# The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811–1912/Volume 1/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II
1634—1834
THE LANDWARD MOVEMENT WEST—TWO DIFFERING MINDS OF CIVILIZATION AND INDEPENDENT MOVEMENTS OF POPULATION MOVE WESTWARD THE FRENCH CATHOLIC ON ONE SIDE, AND THE ENGLISH PROTESTANT ON THE OTHER MARQUETTE, 1665—LA SALLE, 1679—HENNEPIN, 1680—JONATHAN CARVER, 1766 ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, 1793 LEWIS AND CLARK, 1804 MAJOR ZEBULON PIKE, 1805 SIMON FRASER, 1806—ANDREW HENRY, 1808— JONATHAN WINSHIP, 1809 DAVID THOMPSON, 1810 WILSON PRICE HUNT, 1811 JEDEDIAH SMITH, 1826 NATHANIEL J. WYETH, 1832—LIEUT. B. L. E. BONNEVILLE, 1833 AND JOHN C. FREMONT, 1843.
The settlement of the west, northwest and southwest, from the earliest time proceeded from the Atlantic to the Pacific on two separate and characteristically different lines.
First: The French from the Canadas, succeeded by the English Canadians. Second: The English from the colonies, succeeded by the American rebels of the colonies. These currents of differing populations, ideas and ideals impinge one against the other, first in the wilderness of old Fort Du Quesne, where the city of Pittsburg now stands, resulting in war between France and England, and finally on the Columbia, a half century later, between the United States and England, for possession of old Oregon.
In this chapter will be sketched the men and movements which seem to have been in their inception more devoted to fur trading or religious interests than to the political aspect of permanent settlements. Having, in tracing the development and conclusion of the seacoast exploration of the northwest, gone only so far as that exploration resulted in locating and pointing out, as its final result, the great interior water-way line across the continent, that was to locate and build this state, this chapter will present the personalities of the great work of civilization in the settlement of this vast region by the white race. From the timid and tentative adventurings out from the Atlantic seacoast into the unknown western wilderness, two distinct and diverse lines of thought and purpose characterize two separate and independent movements of population to take possession of the vast unknown West. And that these diverse lines of thought and separated independent movements of people did as surely and definitely converge upon, select and build up this Oregon, as did the many-sided sea-rovers' exploration of unknown seas finally converge upon and select the great Columbia river, will be the thought and conclusion of this chapter.
The French being in possession of Canada, were the first to make the plunge into the boundless wilderness. And this final and successful effort to get into the interior of the continent was made only after a long and bitter war with the ​Iroquois Indians, who had destroyed the previously established Catholic missions along Lake Huron, and driven back the French to the gates of Quebec. Protection being finally guaranteed to the Jesuits, and a regiment of French soldiers being sent out to overcome the Indians, the five nations finally made a peace which assured an end of further hostilities. Starting from Old Fort Frontenac, at the outlet of Lake Ontario as early as 1665, we find the faithful priest, Allouez, braving all the dreaded dangers of the unknown, and following up through the chain of Great Lakes, and finally reaching Lake Superior, with Marquette establishing the mission of St. Mary, the first settlement of white men, within the limits of our northwestern states. Following this, various other missions were established and explorations made. Fired by rumors of a great river in the far distant west, Marquette was sent by the superintendent, Talon, to find it. Marquette was accompanied on this exploration of the trackless wilderness by Joliet, a merchant of Quebec, with five Frenchmen and two Indian guides. Leaving the lakes by the way of Fox river, they ascended that stream to the center of the present state of Wisconsin, where they carried their canoes across a portage until they struck the Wisconsin river. Here the Indian guides, fearful of unknown terrors in the wilderness beyond, refused to go farther, and left the white men to make their own way alone. For seven days the Frenchmen floated down the Wisconsin, and finally came out on the mighty flood of the Mississippi—the "Great River"—for such is the meaning of the name. With the feelings of men who had discovered a new world, they floated down the great river, charmed and delighted with the wondrous scene, passing through verdant meadowland prairies, covered with uncounted herds of buffalo, with the unbroken silence of ages they passed the outpouring floods of other rivers—the Des Moines, the Illinois, the Missouri, the Ohio, and on down to the Arkansas. Here they landed to visit the astonished natives on the shore, who received them with the utmost kindness, and invited them to make their homes with them.
But leaving the Arkansas, Marquette and his companions floated on down the Father of Waters, until greeted by a different climate, by cottonwood, palmettoes, heat and mosquitoes. Marquette was satisfied that to follow the river they must fall into the Gulf of Mexico; and fearful of falling into the hands of the Spaniards, reluctantly turned the prows of their canoes up stream and made their way back to Canada over the same route. Leaving Marquette at Green bay on Lake Michigan, Joliet carried the news back to Quebec. Shortly after this Marquette's health gave way, and while engaged in missionary work among the Illinois Indians, he died May 18, 1675, at the age of thirty-eight. He had fallen at his post, and his self-appointed work of enlightening and blessing the benighted American savage, and unselfishly consecrated his life to the highest and noblest impulses of the human soul.
MERIWETHER LEWIS Of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Leaving Father Hennepin, and coming back to his one-armed co-laborer, Tonti, we find that the Illinois Indians promptly banished him on the departure of La Salle, so that he had to take refuge at the old camp on Green bay. ​ from which point Tonti sent back to Canada a dismal report of all his troubles, and the destriiction of the fort at Peoria, and the probable death of La Salle at the hands of Indians. But La Salle was not dead. The lion-hearted hero of the great American wilderness was alive and equal to the great reverses of his fortune. On reaching his old home and establishment at Frontenac, he found it plundered and all his property wrecked, stolen, lost and ruined. But the daunt- less man refused to be defeated. To raise money in a wilderness and outfit a new expedition seemed an impossibility. There are a thousand promoters of all sorts of schemes in this state today, where there is fifty million dollars of money. But if all these thousand promoters were boiled down into one man (he) they could not do in Oregon what La Salle did in the wilderness of Canada two hun- dred and thirty years ago. With his eloquence of speech, his courage, his desper- ate determination to succeed and his refusal to accept defeat, he gathered a new party, of men, he procured supplies for a year, he laid in arms and ammunition to fight Indians, if fight he must, and again sallied forth to claim and conquer the mightiest empire of rich land on the face of the earth, for his God and his king. The grandeur and heroism of the man is simply paralyzing.
With his new company of men and ample supplies, he returned, collected together his old men, went on to Peoria lake, to find his fort destroyed and all the Indian camps in ruins, and the ground covered with the bones and corpses of the slain Illinois who had been literally wiped out by the merciless Iroquois. Then La Salle constructed a barge — not a ship with sails as he had told the In- dians — but a barge like what may be seen in Portland harbor loaded with wood or ties today, and with this comfortably outfitted, he floated down the Illinois from Peoria lake to the ' ' Father of Waters, ' ' and thence day after day on down, down, down, until he came to the point where the great river divided into three branches to discharge its vast flood into the Gulf of Mexico. The party divided. La Salle followed down the Western outlet, D'Autray the East,' and Tonti, the Central. They came out on the great gulf where not a ship had ever disturbed its waters, and where there was no sign of life. The three parties assembled, and re-united, proceeded to make formal proclamation, April 9, 1682, of the right of discovery of all the lands drained by the mighty river, and the ownership of the same by the king of France. They erected a cross as a signal that the country was devoted to the religion of the Holy Roman Catholic church; and buried a tablet of lead with the arm^s of France, and erected a slab on which were en- graved the arms of France and the inscription: Louis Le Grande, Roy De France Et De Navarre, Regne; Le Neuvieme, Avril, 1682.
The Frenchmen fired a volley, sang the Te Deum and then La Salle raised his sword and in the name of his king, claimed all the territory drained by the Mis- sissippi. A region "watered by 1,000 rivers and ranged by 1,000 warlike tribes; an empire greater than all Europe, passed that day beneath the sceptre of the king of France by this feeble act of one man." And now we can see on what slight and trivial circumstances the titles to continental empires of land turned in the easy-going times 230 years ago. When Columbus discovered America, Pope Alexander VI., of bad repute, gave the whole of it to Spain, and that dis- position of the continent was acquiesced in for a long time. When Hernando De Soto discovered the Mississippi river in 1539, he claimed the river and all the regions that it drained for the king of Spain. How the Holy Father ever ​
settled the matter between (he two loyal Catiiolic nations has prol)al)ly never been ascertained.
The sad fate of so great a man as La Salle slionld not be omitted from tliis record. Gathering up his i'oUowers, being unable to take his barge back, he turned his canoes up-stream and i'or many months paddled his way back, stop- ping to build a fort at where the city of St. Louis now stands, and organizing the Illinois Indians into an effective force to withstand the attacks of the Iroquois and hold the country for France. Of all the explorers of the west, La Salle seems to have been the only man who appreciated or tried to organize and utilize the natives in reclaiming the wilderness for the purposes of civilization.
After thus rapidly bringing the Illinois Indians to his support and the de- fence of the interests of Prance, he returned to Canada to find his friend and supporter. Governor Frontenac, recalled to France and the weak and foolish old man, La Barre, in his place. And this man, wholly unable to comprehend the great work La Salle had accomplished, treated him with cruel ingrati- tude, denouncing him as an impostor. He ridiculed the explorer's story of his explorations as a base fiction, saying the country was utterly worthless even if he had found such a country. Stung with mortification and exasperated by in- sult, La Salle at once sailed for France to lay his case before the king in person. The king met La Salle for the first time, and the great explorer made the speech of his life, detailing with a passionate eloquence the grandeur of the great river, the beauty of the great countries it passed through, the value of the forests, and the future of its commerce, and captured the king and court of what was then the most powerful government on the earth. Too much could not be done for him. WTiat did he want? He should have anything he asked for. He asked for ships and men to found a colony at the mouth of the great river. They were granted. The ships, the men, and women with them. The ships were good enough, but their commander turned traitor to La Salle and the colonists to found a new state were the scum of all France. They sailed for the Missis- sippi, but on the way the Spanish captured one of the ships and the other missed the mouth of the great river and landed at Matagorda bay in the terri- tory of what is now Texas. The ships sailed away leaving La Salle and his worthless colonists. They started a settlement where the town of Lavaca now stands. Sickness broke out among them, and they died off like sheep. Of the one hundred and eighty men and women who landed from the ship, one hundred and thirty-five perished within six months. La Salle made two efforts to get away from the doomed settlement and find the Mississippi, but failed. Then made a third attempt and got as far as the Teche river in what is now St. Lan- dry county in the state of Louisiana, where he was brutally murdered by the mutiny and treason of three of his men, shooting him from ambush. And the murderers, quarreling over the spoils of their leader, hastily suffered the same retributive fate at the hands of their associates; while one Jontel, the narrator of these bloody deeds, and only five others of all that ship's load of people, ever lived to reach the great river. La Salle was killed on the 19th of March, 1687. And the good priest, Antase, who had faithfully followed to the last sad end, dug his grave, bui'ied him, and erected a cross over the remains of the greatest land explorer the world ever saw, at the place where the town of Washington, in Louisiana, is now located. ​
La Salle had literally given his life to his king, to France, and to the ex- tension of the Catholic religion. According to the supposed law of nations two hundred years ago, La Salle had given France a good title to all the lands drained by the Mississippi river. And as it turned out in the current of his- torical and political events, that title was made good to France by the subse- quent action of President Thomas Jeiferson; thus showing what a great work and a great gift La Salle had conferred on his country. From that territory, and founded upon the title which the acts and labors of La Salle had given to France, and for which the United States paid France fifteen million dollars more than a hundred years ago, the following American states have been peopled and organized: Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Ne- braska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Indian Territory, and parts of Montana and Colorado.
But we must not forget that this was not all of the empire which the dis- coveries of La Salle conferred on France. La Salle had claimed all the lands drained by the Mississippi. In addition to the states named above, this claim covered Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Mississippi. France had already claimed the whole of lower and upper Canada, and for two hundred and thirty years, running from 1524 down to 1760, had held exclusive possession of the same, and from La Salle's advent on the Mississippi, had held a like exclusive possession of the whole of the Mississippi Valley for more than seventy years.
The relation and connection of this state of Oregon with this chapter of the life of the great La Salle consists of the influence which the acts of the explorer gave to the extension of American settlements and exploration towards the Pa- cific Northwest. It may be adverted to now, and enlarged upon hereafter, that the French nation and the French people have always been, whenever occasion offered, friends of American ideas and institutions on the American continent as against other nations. And this friendship has more than once been effective to confer great benefits not only on the United States, but also on the people of Oregon.
In 1753, England, by virtue of the possession of the colonies on the Atlantic coast, and especially the colony of Virginia, put forth a claim to all the ter- ritoj'y west of Virginia. The first public assertion of this claim by England was when Dinwiddle, colonial governor of Virginia, on the 30th of October, 1753, sent a young man named George Washington over the Alleghany mountains, to the forks of the Ohio to find out what the French were doing in that region. Young Washington, then only twenty-two years of age, took along with him an old soldier that could speak French, engaged a pioneer guide and struck out into the vast wilderness. Reaching an Indian camp twenty miles below where the city of Pittsburg now stands, he held a pow-wow with the red men, and they furnished him an escort and guides to go up the Alleghany river and find the Frenchmen. This was then in the middle of a bad winter. But nothing could stop Washington. He found the French prepared to hold the country by military force if necessary. He got their reply to Dinwiddle's letter, and returned to Williamsburgh, the then capital of Virginia. Washington Irving has drawn out the story of this first expedition of George Washine;ton in his
WILLIAM CLARK
Of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
To make a long story short, this was the challenge to France, and the prelude to the war which raged for six years on American soil to decide whether France with the Catholic or England with the Protestant Episcopal faith should rule America. It is one of the remarkable things of history that this war so decisive and far-reaching in its results should have been begun under the leadership of this young Virginian surveyor; and that it hardly had been closed by a treaty which gave nearly all of America to the English, until the colonies themselves, under the leadership of this same Virginian surveyor, should have disputed the rights of England and successfully made good their claim by a subsequent treaty which gave to Washington's work nearly everything the English had wrested from the French, and thus verifying the prophecy of the French statesman. Count Vergennes, "The colonies (said he) will no longer need the protection of the English; England will call on them to contribute toward supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking for independence."
B.y the treaty of Paris, made February 10, 1763, the whole of upper and lower Canada and all of Louisiana claimed by La Salle, east of the Mississippi river had been ceded to England, and the island and city of New Orleans and all of Louisiana west of the Mississippi had been ceded to Spain. By this treaty French rule disappeared from America, but French influence remained active by fomenting discord between the colonies and England.
LAND EXPLORATIONS TOWARDS OREGON—JONATHAN CARVER, FIRST, 1766
Having thus traced out the impulse given to the exploration of the west by the French, we turn to the American colonies and find that no sooner than the treaty of Paris had been signed, that the hardy pioneers of the border poured over the Alleghany mountains into western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The only Englishman we find in this flood of immigration is Jonathan Carver, born in Connecticut, who left Boston in June, 1766, intending to penetrate the western wilderness to the head of the Mississippi river. It is true there are many accounts of explorations to the far west which do not give any certain information, and which have a flavor of mystery if not fiction, but which it is not necessary to notice here. Carver's trip to the headwaters of the Mississippi is a veritable historical fact, and for many reasons, is of very great importance in any history of Oregon or the North Pacific. Carver was a captain in the British provincial army, and from necessity a man of education and ability to comprehend the facts coming under his observance. His exploration extended to a point about fifty miles west of where the city of St. Paul stands. Here he met the Dacotah Indians, and lived with them for seven months, studying their language and learning all he could from them about the country to the westward. These Indians drew maps for him as best they could on birch bark, which, though meagre and rude in drawing. Carver found to be correct when he had an opportunity to explore for himself. These Indians told Carver of the Rocky mountains; pointed to their location farther west, telling him they were the highest land in all the world they knew, and told him that four great rivers ​great rivers
ran down from these mountains in every direction. Tliis was true. From tlieir description, Carver made a map which we insert in this book. On this map Carver shows our Columbia as the River of the West, although the natives gave him the name of Oregon in connection with the country or the river, and it is not certain which. But it was from these Dacotah Indians, and through Carver, we get the word Oregon as the name of the Old Oregon Country, and the name of our state. Gallons of ink and reams of paper have been wasted in trying to solve the origin and mystery of this name ; and still it goes back to those unlettered sons of the forest. Carver undoubtedly tried his best to catch their meaning, and the true name of everything, and it is very probable that he did, for he was with them for seven months, and certainly had their utmost trust and confidence. It must be accepted as a mere designation, name of a place or country without any known reason or signification for it, just as thousands of other places have names without rhyme or reason.
Carver's idea in this exploration, besides studying the Indians, was to cross the continent and ascertain its breadth from east to west between the forty- third and fortj'-sixth parallels of latitude, after which he intended to have the British government establish a post somewhere on the straits of Anian. In his first expedition with promised support, the supplies never reached him; and when afterwards he revived the scheme with a wealthy member of the British parliament, their plans were iipset by the breaking out of the American rebel- lion and the war for independence. The British government had sanctioned the Carver plan which was to take fifty men to ascend the Missouri river to its headwaters, cross over the Rocky mountain divide and then descend the River of the West to the Pacific ocean, and build a fort at some strategic point. And it is perfectly clear from this chapter of Carver's report that the British did not intend to respect the rights of Spain under the treaty of Paris to the country west of the Mississippi. England was even then, within three years after sign- ing the treaty of Paris, making plans and taking steps to drive Spain out of her possessions west of the Mississippi, just as they had driven Prance out of Can- ada. But now they were counting without their host. In driving France out of Canada, they had Washington and the colonists to help ; but now they were to have Washington and the colonists to oppose them.
We cannot realize that at the opening of the nineteenth century the interior of the North American continent, now so familiar to every reader of public journals, was less known to the world than is the heart of Africa today. French fur traders had penetrated its wilderness depths to the base of the Rocky moun- tains; but what they found, or what they knew, they jealously kept to them- selves, so that there could be no inducement to other venturesome spirits to go searching for peltries and poaching on their preserves. In addition to this trade reason, they had been able to make doubly sure the silence of the Indian, as to what the rivers and forests contained. Of all the people brought in con- tact with the American Indian, the French were the most successful in getting and holding his good will.
Indians had no doubt crossed the continent from the Ohio river to the Pa- cific ocean. M. La Page du Pratz, in his history of Louisiana, gives a long ac- count of an Indian having become endued with a burning desire to find oiit whence came the American Indians, crossed the continent from Natchez ​on the Mississippi to the Pacific ocean and then returned. And there may have been others. We have authentic history to prove that Sacajawea (the bird-woman of the Lewis and Clark expedition) crossed the mountains from the valley of the Snake river to the Mississippi, and remembered the country well enough to guide that expedition back over the same route. But explorations of this kind prove nothing to our purpose—the development of the country.
ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, 1793
We now come to the first white man that ever crossed the Rocky mountains from the east to the west for a great purpose, and set foot on the shores of the Pacific ocean. He was neither French, English nor American—but Scotch, and Alexander Mackenzie was his name. He was a native of Inverness, knighted by George III. for distinguished services, migrated to Canada, and entered the service of a fur trader in the year 1779, while yet a young man, and while the British were in the midst of their fight with Washington and his rebels. This Scotchman possessed every qualification to make him a successful leader and governor of men; a fine mind, clear head, strong, muscular body, lithe and active, great resolution, invincible courage, tireless and patient energy, with the capacity to comprehend and manage all sorts and conditions of men. Remaining in the fur trade for five years as a hired man, saving his wages, and, biding his time, he cut loose for himself, and became a partner in the great Northwest Company, which to distinguish it from others, was known as the Canada company, for many years the most prosperous and aggressive of all the fur traders.
The great interior of northwest America was at that time but little known. In fact, nothing was known of this vast region beyond the incomprehensible accounts of roving Indians and the meagre reports of adventuresome trappers. It was just such a state of incomprehension and imperfect knowledge of a vast country filled with great riches, as appealed to the keen apprehension and profound mind of Alexander Mackenzie, and he resolved to find out the great secrets which the boundless forests beyond Canada contained. To prepare himself for this self-appointed task, he studied astronomy enough to find his way in untraveled regions by the guidance of the stars, and to take care of himself and men in all sorts and conditions of circumstances in distant explorations by land.
The trappers and fur traders had gradually worked west and north from the upper end of Lake Superior until they had reached the western end of Lake Athabasca, where Peace river, coming west from an opening in the Rocky mountains, discharges its waters into channels which carry it to the Arctic ocean. Mackenzie knew that up to that point, clear back to the Mississippi, there was no Strait of Anian, or water course from the east side of the Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean, and that if he would follow that water, then running due north, it would take him either into the great frozen sea of the north, in which ease he would find the Strait of Anian if there was one, or the water would turn west at some point short of the Arctic sea, and carry him to the Pacific. So, that with a birch bark canoe, four Canadians (two with their wives) and two smaller canoes with English Chief, an Indian, and his family, and followers of Mackenzie, set out on June 3, 1789, to float down with the current of Great Slave ​
river into Great Slave lake, and thence on down, down, north, wherever the waters took them, until they had solved the great mystery of the unknown Arc- tie. Passing from one lake to another, hunting, fishing, trapping as they went, the adventurous party finally in the month of July, found themselves in the Arctic ocean, where they chased the whales and paddled around miles and miles of icebergs, iinder a starless sky, and a never setting summer sun. This expedition was one of the most important in the annals of discovery. Mac- kenzie had proved the non-existence of the Strait of Anian, and established the fact for all time that no such passageway across the continent existed, and found that the watershed to the north was wholly separate from the waterished to the west. They had suffered no hardships or hairbreadth escapes, and they found a great waterway to the north in the same month that Captain Robert Gray had sailed through the Straits of Fuca for the first time, two thousand miles' to the southwest.
After an absence of one hundred days, Mackenzie returned with his party to his starting point, loaded with fine furs and having found both coal and iron ore at Great Bear Lake. Mackenzie was not satisfied with his first venture, regarding as something of a failure that which was in fact a great success. He had penetrated the mystery to the north, and put an end to the quest for the Strait of Anian which the sea captains had believed in and vainly sought to find for nearly three hundred years. It was one more dark corner of the mystery which enshrouded the Oregon country cleared up. And we see how the enlight- ening agencies of exploration and discovery were gradually creeping in on the core of the mysterious region, "Where rolls the Oregon."
But Mackenzie was not satisfied. Such a man is never satisfied as long as there are other regions to explore and other obstacles to overcome, and other duties to be performed. Three years after this trip to the north we find him again at the old starting point at the mouth of Peace river. But this time in- stead of floating down with the water, he resolved to go up stream, follow the river to its fountainhead and find, if possible, a pass through the Rocky moun- tains, and a stream on the west side that would carry him down to the Pacific ocean as had Peace river and his own Mackenzie carried him to the Arctic ocean. And so on the 10th day of October, 1792, five months after Captain Gray had found and entered the Columbia river. Mackenzie starts westward for an exploration to find this river. In ten days Mackenzie had reached the most western post of the Northwest Company at the base of the Rocky mountains. Here the natives and trappers received their big chief with great eclat amidst the firing of guns and general rejoicing of the people ; and many was the bottle of good old Scotch emptied on that auspicious occasion. There were three hundred natives and sixty professional trappers and hunters congre- gated there. Mackenzie not only treated them liberally to rum and tobacco, but he preached them a good sermon as to the proper manner they should de- mean themselves for their own good and that of the white man. From this point Mackenzie kept on west for sixty miles until he reached the point named Fort York, and to which men had been sent the previous sprina; to prepare the ground and timbers for a new post, which was to be their winter quarters previous to their last plunge into the wilderness over the mountains and down to the Pa-
pfm.
der the Iludsou's Ba^^ Company ownership, and rroni which point all the travel, messengers and olfteers as well as employes of the Hudson 's Bay Company, came over the mountains on their way to Vancouver on the Columbia. Ebberts was an American independent trapper, and Otchin, Baldra, and all the old Hud- son's Bay men of Washington county, Oregon, were perfectly familiar with that route and could give many interesting tales of its surprises and dangers.
Here ilackeuzie put in the winter of 1792-3, and by spring had all things in readiness for the final advance to the Pacific. With one canoe, twenty-five feet long, four and three-quarters feet beam, and twenty-six inches hold, seven white men and two Indian hunters and interpreters with arms, ammunition, provisions and goods for presents weighing in all about three thousand pounds, these explorers started for the Pacific ocean on mountain streams. The canoe was so perfectly made, and so light that two men could carry it over portages for miles at a time without stopping to rest. Where is the white man boat builder that could equal that canoe carved out of a great cedar tree by the un- tutored red men?
On the 9th of May, 1793, the little party left Fort York, pointed their little vessel up stream and was off for the great Pacific. Before them everything was in its native wildness; unpolluted streams, untouched forests, and verdant prairies covered with buffalo, elk, deer and antelope. Nothing could have been more exciting or entrancing to these lovers of the woods and waters of our primeval forests. With paddle and pole they propelled their craft up the swift flowing mountain stream day by day against every manner of obstruction and difficulties. Rocks beset their way on every side, beavers dammed the streams, perpendicular cliffs and impassable cataracts compelled them to take boat, provisions and everything from the stream and carry all around obstruc- tions for miles, to gain calm water on upper levels. Rain and thunder storms were frequent and the men worn out by unexpected and exhaustive toils, openly cursed the expedition with all the anathemas of the whole army in Flan- ders or any other place. But the great soul of Mackenzie was unmoved. He reminded them of the promise to be faithful and remain with him to the end. He patiently painted in glowing colors the glory of their success — and he opened a fresh bottle and all went merry again, merry as wedding bells.
On the 9th of June they were nearing the broad, flat top of the Rocky moun- tains in that latitude. They were short of provisions, and had to eat porcupine steaks and <vild parsnip salads or starve. Here they found a tribe of wild In- dians who had never seen white men before. They were now surely beyond the limits of all previous explorations. Assured at length of the peaceful intentions of the explorers, the Indians ventured near enough to talk to the interpreters. They exhibited scraps of iron, and pointed to the west. Further efforts elic- ited from them the fact that their iron had been purchased from Indians farther west who lived on a great river, and who had obtained the iron from people who lived in houses on the great sea — white men like these — and who got the iron from ships large as islands that come in the sea. And now we see these children of the forest beset by the white men behind and before, and there is no longer any secret the white man does not find out, and the fateful terrors of these white men have followed them to their land-locked mountain retreat. Terror as it was to the Indian, it was a god-send to Mackenzie. He ​from these incoherent descriptions of places, rivers, mountains and marshes, reckon that he could reach the great river, which he at once supposed to be Carver's Oregon, in ten or twelve days, and from the great river reach the sea coast in a month. Mackenzie got the Indian that told him the story to draw a map on a piece of birch bark, which proved to be a very good map of the region to be traversed. The Indian made the river run into an arm of the sea, and not into the great ocean. Mackenzie was sure the Indian was either mistaken or deceiving him. But he was doing neither. Mackenzie did not know of the existence of Eraser river. He did not know of Gray 's discovery of the Columbia, but he did know of Carver's reported account of the "Oregon River of the West," running directly into the ocean, and this was the only great river he supposed could exist on the west slope of the Rocky mountains. He recalled Carver's statement that he had "learned that the foremost capital rivers on the continent of North America, viz. the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the river Bourbon and the Oregon or the River of the West have their sources in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; the latter, however, is rather further west." And thus from these mere glimmerings of geography assuming what from this "Height of Land" flowed four great rivers, one the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, another south into the California sea, another north into the icy sea, and the fourth west into the Pacific. Mackenzie had been down the north river to the icy sea, and he was sure he would now go west to the "Oregon River," and find his Indian map-maker mistaken.
On the 12th of June, 1793, MacKenzie crossed the narrow divide of the Rocky mountains and found it only eight hundred and seventeen paces (about half a mile) between the head waters of Peace river and the head waters of the Eraser. From there on to the Eraser the stream was a succession of torrents, cascades and little lakes, making traveling very bad. But not a word was said about turning back. The voyagers had imbibed some of the spirit of the intrepid and irresistible leader as well as much of the spirit they carefully packed from one portage to another as a most precious treasure; and on the 17th day of June, 1793, after cutting a passage through driftwood and underbrush for a mile, and dragging their canoe and goods through a swamp, they landed on the margin of the Fraser river of British Columbia. Simon Eraser, for whom the river was named, after this route had been opened by Mackenzie, afterwards passed over it and pronounced it the worst piece of forest traveling in North America. We here include a copy of the map the explorer made of this region, which not only shows by the dotted line his course from the Fraser river across to Salmon bay on the Straits of Georgia, but shows that Mackenzie did not follow the Eraser to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia or he would not have dotted in the lower course of the river as entering the ocean down by our Saddle mountain near Astoria. But this mistake, arising wholly from making a short cut across the land to the ocean instead of following the river to its mouth, was confirmed by Lewis and Clark, who also supposed that Mackenzie had been upon the upper waters of the Columbia. Simon Eraser made the same mistake when he saw the Eraser, and remained thus mistaken until 1808, when he followed the river down to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia, three hundred miles north of the mouth of the Columbia.
TtlE CENTKNNTAL HISTORY OF OREGON 31
To ooiifhide the narrative oi Mackenzie's expedition across the Reeky iiKiuntains to the Pacific ocean, it is sufficient to add here that the Pacific ocean water which Mackenzie did reach is now known as "Bentinck Nortli Arm," an inlet from the ocean into which the Belhi Coola river discharges, aliout two hundred miles north of the international boundary. After exploring the coun- try sufficient to show that he had in fact reached the waters of the Pacific ocean, Mackenzie mixed some vermilion in melted grease and painted in large letters on the south side of a great roek under which his party had camped, the follow- ing claim to the country: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second day of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety -three. "
LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION, 1804
At the next session of congress after the purchase of Louisiana from France, President Jefferson sent a confidential message to congress containing a recom- mendation for an exploring expedition to the west, and congress promptly passed an act providing the necessary funds to make the exploration. The Pres- ident lost no time in organizing the expedition known in all the histories as the Lewis and Clark expedition, appointing his private secretary. Captain Meri- wether Lewis, to the chief command and Captain Wm. Clark, a brother of Gen- eral George Rogers Clark, as second in command. As a matter of historical fact, the President had already, before he knew of the signing of the treaty of session at Paris, perfected arrangements with Captain Lewis to go west and organize a strong party to cross the continent to the mouth of the Columbia river. This is proved by the fact that Lewis left Washington City within four days after the news was received by the President that the treaty had finally been executed. A large part of the year was spent in making preparations for the journey, and the President was so anxious for the safety and success of the men, that he prepai'ed with his own hands the written instructions to show the nature of them, and the great care the President was taking to have success assured, and the natives treated with justice and consideration. "In all your intercourse with the natives," says Jefferson, "treat them in the most friendly and coneiliatorj' manner which their own conduct will admit ; allay all jealousies as to the object of your journey ; satisfy them of its innocence ; make them ac- quainted with the extent, position, character, peaceable and commercial dispo- sitions of the United States ; of our wish to be neighborly, friendly, and useful to them, and of our disposition to hold commercial intercourse with them, and to confer with them on the point most convenient for trade and the articles of the most desirable interchange for them and for us."
The purchase of Louisiana and the great exploring expedition which fol- lowed the purchase is unique and unexampled in the history of mankind. After more than a century of enlightenment, consideration and development of this vast region, the momentous influences and consequences of that great transac- tion are not fully comprehended to this day. Vast regions and great nations, even those with more or less of what we call civilization, have in the history of the world, passed under the dominion of overwhelming military power, and lingered in decay or gone down to oblivion. But here is an empire of natural wealth in a vast region claimed and owned by the then foremost military power ​
32 THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OREGOlSf
on the globe, quietly, speedily and with a friendly hand, passing over to the youngest member of the family of nations, to be by it, in its inexperience in government, ruled and developed for the happiness and blessing of mankind. Not only does this ruling military power of the world, led and ruled by the most successful and brilliant soldier in the history of mankind, turn over this empire of rich territory to the keeping of the young republic of the west, but a greater power than the wealth and resources of the land goes with it — the power to rule two great oceans and dictate the peace of the world. Of the two master minds that wrought this great work, one has been denounced as an infi- del, and everything that was dangerous to the well-being of his fellowman; while the other condemned throughout the world as an unprincipled adventurer to whom fickle fortune gave for an hour the evanescent glory of accidental suc- cess. Shall we dare say that these two men did not consider the welfare of their fellowman in this great transaction? Shall we say they wrought wiser than they knew? Or shall we concede that there is a Divinity that shapes our ends?
So that in tracing the steps of this unorthodox President in the great task of acquiring almost half the territory of the United States, and setting up therein the ways, means and influences of education and civilization, we may form some opinion of his real character and great work. Neither President Jefferson nor anybody else outside of the native Indians knew anything about the vast region which had been acquired. Exploration of it by competent ob- servers was necessary to find out what the wilderness was worth. Captains Lewis and Clark organized their party of forty-five persons in the winter of 1803, and made their start for Oregon in the following spring of 1804. There were no steamboats in those days, and the ascent of the river from St. Louis to the Mandan Indian villages on the Missouri river, almost one thousand miles as the river runs, above St. Louis, paddling and poling their boats up stream, occupied nearly five months' time. Of course the party stopped along ;the river to hunt game for their subsistence. But as game was everywhere in plenty, this could not have delayed them very much, which shows what a slow, toilsome undertaking these men had entered upon. And it shows the vast changes in the country in a hundred years, where now railroad trains running on both sides of the river will whisk the traveler over an equal distance in one day.
On this up-river trip, the volunteer explorers from Ohio and Kentucky found many animals they had never seen before. The vast numbers of buffalo the antelope, mule-deer, coyote, and prairie dog were all new to these men, and excited the wonder of both leaders and privates. With all the Indian tribes the explorers held councils, telling them of the changes of governors, and of President Jefferson, who was so anxious for their welfare. The Indians pro- fessed to be pleased with this news, and as the explorers distributed gifts, pur- ported to come from the great Father at Washington, the natives agreed to everything, as they always did when there was anything to be had by being good. It is scarcely possible that the Indians at that day had any idea of a government, or the exercise of control by one man over a vast population, trav- eling as they did wherever they pleased.
THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OREGON ?«
to stop at the Mantlaii villages aod prepare for liousiiiji ui) until the spring of 1805, aud here they built log huts and the usual stockade familiar to the pio- neers of the Indian country in the west, and which they named Fort Mandan. The Mandans proved to be good neighbors, and not only helped provide game for the party, but invited them to their dances, which were numerous, fantastic and devoid of lady partners. Game had to be hunted, and generally supplies could be had within a day's pony ride, but sometimes the men had to go out fo]>several days at a time ; but in all their hunting forays were never molested by the llandan Indians. Their journals show that in one of these hunting ex- cursions the.y killed thirty-two deer, eleven elk and a buffalo ; on another hunt they killed forty deer, sixteen elk and a buffalo ; showing that for winter quar- ters that was a fine game country. But as snow came on, most of the game left for the mountains, showing that the wild animals know that they are safer in the rough mountains in the winter weather than out on the bleak plains.
In the spring of 1805, after sending back ten of the men who had enlisted to go only to the first winter quarters, and who carried back with them the rec- ord of their exploration thus far, with some specimens of pelts and plants, Lewis and Clark broke camp and struck out through the boundless plains, due west from Fort Mandan. The party now numbered thirty-three persons all told : Sergeant Floyd had died on the way up river, and was buried on the bluffs where Sioux City is now located. Three men had joined the party at Mandan, including the French trapper, Charboneau, together with his Shoshone wife — Sacajawea, now represented in the bronze statue in the Portland City Park. They were now far beyond Jonathan Carver's explorations, and in a country never before trod by the foot of a white man. But few Indians were seen, but the whole country literally swarmed with wild game, vast flocks of sage hens, prairie chickens, ducks of all kinds, cranes, geese and swan, and vast herds of big game, bu&'alo, elk, antelope, white and black tail deer, big horn sheep, and so unfamiliar with the race of men as to be easily approached ; great herds of elk would lie lazily in the sun on the sand bars imtil the party was within twenty yards of them.
On the Yellowstone river Clark encountered on the return voyage a herd of buffaloes wading and swimming across the stream where it was a mile wide, and so many in the herd that the exploring party had to draw up in a safe place and wait for an hour for the herd to pass before they could proceed. The party, of course, had to live on meat as their main stay, and they got it fresh every day without going out of their course to find it, and they generally ate up one buft'alo or an elk and one deer, or four deer, a day. And here for the first time they struck that terror of the Rocky mountains, the grizzly bear. No other traveler or explorer ever gave any account of this bear prior to what we hear from Lewis and Clark. The grizzly was the terror of the Indians. They had never been able to devise any means of trapping him, and they had no gims to fight him with and their only safety from him was in flight. The first ac- counts given to the people of the United States of this monster bear were printed in the early school books, and were extracts from the journal of this expedition. The summer trip up the Missouri in their little boats was very pleasant. But the fall season of the year was rapidly approaching before they had reached the Rocky mountains, and they were warned by early frosts that ​
■S-i THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OREGON
great expedition was necessary to enable tliem. to pass over the mountains and strike some branch of the Columbia to float westward upon before the deep snows shut them in or out for the winter. Lewis and Clark crossed the Rocky- mountains about three hundred miles north of the point where the Oregon trail crosses, and here they found their salvation in the sturdy little Indian woman, Sacajawea.^' They got to a point that their white man's reason could not guide them, but Saeajawea had been there when a child, and she "pointed the way" to the Columbia 's headwaters, to safety and success. And by her aid as an inter- preter, and her kinship to the Shoshoues, the_party was enabled to procure horses from a band of wandering Shoshones, and by "caching" their boats and packing their goods and blankets on the ponies, they got out of the labyrinth of mountains, crossed over the great divide, struck the middle fork of the Clear- water; and made their way down to where the city of Lewiston now stands.
Here they got canoes from the Nez Perce Indians, and floated down the Snake river to the Columbia, and on down the Columbia to where Astoria now stands, and paddled around Smith's point and crossed over Young's bay and biiilt log huts at a point named Fort Clatsop, where they went into winter quar- ters until the spring of 1806.
With the troubles and experiences of the exploring party, during the long rainy season of 1805 and 6 at Fort Clatsop, we have no concern. The men put in their time hunting, fishing, mending their clothing, making moccasins for the long tramp homeward in the spring, and in making salt by the seaside out of the Pacific ocean water, some remains of the old furnace in which they placed their kettles to evaporate the salt water being still in existence after the lapse of one hundred and six j^ears. As early in the spring of 1806 as it was prac- ticable to travel, the party started on their return to the states. Whether the expedition, as a party, ever campod on the present site of the city of Portland, is uncertain. The probability is very strong that they did camp on the river flat in front of the town of St. Johns, which is a suburb of that city, and it is certain that members of the party came up the river as far as Portland town- site. On their return up the Columbia, the explorers camped at the mouth of the White Salmon river on the north side of the Columbia, and there it was that Timotsk (Jake Hunt), the Klickitat Indian, pictured on another page, saw the explorers, the first white men he had ever seen, when he was a little boy eleven years of age, making Timotsk one hundred and seventeen years old now, and pi'obably the oldest Indian on the Pacific coast.
The party pursued their way back over the mountains and down the Mis- souri river without loss, or anything specially eventful, arriving at St. Louis in September, 1806, having been absent from civilization for two years and four months. Their safe return caused great rejoicing throughout the west. "Never," says President Jefferson, "did a similar event excite more joy
" The name, spelling and pronunciation of this Indian Avonian, now in general use, is used in this history, because of such general use. But the claim is here made for the first time in history, that "Saeajawea" is incorrect. When the Lewis and Clark Exposition was held in Portland in 1905 Mr. George H. Himes interviewed William Shannon, an invited guest of I he Exposition As.sociation and who was the son of George Shannon who was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, as to the name of this heroine of the party. After reflecting and testing his memory Mr. vShannon distinctly recalled his father's pronunciation of the name, saying it was "Suh-ka-gowea" — the canoe-woman; — not the bird-woman. "Suh-ka-gowea," has the guttural sound which proves its Indian origin and correctness. ​
THE CENTENNIAL HISTOKV OF OREGON ;{r,
thruuiilioiil llic United States. 'I'he liiiiul)lest oi' its citizens li.-id taken a lively interest in the issue oi" this journey aiul looked forward with iiiipat icncc to the information it would bring." The expedition had ai-i-oniplishccl a Lireat work, for it ojiened the door not only into the far wrst, Imt to the shores ot the j;reat Taeilie, ami laid llir roinidation of n just national claim to all the regions west of the Rocky iiioiintains, lairth of the ('alifoniia line, up to the ixussian posses- sions. There is no othei- I'xpedition like it. oi- cipial to it, iu the history of civ- ilization: and i'Vfiy iiiciiiher of it returned to their homes as heroes of a great historical deetl. The ('resident [irouiptl.v I'cwardcd the two leaders with just recognition, appointing Captain Lewis governoi' cd' Loiiisiaua tcri-itory. and making Captain Clark governor and Indian agent of .Missouri territory. The oidy regretable eircunistanees of the whole great work was the untimely death of Sergeant Floyd, which took place, as before stated, before the expedition- got fairly started on the way. A great monument has been erected to his memory at the location of his burial near Sioux City, Iowa. The only miscarriage of .iustiee was the neglect of the brave and patient little Indian heroine, Sacaja- wea, who received no reward whatever. Both Lewis and Clark, so far as words could go, recognized the great service of the woman to the fullest extent, but gave no reward. The services of Sacajawea were equal to that of any of the whole party, and much greater than those of most of the party. She had not only paddled the canoes, trudged where walking was neeessaiy, and in every event done as much as a man. and that, too, with her infant babe on her back, but she had rendered that greater service which no one else could render — shv. had made friends for the party when they were in dire straits in the mountains, and secured from her tribe assistance in horses and provisions which no other per- son could have commanded, and when in doubt as to what course they should take to reach safety towards the headwaters of the Columbia, Sacajawea pointed out the route through the mountain defiles. And it was left to the noble women of Oregon — and to their great honor they nobly performed the duty— of raising to this Indian benefactress of the great northwest the first and fitting monument to perpetuate her name and unselfish labors — the heroic size bronze statue of the woman at Lewis and Clark exposition, and now standing in the City Park at Portland.
Many persons have entertained the idea, that, with the exception of the leaders, who were educated, and came from distinguished families in old Vir- ginia, the rank and file were rough and inconsequential characters, picked up around St. Louis. This is a great mistake : for they were, nearly all of them, men of great natural force and ability and selected by their leaders be- cause of their inherent force of chai'acter. As the author of this history was pei'- sonally acquainted with one mend)e, of tlie party, and with the family of an- other mendier of the party, the following sketches of them are given as fair samples of the whole force, and which will show the reader what character of men it was that braved the dangers of the unknown wilderness, and risked their lives in the most dangerous and arduous toils to navigate wild streams and scale frowning mountain bai-riei-s to uncover and uuike known to the world this old Oregon of ours.
Patrick (!ass: This mend)er of the Lewis and Clark expedition was un- doubtedly the most vigorous and energetic character of, the entire party; and ​
36 THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OP OREGON
notwithstanding some excess in living, outlived all his compatriots. Gass was the son of Irish parents, born near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1771, and died at Wellsburgh, in the state of West Virginia, April 30, 1870, nearly one hundred years old. The Gass family moved from Chambersburg when the boy was a mere child, carried in a creel on the sides of a pack horse, and set- tled near Pittsburgh. There were no schools in those days in the frontier set- tlements, and Patrick Gass grevf up as other boys of his day, schooled to hard- ships and dangers, ready and eager for adventure of any sort. He was not long in finding an opportunity, and joined a party of Indian fighters under the lead of the celebrated Lewis Wetzel, and had his experience in Indian warfare in Belmont county, Ohio, where the author of this book subsequently first saw the light of day forty years afterwards. Like other young fellows at that time, Gas^made trips down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans in "flat boats" in trading expeditions, returning home by ship to Philadelphia and thence to Pittsburgh with freight teams.
Gass learned the carpenter's trade, but when war was threatened with France in 1799, he joined the army and was ordered to Kaskaskia, Illinois, and while at that station, met Captain Meriwether Lewis, who was hunting for vol- unteers for the great expedition to the Pacific. With the aid of Lewis he man- aged to be released from his enlistment in the army, and safely made the trip from St. Louis to the moiith of the Columbia river and return to the Ohio. He kept a journal of his great trip, which shows he had by his own efforts picked up some book education, and his journal was the first account published of the expedition. When the War of 1812 broke out, he again joined the army and served along with the writer 's grandfather at the battle of Lundy 's Lane, where he was severely wounded. The remainder of his life was spent at and near Wellsburgh, West Virginia. In 1831, at sixty years of age, he was married and lived a happy life thereafter, having seven children born to him. At ninety years of age when the southern rebellion broke out, he volunteered to fight for the union of the states, but of course his age precluded an acceptance of his patriotic offer. Soon after this event he became converted to the Christian (Campbellite) faith, and was baptized by immersion in the Ohio river in front ■of the town of Wellsburgh, the entire population of the town turning out to lionor the event; and thereafter the soldier of three enlistments and two wars, the hero of the great expedition across the continent, faithfully upheld the banner of the cross. I am thus particular in making this record to preserve a suitable account of two of the most important and capable subalterns of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and not only because they were here before all the rest of us, one hundred and seven years ago, rendering great services to their country and to Oregon, but also because we were all from Ohio. The writer was personally acquainted with Patrick Gass, having met the venerable old patriot at Wellsburgh, Virginia, in 1857. He was then, at eighty-six years of age, a very bright and interesting man, and gave me a brief account of his great trip across the continent to the Pacific ocean, and of his trouble in preserving his journal of that trip.
George Shannon : The writer w-as personally acquainted with the Shannon family, whose name and fame is cherished as a part of the heritage of "Old Bel- mont County, ' ' Ohio ; and with Wilson Shannon, the youngest brother of
TIMOTSK
Hereditary Chief of the Klickitats—Still Living, 115 Years Old—Saw Lewis and Clark in 1806
Sacajawea: The last to be noticed in the Lewis and Clark expedition, but by no means the least important nor the least deserving of notice, is the only woman of the party—Sacajawea. And no words can better express the merits of this Indian woman than those of Olin D. Wheeler, who has said: "There were many heroes; there was but one heroine in this band of immortals. And at the start I wish to take off my hat to the modest, womanly, unselfish, patient, enduring little Shoshone squaw—the Bird Woman of the Minaterees—Sacajawea, who uncomplainingly canoed, trudged, climbed and starved with the strongest man of the party; and that, too, with a helpless papoose strapped on her back. All honor to her! Her skin was the color of copper; her heart beat as true as steel, and was pure gold. Through all the long, dreary racking months of toil she bore her part like a Spartan. Captured when a child and carried over the mountains from Idaho as a slave to the Mandan (Wyoming) country, and there sold to Charboneau for a wife, she rose superior to her sad lot: was the go-between in all dangers and trials with the Indians, a safeguard by her tact and native wit; she interpreted all Indian dialects, made clear all doubtful trails and pathways, guided the great party in safety to the great Columbia, and was in every aspect of the great national achievement a mentor to the wise men set to lead, and who thereby achieved almost immortal fame. No words of praise can transcend her just dues; and her fame should be a cherished and precious memory to every Oregon household."
Lewis and Clark frankly acknowledged their debt to the woman so far as mere words go, for her inestimable services. But these two leaders, and congress as well, are open to the most severe and unsparing condemnation in failing to make, or recommending to congress to make suitable and liberal reward in money, lands or a pension to this woman. And it is an ineffaceable blot on the names of Lewis and Clark, and an everlasting disgrace to the congress of the United States that this poor, lowly, humble Indian was requited with such neglect for the priceless services she rendered to the great nation. And it is to the everlasting honor and credit of the women of Oregon that they provided and reared the first and most enduring monument to the honor of the heroic Indian woman—Sacajawea. (The bronze monument in the City Park at Portland.)
38 THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF pREGON
The following poem by Bert Huffman, editor of the East Oregonian of Pen- dleton, Oregon, widely published throughout the country, ' fittingly commem- orates the just fame of that greatest heroine of her race, and the equal of her sex in any race on the continent.
"Behind them toward the rising sun
The traversed wilderness lay — About them gathered, one by one.
The baffling mysteries of their way I To Westward, yonder, peak on peak
The glistening ranges rose and fell — Ah, but among that hundred paths
Which led aright ? Could any tell ?
"Brave Lewis and Immortal Clark!
Bold spirits of that best Crusade, You gave the waiting world the spark
That thronged the empire-paths you made ! But standing on that snowy height,
Where westward yon wild rivers wliirl. The guide who led your hosts aright
Was the barefoot Shoshone girl."
EXPEDITION OF LIEUT. ZEBULON PIKE — 1805
The next year after Lewis and Clark started with their world-renowned ex- pedition to the Pacifie coast. Lieutenant Zebulon Pike of the United States army was ordered by the United States government to explore the sources of the Mississippi river, and establish friendly relations with the Indians whose ter- ritory had but lately been included within the boundaries of the new born Re- public. Taking twenty men from his military camp near St. Louis, and a keel- boat — no steamboats on the great river in those days — seventy feet in length. Pike ascended the Mississippi to its sources and hoisted there the United States flag. This exploration and this act of Pike's determined the point to which dis- tance north the United States could, under ti'eat3^ of peace with England, claim and maintain the northern boundary of this nation east of the Rocky mountains. Pike had not only settled that disputed point but he had made known the course of th^ river itself from St. Louis to its fountain head. Pike made other impor- tant explorations and discoveries among which is the mountain peak in Colorado, which beax's his name. He also mapped the sources of the Platte, the Kansas and the upper reaches of the Arkansas rivers.
And now we reach a period when private enterprise enters the field, pri- marily for furs and trade with the Indians, yet making important discoveries, beneficial to the nation and useful to the western pioneers and especially to the emigrants to Oregon. ​
EXI'KDITIONS OF SIMON KlIASER — ISOfi
III iiiiiiiy rcsprcis till' cxpiMlitidiis ol' Siiiiuii l<'r;iscr t(i the west side of the li'iirky iiiouiitaiiis were iiiiirc iiiipdi-tiint tliiiii that nf his more distinguished pred- ecessor, Alexander .Maekeiizie ; and for tliis reason lie more than Mackenzie was better entitled to the honor of naming the great river which his courage and liersistence explored and made known to the world.
The work of exploitation by Fraser on the west side of the Rocky mountains was assumed by him on his own initiative as a partner in and a commander of the emplo.ves of the Northwest Company. He had taken the place of ]\Iac- keiizie in the Fur Company's general business of gathering furs, establishing trading posts, and exploring the unknown western country. He, however, was not the first Scotchman after Mackenzie to reach the west side of the Rocky mountains. James Finlay, an employee of the Northwest Company had, soon after Mackenzie's expedition, ascended Peace river and passed over the summit of the Rocky mountains, made many important discoveries in the lay of the land and gave his name to a branch of Peace river — as Finlay river.
Eraser's expedition to the west side of the Rocky mountains was in the Au- tumn of 1805, when, following in the tracks of Mackenzie and Finlay he ascended Peace river and its Parsnip river branch to the Height of Land. Here the voy- ageurs were compelled to make a portage — take their canoes out of the waters that ran eastward and north to tlie Arctic ocean, and carry them west across the summit of the mountain until they could find a stream running westward to Oregon and the Pacific ocean. Mackenzie describes this mountain pass as fol- lows: — June 12, 1793 : "We landed and unloaded, where we found a beaten path over a low ridge of land of eight hundred and seventeen paces in length to an- other small lake. The distance between the two mountains at this place (The Pass) is about a quarter of a mile, rocky precipices presenting themselves on both sides." Fraser describes the Pass as follows: "We continued to the ex- tremity of the lake about three miles, and there unloaded at the Height of Land, which is one of the finest portages I ever saw, between six and seven hundred yards long, and perhaps the shortest interval of any between the waters that descend into the northern and southern oceans."
Fraser and his companions were so impressed with the grandeur and beauty of the great mountains that they named the country of their first discoveries west of the Rocky mountains "New Caledonia," in honor of what they chose to call their native land of Scotland. Fraser himself was born in the United States in 1776. just at the lireaking out of the Rebellion against Hritish rule; and his father, choosing to remain loyal to the English King, was driven out of Vermont as a Tory and traitor to the colonies.
At what date Fraser returned to the east side of the Rocky mountains in 1805 there seems to be no authentic information. Put in .laniiai>-. 1806, we find Fraser actively employed at the fort on Peace river called the "Rocky Mountain House." preparing- for another expedition over the Rocky mountains. Having been impressed by what he had discovered on his first tyip, that the fur trade possibilities on the west side of the mountains were very good, he determined to make a permanent settlement there in the shape of a fort or trading station with the Indians. And on May 20, 1806, we find Fraser taking an inventorv of ​
all the property of the company at the Rocky Mountain House, writing letters to his friends, turning over the command of the fort to McGillivray. and mak- ing a start on his new venture into the Great Western Wilderness. And although Eraser was far better equipped for the expedition than had Mackenzie been, and although he had all the benefits of the discoveries, landmarks and reports of both Mackenzie and Finlay who had preceded him, he was forty days on the route from the Rocky Mountain House to the summit of the Rocky mountains — a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles. During this trip Eraser 's jour- nal shows that he put in much of his time in abusing Alexander Mackenzie for alleged misrepresentation of the route.
After reaching navigable water on the west side of the summit, and repair- ing their canoes, Eraser and his men commenced the laborious and perilous de- scent of the rapid stream forming the head of Eraser river on July 2, 1806. These dates are given here for the purpose of showing their relation to the Brit- ish claim of title to the Oregon country. Both Mackenzie and Eraser believed at the dates of their explorations of the headwaters of the Eraser river that they were in fact on the headwaters of the Columbia river. If such had been the case, then the British government would have had a better claim to all the country drained by the Columbia river than they were ever able to show. Neither Mackenzie nor Eraser ever reached "the watershed of the Columbia be- fore Lewis and Clark ; nor did Eraser reach the watershed of the Eraser river before Lewis and Clark reached the headwaters of the Columbia. On the 18th of August, 1805, Capt. Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, reached the headwaters of the Columbia river in what is now the state of Idaho. But put- ting the most favorable interpretation on the journals of Eraser and his aid, Stuart, Eraser did not cross the Rocky mountains into the New Caledonia coun- try until the first of October, 1805.
Returning now to Eraser 's second expedition across the Rocky mountains ,we find him in Augi;st, 1806. establishing a trading post on Eraser lake in a com- manding position, which in time came to be called Eort Eraser. And in addi- tion to this post Eraser commenced the erection of ^another fort at the conflu- ence of the Stuart and Eraser rivers, which he named Eort George in honor of the King, and which has remained an important trading post to this da.v.
Eraser did not return back over the mountains to the headquarters of the fur company at the end of 1806, as might be supposed ; but he remained in New Caledonia, not a large district, during the winter of 1806-7, and continued his work for the company in gathering furs and in completing the building of the forts. And by the spring of 1807 the British government had learned of the successful expedition of Lewis and Clark to the mouth of the Columbia river as a militar,y expedition, and its safe return to the United States. This aroused the British lion to action, and orders were dispatched to Canada to have Simon Eraser complete the exploration of the Eraser (as they supposed the Columbia) from Port George to the Pacific ocean. Eor if Mackenzie or Eraser, either, were upon the headwaters of the Columbia river prior to Lewis and Clark, Eng- land intended to claim the whole entire Columbia river valley from the Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean as British territor.y by right of both discovery and settlement. Accordingly orders were dispatched to Eraser in the autumn
MACKENZIE'S MAP
preparation for an early start in 1808, and explore the Fraser (their supposed Columbia) from Fort George to its mouth at the ocean.
Fraser made preparations in pursuance of his orders, and about the last days of May or the first days of June, 1808, set adrift in his canoes on the boisterous river with twenty-one men and four large canoes. Within a few hours after starting one of the canoes was wrecked and lost. Within three daj^s from start- ing Fraser had reached the point where Mackenzie had abandoned the river en- tirely, and struck across the country' on foot to reach the ocean. But Simon Fraser never wavered at any danger or difficulty. With perils, dangers and ob- stacles to overcome that Avould have paralyzed any ten thousand men standing upon a line, Fi-aser pursued the course of the wild river with a courage that would neither halt nor consider defeat. Time and again his men begged him to alter his course and leave the river, and the Indians repeatedly warned him that it was impossible to follow the river to the great sea. But the hero of the expedi- tion was inexorable ; he followed the river along its banks ; he borrowed canoes from the Indians and took to the river where it was possible ; he packed his goods and baggage around rapids, waterfalls and impassable canyons ; he hired horses and rode along the side of the seething waters ; and he followed the river until its troubled waters was lost in the boundless ocean by many mouths a few miles above where the British Columbia city of Vancouver now stands. Simon Fraser earned the honor of naming the second largest river emptying into the Paeifie ocean, and he proved to the British government that his river was not the Columbia river.
Without any apparent reason or excuse the authors of Bancroft's history of the Northwest has condemned Simon Fraser as "an illiterate, ill-bred, bickering, fault-finding man, of jealous disposition, ambitious, energetic, with considerable conscience, and in the main holding to honest intentions." However, these lit- erary carpet knights of San Francisco are to be both pitied and excused for their judgments of men and things. Never having seen anything worse than the lions on Seal Rock at their Golden Gate, or charged down upon a greater danger than a schooner of beer in the haunts of the Press Club, they knew noth- ing of the perils, dangers and courage of the heroic men and women who rescued the great Northwest from the barbarism and savagery of the wilderness, and set up therein great states with all the glories of attendant civilization.
As has been stated, Simon Fraser 's father, also named Simon Fraser, was a Tory in the American Revolutionary war ; joined the British army to fight the American rebels, was captured by the Americans, and died in prison. Young Fraser was taken by his mother to Montreal, Canada, and educated. At the age of sixteen he joined the Northwest Company as a hired man. His energy, industry and talents were soon noticed and appreciated, and his rise in the serv- ice of the company was rapid. He lived to the age of eighty-six years and died at St. Andrews, in Ontario Province. Canada.
ANDREW HENRY — 1808
The next man to make a plunge into the great western wilderness was An- drew Henry, who was born in Fayette county. Pennsylvania, came west to St. Louis in 1807. went into the employ of Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard, who was en​
gaged in fur trading to the Rocky mountains under the name of the Missouri Pur Compan^y. Henry took charge of the trapping expedition of his company to the Rocky mountains in 1808, and confined liis operations to the upper Mis- souri and Yellowstone rivers; but being attacked and harassed by the Black- feet Indians, he passed over the Rocky mountains in the spring of 1809, and built a cabin on the far-east branch of Snake river, which ever since has been known as Fort Henry on Henry's river. This cabin was the first structure in the shape of a hou.se erected by white men in the great Columbia river valley. Henry did not cross the mountains for the sole reason of getting away from the Blackfeet. His original orders were to continue his explorations westward, and see what he could do in the fur trade west of the Rocky mountains. Not suc- ceeding in doing any business, Fort Henry was abandoned in 1810, and when the Wilson Price Hunt party came along in 1811 and sought to rest and recruit at the Henry cabin they found it abandoned and of no aid to them.
The next we hear of Henry is as Alexander Henry in company with Alex- ander Stuart (whom we left last with Simon Eraser at the Rocky Mountain House in 1807) now coming down the Columbia river to Astoria with two big canoes and sixteen voyageurs in the employ of the Northwest Company, on the 15th of November, 1813. Henry had left the service of the Americans some time between 1810 and gone over to the British. By the time Henry and Stuart reached Astoria the Northwest Company had concentrated a force of seventy- five men at that point in addition to the sixteen in the Henry and Stuart flotilla. The Northwest Company were then hotly and corruptly pressing their scheme of buying out for a song all the property of Astor, while Hunt was absent, and would very probably not have hesitated to have boldly robbed Astor if his Cana- dian partners had not betrayed and sold him out.
The next we hear of Henry is at a post up on the Willamette river — Fran- chere thought in his book somewhere near the present site of Corvallis — and to this post the remnant of the Astor party went to spend the winter of 1814, probably because Henry was an American. At all events; they lived on the fat of the land, fish, deer and elk being too numerous to mention, and captured without trouble. And so ends the Henry expedition to Old Oregon.
EXPEDITION OF JONATHAN W'lNSHIP — 1809
The next year after Lisa's Henry venture, Captain Jonathan Winship. of Brighton, Massachusetts, organized a trading expedition to the Columbia river by the way of Cape Horn, and two ships were secured, one of which, the 'Cain, was commanded by himself and the other, the Albatross, was commanded by his brother, Nathan Winship. They sailed from Boston July 6, 1809, and the Albatross reached the mouth of the Columbia river May 25, 1810, being over ten months on the way. The ship was provided with a com- plete outfit, and to her original ■ company of twenty-five white men were added twenty-five Kanakas, picked up at the islands, and being the first of those islanders imported into the United States. For want of charts, which did not exist on the Columbia one hundred years ago, and from ignorance of the chan- nel, and the stiff current of the spring floods, the passage up the Columbia was beset with much trouble and delay. But after ten days' cruising around on the ​
THE CENTENNIAL IIISTOIIY OK OREGON 43
hniacl i-i\iT. Wiiisliiii sclccird ( );ik I'liiiit on the south side of llic I'iver for a suit- able phire fur a sett Iciiiciil. This was so caMnl I'roiii Ihc oak trees growing- there, Mild it is hicatcd opiMishc Ihchicc now i-alh'il Oak Toint landing in the state of Washiiit;toii. Here Wiiiship cduarod a tract of hiiid,ivpai'ed it for a garden, and phmtrd it with a variety of seeds, and set Ins men to work eiittin^' loos I'o;- a house for a dwelling and Iradiiig post, and they had the strueture well up to the roof when the rising waters of the river overflowed their garden, house loeatiou and all. and eoiupelled their removal to a point farther down the Co- linnhia. Here the party stayed in a temporary camp until Julj- 18, 1810, when they sailed from the Columbia river, and having learned at Drake's bay of Astor's contemplated adventure to the river, gave up the project of making a settlement on the Columbia. "Winship's garden at Oak Point was the first culti- vation of the soil in Oregon for garden or agricultural purposes, and his wa.s tiie first attempt to construct a house in Oregon by civilized men.
E.XI'EDITION OF DAVID THOMPSON — 1810
The American fur trade was the first gold mine excitement experienced in the United States. And its profits were so large in the opening of the 19th cen- tury that many venturesome and energetic men were attracted to the business. And by the year 1810. John Jacob Astor, of New York City, had succeeded so well in the new industry, that he was contemplating not only a transcontinental but also a world-around expansion of his activities. To carry out his ideas in the then far west, he thought it advantageous to interest some of the fur traders in Canada who were better informed of the regions of the Rocky mountains and beyond. These Canadians were making money in the business, and on the first mention of Astor's ambitious project they took alarm. They did not want any coiiiiietifiou in the west, and especially they did not want Astor to get a foothold on the Pacific. And this for two reasons : They did not want Astor because he was a very energetic man. with ample capital and he would divide up the busi- ness: and also because he was a citizen of the United States. The Canadians could see. if the.v had not already been informed by the British government. that the location of an American trading post in Oregon could be made the foun- dation of a claim to the country by the United States. And so. upon the first mention of John Jacob Astor in connection with a hew fur company to operate in distant Oregon, the Canadians controlling the Northwest Company took art ion and at once secretly dispatched their surveyor and scientific man, David Thompson, to the Northwest, with instructions to make all possible speed and get into Oregon before Astor or his men, and forestall all of Astor's plans.
Accordingly, in June. 1810, Surveyor Thompson organized a large and well equipped party for this hasty expedition to Oregon, proceeding upon the usual route up the Great Lakes, up the great Saskatchewan river and struck the Rocky mountains and entered the mountains at what is now known as the Yel- lowhead Pass. He ignored the discoveries of Mackenzie and Fraser and kept fartiier south, relying largely on his own judgment of the rivers and mountains. But surveyor and astronomer as he was, he got his party into such a labyrinth of mountains, and where no white man had ever been before him. that he was completely at sea without uuide or compass. Here in the heart of the Rocky ​
mountains his party mutinied, and all but eight men deserted him, carrying off all the goods, stores and food supplies they thought necessary for their preserva- tion, and took the back track to Canada. It shows the character and capacity of Thompson, that this mutiny did not disconcert him. It was now winter, Decem- ber, 1810, and Thompson and his remaining eight faithful men set to work to make themselves as comfortable as possible in that inhospitable region, building a log hut and laying in supplies of fish and game.
Early in the spring of 1811, Thompson was again actively at work. His in- structions from his principals were to build forts at all commanding points, make a survey and map of the country and watch the expected expedition of Astor. Examining the region about him, he became satisfied that he was in a country not seen by either Mackenzie or Eraser ; and determining to find out where he was and how he could get farther west, he constructed a canoe and launched it on an unknown river. Then caching all his goods he broke camp and bid good- bye to the hoarj- mountains. He floated down the unknown stream to its mouth and there to his great surprise he — the first British subject to see — discovered the great Columbia river, six years after Lewis and Clark had descended the Clearwater branch of the same stream nearly four hundred miles farther south. Thompson struck the Columbia at the apex of the gi'eat northern bend of the river just where it tuxms to run southward to the Arrow Lakes. He was over- joyed at his discovery, and continued his course on down the great river with his eight men and their canoes, through the Arrow Lakes, the Little Dalles, the Great Dalles, the Cascades, on down, down, until he reached Astoria, July 15, 1811, being the first English subject to traverse the whole course of the Colum- bia river. In his trip down the Columbia, Thompson faithfully complied with his instructions, and at various points along the river stopped and built little huts sufficient to house a few men, and raised flags over them in the name of the King of England.
By the month of July, Thom2:)son had reached the junction of the Columbia and Snake rivers. Here he found at the abandoned site of the old town of Ains- worth, a large Indian camp, and seeing the natural and strategic advantages of the point, erected a pole, raised the British flag thereon and nailed the following notice on the pole: "Knoiu hereby that this country is claimed by Great Britain, as part of its territories, and that the Northwest Company of Merchants from Canada, finding the factory of this people inconvenient to them, do hereby in- tend to erect a factory in this place for the commerce of the country around." And by posting these muniments of title it is seen that the Northwest Company ■was quite as loyal to old England as the Hudson's Bay Company, although it was itself a trespasser in this territorj- as against its rival, the Hudson's Bay Company.
His intention was unquestionably to take symbolic possession of the country and to hold it by such rights, of discovery or possession as could be set up by the British government.
But he reached Astoria too late. The Tonquiu, Aster's ship, sailed from New York on September 8, 1810, and reached a landing inside the Columbia river at Baker's Bay on March 24, 1811.
When Thompson reached Astoria, he was most politelly received by Astor 's
Thompson had reac?hed Astoria, received a visit from two Indians (one of which turned out to be a white woman in disguise), clothed in the dress of Indians of the east side of the Rocky mountains, bearing a letter from Finnan McDonald, a clerk of the Northwest Company at a post on the Spokane river. This letter was addressed to John Stuart in New Caledonia; but the bearers of the letter, getting lost, wandered around among Indian tribes until they finally turned up at Astoria, having learned from other Indians that there were white men at that point. Defeated in the main object of his expedition, Thompson made the best excuse possible and proposed to Astor's representatives that he would leave the fur trade west of the Rocky mountains to Astor's company, pro- vided Astor would not interfere with the trade of the Northwest Company on the east side of the mountains. And if this offer was declined then the North- west Company could do nothing less than to press western occupation of the whole region, and to that end had already dispatched a large force of men to the new field, freely distributing the British flag to the natives along the route.
Right here the contest between England and the United States for the posses- sion of old Oregon commenced in earnest. The English had sought through the cloak of their fur company to seize the country by strategy. Thompson had performed a wonderful feat crowded with perils, mishaps and treachery of his own men. But he was nearly four months too late. The agents of Astor were beforehand. They had built their fort, mounted their cannon and run up the stars and stripes. The country and its great river was secured for the United States for all time, with the added inestimable value of a foothold on the great Pacific ocean. The services of these valiant Americans were worth more to the nation than that of a thousand President James K. Polks.
A more extended notice of the building of this Astoria fort will be given in connection with the chapter on fur companies.
THE ASTOR, PRICE HUNT EXPEDITION — 1811
On the 23d of June, 1810, John Jacob Astor, the founder of the wealthy Astor family of New York, a native of Heidelberg, Germany, and a citizen of the United States, then residing at New York City, organized the Pacific Pur Company; and while a private corporation in name, it was nothing more than a general partnership. Astor had been very successful in the fur trade in the regions east of the Rocky mountains, and this latest venture was planned on a scale far more extensive than any other American enterprise. A ship was to be dispatched from New Y'ork to the Columbia river at regular intervals with all the necessary goods for the Indian trade and supplies for a fort and corps of outfield trappers. And after discharging cargo at the fort and station to be established at the mouth of the Columbia, the ship was to take in the furs there on hand and then proceed up the northwest coast visiting all the stations of the Russian Fur Company, cultivating their friendship, trading for their furs, and after securing a ship's cargo, proceed to Canton, China, sell their furs, and take in a cargo of tea and China goods for New York city. It was a grand scheme; and here was the commencement of the present vast ocean-going com- merce of the state whose history we are now recording. It is worth considering ​
that from this humble commencement of one or two ships, handling only the pelts of fur-bearing animals, just one hundred years ago, when this paragraph is written that commerce has developed into an importing and exporting trade of fifty millions of dollars annually, and of which Astor 's big item of pelts does not now amount to more than one hundredth part of one per cent.
But the enterprising German was not to have easy sailing. Knowing full well the great influence, wealth and success of the Northwest Company of Canada, and that said company had no trading posts west of the Rocky moun- tains, south of the headwaters of Eraser river, Astor made known to them his plans and invited them to join him in his new enterprise, offering them a third interest in his company. But instead of receiving this friendly offer in the spirit in which it was tendered, the Canadians pretended to take the matter under advisement in order to gain time, and then hastily sent out a party under the lead of their surveyor, David Thompson, as stated above, with instruction to occupy the mouth of the Columbia with a trading post of their own, and to ex- plore the river to its headwaters, and seize all advantageous positions. But fully aware of this treacherous return for his friendly offer, Astor prosecuted his en- terprise with renewed vigor. He associated with him as ]iartners Alexander McKay, Duncan, MacDougal, Donald Mackenzie, David and Robei-t Stuart, and Ramsay Crooks, all men of experience, taken from the Canadians, and with them John Clarke of Canada, and "Wilson Price Hunt and Robert McLellan, citi- zens of the United States. The McKay named above had accompanied Alexander jMackenzie in both of his previously described voyages of discovery.
The articles of co-partnership provided that Mr. Astor, as head of the com- pany, should remain at New York and manage its affairs, and supply vessels, goods, supplies, arms, ammunition and every other thing necessary to the success of the enterprise at first cost, providing that such advances should not in any one year require an outlay of more than four hundred thousand dollars. The stock of the company was divided into one hundred shares of which Astor held fifty. The business was to be carried on for twenty years, Astor to bear all the losses of the first five years, after that, losses to be borne ratably b}' the partners ; but if not profitable for the first five years, it might be dissolved at the end of that period. The chief agent of the company on the Columbia was to hold his posi- tion for five years, and Wilson Price Hunt was selected for the first term. Four of the partners, twelve clerks (among whom was Gabriel Franehere, who wrote a narrative of the voyage), five mechanics and thirteen Canadian trap- pers, were to go to the mouth of the Columbia b}' the way of Cape Horn and the Sandwich Islands, as stated above, and commence work until Hunt, the chief agent, with his part.y, shoiild go overland to the same point. The ship, Tonquin, two hundred and ninety tons burthen, commanded bj"- Jonathan Thorn, a lieu- tenant of the United States navJ^ on leave, was- made ready for the trip and sailed for the mouth of the Columbia on the 8th day of September, 1810. The ship carried a full assortment of Indian trading goods, supplies of provisions, timbei's and naval stores for a schooner to be built on the Columbia for coast- wise trading tools, garden seeds, and everything else to start a self-sustaining settlement. And as England was then dogging the infant republic to pick a quarrel for the "War of 1812, and Mr. Astor had got an intimation thjit his ship, designed for peaceful commerce and settlement in distant Oregon, might be ​
iutt'iii'|iti'(l \>y n Hritish privateer, the secretary of the navy sent Captain Isaac Hull, with the United States frigate (Constitution, to eseort the Toncpiin licvdnd danuer. 'I'he Tonquin reached the ("ohunhia on the 24tli day of March, ISlI, and anchored in Haker's Bay. This first ship had sad luck in getting inlci llic river on this fii'st vo3'age to start the mighty current of coiumutcc, for cighl oT the crew were lost in examining the shores and bays of the river to mark oul its channel. On the 12t,h of April, the ship's launch, with sixteen men and sup- plies crossed over the river from Baker's Bay to Point George, and there and then commenced a settlement on the present site of the city of Astoria, and gave it the name it bears in honor of the projector of the enterprise. It was nine months after the arrival of the Tonquin before Hunt, with a remnant of his party, reached Astoria, having been harassed by the bitter opposition of the Canadian Fur Company, which had contrived to send a party ahead of him and arouse the opposition of the Indians to him, and which party under the lead of Thompson, reached Astoria in a canoe, flying the British flag just ninety days after the American flag had been hoisted on Point George.
The overland expedition of "Wilson Price Hunt is one of the most remarkable in the annals of pioneer adventure; and in its benefits to succeeding immigra- tions to Oregon was the most beneficial of all the fur traders' contributions to the settlement of this country. While Astor had but little difficulty in getting his ship off from New York, he was harassed by bitter opposition to every step of his effort to organize the overland party. While cruising the western towns of Canada and the United States for suitable material to make up a party he knew he would be beset with great trials. Hunt was harried by the bitter op- position of both the Northwest Company of Canada and the Missouri Fur Company of St. Louis. He finally gathered a party of sixty men together and went into camp where the city of St. Joseph, in Missouri, now stands, on <>r about the first of September. 1810. Here was completed all the details for the journey to be accomplished in 1811. In this assemblage of bold border men were four partners in Astor 's new company. Donald Mackenzie, who had been ten years in the service of the Northwest Company, accustomed to every phase of border danger and trial, familiar with all the tactics of Indian warfare, and a braAc man. There was also a young Scotchman. Ramsay Crooks, formerly with the Northwest Company, of great enterprise, and whose son. Colonel William Crooks was for years a citizen of Oregon and assistant to A. L. Mohler. president of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. Also Joseph Miller, a native of Baltimore, an army oiifieer and a trapper ; and the fourth man, Robert McLellan, a fearless man, of large experience in fighting Indians and the hero of many battles. There was also John Day, a powerful Virginia backwoodsman, a giant in stature, and for whom John Day river of Eastern Oregon and John Day in Clatsop county are named. Pien-e Dorion, the Frenchman whose father had accompanied Lewis and Clark as interpreter, was also in the party; together with two scientists, John Bradbury and Nuttall, the botanist, both Englishmen.
Having everything in readiness the party broke camp on the 20th of Ajjril, 1811. and commenced poling their boats iip the Missouri river ten years before any steamboats were seen in that region. They had got only a few days' advance up the river until the men commenced deserting on account of the fear of the Indians. Hunt had planned to follow the route of Lewis and Clark as far a.« ​
48 THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OP OREGON
possible ; but learning of the hostility and numbers of the Blaekfeet Indians who had given noticfe that they would destroy the whole party, he decided to stop with the Riearees at their villages on the river, purchase an outfit of horses and cross the mountains near the head of Platte river away south of the Lewis and Clark trail, and thus avoid the hostile Blaekfeet. Hunt must have left the Missouri river about fifty or seventy-five miles above the site where the city of Omaha now stands.
Having disposed of his boats and superfluous baggage, Hunt and his party left the Missouri river on the 18th of July, 1811, and struck out west into the trackless, boundless prairies of Nebraska with forty-eight men, one Indian woman and two children, and eighty-two pack horses loaded with luggage, goods and all sorts of supplies to carry them from the Missouri river to Astoria, Ore- gon; nearly all the men being on foot and carrying their arms ready for an Indian fight at any time. When the party reached the country of the Cheyennes, they obtained thirty-six more horses and divided up the packs and gave a horse to ride and tie alternately to each two men. Here bearing to the north the party skirted around the Black Hills in Wyoming and passed over the great coal and gold region of that country without seeing anything but Indians and buffaloes, and then struck westward along the dividing ridge between the watersheds of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. By the end of August they had reached the Big Horn mountains and were in the country of the Crow Indians. Continuing on westward until they struck Wind river valley they followed up that stream for five days. But finding no game and their food supplies running short, the party changed its course to the southwest until it struck a branch of the Colo- rado, now called Green river, and once called Spanish river, because of the fact that the Spaniards lived far south at the mouth of the river. From a high ele- vation in this vicinity from which Mr. Hunt made observations in all directions, he discovered the Three Teton mountain peaks, and made out the guess that these mountains were at the head of the Columbia river.
The party were now in the country of the Shoshone Indians; and turning north from Green river they followed up a small branch of that stream to its source and passed over the dividing ridge between the watershed of the great Colorado of the south and the still greater Columbia of the north. Hunt had no knowledge of this region save what he could gather from a straggling Indian band, and the meagre facts gathered by Henry while he was on the Henry brajieh of the Snake river in the summer of 1808 ; although Henry himself did' not know at that time that he was on a branch of the Columbia river.
The Hunt party had now, September, 1811, reached the south branch of the Snake river, and finding it a rough stream for canoes, pushed on north over the divide to the north branch called Henry river, and found it a beautiful stream three hundred feet wide and apparently easy of navigation. They now thought all their labors and trials at an end. For concluding that this stream ran smoothly down to the Pacific ocean, although a thousand miles distant, all they had to do was to build canoes, load in their baggage and float with the stream un- til they landed at Astoria. Never were men more bitterly disappointed. They had absolutely no knowledge of what was before them. No civilized man had ever been through the region ahead of them and returned alive to tell the tale
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They had one good day's run, the loaded canoes gliding swiftly down the placid river, passing the confluence of the two branches of the stream and enabling the party to camp before night on the banks of the main river. But the next day brought trouble and danger. From a broad unruffled stream the river changed into a series of dangerous rapids in one of which one canoe was wrecked and another filled with water and the goods damaged. The next day the dangers multiplied; a laborious and dangerous portage was made, and later on a waterfall of the whole river required another portage, and still farther on another canoe was wrecked and one man lost his life. Dangers thus multiplying, it was decided to send ahead scouts to examine the river before again trusting their canoes and lives to the boiling whirlpools. Accordingly two parties were sent out to examine the stream; one down the left-hand side and the other down the right side, and at the end of four days, after examining the river for forty miles. they returned and reported Snake river a succession of dangerous rapids. whirlpools and waterfalls that no canoe could ever pass. Here was a misadventure calculated to appall the stoutest heart, and well nigh seemed to be a catastrophe that would wreck the whole undertaking. In the heart of what seemed a boundless desert, on a wild stream that forbid even a crossing, without a single pack horse, with rapidly vanishing supplies of food, at the near approach of winter, and utterly ignorant of the country before them to be traversed before reaching their goal, a more hopeless situation could hardly be imagined. That they survived and overcame dangers and obstacles that could not be foreseen or imagined. shows the fibre, courage and endurance of men whose like or equal has never been seen in any other part of the world.
On reaching this jumping-off place on the river, a picture of which is given on another page. it was called "Caldron Linn," but on parting with it in disgust they named it "The Devil's Scuttle Hole." Bravely facing the inevitable, Hunt and his men set to work to march a thousand miles to Astoria on foot, not calculating on any aid from Indians or canoes. After concealing in caches the goods they could not pack the men divided into four parties. Crooks with five men should return to Fort Henry, over two hundred miles, get their horses and return as quickly as possible to relieve the situation. Mackenzie with five men should strike northward and find another branch of the Columbia river; Reed with three men, and McLellan with three men, should descend the river, one party on each side, while Hunt with the balance of the party—thirty-one men and the Indian wife and children of Pierre Dorion—would advance through the sage brush desert of Idaho. But they had scarcely completed the arrangements for their march when the Crooks party suddenly returned accounting it as hopeless to recover the horses and return to the party before deep snow would ​
set in. And soon Reed's men returned reporting it imiDossible to descend tlie river by land or water. Tlien altering tlieir plans it was agreed that Hunt, with eighteen men, Dorion and his family, should follow down the right bank of the river and Crooks and the remainder of the party should follow down the left bank of the river, and in that way possibly get some food from Indians on either side. The pack of each man to carry was now reduced to twenty pounds, with not more than seven and a half pounds of food to the man, while yet a thousand miles lay between them and Astoria.
The record of the trials and sufferings of these men slowly toiling along through sage brush, over rocks, sand and a trackless desert without chart or guide is one that can scarcely be considered possible. Often they suffered for water, although the water in the boiling river lay below them behind perpendic- ular walls of rock. Occasionally they could get a few dried fish from half starved Indians, or a dog or skeleton horse. Anything and everything to sustain life was food to them as they toiled along with torn moccasins and bleeding feet making sometimes thirty miles and again only three miles a day — sleeping with- out shelter on the bare ground under rocks or trees, anywhere — and to all this was added the distress of the cold rains and snows of bleak December days. One morning about a month after Crooks and Hunt had separated, Hunt heard feeble cries across the river and looking up beheld the emaciated form of Crooks on the other side of the river begging for food. Crooks and his men had been reduced to the verge of cannibalism. They had lived on the carcass of one beaver for days. On the carcass of a dog for other days. Had eaten all the wild berries to be found and finally eaten their moccasins. A boat was hastily improvised out of a horse hide stretched over willow sprouts and food was sent across the river to the starving men. One of the men desired to return with the boat and was taken in ; but as he neared the shore the sight of cooking food upset his mind and with a gibberish laugh and shouf he toppled out of the boat and was drowned. Crooks had gone down the Snake river canyon as far as it was possible for men to go and had been compelled to retrace his steps when he was thus discovered by Hunt. On hearing this report from Crooks, Hunt resolved to turn back. This he did. Crooks still keeping on the west side of the river. Both parties then returned up the river to a point afterwards known as "Olds Perry," a picture of which is given on another page, and where many thousands of immigrants in after years crossed over to Oregon, Here they found an In-' dian camp and set to work to get their aid to help or show the way to the Colum- bia river. An Indian was found that could act as a guide, but he was loth to make the venture. Every argument and inducement that could be thought of was offered him for his services, but nothing seemed to move him. They would furnish horses to carry the party over^ the first ridge of mountains, but no guide would go. Finally Hunt offered a blanket full of trinkets, three knives, two horses for the guide, a gun and a pistol. The guide was the poorest man in his tribe. To accept this offer he would be at once the richest man in the tribe. Filthy lucre was too great a temptation, and the barbarian yielded and became the guide, led the famishing party of explorers through the valleys of what is now Baker county,' through the beautiful Grande Ronde valley, over the Blue mountains, and reaching the grassy slopes of sunshine of the Umatillas on the 8th of January, 1812 — and the Hunt party was saved — saved by the red man.
​The party of five led by Reed and Mackenzie had succeeded better than all the others. By pushing down the east side of the Snake while they were fresh and strong they got past the worst of the mountains before the snows fell on them; crossed over Salmon river, and down the long ridge over the great Florence gold mine deposits, on down to Camas prairie where the town of Grangeville now flourishes, and on down to the towns of the Nez Perce Indians. Here they were received as friends and all their wants for food freely and fully supplied; and when rested and recuperated. were furnished with canoes on which they floated down the Clearwater to the Snake, and down the Snake to the great Columbia, and down the Columbia to Astoria where they were the first of the Hunt party to report for duty, reaching Fort Astoria on the 18th of January, 1812.
Returning again to Hunt where he was left with the Indians on the Umatilla on the 8th of January, we find him busy repairing damages and getting horses and provisions to push on down the river. On January 20th, Hunt and his remaining men left the Umatilla on horses and pushed on to The Dalles, and there getting canoes from the Indians at once dropped down the Columbia where they all arrived on the 15th of February, 1812. having been ten months lacking fivedays since they broke camp on the Missouri river for their world-renowned trip across the western wilderness of America. Counting the crooks and bends of their route they traveled over thirty-five hundred miles in ten months of hardships and perils unparalleled in the history of the world. The two parties met at Astoria with inexpressible joy. and the bronzed heroes of the mountains embraced each other with tears and kisses like children.
The War of 1812 with England breaking out soon after, and before any sufficient effort could be made to prove the practical success of the enterprise, and while Mr. Hunt was absent to Alaska on a trading expedition with the Beaver—a second ship that Astor had sent out with supplies and men—two of Astor's partners, Macdougall and MacTavish, turned traitor to the enterprise and sold it out to the Canadian Company for fifty-eight thousand dollars, property which had cost Astor over two hundred and fifty thousand, together with a large amount of furs that had been accumulated. They had not only betrayed and robbed their partner of his property in the absence of his American agent, but they conspired to turn the fort and all its property and advantages over to the British government, prohibiting the young American employees from raising the stars and stripes over their own fort. The whole disgraceful chapter of treachery and dishonesty to Astor and enmity to the United States ending with the seizure of the fort by the British man-of-war Raccoon, on December 1, 1813
This chapter of perfidy to Astor and seizure of an American fort and commercial post, practically put an end to all American settlement in Oregon for thirty years. There were independent American trappers who sold their furs to the Hudson's Bay Company, which succeeded the Canadian Company, but there was not a single American trading post. merchant or establishment in all Oregon that dared fly the American flag until Joe Meek. led off at Champoeg, in an appeal to "Rally around the flag, boys." in 1843.
After the ruin of the Astoria enterprise, Russell Farnham, one of Astor's men, conferred with Wilson Price Hunt and it was agreed between them that Farnham should undertake to get back to New York by crossing the Pacific ocean and making his way across Siberia and Russia to Europe. This trip around the ​
eartli Farnham uudertook and safely carried out. He took passage on the ship Pedlar and crossed over to Siberia. On entering Siberia, Farnham crossed the eastern continent to St. Petersburgh, where the American minister to the Rus- sian court presented him to Emperor Alexander as the bold American who had traveled across his empire. The Emperor received him with great kindness and consideration, and sent him on his way to Paris. After great exposures to dan- gers, toils and sufferings, such as no other man voluntarily submitted himself to for his countrymen, he reached New Toi-k, delivered his papers to Astor, ap- prising him of his losses and the ruin at Astoria, and then made his way back to St. Louis, where he was received as one risen from the dead.
INDEPENDENT TRAPPING EXPEDITIONS
But while the American enterprise was thus crushed out west of the Rocky mountains, the hardy pioneers were pushing out from St. Louis, to the east side of the Rocky mountains. In 1823 General William H. Ashley led an expedition across the plains. He met with resistance from the Indians, and lost fourteen men in battle. In 1824 Ashlej^ discovered a southern route through the Rocky mountains, led his expedition to Great Salt Lake, explored the Utah valley, and built a fort. Two years later a six pounder cannon was hauled from the Mis- souri river across the plains and over the mountains, twelve hundred miles to Ashley's Fort. A trail was made; many loaded wagons passed over it, and within three years Ashley's men gathered and shipped back to St. Louis over two hundred thousand dollars worth of furs. Ashley was a native of Virginia, com- menced selling goods and trading in the West before he was eighteen j'-ears of age, and manufactured saltpeter for powder before he went into fur trading in the West. The Indians in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company made war on him, on the upper Missouri, and he gathered an army of border men and drove the Indians, Hudson's Ba3' men and all over into Montana.
Jim Bridger — whose portrait we give on another page — is another St. Louis contribution to the winning of the west by the fur trading route. Bridger was another old Virginia boy, born in 1804. When ten years old, his father and mother having died, the boy began earning a living for himself and sister In- working on a fiat boat. Stories from the wilderness west stirred the lad, and when he was eighteen he joined a party of trappers and took to the Rocky moun- tains, and continued in a wandering, trapping, exploring life for twenty-five years. He discovered Great Salt Lake in 1824 ; the south pass in 1827 ; visited Yellowstone lake and the gej'sers in 1830 ; founded Fort Bridger in 1843 ; opened the overland route by Bridger 's pass to Great Salt Lake; a guide to the United States exploring expedition under General Albert Sidney Johnston in 1857 ; aided G. M. Dodge to locate the line of the Union Pacific Railroad, and acted as guide to the army in the campaign against the Sioux Indians. 1865-6 ; and received honorable burial at his death and a handsome monument over his re- mains in Mount Washington Cemetery by the people of Kansas City. In every respect Bridger was a typical pioneer American, plunging into the depths of the wilderness for the excitement of it, and to gratify a curiosity to see what was in the great beyond. He was the friend of the immigrants to Oregon, and wandered far out of his way to warn them against marauding savages and guide them on ​
THE CENTENNIAL lllSTOin'E ORIOGON na
tlieir course, ^l^' was never lost. Father DeSiiiet prouounceil Jii'idger oue of the truest specimens of the real IJouky mouutain trapper. LJridger's peak was named iu his honor; and in the capitol building of the state of ^Minnesota is the painting of a trapper in full dress, of which Bridger was the original. He aided Dr. Whitman on his first trip to Oregon, and in return, the Doctor c\it an iron arrow- head out of Bridger "s shoulder, which had been fired into him l)y a Blackfoot Indian. Nevertheless, the trapper retained no grudge against the led race, and took a Shoshone woman for a wife.
There were many others engaged in pioneering into the western wilderness toward Oregon for furs and Indian trade. There were the four Sublette Bi-oth- ers, all able, energetic men in their manner of life. Captain Sublette served with Ashley and brought him out. He had a rare faculty of managing the In- dians, but when he had to fight them, they always got the worst of it. Sublette was the first man to tame the Blackfeet. After a desperate fight with them at "Pierre's Hole," renowned among the Rocky mountain men as the greatest bat- tle with the Indians, the Blackfeet submitted to Sublette and helped him cele- brate a sort of Roman triumph on his return to St. Louis with a pack of Indian ponies, a mile long, laden with peltries. One of the Sublettes drifted as far west as California, as one of the foi-ty-niners, and there got into a fight with a grizzly bear, killed the bear, but died afterwards from the wounds inflicted by the beast.
And about this time there were scores of adventurous spirits pushing out from St. Louis to all points ranging from the headwaters of the Missouri down to Santa Fe and on to California. Kit Carson was probalily the most noted of these hunters and Indian fighters.
EXPEDITION OF JEDEDIAH S. SMITH — 1S24-S
In the .suHuner of 1824, Jedediah S. Smith, who was born in the state of New York in 1804, went to St. Louis and found employment with Ashley and Henry. And iu the ensuing winter they made their headquarters and home at the Hudson's Bay Company post among the Flathead Indians. In 1825 Smith returned to St. Louis, and in the following year came back to Snake river with a still larger company of trappers. Pushing his way west and south, trapping as he went, passing probably down through the Harney Valley and Klamath Lake regions to the head of the Sacramento river, he is found on San Francisco bay in 1827. After sizing up the California region and not liking the rule of the Spaniard and the priest, Smith with nineteen men left California, and pro- ceeded along up the Pacific coast trapping as he went. This expedition is re- markable in that, standing alone, it is the only expedition of a large company that made the trip between Oregon and California along the sea coast, instead of by the more open and far easier route by the Sacramento, Umpqua and Willamette valleys.
This adventure of Smith i)roved a most disastrous affair to him and his men. By the time the party had reached the Umpqua river they had taken furs to the amount of twenty thousand dollars in value. But here they came in contact with with a relentless foe — the Rogue River Indians. The Rogue Rivers, having their home in the beautiful Rogue River valley in Jackson county, roved over ​
the whole region west to the Pacific ocean, and dominated all the lesser tribes of the Umpqua, Coos Baj^ and the Coquille. Smith and his partj' were received with outward signs of friendship, and spent one night on an island near the mouth of the Umpqua river. The next morning after breakfast Smith and one of his men left camp to find a foi'ding place to cross the river, and no sooner were they out of sight of the camp than an attack was made by a concealed band of Indians and fifteen men killed outright. Hearing the shouts and yells Smith hastily returned to camp only to see his men killed and his furs seized by the Indians. He could do nothing but seek safety in flight. He fled across the river with his one man, and after many trials and great suffering they both reached Fort Vancouver in safety. Two other men of the party, Arthur Black and a man named Turner succeeded in getting away with their lives after a terrific hand to hand fight with the savages. Turner killed four of the Indians with a club, and Black, a physically powerful man, with bare hands knocked the sav- • ages right and left until he got into the forest and escaped. Both of these men also succeeded in reaching Fort Vancouver nearly naked, having only shirt and trousers on, and living for ten days on snails, toads and fern roots.
And now it is seen what sort of a man Dr. John McLoughlin was. When poor Smith, a rival trapper to the Hudson's Bay Company, crept into the recep- tion hall of Fort Vancouver bareheaded and barefooted, McLoughlin listened at- tentively to his tale of woe. All sorts of stories have been given by Oregon histo- rians, not only about this massacre of the Smith party, but also of the conduct of the Hudson 's Baj- Company in relation thereto. Judgment can only be fairly rendered upon known and indisputable facts. On hearing Smith's story, Mc- Loughlin promptly ordered his field captain, Thos. McKay, to take fifty men with twenty pack horses and go to the Umpqua river to the scene of the mas- sacre with all possible haste and recover Smith's furs from the Indians. This McKay did, notwithstanding Smith thought it useless because he thought it would be impossible to recover the furs. McKay did as ordered, and within two weeks was back again to Vancouver with nearlj^ all the furs that had been stolen. Now if McLoughlin had been so minded, it would have been easy for him to have forced hard terms on poor Smith. Btit he took no advantage of the situa- tion. But for the horses that were lost on the trip McLoughlin charged four dollars each, and for the time of his men he charged at the rate of sixty dollars a year, and gave Smith a draft on London for the market price of the furs in Oregon. Mrs. Victor in her book entitled ' ' The River of the West, ' ' referring to this experience of Smith with the Hudson's Bay Company, says (p. 35) : "That George Simpson, the governor of the Hudson's Ba.y Company, chanced to be spending the winter at Vancouver, and offered to send Smith to London the fol- lowing summer in the company 's vessel, where he might dispose of his furs him- self to advantage; but Smith declined this offer, sold the furs to McLoughlin, and returned in the spring to the Rocky mountains. ' ' -Joe Meek is undoubtedly her authority for this statement; and Joe Meek was never a partisan of the Hudson's Bay Company. Smith was a man of great energy and perseverance. No sooner had he got paid for these furs seized by the Indian murderers, but he was off again to distant St. Louis to organize another expedition. But Smith not re- turning to St. Louis as his partners expected, a party was sent out to hunt him lip. The party proceeded to the head of Snake river where Smith and his men
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were last Iwiwtl I'l'diii in 1S27. and Smith was foiuul alom- in " I'ici'iv's Hole," ;i deep mountain valley at tiu' fountain head of Snake river. The redoubtable .)oe Meek, then a stripling, was one of the party to rescue Smith from the wilderness. Smith returned to St, Louis and witii his partners, Jackson and Sublette, or- ganized and sent out the lii'st train of wagons from the Missouri to the Uockv mountains, July 16, 1829.
Jedediah Smith's contril)ution to the settlement of Oi-egon was not lar'ge. but lie unquestionably did add largely to the interest in Oregon liy his knowl- edge of the country given to fur traders and other business men at St. Louis. Misfortune seemed to pursue him throughout his career. His last venture was from St. Louis to Santa Fe, during which he got into a battle with the Comanche Indians on the Cimmaron river and lost his life in 183L
CAPTAIN N-. J. WYETH'« EXPEDITIONS — 1.S32
Another successful explorer was Cajjtain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Massachu- setts, who made two overland expeditions to Oregon. These were nest to Astor's the second purely commercial ventures to Oregon by American citizens. At the same time he started his first party overland to Oregon, he dispatched a ship from Boston ladened with goods, estimating that the ship would reach the Columbia river about the time the overland party would reach the Willamette valley. The ship was never heard from afterwards, and the overland party reached Fort Vancouver on the 29th of October, 1832. It was Wyeth 's plan to take salmon from the Columbia, salt or dry them for the Boston market, trade for all the furs he could get, and in that way get a return cargo for his ship and do a profitable business. The loss of the ship defeated his first expedition. But it brought out some men who took root and grew up with the country. John Ball was one of them, and he is the man that opened the first school (at Van- couver) in all the vast region of old Oregon November, 1832. The school was not a success, but it was a starter. Then Solomon H. Smith, another one of the Wyeth party, in ^larch, 1833, opened a school at old Vancouver under an en- gagement with Dr. McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, to teach for six months. Smith expected to teach an English school, but found a great confusion of tongues. The pupils came in, all speakin.s' their native tongues and each different from the other, Cree, Nez Perce, Chinook, Klickitat, etc. ; and the only boy who could understand the English of the teacher rebelled off-hand. Dr. McLoughlin coming into the school in the midst of the difficulty pi-oceeded to enforce the law himself, and gave the little rebel such a thrashing as secured perfect discipline thereafter. Smith taught this school of twenty-five Indian hoys for eighteen months in which time they learned to speak English well and the rudiments of the primary branches of a common school education. They had but one copy of an arithmetic in the whole school, and of this each pupil made a complete copy which was used afterwards by other pupils. And so education started in the land where there are now more colleges, high schools and universities to the population than in any other region in the United States.
Wyeth 's first expedition was a financial failure, but not disheartened, he returned to Boston overland and renewed his efforts to establish direct trade between the Columbia river and his home city. And having procured the ship ​
56 THE CENTEiNNIAL HISTORY OF OREGON

## May Dacre and filled her up with all sorts of goods and supplies for this coun-

try, the ship sailed for the Coumbia via Cape Horn, while Wyeth again enlisted a party of two hundred men and started overland from Independence, Missouri, on April 24, 1834. "With that party came the first missionaries to Oregon — Jason and Daniel Lee. On his way across the continent, Wyeth stopped and erected Fort Hall, in which he stored his trading goods for the interior. He and his party reached Fort Vancouver about the same time his ship came into the Columbia and proceeding down to the lower end of the Wappatoo island (now called Sauvies island), Wyeth established a salmon fishery and built a trading house which he named Fort William. The salmon fishery was not much of a suc- cess, but it was the commencement of salmon packing on the Columbia, an in- dustry that now brings in many million dollars yearly.
In his journal of April 3, 1835, Wyeth writes: "On arriving here I set about preparing for fishing. Have commenced a house-boat seventy feet long for con- veyance about the different fisheries. Have finished a canoe sixty feet long, three feet wide and two and a half feet deep, out of one tree which has not a shake or knot in it ; and this is by no means a large tree here. I think I could find trees, free from shakes and knots, that would sqiiare four feet one hundred feet long.
' ' This Wappatoo Island I have selected for our establishment is fifteen miles long and three miles wide. It consists of woodlands and prairie, and on it many deer, and those who could spare time to hunt might live well ; but a sickness has carried off to a man its inhabitants (Indians), and there is nothing to attest that they ever existed here but their decaying houses, their graves, and their un- buried bones of which there are piles and heaps."
Wyeth proceeded to lay out a town ^vith streets, blocks, parks, etc., which was the first candidate for the great city of this region. A half a cargo of sal- mon was caught, dried and salted, the ship sailed for Boston in 1838, and never returned to the Columbia. Disheartened with disease on the' island and his commercial failure, Wyeth returned to Massachusetts. While Wyeth 's expedi- tions were disastrous to himself financially, they were of immense value to the United States. He prepared a memoir to Congress, setting forth the character and resources of the country which secured the attention of the American people, and from that day on it was but a question of time and courage uf)on the part of the few settlers that here should be an American state and not a British province.
In his memoir to Congress, Wyeth says: "In conclusion, I will observe that the measures of the Hudson 's Bay Company have been conceived with wisdom, steadily pursued, and have been well seconded by their government; and their success has been complete; and without being able to charge upon them gross violations of existing treaties, a few years will make the country west of the raoiuitains as English as they could desire. The Americans are unknown as a Nation ; and as individuals their power is despised by the natives. A population is growing out of the occupancy of the country that is not with us ; and before many years they will decide to whom the country belongs, unless in the meantime the American government shall make their power felt and seen to a greater degree than has yet been the case. ' '
Wyeth could see no hope for American control but in the active intervention of Congress ; and yet within four years from the time he penned the above lines, ​
TllK ('KNTKXNIA1> IIIS'I'OIJV (»K olJI'XJON .-,7
the Jew "despised" Americans had met at Champoeg and oi'j^aiiized an independ- ent government flying the American flag — and saved tiie country. Yet Wyeth I'cndered an immense service to the country. The island he located on was for many years Jjnown as Wyeth 's Island, and is so recorded in legal records in Wash- ington county. And to Wyeth 's energy, money and sacrifices, more than to all others is due the opening of the Oregon trail. The large force of men he brought out in 1834 did thorough work not only in exploring for the best route, but in smoothing down some of the worst places. Wyeth was never a fur trader. He took a higher, nobler and farther look ahead; and to him also belongs part of the honor of bringing the first Christian missionaries to the people on the west side of the Rocky ^lountains — Jason and Daniel Lee — in 18:34.
CAPTAIN Bonneville's expedition ~l<S:Jii
The most notable venture was made by Captain Bonneville of the U. S. army on leave, who led a party of one hundred and ten men in 1832 into Utah, Nevada and Oregon. Want of experience in the business he had undertaken resulted in many errors and severe losses which were increased by the active and unrelenting opposition of the Hudson's Bay Company, already established in this field. Bonneville had projected his expedition on the basis of making scientific observa- tions as much as for trade. And the government had given him a furlough for two years on the condition that he should not only pay all the expenses of his ex- pedition, but also that he must provide suitable maps and instruments, and that he should be careful to find out how many warrior Indians there were in the regions he might explore, and ascertain the nature and character of these na- tives, whether wai-like or disposed to peace, their manner of making war and their instruments of warfare. Proceeding on this basis, Bonneville got as far west as the present city of Walla Walla, with twenty wagons in the year 1832. Bonneville found out a good deal about the countiy, all of which is most charm- ingly written up by Washington Irving; but he lost his entire investment in goods from the opposition and sharp practices of the Hudson's Bay Company.
the wilkes' expedition — 1842
In 1838, Capt. Charles Wilkes of the United States Navy was sent out by the U. S. government for a cruise around the world in the interests of American com- merce, and during which he visited Oregon in the year 1841, and made some examination of the countrj' and the condition of the American settlers in the Willamette valley. This was practically the first sign of our government to take official notice of the American settlements in Oregon ; and although it was inspired and directed by a genuine spirit and desire to promote the interests of the nation and the welfare of the American settlers in Oregon, it was not at- tended with marked success.
On reaching the Columbia river in June. 1841, Wilkes very naturally fell in to the company of the Hudson's Bay Company whose agents were only too well pleased to entertain a U. S. naval officer and make the most favorable impression possible. And so in the wilderness of Oregon, Captain Wilkes found himself most hospitably entertained b.y gentlemen accustomed to all the graces of polite ​
society. This, however, did not recommend him to the free-handed trapper and pioneer, or the straight-coated missionary ; but rather otherwise ; and he was subjected to groundless suspicions from the company he kept. Dr. McLoughlin, head man of the Hudson's Bay Company furnished Wilkes and his part}' with a comfortable boat, well provisioned and men to man and propel it, for a trip up the AVillamette river to see the great valley and its settlers and missions. At the AVillamette Falls the distinguished party was most hospitably entertained by Rev. A. F. AA'^aller (the man of the old gray hat and for long years agent of the Willamette University) and his charming wife, who played the part of cook and hostess equal to any city lady. After the dinner, all hands repaired to the "Falls" then in all their natural beauty unmarred by the hideous work of paper mill plutocrats in their rage for more money, and there witnessed the native Indian spearing the salmon as he had done for uncounted centuries. Proceeding up the Willamette the Wilkes party was entertained again at old Champoeg by William Johnson, one of the Champoeg heroes of 1843. Johnson had an Indian woman for a wife which Wilkes declared to be worth six civilized wives ; and notwithstanding everj'thing was very raw and crude, Wilkes was soon on the most familiar terms in Johnson's cabin, for Johnson himself had formerly been a "Man of War's Man" in the U. S. navy, having fought on the Constitution — "Old Ironsides" — in the War of 1812. Here they left their boats and took to horses, provided bj^ the settlers eager to show Wilkes everything and proceeded by land over the open prairies up the valley, and made their first stop at the Cath- olic Mission of St. Paul, then presided over by Rev. Francis Norbert Blanchet, afterwards the Catholic archbishop of Oregon Cit}'.
From the Catholic mission the Wilkes party extended its trip farther south to the Methodist mission which was then located about twelve miles north of the present eitj' of Salem. Here the party was entertained by Abernethy, Babcock, and other leading Methodists. Proceeding farther south the party visited the flouring mill erected by the Methodists; and from this point they crossed over the Willamette river, near the present village of Wheatland and returned back to the Falls of the Willamette after visiting American settlers in the settlements where now is found old Lafayette, Dayton, McMinnville, Yamhill and Newberg. From the settlers at all these points, and from the Hudson's Bay Company em- ployees, probably not more than forty or fifty white men all told, Wilkes gleaned all the information he could about the country. And while he did not himself see any of the country east of the Cascade mountains, he sent his subordinate, Dray- ton, up the Columbia as far east as Dr. Whitman's mission, to gather all the in- formation possible. Wilkes obtained from Peter Skene Ogden a full description of all the Oregon country east of the Cascade mountains ; and Ogden was at that time the most reliable and best informed man in all the Oregon country as to all its characteristics and resources. In addition to his trip up the Willamette valley, Wilkes made an excursion into the valley of the Cowlitz, going as far as the Hud- son's Bay Company's farms. The only other work done bj' Wilkes Avorthy of mention was a survey of the Columbia river for navigation purposes. The surve.y amounted to nothing in value, although the party had ample means to have charted the river and rendered a great service to Oregon and the country. Beyond this work was a trip into the Yakima country by Lieut. Johnson, and an overland trip
But when it came to making a report to the government, Wilkes seemed to feel the full force and responsibility of his mission, and says: "Having been well aware of the little information in possession of the government relative to the northern section of this (Oregon country I thought it proper, from its vast importance in the settlement of the boundary question, to devote a large portion of my time to a thorough survey." The value and completeness of this survey may he judged of from his report on the Columbia river, as to which he says: "The entrance to the Columbia is impracticable two-thirds of the year; and the difficulty of leaving the river is equally great." His report as to the climate, soil, crops, fisheries and timber is good. As to the Willamette valley, a region he actually examined, he reports it as the finest portion of the country with a settlement of some sixty families that appear to be industrious and prosperous, and that a man could earn three times as much by his labor here in a given time as he could in the United States. As to the missionaries. Wilkes reports that little had been effected by them in Christianizing the Indians. They (the missionaries) are principally engaged in the cultivation of the mission farms, and in the care of their own stock in order to obtain flocks and herds for themselves, most of them having selected lands. And as far as my personal observation went, in the part of the country where the missionaries reside, there are very few Indians, and they (the missionaries) seem more occupied with the settlement of the country and in agricultural pursuits than missionary labors." This is the testimony of an impartial observer as to both Protestant and Catholic, and it is probably true and just. Wilkes concluded his report on general conditions by saying: "That few portions of the globe, in my opinion, are to be found so rich in soil, diversified in surface or capable of being rendered the happy abode of an industrious and civilized community."
FREMONT'S EXPEDITION—1843
On the 16th day of December, 1841. Lewis F. Linn. United States senator from Missouri, introduced in congress a bill to take United States government possession of Oregon. The preamble to this bill declared the title to the country to be in the United States, that it ought not to be abandoned, that measures should he adopted to take possession of and occupy the country, and that the laws of the United States should be extended over it. On the 4th day of January, 1842. Senator Linn introduced in the senate a resolution requesting the President to give notice to the British government of an intention to terminate the treaty of joint occupancy of Oregon under the treaty of 1827.
Senator Linn's proposed act of congress furthermore authorized the President to erect a line of forts from the Missouri river into the best pass for entering the valley of the Oregon." and also a fort at or near the mouth of the Columbia river; and also granting six hundred and forty acres of land to every white male inhabitant who was eighteen years of age and over who should settle in Oregon and cultivate the same for five years. This bill of Senator Linn's never became a law; but it was the excuse to send out a military government expedition under Lieut. John C. Fremont in 1843.
​t in 1843.
This expedition of Fremont 's never amounted to anything in Oregon ; but it had a vast circulation in the Eastern states. Fremont was the son-in-lav? of Thomas H. Benton; Benton was United States senator from Missouri, and a great and good friend of Oregon ; and that excused Fremont 's shortcomings to the Mis- sourians in Oregon, and made him a national figure under the title of the ' ' Path Finder, ' ' and upon which capital he was finally nominated the second candidate of the republican party for the presidency of the United States. The writer of this book cast his first vote for president for John C. Fremont.
Fremont's expedition to Oregon left the Missouri river at the point where Kansas City is located on the 29th of May, 1843, and traveled along the Oregon trail just behind the Oregon emigration of that year. At the big bend of Bear river, Fremont turned south and visited Great Salt Lake, and after some examin- ation of that salt sea returned again to the Oregon trail and followed along after the Oregon immigrants until he reached the Dalles. There he left his party and came down to Fort Vancouver in a canoe and purchased supplies for a southerly extension of his travels from the Dalles to California. These supplies were sent up to him at the Dalles by the Hudson's Bay Company. That Fremont's trip across to Oregon from the Missoviri river was whollj' destitute of any merit and without a single event to entitle kim to any praise is evident from the oft-quoted testimony of Oregon's distinguished pioneer and statesman, James W. Nesmith. In his address to the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1875, Senator Nesmith says : "I have often been asked in the Eastern states how long it was after Fremont discovered Oregon that I emigrated to that country. It is true that in 1843, Fre- mont, then a lieutenant in the engineer corps, did cross the plains, and brought his party to the Dalles in the rear of our emigration. His outfit contained all the conveniences and luxuries that a government appropriation could procure, while he 'roughed it' in a covered carriage, surrounded by servants paid from the pub- lie purse. The path he found was that made by the hard}' frontiersman who pre- ceded him to the Pacific, and who stood by their rifles and held the country against hostile Indians and British threats without government aid or recogni- tion until 1849, when the first government troops came to our relief."
Returning now to Fremont at the Dalles, with his larder well filled from the stores of the Hudson 's Bay Company, we find him on November 25, 1843, starting south from the Dalles with twenty-five men, nearly all of whom were Canadian French trappers, but among whom was the celebrated guide, explorer and Indian fighter. Kit Carson. The party kept up the south side of the Des Chutes river, passing through the points now known as Dufur, Tygh Valley, Wapanitia, Warm Springs and on up to the point where the railroad junction is to be at the town of Crescent. Fremont was following the old trappers' trail, and his object was to explore the Klamath Lake region. Crossing the Des Chutes near Crescent he kept on south until his carriage struck Klamath marsh, on December 10, 1843, and was compelled to stop or turn aside.
At Klamath marsh the party turned east, exploring the country on both sides. Fremont claims to have discovered and named in succession Summer. Abert and Christmas lakes in Lake county ; but while some of his men may have been at Summer and Silver lakes, it is clear from his own map that Fremont never saw either Summer, Silver or Christmas lake. The Fremont party struck the Che- waucan river in the neighborhood of the site of Paisley, and kept on down the ​
TIIK (.'KNTIONNIAL HISTORY OF OREGON (il
river and ils tiiarsh until they rounded the south eud of Abort lake. Thence pro- ceeding north along the east side of Abert lake for about one-half its length, the party ascended the ridge and passed over the divide between Abert lake and the Warner lake valley, and then turned south and followed the Warner lake valley lakes and marshes down into what is now the state of Nevada. That is substan- tially the whole of Fremont's expedition to Oregon. It was of no value to the immigrants, to the future state, or to the United States. And yet Fremont's al- leged discoveries in Oregon were more talked about than that of all the other ex- plorers who did in fact render great service to the country. And as Senator Nesmith forcibly states the fact, for this trifling service Fremont achieved the fame of "The Path Finder," and was rewarded thereafter with the nonnnation for president of the United States.
It has always been claimed by his partisans that Fremont was entitled to great credit in wresting California from the Mexicans in 1846. But a careful examination of the history of that Mexican province will not support that claim. The California Mexicans themselves had been prior to Fremont's advent, in a state of chronic rebellion against the Mexican Republic on account of the deport- ment of Mexican convicts to that province. Micheltorena, Castro and Pio Pico had been competing rivals for supremacy, until the California settlers, mostly American adventurers and hangers-on of the Swiss leader, John A. Sutter, were incited and emboldened into an attempt to set up an independent government under the name of "The California Republic." At that time Mexico was in- debted to England and English bondholders to the amount of fifty millions of dollars, and IMexico was apparently willing to pay the debt by a transfer of Cali- fornia to the English, and England was ready to .lump at the oi¥er. The Ameri- can government was fully informed of the scheme, and on June 24, 1844, George Bancroft, secretary of the navy, wrote Commodore Slnat, in command of the American squadron in the Pacific, as follows:
"The ^lexican ports on the Pacific are said to be open and defenceless. If you ascertain with certainty that Mexico has declared war against the United States, you will at once possess yourself of the poi-t of San Francisco, and block- ade or occupy such other ports as your force may permit."
In pursuance of that order, on July 7, 1846, Commodore Sloat with his war ships then in San Francisco bay, landed 250 marines, and issued the following proclamation :
"We are about to land on the territory of Mexico with whom the United States are at war. To strike her flag and to hoist our own in place of it is our duty. It is not only our duty to take California, but to preserve it afterward as a part of the United States at all hazards. To accomplish this, it is of the first importance to cultivate the good opinion of the inhabitants, whom we must rec- oncile. '"
Prior to this, on June l-"), 1846. twenty-four American settlers, disgusted with the anarchy and misrule of the IMexican population and their rival governors, had gathered at Sonoma and seized the Mexican post at that point, issued a proc- lamation of independence as stated above for a republic, and had made and raised the celebrated ' ' Bear Flag, ' ' with a lone star upon it, with William B. Ide as their coiiiniander-in-chief. These twenty-four rebels had endeavored to get Fremont and his party of explorers to join them ; but Fremont held aloof fr ​om the move-
ment until Commodore Sloat had landed his marines and raised the American flag. Then Fremont became the leader of the Ide rebels and rendered some as- sistance in making California an American state.
To the men and women of this age the account of the Hunt party and others will not appear as fairy stories, but rather as a hideous phrensy of a diseased or intoxicated imagination. But few people can comprehend it, and not a few may disbelieve it altogether. But only by such dangers, trials and privations of those fearless, self-sacrificing heroes was Oregon saved to the United States. There is now no more West ; there is no more wilderness ; there is no more privation, danger or heroism. The palace car glides swiftly from the Missouri to the great Pacific ocean ; the traveler reclines on luxurious couches ; a colored porter attends to every whim of a satiated appetite ; instead of deserts, mountains, savages and grizzlies, he sees but a procession of peaceful homes and bustling cities. There is no other West, or desert, or mountains, savage beast or Indian foe to conquer and reclaim — and no more heroes.
We have given this much of the first expeditions to Oregon, and the fortunes of the first commercial venture to open commerce with this country and the strug- gles of the brave and invincible men who did this pioneering, so that those now here in great prosperity from that feeble beginning of trade, and those who go down to the sea in ships may see how the great work was started, and all the more appreciate and honor the sturdy men who started it. Persons who would like to read the whole story of Astor's venture to the Columbia and the betrayal and loss of his property at Astoria, will find it most interesting reading and fully and graphically portrayed in Franchere's narrative, and in Washington Irving 's As- toria. Mr. Elwood Evans, in his history of the northwest, fairly and .justly sums up the character of Astor 's enterprise as follows :
"The scheme was grand in its aim. magnificent in its breadth of purpose and area of operation. Its results were naturally feasible and not ovei'-anticipated. Astor made no miscalculation, no omission ; neither did he permit a sanguine hope to lead him into any wild or imaginary venture. He was practical, gener- ous, broad. He executed what Sir Alexander Mackenzie urged as the policy of British capital and enterprise. That one American citizen should have individu- ally undertaken what two mammoth British companies had not the courage to try, was but an additional cause which had intensified national prejudice into embittered jealousy on the part of bis British rivals. ' '