizens. At the same time he started his party overland to Oregon, he dispatched a ship from Boston ladened with goods, estimating that the ship would reach the Columbia river about the time the overland party would reach the Willamette valley. The ship was never heard from afterwards, and the overland party reached Fort Vancouver on the 29th of October, 1832. It was Wyeth's plan to take salmon from the Columbia, salt or dry them for the Boston market, trade for all the furs he could get, and in that way get a return cargo for his ship and do a profitable business. The loss of the ship defeated his first expedition. But it brought out some men who took root and grew up with the country. John Ball was one of them, and he is the man that opened the first school (at Vancouver) in all the vast region of old Oregon in January, 1833. The school was not a success, but it was a starter. Then Solomon H. Smith, another one of the Wyeth party, in March, 1834, opened a school at old Vancouver under an engagement with Dr. McLoughlin, chief factor of Hudson Bay Company, to teach for six months. Smith expected to teach an English school, but found a great confusion of tongues. The pupils came in all speaking their native tongues and each different from the other, Cree, Nez Perce, Chinook, Klickitat, etc; and the only boy who could understand the English of the teacher rebelled off hand. Dr. McLoughlin coming into the school in the midst of the difficulty proceded to enforce the law himself, and gave the little rebel such a thrashing as secured perfect discipline thereafter. Smith taught this school of twenty-five Indian boys for eighteen months in which time they learned to speak English well and the rudiments of the primary branches of a common school education. They had but one copy of an arithmetic in the whole school, and of this each pupil made a complete copy which was used afterwai'ds by other pupils. And so education started in the land where there are now more colleges, high schools and universities to the population than in any other region in the United States.
Wyeth's first expedition was a financial failure, but not disheartened, he returned to Boston overland and renewed his efforts to establish direct trade between the Columbia river and his home city. And having procured the ship May Dacre and filled her up with all sorts of goods and supplies for this country, the ship sailed for the Columbia via Cape Horn while Wyeth again enlisted a party of two hundred men and started overland from Independence, Missouri on April 24, 1834. With that party came the first missionaries to Oregon—Jason and Daniel Lee. On his way across the continent, Wyeth ​stopped and erected Fort Hall in which he stored his trading goods for the interior. He and his party reached Fort Vancouver about the same time his ship came into the Columbia and proceeding down to the lower end of Wapato island (now called Sauvies island) Wyeth established a salmon fishery and built a trading house which he named Fort William. The salmon fishery was not much of a success, but it was the commencement of salmon packing on the Columbia, an industry that brings in many million dollars yearly to this city. Wyeth proceeded to lay out a town with streets, blocks, parks, etc., which was the first candidate for the great city of this region. A half a cargo of salmon was caught, dried and salted, the ship sailed for Boston in 1838, and never returned to the Columbia. Disheartened with disease on the island and his commercial failure, Wyeth returned to Massachusetts. While Wyeth's expeditions were disastrous to himself financially, they were of immense value to the United States. He prepared a memoir to Congress, setting forth the character and resources of the country which secured the attention of the American people, and from that day on it was but a question of time and courage upon the part of the few settlers that here should be an American state and not a British province.