# McLoughlin and Old Oregon/Chapter 2

II
THE COMING OF THE WHITMANS
1836
WHEN Wyeth was returning defeated to the States he met a vision in the mountains, a beautiful woman with golden hair and snowy brow, riding like Joan of old to conquest,—Narcissa Whitman. With her rode Eliza Spalding, a slender, dark-eyed devotee, who back in the States had knelt in a lonely wayside inn to consecrate her heart to Oregon. Two brides were on that wonderful journey, farther than flew the imperial eagles of Rome, to their life-work on the Columbia.
Two brides!—there is a romance about modern missions that the apostolic fathers never knew—two missionary brides were the first white women to cross the continent!
Two grooms, knights-errant, rode at their sides: Marcus Whitman, a young physician, strong, resolute, with fire in his deep blue eyes and courage imprinted on every feature to the tips of his auburn curls, he, too, had heard of the Flathead messengers for the white man's Book of the Great Spirit; Henry Spalding, a youth long, lank, prematurely wrinkled and sharp-featured with thought, he, too, was fired with apostolic ardor. While yet a student in a village academy, Henry Spalding had bent the knee and begged the hand of Narcissa Prentice. To him and to every other ​suitor the beautiful girl said no, until young Dr. Whitman came riding like Lochinvar out of the West.
It was the Sabbath when Dr. Whitman reached his native village in central New York, from his first exploring tour to the Rocky Mountains. In the midst of the sermon, he whom they thought thousands of miles away, walked inta church, followed by two tall, blanketed Indians.
"Marcus!" cried his mother, rising from her pew and stretching forth her arms. "Marcus!" echoed the heart of a maid in the village choir. In a few days there was a wedding at the old-fashioned house of Judge Prentice. There was a missionary farewell at the village church. Long after, it was a tradition in that village that when the choir broke down in sobs, the sweet soprano of Narcissa Whitman, the missionary bride, carried the farewell hymn alone, like a skylark to the sky:
They started. Cincinnati was a village in the woods; Chicago, unknown; St. Louis, the end of the West. Oregon was foreign land in 1836.
"You can never get the women through," said Catlin, the Indian artist, at Pittsburg. "They will both be kidnapped," said old trappers on the border. "They are white squaws, white as snow," was the word that flew from tribe to tribe as, under the convoy of the American Fur Company, they entered the great, wild land of the West. For miles the enraptured Indians followed in silent admiration.
"This is the end of the wagon route," said the fur​traders, stopping their train of carts at Fort Laramie on the Platte. "We always pack on mules from this point over the mountains."
"But we must take a wagon, on account of the women," said Dr. Whitman. "Did not Bonneville take carts over to Green River? Did not Ashley haul a cannon to Great Salt Lake?"
"Yes," admitted the traders, "and then Bridger tried it, but they all gave it up—left their carts in the mountains. Bonneville had no end of trouble—if he hadn't had a blacksmith along for constant repairs, he never could have got through. The fact is, it is not considered practicable."
Dr. Whitman had crossed those Alps before. If Bonneville took a wagon across, he could. "I know we can do it—I can almost see a road," said the dauntless doctor, with that positive assurance that always won half his battles.
"Go ahead, then," laughed the traders. "A good wheel route to Green River will double our profits. We will gladly send a man with you to help explore a way."
With the doctor's wagon and a trader's cart the little company pushed on, leaving Fort Laramie, the last outpost of civilized man, on the foothills at their rear. Dr. Whitman made a wagon route his special object of study. With now a tip-up and now a turn-over, and now a long detour among the ragged pines, he followed the way of the Great South Pass through the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Spalding brought the cows; W. H. Gray, an assistant, drove the packhorses. In smooth mountain meadows the women rode in the wagon; in shelving, rough defiles they mounted their horses, cheering their husbands over this barrier ridge ​of the world, supposed to forever shut the East from the West.
The magical word flew over the mountains—hundreds of Nez Percés, Flatheads, Snakes, and Bannocks came out to meet them.
Two Nez Percé chiefs went up on the heights to escort them down. There, on the summit of the continent, the flag was unfurled. Under its starry folds, facing the west, the little band knelt, and like Columbus took possession in the name of God.
The moment the two brides alighted at the trader's rendezvous on Green River, scores of Indian women pressed to grasp their hands and kiss their cheeks. A handful of bronzed mountaineers, so long in the wilds they had forgotten the looks of a white woman, pulled off their caps in memory of their mothers.
"Thar!" said Joe Meek, an American trapper, "thar are immigrants that the Hudson's Bay Company cannot drive out."
"You must leave your wagon here," said everybody at the rendezvous—everybody but the Indians. They followed with wonder the musical chick-a-chick clattering over the rocks. They waved their arms toward the hills, they chattered and jabbered and put their shoulders to the wheels.
"We can take it through," said Dr. Whitman. The Indians went ahead and helped him hunt the road that afterward became the great overland route to the West. Night after night, late and tired, the doctor came puffing into camp.
The wagon stuck in the creeks, it upset on the steep hillsides, and then—the axle-tree broke.
"Leave it, Marcus," said Mrs. Whitman, reining up her beautiful bay. "Let us have no more trouble with it."
​But no, the doctor made a cart of the back wheels and lashed on the fore wheels. "I shall take it through, Narcissa, in some shape or other," he said.
"You can get it no farther," said the Hudson's Bay men at the cottonwood stockade of Fort Hall—the fort that Wyeth had sold to McLoughlin.
But the doctor went ahead and swam the deep, swift Snake. Cart and mules turned upside down and were almost lost, but with iron grip the doctor brought them out on the other side and safe to Fort Boisé". Then all rose up. "'T is a crazy scheme to take the wagon on," they cried. "The season is late, the animals are failing, the wagon is a source of delay, the route in crossing the Blue Mountains is said to be utterly impassable for it."
"I will send for it by and by," said the determined missionary, stowing the battered vehicle away in a shed at old Fort Boise under the care of Monsieur Payette, the clerk in charge.
Over the scorched plains of the Snake, with a brigade of Hudson's Bay traders, into the cool groves of the Blue Mountains they rode. Tom McKay's excellent hunters brought down for them the elk and the antelope. On the last day of August, 1836, three days ahead of their party, Dr. and Mrs. Whitman galloped up to the gates of old Fort Walla Walla. Heralds had gone before, a watch was on the ramparts, the gates were open. Monsieur Pierre Pambrun, the courtly chief factor, assisted from her steed the pioneer of all white women across the hills to the River of the West. That night the wearied travellers slept in the west bastion, full of portholes and rilled with fire-arms. A great cannon, always loaded, stood behind the door. The water swished by the walls. The wind howled down ​the Columbia, shaking the driftwood donjon till their voices were lost in the racket. A courier rode post to Fort Vancouver.
"They come," said Dr. McLoughlin, "not as rivals, not as traders, but as allies, to teach our Indians peace and industry."
Seated in the fur-traders' boats with Chief Factor Pambrun and his voyageurs, the Americans glided down the Columbia, beyond the drifting sand, past the log huts of the Walla Walla fishermen, who from point to point stood sweeping their nets in the foaming waters, on into the high dark dikes that shut in the tortuous river. Here they entered an elder, grander Hudson, lacking only castles on the cliffs to give a human touch. But there were castles, arrested mid air from the volcanic throat of Hood, in ages long gone by, columns upon columns crowned with towers, columns that swelled like the bastions of ancient citadels—basaltic bluffs, turreted with the pinnacles and shafts and domes that guard this gateway of the floods.
Where the Columbia breaks through the Cascade range they looked where never white woman looked before, on the dark foundations of the hills planted deep in the turbulent water, and rising hundreds of feet in the heavens. The whitecaps rolled as at sea. A gale came up from the west, and the little boats rose and fell like sea-gulls on the surges. Mt. Hood, visible for miles, grew to life size. St. Helens reared her graceful, tapering cone above the distant firs. Within the curving inlets vast amphitheatres with columnar tiers of seats outdid the Roman Coliseum. On every headland grim promontories frowned like forts of some Titanic age.
On the second day they had reached the Dalles. ​In three days, hark I the roaring cascades dashed their billows on the rocks. From shore to shore a rapidly declining, irregular sheet of snow-white foam slid to the level below. Grander rose the mountains, four thousand five thousand feet on either hand, cut by livid gashes of ravine exposing the ribs of mother earth. Not a lip moved, not a word was spoken as the French-Iroquois boatman stood at his post and with a skilful dip turned the flying canoe from the point of some projecting rock, while on every side seethed and yawned the great green caves of water. Should a heart fail or a cheek blanch now? No, each face was as immobile as the naked Indian on yonder rock that stood like a statue cut in bronze spearing the passing salmon.
At the portages how the Indians wondered to see the men helping the women over the rough places. Why, they did not even have to carry the baggage!
Fort Vancouver was ready. The flags were flying. Two ships lay in the river,—the "Nereid," a man-of-war just from London and bound for the Northwest coast with bales of Indian goods, and the barque "Columbia," about to sail on her return voyage with furs and peltries. The stirring song of the voyageurs rang over the terraced plain. The stately McLoughlin and the knightly Douglas stood on the shore to welcome these guests whose coming would unfold a world of change. It was an historic time. Mighty men and lovely women stood there, who had trod a continent, bearing the cross, farther than rode the Hun of old, farther than the Helvetian, farther than even the Celt to the verge of Europe. It was a scene to shine on canvas and live in story, like the landing of the Pilgrims, like the march of Constantine, like Augustine in England, like Paul on the hills of Greece. Governor McLoughlin offered his ​arm to Mrs. Whitman, Black Douglas, assisted Mrs Spalding, and all passed into the fort.
It was a welcome rest after the long days on the plains and the mountains, after the camps in dust and sand, after the suns and frost and fatigue. It seemed like a dream to find this roomy old stronghold in the wilderness. Primeval forests swayed and sobbed upon the hills, primeval Indians paddled and chanted along the streams. The long low halls, the echoing floors, the roaring, wide-mouthed chimneys, the weapons of the chase and elk-skin armor on the wall, all told that the fur-traders perpetuated a storied past.
What a change was the bounteous board from buffalo-beef and mountain bread, flour and water fried in tallow. The best cooks of Canada waited on the fur-trader. Carving was carried to perfection at Fort Vancouver. Salmon, ducks, and geese and venison, the choice of an epicure, was daily fare. And fruit? through the postern gate they walked in the garden musky with odors of peaches and pears, slender-limbed apple-trees broken with their golden weights, and rows of plum and fig-trees crimsoned in the sun. Between the neat squares the old Scotch gardener had gravelled his walks and lined them with strawberry vines, and at the far end stood the grape-grown summer-house where Rae had wooed his Eloise.
But Dr. Whitman could not rest. Whatever he ought to do, that he must do without delay.
In its great westward sweep to the sea the Columbia narrows at the Dalles into a chasm that a fiend might leap. Here the salmon crowded in such prodigious numbers in their journey from the sea that from time immemorial it had been a famous fishing spot. In the summer season thousands of Indians gathered there ​and hung enormous baskets from the rocks. The leaping salmon landed in the baskets in schools and shoals, and the watchful Indians hauled up tons and tons a day. It was like a great fair when the tribes of the interior came down to trade for salmon at the Dalles.
"Here," said Whitman, "is a strategic point. Here will I locate my mission."
"No," said Dr. McLoughlin, "the Dalles Indians are fishing Indians, treacherous and unreliable. Go up among the hunting Indians of the Walla Walla. Do you not know that the English troopers are recruited from the fox-hunters of England? The Indians of the chase are the troopers of this continent. They can do anything."
"But can they be tamed?" asked Dr. Whitman.
"The possibilities of those horse Indians cannot be measured," answered Dr. McLoughlin. "They are in a state of nature, uncorrupted, strong and brave and free. These canoe Indians are in the process of decay."
"But how can I locate so far from my base of supplies?" hesitated the missionary.
"I will send your goods in my boats for a trifle. Every summer our brigades go up the Columbia with supplies for the interior. Your credit shall be always good. Our stations at Fort Walla Walla and Fort Colvile are open to your orders."
While their husbands were gone, looking at the upper country, Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding remained guests at Fort Vancouver. In a day their love unlocked the hearts of Madame McLoughlin and her stately daughter Eloise and the charming Mrs. Douglas. The trader's children crowded about the delicate Mrs. Spalding like bees around a honeysuckle. She ​could draw, she could paint, and spin and weave and knit, and they watched her fingers with curious eagerness. Far back on the plains she had cemented a lasting friendship with the Indian women by her quick intuition of their wants and her readiness in learning Nez Percé, but to Mrs. Whitman the men bowed down as at a shrine before a golden goddess. The silken cape that encircled her soft, white neck seemed like the fluttering of wings, her golden hair like an aureole of light. When she sang forty years after, tears leaped to the eyes of the old fur-traders at the memory of the prima donna of Fort Vancouver. Quickly the children and the voyageurs caught from her lips the plaintive, "Watchman, tell us of the night," to vie thenceforth with their French chansons in the forest.
At Dr. McLoughlin's request Mrs. Whitman heard his daughter recite every day. Eloise had the fresh enthusiasm that has never been cloyed by schools or tasks. While the girls of New England were patiently working their samplers, this princess of the Columbia was embroidering caps and moccasins. While the girls of New England practised formal scales in music, Eloise was picking up the tunes of the voyageurs, and might often be seen in her light canoe darting across the Columbia, singing as she went the wild songs of old Canada.
If the missionary-brides instructed the ladies of Fort Vancouver, they, too, were taught in the lore of lustrous sables, silky sea-otter, thick brown mink, and soft black beaver. Eloise could tell them that the fiery fox was a prize in China, that the Russian would give a hundred silver rubles for the sea-otter that the Chinook slid down and speared as it slept on the shore, that the dappled bearskin would line the coach of an English ​noble, that the blue fox went to the czar for a royal cloak, and the silver gray to an Indian rajah.
"And do I care to wear the beautiful furs?" asked Eloise. "Oh, no; you see I know how they get them. I know how our men face winter and summer in the lonely mountains. It is not play. My father says hunting the beaver is the most laborious work in the world."
Never did guests more regretted leave the halls of Fort Vancouver. Had it been possible they would have been detained permanently, but winter rains were setting in, sure sign that storms were whirling around Mt. Hood. They must re-embark for the upper country. Many a token of beads and embroidery was placed in their hands by the skilled ladies of the fort as Whitman and Spalding bore away their brides to the distant mission.
Dr. Whitman had planted his mission among the knightly Cayuses, the imperial tribe of Oregon, who in the long-ago ruled to the mouth of the Columbia and whose herds now covered the plains from the foothills of Mt. Hood to the borders of the Snake. It was on a green spot called by the Indians Waiilatpu, the Rye-Grass Meadow, that Whitman halted on the banks of the Walla Walla.
Chief Factor Pambrun had ridden out with him, both of their horses belly deep in the rye-grass, to decide upon the location. All around lay rolling green prairie, bathing its cottonwood edge in the winding river. Away to the east the Blue Mountains were hazy along the horizon. Far to the west were the snows of Hood, that the Indians pointed out as the mountain near which the White-Headed Eagle dwelt. Twenty-five miles to the west lay Fort Walla Walla on a narrow ​stretch of sand between the Columbia and the Walla Walla. On the hills around grazed the beautiful spotted horses of the Walla Walla-Cayuses. Here and there the smoke curled up from the conical skin lodges, and thickly gathered all around them were mounted Indians eagerly watching the decision of the missionary. They were clean, well-dressed, noble-looking men, those Walla Walla-Cayuses, with their eagle eyes and fine straight noses, men that looked well worth the efforts of a Whitman or a Wesley. Yellow Serpent, Pio-pio-mox-mox, was their chief, a haughty, handsome Indian fond of dress and parade. By the side of Yellow Serpent rode his little son, a lad of twelve years, baptized by Jason Lee with the name of a bishop of the Methodist church, Elijah Hedding. Already Elijah had studied a year at the mission on the Willamette.
There were present also the Cayuse brothers of Elijah's mother, Tauitau and Five Crows, head men in the council, and Tiloukaikt, a great dark chief with a voice like a brazen trumpet. As soon as the decision was made, Chief Factor Pambrun sent out two workmen from Fort Walla Walla and the Indians all turned in to help build Whitman's adobe mansion.
Spalding had set up his tabernacle one hundred and twenty-five miles northeast at Lapwai, on the Clearwater River, a few miles from the present site of Lewiston, Idaho. Here, among the teachable Nez Percés, the patient, persevering missionary and his gifted wife accomplished a work that has never been surpassed in any age among a savage people. Like Pastor Oberlin in the hills of Alsace, Whitman and Spalding set examples of industry, and ploughed and planted and sowed, and shared the harvest with their people. For a while, wherever they travelled through ​the country, hundreds of Indians followed to see the white men who brought the Book of the Great Spirit and to hear them preach at night. Spalding's Indians would sometimes spend the entire night repeating what he had taught them in the evening. Gray-haired men and chiefs became pupils of their own little children in learning to read and write.
III
THE WEDDING OF JASON LEE
1837
AGAIN a salute resounded at the gates of Fort Vancouver.
"Who the devil's come at this time o' night? "grumbled the sleepy fur-traders, turning on their couches. The porter crawled out of his lodge in his nightcap. To the impatient knockers outside a heavy step sounded and a gruff voice demanded, "Who's there?"
"Strangers from the States on the brig 'Diana.'"
The great key turned, the gate swung creaking on its hinges. This time several men entered, with their wives, followed by three fair damsels half revealed by the light of the moon. The old porter led the shadowy figures up to McLoughlin's door.
"Who is it?" inquired the doctor, in dressing-gown and moccasins, holding a candle above his head. The white locks framed an almost youthful face as he leaned, peering into the night.
"A reinforcement to Jason Lee's mission," answered the spokesman of the party.
"More missionaries?" laughed the doctor. "Well, well, surely we'll all get converted by and by. Come in, come in." He took each hand with the grasp of a friend, and turning led into the great dining hall, where a log still smouldered on the hearth. ​"Be seated; be seated." The doctor rummaged around, poking the log with his cane, and pushing up a settee. "Burris, Burris! "he called from an adjoining door. In short order the major-domo appeared with candles, that cast weird flickers against the windows and the high dark ceiling.
"And so Congress is still discussing that Maine boundary? "Dr. McLoughlin was saying, when the butler reappeared with a steaming tray. A dusky Kanaka (Hawaiian) poured the tea, while Burris retired to pile Indian blankets on the bunk-like beds of the fort.
Before daylight Dr. McLoughlin called, "Money-coon!" An Indian rolled out of his blanket in the barracks.
"Get the despatch-boat. Take these papers to Jason Lee at the mission as quick as you can."
The Indian disappeared. There was a click at the boat-house door, a gleam on the river. Forty-eight hours later McLoughlin, glass in hand, descried two canoes laboring up the billowy Columbia in a tempest of wind. "See, he even comes in a storm!"
All turned to banter the maiden who now was to behold her future husband. Through all that voyage Anna Maria Pitman had kept saying to herself, "I may not marry him; I may not marry him."
The little company sat with Dr. McLoughlin in a room facing the gate, when it swung back, and a tall, broad-shouldered man past thirty approached at the rate of seventy-five strides a minute. "See the conquering hero comes," whispered the teasing companions.
Anna Maria raised her eyes, and at a glance took in the Yankee make-up, the Puritan face with its long, light hair, spiritual eyes, and prominent nose. Any​where it was a face to be remembered, but to her poetic mind a certain halo glowed about that high, retreating forehead. Dr. McLoughlin brought them face to face. There was a letter in Jason Lee's pocket saying, "She has been sent out on purpose for you."
"They really took me at my word!" thought the missionary. "Well, well, well! Though a lady should travel the world over to become my wife, yet I cannot marry her unless upon acquaintance I become satisfied that such a step will be conducive to our happiness. Judgment alone, under the influence of an enlightened conscience, must decide this question."
A pale pink suffused Miss Pitman's neck and brow under Jason Lee's scrutinizing gaze. They had met before in New York City, but his recollection had been, "She is not a lady that I should fancy for a wife."
There may have been inward tumult, but outwardly Jason Lee was as calm as on that thirsty day on the plains when he stopped the cows for a cup of milk and was surprised by a band of whooping savages. "Indians! Indians!" cried his comrades. But Lee quietly had kept on till his cup was full. One round little spot of red burned in either cheek.
It was a lovely May morning when the governor's guests started up the Willamette. Bloom and verdure and songs of birds, blue rippling waters and distant peaks of snow smiled on the scene. Governor McLoughlin and the whole household of the fort accompanied them down to the water's edge. With gay farewells and good wishes the boats shot off, bearing, in addition to other baggage, a great Indian basket of provisions from the bountiful larder of Fort Vancouver. By the conniving of their companions Jason ​Lee and Miss Pitman were seated last, in a boat alone, with a crew of Indians, not one of whom could speak a word of English.
With a bold sweep Jason Lee sent his canoe far ahead. Anna Maria's hair rippled from her comb, her cheek glowed, her eye sparkled. Little dappled gray seals, with large, round, gentle eyes, swam on either side, following the boat like mastiffs, now leaping in the water, and now catching at some unlucky salmon as it bumped its nose in its headlong course up stream. At sunset the party camped in an oak orchard grove, where now the city of Portland stretches its stately avenues and rears its palatial homes. The next day they encountered shoals of salmon, literally millions, leaping and curveting and climbing the foamy falls of the Willamette, where now the factories of Oregon City send out their flumes and wheels. On the third day Jason Lee and his assistants landed where the moss-grown cottages of Champoeg dotted French Prairie.
As early as 1827 Étienne Lucier had said, "Governor, do you think this will ever become a settled country?"
"Yes; wherever wheat grows you may depend upon its becoming a settled country."
"What assistance will you give me to settle on the Willamette? I cannot face Canadian cold again. I am getting old." Étienne Lucier had been one of Astor's Canadians, who had never left the Oregon country since the day when the great New Yorker's stronghold was handed over to British traders.
McLoughlin reflected. Here was a case that might become a precedent. It was against the rules of the Hudson's Bay Company to dismiss servants in the Indian country, but by retaining them on his books ​they might cultivate the land and become a base of supplies for the Pacific posts.
These old voyageurs had Indian wives. They had families growing up around them, born in Oregon and accustomed to its genial climate. To transport them to Canada would be not only a great expense, but a cruel exile. To separate the men from their families that was not to be thought of. These French Canadians loved their Indian wives. The children had twined about their heartstrings. By permitting them to cultivate the fertile Willamette Dr. McLoughlin could retain them under his control, while their influence on their Indian relatives would maintain continued cordiality between the races.
"What assistance will I give?" said Dr. McLoughlin. "Seed to sow, and wheat to feed yourself and family till crops come. Then I will buy your surplus grain."
One after another had settled in the valley, until now there was a prosperous colony. Jason Lee landed his party at the entrance to this settlement, whose farmhouses were scattered back to the foothills. Rude rail fences ran zigzag around the meadows. Wild roses nodded in the corners and bloomed in the wheat. The Canadians greeted the missionary with friendly welcome, opened their doors, offered their horses. He talked with them in their French patois, and could tell as many stories as they of logging on the Ottawa. They were nearly all Catholics. Jason Lee was a Protestant Nevertheless, they attended his preaching gladly, though sometimes there might be a longing for the showier Catholic forms, and chants, and candles of childhood.
Terra-cotta colored children, some darker, some fair and almost white, dressed in blue and scarlet, were sit​ting on the stiles and swinging on the lower halves of the wide barn doors. The dogs slept in the sun, the cocks crew, and the pigeons cooed in the airy lofts. The barns themselves, four times as large as the houses, were still bursting with last year's harvest. The children, true little Frenchmen, left their play to courtesy to Jason Lee and to watch the wonderful white women. Their mothers, in calico dresses and leggings and moccasins, with red kerchiefs crossed on their breasts, nodded and smiled as the strangers passed. These women, whose mothers had packed teepees and dug camas all their lives, women who had passed their infancy strapped on a baby-board, now scrubbed their little cabins and managed the garden and dairy as well as any thrifty frau among the Germans. For their Canadian husbands they deemed no sacrifice too great, for their children they filled the last measure of devotion.
"Indeed," Jason Lee used to say, "these happy-go-lucky voyageurs are fortunate in finding such capable women to make them homes," and the Canadians themselves would have told you they were worth "half a dozen civilized wives."
Exchanging the canoe for the saddle, the mission party galloped across French Prairie knee-deep in flowers. The larks flew up and sung.
It was not a princely mansion, that humble log mission twenty by thirty, with chimney of sticks and clay. Jason Lee had swung the broadaxe that hewed the logs; Daniel Lee had calked the crevices with moss. There were Indian mats on the hewn-fir floors, homemade stools and tables. The hearth was of baked clay and ashes, the batten doors hung on leather hinges and clicked with wooden latches. Four small windows let ​
in the light through squares of dried deerskin set in sashes carved by the jack-knife of Jason Lee. Just now every door and window framed a group of copper faces, every eye intent on the flowing garb and satin cheeks of the strange, fair white women.
Jason Lee never talked unless he had something to say. He simply waved his hand, bade them welcome to the humble edifice that marked the beginning of the capital of Oregon and Willamette University.
The rough table, with its battered tin plates and knives and forks, had venison from the hills, bread from their own wheat crushed in the cast-iron corn-cracker. The cattle driven over the plains furnished butter and cheese and cream; glossy cups of leaves held the strawberries that reddened on every knoll.
In front of the mission a beautiful fir grove, historic now, became the Sabbath temple. Thither repaired the missionaries, with their pupils, neatly dressed in English costume. Thither came the Canadians, with their native wives and half-caste children, all in holiday garb, and gathering in the background came the dark Willamettes, picturesque, statuesque, almost classic, with their slender bows and belts of haiqua. The hymn of worship rang through the forest aisles. Under the umbrageous firs all knelt in prayer. The July zephyr fanned the drooping cheek and downcast lid. Every Indian knelt in imitation of the white men. When Jason Lee arose every eye was fixed on his flushed face and speaking glance. He spoke briefly, then, to the astonishment of all, walked hurriedly to his congregation, took Miss Pitman by the hand, and led her to the front. Daniel Lee came forward, and there, under the fragrant firs, pronounced the solemn service of the first AngloSaxon marriage on the Pacific Coast. There was a ​
wedding trip up the valley and across the coast range to the sea; there were strolls along the level beach, clam-bakes, and surf-baths, a fashion that Oregon lovers have followed ever since. At harvest Jason Lee was back, wielding the cradle among the wheat, and his comrades found that here, as on the river, the bony Puritan outraced them all. ​
IV
DR. McLOUGHLIN GOES TO ENGLAND 1838
DR. McLOUGHLIN took pride in his handsome Scotch son-in-law, William Glen Rae. When the doctor found he must be going to England, he chose Rae, the head clerk, to accompany him as far as Fort Colvile on the Upper Columbia. Every year the Pacific accounts were consolidated at Fort Colvile, to be sent across the mountains. Who could do that so well as the head clerk?
Everybody was out with farewells when the doctor left that March morning in 1838. Along the Columbia the Indians watched the progress of the White-Headed Eagle and wondered if Douglas were as brave a chief. They knew that those swift canoes carried letters and papers. Once they stole them. Now they would as soon think of stealing the snows off Mt. Hood. "Cannot the White Eagle throw his medicine beyond the Dalles? "they said. Five days was quick time to Walla Walla in March, but then, who could move camp with McLoughlin? Charlefoux was at the bow. Over and over again Charlefoux had travelled that route, the safest guide if not the boldest. Every summer he conducted the yearly express to Fort Garry on Lake Winnepeg, and there turned back with the new recruits from Canada. ​
"I will visit you when I pass," had been McLoughlin's message to Dr. Whitman, with a gift of apples, rare as gold dollars on the Columbia.
Then a second courier brought word to the Whitman door: "I cannot stop. Meet me at Walla Walla. We are belated."
Dr. Whitman rode over to Fort Walla Walla, and by the hand of the flying chief sent word to the States of the birth of a little daughter, the first white child born in Oregon.
Next to Vancouver, Fort Colvile was the great Hudson's Bay fort on the Columbia. Behind that palisade, two square towers with portholes guarded the stores of furs. Down in the Colvile valley the traders had a mill. Seventy miles over hill and dale the Spokane Indians came to grind their wheat.
On a three-legged stool in the old log fort Rae added, subtracted, divided, outfit for this post, outfit for that, furs from this, furs from that, balance a king's ransom, to be divided in that Hudson's Bay house across the sea. Oregon's wealth, three million a year, all went to England. Down by the river, "rattat-tat "the hammers flew. Skilled Canadians were building canoes for the spring brigade. Ten days behind the doctor, Tom McKay's Shoshonie brigade set out for its summer hunt. And with it came Jason Lee. The mission on the Willamette had become crowded. Sons and daughters of the Canadian farmers were eager for books. Distant tribes sent for teachers.
"We must extend the work," said the missionaries. " Some one must visit the States and lay this matter before the churches. We must set up branch stations all over this country." Day and night the question was discussed. All eyes turned to Jason Lee. ​
"You only can represent us," said David Leslie. "In greater measure than any of us, you have the tongue, the fire, the courage, and the Lord's anointing."
There seemed a struggle in the leader's mind. If possible, Jason Lee had grown even more gentle of late. In his eyes strange beauty had come upon his young wife; her presence was a constant benediction. The Canadians felt new power in his speech, and tears rolled down their furrowed cheeks at his exhortations to a nobler life. In the tents of the Indians he came and went as a brother.
But now, with hesitation quite new in the line of his work, Jason Lee said, "Brethren, I do not see how I can go. It is a long, long journey, the winter and summer of two years. Indeed, I cannot go."
"It is your duty," the brethren said. "And only by starting with the traders in March can you hope to reach St. Louis before the frosts of autumn."
Jason Lee groaned in spirit. "How can I leave you?" he whispered to his bride.
"If it is your duty to go, go," the noble girl replied. " I did not marry you to hinder, but to help you."
With the heavenly countersign, "The Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent one from another," she bade him farewell. The missionary's bride, like the women of Sparta, sent her hero forth to return "with his shield or Upon it."
With nobler sacrifice than ever entered the dreams of ancient ascetic, Jason Lee trod love and ease beneath his feet. In his heart he bore his bride; next his heart there lay a memorial to Congress asking for a United States government for Oregon.
At Fort Walla Walla, one hundred horses were packed with Indian goods for the interior. How easily ​the Indians might swoop down and capture the caravan! But they will not the trader is the Indian's best friend, on the lookout, however, with a loaded gun. The brigade wound up the old trail to Whitman's. In two years that had become a favorite halting spot for Tom McKay.
Jason Lee and Tom McKay found the mission gardens green on the Walla Walla. Here and there irrigating ditches intersected the squares, and ran back into the Indian fields, where, in the absence of almost every necessary tool, the Indians had plantations of two and three acres in wheat, peas, corn, and potatoes. An orchard of seedling apple sprouts nodded its tender twigs, and a grist-mill hummed across the river.
The heads of the two missions had a long conference, and Jason Lee passed on to visit Spalding in the upper country. The horse he rode was a gift from his pupil Elijah, son of the great Walla Walla, Pio-pio-mox-mox.
"What are you going to do with William? "inquired Dr. Whitman, patting the dark locks of McKay's little son, the "Billy-boy "of Fort Vancouver.
"I am sending him to Scotland to study medicine. He starts to-morrow to join Dr. McLoughlin at Colvile."
"Thomas, why don't you educate the boy in America? Oregon is Uncle Sam's territory, and it won't be long before he takes possession. Take my advice, Thomas. Give the boy a Yankee education, make an American of him."
"I used to think of sending him to John Jacob Astor," said McKay, recalling the time when he himself, a lad of Billy's age, accompanied his father in a birch canoe down the Hudson to join the Astor expedition to the Columbia. "But I have no money. All ​my income is in London, in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company."
Dr. Whitman's answer was quick. "Do I not trade with your company at Fort Vancouver? Does not my money come from the American Board in Boston? Send the boy to New York, where I studied. I will pay his bills, and you can pay mine here in Oregon."
The accounts at Fort Colvile were completed. The annual ship from London arrived at Fort Vancouver, and a boat with special mail hastened up the Columbia to hand McLoughlin the latest advices before he left for England via Canada.
"Dr. McLoughlin sends word for Billy to join him with the mail express," said Rae, homeward bound, touching at Walla Walla. But already Billy was with Jason Lee on the trail over the Blue Mountains bound for the States.
Rat-tat-tat, the canoes were ready, ten, twelve of them, and the river was booming. The snows were melting on the mountains, soon the upper country would be flooded. Through the timber, over old Indian trails, the dog-sleds flew, bringing in furs from Kootenai and Cceur d'Alene. The patient, exemplary Flatheads were on hand with buffalo-meat and pemmican for the up-going brigade, and with buffalo-tongues, buffalotallow and rawhide cords, buffalo-skins, and buffalo-hair for the down brigade to Fort Vancouver. A touch of the hand at these nerve centres, a greeting and farewell, and the traders were scattered by thousands of miles. One day salutes, bustle, activity; the next, the trader strolled round his lonely post, his solitary guest the silent Indian.
April, May, June came. A messenger panted up to the gates of Fort Vancouver. "Is there any way to get ​word to Jason Lee? His wife and infant son are lying dead at the mission."
Tears leaped to the eyes of Douglas. The calm, steady, apparently icy Douglas had a heart like a thermal spring, that responded to the touch of sorrow. "I will despatch a messenger," he said.
A solitary boat set out with the details of that saddest tragedy that comes to human life. The grief-stricken members of the mission consigned to the tomb the bride of Jason Lee. Under the fragrant firs where her bridal was, the mother was laid, with her babe on her bosom.
"I will send it on to Fort Hall," said Chief Factor Pambrun, when the despatch was laid in his hand at Walla Walla. At Fort Hall Ermatinger delegated Richardson, a famous American trapper, to overtake Lee on the plains. July, August, September the trapper chased an ever-receding shadow.
Far up on the Platte Jason Lee was dreaming of his wife. By the camp-fire at night he wrote in his journal the story of their courtship, but he heard no hoofbeats in the rear. It was late September, at the Shawnee mission on the Kansas River, when a sunburnt horseman reached the palisade. "Is Rev. Jason Lee here?"
"Yes," from the gatekeeper.
"I have a message."
Already Jason Lee was at the gate. He saw not the people around, he saw not Billy McKay looking up into his anxious face he saw only a horseman with a black-sealed packet. He took it, entered his room, and shut the door. God alone heard the cry and saw the heart-break in that rude room at the Shawnee mission on the Kansas River. ​
Somewhere back in the mountains, Jason Lee had passed a train of trappers. With them rode Captain John A. Sutter, on his way to Oregon. The gay Swiss adventurer, with his broken English and a romance behind him like a fairy tale, captured the hearts on the Columbia. His contagious laugh made Fort Vancouver ring with merriment. The courtly manners of the fortune-hunter, his kind heart and unaffected affability, won admiration, respect, and love. Without a cent, without a prospect, with an avalanche of debt behind him, the very magnetism of his social nature bound friends like cords of silver.
Every one at Fort Vancouver was ready to swear by Captain Sutter. The conservative Douglas gave him letters of introduction to the merchants of Honolulu, to the fur princes of Sitka, to the Spanish governor of California. Sutter borrowed money, credit, clothes. With a free passage on the Hudson's Bay barque "Columbia" he sailed for the Sandwich Islands. Like the prince whose feet with fairy shoes were shod, Sutter danced across the continent, danced into the favor of the great English fur company, danced into the arms of the merchants of Honolulu. Here, all on credit, he purchased cannon, provisions, implements for his proposed rancho in California. Then, on the English brig " Clementine," the gay captain ran up to Sitka, danced with a Russian princess, and figured as the lion of half a hundred banquets. Back at the Islands, still on credit, he chartered two schooners and sailed to California. Governor Alvarado, won by his pleasing manners, energy, and recommendations, granted the adventurer a princely tract on the Sacramento, although contrary to law and the latest orders from Mexico.
"Take a rancho near Monterey," said the fascinated Alvarado. ​
The shrewd captain knew his own interests too well the farther away from Spanish interference the better.
"He will hold the American invaders in check," said Alvarado to himself.
"I can ally the Americans with myself," said the sagacious Captain Sutter.
Unlimited wealth seemed at his command. Up the Sacramento his heavy-laden schooners ploughed their way through the virgin waters. At the mouth of the Rio de los Americanos Sutter's adobe fort was built, on the general plan of Fort Vancouver. Forty Indians in uniform made up the garrison. Two Indian sentinels paced ever before the gate. Twelve cannon were mounted on the bastions, the gates were defended by heavy artillery through portholes pierced in the walls. Out of deer-fat, beaver, and wild grape brandy the captain expected to make a fortune. He bought stock and ploughed fields for wheat, and in that sleepy lotus-land of Spain the energetic captain bade fair to accomplish all that he desired.
When Andre Charlefoux guided back his boat brigade in autumn two Catholic priests came from Canada.
"Drive away those naked Indians," cried the shocked Blanchet at the Dalles. "Drive away those Indians, Charlefoux."
The laughing guidesman tossed his hair.
"Holy father, you come to civilize Indian. Oregon Indian have no clothe. If you no want to see him that way you better turn back home."
But Blanchet stayed and became a famous bishop of the Northwest. ​
THE LONDON COUNCIL 1838
MANY motives had brought about the journey to London. In the first place, Dr. McLoughlin was entitled to a leave of absence. Factors, chief factors, and traders from the St. Lawrence to the Athabasca had taken their turns at a glimpse of the old home in Scotland, or at the familiar hedgerows of some English village. Dr. McLoughlin had never seen the time when he could leave his ultramontane kingdom. From the day he decided to move his headquarters from the restricted grounds at old Astoria to the green, open swell on the north bank of the Columbia, in 1824, scores of hands had been at work building shops, stockades, storehouses, grubbing up trees, and subduing the soil. Then came a reason, and go he must.
Factors in the fur country had said farming was incompatible with the fur trade. From the days of Prince Rupert till that of the Red River settlement every bit of bread had come from England. "Can you raise wheat on the Columbia?" asked the London Directory.
"Oh, no," answered an old Northwester. "It 's a bad and barren land. Supplies must come across the mountains, or be shipped around Cape Horn."
In the north-country, trappers and traders fed, like the Chippewayans, on buffalo, whitefish, and moose. Pernmican hung in rawhide bags around the trading posts. ​
All that North was a land of fat and pemmican, pemmican "straight" (uncooked), and pemmican fried, pemmican flakes, pemmican soup, and pemmican spiced with berries, inviting the hungry trader to "cut and come again." On the Columbia it was salmon, fresh salmon, dried salmon, salt salmon.
"'The country must find provisions,' was Napoleon's motto; let it be ours," said Dr. McLoughlin.
He set his men to ploughing gardens. Out of the virgin mould there leaped such prodigies of grain and vegetables, such an abandon of peas and turnips and all good things, that even five hundred inmates of the fort could not consume it all. Now the first orchard blossomed on the coast, the handful of wheat had become a harvest that filled the bursting granaries, and a few cattle brought up on the schooner "Cadboro' "from California had multiplied into herds that covered the hillsides.
The question of export came up. The doctor's scheme widened.
"Why may not I supply those Russians at Sitka that send half round the world for butter, beef, and flour? "
But there was trouble with the Sitkans. A long strip of Alaska ran down the northwest coast and cut off the Hudson's Bay lands from the sea. One day Peter Skeen Ogden attempted to pass through the Russian shore-strip.
"Boom! "went the Russian gunboats that guarded the Stikine.
"I shall enter the river. I have a right to it," said the Hudson's Bay trader.
"Then I must fire upon you," came Baron Wrangell's answer.
Ogden stormed back to Fort Vancouver, and complaint was sent to England. The London papers were ​
full of "the outrage upon our traders in those distant seas."
Four years Lord Palmerston and Count Nesselrode had been diplomating over the privileges of that shorestrip. Four years Dr. McLoughlin had been piling up supplies that the Russians would have been glad to purchase. "Let us go to Europe and settle it," wrote the governor on the Columbia to the governor at Sitka.
To some who did not understand the doctor's statesmanship, and he kept his secrets to himself and Douglas, there were other reasons for that long and tedious trip to London.
Some said that Sir George Simpson had complained that Dr. McLoughlin favored the American missionaries. Sir George Simpson, so the Hudson's Bay gossips said, had prepared the London Board to give the doctor a "wigging "for the high hand he held on the Columbia; but when that stately form darkened the doors in Fenchurch Street the king of the Columbia was weighed at his true value, a veritable monarch come out of the West.
It was a stately occasion when the delegates of the Russian American Fur Company of St. Petersburg met the delegates of the Hudson's Bay Company in a London council and discussed matters usually relegated to the cabinets of kings. The difficulty was adjusted. " And now," said McLoughlin, "we want to lease that ten-league strip of Russian seaboard."
Lord Palmerston and Parliament wondered if the Hudson's Bay Company wanted the earth. Already it controlled an extent of territory greater than all Europe, of what value could be a barren bit of shore on that lonely northwest coast? Dr. McLoughlin knew its value better than the Russian Directory, better than ​
the London Board, certainly better than the English statesmen, who then regarded those distant realms as vaguely as the phantom deserts in the moon. He knew those rocky islets were rich in priceless sea-furs. For 10,000 land-otter a year the strip was leased, and further reciprocity contracted in furs and flour.
Other great schemes were incubated during that London visit: the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company, to hold that inland sea for England, a plan for posts in California just ready to drop from decaying Spanish rule, and an out-reach to the Hawaiian Islands. In fact, if those American missionaries had stayed over the mountains, England held in her hand the key to commercial empire on the Pacific.
But the English visit was not all diplomacy. At Addiscombe, the East India training-school, a happy surprise awaited Dr. McLoughlin. His son David, the lean, sickly lad of five years ago, appeared in the regimentals of a British officer commissioned to the East Indies. The scarlet coat, bright buttons, and epaulets set off a form as commanding as his own. The Indian tint in his cheek gave bronze enough for beauty, no more.
With pride the doctor looked upon his son. From the cradle he had set his heart upon David, his heir. For him he had planned education, promotion; for him he had built an estate to hand down the name of McLoughlin.
"I cannot spare you, David," said the father, fondly. " I need you on the Columbia. I am getting old. It may be, I would pass the reins of power to you."
The youth flamed an answer back:
"What prospect have I in the service of Hudson's Bay? Does not Sir George bring over his favorites by ​
shiploads from Scotland? Shall I become a packer, a trapper, a leader of brigades? I have no future there. Let me go to Afghanistan."
"Tut, tut, tut, David; I know your prospects better than you do. Great schemes are afoot. Come, pack up."
The strong will of the father prevailed. Purchasing his son's retirement from the army, the two bade goodbye to Dr. McLoughlin's only brother, Dr. David McLoughlin, who had come over from Paris to see them off. The doctors were much alike Dr. David McLoughlin was younger and less commanding. He had a great name in Paris a leading physician. Five years ago he had received this Indian-tinted namesake from the Columbia and had given him the best that Paris afforded. Now that nephew had become a man of the world, polished and courtly. When he doffed his regimentals, he donned the ruffled linen and the broadcloth of Parisian fashion, and sailed with his father back across the Atlantic to Montreal.
Since the old French days when the governorsgeneral sat in Indian council in their elbow chairs on the banks of the St. Lawrence, Montreal had been the capital of Canadian fur trade. Hither, now, once a year, Sir George Simpson, Governor of Rupert's Land, came from his London home to superintend the company's affairs in North America.
"Trade with Russia is a hare-brained scheme," had been Sir George's earliest thought, but on McLoughlin's arrival a council was held at Montreal. In it spoke the commercial life of the Dominion. The Hudson's Bay Company and its silent partner, the beaver, practically ruled in Canada. No rival, no competitor dared question their authority. Puget Sound, Alaska, Cali ​
fornia, Hawaii were discussed. The merchants of Montreal had not realized there was so great an outlook from that distant land of exile.
"What are you going to do with your Emperor of the West?" asked a chief factor after the doctor's boats with reinforcements for new posts had passed up the Ottawa on their way back to Fort Vancouver.
"Give him free rein," answered the sagacious Sir George. ​
VI
RIVAL FUR COMPANIES 1824-39
IT was time for the fall brigade and the Montreal express. They usually came down the Columbia together. Every year the express left Montreal in May. With a sweep and a swing and flying paddles they shot up the Canadian rivers and through the Great Lakes. In July they were at Red River. Through the torrid summer they toiled along the great Saskatchewan. Before the autumn snows came on the voyageurs left their boats and crossed the Rocky Mountains, generations before a Canadian Pacific was dreamed of. There on the western slope at the Boat Encampment stood a deserted hunting-lodge. Twice a year the big fireplace roared and the kettle sung. Tearing off their moccasins stained with blood in the awful solitudes of the mountain pass, the lighthearted voyageurs prepared to re-embark. Leathern bags of flour and pemmican, sugar and tea, were unearthed from a cache, hidden canoes were drawn out of the cedar brush, and, launching on the little stream, the express soon entered the head waters of the great Columbia.
Down, down they glided, singing as they went the songs of Old Canada, brought generations ago from the land of the fleur-de-lis. Down, down they glided, past peaks of snow and tangled woody heights, past Fort Colvile on her terrace, past park-like stretches of gr ​ove
and lake and meadow, past the picketed square of the flat and sandy rock at Okanogan, through miles and miles of Indian empire to Fort Walla Walla at the great westward bend of the Columbia. Here they met the Shoshonie brigade that had come overland on horses from Fort Hall, and all together swept in state down the Columbia to Fort Vancouver.
Vancouver? It was the emporium of the fur-trade on the Columbia, ninety miles from the sea, a fort that, like the castles of mediaeval Europe, was at once a defence in time of danger, an oasis of civilization amid surrounding barbarism, and a capital from whence its master held baronial sway. Here for a quarter of a century Dr. John McLoughlin ruled with the sceptre of a czar the vast territory from Alaska to California and from the Rocky Mountains to the ocean. Uncounted thousands of Indians obeyed his behests, feared his displeasure. On the Upper Columbia the knightly Cayuses laid tribute at his feet, the brave and stately Walla Wallas, the chivalrous Okanogans, the friendly and hospitable Nez Perces, the faithful Flatheads, and the loyal Spokanes. Back in the mountain fastnesses the robber Klickitats acknowledged him their chief, along the sandy Dalles the treacherous Wascopams allowed his boats to pass in peace. Below the cascades the industrious Molallas, the lazy Callapooias, the lying Tillamooks, the fishermen Chinooks, and their cousins the Clatsops ail bent the knee to the White-Headed Eagle that reigned at Vancouver. On all the waters he sent his Canadian voyageurs, through all the woods he despatched his trappers and traders, in and out of the fringing northwest islands to Sitka itself his schooners plied, down through the San Joaquin and Tulare's reedy valley his hunters set their traps, far over into ​
the Shoshonie country, on Salt Lake's borders, and on the Yellowstone his brigades pitched their tents, bringing home rich caravans of skins and mantles.
And who was this king of the Columbia in whose will lay decrees of life and death, at whose bidding the bloodthirsty savage laid aside the tomahawk and entered upon the peaceful pursuits of the hunt? It was a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company who had been building on the Pacific a fur-trader's empire. Not for nineteen years had John McLoughlin crossed the ocean to set foot in that old Hudson's Bay house in Fenchurch Street, London; not since the wedding of the rival fur companies in 1820, when he stood up for Canadian enterprise.
That wedding of the fur companies is historic. When the French and English were fighting at Waterloo, two rival fur companies were fighting in North America, the Hudson's Bay and the Northwest. When the smoke of battle over there cleared away, the British Parliament saw the smoke of battle over here and called a halt: "Here, you rivals! We cannot let you stain the plains of North America with British blood. If you must fight, turn your arms against the Americans or the Indians, anybody but each other. We cannot afford to lose the few representatives we have over there and abandon the country altogether. Be good children, make up, and King George will give you a wedding present."
So the hoary old Hudson's Bay Company that had slumbered for a century proposed to the young Northwest Company of Montreal, and both sent their best men to London to discuss the marriage dowry. It was plainly a wedding of capital and labor. The Canadian company had nothing but her hands, her courage, and ​
her magnificent exploration. The London bridegroom had the money-bags of nobles and control of the Bank of England. In the midst of the nuptial settlement a young Canadian doctor had startled them all with the boldest speech that had ever rung in those conservative warerooms. He was a study, that courageous young doctor of locks prematurely white and flashing eye, that free-born spirit that had breathed in liberty on the banks of the St. Lawrence.
"My Lords and Gentlemen, I plead for better terms! Since the days of Prince Rupert this monster monopoly has sat supinely on the banks of Hudson's Bay and shut out Canada from her birthright. Did we seek extended settlement? It would drive away their game. Did we attempt to trade in furs? They claimed the only right. Westward, beyond the basin of Hudson's Bay there lay an open field. To this the merchants of Montreal sent out their traders. We scoured the forests and threaded the streams. We sought new tribes and won their friendship. We explored the Saskatchewan and the Athabasca. Our men it was that traced the Mackenzie and planted the flag on the polar Ocean, and turning back found a way across the mountains to the Pacific itself. While the Hudson's Bay Company waited we ran. We built up posts in remotest wilds, we discovered new waterways, we established trade. When the profits began to flow in, the Hudson's Bay Company began to rub its sleepy eyes and claim the fruits of our toil. They claimed our trading fields and shot our traders. To obstruct our work they threw the Red River settlement across our path, cutting communication with Montreal and blockading our supplies. They prohibited their settlers from selling provisions and tried to starve us out. They used their ​
money to buy over our traders, and when bribes would not suffice they shot us in the forest. Is this the condition of British subjects? No wonder we fought for our rights. And now you ask us to ' share equally ' the profits of the trade. I do not object to the union, God knows I regretted the war, but ought we to give an equal share of those profits they never raised a finger to obtain, nay, did all they could to discourage and destroy? What reward have we for those years of toil and trial if we hand over the moiety now to a rival? It is not right, it is not just, and in behalf of the Northwest Company I contend for better terms."
So spoke young McLoughlin, in that London wareroom eighty years ago. The very clerks, amazed, stopped scratching with their quill pens in the dim candle-light to listen. They watched him with breathless interest, the Canadian merchants proud of their champion, the British baronets and stockholders wondering if of such stuff was made the rebels of the American Revolution. But he was not yet done.
"Gentlemen, if I contend for better terms for ourselves, what shall I say for our voyageurs, yours as well as ours, who upon a pittance of seventeen pounds a year must man our boats and pack our furs? Wading in icy waters, cordelling canoes in rocky torrents, transforming themselves into beasts of burden at every portage, working eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, cut off from all refinements of social and civilized life, condemned to exile and rapidly sinking to the level of savages, all this that the inordinate profits of their muscles and sinews may pour wealth into the coffers of this trade. Gentlemen, let us consider the hardships of our employe's' lives and realize that seventeen pounds ​
a year is beggarly recompense for service such as theirs."
It was a new thing for a factor in the fur company to utter a sentiment like that. But, alas! the doctor was too direct for a diplomat. Even the merchants of Montreal were willing to profit by the serfdom of those French-Canadian voyageurs and thought their philanthropic favorite had gone too far. One vote, one voice, could not bring better terms, but one thing the doctor could and did do. John McLoughlin never set his name to the articles of agreement.
That speech was not forgotten. The Board admired and yet they feared him. He was the most popular and energetic of all the Northwest leaders. He must be quieted, he must be honored, and more than all, the great Northwester must have room for executive sway. He must rule in Canada, or as far as possible from Canada no intermediate ground would do.
About that time the American Congress had agreed with Parliament upon a joint occupancy of a certain wilderness called Oregon. The very place! a sort of Siberia, far off! Dr. John McLoughlin was delegated with absolute power to the Columbia Department. He knew it was a banishment, but he knew, too, that he would be king in that realm beyond the mountains.
All that was long ago. Now, after nineteen years, Dr. McLoughlin has been to London on business connected with the Pacific. Every year his ships have brought their furs, every year his reports have come in, until from nothing his returns exceed those of any other post in the Hudson's Bay dominion. He is on his way home now. The arrival of his boats may be calculated almost to the hour, for Dr. McLoughlin is nothing if not punctual. ​
VII
McLOUGHLIWS EARLY HISTORY
1839
UPON the porch of the governor's residence, one warm October day, there sat two women. Every morning those women were there, from the first bright days of May until the Oregon winter began with the rains of November. Always needle in hand, they were embroidering the caps and scarfs and smoking-bags that were the chief delight of the voyageur's heart.
Madame McLoughlin, the elder, had a marvellous needle; one that might have wrought tapestries in the olden time, so fine and soft and even was her work. And yet, Madame's mother had been a wild little princess on the plains of the North, wooed long and long ago by a Hudson's Bay trader. Madame herself had a touch of copper, that deepened with the years. But her daughter, Eloise McLoughlin, had the creamy tint of a Spanish donna. She had her mother's eyes, and her mother's shining satin hair; but the form and features were those of the Hudson's Bay governor, imperial, commanding, fair.
Barely twenty-one, tall, graceful, no wonder the beautiful girl was a star in that land of dusky women; no wonder the clerks of the company competed for her hand, and hearts were rent when she made her choice. Indeed, how could it be otherwise in this remote corner of the world where the governor's daughter qu ​eened
it on the Columbia? Attired in London gowns, selfpoised and sensible, Eloise McLoughlin was too much like her father to submit to the tame self-effacement of the traders' wives. Her mother's humility pained her. She would see her take her place as the Grande Dame, the Lady of Fort Vancouver. But Madame herself waived all right to such distinction. By common consent Eloise had become the Lady of that Pacific Coast. The finest horse on the Columbia was hers; a blond Cayuse with pinkish eyes and pinkish-yellow mane and tail, presented to the governor by the great chief of the Walla Wallas. And on state occasions Eloise McLoughlin came forth arrayed in waving plumes and glittering garments, and seated on that steed rode at her father's side, leading the brigade up the Willamette. For very well her great father, Governor McLoughlin, understood the influence of pomp and color on the savage heart. The horse brigades were gay with brilliant housings; a multitude of tiny bells tinkled at saddle skirt and bridle-rein, bright dresses stiff with beads adorned the trappers' Indian wives, and at the head of this barbaric pageant often sat Eloise and the stately governor, with his long white locks blowing over the cloak of Hudson's Bay blue. As such cavalcades would wind up the valley in the October sun the whole little world turned out to gaze. You would hardly have supposed there were so many Indians in the country until you saw them trooping in to witness the autumn brigade to California. The silence, broken only by the heavy trampling of the fast-walking horses and the tintinnabulating bells; the succession of gleam and color left an impress upon the red man never to be forgotten, an impress of unmeasured wealth and splendor hidden behind those palisades at old Fort Vancouver. ​
Eloise herself enjoyed these state occasions as a flower enjoys the sunshine. Ever at her father's side, taught by him, trusted by him, his companion and confidant, no wonder she repined at his long absence. The page of Telemachus lay untouched, the page she so oft had read at her father's knee; and, needle in hand, the fair bride emulated her mother in patterns of silk upon the pliant buckskin or the glossy broadcloth.
For Eloise McLoughlin was a bride; and the groom (so old voyageurs tell me) was the handsomest man at Fort Vancouver. Reserved, cordial, quiet, William Glen Rae was at bottom a scholar and a thinker. Six years had passed since he came from his ancestral home in the Orkneys, from Edinburgh College honors. His glance fell on the Lady of the Pacific Coast. The course of a life was changed. No doubt it was a wise provision on the governor's part that settled her marriage before his departure, to bind her heart with new ties, to end the rivalries that grew more pronounced from year to year. One young trader, who from the time Eloise was a little girl had joked and sung and danced to win her, was ready to fight on her wedding day. But the governor took him aside.
"Wait a bit, Ermatinger, wait a bit. When I come back I will bring you the fairest lily I can find in Canada. Then you shall have a wedding, too." Ermatinger stormed. For any other offence the governor would have shut him up in the butter-tub as they called the six-by-nine donjon where refractory engages were punished. As it was, Ermatinger betook himself to Bachelors' Hall and was seen no more till he left with Tom McKay's brigade for the Shoshonie, ten days later. He had not even come back in the autumn. But now it was said that surely he would come tc ​
meet the governor; for rumor had gone out that Frank Ermatinger had worked himself into an excitement waiting for his Canadian Lily.
So this morning in 1839 the mother and daughter were stitching, stitching; fitting the pink and purple beads into leaves and rosettes, and twining long vines of gray and green along silken sashes. The porch ran entirely across the front of Governor McLoughlin's residence. It had deep-seated windows and benches at the ends. Along fluted pillars a grapevine trailed and tangled; a vine cut from the mother-vine of all the mission grapes of California.
Suddenly Eloise spoke. "Mother, how can you stitch to-day? See, my silks are knotted and my roses spoiled." She tossed her work into the little Indian basket at her side. Unbraiding her hair she let it down, in a shining, shimmering cataract to the floor.
The Madame finished a leaf before she spoke. Then in a slow and gentle tone, "I haf the more patience, Louice. You are like the father, not quiet." French was the family language of the McLoughlin household. With each other the Hudson's Bay gentlemen spoke English; with their families and with the voyageurs, French; with the Indians, Chinook, a trade-tongue that grew up on the Columbia a polyglot of HawaiianEnglish-Spanish-French-Indian.
"Mr. Douglas says my father is like Napoleon. He can out- travel all others. He may surprise us," said Eloise, shaking the loosened waves around her like a camlet.
"That is what I am hoping. But so many ills happen in a lifetime," sighed the Madame. "When one husband haf gone away and never come back again, who ​
can tell about another?" Eloise was sorry her mother referred to that old sorrow.
To one that noted such trifles the Madame's hair was growing whiter, as if a box of powder had been spilled since the governor went away. Quite snowy now, it floated over the back of her easy-chair. She always wore it so, loosely, like her mother and her grandmother before her. Her eyes kept wandering toward the snow on Mt. Hood. Her ears strained to catch the distant boat song; she started whenever the great gate opened and shut.
And who had Madame McLoughlin been before her marriage to the great doctor? Some old voyageurs could have told you that forty years ago the Madame had been the fairest girl in the Cumberland District of Manitoba. Her Scotch father sent her to school with the nuns at Quebec. As a child she heard rumors from the South; scattered fragments of the American Revolution when the Tories came flocking across the Canadian border. As a girl she met Alexander McKay, who had just returned with Alexander Mackenzie from that wonderful tour in which they, the first white men that ever crossed the continent, had scribbled with red ochre on Pacific rocks:
A. MACKENZIE
ARRIVED FROM CANADA BY LAND, JULY, 1793.
Retracing their steps, Mackenzie went to England to be knighted Sir Alexander and crowned with fame. McKay remained and married Margaret. Two children came to their home at Sault Ste. Marie. A dozen, fourteen years went by. The boy became a sturdy lad, the girl a miss of twelve, while their Scotch father ​
was collecting peltries from Michilimackinac to Detroit in those early days before recorded history began. One summer morning, as he had done every summer for fourteen years, Alexander McKay set out with his brigade of furs for Montreal. That was the last time Madame ever saw him.
For at Montreal McKay met John Jacob Astor. Astor was starting a Pacific fur company. He had come to Canada for men skilled in all the mysteries of the fur trade. McKay pleased Astor was made a partner. He flew around Montreal engaging his men, and by the return boats to Sault Ste. Marie sent a good-bye to his wife, and a request to the commander of the northwest post to care for her "till his return." It was a sudden leave-taking, but not uncommon in the ups and downs of fur-trading life. Margaret sat day after day with her arms around her little girl and wept. The boy Tom had gone with his father. How bravely he stood in the boat that summer day, waving good-byes to his mother! In fancy she saw their birchen barks fly down the Richelieu, up Lake Champlain, and down the glittering Hudson. She dreamed that they tossed in Astor's ship around Cape Horn. Then came the war of 1812. The Americans burnt Sault Ste. Marie, and the little house in which Margaret's wedded life had sped so happily. Those blue-coated soldiers waited for the annual fur brigade due from the North; watched and waited and went away. One afternoon a fleet of forty-seven boats, freighted with a million dollars' worth of furs, slid down the Sault Ste. Marie, and passed unharmed to Montreal. She was glad they had missed the furs, those vandals that had burnt her house! But, to fill up the measure of disaster, word was brought by returning voya​
geurs that her husband had been killed by Indians on the treacherous northwest coast!
Then the fur companies went to fighting on the plains of Manitoba. How could Margaret know that Tom, safe and sound, in trying to get home to her had reached Red River just in time to take part in that battle fought a year and a day after Waterloo? Tom McKay saw Governor Semple march bravely out of Winnipeg with cocked hat and sash, pistols, and doublebarrelled fowling-piece, and his Hudson's Bay men behind him. Tom rode up with the rival Northwesters. There was a rush and a crash, and the governor and some others were killed. Lord Selkirk hastened over from Scotland with a lot of Waterloo veterans, so Tom gat himself back to the Columbia without seeing his mother. But she? She was coming to him in unexpected fashion.
A young Canadian doctor commanded the fort a strange anomaly. Polished and courtly, he had left the civilized world to bury himself in this uttermost wild. In October, 1784, John McLoughlin was born at Riviere du Loup on the banks of the St. Lawrence. While still a boy his father was drowned. The widowed mother took her children home to her father, Malcolm Fraser. There her boys, David and John, grew up in their grandfather's old stone mansion overlooking the St." Lawrence just where it widens to the sea. They played in those hills, rugged as Scotia's rock-ribbed Highlands. They caught a military presence from the soldier grandsire who had brought a Highland regiment with him to America to colonize these seignioral manors. Here Scottish books were read and Scottish tales retold. Here the bagpipe droned and the kilt hung in the old colonial closet. The brothers were sent over-seas, ​
McLOUGHLIN'S EARLY HISTORY 67
were pursuing medical studies, when Napoleon began to harry England. Dr. David McLoughlin went into the wars and followed the Iron Duke until Napoleon was caged at St. Helena. Dr. John said, "I can never fight Napoleon I admire him too much." He returned to Canada.
The world lay before young Dr. McLoughlin. There was a pretty girl in Quebec. One day in spring he was walking with her, when they came to a plank on a muddy street. She was just ahead of the doctor when an insolent English officer, coming in the opposite direction, crowded her off the plank. In one instant that officer, gold lace, epaulets, and all, lay sprawling in the mire. There was danger in store for the young gallant, so he hied him to the Northwest, where his uncles the Erasers were great factors of Eraser's River. That was the whispered tale of how McLoughlin first entered the fur trade. Birth, talent, magnificent presence brought rapid promotion, already he was in command of Sault Ste. Marie.
And the widow of his friend was in his keeping. As Pythias waited for Damon, so McLoughlin had waited for McKay. His tender heart was touched by the sorrows of one so fair. Her well-bred ways whispered of home. No white woman could go into the Indian country, but Margaret could go because she had Indian blood.
Dr. McLoughlin married the widow Margaret McKay. There was no priest at Sault Ste. Marie, that lonely trading outpost eighty years ago, A brother chief factor said the service. That was all; enough for a loyal heart like John McLoughlin's.
It was not an unusual matter. From the days when King Charles had granted a royal charter to his "well ​
beloved cousin," Prince Rupert, the gentlemen "aci venturers of England trading into Hudson's Bay "had married the daughters of chiefs, effecting state alliances to facilitate peace, good-will, and commerce. From these had sprung the type to which Margaret belonged, fair, dark-eyed women, combining the manners and mind of the whites with the daring and pride of the Indian. Such had been Madame McLoughlin's early history.
"How can I know that your father not stiff at the bottom of Lake Superior?" continued the Madame to-day, half to Eloise and half to herself. "He capsize there once, and all but him were lost. Oh, that lake is cold! it quickly numb and drag the swimmer down! I saw them when they brought him through the fort gate like dead man. He had beautiful golden hair, the Indian call it sunshine; but after that it turn white white as snow. Before he was thirty, Louice, men call your father old."
That incident was when Chief Factor Mackenzie was lost and McLoughlin lived to rule Fort William. Eloise had heard talk of the fogs and storms and flurries of the great Canadian sea; she had heard talk of life at Fort William, the metropolitan post of the Northwest Company on Lake Superior, where the merchants of Montreal used to come in summer like kings on a royal progress. She was a baby then. She could barely remember the journey to the Columbia; one long picnic it was to Eloise and to David her brother, who laughed and crowed and kicked his pink heels in his birch-canoe cradle. He, too, was coming home now with his father; coming from five years' study in Paris and London.
"A penny for your thoughts, Eloise! " ​
It was the cheery voice of her husband, William Glen Rae, who had stolen up the steps unobserved to the spot where Eloise sat with her unbound hair still rippling on the floor.
"I was thinking," she said, putting her hands in his, "I was thinking what a family reunion 'twill be when the express comes in! We must celebrate this year with a real Canadian Christmas! "
"Yes," answered Rae, the shadow of a cloud flitting over his brow, "yes, for no one can tell where you and I may be a year from now."
It was the governor's joke when he left: "Wait till I get home, Eloise. Then you and Rae shall have a wedding journey."
Rae looked for promotion, but whether to some wild new Caledonian post on the Fraser, to the sage desert on the Snake, or up the Columbia, he could not guess. For six years, now, he had been head book-keeper at Fort Vancouver. Many a document had Rae filed away in the brick archives of the block counting-house. To take up a new role, to control men and manage Indians, might prove less congenial.
The brass bell on its tripod in the centre of the square rang for dinner. The Canadians in the field heard it, and turned out their oxen. The Iroquois choppers heard it, and rested their axes. The clerks heard it, and hurried across the court to brush their coats in Bachelors' Hall. The fur-beaters heard it, and went to their cabins outside the gate. Madame heard it, and disappeared through the door to her own apartments. Unassertive, shy, it was the custom of the traders' wives to live secluded. Visitors at Fort Vancouver saw little of the resident women. Custom forbade their presence at the semi-military table in the ​
great hall. But children playing about the court attested the presence of mothers.
"It is worthy of notice," writes an old chronicler, " how little of the Indian complexion is seen in these traders' children. Generally they have fair skin, often flaxen hair, and blue eyes."
Stealing a kiss from the cheek of his bride as she flew away after her mother, William Rae turned and watched the other gentlemen of the fort coming up the semicircular flight of steps to dinner.
Most of them are well known to-day in Oregon story. There was James Douglas, Black Douglas they called him, a lineal descendant of that Douglas who in days of old was the chief support of the Scottish throne tall, dark, commanding, and, next to McLoughlin, the ruling spirit on the Columbia. James Douglas had left the storied hills of Lanark as a boy of sixteen to seek his fortune with the fur-traders of Canada. He crossed Lake Superior and came to Fort William in the reign of McLoughlin. Fort William was then in its splendor, a great interior mart, and chief seat of the growing Northwest Company. Douglas was there when the reconciliation took place between the rival fur companies. With joy he watched the late snorting Highlanders, who had cut and carved and shot and imprisoned each other, shaking hands under the same flag and setting out for the uttermost forts in the same canoe. Fifteen years younger than Dr. McLoughlin, his attachment was that of a son or younger brother. Where McLoughlin went, Douglas went. When McLoughlin was sent to the Columbia he requested the company of his young favorite, then a lad of nineteen. Accordingly young Douglas crossed the Rockies and temporarily served at Fort St. James beyond the Fraser. ​
At Fort St. James, Chief Factor James Connolly, a jolly Irish gentleman, held sway, and dealt out beads and blankets to the Shushwaps for their beaver skins and otter. Chief Factor Connolly had a daughter, who is known in the annals of British Columbia as Lady Douglas. She was not "Lady Douglas "then. A shy, sweet, lovable girl, modest as the wood violet and as fair, it is not strange that Douglas loved Nelia Connolly. It would have been stranger if he had not. In addition to personal beauty the blood of heroes ran in her veins. Old chronicles are full of romance of this pair. Once a renegade Blackfoot murdered a Canadian and escaped. A smoke-dried, skinny old squaw whispered through the gate in Douglas' ear: " He haf come again. He hides in yonder camp." Arming himself, young Douglas walked fearlessly into the Indian camp and shot the renegade. Looking neither to the right nor the left, he coolly walked back to Fort St. James. The daring act awed the astonished Shushwaps for weeks they were silent, it seemed forgotten. But when Chief Factor Connolly went down the Columbia with a brigade of furs, the mindful Shushwaps roused themselves. "We must have pay," they said, "pay, pay, pay for the dead man." Crowding in at the fort gate one day, two hundred blackened warriors surprised and seized the Douglas and bound him hand and foot.
Nelia Connolly in her little boudoir heard a sound of confusion. The girl of sixteen ran out she saw every man of the fort tied. A burly fellow was flourishing a knife above the head of Douglas. At a glance she read her lover's peril. Darting upon the Indian she snatched the weapon. Turning to the chief the brave girl cried: ​
"What, you a friend of the whites and say not a word in their behalf at such a time as this? Speak! You know the murderer deserved to die. According to your own laws the deed was just! It is blood for blood. The white men are not dogs. They love their kindred as well as you! Why should they not avenge their murder?" Awed by the skookum turn-turn (strong heart) of the trader's daughter the Indians fled from the room. As the last blanket flopped through the gate the old chief standing in the door called after them in derisive tone: "You braves! Woman make you run! Go home. Hide in leedle holes! "
Young Douglas married the girl. Chief Factor Connolly read the ritual and gave away the bride. Then over the mountains Connolly went to Canada, where shortly he became the Mayor of Montreal.
As for Douglas, he took his wife down the Columbia, where in the then new Fort Vancouver they took up the quarters they had occupied ever since. The gentle Nelia had grown and ripened with the years, until the comely young matron was only a degree less attractive than Eloise herself. At the west end of that same porch was the door to their sitting-room, where on any Sabbath evening you might find Douglas with the Bible on his knee reading to his wife and little ones. It was a sweet home picture; one of the few, very few, to be found the entire length of McLoughlin's kingdom.
Summer mornings found Nelia the third in that group upon the porch, while her little daughter Cecelia in a pink sun-bonnet played among the flower-beds at the foot of the steps. There Douglas had scattered fine seed, and in floral letters had sprung his little daughter's name "Cecelia."
There were other things besides flowers at the foot ​
of the steps. Facing the main entrance of the stockade stood two eighteen-pounders and two swivels, belligerent but rusty, and piled in orderly heaps were pyramids of black cannon-balls that were never disturbed, partly because there was no fighting; more because Robert Bruce, the old Scotch gardener, had piled them there, and woe betide the chick or child that presumed to interfere with anything that Bruce had done. Bruce was far away, now in England with the governor; but habit had become fixed. In all Bruce's eighteen months of absence not even a dog had ventured to nose the forbidden balls. Neither was the grass trodden. They seemed still to hear the gardener's call, "Meestress Dooglas! Meestress Dooglas! Kap the bairnies aflf the grass."
But to continue the dinner company at the fort. Daily, besides Douglas, there was the fort physician, Dr. Barclay; and the clerks, gay young fellows, English and Scotch, whose friends across the sea had sufficient influence to secure them a berth in the opulent fur company. Not that their present salary was at all princely, twenty to one hundred pounds sterling a year was the most that any received, but clerks by promotion became traders, chief-traders, factors, and partners. There was not one of them that did not expect to become a chief factor or to retire at middle life to an old-world manor on the Thames or the Dee. Some waited years, some a lifetime, for promotions that never came.
Rae would greet them each as they passed, Dunn, who wrote letters to the "London Times;" Allen, brother to the physician of the Earl of Selkirk; Roberts, factotum; and all the ever-changing train of voyageurs and traders. ​
VIII
DR. McLOUGHLIN'S RETURN
T TOME WARD hurrying comes McLoughlin in these 11 October days of 1839. "Ready!" The sun and wind burned voyageurs catch up the paddles, the boat song strikes
"Ma 1-brouck has gone a-fighting,
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine"
and away they go, glittering down the Columbia. Miles of blue waters sweep behind them before the sunrise breakfast.
It was the doctor's ambition to have the best paddlers in the world, and he did. Never before did there, never again will such bold watermen ride the Columbia. Such order, such discipline! not the slightest minutiae escaped the master's eye. Monique, a stalwart Iroquois half-breed, a strong fellow, at home in the rapids, stands in the bow of the doctor's boat. Tawny-skinned, stripped to the waist, and bareheaded, his long hair streaming on the wind, with eye fixed and every muscle tense, this side, that, swift the paddle flies as his quick eye measures the line of safety and sends the signal back to the steersman in the rear. It is a play of life and death, but so skilful are those bowmen that rarely a bark goes tum-tum-tum grazing a rock.
There was a McDonald at Fort Colvile that had a daughter of the rich dark beauty of the Creole type, ​
DR. McLOUGHLlN'S RETURN 75
Smaller in figure than her Blackfoot mother, better rounded, lithe, and willowy, Christine McDonald was the embodiment of the grace and supple shapeliness of the half-breed girl. The chief factor, with his long locks flowing over his shoulders Indian fashion, was always in the saddle, and at his side rode his fearless daughter Christine. Handsome as her father and as daring, astride with a serape buckled around her waist, she followed the hounds to the fox-hunt, leaped canyons and fallen trees, and outdid the Indians themselves in her desperate riding.
On such a ride as this they caught sight of the Montreal express and dashed to greet McLoughlin, the chief of chief factors. As in some glen of the Highlands, Scotch plumes and tartans flew. Scotch Macs clasped hands with other Macs famous in the fur trade. Demonstrative Canadians fell on one another's necks with tears and laughter. Indian wives and children clamored for recognition. Delighted voyageurs dandled their terra-cotta babies on their knees with gifts of beads and bells bought in Canadian shops for this happy hour. Within the cedar hall there was roast turkey, sucking pig, fresh butter and eggs, and ale. Spokanes, Kootenais, and Pend d'Oreilles, in all the splendor of paint and feathers, dashed around Colvile on horseback. Some in soft-tanned buffalo-robes peeped through the trading gate. All night old Colvile rang. Outside the drowsy Flatheads heard the droning of the bagpipe.
There was a hush. McDonald had taught Christine the sword-dance. Under the rough rafters in the light of the fire the fair barbarian advanced, invited and evaded the supple blade that glittered round her head. Christine's little moccasined feet twinkled like stars, and her beaded bodice shimmered in the firelight. ​
Catching a lock of her flowing hair, she threw it across the darting blade it fell, severed, to the floor. Spellbound the traders watched them. The movements grew swift and swifter, until, in the excitement, Dr. McLoughlin thumped his cane upon the floor and cried, "Enough, McDonald, enough! "
For hundreds of miles the Columbia has a regular descent, broken only at long intervals by steps of rapids and falls. One hundred, one hundred and fifty miles a day, the fur-traders glide, pausing at nightfall to camp. Scarcely has the first boat touched shore before the axe is in the forest. The Canadian cook builds the tiny pile of lighted brush into a pyramid of blazing logs. From a sapling bent beside it the kettle swings and sings of supper.
On one side of the fire the voyageurs carve with pocket-knife and hunting-knife, and never resting in their talk gulp tea, tea, tea. On the other side the cook has spread McLoughlin's kitchen of linen and plate. Catharine Sinclair is that Canadian lily taking her first flight from the Manitoba home. David's laugh rings merrily. Bruce the gardener sips his tea. He loves the camping life; it reminds him of military marches and Waterloo. Two new clerks, McTavish and Finlayson, are keeping copious journals to send home to Scotland. There is a world of difference between the happy-go-lucky voyageur and his more thoughtful Scotch companion. The French-Canadian or FrenchIroquois laughs at mishaps, he rollicks and flings out the border song. The Scotchman is grave, solemn, and watchful, the brain and nerve of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Down the Okanogan country the grass is sere. Autumn flames. Sombre Alpine forests climb the faroff heights. Eastward dwell the Spokanes, the Children ​
of the Sun, desolated once by a more than Trojan war over a stolen Spokane bride.
At Walla Walla Chief Factor Pambrun comes down from his tower to greet his chief; there are letters for Dr. Whitman; the Shoshonie brigade sweeps into line with thirty packs of the best beaver of the mountains. The boat song rings in the narrow gorge. The Frenchmen sing in times of danger; the Iroquois are silent and stern as death as they let fly the canoe through the hissing and curling waters like a race-horse. There were times when Monique ran the swift and narrow Dalles; down the Cascades he shot with arrowy wing, but not to-day. Dr. McLoughlin is along and Charlefoux is guide. Many a time McLoughlin said, "Monique is my boldest man, but I 'd trust my life with Charlefoux." On they speed, past Memelose, the Isle of Tombs, the Westminster of the Indian, past Wind Mountain with its Ulyssean tales, past Strawberry Island where the fairies feast in June, to the wild-rushing cascades. Not a feature escapes McLoughlin's eye. Every cliff and crag is a familiar landmark pointing to Fort Vancouver.
Madame and Eloise need wait and embroider no more. Like silver bells shook far away, the boat song heralded the singers. Hood seemed to listen, the Columbia heaved its breast of blue, the very islands smiled with gladsome joy. Eloise touched her finger to her lip. "That is my father's boat song, his favorite because Napoleon was said to hum it when mounting for battle." Again she hearkened; then starting up as the words grew more and more distinct
"It is just like my father to sing Malbrouck at such a time as this," and as she flew to the gate her own voice joined the strain that so oft had rung in the halls of Fort Vancouver: l
Malbrouck has gone a-fighting,
Mironton. mironton, mirontaine, Malbrouck has gone a-fighting, But when will he return?
My Lady climbs her watch tower As high as she can get;
She sees her page approaching, All clad in sable hue.
"Ah, page, brave page, what tidings From my true lord bring you? "
11 The news I bring, fair Lady, Will make your tears run down;
"Put off your rose-red dress so fine, And doff your satin gown.
"Monsieur Malbrouck is dead, alas! And buried too, for aye;
"I saw four officers who bore His mighty corse away.
"One bore his cuirass, and his friend His shield of iron wrought;
"The third his mighty sabre bore, And the fourth he carried naught.
"And at the corners of his tomb They planted rosemarie;
"And from their tops the nightingale Rings out her carol free.
"We saw, above the laurels, His soul fly forth amain;
"And each one fell upon his face, And then rose up again. ​
"And so we sang the glories For which great Malbrouck bled;
"And when the whole was ended Each one went off to bed.
"I say no more, my Lady,
Mironton, mzronton, mirontaine, I say no more, my Lady, As nought more can be said."
And with the coming of the express would come all manner of news, and the renewal of contact with the East. Letters, at least, should be in hand. Newspapers for the entire year came in the express, a year's edition of "Le Canadien "and the "Quebec Gazette," just as in June the barque "Columbia "brought a file of the " Daily London Times "of the preceding year. Packed away in a great chest, every day the traders drew out that date a year, two years ago, to tickle themselves with the fancy that the post-boy called each morning!
They were at hand! "The express! The express!! "rang through the court. Every one was busy. Old Burris ran up the British ensign on the flagstaff. Swinging round the last green headland like the curve of a great wheel, the brigade shot into view. The song rang shrilly out. From the governor's barge fluttered the triangular pennon of the Hudson's Bay Company, with its rampant beaver and the familiar "H. B. C." upon a field of blue.
"H. B. C." "Here Before Christ," was Ermatinger's translation, and Bruce agreed. "I reeckon ye'll find the coompany's coolers where kirkmen seeldom git." And then there was a struggle to see who could touch the sand first. Paddles rolled on the gunwales, flinging the spray across the voyageurs' faces as they shook the water from the blades. ​
What rejoicing! Cannon boomed, flags waved, the bagpipes struck up "The Campbells are coming. Hourray! Hourray! "Indians whooped, dogs bayed, Frenchmen ran wild, as the whole fort turned out to greet the arrival and the chief. The sharp end of the canoes gritted on the sand. Every cap flew off as the familiar form of Dr. McLoughlin arose from the cramped position that had grown so irksome and stepped on shore.
Every eye rejoiced in that majestic presence. With a hand-clasp for Rae and Douglas and a salute for the Madame's cheek he presented her son "I have brought the boy home, mother." And Ermatinger gave a shout of joy at sight of his Canadian lily, a niece of the Madame, from Manitoba.
In the midst of greetings and tears and laughter on all sides, Eloise, hysterical with joy, clung to her father's arm, and all talking at once, went plodding up the path between the fields of wheat. Behind them toiled the Iroquois packers, rolling the heavy bales on little trucks to the fort.
"The governor has returned with flying colors," remarked Clerk Roberts of the Indian shop, measuring off a fathom of trail-rope tobacco with his arms as he spoke.
"An' richt glad am I," responded Allen, the farm overseer. "There 's nae better mon i' the coompany's service. His management o' Indians amounts to genius itsel'. Did ye notice Moneycoon an' the hunters when he called them? The' faces lichted like the sun. Anold Kesano, proud as a peacock wi' a feither in his hair. The verra sicht o' him tarn's the red men."
And Bruce the gardener had come again; and Bruce rushed to see his gardens! Reaching England, he had ​
resigned from the Hudson Bay Company. "I'll neiver leeve i' the wuids again," he said. A few days later, walking lonely in the streets of London, he came unexpectedly upon Dr. McLoughlin. The benevolent face beamed, it touched an aching void throwing himself upon his knees at the doctor's feet, with tears he begged to be taken back. Despite some obstinate disobediences the doctor valued the old gardener, so back he came, a fixture for life. Bruce looked eagerly, too, for his old musket, that cherished relic of Waterloo. In half an hour he had all the laddies in a row, with flint-locks on their shoulders "Heids up," "'Taes out like sooldiers, noo," "Mek reddy," "Tek aim," "Fire! "
David McLoughlin was like a child again. He seemed to wake from a dream to look upon the weather-beaten palisades, the unpainted stores resting on blocks, the sparks flying from the forge. He strode through his mother's sitting-room, unchanged save that Chinese matting, the first ever used in this country, had supplanted the native Indian mats. Just to see how it would taste, he drew a bucket of water from the deep well never walled, and snipped a handful of biscuit from the bakehouse. Even the big brass bell under its peaked roof sang the same old song, "Pumbrun! Pumbrun! Pumbrun! "that it sang when Pambrun rang it and David was a little boy. Apparently the same furs lay in the same bales in the furroom, the same trappers came in the same boats, singing the same old songs that had been his cradle lullabies. The same ship brought the same goods and departed again on her cycle of sailing. Changes had come to David, and he had expected changes here, but it was like opening a story-book to a page read long ago. ​
It seemed to him but yesterday, when a lad of thirteen, he had set out in the traders' care for France. They followed the old route up the Columbia. When he saw the wild Spokanes careering across the plain, his blood leaped as at the recognition of kindred. He longed to mount a fiery steed and ride away with them, far from books and school and gentlemen's clothes. He remembered the hunter's tales of Jemmy Jock, the half-Indian son of a Hudson's Bay trader that became a Rob Roy among the Blackfeet. Watching the daring riders he breathed deeply, and felt within him the stirring of savage instincts. It seemed only yesterday that David on snowshoes reached Jasper House beyond the head waters of the Columbia in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The old clerk Jasper was dead, but in his stead Colin Eraser played the bagpipes and danced at his shadow on the wall. How grateful seemed the blazing hearth and opulent larder of the hermit up there in the Alpine solitude!
That was a land of fat and pemmican. Thirty thousand bags, every bag as big as a pillow, hung in the company's forts that year. Every bag represented the pulverized flesh and melted marrow of two big buffaloes. David had seen pemmican down on the Columbia, salmon pemmican, but none like this with hairs in it an inch long! But in a wonderful manner it stayed the hunger of the voyageur crossing sub- Arctic snow. Never before had David seen such snow, hard and white, compact as adamant, across which the dogsleds flew to Fort Edmonton on the North Saskatchewan. All that North had been a realm of fairy-land and every old post a palace. Every bullet-hole in the gayly painted walls of Edmonton, every hack of the tomahawk on the battlemented gateway, had its ​
tale of tragedy and war. The rude fantasies of color and of carving dazzled the boy, as they dazzled the neighboring Cree, the Assiniboin, and the Blackfoot. Five years later, how tawdry they looked! Yes, David had changed. Even Vancouver was not so grand as he had thought. The savage in him slept.
"Be-be," sang the Indian mothers in the cabins:
"Bd-be, the governor has come, And now there 's some fun, And a great big feast to-night."
And so came the express from Montreal to Vancouver in 1839, landing Dr. John McLoughlin at home again on the nineteenth day of October his fifty-fifth birthday. ​
IX
THE BANQUET
1839
A YANKEE would have said Thanksgiving was at hand had he peeped into the spacious kitchen of the fort when the express came. The fort dininghall was a noble apartment, capable of seating five hundred guests. A huge map of the Indian country covered the wall. The dinner-bell rang, and the long tables began to fill. With a wave of the hand the stately governor seated his guests according to rank. Before them cut-glass, and silver with the McLoughlin coat of arms, shone side by side with modern queen's-ware and rare old china. Dr. McLoughlin presided like a picture out of the old colonial time, clean-shaven, fair and rosy, with his white locks twisted into a queue at the back. At his right sat his faithful aid, who in the governor's absence had added new lustre to the name of Douglas. Then came Rae and Dr. Barclay, and factors from other forts, the jolly ship's captain and mate, trappers and traders, clerks and sailors. The heavy doors clanged and the plank floor rang. The fire-logs flickered in the dark old chimney, and the branching candelabra sent out an odor of perfumed wax. There was a clatter of cutlery. In peaked cap and ample apron Burris marshalled his copper-colored, curly-haired Kanakas with trenchers of venison and tureens of brown gravies. And sauces? No one ever yet surpassed Burris in sauces for the Chinook salmon. These Hudson's Bay gentlemen were a rub ​icund
set, epicures to a degree. Mild climate, good living, and easy nerves gave them a corpulent habit in striking contrast with the lean and wiry Yankee traders that sometimes touched the coast.
There was once a complaint sent to Parliament that the Hudson's Bay Company made no attempt to cultivate the soil. Dr. McLoughlin broke that old regime. Almost from his coming there had been wheat, flour, bread, on the Columbia, yea, even gingerbread, and of late years apple pie! That fruitful orchard at Fort Vancouver had sprung from a handful of seeds dropped into the pocket of an old ship-captain by a laughing girl across the sea. "Take them and plant them in your savage land," she said. The black satin vest was packed away in a sea-chest. In airing his clothes one day at Fort Vancouver the seeds fell out. "Bless me! bless me! let us start an orchard," said Dr. McLoughlin, picking up the little triangular treasures. Another sea-captain brought a bunch of peach-stones from Crusoe's Island, Juan Fernandez. A little planting, a little care, peaches.
Back of the Fort hummed the old grist-mill, the first ever built west of the Rocky Mountains. William Cannon, the miller, an American, crossed the mountains with Astor's men in 1810. When Astor's people left he elected to remain with the British fur-traders. It was in the day of beginnings, when the post lived on salmon and wapato (the Indian potato) and were just experimenting with apple-seeds and peach-stones. The handful of seed-wheat brought from Canada was increasing marvellously when Cannon said one day, " Governor, let me build a flour-mill."
"A mill? A flour-mill? Bless you, man, where will you get burrs?" ​
"Make them of granite from the hill back of the fort," said Cannon.
"What power?"
"Cattle power."
"Go ahead then," was the governor's answer.
Cannon worked beneath a mighty fir that stands to-day on the old fort plain. He made his frame of fir, and the cogs and wheels of oak hardened by boiling in seal-oil. He worked his burrs down from rough granite with a cold-chisel.
"What are you making that for?" inquired Tom McKay's little Billy as Cannon smoothed the long main-shaft from a comely fir. Little Billy was three quarters Indian and bright, bright as a bluejay. " What are you making that for? "again piped the watchful little interrogation point.
"A whip-handle for the governor," answered the crusty miller, making a sharp eye at the little boy.
All was set up. The oxen were yoked, old Brandy and Lion brought up from California in the "CadboroV Wheat was put in, the whole fort came out to watch, the main-shaft turned, and lo! it ground out flour, the first flour on the Columbia.
Then Cannon built an old-fashioned over-shot wheel saw-mill. Lumber began to accumulate, so that every summer the Hudson's Bay ship left her Indian goods and taking on lumber went over to the Sandwich Islands. In November she came back for her London load of furs. The same ship was lying there now, furs all laden, her officers up at the governor's banquet.
"And how is competition now, Mr. John? How is competition now? "inquired Dr. McLoughlin of John Dunn just down from the northwest coast.
"Poor picking, Governor, poor picking for the Bos ​
tons. We've swept the hocean clean. Hour little steamer watches the coast like an 'awk. She darts hup the firths and 'auls in the furs before they never reach the coast. The Hamericans 'ave no business 'ere hanyway." Dunn thrust his fork into the duck with a savage lunge.
"Tut, tut, tut, Mr. John! "laughed the governor, "they will come unless we're sharp enough to head them off."
If there was anything Dr. McLoughlin hated, it was a Yankee skipper with rum on board. What trouble they brought! Drunken Indians who would sell for nothing but rum. All day the shrewd siwashes would lie on the shore in the sun and watch for Yankee sails. The company's men watched, too, and ran ahead to catch the furs before the ship could anchor. When naught but rum availed, rum was dealt to head the Yankees off. Then the Yankee captain swore and tore and sailed away to find another agent fighting rum with rum. At last the defeated Bostons almost quit the coast. Only at long intervals a damaged whaler ran into the cove at Esquimault. Then the forts cut off the rum supply. The red men held their furs in vain.
"Lum! lum! lum! "plead the siwashes, spreading rich bales of seal and beaver, shiny silver-fox, and glistening sea-otter around the forts. The traders shook their heads. "No liquor for the Indians." The angry red men brandished their tomahawks, but at last, subdued, were fain to trade their furs for blankets, and soberly set out on another hunt.
One day a new competitor came a Boston captain with a cargo of "Yankee notions." Right up the Columbia he sailed, and under the very guns of Fort ​
Vancouver sold out his squeaking cats and dogs and yellow jumping-jacks to the delighted red men. Solemn old sagamores squandered the catch of the season on little red wagons and tin whistles.
How Dr. McLoughlin fumed! The rascally fellow had even followed the Hudson's Bay example and married the daughter of a chief! Something must be done. The governor despatched a messenger to intercept the Yankee captain, and if possible buy him over, cargo, brig, and all. The scheme succeeded; captain, cargo, ship, and crew turned British, and as a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company the Boston captain McNeill became the most obstinate John Bull on the books.
The spirited recount of adventure since last the banqueters met filled hours. The candles burned low and began to sputter. "Captain Wyeth has sent a keg of choice smoking tobacco and a copy of Carlyle for you," Rae was saying.
"Just like him, just like him," commented the doctor. "Wyeth was a good fellow. I must write him a letter. Bruce! "The governor pulled a green belltassel behind his chair. Bruce opened the door and handed the governor his snuff-box. That was the signal for breaking up.
All passed out to chat and smoke in Bachelors' Hall all but the governor. He never smoked and seldom trusted himself with snuff he borrowed of Bruce. As they crossed the court, the wail of the fiddle resounded the voyageurs danced till daylight. At early dawn the barque "Columbia" left her moorings, and with sails unloosed stood out into the channel. ​
EARLY EVENTS AT FORT VANCOUVER 1812-1829
AND had this handful of whites lived always unmolested in the heart of barbarism? Not always. There was a time, after Astor's people left, when the Cascade Indians levied toll like the robber barons on the Rhine, a time when sixty well-armed men guarded every caravan, a time when the brigades made the portage at the Dalles with a lighted match above a loaded cannon. In a dim corner of the furroom there hung a chain armor worn by a Northwester in the early times. One hot night when he took it off, the skin came with it.
Long after McLoughlin came in 1824, the river bristled with danger. Once the Dalles Indians, the banditti of the Columbia, united to make him pay tribute. One dark night in 1829 their war canoes dropped noiselessly down upon the fort. But the sleepless watch was on the walls, the guns were set. Chief Kesano, a friendly Multnomah, rallied his tribe to aid the traders. All night the savages blew their shells and beat their drums. The next morning Dr. McLoughlin called a council. One by one the hostile chiefs were admitted. Douglas was there, and Pambrun, and Kesano with his sub-chiefs. McLoughlin had men concealed, ready to fire at a sign of treachery. The chiefs were sullen when into their midst came Colin Fraser, a six-foot Highlander in Scottish kilt ​
and flowing plume and played the bagpipes. Up and down the great council hall he strode and played an hour while they waited for McLoughlin. "Music hath charms." The savages were so subdued they forgot their warlike errand. While still the piper played, McLoughlin entered with a treaty ready drawn up that they would never molest Vancouver. It was signed, presents were distributed, and the hostiles departed happy.
One night in that same year, Kesano and his people came with shouts and blows to the postern gate, bringing Jedediah Smith, an American trapper, who had escaped from a massacre on the Umpqua. In 1828 Jedediah led the first party that ever crossed the Sierras into California. The Spaniards viewed them with suspicion. Out of the hands of the Spaniards they fell into the snares of the Indians out of eighteen men three only escaped to the Hudson's Bay Company fort on the Columbia. Dr. McLoughlin was astounded. " Stay! "he cried. "McKay! Tom McKay! This American has been robbed, his party massacred. Take fifty men, ride light, and go down to the Umpqua."
McKay and his Canadians crossed the Columbia that night. Down on the Umpqua the Indians came in, suspecting nothing. Captain Tom counted out the peltries. " There," he said, "for these I will pay you." He handed out their value in goods. "But these with the trappers' mark belong to the men you murdered. Look to the murderers for payment." The enraged Umpquas fell upon the murderers and Tom and his men galloped out of the country. Dr. McLoughlin paid Jedediah Smith three thousand two hundred dollars for his furs. The grateful trapper left the Columbia to rejoin his friends east of the mountains. ​
In 1829, too, a Boston ship came into the Columbia for salmon. Was it "the Bostons," as the Indians said, or was it the first ploughing at Fort Vancouver, that uncorked the vials of pestilence? For miles the shores of the Columbia were dotted with villages so near that a rifle-ball would reach from one to another. The Willamette was filled with a numerous and powerful people, a people that had good houses, great fisheries, and manufactured thread and nets and cloth from the fibre of the milkweed. The deadly fever came among them. The simple Indian remedies failed. The jugglery of medicine men proved vain. In vain was the general sacrifice of eagle's feathers and wooden images. The fated Multnomahs went into their sweat-houses. Half-suffocated in the vapor-bath, reeking with perspiration, they jumped into the cold Columbia. Barely crept they back to the wigwam door. In three weeks Kesano's people perished, and he had been wont to summon five hundred warriors to the chase. At his village, Wakanasissi, six miles below Vancouver, the bones lay five feet high and ten rods long for years, where the dead were piled in a ghastly open tomb. With six solitary survivors Kesano moved his lodge to Fort Vancouver. Here ever after the old chief was honored above all other Indians with a plate at a side table in the great hall, with a feather in a silk hat and a scarlet coat. With his large flat head, bright clear eyes that could look one through, Roman nose, heavy jaws, set firm lips, and hair carefully dressed, old Chief Kesano stalked in and out, an honored pensioner at Fort Vancouver.
That fever time! From 1829 to 1832 thirty thousand Indians perished in the valley of the Columbia and Willamette. In 1831, on the Cowlitz, the living sufficed ​
not to bury the dead, but fled to the sea-coast, leaving their homes to the ravens and the wolves. The sun shone fair as ever the changeless sun of an Oregon summer. Not a cloud, not a shower, not a wind, but the still Egyptian lotus-sky above the changeless days. Had the boy Bryant of New England divined this when he wrote,
"Lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound Save his own dashings. Yet the dead are there "?
Forty men lay sick at Fort Vancouver, and wretched Indians at the gates plead for "la medecine." There was no physician but Dr. McLoughlin. His hands were full. He, too, fell sick of the fever and sent his clerks among the sufferers with pockets lined with vials of quinine.
There was an Indian village on Wapato Island at the mouth of the Willamette. For several weeks no one had come from there. Chief Trader Ogden arrived at the fort. "Go over to Wapato and see what is the matter," said Dr. McLoughlin.
"There is something dead in Wapato," said Ogden, as his boats neared the edge of the island. There certainly was a sickish, fetid odor in the air. The oaktrees whispered as they passed. The gleaming alders fluttered their nervous twigs. The willows shook their large oblanceolate leaves with whitened under-edges. The wood-dove mourned in a thicket of young firs. Canoes lay idle on the beach. Nets hung on the willow boughs. Dogs watched, birds carolled, insects hummed and flitted, but no voice came from the village. As Ogden strode forward he saw them lying dead everywhere, all dead but one little slave-boy to whom the ​
sweat and the river-douse had been refused. Thrown out, the boy burned through the fever and lived.
"My legal primer says necessity knows no law," said the practical Ogden, lighting the funeral pyre. Men, now living, saw the grinning skulls of that Golgotha. Dr. McLoughlin adopted the little Indian slave and named him Benjamin Harrison, for a member of the London Board. He was a bright, attractive child, and became a favorite at the fort.
There was another chief, Maniquon, an old man bereft of his people. Sometimes they could hear him at night walking around the fort, singing a low sad song of death. Sometimes he would tell of other days, when he rode to the chase or fought in battle. "Eighty snows have chilled the earth since Maniquon was born. Maniquon has been a great warrior." The dim eye would glitter, the withered chief would leap and brandish an imaginary tomahawk, then sink back exhausted. " Maniquon is not a warrior now. He will never raise his axe again. His young men have deserted his lodge. His sons have gone down to their graves, and the squaws will not sing of their great deeds." Leaning toward the listener he would ask, "Who has made my people what they are?"
"The Great Spirit, Maniquon."
The old chief would leap like a fiend and fiercely whisper, "The white man did it; the white man did it." Fierce old Maniquon. To the end of his days he believed the Hudson's Bay Company poisoned the people of Wapato to get the beautiful island for a dairy farm. Long ago, in the ancient days of Wauna, the Multnomahs were a mighty people. All the tribes met them in council under the oaks and willows of Wapato. Now herds of cattle were sent to range where Indian ​
kings once trod. Hogs wallowed in the sloughs or fattened on acorns and wapato. Beneath the oaks of the ancient council grove the herdsman built his hut, and Sauvie, a French Canadian, was given charge of a dairy not far from the site of the deserted village.
An old woman, Waskema, wandered like an unquiet spirit in the valley. Here, long years before the white man came, Waskema was wedded to Canemah the arrow-maker. There he wrought the jewelled arrowheads of yellow jasper, red jasper, green jasper, and pale chalcedony, or wrought out knives of translucent obsidian carefully chipped down to a glassy edge. Canemah's arrows were famed from Des Chutes to Tillamook. Old Waskema had never forgiven the white man for bringing the fatal fever that carried off her husband and sons. Among the scrofula-stricken fragments of her race she strove to preserve the old superstitions and the old customs, preferring the necklace of claws and teeth and shells to even the gayest of Hudson's Bay beads. Each year as she went up to the fisheries, she tortured her heart with memories of the time when first she toiled with her arrow-maker gathering baskets of agate and jasper and carnelian along the quiet river sands.
In 1828 there was trouble with the Clatsops at the mouth of the Columbia. The "William and Ann," the company's ship from London, was wrecked one dark and stormy night on the Columbia bar. All on board were lost. Goods destined for Fort Vancouver were thrown out upon the beach. Dr. McLoughlin heard of the loss of the ship and sent to demand the cargo. An old broom was sent back in derisive answer. The surmise grew into a conviction that the Clatsops had murdered the crew as they tried to land that stormy night ​
The new Caledonian brigade was just in. The doctor despatched them to Clatsop with all the swivels in the courtyard. Boom! bang! boom! down went the wooden huts. The frightened people ran. A few were killed. The Clatsops had buried a quantity of the cargo in the sands on the seashore. The Canadians dug it out.
"Mind ye! Mind ye! "was McLoughlin's message. "Ye cannot profit by disasters to vessels nor murder white men for plunder."
Weeks passed. Peltries accumulated in the hands of the Clatsops. Their ammunition was out, but no one had courage to face the White-Headed Eagle at Fort Vancouver. Dr. McLoughlin divined this and sent Celiast down to conciliate her people. Three daughters had Coboway, chief of the Clatsops, Kilakota, Celiast, and Telix, all wedded to white men. Donning her gayest dress and spreading a blanket sail in her little canoe, Celiast and her cousin Angelique glided down to Clatsop.
It was a forlorn little town the Indian princess entered. The cedar logs lay in splinters on the sod. The salmon season had come, and all had been too busy to restore the shattered houses. Celiast sat down with her people on the grassy slope toward the sea. Grave men, voluble women, little children told her the story. " The ship was wrecked on the middle sands and the crew all drowned one windy night in March," they said. " The first we knew of the wreck was when the goods were coming ashore in the morning." With a firm belief in the innocence of her people and a promise of kind treatment when they came to the fort, Celiast made matters right and restored harmony.
About the same time another Boston ship entered ​
the Columbia, turned into the Willamette, and ran aground at the Clackamas rapids one hundred miles inland. The Clackamas Indians were fishing at the Falls. Around the bend they saw the ship. "King George man hate Boston," said the fishers. "Kill urn Boston." They left their fishing and crowded around the unfortunate ship. There was an ominous sound in their scoffing laughter. Already their bows were drawn to the arrowheads when a crew of boatmen hove in sight. It was McLoughlin's men despatched from Fort Vancouver.
Tom McKay's loud voice resounded, "The WhiteHeaded Eagle sends word: if you kill one Boston it shall be the same to him as his own King George man. Fall back." The Indians fell back, and McLoughlin's men got out their hawsers and pulled the rash adventurer from the rocks. ​
XI
BACHELORS HALL
1839
T3 ACHELORS' HALL was the gossiping place, the -L) clerks' quarters, a long, low, whitewashed log structure on the east side of the court. Here, in the central assembly room, with a rousing fire and tables littered with pens, ink, and paper, the gentlemen often chatted till the stroke of midnight. Hunting, fishing, fowling, these were the sports of summer, but during the long, rainy winter evenings Bachelors' Hall became the nightly theatre of song and story. All grades of employes, the aristocratic Briton, the feudal Highlander, the restless Frenchman, the picturesque Indian, shone in the kaleidoscopic shift of firelight. Here the gay and brusque McLoughlin discussed religion with the funereal, formal Douglas, or joked him on the customs of his Scottish chiefs.
Dr. McLoughlin was a hero-worshipper Napoleon was his hero. That is the key to his swift flights of travel; it explains his demand for instant and unquestioned obedience, his system of rewards and punishments, and his far-reaching schemes for power. Like Napoleon, his frown was a terror to the culprit, his approbation the delight of his subordinates. An offender would choose rather to flee away to the hostile Blackfeet than to feel again the blaze of that displeasure.
In Bachelors' Hall Waterloo was fought again and again. Bruce had been an actual participant. ​Clerk
Allen saw the French prisoners brought to Lanarkshire. In his native village he saw the bonfires of tar barrels that celebrated Wellington's victory, and he saw Napoleon's coach that was captured at Waterloo and exhibited throughout Great Britain. Once, while dressing a wounded hand for Allen, Dr. McLoughlin became so excited in discussing the Peace of Amiens that Allen records in his journal, "The doctor hurt me so that I wished Napoleon and the Peace of Amiens far enough! "
Well bred, well read, were the magnates of Fort Vancouver. Scholars loved their society. Many a mile the library of standard, leather-bound, weather-stained volumes travelled by canoe, to cheer the lonely traders around their soughing fires in the northwest forest. Scott, Burns, Shakespeare, these were daily food. The arrival of the American Irving's books created a great sensation.
"How I should like to write the other side of Bonneville," cried Chief Factor Pambrun one night in Bachelors' Hall. "He came to Walla Walla. We gave him of our best. As an officer of the United States army we were hospitable to him, but as a rival trader we had no favors to bestow."
Pambrun felt he had reason for resentment. Bonneville distributed presents so lavishly among the WallaCayuses, and paid them so handsomely for their furs, that he interfered with the Hudson's Bay business. The Cayuse chiefs came to Walla Walla and demanded better pay for beaver. Pambrun refused. "The rate is fixed," he said. Then Tauitau threw him down and stamped upon his breast until the chief factor cried, " Hold! hold! I leave the decision to Dr. McLoughlin."
The next time Bonneville came, the Indians had been ​
so instructed by the company that they fled at his approach. Fort Walla Walla was closed against him not even a dog could be bought on the Columbia. The Indians slunk away as if from a contagion. Bonneville could not get a crew to take him down to Fort Vancouver. He had to give it up, and turning back lost his way in the deep snows of the Blue Mountains. Finally the Nez Perces found him and brought him fainting to the lodge of Red Wolf on the Snake. The Nez Perces nursed him like a brother, gave him horses and provisions, and sent him and his men out of the country. Then Irving wrote the "Bonneville Tales " commentaries on the days when the Hudson's Bay Company ruled on the Columbia.
When Captain Wyeth was on his way to Oregon he had fallen in with a party of Blackfeet at a mountain rendezvous where Bonneville was and Sublette's trappers. There was a half-breed interpreter in Bonneville's camp, Baptiste Dorion, son of the interpreter in Irving's " Astoria." The Blackfeet greeted the whites. "We have heard of the Americans/' said the Blackfoot chief, decorated from head to foot in eagle plumes. He held Wyeth's hand in friendly converse when "whiz " went a bullet from Dorion's rifle. As the chief of the Blackfeet fell Dorion snatched his painted robe and fled. Never a robe was bought more dearly. The outraged Blackfeet pursued the white man from that hour. Four years later one of Wyeth's men smoked the pipe of peace with Jemmy Jock, the Rob Roy of the Blackfeet. Even as he smoked Jemmy Jock gave the signal and Godin fell. Upon his brow Jemmy Jock carved Wyeth's name "N. J. W."
"The Indian has a double nature," said Dr. McLoughlin, "one peaceable and friendly, one savage and dia​
bolical. Somebody has stirred up the- devil with the Blackfeet."
When Jason Lee was on his journey back to the States, the first steamboat on Missouri waters ran up from St. Louis to purchase furs. Somewhere, in the present Montana, an Indian stole a blanket that had belonged to a man who died of smallpox. The Blackfeet died like flies. Beyond the Missouri the smallpox flew, far up among the Sarcies and Assiniboins, on, up through Alaska to the borders of the Arctic. For years the bones of the Blackfeet lay unburied on the Yellowstone, and to this day decaying lodges of skeletons are found along the Yukon.
"And now, Tom, what is the latest trick of Jemmy Jock? "asked Dr. McLoughlin, who always delighted in his stepson's tales.
"'T was on the Yellowstone," said Tom. "One night I gave strict orders to the Canadians on watch to keep a good lookout. They did so, rifle in hand. Jemmy Jock, dressed as a Canadian, entered the camp unobserved, walked up to the watchman, and said in French, * I have received orders that the horses shall be turned out to graze.' Supposing the order was from me, he let the horses out. In no time we heard the whoop of the Blackfeet as they mounted our stock and rode away."
It used to be a favorite escapade for Jemmy Jock to steal into a hostile camp, and over the very shoulders of the foe to watch the game of chance. Quietly he walked among them, taking what he wanted, and cutting the hopples of their horses. A gift of wampum dropped, a cap with his feather, and a distant whoop, alone revealed that Jemmy Jock and his Blackfeet had paid them an evening visit. Sometimes in lonely mountain trails the trappers found letters set up on sticks by ​
the joking Jemmy Jock to tell them that he had camped there, to give a useful hint or to lead them into a trap. The Americans offered $500 for his head.
"Jemmy Jock plays no more tricks," said Ermatinger "What?"
"Smallpox."
Even hundreds of miles away this carried a shudder to Fort Vancouver.
Dr. Barclay was the new physician; one of the old Scotch Barclays, a Shetlander, born in a manse beside the ocean whose seven foot thick walls had been in the family for hundreds of years. He studied at Glasgow, took his diploma at the London College of Physicians and Surgeons, and went to the Arctic.
"Tell us of your Arctic life," said Dr. McLoughlin in Bachelors' Hall.
The cheek of the young physician flushed as he told of Arctic adventure. Nothing could exceed the interest of an Arctic tale to these servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. Had they not promised to find the Northwest Passage, Hearne, Ross, Parry, Back the company claimed them all, and Franklin wintered at their northern posts. Clerk Allen of Vancouver had dined with Franklin the day before he sailed for Hudson's Bay. Rae had a younger brother destined yet to win renown in the icy North.
Old days in Canada were discussed. "Furs, man?" Dr. McLoughlin used to say, "Lord bless you, man, furs are worth more than mines. While the Spaniard was ransacking Mexico and Peru, France and England were trapping skins, and they made more out of it. Furs led the Russian hunter across Siberia, furs led him along the isles to Sitka. Furs opened Pacific trade. At Nootka Sound Captain Cook's men exchanged trin​
kets for otter-skins for their own use and comfort, but when they reached the ports of China the merchants offered such incredible sums for that accidental stock of furs that they all wanted to give up exploration and turn traders. Cook's men introduced the sea-otter to England. Furs led to the exploration of North America. The first white men on the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Columbia, and the waters of the North, were fur-traders." When McLoughlin got started, he was a famous story-teller.
"Once, our magazines were full of unsalable bearskins. One of our chief factors selected a set of fine large skins, had them dressed in silver with the king's arms, and presented them to a royal duke. His lordship put them into his state coach and drove to court, in a fortnight every earl in England was scrambling after bear-skins." With long whiffs at their pipes they listened. McLoughlin knew the fur trade like a book.
"The Russian Empress Catharine set the fashion for sables now we have miles of traps, baited with meat and mice. England alone consumes one hundred thousand Hudson's Bay sables a year. But the beaver! I heard old gray-beards tell in my boyhood, that when a Parisian hatter set the fashion, all the young men of Canada left their seigniories and took to the woods. Their farms went back to forests. Du Luth left Montreal with eight hundred men at one time. Nobody knows how far they did go, but when they came back with their fur-filled boats they lived like kings, they dressed in lace, and wore the sword, and made Montreal a pandemonium with their drunken revels.
"Lord bless you, man, the markets of France were glutted, the ships would take no more, every warehouse in Montreal was packed, and still the brigades came ​
paddling down the St. Lawrence. They stacked the bales in empty squares; some became damaged. At last, to get rid of so much beaver, they built great bonfires, and thousands of pounds were burnt in the streets of Montreal. That was about the time the Americans were hanging witches at Salem and the French were fighting the Inquisition at Quebec. Nobody ploughed the fields in Canada, there was almost a famine, but those men who ranged the woods could never bring themselves to settle down on their farms again. They became wild, and cared for nothing but adventure. They settled in the woods, and their children are our Iroquois voyageurs of to-day. You'll not find a full blood among them their grandfathers were the Frenchmen of that old fur-time! " ​
XII
THE BRIGADE TO CALIFORNIA 1839
DR. McLOUGHLlN had much to do in gathering up the threads of routine. "Where is our Spanish brigade?" he asked.
"Ready equipped at Scappoose Point," answered Michel La Framboise. "We start to-morrow."
There was always bustle when a brigade set out. A.t daylight two hundred horses were pawing at Scappoose Point just across the western end of Wapato. Tom McKay had a ranch there, rich in sleek horses and cattle, and oceans of grass. A string of boats came down from the fort with a jolly picnic party to give the trappers a send-off. The cottonwoods were yellow on Wapato, sprinkling with gold the old council ground of the Multnomahs. October russet dotted the Scappoose hills. The Cascade Mountains lay in banks of crimson against the sunrise. The ladies from the fort leaped to their saddles tinkling with tiny bells. The gentlemen rode at their sides, gay as Charles's cavaliers, with lovelocks round their faces.
As usual, Dr. McLoughlin took the lead on his Bucephalus. Madame rode Le Bleu, a dappled white and sky blue, that in her day had galloped seventy-two miles in eight hours, to carry the tobacco, the sine qua non of an Indian trade. David mounted Le Gris de Galeaux like a Cossack. Rae and Eloise followed on Guenillon and the snowy Blond, all favorite horse ​s at
Fort Vancouver. Ermatinger with his Bardolphian nose cut a laughable figure on Le petit Rouge by the side of his fair bride Catherine on Gardepie.
After the gentry came La Framboise at the head of his long array of French trappers in scarlet belts and Canadian caps, with their picturesque Indian families, the plumes of men and women dancing and waving in the wind, brilliant as a hawking party in the days of mediaeval song.
Michel La Framboise had been a famous voyageur, one of the picked few sent out by John Jacob Astor. He could flip his canoe over the choppy waves where no one else would dare to go. Now, every autumn after the harvest was over, he led the horse brigade to the Spanish country.
The trappers always travelled with their families; the mother bestrode the family horse, with its high-pommelled Mexican saddle; the children jogged along on their Cayuse ponies and slept until night, when down they slid, full of glee, gathering flowers, shooting their little arrows, and listening to tales of grizzly bears and Blackfeet.
La Framboise was proud of his half-breed wife, Angelique, his Grande Dame, in her bloomers of beaded blue broadcloth; Angelique was proud of the pretty white pappoose that dangled from her pommel, asleep in its little miau of beads and ribbon. Close behind came the children, with elfin locks and flashing eyes, with one hand whipping their horses to make the bells go "zing-zing-zing," with the other hugging tight the buckskin dollies with blue bead eyes and complexions chalked to the whiteness of the charming missionary women.
The Indian boys brought up the rear, lashing their ​
unruly packhorses heavily laden with camp equipage and Indian goods. All were in fine feather; the capering steeds, the crisp air, the scintillant sun, the tuneful meadow lark, harmonized completely with the bursts of song and gay and lively laughter.
The Willamette was carpeted with green from the early autumn rain. Scarlet-flaming thickets of vine maple glowed along the watercourses. Every hill-slope was a bank of burning ash. The cavaliers were armed to the teeth; from every belt depended a leathern firebag with pipe, tobacco, knife, and flint and steel. There were hunters in that brigade, rough as the grizzlies they hunted; hunters keen as the deer, suspicious as the elk; hunters that read like a book the language of tracks. Leaning over their horses' necks, they could discern the delicate tread of the silver fox, the pointed print of the mink, and the otter's heavy trail. With whip-stock in hand La Framboise points "A bear passed last week," " An elk yesterday," "A deer this morning." In a moment a deer tosses its antlers, sniffs the wind, then bounds with slender, nervous limbs into the thickest shade.
A brisk morning ride over the Scappoose hills and down into the Tualitan plains was followed by a picnic dinner around a gypsy fire, then McLoughlin dismissed the trappers into the Indian country.
The parting cavalcades looked at each other from their curveting steeds. "Beware on the Umpqua," called the doctor. "If the new men get the fever give them plenty of broth and quinine." Again he turned with a parting word and gesture: "Look out for the Rogue-Rivers; they'll steal the very beaver out of your traps."
With gay farewells the fort people galloped back to ​
the crossing at Wapato. The California brigade followed along the winding trail to the south. La Framboise always touched at La Bonte's, a solitary garden spot in miles and miles of prairie. "How much land do you own, mon frere La Bonte? "
"Begin in the morning," the old trapper was wont to say, "begin in the morning on a Cayuse horse. Go west till the sun is very high, then go south till it is around toward the west, and then back to the river; that is my manor."
And, too, there was always a stop at Champoeg, every man at Champoeg was "mon frere "or "mon cousin "to La Framboise. Beside his wide hearth for many and many a year La Chapelle loved to sit and tell of the days when he, too, was bourgeois, and Madame his wife was the grandest dame that ever bestrode a pony. And for the thousandth time the good dame brought out the dresses stiff with beads that were worn in that gay time when the Monsieur led the hunt to the head waters of the Willamette.
The head waters of the Willamette was a royal beaver republic. There the little colonies cut down whole forests, built up wonderful dams and bridges, scooped out lakes, and piled up islands. With their long sharp teeth they cut up the timber and shaped their houses, plastering them neatly with their broad, flat tails. They had rooms in their houses and dining-halls and neat doorways, these deft little builders, more cunning than the fox, more industrious than the bee, more patient than the spider, more skilful than the Indian. "The beaver can talk," says the Indian. "We have heard them talk. We have seen them sit in council on the lazy ones. We have seen the old chief beat them and drive them off." ​
Two hundred miles south of the Columbia, La Framboise descended from a high ridge of mountains down to a little plantation on the banks of the Umpqua, the fortalice of old Fort Umpqua. Carronades peeped from the donjon tower. Tom McKay built it after that disaster to the American trappers sometimes they called it Fort McKay. Here a solitary white man ruled the Umpqua. Jules Gagnier was a Frenchman, the son of an honorable and wealthy family in Montreal. In vain they made efforts to reclaim him from his wanderings and his Indian wife. Hither, twice every year, La Framboise came, twenty miles off his trail, to bring Gagnier Indian goods and to carry away his beaver. Here, summer and winter, year in and year out, the jolly, genial Frenchman traded with his red friends and cultivated his little patch of garden. Such were the first white men who broke the way for pioneers on the northwest coast.
La Framboise's brigade wound along gorges and canyons, through the Rogue River valley with its orchards of sunlit manzanita and hillsides of gnarled madrono and chinquapin, into the Switzerland of America, where Mt. McLoughlin on the summit of the Cascades was the most conspicuous landmark on the southern trail. One more pull over the Siskiyous and they have crossed the Spanish border. As a rule the brigades started early, to avoid the snows of Shasta, where once they lost the whole of their furs and three hundred horses. All day long, for days and days, the triple peaks of Shasta watched them winding down the Sacramento. La Framboise set his traps. Sutter's men began to look with unfriendly eye upon the intruders from the Columbia, but the Hudson's Bay Company had a permit from the Spanish Governor Alvarado. ​
XIII
DR. McLOUGHLIN AT HOME
1839
T7LOISE at the door was stitching as usual. Little JLL/ Cecelia on a cricket at her feet was untangling the many-colored skeins of silk.
In the doctor's room they were discussing the Russian question. Now and then she could distinguish a phrase: "along the coast," "ten leagues," "a lease," " ten thousand otter-skins." Somehow, half-dreamily putting two and two together, Eloise understood that the company had leased the Russian strip over which they fought five years ago. She knew that scores of Canadians had come to man the new posts on the Russian strip.
"Now, daughter, you and Rae shall take your bridal trip." Dr. McLoughlin came out on the veranda and laid his hand on the thick, glossy braids of Eloise.
"Where? To Canada?" asked Eloise, with a quick glance toward her husband, who, pulling at the grapevines, seemed absorbed in thought.
"Worse yet, to rainy Stikine," said Rae, looking away from his wife.
"Tut, tut, tut, my son. Don't quarrel with your promotion," said Dr. McLoughlin. "The most ​dan-
gerous post in the service is the most .important just now."
"I am satisfied," explained Rae, "but Eloise I hate to expose her." It was the old fear, a white woman in an Indian country.
"William," said Eloise, rising like a queen, "do you not think I shall be safe if you are there? Do not hesitate if my father thinks it best. Perhaps you can do more than any other toward reducing that district to order. They send only the most trusted men to posts like that."
"Spoken like McLoughlin's daughter," said Douglas, coming through the door. "These Hudson's Bay girls inherit heroic blood." The words were both a compliment to Eloise and a tribute to his own brave wife, who at that moment approached from the other end of the long veranda.
So during that winter preparations were made for the trip in the early spring. Arrangements for the lease were yet to be perfected, so an opportunity offered for Rae and Eloise to accompany Douglas to Sitka before settling to the dangers of dreary Stikine. Rae carefully completed his accounts to hand over to Dugald McTavish, his successor in the head-clerkship. Douglas looked after sundries for the new forts. Mrs. Douglas assisted Eloise in overhauling her boxes of v London dresses preparatory to meeting the Russian grandees at Sitka castle.
How did they dress when Eloise was young? Vandyck puffs and wing bretelles, everything just as it is now, was in fashion sixty years ago. Noah's ark, a massive cedar chest bound with copper and lined with zinc, was hauled out of a capacious closet of the governor's residence. Noah's ark came from over the ​
sea, packed full of carefully folded and perfumed dresses of made-up silk from the hands of London dressmakers. Everything lovely was in that old cedar chest, "silken hose and satin shoon," Indian shawls and Canton crepes, brocades and French embroidery, old-time ruffs and stomachers and caps, velvet cloaks and Parisian bonnets, odds and ends of chemisettes and under-sleeves, silken-fringed bretelles, and even the tie of her father's old peruke that he used to wear in the dance at Montreal. Ten or twelve breadths were in the skirts of those dresses; neat-fitting bodices ran down to a point; all sorts of bell sleeves flared like the cups of convolvuli. If there was anything the fur-magnates were proud of, it was their daughters, and they had the money wherewith to gratify that pride.
All winter the axe of the Iroquois chopper rang in the woods; all winter the little saw-mill hummed. Roderick Finlayson had been put in charge of the new grist-mill. At the end of the week, Saturday night, he walked home to the fort, five miles, in the heavy winter rain. It was late. The gate was locked. The new clerk beat on the wall. Bruce looked out.
"Ye 're brakin' the rooles a-coomin' this time o* nicht," said the crusty old gatekeeper, letting him in. The quick ear of Dr. McLoughlin caught the sound. Finlayson was summoned.
"Why are you out contrary to regulations? Are you not aware that clerks must be inside the fort at ten o'clock? I am afraid we shall have to discipline you young gentlemen from the East."
Finlayson explained, some accident at the mill. " And," he added, "after my work was done I had to walk five miles, sir." ​
"Yes, yes, I know all about that," said the doctor. Finlayson was only eighteen. When Dr. McLoughlin saw the boy, cold, wet, and hungry, whose only crime was zeal in doing his duty, he spoke kindly, and turning to Douglas said, "You had better let him have a horse, James." Finlayson bowed his thanks and walked away. " A horse," cried Dr. McLoughlin after him, "a horse; but mind ye, no saddle; ye must furnish your own saddle."
Monday morning Finlayson selected a spirited horse and bought a good saddle with Mexican spurs and gay trappings. Saturday night came again. The dashing cavalier, seeing the gate open, reined his prancing steed within the palisade. "Who the devil is that daring to break the rules of the establishment by coming into the square in that fashion? "roared Dr. McLoughlin, levelling his spectacles.
"Roderick Finlayson, at your honor's service," answered the gay young clerk, reining up before the governor.
"Dismount, sir," cried the governor in a tone of thunder. "Do you suppose the court is a parade ground? Do you suppose we want half-broken colts in the presence of these women and children? This is a private square, sir, and not a public horseyard. Baptiste, take the horse. Young man, you may walk hereafter." So poor Finlayson had to wade through the mud the rest of the winter.
Discipline was strict at Fort Vancouver. In the semi-military life idleness was unknown. For weeks the Canadian voyageurs, laid up for the winter, thwacked with the flails in the barns, thrashing out the harvest of Canadian peas. All winter the ploughs followed the furrows. "Mind ye make them straight," said the ​
doctor. The straightest furrows ever drawn at Fort Vancouver were by the unerring eye of the Iroquois, perfect as a surveyor's line. Spades dug in the ditches. When nothing else offered, decayed pickets in the palisade were pulled out and replaced with fresh ones from the forest. ​
XIV
AT OLD CHAMPOEG
1839
WINTER rains followed the departure of the brigade to California, the still, steady rain of Oregon, that falls straight down. The grass revives, buds swell, moss runs rampant. One morning Dr. McLoughlin watched the sun swinging his chariot of light above Mt. Hood. "T is like the suns of Napoleon, propitious," he said. "Charlefoux! "
"Oui, oui, sire," answered the guide.
"Let us get to Champoeg before the next rain."
"Oui, oui, sire."
Sometimes in summer Dr. McLoughlin took Madame to visit Champoeg and the mission. His fleet of canoes brought beds, bedding, tea, coffee, sugar, bread, cakes and wine, a numerous suite, and a cook. He camped beside the mission, and took a lively interest in its work. "The doctor's urbanity, intelligence, and excellence of character made his visits very agreeable," say the old chronicles.
To-day he sped with only his Iroquois. At the Falls of the Willamette, where the blue sea tide came up to the foaming cataract, he made a portage. Dr. McLoughlin had a house there, two of them, holding the claim to the site of a future city that he dreamed of. Forty miles from the Columbia the shrill "Rouli % roulant, ma bottle roulant" rang over French Pra ​irie.
Wherever the Frenchman's heel has danced from polar snows to San Diego, the Frenchman's oar has cut each lake and stream to this favorite song of the
forest,
"Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant^ En roulant ma boule roulant^ En roulant ma boule"
The deep rich orotund "roll, rolling "from the chests of the canoe-men rang an endless round that sixty years ago made Oregon waters vocal. The moon had risen over the tree-tops. The deep, swift river slid like a dream between her umbrageous banks. The gentle dip of the oars broke the water into a million diamonds, trailing behind in a wake of silver. As they neared the landing at Champoeg the song was answered from the shore even the tiniest child could sing "Rouli, roulant!' The voyageurs gave a last repeat to the everrepeating chorus as they leaped into the water and dragged the boats upon the shore. Many a night in the marshy muskegs of the North had they presented their shoulders to carry Dr. McLoughlin dry shod to shore.
While Charlefoux pitched the tents Dr. McLoughlin strode rapidly up the bank toward the mossy-roofed houses of old Champoeg. The barns loomed duskily. From every parchment window there came a glow of firelight, sparkles danced over the chimney-tops like fireflies in the dark. There was a smell of southernwood and sweet marjoram as the governor climbed the stiles and crossed the pole-picketed gardens. The long-horned Spanish cattle were lowing around the well-sweeps in the neighboring corrals.
"Felicite," the doctor called. He had halted in the mossy porch of a double log house, fitienne Lucier's charming daughter sprang out with a glad la ​ugh. The
governor kissed her on the cheek. "That *s a good girl. Tell your mother to bring on the gingerbread," he said, as she led him into an immense room with a huge fireplace occupying the entire opposite end.
It was a sight for gods and red men when the pompous governor, six feet three in his moccasins, entered the low-raftered room and threw off his ample blue cloth cloak on a leathern chair before the fire. His obsequious vassals, the father and sons, bowed down to the chair-tops, quite overcome by the honor of his visit. The children courtesied from their corners. If King George himself had entered, the good dame could not have felt more flattered. A horde of slaves were summoned. The heavy fir table was loaded with fruits of the hoe and the hunt, hams of venison, and wheaten cakes. Of nothing were the Canadians more proud than of their wives' skill in bread-making. Under the tuition of the Methodist mission, the women of Champoeg vied with one another in this useful art. Nearly every time the bateaux went down to Fort Vancouver some Canadian carried to Dr. McLoughlin a sample of his wife's baking, neatly browned and rolled in a towel. And to every one the encouraging governor said, "Bless me! Bless me! The best bread this side of London "a compliment the proud housewife stored ever after in her heart.
"' Ee eat no more tan te sparrow," urged the host, pressing upon the distinguished guest the Madame's choicest dried huckleberries. The slaves in their buckskin dresses peeped and peered until their dusky mistress "shooed "them back into the shadow.
Reverence fails to express the depth of feeling these Champoeg settlers entertained for the indulgent Hudson's Bay governor. He, together with the gentlemen ​
at the fort, constituted the noblesse of the forest, linking the red men with the London nobles. No less was it a bond of kinship that Dr. McLoughlin was Canadianborn and spoke provincial French. Almost fabulous tales were told of his power, his wealth, his benevolence. Some to this day regard him a saint not yet canonized on the books of the clergy. This was partly Dr. McLoughlin's natural philanthropy, partly his habit of reading prayers to his people and lecturing on their morals.
"Eh? begosh! Eef mon 'ave more nor one wife de hoi dogtor will 'ang eem," whispered the voyageurs.
McLoughlin donned his bright chintz dressing-gown. His feet were on the fender. His clean-cut face looked almost classic in the firelight as he watched the hurrying slaves clearing out the room for a dance. Indian slavery was no exotic in Oregon; it had grown into Champoeg with its Indian wives and aboriginal traditions. Back of every manse their cabins straggled like quarters of the blacks in Georgia. Every autumn still the Klamaths came over the Calapooias, bringing their captives to trade for ponies and three-point blankets. Five blankets would purchase a boy, fifteen a girl. Beads, blankets, and guns would buy a wife, some captive princess from Rogue River or the Shasta land. Even as they jostled one another in futile haste to move tables and settees, up the back path through the onion bed came the toot-a-toot-toot of Andre's squeaking fiddle. Never a voyageur was there who could not make his own fiddle and draw from it, too, the good old tunes his father brought from France when the fleur-de-lis flew over Quebec. In short order, neighbors of every complexion were treading the night away in honor of the guest. The fire burned low and the moon was pale ​
when the governor was escorted back to his camp. The dark boats tied to the shore rocked idly on the glassy Willamette.
The bell in its frame on Father Blanchet's new chapel rang in the Sabbath. In every direction the habitants were wending their moccasined steps to the house of worship. Last night's dancers brought their numerous children packed three and four in a bunch on horseback. Graceful young half-breeds on their Cayuse ponies came loping in with a long and easy swing. Some sweethearts sat in pairs upon the sturdy little steeds. Everywhere the gayest garbs brightened the picturesque prairie.
White-headed Dr. McLoughlin, in his blue cloth cloak adorned with double rows of silver-gilt buttons, stood on the steps with a hearty hand-shake for each father and son and a cordial kiss for each wife and daughter. No wonder he stole their hearts away, this gallant governor of early Oregon! Among those weather-beaten faces were some of the first white men that ever crossed the continent; faithful Canadians, who in 1792 paddled and poled that homespun old baronet, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, from Montreal to the Fraser; men who came with Lewis and Clark; and Astor's trappers, who had drifted into the old Northwest before the war of 1812. In the fur-service they had grown gray. Now with their native wives and half-breed children they had come to a halt in the incomparable valley whose fruitful acres invited repose.
They seated themselves quietly on the rough benches, the men on one side, the women on the other, devoutly kneeling and crossing themselves as Father Blanchet went through the Catholic service. There was a rattling of beads as toil-stiffened fingers counted the ​
rosary. Weather-cracked voices joined in the canticles learned long ago on the banks of the St. Lawrence.
Liberal as he was in religious matters, Dr. McLoughlin felt a peculiar home feeling in that rude little church with its tawdry pictures of the saints and its candles before the Virgin. It carried him back to his native hamlet at Riviere du Loup among the maples of Canada. These old servants were indeed his brethren. He loved them as he loved the memory of his mother and the pictures of childhood. After mass the children lingered for a word of recognition, the old men loitered to consult about private affairs and recount losses and trials to the patriarchal governor, who took a personal interest in every one of them. Whatever he told them to do, that they did. Obedience is one of the first virtues of the French Canadian, learned long ago at the foot of Mother Church. If they were industrious he praised them, and let them have whatever they needed from the stores at Fort Vancouver. If they were shiftless and wasted the harvest season in horse-racing and idle games, he came down with denunciations that frightened them back into rectitude. Hearts stood still like a whipped school-boy's when they heard Dr. McLoughlin's loud voice bidding them, "Go to work! Go to work! Go to work! "There were no written laws; the governor settled their disputes arbitrarily. Whatever he said, that was law in the valley Willamette.
They were a careless, thoughtless, happy people, these Canadian farmers of old Champoeg, quiet, simplehearted, free from fear and envy, temperate, for the governor allowed no ale in the valley, honest, for there was nothing to steal. Free from cares of Church and State, no political issue troubled them, no church schism. There were few books and less English. Their ​
great galas were weddings. A wedding lasted a week at old Champoeg. Everybody far and near came and danced, danced till they wore out their moccasins, then pulled them off and danced in their stockings.
"Don't 'e recollect? I danced at your wedding," was the open sesame to almost any favor. Long winter evenings were spent around the ample hearths, while the rain went drip, drip, drip outside, recounting over and over their boyhood days in Montreal, dog-sled tours to Athabasca, and canoe-brigades on the Saskatchewan. Covering the fire, for coals were precious and not to be lost, they retired to sleep without locks on their doors or ambition in their hearts.
In a solitary cabin across the river from Champoeg there dwelt a lonely Tennesseean. He had come from California with a herd of Spanish horses only to find French Prairie blazoned with his name:
"BEWARE OF EWING YOUNG THE BANDIT."
In wrath he tore the placards down. "Who dares," he cried, "who dares insult an honest man! "
The timid Canadians avoided the tainted stranger. Their doors were shut. In need of clothing, he sent a pack of beaver down to Fort Vancouver. Dr. McLoughlin declined the beaver, but sent a gift of food and clothes to the supposed bandit. In a towering rage Ewing Young hired Indians and a canoe and journeyed to Fort Vancouver.
"Before you arrived, sir," exclaimed Dr. McLoughlin in the hot, explosive interview, "before you arrived I had warnings of you. Our schooner ' Cadboro' ' returning from Monterey brought word from the governor of California that Ewing Young, journeying to this country, was chief of a gang of banditti, horse-thieves, sir; ​
that is the word he used. As head of a great company trading to California, what can I do in face of such a charge and from such a source?"
"Do?" cried Young, white with rage, "why, give a fellow-man a chance. Demand the proof. I myself will probe this thing to the bottom, if I have to go to Monterey to do it."
In view of this indignation and this stout denial, Dr. McLoughlin himself began to be half convinced of Ewing Young's innocence. Letters of inquiry in time brought back a retraction of the charge. "Not Ewing Young himself, but some of his followers," the Spanish governor explained.
Nevertheless the outraged Tennesseean could not forget the insult. At his ranch in the valley he continued to nurse his wrath and his herds of horses. Hate, hate, hate of the Hudson's Bay Company and distrust of its every move became the keynote of the life of Ewing Young. He talked it to every American that entered the valley; with Jason Lee he wafted a breath of it to Boston and to Congress. ​
CHRISTMAS AT FORT VANCOUVER
1839
THVECEMBER arrived. Basil's Christmas fires kept *-^ up incessant roaring. The rafters of the provision house creaked under the weight of birds picked smooth and white. The high-backed settees took on a knowing air as Dr. McLoughlin walked through the kitchen. The tin and copperware winked on the wall. Even the kitchen had Christmas greens.
Burris set all his Kanakas in a whirl. Some turned the plovers on the spit. Some set the quails on the gridiron. Burris kept an eye on the sun-dial, and every now and then took a sly nip of ale behind the buttery door. With a thump of the rolling-pin he announced the Christmas dinner. Fat goose, cranes, swans, so fat they swam in grease, plum-duff crowned with holly, ducks, showing the rich red after the knife, and baked quails, white to the bone, these the Oregon epicures ate for Christmas dinner in 1839.
The tables were removed, and the governor in flowing peruke and ruffled waistcoat led the dance with Madame. The hall blazed in greenery. The tall central posts were wound with the holly-leaved Oregon grape, the Christmas candles were wreathed in ivy. A Yule-log of fir beaded with globules of resin snapped and sparkled. Scotch clerks and English kissed the pretty girls beneath the mistletoe, plucking each time a pale gray berry from the b ​ough.
And who were the pretty girls? Eloise, of course, and Catharine the Canadian Lily. Six weeks Ermatinger duly courted her; and then they were married. From the mouth of the Columbia there came the handsome Birnie girls, whose father, James Birnie, a genial, jolly Aberdeen Scotchman, kept the only hostelry from Vancouver to the sea and from Sitka to San Francisco. Old Astoria, renamed Fort George, had been abandoned; but after the Clatsop trouble Dr. McLoughlin had sent Birnie there to keep a lookout for passing ships. Here he cultivated a little garden, did a little Indian trading in salted salmon and sea-otter skins, kept a weather eye out on the bar over which at long intervals a ship came into the river. Astor's old post was burned; only the scarified and blackened chimney stood among the ruins that were overrun with brier and honeysuckle. The latchstring of Birnie's log house on the hillside was out to the trapper, the trader, the Indian, and the sailor. More than one old missionary has paid tribute to the housekeeping virtues of his pretty wife, the daughter of a Hudson's Bay trader in the north country. Her blazing hearth, clean-scrubbed fir floor, and neat pine table of snowy whiteness, offered cheer and comfort to all the early wanderers who came " the plains across or the Horn around." Sole Saxon of the forest, Birnie's flag was first to welcome the incoming ship, and last to wave a farewell from the shore.
Chief Factor Pambrun, the tinas tyee (little chief) that held in check the upper tribes, sent down his fair Maria, the pride of Walla Walla. Pambrun himself was a blond with thin light curls. This in his child developed into peach-bloom red and white, blue eyes, and the midnight hair of her mother rolling in her ​father's curls. Very well Miss Maria remembered the urbanity of that accomplished Captain Bonneville who came riding so gayly over the mountains, and then rode back again. With his feet under Astor's table in New York City, he told Irving a pretty tale of "Pambrun's attractive wife and her singularly beautiful children."
The chief factor's daughter had seldom passed beyond the stockade of Walla Walla except to the neighboring mission, where she became the favorite pupil of Mrs. Whitman. The good Chief Factor Pambrun himself was a great friend to Dr. Whitman, more than once he called the Indians to task for some act of discourtesy to the devoted missionary. There was a young American at Whitman's, Cornelius Rogers, an enthusiastic missionary, and the finest Indian linguist in the upper country, who madly lost his heart to the curly-haired daughter of the chief factor. Maria was a beautiful singer. Rogers taught her music. Her visits to the mission became events in his life she seemed a child of joy and beauty. The pensive, studious young missionary watched her from afar as she rode with her father after the fox-hounds, like Christine of Colvile, like Eloise of Fort Vancouver.
This feudal life of the Hudson's Bay Company reproduced in the western wilds the feudal age of Europe. The chief of nearly every post had a beautiful daughter who sat behind her casement window, harp in hand, and sang the songs of France. Many of the chief factors took pride in the education and companionship of their children, the nearest links to the Saxon world from which they came. The sons were sent abroad to be educated; some of them are influential chief factors in the North to-day. The girls were sent to Red River ​
or Montreal. Even Maria had once started for Montreal. It was during one of her father's long absences that the fur-traders were sometimes obliged to make. An uncle sent for the little girl to come to Montreal for her education. For her child's good Mrs. Pambrun consigned her weeping little daughter to the care of the east-bound brigade. Somewhere in the north country, on Rainy Lake, Lake of the Woods, or contiguous waters, the little girl lay sleeping in the bottom of the canoe. Suddenly she heard a well-known voice, her father's voice, crying his orders. Up popped the curly head. The west-bound brigade was flying past them toward the sunset. "Papa," she screamed.
"Why, Maria, is that you? "exclaimed the astonished chief factor. "Where in the world are you going? "
"They are sending me to school at Montreal."
"I guess not Come," said the chief factor, holding out his arms. With one leap the lovely child cleared the intervening space and nestled her head on her father's bosom with a little cry of joy. From that hour they had never been separated.
Poesy and song found its way into those old forts; it was no rare thing to find a chief factor's daughter far better instructed than many an Enid or Elaine of Tennysonian song. The clerks went wild over these beautiful girls, so fair in contrast with their dusky surroundings. Cornelius Rogers, the missionary, went to the chief factor.
"Marry her? Marry my daughter?" ejaculated the chief factor. "With all my heart, young man, with all my heart. I shall be proud to call you my son-in-law."
But Maria's blue eyes flashed, "Father, I do not care to marry, and when I do I prefer a Hudson's Bay man." ​
"Do not urge your suit now time will do wonders," said the chief factor to the impatient American. But that Rogers should marry his daughter became the chief wish of the factor's life. He discussed it with Dr. Whitman, he consulted Dr. McLoughlin; he made a will bequeathing a thousand pounds sterling to Cornelius Rogers.
Every autumn of her life Maria Pambrun had walked the ramparts of Fort Walla Walla, watching for the Montreal express. Somehow, in her romantic little heart, she believed that a knight would come out of that north from some castle beside a distant sea, and then then - Day after day she sat there and dreamed, beading the moccasins in her lap. Along the northern wall rolled the wild Columbia, sucking in the lesser Walla Walla in its mighty sweep to the sea. Eastward, the Blue Mountains purpled in the sun. The bunchgrass prairies were covered with horses. Close around the fort lay the ever drifting, shifting, changing sands of the peninsula, darkening the sky in summer and sweeping in gales at night. And now, with such dreams in her head, she had come down to Christmas at Fort Vancouver.
At this Christmas festivity, Douglas and his wife Nelia, Rae and Eloise, Maria and the clerks, and the Birnie girls and Victoire, the daughter of La Bonte from the valley, all whirled in the dance together. Dr. Barclay lifted his eyes to the unexpected beauty of Maria Pambrun "in her kirtle green and a rosebud in her hair." She danced with David McLoughlin. David's long black locks had a careless grace; he had his father's fine, straight nose, and his mother's square-set mouth; there was a ring on his finger and a sword at his belt. Dr. Barclay's eyes followed the pair with ​a strange surprise, and David cared for no one yet.
"Ah, I beg your pardon." It was unusual for David to do an awkward thing, but he trod on Bruce's toes, and Bruce had corns. Snuff-box in hand, the old Scotch warder reposed from the care of the flags, the guns, the garden, and the gate, sleepily watching the weaving dancers and thinking of Waterloo, perhaps. Burris, portly and rubicund, resplendent in a huge roll of colored neckerchief and horn spectacles astride his nose, slipped out again to take a nip of ale behind the buttery door.
To be the governor's guest at Christmas was no light honor. Monique and Charlefoux were there in their gayest dress, fine green cloth coats and silver buttons, crimson caps and golden tassels, cutting pirouettes and pigeon wings, stamping in the noisy rigadoon, and heeling it and toeing it on air. Tom McKay alone made no change in dress. With the free, frank manners of the Scot and the grace and affability of the Frenchman, he came in his hunting outfit. Scorning the effeminate foppery of the Canadians, he wore as usual his leathern belt, from which depended the powder-flask, the bulletpouch, and the long scabbard that concealed the swordlike hunting-knife. Tall, dark, powerful, Tom McKay acknowledged no master save McLoughlin. No other man could do what McKay did at Fort Vancouver or on the trail. His name was a terror in the mountains. The Indians believed this Hudson's Bay cousin of theirs bore a charmed life; the whites knew him to be an unerring shot. But with all his fierceness Tom McKay had the gentle heart of a woman.
Past midnight the dance, half Highland with a dash of Indian, ceased, and the dancers disappeared. Old ​Burris returned in his peaked nightcap and carefully bore away the last brand of the Yule-log to light the next year's Christmas fire. And he took a nip of ale behind the buttery door.
From Christmas to New Year's, feudal hospitality reigned at Fort Vancouver. The servants' rations were doubled, and they danced more madly. On New Year's every employ^ put on his best and mounted the flight of steps to the governor's door. Madame and her daughter stood at the heaped and laden tables, and with gracious air dispensed English candies, cakes, and coffee to the governor's guests.
Far away in the dim recesses of the Oregon woods an altar was reared that Christmas night. Before a green bower lit with candles and hung with garlands stood the Jesuit Father, De Smet, among the Flatheads. A hundred lodge-fires burned, a thousand red men slept. At a signal gun the Indians rose. The midnight mass, the mystery, the swinging censers, the decorated altar, the solemn ceremonial awed the savage heart. Indian voices chanted the Kyrie Eleison and the Te Deum, Indian fingers signed the cross and took the beads. The baptismal rite was read with the rising sun. The neophytes knelt with fluttering hearts. "Receive this white garment," said the smooth-shaven priest. "Receive this burning taper." The red hand received it from the white, robed in a flowing sleeve. One by one the untutored red men retired, proud of the white vestment and deeply impressed with the Black Gown's method of making medicine.
So ended the Oregon Christmas of 1839. ​
XVI
RETURN OF JASON LEE 1840
THE grizzlies were waking up from their winter naps and the drumming of the partridge in the woods gave token of returning spring. A thousand crystal streams leaped from the glaciers of Mt. Hood. In March Bruce was out with a scythe, laying low the thick swaths of grass. On every hillside the scarlet currant invited the gay little Nootka humming-bird to sip its hidden sweets. In March, too, Chief Factor Douglas and Finlayson, and Chief Trader Rae and Eloise, embarked, along with fifty Canadian assistants, to man the new forts on the Russian strip.
Often had Eloise seen the fur-ships come and go, often had she watched the brigades, dimly remembering the time when, as a little child, she came down the Columbia; but to-day, for the first time, she was really bent on a journey. Dr. McLoughlin held his daughter's hand, while tears ran down his cheeks. Her mother sat wailing on the shore.
Dr. McLoughlin turned to Rae. "My son, to you I intrust my child. Never betray that trust." Then the disciplinarian came uppermost. "You are going to a dangerous post, William. With Indians, firmness and management can do everything. Avoid offence. Soothe irritation. Deal honestly. Be kind, be patient, be j ​ust,
but remember Napoleon's motto, ' Be master.' In a subject country always expect an attack. Look for it. Prepare for it. Crush it. Trust nothing to chance." In these few words Dr. McLoughlin outlined his own life policy with the Indian.
David lingered at his sister's side, but to Eloise, today, more than father or mother or brother was the tall young Scot whose fortune henceforth was hers. The barque spread her wings, and with fluttering farewells, sped like a sea-gull out of sight.
During the winter there had been great excitement at old Wascopam, by the Dalles. Daniel Lee had preached to the fishing Indians until a thousand fell on their knees to Christ. Now, in early spring, Daniel Lee followed down along the Columbia to the sea, preaching as he went. He reached a Chinook village.
Naked little pot-bellied, bow-legged Chinook children, with wedge-shaped heads and goggle-eyes, were rolling in the sand. No white man ever looked upon the queer little Chinook children without a shudder there was something so elfish, so impish, so almost inhuman in the distorted little faces. As soon as a baby was born it was swaddled in moss, its poor little forehead was pressed down with cedar bark and tightly corded to a board. The child cried all the time presently it stopped; sensibility seemed deadened. The swelled cheeks and bulging black eyes reminded one of a mouse choked in a trap. The pitiful little attempts to smile under the frightful pressure resulted in grimaces, funnier than Palmer Cox's funniest brownies; but to the end of life, all subjected to this cruel practice had the most aristocratic and flattest of heads.
"Great canoe! Great canoe! "cried the Indians. The Chinook chief, his copper highness Chenamus, ​
rose from his rush mat at the door of his cedai house and looked out. Sure enough, a ship was crossing the bar. He wrapped his rat-skin toga around him, put on a conical bear-grass hat, slipped a scalping-knife into his sheath, and called his runners. They launched the royal canoe that lifted her prow like the beak of a Roman galley, and Daniel Lee, Chenamus, and his two squaws were off. With a monotonous "Ho-ha-hoha-ho-ha," to keep time, the Indian crew sent the cedar barque like a wherry through the water.
Safely the mate in the masthead cried his orders, safely the sailor hanging far over sounded the misty breakers, safely the good ship crossed the bar. The little canoe touched her side, then all clambered up, just as the Indians had clambered into the Boston ship of discovery forty-eight years before (1792). Pressing his nephew to his bosom, the ever-directing, guiding, energetic Jason Lee lingered but a moment, then chartering the crew and canoe of King Chenamus, set out for the mission, to make arrangements for the reception of his unexpectedly large reinforcement.
All that time Dr. McLoughlin was toiling abroad for the aggrandizement of England on the Pacific, Jason Lee, the missionary, was lecturing in the States. He woke up Congress, suggested that a mile square of land be offered to immigrants. He stirred the entire country. Through him Caleb Gushing, of Newburyport, conceived the idea of trading in the Columbia. In response to his call for men and money, the Methodist Board granted $40,000, and a mission colony of fiftythree persons, ministers, mechanics, farmers, and teachers, sailed out on that ship "Lausanne "from New York harbor. At Honolulu, Jason Lee arranged a treaty of commerce with the king of the Sandwich Islands. ​
Fifty miles an Indian runner sped to Fort Vancouver. Back came McLoughlin's compliments in the schooner " Cadboro'," bringing milk and vegetables, a bag of fresh bread, and a tub of Sauvie's fresh-churned butter. The "Lausanne "anchored at Vancouver with the largest company of missionaries that had ever left an American port. Dr. McLoughlin came on board his momentary surprise at their numbers passed, as with the courtesy for which he was famous he invited them all to the hospitalities of the fort.
"Pest take it all!" grumbled the clerks. "The governor goes too far when he turns us out of our comfortable bunks to make room for these Americans."
The same day four ragged boys came down the Columbia in a canoe. "Well! well! well! "ejaculated Dr. McLoughlin, unprepared for this second accession. " And where do you come from? "
"From the States, across the plains," answered the boys.
"At this time of year? And where did you winter, pray?"
"Among the Indians."
"They are certainly runaways," said the missionaries.
"No," said the boys, "we heard Jason Lee's first lecture when he reached the States, and we resolved to meet him here and grow up with the country."
With very round eyes the benevolent doctor sent them to the dairy to get some bread and milk.
"It won't be long before others will follow in their footsteps," said Josiah Parrish, the mission blacksmith.
"Tut, tut, tut! "laughed the doctor, waving his arm with grandiloquent air. "For all coming time we and our children will have uninterrupted possession of this country." ​
"Before we die we shall see Yankees coming across the mountains with their teams and families," insisted the missionary.
"As well might they undertake to go to the moon," laughed Dr. McLoughlin, in his genial way, feeling that he had the best of the argument. ​
XVII
THE BRIGADE FROM ERASER'S RIVER 1840
JASON LEE sped up the Willamette. All night he rowed, watching the fires of wigwams on the shore where naked savages passed between him and the light. "He be faster nor Dogtor Magloglin," said the Canadians, as he galloped through Champoeg. The children were at play, the dogs slept in the sun. He heard as of old the crowing cocks and the cooing pigeons in the barn lofts; again he waded knee-deep in flowers, again the larks flew up and sang. He arrived at the mission unannounced, opened the door of his own room, and paused upon its threshold. There hung the dresses of his wife, her books, her portrait, everything just as he left it two years ago. Through the wind-swayed muslin curtain he saw her garden in the rear, blooming just the same.
"Ah, God, why did they leave it so to break my heart? It seemed so long ago. Now it is but yesterday."
"Do not weep. She is gone from you entirely," said David Leslie, hurriedly followed by the tearful household. With an effort in their presence Jason Lee suppressed his grief.
"Public duty will not wait upon my sorrow. We must make place for a great reinforcement. Here is the list." Jason Lee passed the day in action ​, but
night found him kneeling in the dewy grass under the firs.
Again Jason Lee came toiling down the Willamette. As he neared Vancouver he saw the people watching, he heard the cry, "The brigade! the brigade! "
The flag of the traders' barge, with its legend "Pro pelle cutem," "A skin for a skin," fluttered down the Columbia. Every canoe shook out its beaver-painted bannerol. The boatmen in full song rose and fell with the heavy sweep. Jason Lee paused with the rest to watch the glittering pageant. These were the golden days of Fort Vancouver, when wealth poured in on every passing tide. Nearer came the swish of waves and the measured rap of the paddles on the sides of the canoes; nearer came the slender vessels, laden, heaped, and sunk to the gunwales with their precious freights of furs.
With only less fclat, it was a repetition of the splendid panorama of the governor's return eight months before. Again the bastions roared a welcome; even the mission ship caught the enthusiasm, and waved her flags and fired her guns. The fort gates opened to receive not knights in armor clad, but the brigade of gay and happy trappers with their winter's catch of skins.
Dr. McLoughlin, with an eye to business, lingered a moment. Clerk Roberts called, "Pack in the bales, pack in the bales." The voyageurs leaped to the task and trundled up the furs.
Chief Factor Ogden, homely and kind, passed on up to the fort with Dr. McLoughlin and the other factors of his fleet. His good wife Julia and his daughter Sarah Julia followed at a distance with Archibald McKinley, a tall, red-headed Highlander, second in command at Fort St. James. All the way down the zigzag rivers of ​
1
the North McKinley had sailed and sung with Sarah Julia.
"Mons. Pete," as the voyageurs called Peter Skeen Ogden, was of the Ogdens of Ogdensburg and the Skeens of Skeensboro. Away back sometime his ancestors had founded those cities in New York, but when the Revolution broke out the Tory Ogdens crossed the border, "saved so as by fire." Peter Skeen was born in Canada. As a lad he returned to what would have been his native State and entered the service of John Jacob Astor. Astor sent him to Astoria, on the far Pacific. He reached there just in time to find the post in the hands of the British. Of course Ogden became British again. He it was that explored the Yellowstone, the Utah and Shoshonie countries, made his winter rendezvous at Ogden's Hole in the Bear River Mountains, paddled his canoes on Great Salt Lake, and discovered Ogden's River, that Fremont renamed the Humboldt. He raided the beaver dams of Colorado, and following Jedediah Smith over the Sierras, trapped on the Sacramento. He it was that built the first forts to the north, stirred up the trouble with the Russians, and now ruled Fort St. James, the capital of all that region from the Fraser to the Russian border.
"Here, August." He handed one his wet moccasins, who flew away to hang them up to dry. Little Cecelia balanced on her arm the pretty feathered pouch that contained "Mons. Pete's "shot. Little Benjamin proudly bore the beautiful embroidered sheath that held "Mons. Pete's" big hunting-knife. Sarah Julia fled past her father into the arms of Mrs. Douglas. The women withdrew into the Douglas apartments.
"I don't want to get married," cried Sarah Julia, throwing off her sun-hat and bursting into tears. ​
"She too young," said Princess Julia, her mother. " She fifteen summer."
"I want to stay with my mother," sobbed Sarah Julia.
"Who want to marry you, my child?" inquired Mrs. Douglas, slipping her arm around the sobbing girl.
"Monsieur McKinley. He say he leave the service I do not."
"He can wait," suggested Mrs. Douglas.
"No, he will go with my father."
"And where is your father going? "
"To Canada when the brigade go."
Mrs. Douglas understood. Lifting the tear-stained face, she said: "My dear, your father do not like to undertake a journey and leave you unsettled. If anything should happen to him, what would become of you? Mr. McKinley may be chief factor some day. Haw you seen him much?"
"Every day every evening at Fort St. Jame my father taught me," came between the sobs. " When he gone Mons. McKinley taught me till I read and write. We have read books together."
"And do you care for him? "
"Ye- s," Sarah Julia admitted, still tearful, "but how can I leave so good a mother?"
And she had a good mother. Princess Julia made the fortune of Peter Skeen Ogden. Long ago he went into the Flathead country and was drawn into a quarrel. The chief sent for him. "What! "cried the impulsive Ogden. "Do you demand my life for a paltry pony? " Ripping open his shirt and pointing to his breast "Do you think you sent for an old woman? Fire! "
"The Flathead never killed a white man," calmly answered the Indian chief.
A council was in session; in the council sat the chief's ​
daughter. She ruled the council; she demanded restitution for the stolen pony, and Ogden had to pay it, but he saw the power of that Indian girl and resolved to win her. She proved to be a high-priced maiden Ogden sent fifty ponies before there came any sign of acquiescence. Then the chief's daughter came out and mounted the last one- that was the wedding. He called her Princess Julia. There was a great feast consummating the nuptials of the son of Isaac Ogden of Montreal, Chief Justice of Canada, to the daughter of the chief of the polite and unobtrusive Flatheads.
This marriage was distinctly a business transaction, a state alliance. Ogden married the chiefs daughter for her influence, but in time he valued her far more for personal bravery, for distinguished talents, and undying devotion. With the form of an Indian squaw Princess Julia had the head of a statesman. One day there came .a little pappoose to Ogden's tent he named her Sarah after his mother in Montreal, and Julia after his Flathead spouse. Mrs. Ogden had much finery about her pappoose-cradle, embroidered coverlets, birdwings, and hoops of bells that jingled as they rode.
Once a party of American trappers came near the Ogden camp and began selling liquor to the Indians to get away their furs. In the hostile state of feeling that ensued there was a stampede among the horses. Along with a packhorse loaded with furs Mrs. Ogden's Cayuse pony dashed away into the hostile camp with Sarah Julia hanging to the saddle.
"The prize is ours by the laws of war," said the Americans. At that instant Princess Julia ran into their midst, clasped her child, leaped upon her pony, and leaning down seized the halter of the packhorse. " Shoot her, shoot the damned squaw," was the cry. ​
"Stop! She 's a brave woman! Let her go," cried the captain, as Princess Julia and her baby galloped out of camp.
As long as she lived Mrs. Ogden retained her influence over the Flatheads, and her services secured her husband's rapid promotion among the fur-traders. On both father and mother's side she was related to all the great chiefs of the Northwest, making it safe for them to travel where no one else would dare to go Once at Salt Lake the trappers were away. The faithful Julia, mistress of the lodge, heard the dreadful war-whoop and ran out to secure the horses. Like a Scythian horde the enemy came dashing down upon the defenceless camp. Gathering up the halter straps, Princess Julia turned and faced the hawk's eye and the Roman nose of a Crow. The war-bonnet of eagle plumes trailed in his hair.
"Ah! "said the feathered chief, leaping from his horse, "is that you, my sister, that is camped here? Let your horses eat; we will not trouble them; "and the rascals of the mountain, deadly as the Blackfeet, passed like the whirlwind.
Many a time she kept the Indians from going to trade with the Americans. "Bring the furs to me," she said.
Never was the wife of the chief factor idle. Into her husband's work she threw the full ardor of her nature. When the strong, swift Snake was at its highest notch and no horse could cross it, she tied a rope about her waist and towed to the other shore a raft of priceless furs. Once in March she swam the Snake for a goose for her sick child. When she returned to camp, there was a necklace of ice around her neck where she held her head above the water. What the Hudson's ​Bay Company owes to Indian women cannot be told. In a few cases they acted as spies, to shield the wrongdoing of their own people, but as a rule they became faithful allies of their white partners, persuading the Indians to bring in their trade and settling many a difficulty to the satisfaction of both parties.
Dr. McLoughlin introduced Mr. Ogden to Jason Lee. "By my faith, it 's not a bad thing to have a minister here just now," exclaimed the chief factor." Never before these later days have I heard of sermons or prayers either in a Hudson's Bay fort. But remember, my friend," said Ogden, with an impressive shake of the finger, "remember, gunpowder is stronger than prayers."
Jason Lee was astonished at the effeminate voice of Peter Skeen Ogden, a voice so out of harmony with the hunter's rough external make-up.
Chief Justice Isaac Ogden was the greatest lawyer in Canada, and Peter Skeen, too, had been destined for the bar, but that voice! As a boy in Montreal he pored over the yellow tomes. He set them back on his father's bookshelf. "I can never plead in this falsetto, father. The very clerks would snicker in their sleeves." So that harsh, squeaking, unmanageable voice drove Peter Skeen Ogden into the fur trade. Instead of devoting his life to tracing the seigniorial subdivisions of Canadian property, the son of the chief justice became a Nimrod of that primitive age fast slipping into fable. So long had Ogden been among the Indians that his manners resembled theirs. There was the same wild, unsettled, watchful expression of the eye, the same gesticulation in conversation. Never did he use a word when a sign, a contortion of face or body, would indicate his thought.
​"Let me introduce you to my kloochman (wife)/continued Ogden, in the same squeaky voice. "She's the best moccasin-maker this side of Winnipeg, Mr. Lee,—not so handsome as some, but I tell you she's a goddess. And to-morrow I want you to marry this young man to my daughter," turning toward McKinley. Sarah Julia had yielded to her fate.
"It was due to the company," Mrs. Douglas said. That was a great consideration. Everything was due to the company. And Peter Skeen himself,—he would not have the company lose a promising young man for want of a bride, even if that bride were to be his own daughter and the groom a much less desirable man than Archibald McKinley.
These Hudson's Bay men, living in the vast solitudes, seeing, hearing, knowing little but the fur trade, naturally looked up to "the company" as the one great power next to England's queen. Its interests were their life. Their devotion to it became a mania. As contrasted with Indian wigwams, their substantial log posts took on palatial splendors, their governors were kings, their chief factors high nobles, and their daughters fit consorts for the best-bred young gentlemen the company could employ.
The gentlemen from the various posts assembled at Fort Vancouver viewed with apprehension the host of missionaries within their domain. Right there in Bachelors' Hall Jason Lee made appointments to stations at the Dalles, Puget Sound, the Falls of the Willamette, and at Clatsop-by-the-Sea. Dr. McLoughlin, a model host, with boats, provisions, and packhorses, was there to speed the parting guest. But before they separated Sarah Julia became the bride of Archibald McKinley.
XVIII
DEPARTURE OF THE BRIGADE 1840
JULY brought the shining days of Oregon summer, beginning with twilight two hours after midnight and ending again in twilight. The clerks were fitting the brigades for their return to the interior. Indian goods were packed for transportation. The blacksmiths were preparing axes, horseshoes, bridle-bits, beaver traps. The newly gummed boats were lying at the shore. The freshet had reached its climax, and the governor came out to set up his graduated, painted pole to note the number of feet. Old Waskema, the squaw, watched from under her shaggy brows and said: "The flood is over. It will stop now. The White-Headed Eagle has set out his stick to stop the river's rise."
The Indians looked with awe upon the old crone. Sure enough, the river did cease to rise. "She talks with the dead at night. She understands the white man's magic." In their eyes old Waskema was wise as the chiefs at Fort Vancouver.
The voyageurs were dressing for the launch, devoting an unconscionable amount of time to the decoration of their legs. The fringed buckskin trousers were tied with beaded garters and knots of gaudy ribbon. From their silken sashes hung fire-pouches like ladies' ​reti- cules, with pendent tails embroidered with beads and silk.
"My canoe is my castle," laughed the electric-eyed Monique, strutting in the bow of his boat under a bonnet like the headpiece of a drum-major.
At ten o'clock Dr. McLoughlin summoned them in to take the parting cup of good-fellowship. Some songs, some tears, and repeated hand-shakes wafted the halfwild, Arab-like voyageurs upon the wave.
"Good-bye! Bon voyage! "The New Caledonian brigade shot gracefully into the current. All the upriver boats fell in. The cannon boomed, the trading guns sent back a parting salute. The boat song struck, and Sarah Julia turned in a paroxysm of tears from the last, fond look of her Indian mother. No more she travelled up the zigzag rivers of the north.
The brigade bore straight toward the base of Mt. Hood. No mountain in the world looms like Hood beside the Columbia. Although twenty-five miles away, it appears to approaching boats to rest on the broad water, and towers pyramidal into the clouds.
The brigade turned to the left and was lost amid the hills. At Okanogan they transferred to horses, and to boats again on the upper Fraser. It was a thrilling sight when the caravans of two hundred and fifty and three hundred horses, laden with merchandise, wound through the pack-trails of the North. Merrily, as amid the lochs and bens of their home across the sea, the hardy Highlanders sent the skirl of bagpipes screaming from hill to hill. At old Fort Kamloops the rout and revel rang, as the trading brigades drove through the gates and hung their saddles on the wall.
Fort St. James, 54 North, on a peninsula in Stuart's Lake, was Ogden's castle. Here the humorous, eccen​tric, law-defying chief factor ruled absolute among the red men and sent his dog-sleds over the snow to still more northern forts. Every April he left St. James, with his family and retinue, for the summer trip to Fort Vancouver, reaching home again in late September. This time, however, the chief factor bade his brigade adieu in the warm and fertile Flathead country, and turned his face toward the Rockies.
Ogden carried a breeze across the Rockies.
"What does Dr. McLoughlin mean by encouraging so many missionaries? What does he mean, I say? "exclaimed Sir George Simpson, the most arbitrary Hudson's Bay governor since the days of Prince Rupert. " I'll checkmate this American move if I have to depopulate Red River."
Sir George recognized the resources of Dr. McLoughlin he did him the honor to overestimate them. Despatching his agent, he made this promise to the prosperous farmers of the Red River valley:
"To the head of every family emigrating to the Oregon country we will give ten pounds sterling in advance, goods for the journey, horses and provisions at the forts en route, and on the arrival at Puget Sound the company will furnish houses, barns, fenced fields, fifteen cows, fifty sheep, oxen, horses, farming implements, and seed. On the other hand, the farmers shall deliver to the company one-half of the crops yearly for five years and one-half the increase of the flocks at the end of five years."
In the chilly autumn nights the farmers talked it over.
"Not every day does such a fortune fall into our laps. Charlefoux says it rains and the grass is green all winter. Never is there a thunder, never a lightning, ​
never a blizzard, drought or hail. Let us go," they said.
So twenty-three families of eighty persons altogether agreed to accept Sir George's offer, and meet at rendezvous the following June on the White Horse Plain west of Fort Garry. ​
XIX
DR. WHITMAN AND HIS CAYUSES
1837-39
in\R. WHITMAN'S Indians were proud of their little *~* farms. He bought them ploughs. The first time they broke ground for planting, a strange sickness broke out among the Cayuses. They were filled with consternation. Dr. Whitman attended from lodge to lodge. When over-eating and unnecessary exposure brought on a relapse, "This medicine bad, bad, bad," they cried. "Go bring the tew-at doctors."
The wife of the oldest chief fell sick and came near dying. Umtippe cried in a rage, "Whitman, my wife die to-night, I kill you! "Dr. Whitman was nearly sick with the excitement and care of them all.
Umtippe sent for the great Walla Walla tew-at. He came. He muttered and mumbled and waved his wand and pronounced her well. Umtippe gave him a horse and two blankets. The next day she was the same again. "He bad, bad, bad," cried Umtippe. " Ought to be killed."
All through April the Cayuses groaned in their teepees. Umtippe himself was stricken and sent for Dr. Whitman. The doctor thought he would die; fortunately the medicine relieved him. Just then the Cayuse war chief died in the hands of the great Walla Walla tew-at. The same day Umtippe's younger brother rode to Walla Walla, arrived at twilight, and shot ​the
tew-at dead. That is Indian fashion. The medicine man is responsible.
Sticcas, a sub-chief, fell sick and came to the mission for care and treatment. Late at night Mrs. Whitman sat by the sick Indian with her seven weeks' baby on her lap, writing to her mother. Utterly worn out, Dr. Whitman had thrown himself down to sleep. Sticcas was the most enlightened man of his tribe, but because he was not well in a moment he became restless and uneasy. He rolled in his sleep and muttered, "The tew-ats, the tew-ats, send for the tew-ats"
In a few days he was better; soon he was well. When the warm Chinook blew in the May all the Cayuses recovered. Then great was the fame of Dr. Whitman.
That baby born at the Whitman mission was named for two grandmothers Alice Clarissa. Her advent created great excitement among the Cayuses. The whole tribe of the Walla Wallas moved their teepees nearer. Far away to the buffalo country the tidings flew, up among the Nez Perces and to the distant Flatheads. The next day after she was born Chief Tiloukaikt called at the mission.
"Ugh-ugh! "he grunted, at sight of her ladyship. "Ugh-ugh! fall to pieces! Tecast! tecast!" he cried, dropping his buckskin robe and waving his arms so wildly that Mrs. Whitman thought something must be the matter.
The old chief knelt down and poked the baby's clothes with his big red fingers to see if under the dainty flannels there might not be indeed a hidden tecast (baby-board).
Pio-pio-mox-mox came, and Five Crows and Elijah, all worshippers at the shrine of the little white child. Five Crows remained a long time, smoking in the ​Indian room and asking strange questions of Dr. Whitman.
The house became such a highway for every passing band that Dr. Whitman had to put up a stockade fence to keep them out. Sheets had to be hung to keep them from peeping through the windows and keyholes and crevices. They dug the moss out of the chinks to get a little glimpse of the mysterious chamber within, so much they wondered at this respectful care of a white wife in childbirth, when their own women at such a time were turned out of the lodge to live or die alone.
Every day the chiefs and headmen came to marvel at the baby that was not lashed to a tecast and yet did not fall to pieces. Indian women thronged the house continually to get a glimpse of the little stranger.
"She Cayuse terni, Cayuse girl," said Tiloukaikt, " born on Cayuse land."
"Yes, yes," laughed Dr. Whitman, "she is a Cayuse girl."
"Ugh-ugh! "grunted Tiloukaikt. "I not live long. I give all my land to her."
How she stole their hearts away, that little Cayuse girl! Every day she saw the dark faces around her. By and by she began to prattle in the Cayuse tongue.
"Ugh-ugh! Cayuse girl talk Cayuse." They were wild with joy. The chiefs would sit for hours teaching her Cayuse words.
Dr. McLoughlin sent up an orphan Indian girl to assist Mrs. Whitman. She became the baby's nurse. Mrs. Whitman's kitchen was full of little Indian children morning and night, learning to read and write and sing. At one year little Alice's size and strength astonished the Indians. She was as large and active as Indian babies two years old. ​
"Because she was never tied to a tecast" said the Indians.
"Because she has better food and better care," said Mrs. Whitman. How she pitied the poor Indian women, struggling along with burdens greater than they could bear and a little baby tied on top of all. No wonder they did not thrive when the overworked mother herself was ready to sink with exhaustion. And the little graves it was shocking how many died from pure neglect.
In those days it was a familiar sight to see Dr. Whitman riding from plantation to plantation with little Alice on the horse before him. She was fair as her mother, and her flossy hair hung in silky yellow curls. Mrs. Pambrun sent a present of a rocking-chair to Mrs. Whitman and a little chair for Alice. Like a fairy queen the little girl sat in her chair in the Indian school, beating time with her tiny hands and singing the Nez Perce hymns. Her readiness to learn amazed them, but not more than the aptness of the Cayuse children amazed Mrs. Whitman.
"They are good-looking, quite handsome children," said Mrs. Whitman. "To sit at a little distance and hear them sing one would not think he was in a heathen land."
Sometimes Mrs. Whitman took baby Alice and went to Tauitau's lodge to help them sing. It was a compound lodge, several lodges together, made into a long hall of skins and rush mats, with a fire in the centre. Here Dr. Whitman talked to the Indians and Mrs. Whitman sang with little Alice on her lap. In the old New York days Dr. Whitman could not sing, but here he discovered a new talent, and in rich tenor, led the Indian chorus. ​
The Oregon Indians moved with the seasons. When the wapato lay ripe under the last drip of winter rain, the women went waist deep into the marshes to dig this Indian potato. When the summer sun killed the stem of the star-flowered camas down to the ground, they dug in the prairies. Before the spring freshet subsided the salmon came sliding up the streams; while yet their opaline hues were glancing on the wave, the ripening berries called the squaw-mothers to the hills and the hunter to the buffalo beyond the Snake. September brought the salmon back to the sea, roots again filled the smoky October. So the Indian had his fishing trip to the Columbia, his summer residence in the mountain, his autumn camp on the prairie, and his winter home in some sheltered hollow contiguous to water, fuel, and winter pasture. For a time these roving habits threatened to render nugatory every effort of Dr. Whitman to settle the Indians on farms of their own, where he could superintend their education.
"Come, Narcissa," said the doctor one day, "let us go a little while and live with the Indians in their own lodges. It will give us better access to their language and more opportunities for instruction."
So one January morning the doctor and Mrs. Whitman mounted their horses, and taking little Alice before them, rode fifty miles over the sun-dried plain to the Cayuse camp on the Tucannon. The Indians received them with delight and entertained them in the best lodge. Mrs. Whitman conversed with the women, the doctor mingled with the warriors. The little children lay around on the ground, with their elfin locks in their eyes, listening to every word and drinking in the beauty of the flossy-haired little Alice. Every morning at dawn, every evening at twilight, the song of worship ​
arose. At midday the doctor addressed the attentive throng. Again at evening, with the moon shining in full splendor, the dark, eager faces gathered around the great fire in the open air. With a shawl around her shoulders and a handkerchief on her head, Mrs. Whitman sat in the door of her tent facing the fire in the foreground, with little Alice asleep in her arms. The air was clear and cold, but the cheeks of Alice were never so rosy. Now the doctor related the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, anon it was the tale of the Crucifixion. Sobs and cries burst from the Indians, women buried their faces in their hair. Almost as weird a scene as on that night in Calvary, was enacted on the banks of the lonely Tucannon.
Sometimes the missionary dwelt on their own sinful lives, their hearts, "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." Then their faces grew stern and they drew back.
"Don't, don't, don't tell us that. That talk is bad, bad, bad. Now give us some good talk. Tell us about the Bible country."
In summer the squaws had filled hundreds of rushbags with dried roots, and berries, and salmon pemmican, that they had worked hard to pulverize on the rocks in the sun. They buried them at night in caches, and went to the hills with the hunters to chase the deer. While they were gone other tribes came down and robbed their salmon caches those cellars where their winter stores lay hid and great suffering resulted.
"Ah, my poor people," said the sympathetic doctor, " I see some of your discomforts. Some of these days I shall have you all off the ground, out of the smoke, living in nice comfortable houses of wood. And you ​must all have farms, so you need not depend on the precarious living of roots and fish."
And they treasured these things in their hearts.
"Margaret, where is Alice Clarissa?" said Mrs. Whitman to the Indian nurse one day in June after her second birthday. Never could the fond mother bear the child out of her sight.
"I go see," said nurse Margaret. The Hawaiian servant also went out and returned. "There are two cups in the river," he said.
"How did they get there?" asked Mrs. Whitman, imperiously.
"Let them be," said the doctor, "and get them out to-morrow."
"How did they get there?" insisted Mrs. Whitman, "and what cups are they?"
As in a dream she recalled a glimpse of the curlyhaired sprite "Mamma, supper is most ready. Let Alice get some water." Going up to the table she took two cupSy hers and Margaret's and disappeared. Like a shadow it passed across her mind, passed away and made no impression. Mrs. Whitman did not recollect it until she reached the river brink where the child had fallen in. No Alice could be seen. Turning toward the house, they saw an old Indian preparing to enter the river. They stopped to see him swim under the water.
"She is found," he cried, holding aloft the lifeless form.
Mrs. Whitman ran, but the doctor passed her and snatched the baby to his arms. The precious life had taken flight.
Four days they kept her. "Then," says Mrs. Whitman, "when she began to melt away like wax and her ​visage changed, I felt it a great privilege that I could put her in so safe and quiet and desirable a restingplace as the grave. Although her grave is in sight every time I step out of the door, yet my thoughts seldom wander there. I look above, where her joys are perfect."
In a home-made casket the stricken parents and the weeping Indians consigned to her grave the goldenhaired Cayuse temi, the light of the Whitman mission. ​
XX
THAT WAGON 1840
CHIEF YELLOW SERPENT, old Pio-pio-moxmox, sat on a buffalo-robe at the door of his tent, smoking his calumet and watching the horses. Far out as the eye could see the hills were covered with horses, coal black, cream white, spotted white and roan and bay, Cayuse horses, well-knit, deep and wide at the shoulders, broad-loined, fleet-footed. At the slightest hint of danger the wild beauties would lift their heads with a shrill neigh, dart in air their light heels, and speed with horizontal manes and tails across the hills.
The young men had gone to hunt the buffalo far away. Out in the meadows the Indian women, with long crooked sticks, were busily digging the camas, the queen root of the Columbia, and tossing the bulbs into baskets slung on their backs. Some were baking them into figs to pack away for winter use. Others pulled the conical kouse, the biscuit root, to bake into sweet little cakes for the winter's bouillon.
As the old chief sat there he heard a sound unlike the hum of insects or the whir of grouse. 'Twas not the bleating of the kid nor the plaintive call of the fawn. Far out beyond this city of conical teepees something was following the horse-trail through the grass.
Yellow Serpent turned and bent his eye upon the approaching wonder. Some of his people were gath ​er- ing around a vehicle that rolled on the grass. Yellow Serpent stood up. "Chick-a-chick," said the Indians, imitating the phenomenal sound. "Horse canoe," cried Yellow Serpent. Round and round the Indians walked and gave it up. Yellow Serpent bent and peered and touched it with a stick. The horse canoe paused for a moment, then rolled on over the grass to Whitman's mission. It was that wagon.
Beaver had grown scarce in the mountains. Jo Meek, the American trapper, and his "pard "had decided to settle in the Willamette valley. They went to Fort Boise" and got Whitman's old wagon. Into it they packed their Indian wives and babies, and drove by a recently discovered trail over the Blue Mountains to Waiilatpu. Dr. Whitman and his wife came out to meet them. These trappers they had met in the mountains seemed like old friends.
"'Twar a hard trip over the mountings," said Jo Meek. "Back thar ^on the plain the sage-brush war over the mules' backs and the flippers a' most cut off the axletrees. I war a'most sorry we undertook to bring the wagin."
"Oh, no," said Dr. Whitman, "you will never regret it. You have broken the road. When others see that one wagon has passed they too will pass, and in a few years the valley will be full of our people." A Delaware standing by heard these words, and told the Indians. Like wild-fire it flew from mouth to mouth.
Dr. Whitman killed the fatted hog for his trapper friends and they had a feast. Jo Meek left his little half-breed daughter Helen Mar to be educated at the mission. "How did you get that famous name?" asked Mrs. Whitman, smoothing the tangled locks of the little girl. ​
"Waal," he answered, with a twinkle in his eye, "we war reading the ' Scottish Chiefs ' in the mountings when the little gal came, so I named her Helen Mar." The trappers passed on and took up farms west of the Willamette, where their descendants live to this day. Soon after, the famous Captain Bridger sent his little Nez Perce" daughter Mary Ann to the Whitman school. On his first journey Dr. Whitman had cut an Indian arrow from the back of Bridger, a feat of surgery that gave him great fame in the mountains.
At the Indian camp a little half-breed Spanish boy abandoned by his Cayuse mother lay in a hole in the ground. The Indian children were amusing themselves lighting sticks in the camp-fire and burning spots on his little bare body. An old squaw passed by heavily laden with her lord's saddles and bridles and blankets; with a jerk that might have dislocated the infant's arm, she snatched him away from his tormentors, tossed him on top of her burden, and running across the Walla Walla on the teetering foot-log laid him down at the door of the mission. So now the Whitmans had three adopted half-breed children to take the place of the flossy-haired Alice. ​
XXI
A TRIP TO SITKA 1840
WHEN Douglas and his crew and Rae and Eloise left Vancouver that March morning in 1840, they slid down the Columbia to the confluence of the Cowlitz. Entering this river, milky with volcanic ash from St. Helen's, they soon came to its headwaters and crossed overland on horses to Puget Sound. All the storied beauty of Scottish lakes, Italian skies, and Isles of Greece seemed centred here, on these unsung shores that commemorate the name and fame of Lieutenant Peter Puget. Here the little black "Beaver," the first steamer on Pacific waters, took them out on their northern journey.
For miles and miles, interlacing the northwest coast, rocky islands, like the summits of submerged mountains, hold their green fringes down to the sea. In serried rank, the Douglas spruce "the tree of Turner's dreams," the king of conifers, the great timber-tree of the world stands monarch of the hills. Once, twice, thrice, they ran up rivers where Hudson's Bay forts held subject the clans of red men. "Reports from these posts form the most agreeable part of my library," McLoughlin was wont to say.
One evening the little "Beaver "rounded a rocky point and, quite unexpectedly, the Bay of Sitka burst into view. Beside Mt. Edgecumbe it lay, dimpling in the sunset. A few Russian ships lay at anchor in the Norse-like fiord close under the guns of Sitka Cas ​tle.
On either side of the bay, precipitous walls of rock dipped into the emerald waters and waved their plumes of pine-trees far above. As soon as word went up to headquarters, a salute rang from the brazen guns, and Governor Etholine, in his gig, ran out to greet his English guests. Only three weeks since, Adolphus Etholine had arrived from Kronstadt, bringing with him a blond bride from Helsingfors. The events of the London council were fresh in Etholine's mind, as he greeted the envoys of the potentate on the Columbia.
On a high rock overlooking the Indian village of Sitka old Count Baranoff had built a castle, built it strong, of heavy hewn cedar, pierced by copper bolts, and on the terrace, commanding land and water, he planted his batteries of a hundred cannon. At the top he ran up a lighthouse tower, that flashed the first beacon ray on Pacific waters. Above it waved the Russian flag and the eagles of the czar. For twenty years the bearded old Baranoff ruled Alaska, and despatched home shipload after shipload of furs, that sold for fabulous sums in the markets of Russia. The count was a shrewd old tyrant, bold, enterprising, with a heart of stone, nerves of steel, and a frame of iron. Under his vigorous rule, seals, sea-lions, beaver, and sea-otter perished by millions, and the overworked Alaskans dwindled away to a few sad-faced, cringing slaves.
When Astor sent his expedition to Oregon in 1810, Baranoff was in the prime of his power, alternating days of toil with nights of revelling on raw rum and fiery vodhka. Setting out the foaming camp-kettles, he would sing and shout like an old Norse viking, "Drink, children, drink," till every serf and slave in Sitka Castle lay sprawling on the floor.
But he was a great manager. Sea-furs and walrus ​ivory were to be had for the taking, so that when the Russian- American fur-ships came home, nobles and princes and the czar himself took shares in the stock, and dreamed of one day controlling, not only Alaska, but the entire coast of California.
One day Baranoff died. "The Directory at St. Petersburg sent out Baron von Wrangell, and now the baron's successor, Adolphus Etholine, a young admiral of noble birth, had come to live in viceregal splendor in the stronghold that guarded the strip of shore, the tundra moors and mountains of rainy Alaska. The business had greatly fallen off, yet Etholine was able to despatch every year to St. Petersburg peltry valued at half a million silver roubles, and his returning ships, commanded by officers of the imperial navy, brought back the luxuries of Italy, Spain, and France. Could plain old Baranoff have looked in upon their mirrors and carpets and curtains and candelabra, he would have torn his beard in Russian rage and sworn a big round oath at these degenerate days.
At dawn Governor Etholine and several officers assisted Chief Factor Douglas and his companions to disembark. Sitka was a dirty village, full of drunken Indians, reeking with all imaginable smells, through which they hastened to the steep flight of steps leading up to the castle.
Etholine's drawing-rooms, with portraits of the czars, decorated walls, damask-draped windows, waxed floors, and heavy carved furniture, quite surprised the Hudson's Bay officials, who, in their plain quarters at Vancouver, had studied comfort rather than display. Here was a fur company that certainly had no greater income than their own, yet everywhere were signs of extravagant display and costly living. ​
"Perhaps they need it to reconcile them to this awe inspiring, silent Sitkan land," thought Douglas, as he mentally counted the cost.
Through parted curtains, Etholine's petite child wife entered; like a fairy she approached the stately daughter of the magnate on the Columbia. She spoke in French. Thanks to her father and "Telemachus," Eloise had a fluent command of French. There were other ladies, maids and companions, and, yes, there really was a princess, Madame Racheff, who had renounced the gayeties of the Russian court to accompany her husband to the far Pacific exile.
Long they lingered at the state breakfast in the resounding banquet-hall. What unexpected viands! Wines from France and fruits from Spain, hyperborean pickles and caviare, flanking and interlarding long arrays of sauces and chevreuil. There were toasts and jokes and laughter, not so wild, perhaps, as in the old BaranofY days, but enough to prove that the Russian and English fur companies were no longer at war.
"By the way," exclaimed Etholine, "the Russians came near appropriating the Columbia long before you fellows took it."
"How is that?" inquired Chief Factor Douglas.
"It was in 1802 that the Directory met at St. Petersburg to consider the post at Sitka. Some complaints had reached them against Count Baranoff. It was a ticklish thing to deal with Baranoff he was autocrat here. In general, they left him to his own way. But Prince von D. said, 'We ought to extend the business/
"'We need a better base of supplies,' said Baron X.
"'What we really need is to send a responsible man to look after Baranoff,' added Count T. ​
"'Why not take lands farther south and start an agricultural colony?' suggested Baron von Resanoff.
"Everybody stared at the young baron who had come up for the first time to take his seat in the Directory. He returned the stare with the additional suggestion, 'Why not make the Columbia a base of supplies for Sitka? " After a good deal of talking it was decided to send Von Resanoff himself as the Russian Imperial Inspector of Alaska. 1805-6 found him at Sitka, laying plans with Baranoff, one of which was to expel American traders from the North Pacific. All too numerous had become those Boston skippers on this northwest coast. Frequent complaints had been made to the American president that his people were selling fire-arms to our Indians, but all to no purpose. Von Resanoff said it was an outrage, and we were justified in using force. Supplies went low at Sitka that winter. No ship came. No flour, no fish, not even seal blubber for the garrison could be bought or caught. Just then, when all the cannon were loaded to sweep the Yankee skippers from the sea, a little Rhode Island ship sailed into Sitka harbor.
"'Shall we expel these American traders from the North Pacific?' said Von Resanoff.
"'For the love of God, no,' cried Baranoff. 'That little ship is our saviour.'
"Into the starving garrison the Yankee captain brought bread and beef, and raised the famine siege at Sitka Castle. Baranoff bought that little ship, the 'Juno,' that saved their lives, and sent her down the coast to cruise for supplies. Von Resanoff sailed with her, trying to find the Columbia, to plant a Russian colony. Those exploring Americans, Lewis and Clark,
XI ​
1
were just leaving their winter post at Clatsop, but Von Resanoff knew nothing of that. The whole coast might have been ours, but he could not get across the bar. Beastly river, the Columbia. Tried it three days and gave it up and went on down to California. There he found supplies, and fell in love with the Spanish commandant's charming daughter, Dona Conception.
"The matter was brought before the commandant would he give to the baron the hand of his daughter as a seal to the compact for future supplies to Sitka?
"Don Arguello, the commandante, considered and consented, but a dreadful lion lay in the way! Von Resanoff was a Greek Catholic, the donna a Roman Catholic. Von Resanoff laughed at the lion: Til go to St. Petersburg. I'll beg the consent of the czar himself; then to Madrid, and doubt not, I'll conciliate the King of Spain. " They parted with tears. Far out from shore his handkerchief fluttered farewell. But alas! in his haste to cross Siberia, Von Resanoff fell from his horse and broke his neck. The girl is down there yet, somewhere. But England forestalled Russia on the Columbia."
After breakfast the gentlemen went away to attend to their commission. Lady Etholine and the Princess Racheff led Eloise out on the promenade around the castle. Below them lay the low, square, rough-hewn huts of the half-breed Sitkans. Yonder were the officers' homes, three-storied, lemon-yellow houses with iron-red roofs and stained-glass windows. The green roof of the bishop's house shone in the sun, and the green dome of the Greek church, surmounted by its oriental spire. Behind the castle, the princess pointed to the living green flanks of Vestova, where the Muscovites held their summer picnics. ​
"All the year round the glaciers glitter on those heights beyond," she said. "And you can read, at night. You can read all night in these Sitkan summers. The midnight sun just dips behind Edgecumbe, and before twilight is gone the dawn is here."
Edgecumbe rose like a snowy cone beyond the island-studded harbor. A fleet of skin bidarkas moved in and out among the ships. The steamer "Alexander," from Okhotsk, was landing the mail from St. Petersburg, whereat the princess flew away for letters.
"And do you like it here?" asked Eloise of the dainty Lady Etholine.
"One always likes the home of the honeymoon," answered the bride of Etholine. "My husband says the grandest scenery of the world lies along this coast. I love to fancy this is Naples, with its cliffs by the sea and its lava cone. It lay like this long ago before the Romans built their villas on its shores."
"And do you think some Virgil yet may write an ^Eneid here?" asked Eloise, smiling.
"Who knows? Baranoff would be a worthy hero. They tell great tales of him in his battles with the Sitkans. Some dark tales, too. When at night I hear the roar of the sea-lions and the pitiful cry of the seals, I tell Adolphus it sounds like the moans of all the dead Alaskans."
Governor Etholine and his lady were model hosts. Sumptuous dinners and courtly balls followed each other in swift succession. At sunrise the reveille sounded, at sunset the drums beat, and the great light blazed in the tower. The heavy Muscovite padlocks were turned in the gates, and all night the sentinels paced the promenade, guarding the life and treasure of Sitka Castle. ​
Meanwhile Douglas and Etholine were discussing provisions and boundaries and tariffs for the Indian trade. Douglas took part in all the gayeties of the fort; at the same time he criticised them in private.
"It is not our way of doing things," he said to Rae. " These Russians are squandering all they make. What folly to appoint naval officers to the command! They know nothing of the business, yet draw pay from both the fur company and the government. Look at these establishments crowded with idle officers and men, fifteen vessels afloat, and thousands spent every year on provisions for Sitka alone. You never saw such a lazy crew around Vancouver the doctor would n't have it."
Too soon the week rolled by. The ten-league transfer was made according to the London agreement, and exchanges concluded in grain and furs. Farewells were quickly said, salutes were fired, and the little "Beaver " sped down the coast to the sandy flats of Fort Stikine. On the self-same spot where a few years ago the Russian gunboats had threatened Ogden, lay a Russian brig of thirty-two guns, ready to hand the redout over to Douglas and the English. As Rae marched out with his detachment of eighteen Canadians the Russian officer drew back.
"What! hold this fort with eighteen men! I required fifty, and you can do with no less."
"Other forts we rule with twenty men, and we can hold Stikine," said Rae, setting his lips in the firm way habitual to him.
At the mouth of the Stikine River, on a strip of sand that was an island at high tide, stood the old Russian redout, St. Dionysius, near the present Fort Wrangell. Over the log fort Rae hung out the English flag and the ​Hudson's Bay pennant, and with his wife and eighteen Canadians saw the Russian brig set sail for Sitka, and the "Beaver" and Douglas depart to build Fort Takou.
Scarcely had the Russians disappeared when the Indians began hostilities. It was not a pleasant outlook, on that bank of sand scarce large enough to hold the fort, with only the rising and falling tide to break the monotonous days.
In the inner gallery a watchman paced, ever on the outlook, with a loaded swivel above the gate. In the bastions eight nine-pound guns and an armory of Hudson's Bay flintlocks lay ready for action. The wood-boats plied back and forth with musketoons on their gunwales.
Here, there, everywhere, rolled the smoke from savage camps. Canoes came over with beaver, beaver, beaver, until the fort was packed with beaver, but all the pay they would take was drink, making night hideous with their orgies. Years after Eloise spoke of this time with a shudder. Once, at midnight, the savages attempted to scale the stockade and take the fort. A thousand bidarkas came down from the north and shot their arrows at Fort Stikine. The brave girl stood by her husband's side, beating them back with the carronades.
In autumn the "Beaver "passed as she gathered in her furs, but no one came when the dark and rainy winter sent the waterfalls tumbling down the mountains and swept the white foam out to sea.
Meanwhile events were occurring at Fort Vancouver that led Dr. McLoughlin to recall Rae to take charge of another important post ​
XXII
ERMATINGER GUARDS THE FRONTIER 1840
/CONSUMPTION was eating away the vitals of Tom ^^ McKay. This was not strange, in view of the winter bivouacs on the Missouri, the dog-sled journeys to Colvile, the fights and flights at Okanogan long ago, the days of wet moccasins and nights of damp blankets, the weeks of sand-dust and alkali along the Shoshonie. His brigade was handed over to Ermatinger.
"Tom will spend the winter in California," said Dr. McLoughlin.
There were reasons for despatching Ermatinger to the Shoshonie. More and more St. Louis trappers were crossing the Rockies and disputing grounds with the Hudson's Bay Company and the Blackfeet.
"This opposition must be frozen out," said Dr. McLoughlin. "We must fight fire with fire," said Douglas. So Ermatinger rushed over the twisted aromatic sagebrush of the upper country, snuffing the air for rivals. Witty, skilful, affable, he was the trump card, and they played it.
How kind Ermatinger was, how insinuating! How hospitably he received a rival camp! inspecting their outfit from the corner of his eye. He knew to a skin how much the Americans carried. He counted every gun, and reckoned up the value of the goods. How trickily he misled them! worse than Jemmy ​Jock.
How deftly he planted the seeds of discontent! "Your leader pays you ha beggarly rate; hour men would never put hup with it." How he fomented disputes, how disinterestedly he conveyed word to the Indians, how he played on their superstitions! "These Bostons bring trouble. If you deal with the Bostons we shall sell you no more smoke-smoke. These Bostons hare swindlers. They charge ten dollars for scarlet that just falls to pieces. We charge honly thirty-two shillings for cloth that will last a lifetime."
But when the missionaries came Ermatinger was in his glory. Gray, Walker, Eells, Griffin, Hunger, and their wives, all passed under his convoy. "Surely there is no danger in missionaries," he said; "they come not to trap nor to trade nor to make settlements, they come only to teach the Indians." Ermatinger flew around among his men. "Company to-night. Company to-night. Put hon your best faces, boys. Serve up the supper hon has clean ha mat has you can find, Baptiste. Let them see that we live on civilized fare. More cakes, Gabriel, plenty of fried cakes."
The quick Canadians, trained to obey, turned camp over at his call. Cook Gabriel, blowzy at the fire, dropped ball after ball of flour and water dough into the boiling tallow, stirring it afar off with a pointed pole to avoid the blistering heat.
Skipping out to meet his guests, the little man bowed profoundly "Come, ladies hand gentlemen, let me hintroduce you to the chairs hand tables hand hedibles."
There was something almost homelike in Ermatinger's companionable camp, with regiments of buffalo ribs propped up before the blaze on dress parade, and savory fumes of fleece meat bubbling in the kettles. There ​had been a great hunt; even now the buffalo runners were restless in the camp, the hills east of the Snake were black with shaggy herds, and their deep-mouthed bellowings rolled like thunder far away. Some of the Canadians were still busy with hatchets, cracking the marrow-bones, to lay bare the rolls of trappers' butter contained within; others had cleaned the intestines, turned them inside out, and tucked them full of strips of salted and peppered tenderloin, and beside the ribs these long, brown festoons of trappers' sausage snapped and crackled with their juicy contents.
The missionaries, young men just out of the seminaries, and their rosy-cheeked brides, sat down on the Indian mats spread on the grass. Ermatinger kept up incessant chatter.
"I 'm 'ungry 's a grizzly. Pour the coffee, Baptiste. Notice hany trappers this side hof the Rockies? 'Elp yourselves, 'elp yourselves. Don't stand hon ceremony. To-day hit his buffalo 'umps hand marrow-bones, tomorrow hit may be mice. We starve when we must, but when we 'ave plenty we heat the best first, for fear hof being scalped by han Injun before we 've henjoyed it."
On their brushwood beds the wandering missionaries slept in this early Oregon time. The wolves howled them to sleep every evening, howled them awake every morning; all the night long the wolves bayed at the moon as she rode in a cloudless sky. Under their heads they hid the meat for pillows, to keep it away from the wolves even then some sly old gray-back would come in the night and pull it out.
"Harise! Harise! Harise! "was Ermatinger's daylight call. "Hi'll be 'anged hif the wolves 'ave n 't grown so bold hand saucy they 've come to the fire to warm themselves!" ​
There they sat, three great gray wolves, with noses pointing to the fire. One touch, over they toppled, dead, set up by this joking hunter in the night to frighten the tenderfeet from over the Rockies!
"Hi'll be 'anged if the dogs 'ave n't heaten my moccasins," was the next discovery. Perhaps the remnant of a cap chewed out of recognition lay under a tent edge. More than likely one leg of a pair of buckskin pantaloons was all that was left of somebody's apparel.
The missionaries laughed, laughed, laughed as at holiday. How could they look for guile when all went merry as a marriage-bell under the lead of this goodhumored, winsome host? To Ermatinger they confided their plans and acted on his advice. He slapped them on the shoulders, lounged round their tent doors, and sat in their secret councils. He penetrated their inmost hearts, warned them against trespassing the regulations of the great company.
"What are the regulations of the company?" asked the incoming missionaries.
"Hamericans must not trade with Hinjuns, they must confine themselves to hagriculture hand mission work, hand keep to the south side hof the Columbia," was the answer, impressed like a solemn law. And he tricked them, tricked them out of their tame cattle for longhorned Mexican heifers that needed to be caught with a lasso and held for milking, tricked them out of their gentle American horses for wild Indian ponies. Even at Whitman's he tried his wiles.
"You live too plainly. You dress too plainly. Splendor wins the Hinjuns. You must put hon more style hand get all the hinfluence possible. The Hamerican Board agrees to give you your living; that living must not be mean." Then the tempter passed, leaving ​a worry in the heart of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, for to some extent they knew his words were true.
Sometimes the conversation fell on politics. Then Ermatinger fired:
"If the Hunited States tries to drive hus from the country the Hudson's Bay Company will harm 'er height 'undred mixed bloods, and with their knowledge hof the mountain fastnesses we can 'old Horegon hagainst the world. Ham hi not ha marvellously proper man to go a-soldiering? "The little man drew himself up, and his big nose shone. Of course everybody laughed, "It is only Ermatinger."
Even Dr. McLoughlin would laugh, "Bow-wow-wow! It 's only Ermatinger."
"Ho, no, this country can never be settled," said Ermatinger, slyly taking the missionaries through the most difficult goat-trails over the mountains. "'Ow could wagons hever get through these jungles? "Over sharp-cut rocks he led them, through dense woods, and over mountain patches of snow where never man or beast had trod before.
Long since, the Indians had revealed to Dr. Whitman wide, comfortable trails that the company had hoped to keep secret. But Ermatinger, leading the new-comers a thorny chase, laughed, laughed, laughed because he had fooled the missionaries.
"Be silent, exclusive, secret," said the company, " lest the furry folk be frightened away. We shall be undone if colonies of people supplant our colonies of beaver. Mill-dams break up beaver-dams; they never flourish in the same water."
"Why have you never taught the Indians agriculture? "inquired Dr. Whitman.
"Hoh, beaver is hour business. Why meddle with the plough?" was Ermatinger's careless answer. ​
"How came the Spokanes, then, to plant and plough?"
"The Spokanes 'ave planted for twenty years. Raster's men built Spokane House hand made ha little garden. The Hinjuns watched them, tasted their vegetables. When they left the squaws saved the seed hand tried their 'and hat gardens."
"Does n't that prove that all the Indians want is a chance that they are ready to take up civilization?" Dr. Whitman was standing by that historic wagon with his foot on the hub.
Ermatinger knocked the ashes from his ever-burning pipe with an impatient snap.
"Yes, too ready, if anything. We don't want 'em civilized we want 'em to catch skins. That is why the company gets along better with the Injun than you Hamericans do we leave 'im to 'is own ways. You try to change 'im. All along your border states you say, ' 'ere, take a farm and settle down like white folks, or get hout.' That 's no way to get halong with Hinjuns."
"Exactly." Never before had Dr. Whitman grasped so clearly the difference of the two policies. Then began the nervous walk in which he indulged when under the pressure of exciting thought. "It's here in a nutshell, Ermatinger. The fur-hunter meets the Indian half-way, he intermarries, he perpetuates barbarism. The American brings the rifle, the axe, the home. For the beaver-dam and buffalo-range he substitutes the plough, the mill, the school, the railroad, the city."
Ever after Dr. Whitman seemed to hear a voice soughing in the wind like the worried ghost of the great company: "Away! away! You must not civilize our Indians. Away! away! Your mills, your ploughs and schools and shops must not frighten our beaver." ​
Silence brooded over Oregon, the silence of the grave. England looked upon the great fur preserve as a waste, a desert where a few wild beasts gained a scanty living. As the fur-traders tramped the forest they knew of coal, but they never told it; they knew of marble and iron, but they kept it secret; voyageurs discovered ledges of gold, but were enjoined to silence; the Indian was not more quiescent. To publish to the world these vast savannas and belts of a greater Britain would bring in people, and people frighten away the game. So Oregon slept behind her battlements, waiting for the prince at whose magic kiss the gates should fall, the forest trails expand, and her thousand industries leap to life.
In November again Monique's brigade glanced like a shadow down the River of the West.
"Time? time?" he called at Fort Colvile. Chief Factor McDonald gave him the time. Monique scribbled it on his orders.
"Time? time? "he called at Walla Walla.
"Time? time? "at Fort Vancouver.
Dr. McLoughlin looked at his watch. "Five minutes past ten o'clock in the morning." Monique scribbled it on his papers and passed them in.
Dr. McLoughlin looked over the record in the quiet of his office. With drooping head the Iroquois stood like a weary race-horse. Dr. McLoughlin came to the Colvile paper.
"You scoundrel, you! "he cried, leaping to his feet. " You have run every cascade this side of Colvile! "
Up flew his cane, but Monique dodged and darted through the door. The proud Indian had reached the goal that Kennedy missed, the fastest time ever made from Colvile to Fort Vancouver. ​
When December rains were beating on the hills, James Douglas and Tom McKay took a run on the Hudson's Bay Company barque Cowlitz down to Monterey. The company's ships had become frequent visitors at that southern port, buying up sea-otter and paying a handsome fee for the privilege.
On New Year's day they anchored. The warders of the old Spanish castle on the coast were not backward in collecting customs.
With lifted beaver Douglas returned their civilities. f ' No, not sea-otter to-day, thank you, gentlemen; we wish to see the governor."
With a shade of disappointment the Spanish officials conducted the Hudson's Bay ambassador to the home of Alvarado. It was an unpretentious mansion, luxurious only in windows overlooking the sea, windows upon windows in those California days when glass was worth its weight in solid silver. The common people had no glass, only wooden shutters and outdoor verandas, that were the actual living rooms.
When La Framboise came home from the Spanish land he had brought this word from Captain Sutter: " The Hudson's Bay Company need not come down here to trap any more. I have engaged these grounds." No attention was paid to it. In autumn La Framboise set out as usual. Now Douglas, in the presence of Alvarado, after the usual salutations, inquired,
"Did you authorize Captain Sutter to order our brigade to leave the Sacramento?"
"Captain Sutter was authorized to act for the government, not in one hostile way, but merely to request the withdrawal of your partie on account of the new settlements," said the Governor Alvarado.
"Very well, then," replied the haughty Douglas, " ​when your wishes shall be officially communicated they shall be followed to the letter. For the present I suppose the old agreement stands."
"Certano, Signer, certano? answered Alvarado, somewhat puzzled, somewhat flattered.
Douglas found it hard to bend the knee and sue for favors from this southern potentate, but he did it. In the end his courtliness quite undermined the gallant Captain Sutter.
In the bay of Saint Francisco the fur company wished to establish a post to capture the Spanish trade perhaps the Spanish state.
"Certano, certano, Signor, by payment of suitable duties."
"And we want sheep to stock our farms."
"Certano, certano" said Alvarado.
All Douglas wished and more he got, a post on the bay, trappers' rights renewed, and five thousand sheep from the old missions, three thousand to be driven overland, and two thousand to be brought by sea.
Tom McKay, tall, dark, long-haired, standing hat in hand, had been a silent auditor. As negotiations progressed mutual esteem mounted high and higher. With fluttering flags of Spain and England at the mast Douglas dined and wined the Spanish grandees on his ship. He lent the impoverished Californians powder to fire a salute from the old castle and departed amid a shower of, "A Dios! A Dios! "leaving McKay to recruit his health and superintend the sheep brigade. ​
XXIII
AN AMERICAN EXPLORING SQUADRON 1841
THE New Year of 1841 opened a new act in the drama on the Columbia. In his lonely cabin on the Willamette, Ewing Young, the Tennesseean, lay dead. Outside, his herds grazed on the hillsides, without a visible heir. The little handful of Americans, scarce thirty-six all told, gathered at his funeral. Jason Lee deeply felt the situation. No law, no court, no government, nothing from the Spanish land to Sitka, but the arbitrary will of Dr. John McLoughlin. "He is a good man," said Jason Lee, "but the one man power is not American."
They carried the Tennesseean out and buried him under the oaks on his ranch, and then returned to discuss the disposition of his property.
"We must have some sort of organization," said Jason Lee. "We must draft a constitution and frame a code of laws."
The committee sat, with pens in hand, when, presto! change! an American exploring squadron came sailing into the Oregon waters bearing the banners of Uncle Sam.
The Hudson's Bay Company on the Columbia had paid little attention to the young republic at the east, they sometimes forgot there was a United States; but this sudden apparition startled them with its possibilities. Conciliatory, urbane, troubled, the ​doctor and Douglas visited the American commodore on shipboard. The yards were manned, salutes were fired, the flags of both nations flew at the international banquet where the two governments met on the disputed Columbia.
"Come right over to the fort," was the doctor's cordial invitation. "Rooms, boats, guides, whatever you need is at your service."
Commodore Wilkes set up his tents outside the British stronghold, but like all others who passed that way, he, too, was enchanted with this old feudal host and hospitality. Like Whitman, he viewed the fields and farms, like Sutter he tasted the wine and heard the song, like Lee he ascended the charming Willamette. Under the roof of the new mission house George Abernethy, the mission steward, entertained the commodore.
"Do you advise us to establish a government? "he asked.
"Not yet," said the commodore; "wait. The British interest already feels itself threatened by the presence of this exploring squadron. Any action on your part may precipitate trouble, in which case you are too few and too far away to be properly supported. Wait till your numbers augment."
"Dr. McLoughlin's wine has affected his judgment," said the men of the mission.
In the purple twilight, Commodore Wilkes walked in the fields of wheat. The crescent moon hung over Mt. Hood. "A lovely land," he murmured; "charming by day, enchanting by night. Tell me, what do you Americans think of the Hudson's Bay Company?"
"The Hudson's Bay Company is Great Britain's instrumentality for securing Oregon," was the answer. ​
"But," urged the commodore, "the missionaries have received untold favors from the Hudson's Bay Company, and if they are gentlemen, it is their duty to return them."
The missionary faced about in the commodore's path. "Return them? Certainly. I will exchange favors with Dr. McLoughlin or any other man or set of men, but I will not sell country for it"
Wilkes was almost angry with this blunt missionary. Presently he inquired, "What was that bleating I heard at sunset flocks of the mission? "
"It is the company's sheep brigade, being driven overland from California, to stock the country on the Sound. That is part of the plan for holding Oregon."
Eloise stood at Vancouver's gate as the sheep passed by. Already she had been summoned from Stikine, and Rae had been sent to the South. California had a new meaning for her now; even the shepherds might bring a message from her husband at the company's new post on the bay of Saint Francisco. As the bleating of sheep died out in the west the beaver-painted bannerols of Ogden's brigade came fluttering in from the east. Among the gayly decked voyageurs the quick eye of Eloise noted the drooping curls of her old playfellow, Maria Pambrun.
"Maria is an obedient girl," Chief Factor Pambrun had been saying six weeks before, as he rode with Cornelius Rogers on the flowery meads of Walla Walla, it was the old topic, the marriage of his daughter, " and skilled in housewifery."
At that moment the half-wild Cayuse pony lost the rope from his mouth and ran and surged, throwing Pambrun over the high-pommelled Mexican saddle. In
12 ​
1
a moment Rogers knelt by his side. Indians came running to the rescue, and carried the injured officer home to the fort. Dr. Whitman was summoned, but in vain. Four agonized days the piteous appeal resounded,
"O Doctor, Doctor, give me something to kill me quick! "
Then Pambrun's strength failed. All was hushed save the labored breathing and the lapping waters on the northern wall.
"Cornelius." Cornelius Rogers bent to support the dying head. "Cornelius I give you my watch and my gun."
The sobs of Maria and her mother were all that broke the death-bed silence.
"Cornelius in secretary find will made in your favor Take care of my family."
With falling tears Cornelius Rogers smoothed the clammy brow. "Yes, yes, dearest friend. I will see to everything." A look of peace settled on the ashen face.
Pale as death Maria Pambrun sat on the bed with one of her father's hands pressed close in both of hers. The other hand Madame, her mother, pressed close to her heart. The chief factor fixed his glazing eye upon his child
"Maria darling marry Mr. Rogers."
The anguished girl dropped her head upon her bosom the chief factor interpreted it as a sign of assent.
"God bless "
"He is dead," said Dr. Whitman, bending low to tatch the last pulse.
Maria Pambrun slid from her perch on the bedside. With uplifted face and hands clenched in her wild dis ​
AN AMERICAN EXPLORING SQUADRON 179
ordered curls she gave a shriek, the terrible death-wail that has rung for ages in the tents of the dead. The Indians waiting outside caught it up, till it rolled in one long reverberation over the plains of Walla Walla. It reached the home of Mrs. Whitman before her husband did, and she knew the good Chief Factor Pambrun had gone to rest.
They buried him there in the drifting sand. Ogden's brigade came by and Rogers accompanied the mourning family down to Fort Vancouver, whither they had been summoned by Dr. McLoughlin.
"I cannot marry him," sobbed Maria Pambrun, hiding her face on the shoulder of Eloise. Dr. McLoughlin looked on in compassion. The face of Cornelius Rogers was paler than Maria's, set as marble.
"I will not ask it," said Rogers. He heard the din in the court as the doomed man hears the hammer of the executioner. "I will not take advantage of her helpless situation. Let the will be void. I return the property, but the watch I would like to keep as a memento of my dead friend."
His own voice sounded far away and dead. Maria ceased her sobs and breathless waited she only heard a departing step and the shutting of a door. When she looked up Rogers was gone. Dr. McLoughlin stood there, looking at the closed door. The arm of Eloise was still about her waist, and the sun through the grapevine cast checkered shadows on the Chinese matting.
"That is an honorable man," said Dr. McLoughlin, picking up the torn fragments of the will at his feet. " He is worthy of an excellent wife. But remember, Maria, you and your mother and the younger children can have a home here as long as you live. I adopt you all." ​
18o McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
Maria had scarcely time to murmur her thanks when a shuffling was heard outside.
"Boston ship at Fort George, laden with liquor," announced a Frenchman, hat in hand, suddenly breaking up the tableau in the doctor's office. Dr. McLoughlin went out. In ten hours he stepped from his barge on the sands at Astoria. The Thomas H. Perkins" looked up grimly, demoniacally, from the water.
"How many barrels on board?" demanded Dr. McLoughlin of the captain. "What is it worth? I will take the whole cargo." And in the end Dr. McLoughlin chartered the ship itself, to put a stop to the business.
"It 's cheaper to buy ' blue ruin ' out of hand than to deal with a riot of drunken savages," was the doctor's explanation to the inquiries of Commodore Wilkes. The liquor was stored in the basement of the governor's house, where it lay untouched for years.
Commodore Wilkes sent exploring parties all over the country. Everywhere the Indians fell into convulsions of laughter at the useless labors of these lunatic scientists, who came squinting around at rocks and soil and hills and stars, and never once asked for beaver. Did the geologist use his hammer "Ho! ho! ho! no kernel in that nut! Indian know better than that! " Did the botanist creep along picking flowers like precious gems "He! he! he! see the grass man?" All flowers were grass to the Indian.
"Come over and see us celebrate the Fourth of July, Doctor. We have the finest warship in the navy there," said Commodore Wilkes, setting out for that portion of his squadron anchored in the Sound.
"Tut, tut, tut! Ask me to celebrate the Fourth of ​
AN AMERICAN EXPLORING SQUADRON 181
July? "laughed the doctor. "I have business over that way and may run down to look at your ships."
A few days later Dr. McLoughlin went over to the Sound, arriving, however, a day too late for the celebration. At this moment, while the doctor was gone, the Rupert's governor, Sir George Simpson, came sweeping down the Columbia with his retinue of fancy voyageurs and his buglers and bagpipers on his journey around the world, Douglas did the honors of the fort.
Sir George had been head of the old Hudson's Bay Company before the coalition, and, naturally, had never acquired perfect confidence in this independent northwester who never took the trouble to cross the mountains to his annual council at Norway House on Winnipeg.
"Ah! "was Sir George's mental comment as he took off his tall felt chimney-pot hat and scratched the bald spot on top of his head. "Last year McLoughlin entertained the missionaries. This year I find him hobnobbing with Americans in their gunboats on the Sound."
Everything encouraged Sir George's suspicions. He was angry on account of the squadron, angry on account of Dr. McLoughlin's courteous hospitality to it, angry on account of the banquet to which the Americans were invited on the doctor's return to the fort. Sir George, in narrow-waisted, swallow-tailed coat, occupied the chair of honor. There was an aristocratic scantness to the tight-fitting sleeves; a corresponding fulness to the immaculate puffed and ruffled shirt-front above the waistcoat of salmon-colored satin. Behind his chair the pipers played. Dr. McLoughlin kept up the conversation. Under the rim of his gold-bowed glasses ​
18 2 McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
Sir George eyed the commodore from an immeasurable distance of formality and reserve. His temper cast a damper on the festive scene, despite the magnificent table garnished with venison and rosemary, grouse and salmon and cygnets.
"The dinner was a funeral," said the clerks that night.
"It was like a feast of feudal times," said Commodore Wilkes.
"Those Americans are spies," said Sir George, reproving the doctor in private.
"You are not to encourage Americans in any way," said Sir George, in the positive tone bred of years of command. "The United States will never possess more than a nominal jurisdiction west of the Rocky Mountains, nor, if you do your duty, will it long possess even that. You make a great mistake in assisting these missionaries. Let them take care of themselves, refuse them favors, drive them out of the country as soon as possible."
"But," interposed the doctor, standing up beside Sir George he could look down upon him like a little boy "what excuse can we have for driving them out of the country? They are peaceable, industrious, helpful to the Indian. By the terms of our treaty with the United States they have as good right here as we have."
"The Hudson's Bay Company was not chartered to educate the Indian," curtly responded Sir George, hitching up the wires of his glasses in a few once curly locks behind his ears. "That is no part of our business. I would not give them even a spade to till the soil. We want furs, not farms. We must tolerate nothing that interferes with our business." ​
AN AMERICAN EXPLORING SQUADRON 183
"Sir George prays only to mammon," was a wellknown saying in the upper country.
The doctor kept his temper. Better than any one else west of the mountains he understood the policy of his company, and never had that company a more brilliantly cold and calculating manager than Sir George Simpson.
"By your management already you have lost us all that country south of the Columbia," continued Sir George.
"/lost that country?" cried Dr. McLoughlin, bristling at this unexpected charge. "England never claimed it. The company never expected to hold it. The Joint Occupancy Treaty was in itself official notice to that effect. As for these missionaries when they come bringing passports signed by the Secretary of War, dare I treat them like Yankee skippers or overland traders?"
Sir George by his John Bull obstinacy was fast driving the doctor into an American advocate.
He saw his error, and with the quick diplomacy for which he was noted Sir George grasped the angry doctor's hand.
"I beg your pardon, Chief Factor McLoughlin I beg your pardon. Your situation is indeed a complicated one. I shall take immediate measures to press this Oregon question to an issue. England cannot afford to lose this territory."
How he pressed this question is hidden in the English archives. A few days later Sir George left with Douglas to inspect the northwest coast and visit Sitka.
When Ogden went back up the Columbia he took with him Cornelius Rogers to the Whitman mission, ​
1
and his son-in:law, Archibald McKinley, whose young wife, Sarah Julia, the first woman of white blood born on the Snake, was destined now to become mistress of the driftwood fort at Walla Walla.
Failing to secure the hand of Maria Pambrun, Mr. Rogers became discouraged over the work of the mission. He, who never before could see an obstacle, began to say, "Religious truth can never be taught in the Indian tongue. They have no words for spiritual thought. How can the Indian unacquainted with law be made to understand a broken moral law?"
"This reasoning is delusive," said Dr. Whitman. " The Indian knows the right and wrong. That is the basis of all moral law."
Nevertheless Cornelius Rogers left the mission and settled in the Willamette valley.
Before a year had rolled away there was another wedding at Fort Vancouver. The bride was Maria Pambrun, still in mourning the groom was Dr. Barclay.
One October morning, after Sir George's return from Sitka, a mist hid the Columbia from view, but up the terraced plain rang the familiar
"Sur la feuille ron don don don!' of the voyageurs.
Far back on the Saskatchewan, months before, Sir George had passed a lengthened cavalcade toiling westward under the broiling sun of a northern July, And now those bronzed, determined men, those women and children have crossed the Assiniboian plains in oxcarts and wagons, and scaled the mountains on packhorses; they have arrived to claim Sir George's promise.
Sir George paled slightly under the doctor's questioning glance. ​
AN AMERICAN EXPLORING SQUADRON 185
"No doubt it is those half-breeds of Red River," he said. "Possession is nine points of the law, and actual possession is now conclusive in our favor. You must help me meet them."
"Certainly," said the doctor.
The leaders and headmen of the Red River immigrants came up to the fort. The people camped on the plain below. Sir George Simpson, Dr. McLoughlin, and James Douglas met them in the hall. Sir George knew he had to face an ordeal, and nerved himself with a glass of wine. He saw the hope on every face and shattered it at a glance.
"I am sorry to tell you that we cannot fulfil our agreement," began Sir George, hesitating at the disagreeable truth. "We have neither horses nor barns nor fields for you, and you are at liberty to go where you please. You may go with the California trappers and we will give you an outfit as we give others. If you locate south of the Columbia we will help you none. If you go to the Cowlitz we will help you some. To those who will go to the Sound we will fulfil our agreement."
For a moment the Red River immigrants were struck dumb with amazement. Then wrath arose, some oaths escaped. Sir George with utmost coolness declared the interview at an end. Dr. McLoughlin was greatly distressed at the plight of the poor people who had sold their homes and travelled to a wilderness two thousand miles away, on the strength of such great expectations. He followed them out to their encampment, and in every way helped them to their destination with food, clothing, boats, and horses. Slowly, wearily, disheartened, heaping imprecations on the company's head, they toiled over to the woods on Puget Sound. After ​
1
a winter of ineffable suffering most of them moved to the Willamette valley, where their descendants still live, loyal citizens of the United States.
From that hour the coolness increased between Sir George and the doctor. Sir George was angry because Dr. McLoughlin was not prepared to furnish houses, barns, and fenced fields to all these people. The doctor was astonished that such a promise had ever been made.
"I will go back," said James Sinclair, the leader of the northern immigrants, "and I will tell the Red River people this latest fraud of Sir George Simpson's. It is not enough that the company has throttled that colony in its cradle; it is not enough that they have subordinated every interest there to the fur trade; it is not enough that they have frustrated every effort at traffic by enormous freights and jealous regulations until they have driven our best men over the border into the United States, but now they must needs practice on the credulity of those who remain and rob us of our last little all."
When next Sir George went back to Red River he fled by night from the threatened rebellion, and he disarmed the leader, James Sinclair, by despatching him to the Columbia promoted at once to the honors and emoluments of a chief factorship. ​
XXIV
STAR OF OKEGON" 1841
'"T^HERE was an animated discussion among the
A Canadians in the court at Fort Vancouver. "What is it, Baptiste?" inquired Dr. McLoughlin.
"Begosh! Dat w'at we not know, Dogtor. Dey say hit be for ferry-boat, but Antoine, 'ere, sir, 'e tink hit for be keel of a schooner."
"What looks like the keel of a schooner?" inquired the doctor.
"Dat boat, w'at de Hamericans buil' hon de islan'. Dey 'ave borrow w'ip-saw an' tools on de mission. Dey buy hall hour hoi' Dutch 'arness-rope an' want more."
"Who are they?" persisted the doctor, with sudden interest.
"Josef Gale, 'e ees de boss. Felix 'At'way, J e ees de 'ead builter. Dere be five hall togedder."
"Joseph Gale! Hathaway! Joseph Gale! Hathaway! "exclaimed the doctor, excitedly turning toward the office where the head-clerk sat. "The very men! The very men! They were mad because we had a monopoly on cattle. They tried to get passage on the ' Cadboro ' ' to buy cattle in California. I refused to let them go, but offered to help them settle. They appeared to agree and got supplies. Let me see, McTavish, let me see what Gale and Hathaway have bo ​ught"
He began turning over the yellow leaves. "Here is their bill: Draw-rope, Draw-rope, Bagging, Draw-rope, Sails and rigging as I live! Gale is a renegade seacaptain, Hathaway a deserter from the 'Convoy.' I've no love for Hathaway; he 's the rascal that built a house on my island at the Falls. I sent him word, but he paid no attention to it."
Dr. McLoughlin reappeared in the yard.
"Dere be one of dose mon now, Dogtor," said Baptiste, pointing to a young man just entering the gate.
"And what do you want now, Mr. Woods, what do you want now?" Dr. McLoughlin abruptly inquired, walking toward the young man. Sir George's rebukes had temporarily affected the doctor's urbanity to Americans.
"Why, Governor, some of us fellows are trying to build a schooner to go to California to get some cattle. If you will trust us for chains and anchors and rigging, we can pay you by and by."
"How? how? how, I'd like to know, how, sir?" cried the doctor.
"In furs and wheat, sir," answered the American.
"A schooner to go to California on this iron-bound coast? Tut, tut, tut! You'll all be drowned, and I'll not be party to such a transaction. You had better settle in the valley, as I told you, and take up farms. I'll lend you all the seed you want, but chains and anchors don't grow in this climate."
"But, Doctor, cattle"
"Tut, tut, tut! "'impatiently the doctor waved the petitioner away. "A hare-brained scheme! a harebrained scheme! Who ever heard of a trapper-sailor? You've no idea of the danger you venture into. No slipshod schooner can live on this rock-bound coast." ​
"And you won't advance supplies, sir?" asked the young man, whitening.
"Didn't I tell you it was a hare-brained scheme? Why, boy, don't you know that without papers you are liable to be captured as a pirate, and how do I know you do not intend to become one?" said the doctor, looking very fierce and nodding his head.
"Well, Doctor," shouted the enraged Yankee, "you may keep your paltry rigging. You carry matters with a high hand now, but it won't last always. Remember, sir, I have an uncle in the States, that, rich as you are, is able to buy your great company out and several more such. He'll come along here some day when you ain't thinking of him and send you all packing."
"Tut, tut, tut!" cried the doctor, reddening. "I am glad to hear so rich a man as your uncle is coming to this country. Who is it, Mr. Wood? What is his name, Mr. Wood? I should like to know him, Mr. Wood."
"Why, they call him Uncle Sam, and he 's liable to come out here looking after us fellows most any day," retorted the angry American, making a bee-line for the gate.
"The persistency of these Americans is amazing," said the doctor, as he watched the retreating figure. " If I tell my Canadians to stop, they stop, but these Americans keep right on."
And the Americans did keep on. On Wapato Island they found material fit for a keel and a frame of swamp white oak. They grubbed up red fir roots for knees, put up beams of red fir timber, and planked their boat with cedar dressed by hand. Parrish, the mission blacksmith, made the spikes and irons. ​
When Commodore Wilkes went up the Willamette he saw the unfinished craft.
"Yes, we've got so far," said Gale, "but Dr. McLoughlin refuses to sell us supplies. Can you?"
"I cannot sell to you," said the commodore. "I am not in the trading business, but I could give you cordage and anchor out of my ship-stores in case of distress. I'll interview Dr. McLoughlin when I get back."
"They are making a coffin for themselves," said the doctor, when Wilkes approached him on the subject. " Now there is Gale. He has been in our employ for several years as a hunter and trapper. Now what does he or the rest of them know about managing or navigating a vessel at sea?"
"I have tested Gale's knowledge. He is an old sailor, and I have given him papers," said Commodore Wilkes.
"You have?" exclaimed the amazed doctor. "But do you think that vessel is strong enough to make the voyage to San Francisco?"
"It's stout enough to double Cape Horn," said Wilkes. "Gale knows what he is about and Hathaway worked in a shipyard in the States. If you have such things as they need you will oblige me by letting them have them. If they are not able to pay, charge it up to me. I shall need considerable cordage and canvas myself."
"Oh, well, well," exclaimed the doctor, "they can have whatever they want." So the store was thrown open, and the delighted Americans hastened to get all they needed before Commodore Wilkes got out of the country. The commodore gave them a flag, an ensign, a compass, an anchor, and a hawser one hundred and forty fathoms long, and a log-line and glasses. ​
The little schooner, clinker-built on the clipper model, painted black with a white ribbon running from stem to stern, was in the eyes of her builders the cutest little craft that ever sat upon the water. With flying sails she dropped down the Willamette, and for pure buncombe crept up to Fort Vancouver. The little clipper ran so close to the barque "Vancouver "that it nearly touched her side.
"Helm-a-lee! "cried Captain Gale.
As she spun around on her keel the stars and stripes were flung in the face of the British tars and they read on her side in full-face letters, "The Star of Oregon."
Dr. McLoughlin was absent. Gale sent word to Douglas:
JAMES DOUGLAS, Esq.:
SIR, I am now on my way to California. If you have any letters or commands that you wish to send to Mr. Rae, residing there, I will with pleasure take them to him.
Yours, JOSEPH GALE.
"Talk of their getting to California that's all braggadocio," said Douglas, as he penned the answer.
MR. JOSEPH GALE:
SIR, As the schooner "Cadborough "will leave for that port soon, we will not trouble you in that particular.
Yours, etc., J. DOUGLAS.
Again at old Fort George (Astoria) the daring little crew unfurled the stars and stripes for Birnie and his men to see.
"Oh, ho! "cried the British tars, "as soon as you see the Pacific your hearts will fail and you'll all be back again." ​
"I'll go to Davy Jones's locker first," cried Gale, spreading his sheets to the wind.
Gale had a quadrant epitome and a nautical almanac that some one had brought to the country. He set out with his crew of four and a little Indian boy, not one of whom knew the compass. After giving his men a few lessons in steering in a seaway and by compass, they crossed the bar, and just at sunset, September 12, 1842, turned their faces to the south. The wind freshened to a tempest, the little barque skipped like a stormy petrel on the surface of the sea, the crew fell seasick, and for thirty-six hours the dauntless captain stood at the helm and steered his flying ship.
On the fifth day the little "Star "shot through the portals of the Golden Gate, and just as the sun went down dropped anchor abreast of the old Presidio. Not the Spaniards when they found the new world felt prouder than the youthful crew of the little ship.
"Oregon, Oregon," mused an officer in port when the little "Star "touched Yerba Buena the next day. " I'll be hanged if there 's any port by that name on any of our charts."
"Are there letters for me?" asked Rae, amazed at the sight of the little craft.
"No letters," said Gale; "they'll come creeping in by and by on the ' CadboroV This delivery is a trifle too swift."
The boys sold the little "Star" for three hundred and fifty cows. They trimmed up a cottonwood tree and ran up the stars and stripes. Under it fortytwo Americans gathered to emigrate to Oregon. The next season the boys came back, bringing with their settlers three thousand head of sheep, six hundred head of horses, and twelve hundred and fifty head ​
"THE STAR OF OREGON" 193
of cattle, forever breaking the stock monopoly in Oregon.
The little "Star," the first ship ever built on the coast, remained in the South, where she ran on the Sacramento in the days of gold. But Joseph Gale never parted with the dear old flag that floated from her masthead. He made it into a canopy, under which he slept, and was buried with it around his coffin. ​
XXV
McKINLEY AT WALLA WALLA 1841
SOON after Archibald McKinley took charge at Walla Walla, a younger brother of Elijah, rambling around the place, came upon a pile of birch seasoned for pack-saddles.
"Put that down," demanded the clerk.
"The wood is ours," retorted the boy, defiantly tucking it under his blanket.
The clerk stepped out and struck the lad. Swelling with rage, the little savage fled through the gate to his father's lodge. Archibald McKinley was busily sorting and matching furs, when he caught sight of the Walla Walla chieftain and a dozen warriors filing into the court. There was something grim in the old chiefs lofty look.
"What will you have this fine day?" inquired the politic trader, advancing and shaking hands.
"Him" roared Yellow Serpent, shaking an ominous finger at the clerk. "Big Boston say ' Indian strike white man, whip him. White man strike Indian, whip him' "The chief's attendants advanced and seized the clerk.
"What does this mean?" inquired the chief trader. The Indian deigned no reply. One drew out a lash.
"Stop! "cried McKinley, wheeling through the door of the Indian shop and returning with a copper keg of ​
McKINLEY AT WALLA WALLA 195
gunpowder. Knocking out the head and crossing a flint and steel "Touch him and I'll fire," said McKinley, with determined look, yet trembling with excitement.
Pio-pio-mox-mox threw up his hands. His men loosed their hold and fled precipitately. The old chief, with eye on the powder, backed out after them.
In that hour old traditions passed away. At one bound McKinley became a "great big brave of the skookum turn-turn" (strong heart).
"How long, sir," roared Dr. McLoughlin, when next the clerk appeared at Fort Vancouver, "how long, sir, do you suppose we could hold this country, with our feeble forces, if you are going to get into a row with every boy over a paltry whip-handle? " ​
XXVI
DELAWARE TOM 1841-5
WHEN the Cayuse Indians dashed on their fleet ponies through the Grande Ronde, they often noted a smoke curling on the Blue Mountains, and said, " There is the lodge of Delaware Tom."
It was in a mountain pocket, rich in trout and beaver. Occasional herds of elk wandered into its green plateau, and the salmon of the Columbia ascended into the little mountain lake. Here, in a lodge of deerskin, with his Nez Perce" wife, dwelt Tom Hill, an educated Delaware Indian, once a student at Dartmouth, now an independent trapper in the mountains. His knowledge of English made him valuable to the white man. For several years he was employed as an express between the trading posts of Bent, Laramie, and St. Vrain. No runner could surpass him, no obstacle lay in his way as he took his swift courses over mountain height or foaming rapid. Alone, without a horse or a dog, he first came to Oregon, into the Grande Ronde where the Nez Perec's were digging camas.
Indians as well as white people are conservative to strangers. Gradually the Delaware worked, into their confidence. He heard that white men had penetrated even here.
"I know the white man," he said. "He came to the Delawares a welcome guest. We invited him t ​o the
best lodge, seated him on the best robe, smoked with him the calumet. He came again and killed off all our game. A third time he came and took our lands. So it will be with you. We are but dogs, to be driven from his path. I have come step by step across from tribe to tribe and watched the Americans. They begin by sending missionaries, who say all men are brethren, you must live in harmony. When you live in harmony then they want to buy a little piece of land. Then more come, and more and more, until they have occupied all the land."
The Nez Perces began to be deeply interested in this strange Indian who had seen so much. The Cayuses came around and the Walla Wallas listened.
"I am acquainted with missionaries," said Delaware Tom. "It is only a way of making property. There is nothing in religion only to make money. You can see that Look how they are selling everything they raise on your own lands. You cannot get anything from them without paying for it, not so much as a piece of meat when you are hungry."
The Nez Percys invited Delaware Tom to go with them and visit Spalding's mission at Lapwai. Mr. Spalding was very busy attending to the wants of his people and paid no attention to a single stranger. It piqued the pride of Delaware Tom.
"See," he said, "if these were true men of God, they would supply every one of you with food and clothing. God gives you all things free of charge. The Indian shares his wealth; the white man gets it all for himself."
They took him to visit the school.
"I know schools," said Delaware Tom. "White men have books to describe great scenes of the West. We ​
1
have the scenes themselves. White men measure mountains. Does the Indian measure a mountain that he can climb? "
Mr. Spalding had been explaining the use of the compass.
"What care we for the compass?" scoffed Delaware Tom. "We follow the stars. The trail leads to the hunt. The shores guide our canoes. The green leaves tell us when it is spring; the yellow, when to pitch our winter teepees. White men have the locomotive what need, when our own fleet feet out-travel the horse? The missionary teaches you to weave cloth. Has not the buffalo spun a robe for you? The white man tears up the soil, it becomes full of worms and weeds. He makes a garden. Are not your meadows full of camas, your rivers full of fish, your father's hillsides stocked with game? Who would obstruct the streams with bridges? Does not the beaver build bridges enough for you? "
This talk drove the Nez Perec's into a frenzy of excitement. Tom Hill would gallop down from the mountains, talk around a few days, then go back for weeks of solitary hunting. He refused to wear anything made of cloth; day in and day out his squaw sat beating the buffalo skin to make it soft and pliant for the couch of her lord. Mr. Spalding heard of the Delaware's instructions and warned his people against them. But the Indians looked up to Tom Hill as a mighty tyee, learned in the secrets of the white man. A few left the main tribe and camped with the Delaware on the mountain. The Nez Perc6 chiefs only laughed, and went on cultivating their farms and gardens.
Mr. Spalding went to the mountains for material ​to
build a mill. The childish Indians saw him rolling down the stones. It annoyed them that these inventive white people could find uses for even the stones on the hills.
"Bad, bad, bad," said the disciples of Tom Hill. " Mr. Spalding, we going to kill you."
"Oh, no," carelessly responded the missionary, rolling away at his stone.
"Yes, we are."
"Oh, no; you would n't do that. What would you gain by it? If you do I have many friends over the mountains who will come and destroy you all and take your wives and children and horses."
This awful prospect quieted the discontents. Some spoke with McKinley at Fort Walla Walla.
"What say you? Shall we drive these missionaries away from our lands? "
"You are braves," said McKinley, "and there are many of you. It would be easy to kill two men and two women and a few little children. Go quickly and do it, if you wish. But, remember, if you do, I shall have you punished."
Delaware Tom and a few Nez Perces came down into the Walla Walla valley to visit Dr. Whitman. For a long time the doctor had heard rumors of the Delaware and had formed an unfavorable impression of the supposed renegade. Quite surprised, then, was he when an attractive Indian of prepossessing appearance approached him with excellent English and in a cordial manner said, "I am glad to meet you, Dr. Whitman."
The black locks two and one-half feet long were dressed with uncommon care. The eager, flashing eye was lit with intelligence. Dr. Whitman had heard that ​
200 McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
the Delaware was vain of his learning and approached him through that medium.
"Ah, Mr. Hill, I am pleased to welcome you to our mission. I am told you are a student of Dartmouth a great institution."
Pleased, flattered, the Indian became easy and talkative, revealing a surprising acquaintance with the politics of Europe and America. He dwelt on his school-life, describing again and again the walks and groves of Dartmouth.
"Why do you leave civilized life for the precarious life of the wilderness? "inquired Dr. Whitman.
"For reasons found in the nature of my race," answered the Delaware. "Never again shall I visit the States or any other part of the earth torn and spoiled by the slaves of agriculture. The pines of the Connecticut look on an age of decay. Only the Indian is strong and free. I shall live and die an Indian."
"What do you mean by strong and free?" inquired the doctor, curious to investigate this riddle.
"I mean the white men are too many. Population is increased to an unnatural extent. They crowd one another. That necessitates laws, it curtails liberty. There is no freedom among the whites. You break a law, they lock you in a jail or hang you on a tree. They have laws to punish murder. My own arrow can do it better."
The Delaware began to speak of his own tribe a certain scintillant gleam began to coruscate in his eye as he dwelt on the wrongs of his people. Dr. Whitman wisely cut off the discussion by announcing a feast in honor of his guest.
An immense kettle of mush cornmeal cooked in ​
tallow was set in the centre of the school-room. The principal chiefs of the neighborhood, Pio-pio-mox-mox, Five Crows, Tauitau, and Tiloukaikt came in and sat down on the floor. The tallow dips were lighted and Mrs. Whitman brought in the tea. The Indians dipped in sugar, four, five, six teaspoonfuls to a cup. They ate without a word, sipping noisily, as Indians do; now Dr. Whitman and now a chief dipping his big wooden spoon into the kettle. Other Indians came in, until every bench in the school-room was crowded. At last the Hawaiian servant carried the kettle away, and for two hours Tom Hill spoke eloquently in the Cayuse tongue on the benefits of education.
"I like Dr. Whitman better than Spalding," he said to the Nez Perces on reaching home. "He asked me into his house sometimes."
But spite of all, Tom Hill did the mischief with the Cayuses. Pointing to the mission house
"See," he said, "big house, big barn, big mill, grain, all out of Cayuse land. All belongs to you." Pointing to their graves he affectionately asked, "Where are all your principal men who were alive when these pretended teachers of God came among you? Is not Dr. Whitman a great medicine to let your people die in that fashion?" Mr. Spalding wrote to a friend: "God has interposed in a wonderful manner to prevent this calumny from taking effect upon Dr. Whitman."
At a joint meeting of the missions the question was debated whether danger from that source had not become so great that duty required them to leave. But on their knees Dr. and Mrs. Whitman resolved to com* mit themselves anew to the work.
"God does not understand Injun language," was the next report from the oracle in the Blue Mountains. ​
202 McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
The distressed Nez Perces were shocked. Of all known tribes they were most inclined to prayer. Dr. Whitman wrote to a friend in the valley: "The question of worship or no worship is now before the minds of our people as urged by Tom Hill, a Delaware Indian. I am in hopes we can turn his influence to the best account, not only in regard to religion, but in regard to the intercourse of the whites with Indians, as he is well acquainted with the border history."
Delaware Tom visited Fort Walla Walla. From the corner of his eye he scrutinized every lock and barricade.
"Since these skin buyers have come we can do nothing without their guns and ammunition," he said.
The Delaware visited the Willamette and shook his head at the signs of white men. He came to Fort Vancouver Dr. McLoughlin kicked him from the gate. The Delaware picked himself up and gave one look. Dr. McLoughlin never forgot those eyes, strange eyes, wonderful eyes, glittering, scintillating with inward fire. Back in the Blue Mountains the Delaware ground his teeth.
"Why do not all Indians band together and fight for the independence of their native land? We are like the partridge wounded by the hunter. They have given us guns until now we have forgotten the use of the arrow. They alone have the secret of gunpowder. Could we plant the powder and make it grow, could we gather shot like pebbles on the shore, we might be free. Now we are slaves."
Walking nearer and shaking his finger in the solemn faces of his auditors "White men bring diseases. Look at the Willamettes, dying year by year; yet once, like you, they were brave and free and rich and inde ​
pendent. Look at the Blackfeet, fleeing to the mountains to escape the contagion of white men." Slowly and yet more solemnly spoke the Delaware: "Disease will come to you and you will die, and they will take the land. I have warned you. Beware. Have nothing to do with white men. They scorn us. They kick us from their gates. We are but dogs."
Again the Delaware spoke: "They judge us by the border Indian degraded by the vices of white men. They call us drunken. Who brought the fire-water? We drank from the rill and the spring. They say the Indian fights. Has the white man never fought? The savage red man burns his enemy at the stake. Did the enlightened white man never burn his kindred, even helpless women, at the stake? I have read it."
Some one ventured to remark, "Dr. Whitman is good to Indians." The Delaware blazed. He leaped from the ground and strode back and forth, talking and gesticulating to the Indians that squatted before the camp-fire.
"A white man good to the Indian? Never. It is not in the race. Do I not know? Did they not come to my home on the Susquehanna? Did not the white man want a little land to till and we let him have it? And did not more white men come, and more and more, until the Delawares were driven west and west, and no longer had any home? Does not Whitman say this land belongs to the Americans? Is he not encouraging immigrants to come this way? In a little while they will come in a great tide, and the poor Indian may slink like a dog away."
The Delaware raised his hand "Never let the Americans settle on your lands."
"NEVER," said the Cayuses, "never, never." ​
204 McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
For a long time Tiloukaikt had shown good evidence of conversion. He longed for the beautiful and mysterious rite of baptism. But Dr. Whitman put him off. "Too many wives, Tiloukaikt, too many wives. God says one man, one wife."
"Ugh-ugh!" said Tiloukaikt. "Ugh-ugh! "echoed the Indians. Then he went away and stayed for weeks.
"He has talked enough about your bad hearts," said a priest at Walla Walla. "He ought to have baptized you long ago."
One day Tiloukaikt rode to the mission on his spotted Cayuse, opened the door, walked in, and sat down on the mat before the fire. "Well, Tiloukaikt, are you going to put away your wives?" asked Dr. Whitman. The Indian continued gazing into the bed of driftwood. He spread his taper fingers before the blaze. His hands were smaller and more shapely than the squaws' who dug the camas.
"Cannot cannot," said the savage, slowly shaking his head. "One old wife no work any more, old, old. She mother of sons, tall sons," gesturing high above his head. "I take care her. One young wife she strong. She take care me. Three wives dig camas, tan robe, pick berry, pack salmon, take care all."
"You can be married to one and take care of the rest until they find husbands," suggested Dr. Whitman.
"Ugh-ugh-ugh! "grunted the old chief, shaking his head again and again. "Much squaw much camas."
"Must be white men," said Five Crows at the lodge that night. "One wife, wood house, big plantation, cattle."
Tiloukaikt wrinkled his vinegar face. On Sundays ​
the Indians came to the mission for ten and fifteen miles around, except a few to watch the lodges. Sometimes hundreds met after the buffalo hunt. Tiloukaikt stayed away.
"It was good when we knew nothing but to eat, drink, and sleep. Now it is bad, bad, bad," growled Tiloukaikt, poking around the hoes and shovels in the lodge. "Prayers no bring guns and blankets. Me no pray for nothing."
He kicked every implement of civilization out of his lodge. He trampled up his garden in a rage. He struck the bread out of the women's hands bread they had learned to bake at Mrs. Whitman's. "Bad, bad, bad. Lazy squaw, get kouse, camas, salmon," raising his frightful double-thonged whip, "Go."
Jason Lee had said, "My Indians are so anxious for civilized food that they will even dig up potatoes after they are planted and eat them." Tiloukaikt kicked the potatoes into the river.
The old chief watched Mrs. Whitman with jealous eye. "Doct' Whit'n, why you take you wife where you go? Why not go alone? See, I leave my wives, they work, pack fish, camas, skins. Why you treat her so like big chief?"
"It is good for her to go with me," said Dr. Whitman. "We are one. Wives are given us for companions."
"Ugh-ugh! "growled Tiloukaikt. "That was Adam. God made him wife from rib. These wives not our rib. These not one with us."
In a wretched little hut constructed by herself a pretty young squaw lay dying in childbirth. Dr. Whitman heard of it, snatched his surgical case, hastened to the spot. ​
206 McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
"Te-he-he-he," tittered the Indians. "Squaw-doctor! squaw-doctor! squaw-doctor! Te-he-he-he! "
Year after year Dr. Whitman went quietly on in his work of mercy, but his Christ-like forbearance seemed lost upon the savage.
"Ha knock-down with a club would hinduce more respect," said Ermatinger.
"It takes time, time," said Dr. Whitman. "Civilization is not the work of a day."
Above his squaw, above his pony, the Cayuse prized his gun. He ornamented the rough flint from a London smithy with streaks of red ochre and studded it with brass nails. He slid it into a mink-skin case and slept with it over his heart. To him that old gun brought food and furs and security from the hated Blackfeet. And the greatest hero in Indian eyes was the finest shot. That youth that could bring down the eagle on the wing was in the line of chieftainship.
Tom McKay had an old-fashioned rifle heavily ornamented with silver. Ermatinger called it "ha gingerbread gun."
When McKay came up the Walla Walla with his favorite gun, the clans followed him like sheep. The Indians believed he bore a magic life. They trusted and admired his coolness and bravery. None but he would have dared to trounce the impudent chieftain at the Dalles, none but Tom could have killed a boastful Walla Walla and escaped the Avenger of Blood. At one hundred paces he could drive a dozen balls through a Spanish dollar or knock off a duck's head at one hundred and twenty yards. "I always shoot a bear in the mouth to save the skin," he said.
Dr. Whitman seldom touched a gun, only now and ​
then to shoot a pony in his corral for horse-steak. The grouse and the gray hare looked in his face and laughed.
"Te-he-he-he! "laughed the Indians. "Doct' Whit'n, he put up he gun so shut he eye so go bang. Poolalik (the rabbit) nibble nibble nibble just 'e same."
"Dr. Whitman, you are too indulgent with your Indians," said McKinley at the fort. "Indians cannot be controlled except by fear. You must learn to use your gun."
"Doct' Whit'n," said Tiloukaikt, "I am mad at you. Before you came we fought each other, killed each other, enjoyed it. Before you came the spot where Walla Walla stands was red with blood. You have taught us that it is wrong, and we have in a great measure ceased. So I am mad at you, Doct' Whit 'n. I am mad at you."
The young chief Elijah had shot up into the teens straight as a fir and beautifully fashioned as the Apollo Belvedere of Canova. Those who remember him best say he had the face of a Roman, at times lively and laughing, at times solemn, even sad. When he looked upon the scrofula-smitten children of the Willamette his dark, luminous eyes spoke volumes. As a lad he played among them in his embroidered tunic of deerskin and his little band of eagle plumes. His small, swift feet outsped them in the race, his shapely hands outshot them with the bow. "He is very bright," they said at the mission. Sometimes the boy boasted: "My father and my father's father were chiefs. My mother is a sister of chiefs, and I am a chief."
At seventeen, in his war-cap of eagle feathers and his robe wrought in porcupine, the young chief Elijah was ​
ao8 McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
every inch an Indian king. Already he had been sent to Spirit Hill in the Grande Ronde to learn his destiny; already he led the braves in the buffalo hunt.
In October the Walla Walla-Cayuses came home from the summer hunt laden with spoils of buffalo-beef and hides. The nights were cold and the driftwood fires blazed merrily.
Walking there in the soft twilight with the hum of the lighted lodges around him, Elijah heard the gossip of the Indian village. Here it was the whisper about his uncle, Five Crows, who wanted a white wife. A year ago he had asked the missionaries for one; he had been down to Vancouver to negotiate, and at last dismissing his five present wives he had gone in great state of fine horses and blankets to Fort Walla Walla to propose to Chief Factor Pambrun for the hand of the lovely Maria. To his astonishment, the suit was rejected with a kick, and the discomfited chief returned home and married a Modoc slave to the great scandal of the tribe.
Here the talk was of some trouble at the mission. The Cayuse horses had broken into the mission field and damaged the growing grain. When Dr. Whitman reproved the Indians, Tiloukaikt said: "It is not your grain, it is ours. The land is all ours, and the water and the fuel."
One threw mud on him and pulled his ears, one snapped a gun at him, and another aimed an axe that the doctor dodged.
"What Indians did that? "demanded Elijah, turning sharply.
"The ones that talk so much with Delaware Tom," was the answer.
"And did not Dr. Whitman punish them? " ​
"No, but Mr. McKinley heard of it and made them beg his pardon."
Elijah passed on frowning. "That renegade Delaware will get us into trouble yet. I wish he would go back to his own people. Why need we fear the whites? Is not my father a very great chief? " ​
XXVII
THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY IN CALIFORNIA
1841
TN wintry mist and flying cloud, Dr. McLoughlin and * Sir George Simpson, on board the Hudson's Bay barque "Cowlitz," dropped down the Columbia on the way to California, and with them went Eloise Rae to her husband. Following the swells toward the whitened strand, the ship entered the Golden Gate, still quiet in the age before commerce discovered that auriferous highway. The little square Presidio, with its Mexican flag, was fast asleep. Horses and cattle dotted the hills around the bay. There was a handful of houses at Yerba Buena cove, and, yes, there was Rae, glass in hand, watching for the ship to bring his bride. It was on the last day of 1841 that Dr. McLoughlin, Sir George, and Eloise landed on the sand-dunes where in a few short years should rise the magic city of San Francisco.
The New Year's holiday was quietly spent, then followed diplomatic visits to the Spanish grandees. It was a radiant morning when they set out across the bay to Sonoma, the home of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the Prince of Northern California.
"Their castanets do not click together," the Spaniards said of Sutter and Vallejo. But they were far enough apart. In California, as in Oregon, thes ​e old
feudal chieftains counted their land by leagues instead of sections. Before 1836 Vallejo had been commandant at Sonoma, where the old mission stood. Now, since the confiscation of missions Sonoma belonged to Vallejo as chief of the colonial army. It was his strong arm, more than anything else, that had seated his nephew, Alvarado, in the governor's chair at Monterey.
Vallejo's house was the finest on the coast. Eight thousand cattle bore his brand on the hills; his leagues of wheat yielded eight hundred fanegas for every eight sown. Indian serfs without number tilled his lands and toiled in his house.
Vallejo sent mounted horsemen to bring in his guests. As Dr. McLoughlin, Sir George, and Rae and Eloise galloped under the arched gateway, his retainers fired a salute under the Spanish flag. Vallejo's young brother, Don Salvador, led the way in jingling spurs and serape. The handsome general came out in his dark-blue broadcloth cloak, the senora bowed in her silken gown and spangled satin shoes, and a star like a coronet in her hair.
Everything had an old-world air, gilded mirrors, square old Spanish sofas, even the spindle-legged pianoforte, the only one in California. The carpets were made by Indians of Mexico. Vallejo, and his nephew, Alvarado, had collected the only libraries west of the Rockies. The senora sparkled at dinner, and the senora's charming daughters. Indian servants sped to and fro with frijoles and tortillas, olives, stewed beef with red pepper, and onions and native wines.
General Vallejo, of old Castilian stock, born in California, foresaw the building of a great commonwealth. All the world knew that Spanish rule was trembling in ​
2
the balance. To Vallejo's feet France, Russia, England sent suitors, as if in his hand lay the disposal of this fair Pacific province.
Naturally the conversation turned on the future of the country, its independence of Mexico, whether feasible, and could it be maintained by the few whites then in California, the idea of a French protectorate, the extension of the Russian claims to this free and lovely land, and Sir George's suggestion in a quiet way that England could make it to Vallejo's advantage to favor the queen. Vallejo was used to this had he not a hand full of propositions? With due Spanish etiquette he listened to all, entertained all, drew out the various phases of advantage, yet held himself uncompromised.
Evening brought on the fandango. Don Salvador and his troopers played the guitar, the Alcalde paddled over the bay with the fierce, fat little commandant of the Presidio, round as an apple dumpling. One or two padres, not loath to taste the general's wine, dropped in on their way to San Dolores. The people at Vancouver were dancers, but even they had never seemed to so melt into the liquid poetry of Terpsichore as did these sinuous Spaniards.
"Let this not be the last of your visits," said General Vallejo, as his guests departed after a round of festivity. " When these pretty senoritas are married there will be whole weeks of fandango and bull-fights, and no end of drinking sweet wines." In truth, the California days promised to be far from depressing.
A few days later Eloise sat in the Hudson's Bay House at Yerba Buena, when a jingling cavalier rode up to the door. He seemed a typical Spaniard, in broad-brimmed sombrero, with silken cord and tasse ​l,
profusions of lace and embroidery and buttons, and pantaloons split on the side and laced to the ankle. A long sword was thrust into the right boot of untanned deerskin, a silken sash drooped at the side. Eloise looked for the fierce mustachios and piercing eyes of a Spaniard, and beheld Ermatinger!
With lifted sombrero and laughing face he called, "Are Sir George and the doctor here?"
"They sailed five days ago for Monterey, sir," answered Eloise.
"And Rae?"
"Is with them. Where is your brigade?" she asked.
"Camped with La Framboise beside the old mission," and with a jingle he was gone, galloping down the trail to Monterey.
It was the work of a moment for Eloise and her maids to saddle, and set out for the first time to meet the California brigade from the other end of the route. They heard the Spanish women singing and thrumming guitars in the whitewashed adobes on the scattered farms. Now and then they passed a gilded and painted horseman, in steeple-crowned sombrero and fiery serape, flying to the race-track. Eloise hastened on over the sandy hills covered with dwarf oak and strawberry trees, past San Dolores walled in with skulls of slaughtered cattle, scarce noting the mouldering pile where once the Indian converts carded wool, and wove blankets and cloth with home-made looms. A few Indians lingered, still chanting canticles traced by the early fathers in the great choir books of sheepskin. She scarce noted the narrow windows deep set in the wall, or the gaping roofs whence the lazy Californians had stolen the tiles for their farmhouses on the bay. Her heart thrilled as children's will when all at once the full brigade burst ​
2
into view, La Framboise in his Hudson's Bay buttons, Angelique as of old on her beaded palfrey, and all the long line of bearded men and butternut-colored belles like some far caravan on Arabian hills. Around the camp, fisher, beaver, and marten were stretched to dry, and through the door of a gypsy tent she caught a glimpse of Catharine Ermatinger lying on a couch of skins.
"Where have they all been to-day? "asked Eloise.
"On dress parade to Sonoma," she said.
So much they had to tell.
"Yes, my husband saw Captain Sutter and he is very angry," said Catharine. "He and the Americans think Sir George and Dr. McLoughlin are down here not only to monopolize the trade but to get possession of California. Do you know that Captain Sutter has bought the Russian post at Bodega Bay for $30,000?" added Catharine.
"Why," exclaimed Eloise, "the Russians offered that to the Hudson's Bay Company when we were at Sitka and Douglas thought the price too high."
"Money is no obstacle to Captain Sutter," said Catharine. "He has bought the post and hauled its cannon down' to his fort on the Sacramento."
"Catharine, are you not afraid here? "asked Eloise.
"Why should I be, with our people all around? "
"Because," answered Eloise, "they told us at Sonoma the mountains are full of banditti. When the missions broke up some of the Indian converts became servants, but the bolder ones fled to the mountains. They hate their Spanish oppressors and come down to steal their horses and cattle. Once they tried to kidnap Senora Vallejo's beautiful sister, but she was rescued. Now the Spanish lancers go out, and when th ​ey
come to a strange village they spear down men, women, and children. I have heard them tell it."
Catharine shuddered.
"The Spaniards hunt them like cattle," continued Eloise. "The story is told that one governor drilled a company of Indians as soldiers; they became so proficient the governor became alarmed and ordered them all to be shot! "
"It is not strange these California Indians have that hunted, haunted look. Whenever we approach they flee away and hide," said Catharine, thinking of the flitting shadows of the Shasta route.
"England has no rival on this coast but the Russians," said Sir George as he sailed to Monterey. "Now Mexico owes to British subjects a debt of more than fifty millions of dollars. By assuming a share of this debt on condition of being put in possession of California "
Sir George looked what he did not say. Dr. McLoughlin was silent. He too had his dreams.
Again the warders of the old Spanish castle at Monterey looked out and saw a Hudson's Bay barque approaching the shore.
Governor Alvarado, "grown in four years from a thin and spare conspirator into a plump and punchy lover of singing, dancing, and feasting," as Sir George expressed it, also beheld them from his balcony. The "A Dios! "of Douglas still rang in his ear, but the doubloons had long since gone from his pockets.
Whatever Monterey could afford was shown to the doctor and Rae and Sir George. Whatever trade was suggested was welcomed, but State affairs Alvarado ​
216 McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
was silent. He was jealous of his own seat at the head of Spanish power; he was even jealous of his Uncle Vallejo at Sonoma, with whom he divided the province.
"Monterey is the kitchen to Santa Barbara's parlor," said Sir George, after they doubled Point Conception and landed at the latter village. Evidently Sir George was not satisfied with Alvarado. They were enchanted with the lovely dons and donas of Santa Barbara, rich, even in that day, in linen and lace and damask and satin. At the Spanish mission they were served by a middle-aged nun in black.
"Dona Conception, a famous lady hereabouts," said the padres, as she passed from the room with a plate of cakes.
"What! Dona Conception who would have been the bride of Baron von Resanoff? "asked Sir George, who had just been to Sitka.
"The same," said the padres. "He never came, so she devotes herself to the instruction of the young and the consolation of the sick."
"What! "exclaimed Sir George. "Is she not aware that Von Resanoff is dead? "
"Dead? "shrieked the nun in black at the open door.
"Yes, my lady, he fell from his horse and was killed at Krasnoyarsk on his road to Europe more than thirtyfive years ago."
And the nun who had mourned her lover for thirtyfive years went away and wept in a cell of the mission at Santa Barbara.
Rae returned with Ermatinger to Yerba Buena. The doctor and Sir George sailed away to interview the king of the Sandwich Islands. Kamehameha III. made the ​
same promises he had given to Jason Lee, and presented Sir George with a feather mantle for Lady Simpson. Dr. McLoughlin returned to the Columbia, and Sir George went on across Siberia in his journey around the world. ​
XXVIII
THE FIRST IMMIGRANTS 1842
TT was September, 1842. Dr. Whitman was talking * Cayuse at the top of his voice, directing his Indians, when he caught sight of a small pack-train. "'T is early for the Shoshonie brigade." Shading his eyes to scan more closely "No, there 's not a red belt nor a Canadian cap among them. They are not trappers. They are not Indians."
"Why, Marcus, see those women! They must be immigrants! "cried Mrs. Whitman at the door. With three bounds Dr. Whitman cleared garden, field, and irrigating ditch. Mrs. Whitman flew to greet these women who had followed her to the farthest West. Fifty men, a dozen women, with children in their arms, sat upon their jaded horses.
"Where are your wagons?" was Dr. Whitman's first inquiry.
"Broke them up for pack-saddles on Green River. The rest are at Fort Hall. The Hudson's Bay agent told us no wagon could cross the Blue Mountains."
"Left your wagons? All a mistake, all a mistake. Come in, come in," said Dr. Whitman, hurriedly, helping the women down. "Any accidents by the way? "
"None, barring that our two lawyers here were captured by the Indians and we had to buy th ​em back
again with tobacco. The rest of us were sharp enough to keep out of their clutches." Everybody laughed at the expense of the lawyers.
"Hasten, Sticcas; bring corn and flour for these people." The obedient Cayuse started for the mill.
"Roll up some melons, Aps." The Walla Walla backed into the melon-patch, his eye still on the doctor helping down the women. This deference was a strange mystery; Indian women bundled off alone.
Mrs. Whitman escorted them to the house. How gladly their tired eyes took in the poppy garden and the curtained windows. "A house! a house! How good it is to see a house! "they cried, wiping away an involuntary tear. "We have lived so long in tents we have almost forgotten what homes are like." They glanced from room to room, Indian matting, handmade chairs, a table covered with white "Can we ever realize the preciousness of home again! "
Dr. Whitman called, "Bring bread, Narcissa. The men will camp in the field." Mrs. Whitman gathered up the loaves of a fresh baking, the first bread the travellers had seen since leaving Fort Laramie on the Platte. In fact, Mrs. Whitman's pantry was swept. Her hoarded jars of yellow butter went with the rest, and Dr. McLoughlin's latest gift of apples, and the pickled tongues from Colvile nothing was too good for the doctor's fellow-countrymen. Some one suggested pay.
"Pay?" echoed the doctor. "This is not an inn. You are my guests to-day." Dr. Whitman was all in a fever. "What of immigrants?" he asked.
"They are talking of Oregon all along the border," answered one. "These came this year, more will try it next," said another. ​
2
Ever since the Red River immigration Dr. Whitman had been uneasy. At a glance he had 'penetrated Sir George's design in the English race for occupation.
"What is Congress doing? Is the boundary settled? Will government extend its arm over us soon?" These and a thousand other queries fell from the lips of the energetic doctor. "Oregon don't count in politics so long's the nigger question's on the boards," answered one of the lawyers. "I believe Webster was talking of trading it for a codfishery when we left," he added by way of a joke.
Oregon was no joke to Dr. Whitman. Setting his lips firmly and looking the speaker in the eye "Do you think it possible for me to cross the mountains at this time of year, Mr. Lovejoy? "
"I think you can if you start immediately," replied the lawyer.
Again that studied, anxious look that had led Mrs. Whitman so often to say, "Marcus, you are a bundle of thoughts." He spoke again: "You see, Mr. Lovejoy, I have adopted Oregon as my country, the Indians as my field of labor. But there will be a great immigration next year. Some one must superintend it. There can never be any great influx of settlers to this country until they learn to bring their wagons. Such a wagon train, safely carried through, will lay the foundation for speedy settlement. If it fails, it will discourage any further attempt for years to come. Meanwhile, Oregon will be lost. My idea is to go back, meet these immigrants, pilot them through, and, if possible, go to Washington and present the needs of a military road across the continent. In that matter you could be of great help to me. Will you accompany me? "
The question was unexpected; the lawyer request ​ed
time. The next day he brought his decision, "I will accompany you." Aged men, yet living (1899), say that in answer to their responses concerning Congress, he kept saying, as if talking to himself, "I'll do it; I'll go, I'll go to Washington."
This was no sudden impulse. "This vast and fertile country belongs to us," Dr. Whitman was wont to say. " Congress had delayed too long, while England gains a foothold. Bring in people, build houses, plough up the soil, and Oregon is ours."
There was another reason for going. A letter had been brought from the American Board at Boston: " The Indians are so intractable that we have decided to discontinue the mission."
"Discontinue the mission! "That would be taking the heart out of Dr. Whitman. "Have I toiled here six years to abandon the field at last? It must not be. Why, these Indians have their little farms in every direction, and are every year extending them farther. Is that nothing in six years? Suppose they are unruly at times, what else can be expected of wild, untamed Cayuses? Men are not civilized in a day. And is not this on the highway of all future immigration? The very gateway and the key?"
An Indian courier flew over the hills to Lapwai, another to Tschimikain, near the present Spokane, where Walker and Eells had built a station. In the little library at Whitman's they met for consultation. In an agony of grief Mrs. Whitman begged their intervention. Even imperious little Helen Mar stamped and cried.
"You must not go," said Spalding.
"No man can live upon the plains in winter," said Walker.
2 ​
"You will be lost in the mountains; you will perish in the snows," said Eells.
"My first duty is to my country. I am not expatriated by becoming a missionary," said Whitman, rising before them.
"Doctor, Doctor, it is madness. Even the trappers remain in camp until the snows are gone. Think of the famished wolves on that wintry waste; think of the frozen streams, the lack of food, the howling storms, the hostile tribes that will cut you off. Doctor, three thousand miles "
"Say no more," cried the hero of that winter ride, closing his eyes and shaking his hand at the speaker. " I am ready, not to be bound only, but to die at Jerusalem, or in the snows of the Rocky Mountains, for the name of the Lord Jesus or my country. I must go, even if I sever with the mission."
Who could stand against the will of Whitman! He bore down every objection, just as six years before he bore down every objection to his coming on a mission to the Indians. Through her tears Narcissa Whitman smiled. "He is right. He is right. Let him go," she said. Reluctantly, seeing that he would go anyway, they gave consent. Like Samson of old, he snapped the withes that bound him and passed from their control.
"It will never do to let the Hudson's Bay Company know what I am after," said Whitman in a lower tone, as if the very walls might hear and tell the message. " Delegate me to Boston. I'll take care of the rest."
There was a day of hurried preparation. There was a ride to Fort Walla Walla to purchase certain necessaries. "I am going to Boston on business, Mr. McKinley. I would like to leave my wife in your ​
care. I have sent to the Willamette for Mr. Geiger to assist in the mission. He will be here shortly."
A wish from Dr. Whitman was a command with the chief factor. The warmest friendship subsisted between the two. His young wife, Sarah Julia, had become Mrs. Whitman's most intimate friend, neighbor, and pupil.
There was little sleep that night at Waiilatpu. With tears silently falling Mrs. Whitman put the last stitch in the buckskin garments. The food, the axe, the rifle, the medicine, horses, all were ready. Spalding and the rest had departed for their stations.
"The board may dismiss me, but I shall do what I can to save Oregon to my country," was Dr. Whitman's parting word.
With a single companion, Lovejoy, the lawyer, the intrepid doctor undertook a journey that well might daunt a less courageous heart.
What apprehensions surged through the soul of Mrs. Whitman as she turned from the farewell at the gate! She heard the hoof-beats die on the sod the riders melted into the tawny shadow of the grass. She reentered the lonely home; she paced from room to room. "Why do you cry?" said Mary Ann Bridger. "Will father be home to-morrow? "said Helen Mar.
Dr. Whitman set out on his famous ride October 3, 1842. In eleven days he reached Fort Hall. The Indians were returning from buffalo-hunting. Once, twice, thrice, the doctor sent letters to his wife. Each day she wrote a line to him, hoping for an opportunity to send it. Let us make a few extracts:
Oct. 4, 1842. MY DEAR HUSBAND, The line you sent me to-day by Aps did me great good. . . . Night and day shall my prayers ascend in your behalf, and the cause in which ​
2
you have sacrificed the endearments of home at the risk of your life.
Oct. 5. In arranging the cupboard to-day I found that you had not taken the compass as you had designed. . . .
7/$. MY DEAR HUSBAND, I got dreadfully frightened last night. About midnight I was awakened by some one trying to open my bedroom door. I raised my head and listened awhile. Soon the latch was raised, and the door opened a little. I sprang from bed and closed the door again, but the ruffian pushed, and I pushed and tried to latch it, but could not. Finally he gained upon me until he opened the door again, and, as I supposed, disengaged his blanket (at the same time I calling John) and ran as for his life. The east diningroom door was open. I thought it was locked. I fastened the door, lit a candle, and went to bed, trembling and cold, but could not rest until I had called John, the Hawaiian servant, to bring his bed and sleep in the kitchen. Had he, the intruder, persisted I do not know what I should have done. I did not think of the war-club, but I thought of the poker.
Chief Trader McKinley, at Walla Walla, heard of the attempt to break into Mrs. Whitman's room. Without delay he sent a runner saying, "Come to us. We will fix you a comfortable room. It is not safe for a woman to be there alone."
Oct. 12. MY DEAR HUSBAND, I am now at Walla Walla. I could not refuse, as Mr. McKinley came on purpose to take me in the wagon. The Indians did not like my leaving very well, seemed to regret the cause. I felt strongly to prefer to stay there if it could be considered prudent.
Oct. 22. MY DEAR HUSBAND, The word is given that the Express is arriving, and I hasten to write you my farewell, praying earnestly that we may be permitted to meet again and spend many years together. . . . Indeed, much as I shall, a ​nd
do, want to see you, I prefer that you stay just as long as it is necessary to accomplish all your heart's desire respecting the interests of this country, so dear to us both our home.
Dr. McLoughlin sent me a keg of fresh apples from Fort Vancouver, and ever since we have been enjoying apple pies.
The Indians that met you beyond Grande Ronde appeared very happy to say they had seen you, and to hear something about your plans for returning, from yourself. Sticcas really mourns about you, that he did not come and see you before you left. I believe it is a great comfort to them to see me left behind. They tell me they are waiting to see where I go, before they decide where to go for the winter.
Almost three long weeks have passed since we exchanged the parting kiss, and many, many long weeks are yet to come before we shall be permitted, if ever, in this world, to greet each other again. ... I follow you night and day, and shall through the whole journey, in my imagination and my prayers. My heart is as your heart in this matter. I confidently believe you will be blessed in the object of your visit to the States.
Read this letter, my husband, and then give it to my mother. Perhaps she would like once more to take a peep into one of the secret chambers of her daughter's heart. . . .
NARCISSA.
Even while Mrs. Whitman was writing, the Cayuses were fishing in the Walla Walla. Dr. Whitman had just thrashed, and the straw lay in a pile by the mill. They built a fire to roast their fish. That night, while the careless Cayuses slept, the sparks crept from straw to straw until they reached the pile. At midnight the flames of the burning mill cast a lurid glare on the walls of Whitman mission.
It was enough. "I dare not go back," she said. The Methodist mission sent an invitation for Mrs.
'5 ​
2
Whitman to come down to the Dalles, so, when the Montreal express came singing by, she- embarked with a heavy heart, full of foreboding.
The weather-beaten voyageurs recognized the prima donna of Fort Vancouver. They heard the story of her flight. Was it the delicate sympathy of those brawny Canadians that prompted the thought? The song she taught them six years ago thrilled with pathetic melody the evening air:
"Watchman, tell us of the night,
What its signs of promise are, Traveller, on yon mountain height,
See that glory-beaming star. Watchman, does its beauteous ray
Aught of joy or hope foretell? Travaller, yes, it brings the day,
Promised day of Israel."
A solitary star twinkled above the cliffs that rose perpendicularly on either hand. The music reverberated from wall to wall of the narrow gorge. Never in arched cathedral or gilded choir rang out that old hymn as on that night in the Dalles of the Columbia.
The mission at the Dalles received Mrs. Whitman as a sister. After the solitary life at Waiilatpu, it was like a home-coming to see again white men, white women, white children. She noted not the tall Indians passing and repassing and peering in at the windows; her soul was with the rider on the plains.
The flight of Mrs. Whitman, and a rumor that the Indians were coming down "to kill off the Bostons," created a panic in the Willamette valley. The handful of settlers loaded their guns and barricaded their doors.
Scarcely a month had Dr. Whitman been on his way when an Indian subagent, who had come with the im ​mi
grants, invited Tom McKay to go up with him to quiet the Indians. Cornelius Rogers accompanied them. Chief Trader McKinley joined them at Fort Walla Walla. They rode out to Waiilatpu it was deserted. The charred mill lay on the river bank. One hundred miles northeast they galloped through a beautiful, undulating country, to the lodge of Red Wolf on the Snake.
"See my trees," said the chief. By a creek at his door grew a tiny orchard, planted by his own hands. Mr. Spalding had presented the sets that blossomed into the first fruit raised by an Oregon Indian. Following the great Nez Perce trails that terraced the hillsides for hundreds of miles, they spied across the Clearwater River a low, irregular roof, with wings, sheltering an establishment of eleven fireplaces. It was Spalding's mission at Lapwai.
In the schoolroom two hundred children were busy with books and pens, printing like copper-plate in the Nez Perce tongue. In the weaving and spinning room, Nez Perce girls were knitting and making cloth. In the kitchen, Nez Perce women were cooking and sewing and shelling peas. In the fields one chief had just harvested one hundred and seventy-six bushels of beans, one hundred bushels of corn, and four hundred bushels of potatoes. Forty others had raised grain, eight had ploughs. Several exhibited with pride a few cows, some pigs and sheep and poultry.
Early in the morning the Indian children ran to the mission, and without being called, began teaching one another, and continued so until dark. The chiefs governed the school; taking the books home at night, every lodge became a schoolroom.
"Yonder sits my most promising pupil and our first ​
2
convert, Chief Joseph," said Mr. Spalding. "The one beside him is the Cayuse chief, Five Crows, they are half-brothers on the mother's side. Three winters now Five Crows has driven his herds over here and attended our school. That one with the hawk's nose is Lawyer, my teacher. With his aid I have been able to translate the four gospels and many hymns into Nez Perce\ We have a printing-press now, the first one west of the Rocky Mountains."
A little boy sat on Chief Joseph's knee, the image of his father, even to the band of feathers in his hair. Every day the child came to school with his father at the mission. Who then dreamed that little Joseph would one day lead our troops a bloody chase of a thousand miles, twice crossing the Rockies, fighting pitched battles from point to point, retiring each time in masterly retreat with his women and wounded, until his name should be written in the scroll of great military leaders?
"Have you no trouble with the Indians?" inquired the agent. "We are agitated with strange rumors in the valley."
"Yes, we have trouble," was Spalding's answer. "A renegade Delaware has been exciting their fears. Indians are children, and easily influenced. Just now they are excited over Dr. Whitman's going to the States. They have been told that he will bring back an army of immigrants to take their lands."
It was decided to summon a council on the plains at Lapwai. Twenty-two chiefs responded. Dark-eyed, long-haired men and women poured thickly over the hills. Silently, stoically, the Indians listened, until an old chief, father of the famous two that journeyed to St. Louis, tottered to his feet. ​
"I speak to-day," he said. "To-morrow I die. I am the oldest of the tribe, was high chief when Lewis and Clark came to this country. They visited me, honored me with their friendship. I showed my wounds received in bloody battle with the Snakes. They told me it was not good, it was better to be at peace, gave me a flag of truce. I held it up high. We met and talked, but never fought again. Clark pointed to this day. We have long waited. Sent our sons to Red River to school to prepare for it. Two of them sleep with their fathers. One is here, can be ears and mouth and pen for us. I say no more. I am quickly tired. I am glad I live to see you and this day. I shall soon be quiet in death."
He ceased. The Nez Perec's were moved as by a wind. The instructions of forty years were voiced by that old chief. The memory of Lewis and Clark was a potent spell. Distrust of the Americans gave place to confidence. Ellice, the old man's educated son, was that day elected High Chief of the Nez Perec's nation.
Among those who accompanied the subagent up from the Willamette valley was Baptiste Dorion, a halfbreed interpreter, the same Dorion that shot the Blackfoot chief and stole his painted robe. Dorion's mother, the heroine of Irving's "Astoria," had brought him as a child over the Blue Mountains to the camp of Piopio-mox-mox, the Yellow Serpent. He came now to visit his benefactor.
The Walla Walla-Cayuses were preparing the ground for winter wheat. Dorion's ever restless eye, "the lurking home of plots and conspiracies," fell upon their rude husbandry.
"Why do you make farms and build houses? It is no use," said Dorion. "Dr. Whitman will come in the summer and bring an army. Then the whites will ​
2 3 o McLOUGHLIN AND OLD OREGON
destroy everything, take your lands and kill you, or make you slaves/ Dorion returned to the valley, but the words of Dorion flew from lip to lip. The young men grew wild for war. "Let us rush to the Willamette," they cried.
"Be cautious," counselled the old men. "The season is late. The trail around Mt. Hood is deep with snow. Let us wait see. We do not wish to go to war, but if the Bostons come to take away our lands we will fight to the last drop of blood. Yellow Serpent is a wise and careful chief. Let us send him to talk with the WhiteHeaded Eagle at Fort Vancouver."
Directly after his return with the subagent, to the Willamette, Cornelius Rogers went up the valley to wed the daughter of David Leslie at the old Methodist mission. The bridal party came down the laughing river. A thousand rainbows danced that February morning, when the bride and groom were landing at Willamette Falls. And at that moment, while friends waited with congratulations, the boat veered into the current. Resistlessly it tore the rope away from the Indians on shore. Only inanimate rocks answered the despairing shriek, as Cornelius Rogers and his bride and her sisters swept over the Falls and into the yawning gulf together. The cruel waters whirled and hissed and curled, but the seething maelstrom never gave up its dead.