# Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders/Volume 1/Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX.
1842—1848.
The first great name naturally associated with the Oregon country is that of Thomas Jefferson. His place in the history of the United States, in the estimation of the great mass of the people is next to that of Washington. But had it not been for his far-seeing statesmanship which added the Louisiana territory to that of the thirteen original states, his position would certainly have taken rank after that of Franklin, Hamilton and Madison. His fortunate connection with the Declaration of Independence, while no special evidence of statesmanship, secured for him early recognition, and kept his name to the front at the annual celebration of the great event throughout the length and breadth of the whole country. His part in the actual struggle with the foreign king for national independence amounts to very little. In the making of the constitution, where Washington, Hamilton and Madison each towered above all the statesmen of their day, Jefferson took no part. And while recognized as a man of versatile talents, of genius and ability, he barely held the place he achieved in the continental convention by his persistent advocacy of popular rights. He became early known as the advocate of popular as distinguished from constitutional government. And it is a sharp commentary on the weakness of his original propositions of government, that almost the very first of his acts as president of the United States was admitted by himself to be an infraction of the letter of the constitution he had sworn to support, and of his own ideas of the proper mission of the republic. In a letter to John Breckenridge, August 12, 1803, speaking of the purchase of Louisiana. Jefferson says:
"The treaty, of course, must be laid before both houses. They, I presume, will see their duty to their country in ratifying and paying for it (Louisiana), so as to secure a good which would otherwise probably be never again in their power. The constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our union. The executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, has done an act beyond the constitution. The legislature in casting behind metaphysical subtleties, and risking themselves like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it, and throw themselves on their country for doing for them unauthorized, what we know they would have done for themselves had they been in a situation to do it."
"The future inhabitants of the Atlantic and Mississippi states, will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise, and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take sides with our Atlantic rather than our Mississippi descendants. God bless them both, and keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better."
And when the great Jefferson comes to consider the Pacific coast sons of the republic, he wanders still farther away from a union which must for all time make us a homogeneous nation. In a letter to John Jacob Astor, May 2, 1812:
"I considered as a great public acquisition the commencement of a settlement on that point (Astoria) of the western coast of America, and looked forward with gratification to the time when its descendants should have spread themselves through the whole length of that coast, covering it with free and independent Americans, unconnected with us by the ties of blood and interest, and employing, like us, the rights of self-government."
And in another letter to Mr. Astor, November 9, 1813, Jefferson says:
"I learn with great pleasure the progress you have made toward an establishment on the Columbia river. I view it as the germ of a great free and independent empire on that side of our continent, and that liberty and selfgovernment spreading from that as well as this side, will insure their complete establishment over the whole. It must be still more gratifying to yourself to foresee that your name will be handed down with that of Columbus and Raleigh, as the father of the establishment and founder of such an empire. It would be an afflicting thing indeed should the English be able to break up the settlement. Their bigotry to the bastard liberty of their own country, and habitual hostility to every degree of freedom in any "other will induce the attempt; they would not lose the sale of a bale of furs for the freedom of the whole world."
This letter shows vividly the three predominant characteristics of Jefferson's public life; intense devotion to personal liberty, expansion of the American idea of popular government, and intense hostility to everything British. Had Thomas Jefferson lived to read of the formation of the Oregon provisional government, he would have hailed it as the embodiment of his life-long principles. As it was, he was emphatically the father of Oregon. Although admitting he violated the constitution to get control of this vast region, and carry out his long cherished desire to explore the depths of its wilderness and show to the world its vast riches, he put the stamp of his genius and love of liberty on its original government through the brains and labor of the pioneers who had imbibed Jeffersonian principles with their mothers' milk. Slavery, he considered a moral and political evil, and declared in reference to it that "he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just." And one of the first acts of the legislature of the provisional government of Oregon was to declare that slavery should never have a foothold in this state.
Thomas Jefferson was as accessible to the plain every day farmers, as to the highest dignitary of his own or any foreign government. All titles of honor were distasteful to him, and he lived and died as the popular incarnation of equality, justice and democracy. And it is to Jefferson that the country is indebted for that necessary enterprise in sending out the Lewis and Clarke expedition to explore the unknown country of Oregon, and place the stamp of American title on its whole extent, from the mountains to the sea. Judging from the history of the country, there is not a president since the days of Washington that had the push and enterprise, as well as the American spirit, to expand the nation's boundaries as did Jefferson; and if it had not been for his action ​in seizing what he termed the "fugitive opportunity," the United States would have been, in its western extension, Hmited to the boundary of the Mississippi, and Oregon would have been as British as Canada. It is therefore justly due that the name of Thomas Jefferson should top the scroll of Oregon's hall of fame.
The next prominent character in the long contest for the American title to Oregon was Senator Thomas H. Benton of Missouri. Benton was not alone in the battle, but was ably supported by his colleague, Senator Lewis F. Linn. Linn was a physician by profession, and a forceful, aggressive man, serving two terms in the senate. But Benton was there for thirty years, always a commanding figure, resolute and courageous far beyond the great majority of men who have risen to that high position. Benton, next to Jefferson, early comprehended the great importance of the west to the nation. Living at St. Louis, which was in his day the great gateway not only to the south and southwest, but also to the real west beyond the mountains, he saw the national necessity to seize every point of vantage and hold on for the future. And although representing a slave state in the senate, he was far too large a man not to see that free territory to the west was a thousand times more important to St. Louis and to the nation than more slave states. And when the issue came, whether there should be territory added on that would make free states beyond the mountains, and thus disturb the equilibrium between slave and free states, he promptly cast in the whole force of his great influence in the senate and with the people on the side of the free territory of Oregon. For this act for justice and humanity, for national honor and defense, he was discredited by the slave-holding leaders of the south.
No man understood better the wants and aspirations of the pioneer settlers of Oregon. And no man comprehended as well the future national importance of taking and holding the whole of old Oregon for settlement by American citizens. His prophetic words, picturing the future greatness of this country, and the great commerce which would ebb and flow through this city, and the Columbia gateway, has been given in the introductory chapter of this book, and we have lived to see it a veritable reality. For long years, and through good and evil report, and in the face of all sorts of misrepresentation of the value of this country by the pigmy men who had gotten into the senate by some sort of accident, he stood the "Lion of the West" making the battle for Oregon. And some day, when this city or some of its merchant princes shall fully comprehend the great work which Thomas H. Benton did to "save Oregon" to the nation, and make Portland an American city and the imperial commercial metropolis of the great Pacific, there will arise on some commanding point in the city the heroic statue in bronze of "Old Bullion," friend of Oregon, with the uplifted right arm of his commanding figure pointing to the west to emphasize the apothegm that made him famous, "There's India, there's the East!"
And now we come to a man who "saved Oregon" who is wholly unlike every other man connected with Oregon history. Unappreciated and misunderstood, by some called a fanatic, by others a crank, and by the Hudson Bay Company treated as a horse thief, the ghost of Hall J. Kelley appears and disappears through the shifting scenery of Oregon's strenuous history with such kaleidoscopic presentment as almost utterly baffles description.
Hall Jackson Kelley was born at Northwood, N. H., February 24, 1790.
And while it is true that Kelley never did come to Oregon to preach the gospel, it is also true that he, more than all others, by his public lectures, letters, pamphlets and circulars, informed and enlightened the people of the Atlantic states as to the character and value of the territory of Oregon. And it was on the public sentiment created and built up by Kelley that the Methodists and Presbyterians were enabled to organize their missionary expeditions to Oregon and to get the first money to pay their expenses. And on this point the following statements are quite satisfactory proof:
   "Boston, January 30, 1833.
   Wm. C. Brown."
Rev. David Green, secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions, bears similar testimony, and says: "The welfare and improvement of the Indians of that territory, and the introduction there of the blessings of civilization, and the useful arts, with education and Christian knowledge, seemed to be his leading object. Much of the early interest felt in the Oregon country by the New England people was probably the result of Mr. Kelley 's labors."
In 1829 Kelley procured from the legislature of Massachusetts an act to incorporate "The American Society for Encouraging the Settlement of the Oregon Territory," and in 1830 he published a "Geographical Memoir of Oregon," accompanied by a map of Oregon, drawn by himself, and also a "Alanual of the Oregon Expedition," for the information and guidance of emigrants to Oregon.
Then Kelly went to Washington city and spent the winters of 1830 and 1831 in explaining his scheme to members of congress and high government officials with a view of securing the action of the government and aiding or encouraging emigration to Oregon.
And then after many rebuffs and disappointments he left Boston for Oregon in 1832, two years before Jason Lee started for Oregon; and on his way west stopped at Washington city, where he was the recipient of many favors, as he says, and encouraged by public officers to go west and explore the country. Leaving Washington, he traveled by the way of the Cumberland wagon road to the Ohio river, and thence down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, and from thence by sailing vessel to Vera Cruz in Mexico, and from thence by stages to Jalapa and the City of Mexico. From the capital of Mexico by muleteer pack trains he made his way to San Bias, and from thence up the coast in a little schooner to Monterey, California. Here he offered his services to the ​Mexican governor of California to make a survey of the Sacramento valley, which being declined, he made a reconnoisance of the valley on his own account and made a map of the valley. Here he fell in with Ewing Young, whose estate without heirs, was afterwards urged as a reason for organizing a provisional government in Oregon. Young was an American trader from New Mexico, and Kelley persuaded him to undertake a trading venture up to Oregon with horses. And gathering up a party of adventurers and deserting sailors, with a lot of cheap horses, one hundred and fifty or more, they all started for Oregon. Getting as far as the mountains of southern Oregon, Kelley was taken sick. And here he fell in with the Frenchman fur trader, Michael La Framboise, who seeing Kelley's unfortunate condition in the grasp of a racking ague fit at once proceeded to alleviate his distress with quinine and hot venison broth. Kelley remained with and traveled with the Frenchman for several days, until overtaken by the Young party, when they all came down to Fort Vancouver. Here, weary and worn out, sick from a relapse, he finds the gates of Vancouver closed against him. He is informed that the Mexican governor of California had sent word to Dr. McLoughlin that Young and his party were a gang of horse thieves, and cautioning McLoughlin against the whole company. In vain does the sick man, a scholar and educated gentleman, and a christian, protest his innocence. McLoughlin says: "When Kelley arrived he was ver}'- ill, and out of humanity I placed him in a house, put a man to nurse him. the surgeon of the establishment attended him. and his victuals sent him every meal until he left in 1836." But the facts were, that Kelley while remaining at Vancouver was housed in a hut outside the fort, and treated as a mendicant or worse, and debarred the recognition of an honest man, or a gentleman, in the the country he had done so much to advertise to the world.
Kelley was undoubtedly greatly embittered against the Americans he found in Oregon, and, as he said, induced to come here by his representations of the country. He did not hesitate to charge the trader Wyeth with having gone over to the support of the Hudson Bay Company. Wyeth personally knew that Kelley was an educated man in good standing in Boston, and not to be thought of for an instant as a horse thief; and the neglect of Wyeth to assist a fellow countryman in such straits shows him to have been a coward and ingrate. And neither did the Methodist missionaries come to the rescue of the man who had so largely contributed to their undertaking their noble work in Oregon. But as McLoughlin had posted the letter of the Mexican governor up in the Willamette valley, and was all-powerful against everybody at that early day, the missionaries evidently concluded that "prudence was the better part of valor," and left their fellow christian patriot to sink or swim as best he could.
After completing this work, Kelley left the country in March, 1836, on transportation via the Sandwich Islands, furnished by Dr. McLoughlin, and which was acknowledged by Kelley in his narrative of his journey to Oregon, saying McLoughlin kindly furnished him comforts to start home with, and some money, which he felt very grateful for. On his return to Boston by a whale ship from the islands, Kelley published the first satisfactory report of the Willamette and Columbia river valleys, ever made, giving far more information about the climate, soil, timber and other natural resources of wealth upon which to found a prosperous state than was given by Lewis and Clarke. And notwithstanding his failure to enlist public support of his colonization schemes, or to get aid from congress, or even decent treatment in the wilds of Oregon, Kelley continued his agitation of the Oregon question, and advocacy of congressional aid, and settlement of the country as long as he had financial means to do so. He had gone through trials, disappointments, and severe labors, in traveling through foreign countries to reach Oregon to be received not only with distrust but with slander and persecution, such as would have crushed most of men. Yet his hopeful and unwavering spirit of promotion and adventure did not desert him, and on his return to his old home, he immediately engaged with others in erecting a cotton mill at Three Rivers, Massachusetts. And after losing the last remnant of his fortune in this venture, he retired to private life, and lived as and was known as "The Hermit," of Three Rivers, finally passing away at the advanced age of eighty-five years.
The work that Hall Kelley did to save Oregon to the United States was that of an educator and agitator. He wrote and published more about Oregon than all others put together prior to the formation of the provisional government. His writings were all characterized by noble thoughts, and directed to the promotion of the uplift and welfare of his fellow-man. Not a line can be found in all his voluminous writings, that is not educational and reformatory. His labors for spreading knowledge and interest about Oregon were not fitful and spasmodic, but were persistently and energetically carried on for more than forty years. And the result of it all was to secure and hold the attention of men in congress, in public stations, and in the newspaper world, so that a public sentiment was created in favor of holding on to Oregon as a Pacific outpost for national development and defense. But for Kelley 's labors, the whole of the New England states. New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia would have been practically without any information about Oregon further than the report of Lewis and Clarke. And that this labor of Kelley's was eff^ective and of great service, the letter of U. S. Senator John Davis of Massachusetts, is here given. Davis was a man of such great integrity and high character that he achieved the distinction of being known as "Honest John Davis."
   "June 6th, 1848.
   Hall J. Kelley,
   Dear Sir: Having learned that you are about to leave Washington city for your home without having obtained an act of congress in your behalf, the subject not having been acted upon, I beg leave to say that I consider you as entitled, in equity and good conscience, to a liberal grant of land from the government for your meritorious services in promoting the settlement of Oregon, and I by no means despair of obtaining such a grant.
   Respectfully yours,
   John Davis."
And among the many distinguished supporters of Kelley's claim for recognition by congress was the eminent historian, George Bancroft. And in addition to his work in creating public opinion in congress and the eastern states ​in favor of holding Oregon, he is entitled to no small amount of credit in sending the first missionaries to Oregon. Prior to the movement that sent them out here, Kelley had collected and published all the facts and information about Oregon that was then available, and had laid the foundation for practical efforts, and proved that Oregon was a good country to settle and people with American citizens. It was from Kelley's labors that the missionary board got their facts which justified them in sending Lee and Whitman to Oregon.
Besides his work for Oregon, Kelley surveyed and planned a canal from the Charles river to the Connecticut, and for a ship canal from Barnstable to Buzzard's bay, Massachusetts, and located and engineered the construction of several railroads in the state of Maine. He never made any money for himself, but he did much to make fortunes for other people. He was not a crackbrained theorist, pursuing unsubstantial chimeras, as some writers have sought to make out, but a clear-headed, far-seeing enthusiast patriotically seeking the honor and prosperity of his country. And, if Hke Jefferson and Benton, he could see in the future the great importance of this great country of the Pacific slope, when the timid great men and cowardly little men of the United States could not, or would not see it, it is to his honor and not his discredit. And for these reasons. Hall J. Kelley is justly entitled to have his name enrolled among the greatest of those who saved Oregon to the people of the United States.
And now, in the order of their acts in point of time, following down the line, is found another man of entirely different character, from any that has preceded him, that at the "psychological moment" (to use a modern expression.) rendered a service which seemed to be an inspiration, and that turned apparent defeat into glorious victory.
When all the circumstances of the settlement and occupation of Oregon are considered in the light of the strength and facilities of the contending and competing powers, the success of the handful of scattered Americans seems little short of a miracle. On one side was the most perfectly organized, and for the purpose of settlement and holding the country, the most powerful commercial organization then in North America. Possessed of all the money necessary for any venture or enterprise, equipped with ships for immigration as well as commerce, semi-military in its organization, with trained and perfectly obedient servants ready to obey any order, with forts and military supplies defended by light cannon located at every strategic point, and able to call to its assistance ten thousand Indian warriors, and backed by the whole power of the British government if necessary, the Hudson Bay Company was able to crush at any moment the feeble efforts of the Americans to protect themselves by any kind of an organization. Was it divine prophecy, or common sense reliance on the courage and happy luck of the men who had sent him to congress, that inspired Tom Benton to say in the United States senate: "Mere adventurers may enter upon it, (Oregon) as Aeneas entered upon the Tiber, and as our forefathers entered upon the Potomac, the Delaware, and the Hudson, and renew the phenomenon of individuals laying the foundation of a future empire." And on the other side, pitted against this powerful company and the imperial power of Great Britain, were, what Benton has intimated—"mere adventurers," recklessly proclaiming their intention to found a new state. Two opposed ideas—monarchy and special privileges on one side, and republicanism and equal rights to all, meet and clash once more. Neither Bunkers Hill or New Orleans is forgotten, but here at a lonely cabin on the banks of a peaceful river, two thousand miles from the outpost of all civil government, 102 men meet to decide whether the union jack of old England, or the stars and stripes of young America shall float over the four great states to be.
We get a glimpse of the contending forces as they rally in coonskin caps and buckskin trousers on the banks of the Willamette May 3, 1843, to try out the momentous issue. The leaders of the rival forces are rallying every man for the fray, enthusing them, with the patriotic maintenance of their principles, and with courage to maintain their rights. The fateful hour has come; the chairman calls for order; the committee reports a plan of organization; the ayes and noes are called for and against a government; the Americans vote scatteringly, hesitatingly and ineffectually. Then comes the vote against a government, and the Hudson Bay Company men trained for the occasion, fire a solid shot, voting loudly and as one man, and—everything seems lost for the Americans. A few brave spirits refuse to be beaten, will not admit defeat, and call for a division and polling the men. The division is ordered by the chairman and pandemonium breaks loose. The Hudson bay men and Catholic Canadians rapidly mingle with the Americans to prevent division and bitterly remonstrate against any government organization. Neighborhood friendships, peace of the community, every consideration is recalled to prevent any action; when suddenly, as if leaping out of the earth, springs forth the stalwart form of Joseph L. Meek, and shouts above the din of contending voices:
"Divide! Divide! Who's for a divide! All in favor of the American flag, follow me!"
Instantly, the commotion is silenced. The Americans line up after the natural born leader of men, and as the lines lead out to the banks of the beautiful river, the decision hangs in the balance. The secretaries go down the lines of determined men, resolutely facing each other with that grim courage which betokens the real heroes of a great cause, and it looks fearfully like a drawn battle. Suddenly a Frenchman—(the Frenchman has always helped Americans out when they most needed him)—a Frenchman steps out from the ranks of those of his native land, conquers the greatest trial of his life, and Francis Xavier Matthieu slowly crosses over to the American side and takes rank with his fellow-countryman, Etienne Lucier—and Oregon is saved to the nation—fifty-two votes for organizing the provisional government of Oregon, and fifty votes against.
Now it will not be claimed that Colonel Joe Meek was a great man. It is not necessary to set up for him any claim to great talent or statesmanship. It was not an occasion that required that. A decision had to be snatched from doubt and indecision. Men had to be rallied to the greatest event not only of their lives, but in the life of a great national movement, and the founding of a new state. The actors in the dramatic scene could scarcely have comprehended the tremendous consequences of their acts, and of the unfolding scheme big with vast results to two great nations. But this chief actor, at the vital moment, had the inborn imagination, the bumptious dare-devil courage and dramatic talent, to seize the only point left him for effect, and make an appeal for the flag. He had heard in old Virginia, as every American boy has heard, the slogan of every battle cry—"Rally around the flag boys." Meek saw the chance; it might have been an inspiration from boyhood days; but he caught it instantly, used it most effectively; won the victory and secured organization, union and combination, and by that means enrolled his name among the savers of Oregon.
​(Joseph L. Meek was a native of Washington County, Virginia, born in 1810. He grew up without education on a Virginia plantation, and being troubled because his father contracted a second marriage, ran away and joined a party of fur traders going to the Rocky mountains, and drifted into Oregon in 1840. He married a Nez Perce woman, and they raised a very respectable family; his daughter, Olive, is a woman of education, talent and refinement, and his son, Stephen, was a member of the Oregon legislature. Meek had a splendid physique, a magnetic presence, wit, courtesy, and generous to a fault, and if he had been afforded the advantages of an education, would have reached high official station.)
But not all the heroes and savers of Oregon rage the battle field, or pace the forum in the limelight of popular acclaim. Every man at that historic meeting at old Champoeg, proved his title to true worth and honorable mention. Victor and vanquished proved their worth in the founding of a new empire. Those who were defeated, promptly and quietly withdrew, showing neither faction or opposition, and proved their real worth as men and citizens in yielding cordial obedience to the new government.
Of Francis X. Matthieu, the only one of that band of immortals, still living when this history of the events is recorded, too much cannot be said in his praise. Born and reared under the flag that on that day he reluctantly discarded, with all his educational bias, and all his personal associations with the policy and men who were defeated, it must have been a soul-trying ordeal to cast in his lot with the Americans. But being convinced that it would be better for those men and their families, and the future of the country, to be ruled by the United States than by England, he sacrificed all personal feeling and the associations of his life time, and voted unselfishly for what he conceived to be the greatest good to the greatest number. On his vote depended the hopes and fears of both sides—the whole mass. Had he remained with the Canadians the vote would have tied evenly, and no decision. The future of the community might have drifted helplessly, or broken out into faction and violence. At the least sign of dangerous strife the great commercial company backed by England, would have intervened, and British immigration and settlement would have followed, and Oregon would have been lost to the United States. And well we may conclude, that the single vote cast by the far seeing and patriotic heart of Francis Xavier Matthieu, solved a momentous question at a critical moment, and enrolled the name of this true man among the savers of Oregon.
(Francis Xavier Matthieu was born at Montreal, Canada, 1818, and in 1837, at the time of the Canadian rebellion, was clerk in a store in Montreal. Being a rebel, he employed his leisure in purchasing and shipping arms to the centers of rebellion, and was obliged at last to quit Canada to save his life, and come over to the United States, which he did in 1838. Going first to Albany, New York, and thence to St. Louis, he joined a party of the American Fur Company to trap and trade up into the Yellowstone region. But the Indians being furnished with rum, which Matthieu did not approve of. he left the party and joined a party of immigrants on their way to Oregon. Reaching Oregon he went to Champoeg, and hired out to Etienne Lucier for two years as a carpenter and farmer. Married a good woman in 1844, and settled at St. Paul in French Prairie as a farmer. He is the only survivor of the 102 men taking part in the Champoeg meeting to organize a new state; and now resides with a daughter in East Portland, enjoying life and his friends at the age of 92.)
To raise money to support a government in a country where half the people did not want any government, and where there was not even the power to enforce taxation, and where the legal tender was wheat, beaver skin, etc., and serve the government for years without salary or pay, was not half a list of the trials and difficulties Governor Abernethy had to contend with and overcome.
That he was able to keep the little craft afloat, and steer clear of the opposition of open enemies, and the petty annoyances of backbiting rivalry, until he finally reached the secure harbor of national protection, is a marvel of good management, patient forbearance to all criticism and patriotic devotion to the welfare of his fellow-men. Where all Americans were ardent patriots, and many were captious critics, the slightest deviation from the straight and narrow way of strict rectitude, and even self sacrifice, would have lost him the confidence of the little commonwealth and plunged the community into that anarchy that would have wrecked the whole effort to found a new state. And to have succeeded as Governor Abernethy did, was to save and strengthen the entire movement from day to day, until from infantile weakness it reached the vigor and capacity to defend itself from foreign intrigues and Indian wars. And thus saving the organization was in fact making the state, and the labor and success of the achievement places the name of George Abernethy among those who really in truth and fact saved Oregon to the United States.
George Abernethy was a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, though reared in New York city. Left New York in 1839, and arrived in Oregon in 1840, coming with a missionary party. He was an ardent Methodist, but smooth and politic in a marked degree, and able to manage Catholic and Protestants with equal facility. He was actively supported by his Methodist brethren for the office of governor and made a good executive. On his canvass for re-election, he had serious opposition, and it is said that a majority of the voters preferred General Lovejoy, but put aside their preferences rather than disturb an existing order of administration. He went actively into business after the expiration of his official duties. He was not successful in mercantile affairs, and after loosing most of his fortune, removed from Oregon City to Portland, and resided here for sixteen years, passing away in May, 1877.
No record of the strenuous times in which the foundations of civil government were laid in Oregon would be just, or complete, that failed to recognize the united efforts of all the men and women to organize society and promote good works here from 1840 to 1848. There were leaders as there must be in all forward movements, which the turn of events or characteristic abilities brought to the front. But the record and the results show, that while individuals stoutly contended for their opinions, and for their policies of government, yet on the one ​purpose in view, there was more harmony and united action than is generally found in small communities. It was all the people who united in the provisional government, and manfully pulled together through good and evil report, that saved Oregon to the United States.
Of all these, three men have secured great prominence, and one at least, a national reputation, in the work of saving Oregon. And of these three, one was not for a time, a citizen of the United States.
The work of John McLoughlin in co-operating to organize society and establish the institutions of education, religion and civil government, is unique and unexampled in the history of the west. The work of Marcus Whitman, cut off in the midst of his career by the treacherous hands of those he vainly sought to bless, has not, and probably never will be fully known or comprehended. There can be no doubt that iWhitman was one of the first to divine the plans of the Hudson Bay Company as the representative of Great Britain in Oregon, and probably the first man to personally appeal to the government for that support which was so long and so wrongfully withheld. The work and career of Jason Lee was in many respects different from that of McLoughlin and Whitman. Lee himself, a native Canadian, was able to command the friendship of McLoughlin from his first appearance in Oregon. But being a citizen of the United States, all his aims and ambition were enthusiastically enlisted with his adopted country. And he was withal an intensely practical man. He passed over the country that Whitman settled in. He sized up the native red man from some observation of him in Canada. He saw at a glance that the Willamette valley offered a better and broader foundation for a missionary station than the more rugged regions east of the Cascades. The characteristics of these three great men were entirely dissimilar. Their work, careers and influence in Oregon and in saving Oregon has been the subject of a great controversy for a quarter of a century. Books have been written, each covering four hundred or more pages, proclaiming the good work of these men for Oregon. And that the work of each of them may be fully and justly presented, and preserved in this history, it has been deemed best to have their careers sketched by friends who have made a special study of their lives. And in pursuance of that arrangement, Mr. Frederick V. Holman, has prepared the monograph on Dr. John McLoughlin; Joseph R. Wilson, D. D., has rendered a like service for Dr. Whitman, while Mr. John Gill has given us the career of Jason Lee. These sketches will be found at the end of this chapter.
If the publisher had given more space it would have been a pleasant duty to have noticed at length such men as W. H. Gray, John S. Griffin, Robert Newell, Robert Shortess, James W. Nesmith, Peter H. Burnett, John Minto and others all of whom did valiant and effective work in saving Oregon to the United States. Gray was practically the lieutenant of Whitman. Energetic, omnipresent and courageous to the limit, he lost no opportunity in his determined purpose to do all, and say all, that could be done or said for Protestanism and the provisional government. And besides this, Gray's work lives after him in a history of Oregon, which contain many facts and phases of life in pioneer times that cannot be found in other works on Oregon. Peter H. Burnett one of the judges of the provisional government did useful work for the new state, attained prominence here and going to California was made the first governor of that state. James W. Nesmith was also one of the judges of the provisional government, colonel in the Indian wars, and United States senator. John S. Griffin (Father Griffin) was for many years a pioneer preacher of usefulness, giving his services freely to all, and living to the honored old age of Q2. Robert Newell was the wit and philosopher of the whole community, and the peace-maker in all petty contentions for office or precedence. He was the diplomatist that could "sooth the savage breast" and bend the red men to his will. What "Dr. Bob Newell" could not plan, and successfully carry out, to promote the public welfare and peace of the community, sixty-five years ago, is not worth mentioning.
​But heroes and heroines, all of them, all gone but one; and we will never see their like again. Peace to their ashes and honor forevermore.
"Oh, bring us back once more The vanished days oi yore.
When the world with faith was filled; Bring back the fervid zeal,
The hearts of fire and steel,
The hands that believe and build."
JASON LEE.
A tale so improbable that it has been doubted by historians, and regarded as a myth by many critical readers, has been attested as truth by the veracious testimony of Miss McBeth, missionary among the Nez Perces for thirty years.
Let us begin with this link of evidence. In her "Story of the Nez Perces since Lewis and Clarke," Miss McBeth says: "There are two events in Nez Perces history so well known that even children can tell about them. These are the coming of Lewis and Clarke in 1805 and their return from the coast in 1806, and the going out of the four about the truth of God twenty-five years later." She gives the names of these four messengers. One of the names corresponds with that given by Catlin, who met the two surviving members of this band of four Nez Perces in 1832 in St. Louis, and traveled two thousand miles with them on their journey to their country in northern Idaho. Another of the names given by Miss McBeth is evidently but a slight variation of the name applied by Catlin to the same man.
Two old men of the four had died before Catlin met the survivors. They had been sent out upon their quest of the white man's God in 1831, by mandate of a grand council of their tribes.
If any testimony were required to confirm Miss McBeth, that of George Catlin, the artist and traveler, the greatest authority who ever wrote upon the Indians, is sufficient; he says: "When I first heard the report of this extraordinary mission, I could scarcely believe it, but on conversing with General Clarke (William Clarke of the great exploring expedition) I was fully convinced of the fact." Catlin painted the portraits of over five hundred Indians, which are now in the National Museum at Washington, and among them are the portraits of the two Nez Perces spoken of. Catlin traveled with these Indians for weeks on the first steamboat that made the voyage from St. Louis to the upper Missouri. This was in the spring of 1832.
General Clarke was probably the first American who took a deep interest in the quest of these Nez Perces. He received them into his own house and was most hospitable and helpful to them. When Keepeelele, the old man of the three remaining, upon their arrival at St. Louis, was mortally sick, Mrs. Clarke ministered to him. She was herself in feeble health, and died, it is stated, of miasmatic fever, December 25, 183 1. Keepeelele was buried in St. Louis. His epitaph reads: "Keepeelele, enterree October 31, 1831, Nez Perce de la tribu des Choponeck, appele Tete-plate."
Conquest, Mrs. Eva Emery Dye.)
Some have stated that General Clarke was a Roman Catholic. He was in fact a communicant of the Episcopal church. General Qarke upon first receiving these messengers directed them to Rev. John York of the M. E. Church then a resident in St. Louis. In 1876 Mr. York, was pastor of the M. E. Church of Corvallis, Oregon.
​An eloquent speech made at St. Louis by He-oh-kste-kin, one of these Nez Perces, is recorded by Dr. Hines. It too has been considered mythical; not more so than the earliest claims that these "Flathead" messengers were Nez Perces, probably. This speech tells of the regret of the messengers that "they must return empty-handed to their people." They returned home disappointed, but their errand was not in vain. Three years after the meeting of the council that sent them forth, Jason Lee and his companions passed through the Nez Perces country, seeking for the "Flathead Indians" who had borne the message and the tribes that sought the light. It was for their sake that Lee undertook the mission, though his work was destined to be in a field far to westward.
The appeal of the Nez Perces was carried swiftly from St. Louis to the Atlantic states. It stirred the missionary spirit of the churches woriderfully. Dr. Wilbur Fisk, president of Wilbraham academy, (Mass.,) was one of the earliest and most active to respond. "Zion's Herald," of Boston, in issue of March 22, 1833, contained a rousing address to the Methodist churches, in part as follows:
A GREAT PROCLAMATION.
Missionary Intelligence.
Hear! Hear!
"Who will respond to the call from beyond the Rocky mountains? The communication from Brother G. P. Disosway, on the subject of the deputation of Flathead (Nez Perces) Indians to General Clarke, has excited intense interest, We are for having a mission established there at once. . . . Money shall be forthcoming. I will be bondsman for the church. All we want is the men. Who will go? Who? I know one young man who, I think, will go, and I know of none like him for the enterprise. . . . Were I young and unencumbered, how joyfully would I go! But this honor is reserved for another. Great will be his reward; glorious his crown."
Wilbur Fisk.
Wesleyan academy, March 9, 1833."
On March 20, 1833, the missionary board of the M. E. church in session in New York city received the above communication from Dr. Wilbur Fisk, urging the sending of a missionary to the Indians. Through the bishops of the church inquiries were made and a correspondence with General Clarke followed. From him the board received valuable information of the tribe and the country, and the result was a resolution of the board to establish a mission among the Indians west of the Rocky mountains. The church had then a single mission, recently established in Liberia. Dr. Fisk, who was the president of Wilbraham academy and a great leader in the church was asked to name a man to take the proposed mission in charge. He replied: "I know but one man, Jason Lee." On July 17, 1833, Lee was appointed to the superintendency of the mission west of the Rocky mountains.
BOSTON'S PART IN THE EARLY OCCUPATION OF OREGON.
New England was alive with the spirit of colonization in the early years of the last century. From Massachusetts and Connecticut large colonies traveled to the territories of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and especially to the "Western Reserve." The sons and grandsons of some of these Yankee settlers moved westward again in the forties to the Oregon country.
In Massachusetts the idea of American occupation of Oregon first took a certain shape. This was naturally due to the discovery of the Columbia by Captain Robert Gray, a Boston sailor in the "Columbia," owned by Boston ​chants trading furs along the north Pacific coast. Other Boston ships also traded along these shores. Even before the Astoria enterprise, three brothers named Winship, residents of Boston, and others, formed a company for settlement and trade on the Columbia, and Nathaniel Winship sailed upon this enterprise in 1809 in the "Albatross." This ship entered the Columbia in 1810, and ascended the river to Oak Point (on the Oregon side) nearly north of the village of Marshland.
Here Winship planted a garden and began the building of a fort or trading station; but the June rise of the Columbia, swept away the foundation, destroyed the garden, and caused Winship to abandon his efforts. These New England ventures doubtless inspired Astor's expedition of the following year.
Hall J. Kelley, a Bostonian, became an active advocate for the occupation of Oregon. For many 'years he wrote extensively in New England publications upon the subject and in 1829 he organized, in Boston, the "American Society for Settlement of the Oregon Territory." This society sent to congress in 183 1, a memorial urging that troops be sent to Oregon for the protection of its proposed settlement, and setting forth reasons for immediate occupation. Congress paid no heed to the memorial, but Kelley was still undismayed. He did much more to awaken interest in the settlement of Oregon, and through Kelley's efforts Wyeth, a Bostonian also, undertook an enterprise of settlement for trading purposes in 1831, and came to Oregon in 1832 and established a trading station on Sauvies island near the mouth of the Multnoma (or Willamette), a name which might well have clung to the river, and likewise been given to the city which has grown to such eminence on the banks of the Multnomah. This name this city should bear, and even now the change might be made with advantage.
THE STUDENT AND HIS LINEAGE.
At the time when Kelley was mots active in his exhortations for the settlement of Oregon, a young Canadian giant came down from Stanstead, a border town of the Vermont line, to study at Wilbraham academy. This was Jason Lee, then twenty-four years old. He had been recently converted and determined upon entering the Methodist ministry. Though born in Canada, Jason Lee was of one of the old New England families, his father, Daniel Lee, having moved to Stanstead in 1800 to join a colony of New Englanders who were settling that township which they believed would be included in American territory when the international boundary was finally settled. Daniel Lee was of Connecticut, and his wife also, John Lee, the English progenitor of the family, was of Colchester, Essex, and came to America in 1634 in the ship "Francis" of Ipswich. He lived in Cambridge and was one of the company of Rev. Thomas Hooker which settled and founded the city of Hartford. Subsequently he was one of the eightyfour proprietors who bought a tract of land comprising two hundred and fifty square miles from the Tunxis Indian tribe, and on this territory are located, besides the town of Farmington, the original settlement, the cities and towns of Bristol, Southington, . Berlin, New Britain and Kensington. Some direct descendants of John Lee still live on lands received in the original apportionment over two hundred and fifty years ago. John Lee was a soldier in the expedition against the Pequots in 1637. He lies in the cemetery at Farmington. His descendants were soldiers in the French and Indians wars, and fought at Concord, Lexington, Long Island, Valley Forge and Bennington. Colonel Noah Lee equipped a regiment and fought with Ethan Allen. Captain Nathan Hale, Washington's scout, was a descendant of Tabitha, youngest daughter of John Lee, and Rev. Edward Everett Hale is of the same lineage. Such were the ancestors of Jason Lee.
This young student was six feet, three inches in height, and of corresponding Herculean proportions. His complexion was ruddy, his eyes gray-blue; an ​Anglo-Saxon in type, full of the strong, virile elements of that race. He attracted the especial attention and care of Dr. Wilbur Fisk, then president of Wesleyan academy, and when the Methodist church determined upon sending a mission to the Indians of the Oregon country. Dr. Fisk recalled Jason Lee, who had returned to Stanstead and by authority of the missionary board of the church he wrote to Lee, offering him the superintendency of the mission. The young man had already offered his services to the Wesleyan missionary society of London as a missionary to the Canadian Indians, and when Dr. Fisk's letter reached him he was expecting the appointment from London. Up to this time Jason Lee had been a member of the Wesleyan church of Canada.
Jason Lee was born in 1803 at Stanstead, and his life was that of a backwoodsman, with limited means of education. It was in 1827 that he entered Wilbraham academy as a student, at the age of twenty-four. He was born in Canada, but upon the border line of Vermont. Eastern Canada and northern Vermont in 1800 were but thinly peopled. New England was more populous than Oregon is today. Jason Lee's father, Daniel Lee made his home in Stanstead with a large colony of New Englanders who believed their farms were really within the boundaries of the United States. In 1842 the adjustment of border lines threw these farms partly within Canadian territory.
The Lees for two hundred years had been captains and leaders among their American comrades, and the young student of Wilbraham must have been inspired by his gallant father, who had served as a soldier in the Revolutionary war, with love for the land and home of his ancestors. Had the Lees been tory in sentiment, doubtless Jason would have sought his education at McGill or some other Canadian college. He chose instead a famous American academy in the heart of the Connecticut valley, and from the hill above Fisk hall he could see the country about Hartford which had been the home of his fathers for two centuries.
Wilbraham was the great Methodist academy of New England in the time of Jason Lee. There were many young men at that school who rose to high distinction in the church. One of his fellow students, Rev. Jefferson Hascall, was well known to the writer. Other students of Lee's time were David Patten, Moses Hill, Miner Raymond, and Osmon C. Baker. From such first rate material Dr. Fisk, when asked to name the man to be sent upon the mission to the Flatheads, selected wisely. 'T know but one man—Jason Lee," was his answer. The choice was warmly approved, and July 17, 1833, Lee was appointed by the board of missions to be missionary to Oregon.
Jason Lee was received into the New England conference in the spring of 1833, and set about the preparation for his mission at once. As his assistant in the duty of the new field he chose Rev. Daniel Lee, his nephew, then a minister in New Hampshire. As a teacher, Cyrus Shepherd, of Lynn, was engaged. The board appropriated $3,000 for fitting out the mission and a progress of the missionaries was planned, to take them through the eastern states as far as Washington, with the hope of receiving the aid and cooperation of the eastern churches in the enterprise. They held a farewell meeting in New York in the Forsyth street church, November 20, Bishop Hedding presiding. At Washington papers of authorization were given them by the president and secretary of state, to aid as such documents might in the neutral land to which they were going.
Captain Wyeth, at this time, was planning a second expedition to Oregon, and was to start overland in the spring of 1834. The opportunity was thus offered for our missionaries to cross the plains and mountains with men who had become acquainted with the route, and the Methodist mission took its departure early in March, to pass via Pittsburg, and the Ohio river and Mississippi to St. Louis, and fell into the train of Captain Wyeth at Independence, then the last town westward, on the last day of April. From St. Louis to Independence, Jason and Daniel Lee had ridden horseback across Missouri. At Independence ​Mr. Lee engaged P. L. Edwards as a teacher and Courtney M. Walker as an assistant.
ACROSS THE PLAINS WITH CAPTAIN WYETH.
The young evangehst found himself in strange company. There were nearly two hundred of Wyeth's men, and they were a tough lot of mountaineers and trappers, accustomed to hard life and scant ceremony—winters spent in St. Louis and the river towns in wild orgies, then back to the fur country. This company was expecting to compete with the Hudson's Bay establishment for the fur trade of the northwest, and it is not likely that Captain Wyeth engaged any class-leaders for the enterprise. The Lees were sick of their strange surroundings at first, but soon found themselves none the worse. They bore their proper share of the toils and dangers of the journey through the Indian country and won the friendship and good will of the party. Jason Lee kept a journal, and extracts from it on the early days of the Wyeth expedition show a pathetic homesickness and longing for the gentle life he had been wont to lead, but also full of determination to stay with the train and his task. It was better very soon. He entered into the freer life of the open, new world around him and found hope and gladness. A line from his diary. Out beyond Laramie, in as hopeless looking country as he had ever seen, he says: "Awoke just at daylight after a night of sweet repose and found all safe. Roasted buffalo meat and pure water was our rich repast. Am persuaded that none even in New England ate a more palatable meal. We do not feel the want of bread, and I am m better health than for years."
On June 15, the Wyeth company met the great body of trappers and mountaineers of the inter-mountain region at the "summer rendezvous," a summer gathering of these semi-wild men, at a time when they were footloose. This time the rendezvous was on Ham's Fork, a stream which enters Green river, a branch of the Colorado, at a point near the site of Fort Bridger, two days' journey by the old emigrant road west from Green river. Some of the trappers in the motley crowd promised to make trouble for the missionary party, but as soon as Jason Lee was informed of their threats he sought the men out and had a frank talk with them, which quite removed their hostile ideas and gave them a wholesome respect for the young preacher.
Mr. J. K. Townsend, ornithologist, who was making the journey to the Pacific with Captain Wyeth's party, says: "Mr. Lee is a favorite with the men, deservedly so, and there are few to whose preaching they would have listened with such complaisance. I have been amused and pleased by Mr. Lee's manner of reproving them for their coarseness and profanity. The reproof, though decided, clear and strong, is always characterized by the mildness and affectionate manner peculiar to the man, and it is always treated with respect."
At the rendezvous Lee encountered certain Indians of the Nez Perces tribe who had heard of Christianity, like their neighbors, the Flatheads, and the young chief who was at the head of this party of Nez Perces invited him to come to the country of his people and establish his mission among them. This chief was the celebrated leader of his tribe, subsequently known as "Lawyer," and is remembered by many of our pioneers.
On July 10th, the expedition passed over the divide, from which the waters flow west into the Shoshone, and three days later they reached that river at the mouth of the Port Neuf. Here Wyeth's party remained some time, procuring provisions from the Indians and establishing the trading post station known as Fort Hall. Here Lee preached the first sermon ever uttered in the Oregon country, July 27, 1834.
His audience consisted of Indians, half-breeds, Canadian trappers, etc. Among the listeners was the famous Captain Tom McKay, who acted as guide for Wyeth's party from this point west, and two years later he performed the ​same service for Dr. Marcus Whitman, whom he also escorted from Fort Hall to Vancouver.
On the first day of September they emerged from the Blue mountains, and before night of September 2, they reached Fort Walla Walla, a post of the Hudson's Bay Company at the mouth of the Walla Walla river, where Wallula stands today. Here Jason Lee remained a guest of the company for a few days, and seriously considered the establishment of his mission at this point. It was the most desirable for an interior mission, as there was a numerous Indian population. Whitman subsequently established his mission a few miles farther east, at the place now known as Whitman, where he was killed in the Whitman massacre. But Lee concluded to go on with the Wyeth party, and they set out in flatboats, making the journey of 200 miles to Vancouver without serious difficulty, arriving there September 17th. Mr. Townsend, Prof. Nuttall (also a naturalist) and Mr. Lee's party of missionaries came on to Vancouver in the care of Captain McKay and John McLeod, who were in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company under Dr. McLoughlin. Wyeth and his party remained at Fort Hall. The missionaries had been placed under obligations for the food they ate to Captain McKay and the Indians of the country. Lee says in his diary: "The Indian women would bring food, and putting it down return without saying a word, as they speak no language we can understand." This season of scant fare was in their passage from the great basin of the Salt lake to the Snake river valley.
That night the missionaries slept in beds, in houses, for the first time in 150 days. They were the guests of a prince among men. Dr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, master of a territory that stretched from California to the Arctic and from the Pacific to Saskatchewan.
MCLOUGHLIN VANCOUVER—THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY.
It is proper here to give some facts and perhaps some personal opinions of the Hudson's Bay Company, and its governor, and their relations to the enterprise of which Jason Lee was the leader.
The Hudson's Bay Company had been granted its charter "to trade, hunt, and fish in the waters of Hudson's straits, and all rivers tributary, and all lands and territories not already granted to other subjects of the king, nor possessed by the subjects of any other Christian prince or state." This charter was granted by Charles II in 1670. In the long term of years succeeding there were frequent conflicts between the Hudson's Bay servants and the French of Canada in the region of the great lakes and Saskatchewan, and a bitter struggle ^as going on in the beginning of the last century between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Fur Company, a Canadian enterprise. Many pitched battles occurred between the trappers of these rival concerns, but in 182 1 their differences were accommodated and the business was merged under the old name.
Dr. John McLoughlin had been an active partisan of the Northwest Company. He came to this coast as a factor or governor for the Hudson's Bay company in 1824, and founded Fort Vancouver as his central post and headquarters the same year, but not then upon the site subsequently occupied, but north of it at a distance of nearly a mile from the river. It will be remembered that the Northwest Fur Company had bought out Astor's post at Astoria during the last war with Great Britain. Dr. McLoughlin found the post at the river's mouth too remote from interior posts, and determined upon Vancouver as the most desirable site. His selection was most prudent, and the centralization of the business of the Columbia and Willamette valleys at Portland, separated only by the Columbia from the site chosen by Dr. McLoughlin, attests the sagacity of the great factor. To Fort Vancouver the trappers of the lower and upper Columbia, Cowlltz, Nisqually, Walla Walla, Spokane and more remote points, as ​well as from the Willamette and Umpqua, brought their furs annually, by boat and canoe, A vessel or two came annually from England around Cape Horn and up the Columbia to receive the furs and deliver to the post the supplies required. The business had been continued many years at the time of Jason Lee's arrival. Winship, Astor, Bonneville, and Wyeth had sought to establish themselves in this country as rival traders, but all had lost their ventures. Wyeth was making his second attempt when he crossed the plains in '34 in the company which the missionaries joined. These enterprising American rivals were treated more courteously and hospitably by the Hudson's Bay traders at Walla Walla and Vancouver than they had any right to expect. Certainly if the circumstances had been reversed we could not expect established American fur traders to have shown greater kindness to Canadian or Russian competitors. So long as they remained at the forts they were always the welcome guests of the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, and when they embarked in their own business in the territory which had so long been in possession of the older concern, they could not have expected the Hudson's Bay Company to accord them exceptional facilities for acquiring- a foothold in the Oregon country. That Dr. McLoughlin went far beyond any claim of hospitality to strangers in his treatment of all comers is a matter of record. Jason Lee was not the first nor the last to make the statement.
The country was esteemed much as Kamchatka and the seal rookeries of the north Pacific by ourselves now. The handful of white men scattered between the Rocky mountains and the sea had no idea of "settling" the country. It was to them a great preserve of fur-bearing animals, and they intended to keep it so. No greater menace to their interests was possible than the occupation of the country by settlers, of whatever origin; and yet they put no obstacles in the way of the stream which had its beginning in Jason Lee's party, and increased in volume year by year thereafter. Put John Jacob Astor in McLoughlin's place, and let us ask whether, being an American fur trader, he would have lent seed for fields, plows to break the land, cattle and sheep to Canadian settlers who would shortly interfere with or ruin his business. Would he or Wyeth have entertained with princely hospitality and kindness a score or more Canadians or Scotchmen, who presented themselves at Fort William or Astoria with the evident purpose of settling up a competing trading establishment, or settling the country? Yet this is just what Dr. McLoughlin did for Wyeth, Lee and Whitman. Until long after Lee's arrival the Oregon country was a no-man's-land—a debatable ground, the intrinsic value of which was unknown alike to both America and England. Dr. McLoughlin was the governor of the country, acting for the only civilized people within its borders, who by existing treaties had at least an equal right in it with the only other contestant, and by possession and vested interests a better than any then existing.
At Vancouver the Hudson's Bay Company had built the extensive warehouses, fort and quarters for its people and business, and a dock for its commerce. The factor or governor. Dr. McLoughlin, had built a mill, planted a large farm, imported cattle and taken the other natural means to support the fort's employees and supply the Indians and trappers trading there. These buildings, the farm, mill, cattle, etc., were incontestably the property of the company.
The harshest critic of the Hudson's Bay Company relates his arrival with a party of missionaries at Vancouver in 1836. He says: "As the boats neared the shore two tall, neatly dressed, well-formed gentlemen waved a welcome, and in a moment all were on shore. Rev. Mr. Spalding and lady were introduced, followed by Dr. Whitman and lady, to the two gentlemen. One, whose hair was then nearly white, stepped forward and gave his arm to Mrs. Whitman. The other, a tall, black-haired, black-eyed man, gave his arm to Mrs. Spalding. By this time McLeod had appeared, and bade the party a hearty welcome, and accompanied them to the fort. We begam, to suspect the cause of so much display. We were led upstairs into a room on the right of the hall, where the ladies were ​seated, as also six gentlemen, beside the tall, white-headed one." The narrator was the clerk of the visiting missionaries. He was invited to the quarters ot the company's clerks, and makes unfavorable comment upon the discrimination. He gives us description of the fort, which was as Jason Lee found it and knew it for many years, and is worth repeating:
"Fort Vancouver was a stockade, built with fir logs about ten inches diameter, set four feet in the ground and rising twenty feet above, enclosing at that time two aCres of ground. The storehouses were all built of hewn timber. Floors were mostly rough boards, except the governor's house and office, which were planed. The doors and gates were all locked from the inside and a guard stationed over the gate. In front of the governor's house was a circular double stairway leading into the main hall. In the center of the semicircle was a twentyfour pound cannon mounted on a ship's carriage, and two smaller pieces, with shot piled in order about the guns, which were pointed toward the main entrance. "At noon the fort bell rang; clerks and gentlemen all met at the common dinner table, which was well supplied with salmon, potatoes, wild fowl, and usually with venison and bread. Dinner over, most of the gentlemen passed a compliment over a glass of wine, and then retired to the social hall to smoke their pipes, sometimes filling the room full as it could hold with smoke. At one o'clock the bell rang again and all went to business.
"The party had no sooner arrived than the carpenter was ordered to make an extra table, which was set in the governor's office. Usually one or two of the head clerks or gentlemen traders were invited to dine at this table with the ladies, for whom it had been specially prepared. . . . The utmost cordiality was manifested, the kindest attention paid, and such articles as the missionary party wanted were supplied. These goods were to be paid for at double the cost in London." (The italics are Mr. Gray's, and go to show how small a matter became in his eyes an extortionate robbery. Even now English goods sell for more than double their London value in Vancouver or Portland.) A point of which Mr. Gray makes much complaint is the "oppressive monopoly," exercised by the company in its terms regarding cattle and stock, of which there were none in 1834 save those belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, and in 1836 the few additional head which had been driven across the plains by the party of Spalding and Whitman, and in 1834 by Jason Lee. These hard terms are given in Mr. Gray's statement: "Dr. Whitman concluded that more cattle than the mission had were necessary, and that a few cows were wanted. The proposition was made to Dr. McLoughlin. 'Certainly, you can have what cattle you want on the conditions we supply them to the company's servants and the settlers in the Wallamet.' 'What are those conditions?' asked Dr. Whitman. 'Why, in case of cattle,' said McLoughlin, 'you can take what you want from our band, break them in, and when the company requires them return them. Cows we will let you have, that you may be supplied with milk. When you return the cows you also return any calves.' "The question was asked also what would be expected in case any of the borrowed stock was lost or killed, and Dr. McLoughlin replied that they could be paid for or replaced by cattle from the missionaries' herd. These terms are considered most oppressive by Mr. Gray. The company had, it is true, more cattle than the missionaries, and required more. The cattle were their own, and evidently the company might have made harder terms in these circumstances. Probably there is not a wealthy stockman in Oregon today who will make as liberal arrangements with a poor neighbor. No compensation for the use of the cattle was mentioned.
This digression may be excused because the conditions Jason Lee met at Vancouver were identical. He was received as hospitably as man could be, and with the respect and deference due him as a clergyman. He was not quite sure that his mission met Dr. McLoughlin's approval at first, but his frank kindness soon won Mr. Lee's confidence. The appeal of the four Indians who had gone to St. Louis still rang in his ears, and he counseled with the Doctor about going ​back into the Clearwater country to find their people, but Dr. McLoughlin advised the establishment of the mission in the Willamette valley in the neighborhood of French prairie, where a number of former employes of the Hudson's Bay Company were settled on farms, and where many Indians gathered. This advice ought to set at rest any idea that Dr. McLoughlin was opposed to Lee's enterprise, for it would have been easy enough to second his own desire to go far into the interior, where the difficulties in the way would have been perhaps insurmountable. McLoughlin was a Catholic indeed, and his hearty concurrence in Jason Lee's plan to Christianize the Indians marks the liberal, magnanimous gentleman.
When Lee determined to visit the locality proposed by Dr. McLoughlin, the company ofifered him every facility. Boats, boatmen and provisions were freely given him, and on September 29, 1834, the two Lees started upon their quest. The brig "May Dacre," which had left Boston months before with Wyeth's trading outfit and that of the mission, had arrived in the Columbia and lay near Warrior rock, perhaps because the river was low and navigation difficult—perhaps because Wyeth preferred not to intrude upon the Hudson's Bay people at Vancouver. The Lees dropped down the river to the brig and spent a few days there, looking over the country where Warren now stands and the lowland meadows at the mouth of Lewis river to consider those localities as possible sites for their mission. Much of that beautiful region is unchanged even to our day. The same oaks which Jason Lee saw on the Scappoose plains and on the velvet sward of Sauvies island stand there to this day, and the cottonwoods that fringe the Columbia and the deep, quiet channel of the Multnoma, as Willamette slough was called, have sprung from the grand ancestral trees that grew in the same spots. Proceeding up the river they entered the greater Multnoma, and there, too, the willow-fringed shore below St. Johns, the grand oaks of Swan island, the laurel-crowned promontory at University point and the green meadows and islands at the north of the site of Portland must have been much as they are in our day. Probably the remarkable Indian houses visited by Captain Clarke near St. Johns were still as Clarke saw them; but where now this city stands was a dense forest of firs and spruce and hemlocks that stretched from the river shore to the mountain-tops west. The impression the virgin wilderness and sweet, sylvan shores of the Multnoma made upon these wanderers must have been amazing and delightful. The Columbia, until within a few miles of Vancouver, is solemn, tremendous, appalling in its majesty; the Willamette—the "Green Water"—is inviting, tranquil, arcadian.
This journey was made by way of the Columbia westward to the lower end of Sauvies island (then called Wapato) and to Wyeth's trading station where lay the brig "May Dacre" which had brought out the mission freight along with Captain Wyeth's trading stock. The island was encompassed by the journey up the inland or western channel of the Multnoma, upon which Wyeth established his fort, on the southwestern point of Wapato island, now included in the Jonathan Moore claim. A stock of necessary articles for immediate use was taken with the boat at Wyeth's place, and the party of missionaries, Jason and Daniel Lee and P. L. Edwards, in a Hudson's Bay boat and manned by servants of the company, proceeded up the Multnoma. They remained two nights at Wyeth's and camped two nights on the way to the falls. Here Indians assisted in the portage of the boat and goods, and the journey to the site of the mission was completed October 6th.
The season was already too far advanced for beginning such an undertaking as the construction of a mission house, but Jason Lee was resolved upon its completion for winter use as a house for himself and his companions, and as a school and chapel. Dr. McLoughlin had sent up oxen and a number of cows for the mission. Jason Lee was a New England frontiersman and handy with the axe and care of cattle, and the management of the clearing, hauling, and building were his personal care and labor. He was a colossal man, eight inches above ​average height, and powerful in accord. The building- first constructed was 18×32 feet and one story high. It was occupied four weeks after their arrival on the spot, though not yet completed. This was the first American home built on the Pacific coasts or on the western side of the Rocky mountains.
Before the completion of the building, Indian children of the prairie were receiving instruction and care. October 19th, Jason Lee preached his first sermon near the mission, in the house of Joseph Gervais, of French prairie, as a large tract of land between the Willamette and the present town of Gervais was called. The location chosen was in some ways unfortunate, but all considerations of comfort or future advantage were properly set aside by Lee in his determination to perform the work to which he was called. The half-breed children of the prairie were numerous, and many Indians traveled the river and lower trails or made their homes near French prairie. Here was the most favorable place for reaching the people, and so the mission site was chosen near the river, on land too low, as it proved later, being subject to inundation in river floods, and peculiarly miasmatic.
THE PEOPLE OF THE VALLEY.
It was the intention of the church to Christianize the Indians; the message of the pilgrims to St. Louis had evoked a remarkable response from the eastern churches, and it was doubtless intended that Jason Lee should establish himself among the "Flatheads." The people who sent him knew nothing of Nez Perces, and Lee overshot the actual mark five hundred miles by coming to the Willamette valley, but the Indians of our vicinity were flatheaded as any, and as fit subjects of missionary aid as could be found anywhere. They were not the most hopeful subjects, but the first great missionary of Christianity seems not to have balanced very carefully the advantage of preaching to Greeks or Romans rather than to Hebrews.
Among the resident Indians of the Willamette were Chinooks, Multnomas, Clackamas, Calapooias, Mollallas, and other tribes, whose names in some instances still pertain to the land they lived in. These Indians, like most of their race, had no fixed dwelling-place. When the camas or wapato or berries were ready for gathering or digging, they migrated in bands to places where these things were to be had. When salmon were plenty at the falls or down the Columbia the men would be off fishing. In the fall there was game in abundance, particularly wild fowl, and the tribes followed these necessary objects of their lives from place to place over large tracts, from the river to the mountains, from the mountains to the sea. The aborigines had been rapidly decreasing in number for half a century or more. Their traditions tell of terrible pestilence among them even before the first contact with the white race on the Pacific, half a century before Lee's coming. The year after Lee established the mission, the Multnomas, living on Wapato island and the adjoining lowlands, died by hundreds from measles, having been infected from a trading vessel in the river. The diseases contracted from the whites, had greatly reduced the population of the Willamette, and soon after the establishment of the mission, sickness of a dangerous sort prevailed among the Indian children, who had, up to that time, been received in considerable numbers, and begun their new duties as proselytes of the mission with encouraging zeal and interest. The sickness seemed to cling about the place for years. It was a fever, and is explained by some as malarial, due to the cultivation of the moist lowlands. Jason Lee and his two assistants gave the utmost care possible to the sick, and Daniel Lee was compelled to seek relief from labor and sickness by a voyage to the Sandwich islands the following winter.
Like certain Asiatics, our Indians held the medicine man responsible when his patient died; this spirit of vengeance, nearly cost Lee and his companions their lives, more than once. Some other Indians, grateful for kindness shown them, gave Lee warning.
​The Indians of 1834, in the western Oregon country, were half savage only, the nobler traits of the ancient race being supplanted by the white man's vices. The remoter tribes maintained the tribal customs and manner of living, but from Astoria to Waiilatpu, and for a hundred miles up the Willamette, the tools, trinkets, arms and cast-off clothing of the whites were common enough. The Indians of this locality attempted to imitate the trapper and voyageur. Many hovered about the trading posts, ready to eat the scraps and offal rather than follow the ancient hardy habits of their race. Exceptional Indians foresaw this new order, and were anxious that their children should get the wisdom of the white man, or even his religion. Many such children came under the care of the Willamette mission.
The children of French prairie were more hopeful subjects for instruction, Their fathers were mostly Canadian trappers and voyageurs, formerly servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had taken Indian women to wife in their days of wandering, and now domesticated in the heart of the valley, released from service, they were glad to have the mission and school available for their children.
The settlement on the "Prairie" now included in the old Catholic parishes of St. Louis and St. Paul, was begun in 1829. Dr. McLoughlin advised the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company who had served their enlistment to settle there, and he aided them substantially in making their homes; furnished them ploughs and cattle, and assured them the protection of the great company. Even at that early date Dr. McLoughlin was convinced that this settlement was destined to be an American community.
The material for conversion to Christian and civilized living, was not the most hopeful. After three-quarters of a century the problem of education for the Indian is still a doubtful one. Jason Lee's idea of teaching the children of the mission to do useful work, as well as study, seems to have been followed and approved by missionaries and teachers to this day. His work and methods were approved by men qualified to judge. Rev. Samuel Parker who visited the mission in 1835, while investigating the conditions for the establishment of Presbyterian missions among the Pacific coast Indians, records his approval and admiration of the mission and its head. Dr. McLoughlin, a year and a half after the mission was begun, sent to Mr. Lee, $150 which had been contributed by himself and the other gentlemen of the post, with this noble letter of commendation.
"I do myself the pleasure to hand you the enclosed subscription, which the gentlemen who have signed it request you will do them the favor to acccept for the use of the mission; and they pray our Heavenly Father, without whose assistance we can do nothing, that of his infinite mercy He will vouchsafe to bless and prosper your pious endeavor; and believe me to be, with esteem and regard, your sincere well-wisher and humble servant.
John McLoughlin.
Fort Vancouver, 1st March, 1836."
Toward the end of the same year, Mr. Wm. A. Slacum, naval agent of the U. S., visited the mission and all the families of the "Prairie." The precise object of Mr. Slacum's visit was not divulged, but he came in the U. S. brig, "Loriot," which lay several weeks in the Columbia, and his observations are regarded as having been most important to the government in the settlement of the claim of the United States to Oregon.
Mr. Slacum wrote Jason Lee a letter of high approval, and enclosed a gift of $50, "as an evidence of my good will toward the laudable efforts you are making, regretting that my means will not allow me to add more."
Mr. Slacum and Jason Lee discussed the situation of the settlers in the Willamette, and Mr. Slacum gave important aid to an enterprise of vital interest to the country. Cattle were still very scarce, and a company was formed, by the settlers who had money, to bring a large band of cattle from California. Jason Lee was a leader, if not, as seems probable, the leader in this effort. But the ​critics of Dr. McLoughlin will do well to note that by his generous action for the Hudson's Bay Company, the project was successful. His kindness and business foresight it was that pursuaded them to purchase a band of seven hundred, thus dividing the great cost of the enterprise to advantage. The company took one-half of these cattle and bore half the costs. If it had been their habit to "rob the settlers" nothing would have been easier than to keep the "monopoly" their enemies charge against them.
Ewing Young, another of the early Americans, went as captain of the expedition. Mr. Slacum took those who went from the valley on this errrand in the "Loriot" to San Francisco without cost, and Mr. Edwards, who came out in Jason Lee's party, accompanied these pioneer cowboys as treasurer of the cattle company. The animals were driven up the Sacramento, and then to- Oregon, closely following the present route of the railroad. The cost delivered at destination was eight dollars per head. Probably this large influx of Spanish blood is responsible for many of the gifted fence- jumping bovines that still roam our fields.
Mr. Slacum bore a petition from the missionaries and from the few other Americans of the valley, as well as from some of the Canadian settlers, that the government of the United States would recognize them as an American community and extend to them its protection.
REINFORCEMENTS ARRIVE.
In 1837 twelve members were added to the mission forces. They came by sail around Cape Horn, eight arriving in May and four in September. Seven of these were women. The names of many oi these are written large in Oregon history.
On July 16, Jason Lee was married to Miss Anna Maria Pitman, one of the recent arrivals. At the same time Cyrus Shepard was married to Miss Susan Downing, another lady of the newly arrived assistants.
In January, 1838, Jason Lee set out upon a journey to the Umpqua valley, to see about establishing a mission there. He spent two months on this quest, enduring great privations and peril. The Dalles was selected as a promising point for a mission, and to this field Rev. Daniel Lee, who had come west with his uncle, Jason Lee, and Rev. H. K. W. Perkins were assigned. They arrived at their destination, the Indian town of Wascopam, March 22, and immediately began their work. The field of their labors extended from the Cascades to Deschutes river, and on both sides of the Columbia. In this territory were clans of Walla Walla, Wishram (the notorious robber tribes of the Grand Dalles), Wascos, who lived at Wascopam, Klickitats and the "Upper Chinooks," the two latter occupying the country north of the river. About 2,000 Indians were more or less permanently in this field, and Yakimas, Cayuses and Klickitats, were frequently passing through it. The latter tribe made astonishing journeys from their country to northern California annually, and claimed to over-lord the Willamette tribes. The Dalles mission religiously accomplished more among the Indians than any of the other stations.
The missionaries used the Chinook intertribal tongue in their public talk to the Indians, as the upper tribes, as far as the Nez Perces at least, were accustomed to make use of Chinook, though speaking languages of their own which were as different from Chinook as Arabic is from the English. Some of their hymns, prayers and addresses are preserved, all in Chinook of the "upper" dialect, in old books.
Frequently is was necessary that the words of the missionary should be translated into the speech of the interior tribe by an interpreter.
In 1840, after the arrival of the lay-party of missionaries in the Lausanne, a council or conference of the members of the mission was held, at Vancouver, and new missions were detailed for Clatsop (sometimes called Chinook) ​Nisqually, Umpqua and Willamette Falls. Jason Lee remained in charge of all as superintendent.
A MISSION TO THE EAST.
Three years after the establishment of the Willamette mission the question of sending Jason Lee east for more workers in the field and financial aid from the missionary society, was discussed. Besides Lee and his earlier assistants, there were then connected with his work Rev. David Leslie, Rev. H. K. W. Perkins, Alanson Beers, W. H. Willson, and Dr. Elijah White. These all earnestly advised Lee's return. A similar situation in some respects existed at Wamatpu in the fall of 1842, four and a half years later than Jason Lee's first return to the east. Both these mission felt the need of representing to their parent societies, by an envoy thoroughly acquainted with the situation the importance of their field of labor and its needs in 1842. The American board had determined to abandon the Waiilatpu and Clearwater missions. The M. E. society was not very warmly interested in the Oregon work. Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman had like ambitions to see the American people and government in control of this western empire, which was no-man's land for many years. The great spring of action in both instances was the duty to his mission. That Lee was awake to the political importance of his errand is proven by the fact that before he started east, in March, 1838, at a meeting of the American settlers in the mission house, Lee and Leslie and Perkins drew up a memorial to be presented to congress asking that body to "take formal and speedy possession."
The memorial is worthy of a statesman. It set out the great value of Oregon as a territory of the United States, and stated intelligently the whole situation historically and economically. This paper was signed by thirty-six residents of the Willamette valley, including all Americans and many Canadian settlers.
Lee set out on his journey in March, staying for two days at the Wascopam mission. As far as possible he went by canoe. Thus he arrived at Waiilatpu, where he remained nearly three weeks in the friendliest intimacy with Dr. Whitman and Rev. H. H. Spalding. It is not probable that there was any reserve between these men, engaged in the same work, and with the same patriotic sentiments. If we could have Dr. Whitman's word about it he would tell us now that he read every word of the memorial from the settlers of the Willamette, and knew that Jason Lee would present it to the congress of the United States, as soon as he reached Washington.
At Wallula (Fort Walla Walla of the H. B. Co.) Lee left the river, and from thence onward a thousand miles or more, horseback to the Missouri. At Fort Hall he took in charge three sons of Captain Tom McKay, who had been Lee s'guide westward from that fort in 1834. The boys were committed to him by their father to be put in school, and Lee took them to Wilbraham academy, his own alma mater. At Westport, Missouri, September 1, a messenger from Oregon overtook him with letters. They brought him the terrible news that his young wife and newborn son had passed away at the mission June 26. Her gravestone, in Lee mission cemetery at Salem, bears the legend: "Beneath this sod, the first ever broken in Oregon, for the reception of a white mother and child, lie the remains of Anna Maria Pittman, wife of Rev. Jason Lee."
Perchance her hands planted the climbing white rose that John Minto found growing luxuriantly over the walls and roof of the log house that was her home, when he purchased the mission farm in 1845. Mr. Minto has distributed this rose over the Willamette valley, nature's most favored rose garden, and he speaks lovingly of it as "the sweetest rose that grows."
By way of St. Louis Mr. Lee passed to Illinois. Again the nation awoke to the existence of the Oregon country. At Peoria he delivered an address inviting imigration to Oregon. This resulted in the formation of the first company of settlers for the Willamette, which left Illinois the following spring. He ​arrived in New York in November, and so w^ell did he plead his cause before the missionary board that that body determined to send the largest missionary colony to Oregon that had ever left American shores. The party included thirty-three adults, to take various duties, and eighteen children. The fund raised for the new expedition was over $42,000.
The memorial from the settlers of the Willamette, was presented by Lee to Senator Linn of Missouri, and by him to the senate. Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts, desiring more information, wrote to Lee for the facts, and he replied from Middletown, Connecticut, stating clearly and powerfully the needs and desires of the Oregonians. Senator Cushing was a relative of Captain John H. Couch, who was induced to come to Oregon in the brig "Chenamus," by reason of Lee's letter to Cushing. The Cushing family were Boston merchants, and here again appears the helping hand of Massachusetts to the Oregon settlement. Two brothers of the Couch family commanded vessels of the Cushings. They were interested as stated above, in Jason Lee's report to Senator Linn, and the correspondence between the missionary and the merchant resulted in the Couches and Cushings' entrance into Oregon commerce.
Captain Couch made several voyages here, and finally took up a claim in Portland, and became a founder of this city, which has done his name welldeserved honor in perpetuating it by giving the name of Couch to one of our important streets, and to one of our public schools, Lee's reply to Senator Cushing closed with these words: "To whom can we look for laws to govern our rising settlements, but to the congress of our own beloved country? It depends much upon congress what the character of our population shall be, and what shall be the fate of the Indian tribes of that country. It may be thought Oregon is of little importance, but rely upon it, there is the germ of a great state. We are resolved to do what we can to benefit the country, but we throw ourselves upon you for protection." Lee's presentation of the claim of the Oregon settlers was so favorably received by the president and his cabinet, that $5,000 from the secret service fund was contributed toward the expense of the missionary society, in recognition of the strategic and political importance of the mission of the Willamette.
On October 9, 1839, "Lausanne" sailed from New York with fifty-one souls destined for the Willamette and other missions of Oregon. Among them were George Abernethy, who became Oregon's first provisional governor. Rev. J. P. Richmond, Rev. J. L. Parrish, Rev. Gustavus Hines, Hamilton Campbell and other men afterwards notable in the annals of early days here. Jason Lee made the voyage with them. They touched at Rio, Valparaiso, and made a stay of three weeks in Honolulu. On May 21, 1840, the "Lausanne" entered the Columbia. At Vancouver Dr. McLoughlin made all welcome "as long as they chose to remain."
Very soon after their arrival the men appointed to the missions at Clatsop, Nisqually, "The Falls" and The Dalles were on their way to their stations. In the neighborhood of all these points have sprung up important cities, whose nuclei were the missions.
In 1841 the central mission was removed about ten miles south from its original location, to Chemekete. A manual training school was erected here for instruction of Indian children. Mills had been built earlier at this site for the mission. Around this Chemekete mission grew the city of Salem.
THE MISSION'S NEW MISSION.
Jason Lee found the Indian population greatly reduced upon his return in the "Lausanne." There was no increase up to that time in the number of Americans in the Willamette, but there were more Canadians and half-breed children. The newer missions found more populous fields at The Dalles and ​Nisqually, and made great progress. The American immigration of 1841 arrived in the fall of that year, and many settled near the Valley mission.
In 1840 a saw mill and grist mill was built for the needs of the mission on Mill creek, ten miles south of the mission site. On Mill creek was built later, the Indian manual training school, and a mission house. The site of these buildings was near the old woolen mill at Salem, and two of them are still standing; the oldest of these is a part of the residence of Hon. R. P. Boise, at 852 Broadway, Salem, and the hewn timbers of the building, according to the diary of Rev. Mr. Waller, who assisted in the work, warrant the belief that Jason Lee's hand wielded the broad-ax upon them. Around this new establishment, and because of it, the community which developed into the capital city of Oregon grew up.
The Indians of the Willamette had decreased in number constantly, and the central mission found its intended field of labor among the Indians less fruitful year by year; the white settlers were becoming more numerous, and the teachers and preachers of the mission saw larger opportunities offered. In 1842 at a conference of the mission it was determined to build a school at "Chemeteke," to be called the Oregon institute. This project was the conception of Jason Lee. The building erected was planned for great things. None knew so well as Jason Lee the certain future of the Willamette valley, destined to be perhaps the most populous valley of the Pacific coast. The building was completed in 1844, the missionary community contributing generously to the fund. It was seventy-five feet long, and three stories high. In the same year the missionary at "The Falls," Rev. A. F. Waller, completed the first church built in Oregon, still standing, at Oregon City, where during the four preceding years, a large community of Americans had settled.
Thus the work of the mission in the valley was directed to a new channel—the educational and religious care of the immigrants, streaming in constantly increasing trains into western Oregon.
Because of this natural diversion of the energies of the Willamette mission, some writers have considered its work a failure. Such a view would indicate that the holder of it considered it better to teach dead Indians than the young pioneers. No fair-minded reader and observer can fail to see the great and blessed influence of Jason Lee and his missionary contemporaries upon the people of the Willamette and other fields of their labors. As examples I only cite Salem and Forest Grove as representative cities of missionary origin, and largely populated still by the descendants and pupils and proselytes of Oregon missions. The parent societies did indeed discontinue their official support of the Indian missions, but the men who had come to Oregon to redeem the Indians never ceased to minister to them in every possible way.
Jason Lee in 1843 wrote to the New York missionary board: "My interest in the Oregon missions is not in the least abated. Oregon is still of immense importance as a field of missionary operations among the Indians."
This sketch necessarily omits details. Such as remain—unfortunately meager—are worth the reading. Rev. Dr. Hines (H. K.) has preserved what was possible in "Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest." Adventures which would fill hundreds of thrilling pages were left entirely unrecorded by Jason Lee and his companions. Their records are terse, omitting all but greater facts. Their hands clove to the plow and ax and paddle, rather than to the pen.
Enough has been said already to show Jason Lee's knowledge of Oregon's importance as a future territory of the United States, and enough to set at rest any doubt regarding his deep interest in "saving Oregon." In 1834 before he started upon his mission, he visited Washington and secured passports and credentials entitling him to the government's recognition and protection. Upon his return in 1838 he went as early as possible to Washington and presented to congress the memorial of the missionaries and settlers in Willamette, urging the government to extend its control over their territory. His addresses in the ​middle west the same year were the source of that interest in Oregon which started the mighty stream of pioneer immigration to the Willamette valley First and foremost of the builders of Oregon was Jason Lee.
Before the "Lausanne" sailed, Jason Lee married Miss Lucy Thomson of Barre, Vt., who accompanied him to Oregon with the "Lausanne" party. March 20, 1842, she died at the mission, leaving an infant daughter. This child, upon Lee's return to the east in 1844, was left in the care of Rev. Gustavus Hines. She was an early graduate of Willamette university, and became the wife of Professor Francis H. Grubbs, to whom I am much indebted for information here recorded.
LEE'S SECOND JOURNEY EAST.
Later in 1843 Jason Lee determined to go again to New York to set before the missionary board the affairs of the Oregon mission. He was aware that the board was not satisfied with the work in Oregon. The disappointment was due to their lack of knowledge of conditions there, and to the results of the work aomng the Indians, particularly. In the most favorable circumstances a letter sent from Oregon in 1840 would not be answered until the end of the following year. The information of the board was always a year behind the tact. I he board was hoping for the conversion of thousands of Indians, and quite unaware of the splendid work the mission was doing among the whites as well as at several of the Indian stations. It was to inform them of these matters that Lee left Oregon February 3, 1844, on the British barque "Columbia" which sailed from Vancouver for London in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company.
At Honolulu Lee received information that his successor had been appointed and was on his way to Oregon. After consideration of this unexpected phase of affairs he determined to go on his intended journey. He went from Honolulu to Mazatlan crossed Mexico to Vera Cruz, barely escaping imprisonment on account of the ill feeling due to the Texas intrigues, III his letters and papers being seized.
From Vera Cruz by sail to New Orleans, then by steamboat to Pittsburg, and by stage to the Atlantic sea-board. July 1st he appeared before the missionary board and made a plea of such convincing power that that body expressed Its renewed confidence in him and his wise administration; but his successor was at sea, irreclaimable, and arrived in Oregon about the time Jason Lee arrived m New Orleans.
Again Lee visited Washington, called upon President Tyler, and was assured by him that the "Oregon Bill" would probably pass congress at the coming session. He spent two weeks at Washington at this time, but a presidential election was near at hand, and was the principal affair of the time It was then in view of the approaching settlement of the claims to the Oregon country that the "fifty-four, forty or fight" slogan was ringing through the country.
After finishing his business in New York, Jason Lee went to his old home in Stanstead. He expected to return to the west, after some months of rest and renewal of old acquaintance in his native place. On his way thither he visited Wilbraham academy, where his student years were passed.
It seems strange indeed that a man of Lee's heroic frame, inured to hardship for ten years m all the climates of our country, should have met death mutes prime, at his early home, among his dearest relatives and boyhood friends. He preached to them his last sermon in November, 1844 even then feeble and emaciated, but yet filled with zeal and fire.
As late as February, 1845, he wrote to his friend, Rev. G. Hines, in Oregon: "Unless some favorable change in my malady occurs soon, it is my deliberate conviction that it will prove fatal. Should such a change take place I advise you to be looking out for me, coming around Cape Horn, or threading ​my way up the Willamette as I used to do." On March 12, he passed away at the age of forty-one years.
Sixty-four years afterward on June 15, 1906, the ashes of Jason Lee were consigned with solemn and impressive ceremonies to the hallowed soil of the Lee mission cemetery at Salem. Great men from four great states were there; states carved from the territory of the old Oregon country. These men, speaking above his ashes, accorded him the honor that is his due as pioneer, patriot and priest.
In preparation of this sketch I have made references to Rev Dr Hines"Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest," Rev. Aaron Atwood's "Conquerors, Mrs. Eva Emery Dye's works, Hines and Lang's "History of thf>
John Gill.
Portland, October 4, 1910.
MARCUS WHITMAN.
Among those who bore an important part in the beginnings of Oregon was" Dr. Whitman, the missionary of Walla Walla. Marcus Whitman third son of Beza and Alice Whitman, was born at Rushville, Yates County New York September 4, 1802. He was descended from English ancestors who had settled in Massachusetts early m the seventeenth century. His father died when he was eight years of age and shortly after Marcus was sent to live with his grandfather, Samuel Whitman of Plainfield, Massachusetts, where he remained for nine years and received the greater part of his education preparatory to his professional studies.
His first choice of a profession was that of the gospel ministry; but the way not being open for his entering this, he studied medicine, first privately with Dr. Ira Bryant, a physician of his native town, and later in the medical college of Fairfield, New York, from which he was graduated in 1824 The next ten years of his life he spent chiefly in the practice of his profession, first in Canada and later in Wheeler, New York, with an interval in which he engaged with his brother in running a sawmill; an experience which was to stand him in good stead in his later life in Oregon.
Dr. Whitman seems never to have been quite reconciled to the relinquishment of his early purpose of entering the Christian ministry. His natural tastes had he followed out his first purpose, would doubtless have led him either to some foreign field or to the frontiers of his own country. Being a man of strong and muscular frame, of indomitable will and courageous and adventurous spirit he was not one to be content to settle in the quiet and comfort of older communities and build on other men's foundations. He was a man quick to hear and prompt to respond to the call of human need, and counted it rather a joy if such response called him to face danger and hardships. The opportunity to give full vent to his pent-up desire for an active life of ministry to his fellow men came at the close of his first ten years of professional life; and it came in such a way as to make to one of his nature and ambition an irresistible appeal.
In the early thirties, at a time when the various missionary societies of the east were warmly interested in missions to the native races of the Mississippi valley, an incident occurred that directed their interest and effort particularly to the region west of the Rocky mountains. A delegation of four Indian chiefs from one oi the tribes located in the Oregon country appeared in St. Louis on an unusual mission. Having heard from explorers and traders something of the white man s religion, they had been impressed by what they had heard and came to try to find some one that would tell them more of this religion. The romance ​and pathos of this incident thrilled the whole Christian church and kindled it to a new zeal and enthusiasm in Indian missions.
The first response to this appeal from the Oregon country was the mission of the Methodist Episcopal church, under Jason Lee, who came with his company overland to Oregon in 1834 and settled in the Willamette valley. The next response was by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, located at Boston and representing the Presbyterian, Congregational and Dutch Reform churches. Early in the year 1835 this board commissioned the Rev. Samuel Parker of Ithaca, New York, and Dr. Marcus Whitman to go to the Oregon country and explore the field with a view to the establishment of missions among the Indians of that region. Mr. Parker and Dr. Whitman set out at once on this mission, and joining the caravan of the American Fur Company which left Liberty, Missouri, in May of that year, proceeded under the safe conduct of this company as far as the company's rendezvous on Green river, one of the headwaters of the Colorado. Here they met representative men of the Nez Perces nation, who were so earnest in their entreaty that missionaries be sent to their people, that it was at once decided that Mr. Parker should go on alone, and Dr. Whitman should return and report to the board of missions and secure, if possible, the sending out of missionaries the next year.
Dr. Whitman's fitness for pioneer and missionary life was abundantly shown during his connection with the caravan of the Fur company, composed of hunters, traders and trappers; the type of men with whom in after life he was to have much to do. While at the rendezvous on the Missouri river an epidemic breaking out which threatened serious results, by his promptness and skill he not only saved the lives of many, but saved the expedition itself from destruction or disbandment. And later at the rendezvous on Green river as well as on the route he commanded respect for his professional skill and by his readiness to put his skill at the service of his fellow travelers won the good will of the men of the company.
Dr. Whitman lost no time in carrying out his agreement with Mr. Parker, but returned at once to New York and Boston. The spring of the following year found him again at the rendezvous on the Missouri river with a company of missionaries commissioned and equipped for the Oregon country. He had been married in the meantime to Narcissa, daughter of Judge Stephen Prentiss of Prattsburg, New York, a young woman of strong character and devoted piety, who had given her life to the cause of missions. The mission consisted of himself and Mrs. Whitman and the Rev. H. H. Spaulding and Mrs. Spaulding together with Mr. W. H. Gray of Utica, New York, in the capacity of secular agent. Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spaulding were the first white women to attempt the daring feat of crossing the Rocky mountains into the wild region beyond. But to their honor it must be said that they performed it with a courage and endurance that commanded the admiration of all who witnessed it.
They reached the Columbia river early in September of the same year, and proceeded at once under the escort of agents of the Hudson's Bay Company to Fort Vancouver. Here they were received with the utmost hospitality by Dr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of the company. Dr. Whitman had already provisionally agreed with Mr. Parker that the mission should be established among the tribes east of the Cascade range. He was now advised by Dr. McLoughlin to the same decision. The result was that Mr. Spaulding settled at Lapwai among the Nez Perces Indians, on what is now the western edge of the state of Idaho; while Dr. Whitman settled on the Walla Walla river near the site of the present town of Walla Walla.
The site of what came to be commonly known as the Whitman mission was well chosen; not so much from the point of view of a mission to the Indians as from "the point of view of a vantage ground from which to influence the destinies of the Oregon country. It lay near the junction of the two principal trade routes from the east, and near to one of the chief forts of the Hudson's Bay Company. It was a station at once for observation and influence. The various inter​ests of this whole region centered here as in no other place. The various cur- rents of travel that were to determine the ultimate destiny of this region passed this way as at that time they passed nowhere else. Dr. Whitman proved to be the man for the place ; quick to grasp the significance of the situation and bold and prompt to seize and use its opportunities.
The life of Whitman in Oregon falls into two well marked periods. The first of these, extending from the establishment of the mission in 1836, to October, 1842, was the period of his distinctively missionary work. The second, extending from that eventful year to his death in 1847, was marked by a wider activity in which, while keeping the interests of his mission and the welfare of his Indians as his central object, he yet exerted well-directed efforts toward furthering the nation's interests in the Oregon country.
Dr. Whitman's conception of his mission to the Indians and the persistence with which he strove to carry it out, are indicative of the character of the man. His ideal for the Indians was that they should become not only Christians, but peaceful and thrifty citizens. With this ideal before him he at once set about to instruct them in the faith and morality of the Christian religion, to give them an elementary education in their own tongue, and to instruct them in agriculture and other arts of a peaceful and settled life. His efforts toward these ends in this earlier period promised a fair measure of success. As the fruit of his and Mrs. Whitman's patient instruction and consistent daily lives a few of the natives were brought to embrace the Christian religion ; some of whom commanded the highest respect of the white men by their lives of consistent piety and integrity. A school was early established, and though maintained under the utmost difficulties, enrolled considerable numbers of the Indians, reaching at one time an enrollment of more than one hundred. Agriculture too was taught, with promising results. More than one immigrant and early traveler on visiting the mission remarked on the prosperous appearance of the mission farm, and observed with special interest the well cultivated farms of the Indians that surrounded it.
The attitude of the Cayuse Indians among whom Dr. Whitman settled, toward Dr. Whitman and his work changed toward the end of this period. The mission had been established on the invitation of prominent men of the Indian tribes, and the missionaries and their wives had been made welcome. But from the fall of 1839 to the end of this period the feelings of the Indians show a change from that of cordial good will to one of suspicion and faultfinding, which issued in the later years in threats, and even in over acts of violence. Several things contributed to this charge of attitude. One was the indirect influence of the Catholic missionaries who had come into the region in 1839. This arose not from hostility on the part of the missionaries personally, toward the Protestant missionaries, but it was an inevitable result of their variant teaching, unsettling the minds of the Indians, and still further, from a policy differing from that tof the Protestant missions, in following the Indian in his roaming life and not insisting on his settling in one place to a life of industry. The treatment, too, by the missionaries, of their wives, as on an equality with themselves, offended the leading Indians, as being a constant rebuke to their own conduct, and as tending to cause in their wives restlessness and discontent. Finally, the coming of the white settlers in such numbers as to attract the attention of the Indians and awaken their fears that they should be dispossessed of their lands by the white men, contributed to this growing spirit of hostility toward the Protestant missions. The situation of the mission on the highway of immigration of that period made it peculiarly open to this influence. In a letter of May 2, 1840, Mrs. Whitman writes:
"A tide of immigration appears to be moving this way rapidly. A great change has taken place even since we entered the country, and we have no reason to believe it will stop here. Instead of two lonely American females we now number fourteen, and soon may twenty or forty more, if reports are true. We are emphatically situated on the highway between the states and the Columbia river." ​The fall of 1842 brought a still larger immigration, numbering more than one hundred and including many families. It was an immigration well suited to impress the Indians as it passed through their lands, and further to arouse their apprehensions for the future.
With the arrival of this immigration affairs at the Walla Walla mission seem to have reached a crisis. There had been for some time a growing feeling at the headquarters of the board of missions at Boston that the results of the mission at Walla Walla were not satisfactory. Missionaries at that day were expected by the board that commissioned them to confine themselves strictly to the religious instruction and care of those to whom they were sent. Even education had not yet come to be regarded as a proper part of their work, while instruction in industry and secular arts must have appeared quite aside from it. Besides, news had reached the board of unpleasant differences among the missionaries themselves which seemed to bode ill for the work of the mission. Whitman now learned that the order for the abandonment of the Walla Walla mission, if not already issued, was at least imminent. A less farsighted and courageous man than he might have welcomed the order to leave the post where hardships were great and where perils from the natives were thickening around him. But it was not of Whitman's character to abandon a post which, perilous as it was, he felt was important to the cause of missions and to the interests of his country to hold. He would not abandon it without first making a determined effort to secure from the mission board its continuance and reinforcement, and from the government at Washington provisions and the adoption of measures that would bring content to the Indians and open an easier and safer highway for intending immigrants.
Accordingly, on the 2d of October, 1842, within a month after the arrival at Walla Walla of the immigration of that year, Whitman was on his way to Washington and Boston, accompanied by a single companion. Crossing the mountains at any season of the year in those days was a serious undertaking; entered upon at the edge of winter it was perilous, and for any object but one of supreme importance and urgency foolhardy. Undertaken as it was with Whitman's full knowledge of its difficulties and perils and with his conception of the interests at stake, it was heroic.
Whitman's one companion on this perilous ride was A. L. Lovejoy, a young lawyer who had arrived in Oregon with the immigration of that year, himself destined to an important part in the early history of Oregon. They reached Fort Hall without serious difficulty, but here they found their way over the direct route barred by the snows of an early winter. Not discouraged by this, Whitman procured a guide, and he and his companion turned southward, keeping along the western base of the Rocky mountains to the Santa Fe trail, and thence eastward to St. Louis, where Whitman, having left Lovejoy on the way to return by way of Fort Hall to Oregon, arrived in February after a journey of four months of incredible hardships and privation and peril. From St. Louis he hastened on to Washington, stopping briefly in Cincinnati on the way. From Washington he went to Boston by way of New York. The date of his visit to Washington is not fixed, but it is certain that he was in New York, March 28, and a day or two later was on the steamer on the sound bound for Boston, and that he was in Boston the first week in April. His stay at his home after leaving Boston must have been brief, for he was back in St. Louis early in May on his return to Oregon, in less than three months from the time of his arrival there on his eastward journey.
Finding the emigration somewhat delayed in setting out, he visited relatives in Quincy, Illinois, then went to the Shawnee mission in the neighborhood of the rendezvous from which emigrants for Oregon were accustomed to start. On May 17, he was visited here by a committee of emigrants appointed for that purpose, and on the 20th attended a meeting of the committee appointed to draw up the rules and regulations for the journey.
​The emigration started on the 22d under Captain Gantt, a man experienced in the route as far as Fort Hall, who had been employed to pilot the company to that point. Whitman remained at the Shawnee mission for some days and joined the emigrants on the Platte river about the middle of June, and continued with it to Fort Hall. During this part of the route he travelled for the most part with Jesse Applegate, who after the division of the emigrants was captain of one of the divisions. This division was generally in advance, as appears from the diary of J. W. Nesmith, who was made orderly sergeant of the company as first organized. It was perhaps while traveling with this division in advance that Whitman obtained information from the Catholic missionaries, who were somewhat in advance of the immigration, of a shorter route by Fort Bridger, known afterwards as the Fort Bridger cut-off. Of this Peter H. Burnett writes: "On the 12th of August we were informed that Dr. Whitman had written a letter, stating that the Catholic missionaries had discovered by the aid of their Flathead Indian pilot a pass through the mountains by way of Fort Bridger, which was shorter than the old route. We therefore determined to go by the fort. On the 14th we arrived at Fort Bridger, situated on Black's fork of Green river, having traveled from our camp on the Sweetwater two hundred and nineteen miles in eighteen days. Here we overtook the missionaries."
Fifteen days later on August 27, the immigration arrived at Fort Hall. Of the route up to this point Burnett writes: "Up to this point the route over which we had passed was perhaps the finest natural road of the same length to be found in the world. Only a few loaded wagons had ever made their way to Fort Hall and were there abandoned. Dr. Whitman was at the fort and was our pilot from there to the Grande Ronde, where he left us in charge of an Indian pilot, whose name was Stickus, and who proved to be faithful and competent....
"We had now arrived at the most critical period in our journey, and we had many misgivings as to our ultimate success in making our way with our wagons, teams and families. We had yet to accomplish the untried and difficult portion of our long and exhaustive journey. We could not anticipate at what moment we should be compelled to abandon our wagons in the mountains, pack our scant supplies upon our poor oxen and make our way on foot through the terribly rough country as best we could. We fully comprehended the situation; but we never faltered in our inflexible determination to accomplish the trip, if within the limits of possibility, with the limited resources at our command, Dr. Whitman assured us we could succeed, and encouraged and aided us with every means in his power."
This from Burnett's recollections was not so much a forecast of the trip as a description of what it proved to be. Others who had passed over the trail by which they must go represented its manifold difficulties and perils, and did not hesitate to present in the strongest terms the obstacles to their taking wagons successfully over it. It was to the minds of the hardy mountaineers a trail for a pack train only, and a difficult one at that. It was no wagon road over which a company of a thousand men, women and children could hope successfully to pass, taking their wagons as they had come thus far. Whitman, however, although knowing the difficulties, was confident that it could be done, and his counsel prevailed. The emigration left Fort Hall August 30 and reached the Whitman mission the loth of October. Whitman had left the company in charge of a skillful Indian pilot when he saw it safely past Fort Hall, and was already at the mission on its arrival. He there had the gratification of seeing encamped near the banks of the Columbia the largest immigration that had ever entered Oregon, and as he looked on it with its unbroken families, with their wagons and goods and herds, having successfully passed through all the difficulties and perils of the journey, he knew that the road to Oregon was now fully open. In his letter to the secretary of war a few weeks later he writes: ​
"The government will now doubtless for the first time be apprised through you, and by means of this communication, of the immense migration of families to Oregon which has taken place this year. I have, since our interview, been instrumental in piloting across the route described in the accompanying bill, and which is the only eligible wagon road, no less than one hundred families, consisting of one thousand persons of both sexes, with their wagons, amounting in all to more than one hundred and twenty, six hundred and ninety-four oxen, seven hundred and seventy-three loose cattle." . . .
"The immigrants are from different states, but principally from Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois and New York. The majority of them are farmers, lured by the prospect of bounty in lands, by the reported fertility of the soil, and by the desire to be the first among those who are planting our institutions on the Pa- cific coast. Among them are artisans of every trade, comprising, with farmers, the very best material for a new colony. As pioneers these people have un- dergone incredible hardships, and having now safely passed the Blue mountain range with their wagons and effects, have established a durable road from Mis- souri to Oregon, which will serve to mark permanently the route for larger numbers, each succeeding year, while they have practically demonstrated that wagons drawn by horses or oxen can cross the Rocky mountains to the Co- lumbia river, contrary to all the sinister assertions of all those who pretended it to be impossible."
The note of triumph in this letter may be pardoned Whitman when we re- member how persistently he had labored to bring his wagon over this route when he first came to Oregon, and how firmly he believed in the face of all assertions to the contrary that the trail through the mountains would yet prove to be an open highway for immigrants and their wagons and herds ; and when we remember too, how clearly he saw that the ultimate demonstration of this would bring a solution of the Oregon question favorable to his country. In the great caravan safely encamped on the Columbia he saw with pardonable pride the accomplishment of a cherished hope and of a purpose persisted in for seven years; and full justification of all the hardships and toil he had endured to bring it to a successful accomplishment.
Whitman's satisfaction at the successful accomplishment of this object of his winter journey was not without alloy. On his way he had received news of the burning of his grist-mill, a means he had relied on not only for supplying his and the neighboring missions with flour, but which he had particularly hoped would furnish needed supplies to the immigration of this year. He was to learn too of the outbreak of violent feelings of hostility on the part of the Cayuse In- dians surrounding his mission, which had well-nigh resulted fatally to Mrs. Whitman, and had obliged her to leave their home and seek safety under the hospitable roofs of the Hudson's Bay Company and of neighboring missions.
His presence, however, and the moving on of the immigrants to the Wil- lamette valley soon brought the Indians to a quieter mood, and the affairs of the mission moved on again for a time with even more than their former promise. The mission work was resumed, the school reopened and its num- bers enlarged, the grist-mill was rebuilt, and in addition a saw mill erected, and new efforts were made to induce the Indians to settle down to the pursuits of agriculture and stock raising. But conditions had changed, Whitman felt it, and the Indians showed that they too felt it. It was no longer a matter of doubt to either that the Americans were to have Oregon, and both foresaw that this meant sooner or later the dispossession of the Indian of a large portion of his land. In a letter to his father and mother in the May following his return Whitman gives expression to his view of the changed condition:
"It gives me much pleasure to be back again and quietly at work again for the Indians. It does not concern me so much what is to become of any partic- ular set of Indians, as to give them the offer of salvation through the gospel and the opportunity of civilization, and then I am content to do to all men as ​
T have opportunity.' I have no doubt our greatest work is to be to aid the white settlement of this country and help to found its religious institutions Providence has its full share in all these events. Although the Indians have made and are making rapid advance in religious knowledge and civiliztion, ye' it cannot be hoped that time will be allowed to mature either the work of Christianization or civilization before the white settlers will demand the soil and seek the removal of both the Indians and the mission. What Americans desire o this kind they always effect, and it is equally useless to oppose or desire ii otherwise. To guide, as far as can be done, and direct these tendencies for the best, is evidently the part of wisdom. Indeed, I am fully convinced that when a people refuse or neglect to fill the designs of Providence, they ought not to complain at the results ; and so it is equally useless for Christians to be anxious on their account. The Indians have in no case obeyed the command to multiply and replenish the earth, and they cannot stand in the way of others in doing so. A place will be left them to do tliis as fully as their ability to obey will permit, and the more we can do for them the more fully can this be realized. No exclusiveness can be asked for any portion of the human family. The exer- cise of his rights are all that can be desired. In order for this, to its proper extent in regard to the Indians, it is necessary that they seek to preserve their rights by peaceable means only. Any violation of this rule will be visited with only evil results to themselves.
The Indians are anxious about the consequences of settlers among them, but I hope there will be no acts of violence on either hand. An evil affair at the falls of the Willamette resulted in the death of two white men killed and one Indian. But all is now quiet."
In April of the same year Mrs. Whitman had written to Mrs. Brewer of the Methodist mission :
"Our Indians have been very much excited this spring, but are now quiet. The influx of emigration is not going to let us live in as much quiet, as it regards the people, as we have done."
The fall of 1845 brought a larger immigration than ever, numbering in all several thousand. Shortly after this Mrs. Whitman writes again of her ap- prehensions :
"It may be that we shall be obliged to leave here in the spring. The state of things now looks very much as though we should be required to. . . . For the poor Indians' sake and the relief of future travellers to this country I could wish to stay here longer if we could do it in peace. We feel sometimes as if our quietness were past for this country, at least for a season."
Such was the growing uneasiness at the mission. It awakened apprehen- sions, but did not weaken purpose or paralyze activity. The same zeal, warm and unabated, for the welfare of the Indians, was manifest through it all. Meanwhile the increased immigration brought to the Whitman household care and work of another kind. The long journey was a severe tax upon the strong- est, but for the weak it was doubly trying. Some fell by the way; mothers — now and then both father and mother — sickened and died, leaving dependent families of young children; invalids unable to complete the journey without a period of rest; wives approaching confinement; families of slender means which the exacting journey had exhausted — such from time to time took refuge under the hospitable roof of the mission.
Mrs. Whitman in letters to friends gives us vivid pictures of the family at Waiilatpu these years after the great immigration. In January following her return from her stay at the Methodist missions during her husband's absence she writes to one of her friends :
"My family consists of six children and a Frenchman that came from the mountains and stops with us without invitation. Mary Ann, however, is with Mrs. Littlejohn now. Two English girls, Ann and Emma Hobson, one 13 and the other 7, of the party, stopped with us; husband engag ​ed to take them
in the first part of the journey but when they arrived here they went directly to Walla Walla, being persuaded not to stay by some of the party on account of the Indians. When I arrived at Walla Walla they saw me and made them- selves known to me and desired to come home with me. The girls were so urgent to stop that I could not refuse them, and their father was obliged to give them up. I felt unwilling to increase my family at that time, but now do not regret it, as they do the greater part of my work and go to school besides."
A day or two later Mrs. Whitman again writes of the household to which she returned : -
"When I arrived home I found Mr. and Mrs. Littlejohn occupying my bed- room. She was sick, having been confined a few days before I came. The room east of the kitchen, Mr. East and family occupied — four children, all small. Mr. Looney with a family of six children and one young man by the name of Smith, were in the Indian room. My tvvo boys, Perrin Whitman and David, slept upstairs, Alex, the Frenchman, in the kitchen, and Mary Ann and Helen in the trundle bed in the room with Mr. Littlejohn. The dining room alone re- mained for me, husband, and my two English girls ; all of these we fed from our table except Mr. Looney's family, and our scanty fare consisted of potatoes and cornmeal, with a little milk occasionally, and cakes from the burnt wheat. This was a great change for me from the well-furnished tables of Waskopum and Willamette."
It was due to the memory of the mission by the wayside to present one more picture of its hospitable home. In a letter dated April 2, 1846, Mrs. Whitman again writes :
"You will be astonished to know that we have eleven children in our family, and not one of them our own by birth, but so it is. Seven orphans were brought to our door in October, 1844, whose parents both died on the way to this country. Destitute and friendless, there was no other alternative — we must take them in or they must perish. The youngest was an infant five months old — born on the way — nearly famished but just alive; the eldest was thirteen, two boys and five girls ; the boys were the oldest. The eldest girl was lying with a broken leg by the side of her parents as they were dying, one after the other. They were an afflicted and distressed family in the journey and when the children arrived here they were in miserable condition. You can better imagine than I can describe my feelings under these circumstances. Weak and feeble as I was, in an Indian country without the possibility of obtaining help, to have so many helpless chil- dren cast upon our arms at once, rolled a burden on me insupportable. Nothing could reconcile me to it but the thought that it was the Lord that brought them here, and He would give me grace and strength so to discharge my duty to them as to be acceptable in His sight."
Such was the enlarged scope of the Whitman mission and the increased burden put upon its heads by the increased immigration. The burden was made heavier by the fact that the stream of immigration which brought these new inmates to the Whitman home, increased the irritation of the Indians to the point where more than once during these years it seemed as if the mission must be abandoned for lack of protection. The letters of this period make frequent mention of this impending peril. One letter, however, of Mrs. Whitman's, written in the midsummer of 1846 speaks with joy of a season of relief from these painful apprehensions :
"The Indians are quiet now, and never more friendly. ... So far as the Indians are concerned our prospects of permanently remaining among them were never more favorable than at present. . . . It is a great pleasure to them to see so many children growing up in their midst. Perrin, the elder, is able to read Nez Perces to them and when husband is gone takes his place and holds meetings with them. This delights ​them much."
This season of quiet was not to last. Late in the summer of the following year Mrs. Whitman writes of their situation in a less hopeful strain. It is on the eve of the passing of another caravan of immigrants, and she views their coming not without apprehension, for the Indians as well as for themselves.
"It is difficult to imagine what kind of a winter we shall have this winter, for it will not be possible for so many to all pass through the Cascades into the Willamette this fall, even if they should succeed in getting through the Blue mountains as far as here. . . . We are not likely to be as well off for provisions this season as usual — our crops are not abundant.
"Poor people, those that are not able to get on, or pay for what they need are those that will most likely wish to stop here, judging from the past. The poor Indians are amazed at the overwhelming numbers of Americans com- ing into the country. They seem not tO' know what to make of it. Very many of the principal ones are dying, and some have been killed by other Indians, in going south into the region of California. The remaining ones seem attached to us and cling to us the closer ;. cultivate their farms quite extensively, and do not wish to see any Sniapus (Americans) settle among them here; they are willing to have them spend the winter here, but in the spring they must all move on. They would be willing to have more missionaries stop and those devoted to their good. They expect that eventually this country will be settled by them, but they wish to see the Willamette filled up first."
The undertone of foreboding in this letter was not groundless. Whether Mrs. Whitman was conscious of it or not as she wrote, her letter describes a situation that boded ill for the mission. A proud tribe, accustomed in the past to dominate neighboring tribes, seeing its numbers decimated by war and by disease, and its lands each year more surely destined to pass into the hands of the white man — this was a situation that might easily, on further provocation, pass into one of bitter hostility and open revolt.
Dr. Whitman had felt this for some time, but without taking measures for protection. In a letter to her sister in the spring of 1847 Mrs. Whitman writes of her husband's absence for several weeks at Vancouver. This absence J. Quinn Thornton, in his history of the provisional government of Oregon ex- plains, in part at least. "In the spring of 1847," he writes, "Dr. Whitman being at my residence in Oregon City spoke to me freely on the subject of his mission station, and of the perils to which he feared all connected with it were exposed. And he said that he believed that nothing short of the establishment of a territorial government would save him and his mission from falling under the murderous hands of the savages. And he urged me to yield to the solicita- tions I had received to go at once to Washington city on behalf of the people and provisional government, for this and other purposes."
This was no imaginary peril. It was the forecast of a clearsighted, fearless man, one whose courage did not blind him to impending danger. The stroke fell sooner than he had expected, and with not less murderous effect. In the late summer and fall of this year an epidemic of measles prevailed among the Indians about the Whitman mission and among other tribes of the Columbia val- ley. Many of them died in spite of the utmost exertions of Dr. Whitman and his assistants. Dr. Whitman's very efforts to save the Indians only made his death at their hands more certain, such were their cruel superstitions regarding their medicine men or anyone in whose hands any of their number died. Then, too, the presence among them at that time of a vicious and disaffected person made it almost certain that this dreadful superstition would work disaster to the mis- sion.
So it did. On the morning of November 29, with no immediate warning the storm of savage passion broke with murderous effect on the devoted mission. Dr. Whitman himself fell first, then others until fourteen in all were slain — in- cluding Mrs. Whitman, the one woman among the victims, and fifty taken cap- tives, mostly women and c ​hildren
The causes of the massacre have already been indicated. As years remove us from the event, and passions cool and partisan feeling abates, historians grow less inclined to find in it any purpose other than that of which the Indians under the circumstances already described were of themselves fully capable.
It was the death of the mission at Waiilatpu. The mission was never re- organized, or even sought to be re-established. The Cayuse Indians themselves, decimated by disease and war, became scattered, and soon were lost in other tribes. Estimated by the results of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman's united labors for the Indians the mission can hardly be reckoned among the great missions of the country. Other neighboring missions may justly be regarded as having sur- passed it. But when looked at in its work for passing immigrants and its effect on the fortunes of the Oregon country, the case is altogether different.
Less than four years after the massacre, M. D. Saint-Amant, an envoy of Louis Napoleon's; landed in San Francisco, sent here to explore California and Oregon and to report on the prospect of pushing trade in this region. He came to Oregon soon after his arrival in August and remained several months, push- ing his travels and researches clear into its furthest settlements. He was in Walla Walla in November, 1851, almost on the anniversary of the massacre. While here he made careful and extended reports to his home government of all that he saw and learned while in this region, and on his return published the re- sults of his observations and inquiries. In his book entitled "Voyages en Cali- fomie et Oregon" he has this to say of Wliitman and his mission:
"It (Central Oregon) would be much more advanced but for an event which j imposed upon it a period of arrest. The Reverend Whitman, an American Bap- tist missionary, came and established himself with his family among the different tribes of Walla Walla, almost in the midst of the wilderness. He gained some influence over the Cayuse, the Nez Perces, the Spokane, etc. Having come in advance of the taking of the country by his fellow citizens, he became a very active agent of the American interests and contributed in no small degree to promote annexation ; but in spite of all he did for them, he did not realize that his standing and influence would not always prevail aginst the consequences of the superstition of these savages, and he fell a victim to it with his family. An epidemic spread, and as the Reverend added the art of healing to his pretention to save souls, and as several striking deaths disturbed their feeble and ailing minds, doubts sprang up as to the honesty of Dr. Whitman's purposes, and still more as to the character of his medical knowledge. In short, he was massacred with all his family in 1847."
This is interesting as one of the earliest recorded estimates of Whitman's work for Oregon, and of the causes of his death. It is the judgment of an in- telligent Frenchman — a man experienced in affairs — based upon information ob- tained on the spot from the most intelligent observers of events then in Oregon, the French Catholic missionaries and the representatives of the Hudson's Bay Company. In both points his estimate is likely to be confirmed by the mature judgment of history. As to Whitman's work for Oregon, we have what is likely to be the final verdict in Saint-Amant's brief statement that "he became a very active agent of the American interests and contributed in no small degree to promote annexation." 1
By common consent the culmination of Whitman's exertions for the American I interests in Oregon is considered to have come in the year 1842-43, and to have " centered particularly in his journey to Washington and Boston, and his return with the emigration of that year. Various views of the objects of this celebrated journey have been expressed by historians. That Whitman had several objects in view is now well ascertained. What they were may be gathered partly from con- sidering the main objective points of the journey, partly from official documents, and partly from his and Mrs. Whitman's private correspondence. The main ob- jective points of Whitman's visit were Washington and Boston. These he visited, and beyond reasonable doubt in this order. ​
The main object of his visit to Washington may be gathered from the bill he drew up at the request of the secretary of war, and from the letter with which he accompanied it. To the secretary he wrote :
"In compliance with the request which you did me the honor to make last winter while at Washington, I herewith transmit to you the synopsis of a bill, which, if it could be adopted, would, according to my experience and observation, prove highly conducive to the best interests of the United States generally ; to Oregon where I have resided more than seven years as a missionary, and to the Indian tribes that inhabit the intermediate country."
The bill itself exhibits the object here stated in an extended form. It is remarkable for the thorough grasp it shows of the situation, of the needs of every interest involved and of the means best suited to meet each one. No docu- ment of that time exhibits a more full and clear grasp of the Oregon problem, and of the condition of its ultimate solution. A reasonable hope on his part of his being able by any representations that he might make of securing the adoption of such a measure by the government, was itself a justification of his perilous journey.
To a member of the board of missions at Boston after his return to Oregon he writes touching the objects of his visit:
"It was to open a practical route and a safe passage and to secure a favorable report of the journey from emigrants, which, in connection with other objects, caused me to leave my family and brave the toils and dangers of the journey, which carried me on, notwithstanding I was forced out of my direct track, and notwithstanding the unusual severity of the winter and the great depth of the snow."
In the same letter we have frankly stated the other great object of his visit, that which took him to Boston as the other had taken him to Washingon. In close connecion with the passage quoted above he writes :
"The other great object for which I went was to save the mission from being broken up just then, which it must have been, as you will see by reference to the doings of the committee which confirmed the recall of Mr. Spalding only two weeks before my arrival in Boston."
These were two of the main objects of his journey, the one leading him to Washington, and the other to Boston, both clearly stated in his own words.
The third object of this journey had to do particularly with the immigration of that year. His object in connection with this immigration was not in induc- ing men to join it, or in organizing the company when together. It was already assured beforehand that a large immigration, larger than any before, would as- semble in the spring of 1843 and start for Oregon. Immigrants of the year before had brought this word. Whitman had received it before he had even decided upon his journey. He had but little directly to do with gathering the company, further than to drop encouraging words here and there in the western states as he journeyed eastward. His main purpose in connection with it was, as he says, to secure its safe conduct, in a manner as satisfactory as possible to the immigrant, but especially that at Fort Hall they should not be induced to turn aside to California, or to leave their cattle and wagons behind for fear of the difficulties of the road beyond this point. He wished nothing to prevent the safe arrival of the whole body with wagons and stock on the Columbia, so that when the word went back, as he intended to make sure that it did, both the government and the people of the east should know that a highway for immigration was now fully open through the mountains into the Oregon country.
These then were Whitman's chief objects in that winter ride. There were others incidental and subsidiary to these. One was to get reinforcements for his mission, if not of commissioned missionaries, at least of such families as would settle near the mission and aid in furthering its purpose. Another was to secure an appropriation from the secret service fund of the government to aid in the support of schools among the native tribes, and still anothe ​r was to
induce the government to send sheep and cattle to the Indians. In a letter to his brother written from the Shawnee mission May 27, 1843, on the eve of his joining the emigrants in the westward journey he writes :
"Sheep and cattle, but especially sheep, are indispensible for Oregon. . , . I mean to impress the secretary of war that sheep are more important to Oregon than soldiers. We want to get sheep and stock from the government for the Indians instead of money for their lands. I have written of the main interests of the Indian country."
"My plan, you know, was to get funds for founding schools and to have good people come along as settlers and teachers, while others might have sheep of their own along also."
This passage in Whitman's letter is explained by a letter of the brother-in- law to whom he wrote, J. G. Prentiss. Mr. Prentiss says: "His project was, so far as tBe Indians were concerned, to induce the government to pay them off for their lands in sheep and leave them to be a herding people. Hence in his letter to me he wrote about a secret fund controlled by the cabinet."
In seeking to draw upon this fund for the Indians he was but following the Methodists and the Catholics in their several missions. All seemed to feel jus- tified in drawing upon this fund to aid them in their secular work for those whom they justly regarded as the nation's wards.
Of the three main objects of his journey Whitman seems to have regarded the safe conduct of the immigration on his return as the most important, pos- sibly because it proved to be the most obviously fruitful of results. Nor did he over estimate the importance of the success of that immigration. Ten times larger than any former immigration, cumbered with wagons and herds besides, it might easily have ended in disaster. But if successful, it insured still larger immigrations in the future, and would satisfy those cautious and hesitating statesmen who were waiting to be shown that Oregon was accessible before voting measures for the relief and protection of the few scattered settlers already there, and offering inducements to others to follow.
It does not seem, either, that Whitman claimed a larger share in the conduct of this immigration than was actually his. Prominent members of the com- pany have fully justified his claim. M. M. McCarver, writing within a month after his arrival in Oregon to A. C. Dodge, member of congress from Iowa, says :
"We had less obstacles in reaching here than we had a right to expect, as it was generally understood before leaving the states that one third of the dis- tance, to-wit, from Fort Hall to this place, was impassable for wagons. Great credit, however, is due to the energy, perseverance and industry of this emi- grating company, and particularly to Dr. Whitman, one of the missionaries of the Walla Walla mission, who accompanied us out. His knowledge of the route was considerable and his exertions for the interest of the company untirmg."
Years afterward when the pioneers of Oregon began to recall the beginnings of their state, other members of the immigration of 1843 t)ore like testimony to the services of Dr. Whitman. One of these was J. W. Nesmith, orderly ser- geant of the company, and afterwards a United States senator from Oregon, In an address before the Oregon Pioneer Association at its annual reunion in 1875 he said:
"Beyond that [Fort Hall] we had not the slightest conjecture of the con- dition of the country. We went forth trusting to the future and doubtless would have encountered more difficulties than we did had not Dr. Whitman overtaken us before we reached the terminus of our guide's knowledge. He was familiar with the whole route and was confident that wagons could pass through the canyons and gorges of Snake river, and over the Blue mountains, which the mountaineers in the vicinity of Fort Hall declared to be a physical impossibility. Captain Grant, then in charge of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Hall endeavored to dissuade us from proceeding further with our ​wagons,
and showed us the wagons which the emigrants of the preceding year had aban- doned, as an evidence of the impracticabihty of our determination. Doctor Whitman was persistent that wagons could proceed as far as the Grand Dalles of the Columbia river, from which point, he asserted, they could be taken down by rafts or batteaux to the Willamette valley, while our stock could be driven over an Indian trail near Mt. Hood. Happily Whitman's advice prevailed."
From the diary of Nesmith kept on the journey we learn that Whitman traveled much of the way in company with Jesse Applegate, who was captain of one division of the immigrants and traveled much of the time in advance of the others. In a paper written for the annual reunion of the Oregon pioneers in 1876, Applegate says of Whitman's services to this immigration :
"It is no disparagement to others to say that to no other individual are the emigrants of 1843 so much indebted for the successful conclusion of their journey as to Dr. Marcus Whitman."
At their organization at Independence, Missouri, the emigrants selected Peter H. Burnett, one of their number as captain. Burnett had an important part in the organization and conduct of the company, and on the journey kept a careful diary, by the aid of which years afterwards he wrote his Recollections of a Pioneer. In this book he thus spoke of Whitman and his services :
'T knew Dr. Whitman well ; I first saw him at the rendezvous near the western line of Missouri in May, 1843 ; saw him again at Fort Hall, and again at his own mission in the fall of that year. ... I saw him again at my home in Tualitin Plains in 1844. He called at my house and finding that I was in the woods he came to me there. This was the last time I ever saw him. Our relations were of the most cordial and friendly character, and I had the greatest respect for him. I consider Dr. Whitman to have been a brave, kind, devoted, and intrepid spirit, without mahce and without reproach. In my best judgment he made greater sacrifices, endured more hardships, and encountered more perils for Oregon, than any other one man, and his services were prac- tically more efficient, except perhaps those of Dr. Linn, United States senator from Missouri. I say perhaps, for I am in doubt which of these two men did more in efifect for Oregon."
Whitman's work for Oregon had little to do with its internal afifairs. He had little or no part in organizing its scattered settlements into a civil com- munity, and so in laying the foundation of the state, history will award the honor for this work to others. But in the work of bringing Oregon into close connection with the states of the union by opening the door through the bar- rier of the intervening mountains, he was among the foremost. Others contribu- ted to this end, but no one seems to have seen as early as did he the supreme importance of iinding, or making, this highway, nor to have seen it with so single and unclouded an eye. He saw almost from the first that if Oregon was to become the territory of the United States ; if England was to be brought to acknowledge the rightfulness of the American claim; if the American govern- ment itself was to be brought to take any serious and efifective steps toward pressing its claims to that to which it pretended to have a just title, American families must be brought through the mountains into the region claimed and the way be shown beyond all doubt to be open for others to follow. To this end Whitman addressed himself with tireless purpose, and when he discerned that the supreme moment for action had ar-rived, acted with heroic daring. He suc- ceeded, but his very success was ​his undoing.
JOSEPH R. WILSON. DR. JOHN MCLOUGHLIN.
Dr. John McLoughlin, his title having been for years used as though a part of his name, is the most conspicuous man of Oregon's true pioneer period. He was born in Parish le Riviere du Loup, Canada. His paternal grandfather, born in Parish Desertagney, Ireland, immigrated to Canada, married there, and his son John was the father of Dr. John McLoughlin. The maiden name of the mother of Dr. John McLoughlin was Angelique Eraser, born in parish of Beaumont, Canada. Her father was Malcolm Fraser, a Scotch highlander, a member of the well known Scotch family, or clan of that name. A relative of hers was General Fraser, one of Burgoyne's principal officers, who was killed in the battle of Saratoga, October 7, 1777. Her father, as a lieutenant in the regular British army, took part in the capture of Quebec, under General Wolfe. At the time of his retirement from the army and settlement in Canada, he was a captain in the Eighty-fourth regiment of the British regular army. He was the first seigneur of Mt. Murray, Canada.
Dr. John McLoughlin's father was accidentally drowned in the St. Law- rence river, while the former was a child. He and his brother David were brought up in the home of their maternal grandfather. He was educated in Canada and Scotland and became a physician while still very young and did not long practice his profession. He joined the Northwest Company and his ability soon made him prominent. When the Northwest Company and the Hudson's Bay Company coalesced, in 1821, he was in charge of Fort William, situated on Lake Superior, the chief depot and factory of the Northwest Com- pany. Although he strenuously opposed the coalition of the two companies his ability was such that he was soon after appointed chief factor of all the Hud- son's Bay Company's business west of the Rocky mountains. In 1824 he ar- rived at Fort George (Astoria) near the mouth of the Columbia river, which was then the chief post of the company, west of the Rocky mountains. The next year he established the headquarters of the company at Fort Vancouver, now in the state of Washington. About the year 1830 he erected a new Fort Vancouver, about one mile distant from its first location. Here is now located the United State's military post known as Vancouver barracks. Dr. McLough- lin soon established a farm of about 3,cxx) acres near Fort Vancouver, on which were grown quantities of grain, principally wheat. He gradually developed a large herd of cattle. He constructed saw mills and flour mills near the fort and yearly shipped lumber to the Hawaiian islands and flour to Sitka. He es- tablished and maintained a number of trading forts and posts and made the part of the Hudson's Bay Company's business under his control the most profit- able of all its business in North America.
When he first came to Oregon the number of Indians in the country in which he had command is estimated at about one hundred thousand. At that time it was not safe for white men to travel except in large parties and heavily armed. In a few years there was practically no danger and small parties traveled safely in all parts of the country west of the Rocky mountains. This was due almost wholly to Dr. McLoughlin's personal qualities and his superb command and influence over men of all kinds. He was the autocrat of the country, yet ever tempered austerity with kindness, justice, and mercy. His subordinates and the Indians soon came to know that he was a man of his word whether it was for reward or punishment. He had no police or armed men, except the regular trade officers of the company and its employes and ser- vants. No one ever understood how to manage Indians better than he. Physic- ally he was a man of large frame and was fully six feet four inches in height. While comparatively a young man his hair became white. Usually his hair was worn long, reaching nearly to his shoulders. His mental qualities matched his
It was necessary that some one should be in command in what was known as "the Oregon country," being all that part of North America north of latitude 42 degrees north, the present northern boundary of California and Nevada, then Spanish possessions, west of the Rocky mountains, south of latitude 54 degrees and 40 minutes, the southern boundary of the Russian possessions, and east of the Pacific ocean. By a convention or treaty between the United States and Great Britain, dated October 20, 1818, it was agreed that for a period of ten years, the Oregon country should be open to the citizens and subjects of the two powers, without prejudice to the rights of either of them or of any other power or state, this being what is called for convenience "joint-occupancy." By another convention or treaty between these two nations, dated August 6, 1827, this joint-occupancy was indefinitely extended, subject to be terminated by either of the two nations by giving notice of twelve months, after October 20, 1828. This joint-occupancy was terminated by the boundary treaty of June 15, 1846, establishing the present north boundary of the United States, south of Alaska, from the Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean. During this joint-occupancy neither the laws of the United States nor of Great Britain were in force in the Oregon country, but Canada in 1821 passed a law, which probably applied to Canadians in the Oregon county, giving its courts jurisdiction of civil and criminal matters in the Indian territories not within the province of lower or upper Canada or of any civil government of the United States. No attempt was ever made to enforce this law on a citizen of the United States. By his own initiative, approved by common consent, Dr. McLoughlin, became the ruler or the efficient, but kindly autocrat of the Oregon country, as applied to the officers and employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and to the Indians. But his rule was just. On two occasions he caused an Indian to be hanged for murdering a white man.
In 1828 fourteen men of a party of eighteen, commanded by Jedediah S. Smith, an American rival trader, were murdered by Indians near the mouth of the Umpqua river, who took all of Smith's goods and furs. Dr. McLoughlin succored the four survivors, one of whom was Smith, and sent a party of the Hudson's Bay Company's men who recovered the furs, which were of large value. Dr. McLoughlin bought these furs from Smith, paying the fair value to the latter's satisfaction. In 1829, when one of the company's vessels was wrecked near the mouth of the Columbia river and the wreck was looted by the Indians, he sent a well-armed party who punished the Indians. There are other instances of retributive justice meted out by him to the Indians, which lack of space prevents the telling. The result was an admiration and obedience of Dr. McLoughlin by the Indians. They called him the great white chief and, from his masterful ways, his grand appearance and his long white hair, they also called him the white-headed eagle. The few extreme measures he took with the Indians were always justifiable under the circumstances. The unusual conditions justified the unusual methods.
There were no Indian wars during the twenty-two years Dr. McLoughlin had charge of the Hudson's Bay Company's affairs west of the Rocky mountains. The first Indian war, caused by the Whitman massacre, occurred the year after Dr. McLoughlin's resignation went into effect.
Never was there a finer, truer, or more acceptable hospitality extended than that of Dr. McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver to missionaries, without regard to sect, to strangers from any country and also always to rival traders. These traders were all Americans, for British traders were forbidden to trade in the Oregon country, under the grant of the British government to the Hudson's Bay Company. But as the head of this company in the Oregon country, he readily engaged in ruinous competition with rival traders, including Na​thaniel J. Wyeth. On each side it was always a commercial war to a finish. It was a similar competition to that the American traders engaged in with each other. Rev. H. K. Hines, D. D., a Methodist minister, who came to Oregon in 1853, in an address at Pendleton, Oregon, December 10, 1897, said: "My own conclusions, after a lengthy and laborious investigation, the results of which I have given only in bare outline, is that Dr. McLoughlin acted the part of an honorable, high-minded, and loyal man in his relation with the American traders who ventured to dispute with him the commercial dominion of Oregon up to 1835 or 1837."
In November, 1850, Samuel R. Thurston, the first territorial delegate from Oregon territory, who was unfriendly to Dr. McLoughlin, wrote to Nathaniel J. Wyeth, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the latter then resided, asking for information against Dr. McLoughlin, as to his treatment of Wyeth, when the latter was in Oregon in 1832 and 1834. Wyeth replied in a letter of praise and also wrote to Robert C. Winthrop, then a congressman from Massachusetts, saying that Wyeth had no confidence that his testimony would be called for by any congressional committee and that he would like to present a memorial in favor of Dr. McLoughlin. In this letter, after quoting an excerpt from Thurston's letter, Wyeth wrote Winthrop: "I have written Mr. Thurston, in reply to the above extract, that myself and others were kindly received and were treated well, in all respects, by J. McLoughlin, Esq., and the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company. . . . The very honorable treatment received by me from Mr. McLoughlin during the years 1832 to 1836, during which time there were no other Americans on the lower Columbia, except myself and parties, calls on me to state the facts." Wyeth forthwith sent a copy of this correspondence to Dr. McLoughlin and wrote him, tendering Wyeth's good offices in the matter, and saying: "Should you wish such services as I can render in this part of the United States, I should be pleased to give them in return for the many good things you did years since, and if any testimony as regards your efficient and friendly actions towards me and other earliest Americans who settled in Oregon, will be of any use in placing you before the Oregon people in the dignified position of a benefactor, it will be cheerfully rendered."
But Dr. McLoughlin's humanity was extended also to those who were not of his race. In 1834 he learned accidentally that three Japanese sailors, the survivors of a crew of seventeen of a derelict Japanese junk, which had drifted across the Pacific, had been captured and enslaved by the Indians a few miles south of Cape Flattery, near the entrance of the straits of Fuca. After great trouble these Japanese were rescued and taken to Fort Vancouver, where they were most kindly treated for several months. He then sent them to England on one of the company's vessels, whence they were sent to China.
In 1832 he started the first school west of the Rocky mountains. John Ball, who came with the trading party of Nathaniel J. Wyeth in 1832, was a graduate of Dartmouth college. On the failure of this expedition, Dr. McLoughlin engaged Ball to teach his son and other children at the fort. After teaching about two years he was succeeded by Solomon H. Smith, who also came with Wyeth. Smith taught this school about eighteen months, when he was succeeded by E. H. Shepard, a lay missionary, who came with Revs. Jason and Daniel Lee in 1834.
The first missionaries to Oregon were Methodists who came to Oregon with Wyeth's second party in 1834. The next missionaries were the Presbyterians, who came in 1836. Among the latter was Dr. Marcus Whitman and wife. Although none of these missionaries were of his religious faith. Dr. McLoughlin treated them with the greatest hospitality and kindness. He assisted them in establishing their missions, furnished them with food and other supplies, and protected them from all troubles and perils from the Indians. The missionaries who came later received the same kindly treatment and assistance. The first Catholic missionaries came to Oregon in 1838. These, too, he assisted as he ​had the Protestants, although he was then a member of or at least followed the practices of the English established church. It was his custom to read the service of that church on Sundays to a congregation of officers and employes at Fort Vancouver. He became a member of the Catholic church in 1842, and for the rest of his life was a consistent and devoted Catholic.
After the death of Dr. McLoughlin there was found among his private papers a document in his own handwriting, probably written a short time before his death, setting forth what he had done in Oregon and the treatment he had received. It is one of the important contributions to the history of early Oregon. It was presented to the Oregon Pioneer Association. It is published in full in the "transactions" of that association for the year 1880, on pages 46-55. In this document he says that he early saw from the mildness and salubrity of the climate, that it was the finest portion of North America for the residence of civilized man. He evidently had determined to make Oregon his home for life, and with this in view, in 1829, he located his land claim at the falls at Oregon City, where there is a large and excellent water power. He encouraged the French-Canadian employes whose services with the Hudson's Bay Company had expired, to settle in the Willamette valley. The first settler located a land claim near Champoeg in 1829. He furnished these settlers with wheat, seeds and necessary supplies at low prices to enable them to be successful, loaned them cattle and bought their crops of wheat at a good price. It was the beginning in Oregon of farming and of home life, outside of the Hudson's Bay Company. To this colony of settlers there added from time to time a few persons, mostly American citizens, some of these were free trappers, who wished to stop their nomadic careers, a few of Wyeth's two unsuccessful ventures, and other adventurers. All these were treated by Dr. McLoughlin with the same kindness and consideration he had extended to the French-Canadian settlers. He felt certain that these settlers would not interfere with the fur trade of his company, and he had also been informed by the directors of his company as early as 1825 that Great Britain did not intend to claim any part of the Oregon country south of the Columbia river.
Until after the year 1840, Dr. McLoughlin was a very happy and prosperous man. In that year he was fifty-six years of age. He was happily married. His children were coming to maturity; he had accumulated a fortune, and his salary was $12,000 a year and the country was to his liking. Few men at his time have brighter prospects for a happy old age. He had planned to erect mills on his land claim and live there when he retired from the service of his company.
In 1840, the Oregon missions, particularly in the Willamette valley, were a failure. Most of the Indians had died from epidemics in the years 1829-1832, and the few who were left in that valley were a miserable lot. They would not be converted, or if converted, stay so. But in the fall of 1838, Rev. Jason Lee went to the eastern states and with great fervor delivered lectures, collected moneys, and enlisted new missionaries, clerical and lay, to go to Oregon, ostensibly to convert the Indians, but in reality, as he said in his verbal report to the missionary board in July, 1844, "When the board sent out its last reinforcement (in 1840), its object in my view, and I believe in theirs, was that Methodism should spread throughout Oregon; for what purpose else, I ask, did so large a number of laymen go out?" A ship, the Lausanne, was chartered, loaded with goods, machinery and merchandise to establish mills and stores for mercantile purposes. The moneys raised for these purposes amounted to $42,000. This ship carried as passengers thirty-six missionaries, men and women, and sixteen children. It is usually called "The Great Reenforcement." The Lausanne arrived at Fort Vancouver June i, 1840. Dr. McLoughlin sent a skilful pilot, for the captain of the ship did not have any reliable chart of the river. He sent fresh vegetables, milk, and a large tub of butter from Fort Vancouver. On their arrival there Dr. McLoughlin supplied rooms and pro​visions for the whole missionary party. They were his guests for about two weeks, A few weeks after some of these missionaries were endeavoring to take for themselves Dr. McLoughlin's land claim at Oregon City. The Methodist mission, as such, did not officially take part in these proceedings. Some of the missionaries took no part in these actions. The mission took up a land claim of 640 acres north of Dr. McLoughlin's claim. The first missionary work on this claim was done where Gladstone park is now situated. In July. 1840, Rev. A, F. Waller, one of the new missionaries who had charge of this mission, was sent by Rev. Jason Lee to establish a mission at Oregon City. Dr. McLoughlin gave to the mission a piece of his land claim and assisted in building the mission house thereon. July 21, 1840, Dr. McLoughlin, having been informed that the mission intended to try to take his land claim, notified Rev. Jason Lee, the superintendent of the Oregon Methodist missions, that Dr. McLoughlin had taken up this claim and gave a general description of it. Lee returned a satisfactory answer. In 1841, some of these missionaries attempted to occupy what is now known as Abernethy Island, near the crest of the falls, a part of Dr. McLoughlin's claim. On Dr. McLoughlin's protest, this occupancy was stayed for a while. In the fall of 1842, after Dr. McLoughlin had made further improvements on his land, had it surveyed and laid ofif, part of it into lots and blocks, and named the place Oregon City, Waller employed John Ricord, a peripatetic lawyer, and asserted his ownership of the whole claim, except Abernethy Island, he result was that Dr. McLoughlin bought off Waller by giving him personally five hundred dollars, a few acres of land in Oregon City, and six lots, and a block in Oregon City to the Methodist mission. About three months after this settlement. Rev. George Gary, who came from the eastern states to close the mission and to dispose of all its property, compelled Dr. McLoughlin to pay $2,200 to the mission for the land he had given the mission in the settlement with Waller. In 1841 several of the missionaries formed a company called the Oregon Milling Company, which succeeded in taking Abernethy Island from Dr. McLoughlin. The details are too many to be set forth in this article. In 1842 Dr. McLoughlin built a sawmill on the river bank, near Abernethy Island, and a little later he established a flour mill. It was from the latter that the first shipment of flour was made from the Pacific coast to the Orient.
Waller and others who took part in trying to deprive Dr. ^McLoughlin of his land endeavored to justify themselves by the fact that Dr. McLoughlin was then a British subject, and was not entitled to hold a land claim in Oregon. But British subjects and citizens of the United States had equal rights under the conventions of joint occupancy, and the boundary treaty of June 15, 1846, provided that the possessory rights of land of British subjects in Oregon should be respected.
In 1845 Dr. McLoughlin tried to be naturalized by a court of the Oregon provisional government, but he was informed by its chief justice that it had no jurisdiction in the matter. The courts of Oregon territory were established in May, 1849. In that month Dr. McLoughlin, at Oregon City, made his declaration to become a citizen of the United States, as required by its naturalization laws. He became an American citizen in 1851, which was as soon as he could do so by law.
While small parties had come to Oregon from the United States prior to 1843, some of the persons composing these parties had settled in the Willamette valley, with the assistance of Dr. McLoughlin, it was in that year that the first true home building immigration came to Oregon. It left Independence, Missouri, May 20, 1843. It was composed of about 875 persons, of whom. 295 were men and boys over sixteen years of age. They were the first persons to bring loaded wagons west of Fort Hall, now in Idaho. After great hardships they arrived at The Dalles at the beginning of the winter season. There was then no way to take wagons further, except by water. Their supplies were ​nearly exhausted, their clothing was badly worn, some of the immigrants, especially children were sick. They were threatened with massacre by the Indians. It was then the greatness and humanity of Dr. McLoughlin was best shown. He prevented the assaults of the Indians, provided boats to carry the immigrants to Fort Vancouver, furnished food and clothing to all, extended credit to all who needed it without collateral, although selling goods on credit was strictly against the rules of the Hudson's Bay Company. He took care of the sick at the company's hospital without charge. He provided means for them to reach the Willamette valley, and supplied them with seed wheat to be returned in kind the next season, loaned them tools to cultivate with, and also cattle._ Although most of these and succeeding immigrants repaid for these advances, it is to be greatly regretted that a number did not, and thus caused Ur McLoughlin great trouble and loss, and were one of the causes which led to his resignation from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1845, which became effective in 1846. Without these aids, most of these immigrants would have sullered greatly probably many would have died from privation, exposure, and some possibly from starvation. The total white population, men. women and children in Oregon, outside of the officers and employes of the Hudson's Bay Company, prior to the arrival of the immigration of 1843. did not exceed two hundred persons.
The immigration of 1844, numbering about fourteen hundred persons and of 1845, numbering about three thousand persons, arrived in nearly the same destitute conditions as the immigration of 1843. They were protected, aided and supplied on credit by Dr. McLoughlin, as were the immigrants of 1843.
These early pioneers of Oregon were not adventurers nor mendicants I hey were courageous, strong and forcible men and women who came to Oregon to make it their home. They had the confidence in their ability to overcome all difficulties. A majority of these were from the southern states. They started without full knowledge of the trials and difficulties of the journey, many without sufficient equipment or supplies. They were not encouraged nor protected by the government of the United States. They came of their own initiative The assistance Dr. McLoughlin extended to them was not charity. It was a matter of humanity.
Sir George Simpson, the governor-in-chief of the Hudson's Bay Company, severely criticized Dr. McLoughlin for his assistance to these immigrants. Furnishing goods and supplies on credit was against the rules of the company, and it was thought that by so doing he was encouraging the settlement of the country by citizens of the United States called Americans, as distinguished from Canadians and other British subjects. In 1845, Lieuts. Warre and Vavasour arrived at Fort Vancouver, ostensibly as visitors, but they came as officers of the British army to report on the condition of affairs and to plan for forts and posts in case of war. In their reports they severely criticized Dr. McLoughlin The result was that Dr. McLoughlin, in 1845, resigned from the company. Under its rules his resignation did not take effect until the expiration of one year.
Dr. McLoughlin's assistance to these immigrants was not only humane but it was necessary. Had he not done so, it is not unlikely that Fort Vancouver would have been captured by these immigrants and a war between the two countries have resulted. This result, Dr. McLoughlin with rare prescience fully appreciated, and stated it in his reply to the criticisms referred to.
Before the arrival of the immigration of 1846, Dr. McLoughlin's resignation had taken effect and he had established, in addition to his flour mill, a sawmill and a store for himself at Oregon City. He extended similar aids to that and to succeeding immigrations as he had to the preceding ones. By the time the immigrants of 1846 arrived at The Dalles, the Barlow road had been made over the Cascade mountains, so it was possible to bring wagons overland from The Dalles to Oregon City. But the Willamette valley was so new and ​so largely unsettled, roads were to be built, houses constructed, and the country made habitable, that the later immigrants were greatly in need of assistance. This Dr. McLoughlin continued to render.
In this sketch I cannot go into the matter of Dr. McLoughlin's part in the Oregon provisional government, which existed from May 2, 1843, until March 3, 1849, when the Oregon territorial government was established. Nor can I state many unfriendly actions against him and his land claim by Methodist missionaries and their followers. These missionaries were the leaders of a local political party known as the mission party. Owing to the absence of many residents in Oregon in the newly-discovered California placer mines, this party succeeded, in 1849, i^ electing Samuel R. Thurston, a new arrival, as the first delegate to congress from the territory of Oregon. He was a ready speaker, ambitious, and not over scrupulous. George Abernethy, one of the Lausanne party, a lay missionary, who had been steward of the Methodist mission, had charge of their store and of their secular affairs, and who had been governor under the provisional government, had become the owner of the Oregon Milling Company and he and his son claimed Abernethy Island. He and other conspirators against Dr. McLoughlin, found in Thurston a willing instrument to carry out their nefarious plans. They succeeded, through false and malicious representations by Thurston to congress, in having a clause inserted in the Oregon donation land law of September 27, 1850, giving Abernethy Island to Abernethy as assignee of the Oregon Milling Company, but under another name, and giving to the territory of Oregon the rest of Dr. McLoughlin's land claim, the proceeds from its disposal to be used for the establishment and endowment of a university. Almost all of Dr. McLoughlin's wealth was in this claim and in the mills and other buildings situated on it. Dr. McLoughlin sought redress from congress, but he was unsuccessful. While he was not actually ousted, he could not move nor sell his mills and other improvements. It resulted in his practical bankruptcy. He died at Oregon City September 3, 1857, a broken-hearted man, the victim of malice, mendacity and ingratitude. He was buried in the churchyard of St. John's (Catholic) church at Oregon City, where his body has lain ever since. In 1862, the legislature of the state of Oregon restored to Dr. McLoughlin's heirs all of the part of his land claim given to it by the donation land law.
In 1846, Pope Gregory XVI, in appreciation of Dr. McLoughlin's high character and his humanity, made him a knight of St. Gregory the Great, of civil grade.
It is one test of Dr. McLoughlin's high character and of his true worth that now, fifty-three years after his death, his name is venerated in Oregon, and his memory kept alive, not only by Oregon pioneers and their descendants, but by the people of Oregon as a whole. His full length portrait is hung in the place of honor in the senate chamber of the state capitol among portraits of former governors of Oregon. His reputation is that of Oregon's greatest citizen, its first ruler whose autocracy was necessary, but kindly, beneficent and efficient, a friend of the poor and distressed, and the savior of the early Oregon pioneers. By common consent, without dispute and without jealousy, he is known as the father of Oregon.
FREDERICK V. HOLMAN.
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RIVALS OF PORTLAND STARTED FROM 1825 TO 1844