The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce
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Title: The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce
Author: William Denison Lyman
Release date: April 6, 2012 [eBook #39388]
Language: English
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[Illustration]
The Columbia River
Its History, Its Myths,
Its Scenery, Its Commerce
By William Denison Lyman
Professor of History in Whitman College,
Walla Walla, Washington
_With 80 Illustrations and a Map_
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1909
COPYRIGHT, 1909
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
TO MY PARENTS
Horace Lyman and Mary Denison Lyman
PIONEERS OF 1849, WHO BORE THEIR PART IN LAYING THE
FOUNDATIONS OF CIVILIZATION UPON THE BANKS OF
THE COLUMBIA, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR
I see the living tide roll on,
It crowns with rosy towers
The icy capes of Labrador,
The Spaniard's land of flowers;
It streams beyond the splintered ridge
That parts the northern showers.
From eastern rock to sunset wave,
The Continent is ours.
HOLMES.
PREFACE
As one of the American Waterways series, this volume is designed to be a
history and description of the Columbia River. The author has sought to
convey to his reader a lively sense of the romance, the heroism, and the
adventure which belong to this great stream and the parts of the
North-west about it, and he has aimed to breathe into his narrative
something of the spirit and sentiment--a spirit and sentiment more easily
recognised than analysed--which we call "Western." With this end in view,
his treatment of the subject has been general rather than detailed, and
popular rather than recondite. While he has spared no pains to secure
historical accuracy, he has not made it a leading aim to settle
controverted points, or to present the minutiae of historical research and
criticism. In short, the book is rather for the general reader than for
the specialist. The author hopes so to impress his readers with the
majesty of the Columbia as to fill their minds with a longing to see it
face to face.
Frequent reference in the body of the book to authorities renders it
unnecessary to name them here. Suffice it to say that the author has
consulted the standard works of history and description dealing with
Oregon--the old Oregon--and its River, and from the voluminous matter
there gathered has selected the facts that best combine to make a
connected and picturesque narrative. He has treated the subject
topically, but there is a general progression throughout, and the
endeavour has been to find a natural jointure of chapter to chapter and
era to era.
While the book has necessarily been based largely on other books, it may
be said that the author has derived his chief inspiration from his own
observations along the shores of the River and amid the mountains of
Oregon and Washington, where his life has mainly been spent, and from
familiar conversations in the cabins of pioneers, or at camp-fires of
hunters, or around Indian tepees, or in the pilot-houses of steamboats. In
such ways and places one can best catch the spirit of the River and its
history.
The author gladly takes this opportunity of making his grateful
acknowledgments to Prof. F. G. Young, of Oregon University, for his
kindness in reading the manuscript and in making suggestions which his
full knowledge and ripe judgment render especially valuable. He wishes
also to express his warmest thanks to Mr. Harvey W. Scott, editor of the
_Oregonian_, for invaluable counsel. Similar gratitude is due to Prof.
Henry Landes of Washington University for important assistance in regard
to some of the scientific features of the first chapter.
W. D. L.
WHITMAN COLLEGE,
WALLA WALLA, WASH.,
1909.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I.--THE HISTORY
CHAPTER I
THE LAND WHERE THE RIVER FLOWS 3
CHAPTER II
TALES OF THE FIRST WHITE MEN ALONG THE COAST 33
CHAPTER III
HOW ALL NATIONS SOUGHT THE RIVER FROM THE SEA AND HOW THEY
FOUND IT 43
CHAPTER IV
FIRST STEPS ACROSS THE WILDERNESS IN SEARCH OF THE RIVER 69
CHAPTER V
THE FUR-TRADERS, THEIR BATEAUX, AND THEIR STATIONS 98
CHAPTER VI
THE COMING OF THE MISSIONARIES TO THE TRIBES OF THE RIVER 136
CHAPTER VII
THE ERA OF THE PIONEERS, THEIR OX-TEAMS, AND THEIR FLATBOATS 159
CHAPTER VIII
CONFLICT OF NATIONS FOR POSSESSION OF THE RIVER 179
CHAPTER IX
THE TIMES OF TOMAHAWK AND FIREBRAND 202
CHAPTER X
WHEN THE "FIRE-CANOES" TOOK THE PLACE OF THE LOG-CANOES 234
CHAPTER XI
ERA OF THE MINER, THE COWBOY, THE FARMER, THE BOOMER, AND THE
RAILROAD-BUILDER 249
CHAPTER XII
THE PRESENT AGE OF EXPANSION AND WORLD COMMERCE 265
PART II.--A JOURNEY DOWN THE RIVER
CHAPTER I
IN THE HEART OF THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 273
CHAPTER II
THE LAKES FROM THE ARROW LAKES TO CHELAN 290
CHAPTER III
IN THE LAND OF WHEAT-FIELD, ORCHARD, AND GARDEN 313
CHAPTER IV
WHERE RIVER AND MOUNTAIN MEET, AND THE TRACES OF THE BRIDGE
OF THE GODS 332
CHAPTER V
A SIDE TRIP TO SOME OF THE GREAT SNOW-PEAKS 352
CHAPTER VI
THE LOWER RIVER AND THE OCEAN TIDES 374
INDEX 399
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
ST. PETER'S DOME, COLUMBIA RIVER, 2300 FEET HIGH _Frontispiece_
Copyright, Kiser Photograph Co., 1902.
MOUNT ADAMS FROM THE SOUTH 74
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
CAPT. ROBERT GRAY 76
THE "COLUMBIA REDIVIVA" 76
MOUNT HOOD FROM LOST LAKE 82
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
ELIOT GLACIER, MT. HOOD 84
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
ASTORIA IN 1845 116
From an old print.
ASTORIA, LOOKING UP AND ACROSS THE COLUMBIA RIVER 116
Photo. by Woodfield.
ONE OF THE LAGOONS OF THE UPPER COLUMBIA RIVER, NEAR GOLDEN B. C. 120
Photo. by C. F. Yates, Golden.
SADDLE MOUNTAIN, OR SWALLALOCHORT NEAR ASTORIA, FAMOUS IN INDIAN
MYTH 120
Photo. by Woodfield.
STEAMER "BEAVER," THE FIRST STEAMER ON THE PACIFIC, 1836 124
PORTLAND, OREGON, IN 1851 124
From an old print.
GRAVE OF MARCUS WHITMAN AND HIS ASSOCIATE MARTYRS AT WAIILATPU 210
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.
CAYUSE BABIES--1 212
Copyright by Lee Moorehouse, 1898.
CAYUSE BABIES--2 212
Copyright by Lee Moorehouse, 1898.
COL. B. F. SHAW, WHO WON THE BATTLE OF GRANDE RONDE IN 1856 222
By courtesy of Lee Moorehouse.
FORT SHERIDAN ON THE GRANDE RONDE, BUILT BY PHILIP SHERIDAN IN
1855 224
By courtesy of Lee Moorehouse.
TULLUX HOLLIQUILLA, A WARM SPRINGS INDIAN CHIEF, FAMOUS IN THE
MODOC WAR AS A SCOUT FOR U. S. TROOPS 228
By courtesy of Lee Moorehouse.
HALLAKALLAKEEN (EAGLE WING) OR JOSEPH, THE NEZ PERCE CHIEF 230
By T. W. Tolman.
CAMP OF CHIEF JOSEPH ON THE NESPILEM, WASH. 232
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.
TIRZAH TRASK, A UMATILLA INDIAN GIRL--TAKEN AS AN IDEAL OF
SACAJAWEA 234
Photo. by Lee Moorehouse, Pendleton.
OREGON PIONEER IN HIS CABIN 256
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
OLD PORTAGE RAILROAD AT CASCADES IN 1860 258
A LOG-BOOM DOWN THE RIVER FOR SAN FRANCISCO 258
Photo. by Woodfield.
LUMBER MILL AND STEAMBOAT LANDING AT GOLDEN, B. C. 260
Photo. by C. F. Yates.
A TYPICAL LUMBER CAMP 262
Photo. by Trueman.
A LOGGING RAILROAD, NEAR ASTORIA 264
Photo. by Woodfield.
NATURAL BRIDGE, KICKING HORSE OR WAPTA RIVER, AND MT. STEPHEN,
B. C. 276
Photo. by C. F. Yates.
SUNRISE ON COLUMBIA RIVER, NEAR WASHOUGAL 276
Copyright, Kiser Photograph Co., 1902.
LAKE WINDERMERE, UPPER COLUMBIA, WHERE DAVID THOMPSON'S FORT
WAS BUILT IN 1810 280
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
MT. BURGESS AND EMERALD LAKE, ONE OF THE SOURCES OF THE WAPTA
RIVER, B. C. 282
Photo. by C. F. Yates.
BONNINGTON FALLS IN KOOTENAI RIVER, NEAR NELSON 284
Photo. by Allan Lean.
BRIDGE CREEK, A TRIBUTARY OF LAKE CHELAN, WASH. 286
Photo. by F. N. Kneeland, Northampton, Mass.
KOOTENAI LAKE, FROM PROCTOR, B. C. 288
Photo. by Allan Lean, Nelson.
LOWER ARROW LAKE, B. C. 290
Photo. by Allan Lean, Nelson.
BRIDAL VEIL FALLS ON COLUMBIA RIVER 292
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
SHOSHONE FALLS, IN SNAKE RIVER, 212 FEET HIGH 294
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
LAKE PEND OREILLE, IDAHO 296
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
LAKE COEUR D'ALENE, IDAHO 296
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
THE "SHADOWY ST. JOE," IDAHO 298
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
ON THE COEUR D'ALENE RIVER, IDAHO 300
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
GORGE OF CHELAN RIVER, THE OUTLET OF LAKE CHELAN 302
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.
HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN--LOOKING UP STEHEKIN CANYON 304
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
CASCADE PASS AT HEAD OF STEHEKIN RIVER, WASH. 306
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.
DOUBTFUL LAKE, CASCADE RANGE, WASHINGTON, NEAR LAKE CHELAN 308
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane, Wash.
HORSESHOE BASIN THROUGH A ROCK GAP, STEHEKIN CANYON 310
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
LAKE CHELAN 312
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
A HARVEST OUTFIT, DAYTON, WASH. 314
_Sunset Magazine._
A COMBINED HARVESTER, NEAR WALLA WALLA 314
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.
INLAND EMPIRE SYSTEM'S POWER PLANT, NEAR SPOKANE, 20,000
HORSE-POWER 316
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
LOWER SPOKANE FALLS 316
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
CANYON OF THE STEHEKIN, NEAR LAKE CHELAN 318
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
MEMORIAL BUILDING, WHITMAN COLLEGE, WALLA WALLA 320
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.
STARTING THE PLOUGHS IN THE WHEAT LAND, WALLA WALLA, WASH. 322
Photo. by W. D. Chapman, Walla Walla.
ON THE HISTORIC WALLA WALLA RIVER 324
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.
BLALOCK FRUIT RANCH OF A THOUSAND ACRES AT WALLA WALLA, WASH. 326
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.
WITCH'S HEAD, NEAR OLD WISHRAM VILLAGE. THE INDIAN SUPERSTITION
IS THAT THESE EYES WILL FOLLOW ANY UNFAITHFUL WOMAN 328
By courtesy of Lee Moorehouse.
CABBAGE ROCK, FOUR MILES NORTH OF THE DALLES 330
Photo. by Lee Moorehouse, Pendleton.
EAGLE ROCK, JUST ABOVE SHOSHONE FALLS IN SNAKE RIVER 332
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
STEHEKIN CANYON, 5000 FEET DEEP 334
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
STEAMER "DALLES CITY," DESCENDING THE CASCADES OF THE COLUMBIA 336
MEMALOOSE ISLAND, COLUMBIA RIVER 338
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
HORSESHOE BASIN NEAR LAKE CHELAN, WASH. 340
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.
CASTLE ROCK, COLUMBIA RIVER 342
Copyright, Kiser Photograph Co., 1902.
THE LYMAN GLACIER AND GLACIER LAKE IN NORTH STAR PARK, NEAR
LAKE CHELAN 344
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
HUNTERS ON LAKE CHELAN, WITH THEIR SPOILS 346
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
A MORNING'S CATCH ON THE TOUCHET, NEAR DAYTON, WASH. 346
_Sunset Magazine._
ONEONTA GORGE--LOOKING IN 348
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
CAPE HORN, COLUMBIA RIVER--LOOKING UP 350
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.
LOOKING UP THE COLUMBIA RIVER FROM THE CLIFF ABOVE MULTNOMAH
FALLS, ORE. 352
Copyright, 1902, by Kiser Photograph Co.
SPOKANE FALLS AND CITY, 1886 354
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.
SPOKANE FALLS AND CITY, 1908 354
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
IN THE HEART OF THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS, ABOVE LAKE CHELAN, WASH. 360
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.
BIRCH-TREE CHANNEL, UPPER COLUMBIA, NEAR GOLDEN, B. C. 362
Photo by C. F. Yates, Golden.
TYPICAL MOUNTAIN MEADOW, STEHEKIN VALLEY, WASH. 364
Photo. by T. W. Tolman.
HIGH SCHOOL, WALLA WALLA, WASH. 366
Photo. by W. D. Chapman, Walla Walla.
LAKE CHELAN 368
Photo. by F. N. Kneeland.
ON THE BANKS OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER, NEAR HOOD RIVER 370
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
ROOSTER ROCK, COLUMBIA RIVER--LOOKING UP 372
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.
BAND OF ELK ON W. P. RESER'S RANCH, WALLA WALLA, WASH. 374
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.
OREGON CITY IN 1845 376
From an old print.
FORT VANCOUVER IN 1845 376
LONE ROCK, COLUMBIA RIVER, ABOUT FIFTY MILES EAST OF PORTLAND 378
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.
WILLAMETTE FALLS, OREGON CITY, ORE. 380
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
AMONG THE BIG SPRUCE TREES, NEAR ASTORIA, OREGON 382
Photo. by Woodfield, Astoria.
PORTLAND IN 1908. MT. ST. HELENS SIXTY-FIVE MILES DISTANT 384
PORTLAND HARBOUR, OREGON 386
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.
FISH RIVER ROAD IN UPPER COLUMBIA REGION, B. C. 388
Photo. by Trueman, Victoria.
MULTNOMAH FALLS, 840 FEET HIGH, ON SOUTH SIDE OF COLUMBIA RIVER
ABOUT SIXTY MILES ABOVE PORTLAND 390
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
CHINOOK SALMON, WEIGHT 80 POUNDS 392
Photo. by Woodfield, Astoria.
LAKE ADELA, NEAR HEAD OF COLUMBIA RIVER, B. C. 394
Photo. by C. F. Yates.
BRIDAL VEIL BLUFF, COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON 396
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.
BAND OF KOOTENAI INDIANS, B. C. 398
Photo. by Allan Lean, Nelson.
MAPS _At End_
PART I
The History
CHAPTER I
The Land where the River Flows
Contrasts--The Two Islands--Uplift--Volcanic Action--Flood--Age of
Ice--Story of Wishpoosh and Creation of the Tribes--Outline of the
Mountain Systems--Peculiar Interlocking of the Columbia and the
Kootenai--The Cascade Range--The Inland Empire--The Valleys West of
the Cascade Mountains--The Forests--The Climate--The Native Races and
Some of their Myths--Story of the Kamiah Monster--The Tomanowas Bridge
at the Cascades--Origin of Three Great Mountains--The Chinook
Wind--Myths of the Unseen Life--Klickitat Story of the Spirit
Baby--Beauty of the Native Names.
Wonderfully varied though rivers are, each has a physiognomy of its own.
Each preserves its characteristics even in the midst of constant
diversity. We recognise it, as we recognise a person in different changes
of dress. The Ohio has one face, the Hudson another, and each keeps its
essential identity. The traveller would not confuse the Rhine with the
Danube, or the Nile with the Volga.
Even more distinctive than most rivers in form and feature is the
Columbia, the old Oregon that now hears far other sounds than "his own
dashings," the River of the West, the Thegayo, the Rio de los Reyes, the
Rio Estrachos, the Rio de Aguilar, the many-named river which unites all
parts of the Pacific North-west. It is to its records of romance and
heroism, of legend and history, as well as to its alternating scenes of
stormy grandeur and tranquil majesty that the reader's attention is now
invited. Though among the latest of American rivers to be brought under
the control of civilised men, the Columbia was among the earliest to
attract the interest of the explorers of all nations, and the struggles of
international diplomacy over possession were among the most momentous in
history. The distance of the Columbia from the centres of population and
the difficulty of reaching it made its development slow, and for this
reason its pioneer stage lasted longer than would otherwise have been the
case. In this part of its history there was a record of pathos, tragedy,
and achievement not surpassed in any of the annals of our country, while,
in its later phases, the North-west has had the sweep and energy of growth
and power characteristic of genuine American development. Finally, by
reason of scenic grandeur, absorbing interest of physical features, the
majesty and mystery of its origin in the greatest of American mountains,
the swift might of its flow through some of the wildest as well as some of
the most beautiful regions of the globe, and at the last by the peculiar
grandeur of its entrance into the greatest of the oceans, this "Achilles
of Rivers" attracts alike historian, scientist, poet, statesman, and lover
of nature.
* * * * *
"A land of old upheaven from the abyss," a land of deepest deeps and
highest heights, of richest verdure here, and barest desolation there, of
dense forest on one side, and wide extended prairies on the other; a land,
in brief, of contrasts, contrasts in contour, hues, productions, and
history;--such is that imperial domain watered by the Columbia River and
its affluents. To the artist, the poet, the scientist, and the sportsman,
this region presents noble and varied scenes of shore, of mountain, of
river, of lake, while to the romancer and historian it offers a wealth of
native legend and of record from the heroic ages of American history.
As a fit introduction to the picture of the land as it now appears, there
may be presented a brief record of the manner in which it was wrought into
its present form. Professor Thomas Condon of Oregon thought that the first
land to rise on the Pacific Coast was composed of two islands, one in the
region of the Siskiyou Mountains of Northern California and Southern
Oregon, and the other in the heart of what are now the Blue Mountains and
Saw-tooth Mountains of North-eastern Oregon, South-eastern Washington, and
Western Idaho. Other geologists have doubted the existence of the second
of these two islands.
Those islands, if both existed, were the nuclei of the Pacific Coast
region. The rock consisted of the earlier granite, sandstone, and
limestone crust of the earth. For long ages these two islands, washed by
the warm seas of that early age, and bearing a life now found in the
tropics, were slowly rising and widening their boundaries in all
directions.
Next, or perhaps as early, to respond to the pressure of the shrinking
crust of the earth and to appear above the sea, was the vast cordon of
pinnacled peaks which compose the present Okanogan and Chelan uplift,
granite and porphyry, broken by volcanic outflow. These peaks are veined
with gold, silver, and copper.
That first age of mountain uplift was ended by the coming on of the age of
fire. The granite upheaval of the Blue and the Cascade Mountains was blown
apart and cracked asunder by volcanic eruption and seismic force. A vast
outflow of basalt and andesite swept westward from the Blue Mountains to
meet a similar outflow moving eastward from the Cascades. Thus, throughout
the Columbia Basin, the surface is mainly of volcanic rock overlying the
shattered fragments of the original earth crust. At many points, however,
the primeval granite or sandstone surface was not covered, while at
frequent intervals the breaking forth of the fiery floods transformed
those original rocks into various forms of gneiss, porphyry, and marble.
But the greatest result of the age of volcanic outflow was the elevation
of the stupendous isolated snow peaks which now constitute so striking a
feature of Columbian landscapes.
With the close of the age of fire, the mountain chains were in place, as
they now stand, but the plains and valleys were not yet fashioned. Another
series of forces must needs come to elaborate the rude outlines of the
land. And so came on the third great age, the age of flood. The upheaval
of the mingled granite and volcanic masses of the Cascade and Blue
Mountains, while at the same time the Rockies were undergoing the same
process, imprisoned a vast sea over the region now known by Westerners as
the Inland Empire. In the depths of this sea the sediment from a thousand
torrents was deposited to fashion the smooth and level valleys of the
Yakima, the Walla Walla, the Spokane, and lesser streams, while a similar
process fashioned the valleys of the Willamette and other streams between
the Cascades and the Coast Mountains westward.
But while the age of flood was shaping the great valley systems, a fourth
age--the age of ice--was working still other changes upon the plastic
land. The mountains had been reared by upheaval and volcanic outflow to a
stupendous height. Then they became glaciated. The whole Northern
Hemisphere, in fact, took on the character of the present Greenland.
Enormous glaciers descended the flanks of the mountains, gouging and
ploughing out the abysmal canyons which now awe the beholder, and scooping
out the deeps where Chelan, Coeur d'Alene, Pend Oreille, Kaniksu, and
other great lakes delight the vision of the present day.
Such were the forces that wrought the physical features of the land where
the River flows. We do not mean to convey the impression that there was a
single age of each, and that they followed each other in regular
chronological order. As a matter of fact there were several eras of each,
interlocked with each other: upheaval, fire, flood, and frost. But as the
resultant of all, the Columbia Basin assumed its present form. The great
forces which have thus fashioned this land manifested themselves on a
scale of vast energy. Evidences of upheaval, fire, flood, and glacier are
exhibited on every side, and these evidences constitute a testimony of
geological history of the most interesting nature. Long before this record
of the rocks had found a white reader, the native red man had read the
open pages, and interpreted them in the light of his ardent fancy.
The Indian conception of the flood, involving also that of the creation
of the native tribes, is one of the most fantastic native legends. This is
the story of the great beaver, Wishpoosh, of Lake Kichelos. According to
this myth the beaver Wishpoosh inhabited that lake on the summit of the
Cascade Mountains, the source of the Yakima River.
In the time of the Watetash (animal people) before the advent of men, the
king beaver, Wishpoosh, of enormous size and voracious appetite, was in
the evil habit of seizing and devouring the lesser creatures and even the
vegetation. So destructive did he become that Speelyei, the coyote god of
the mid-Columbia region, undertook to check his rapacities.
The struggle only made the monster more insatiate, and in his wrath he
tore out the banks of the lake. The gathered floods swept on down the
canyon and formed another great lake in the region now known as the
Kittitas Valley.
But the struggle between Wishpoosh and Speelyei did not end, and the
former in his mad fury went on thrashing around in this greater lake. For
a long time the rocky barriers of the Umtanum restrained the flood, but at
last they gave way before the onslaughts of the wrathful beaver, and the
loosened waters swept on down and filled the great basin now occupied by
the fruit and garden ranches of the Cowiche, Natchees, and Atahnum. In
like fashion the restraining wall at the gap just below Yakima city was
torn out, and a yet greater lake was formed over all the space where we
now see the level plains of the Simcoe and Toppenish. The next lake formed
in the process covered the yet vaster region at the juncture of the
Yakima, Snake and Columbia rivers. For a long time it was dammed in by
the Umatilla highlands, but in process of time it, too, was drained by the
bursting of the rocky wall before the well-directed attacks of Wishpoosh.
The yet greater lake, the greatest of all, now formed between the Umatilla
on the east and the Cascade Mountains on the west. But even the towering
wall of the Cascades gave way in time and the accumulated floods poured on
without further hindrance to the open sea.
Thus was the series of great lakes drained, the level valleys left, and
the Great River suffered to flow in its present course. But there is a
sequel to the story of the flood. For Wishpoosh, being now in the ocean,
laid about him with such fury that he devoured the fish and whales and so
threatened all creation that Speelyei perceived that the time had come to
end it all. Transforming himself into a floating branch, he drifted to
Wishpoosh and was swallowed. Once inside the monster, the wily god resumed
his proper size and power; and with his keen-edged knife proceeded to cut
the vitals of the belligerent beaver, until at last all life ceased, and
the huge carcass was cast up by the tide on Clatsop beach, just south of
the mouth of the Great River. And now what to do with the carcass?
Speelyei solved the problem by cutting it up and from its different parts
fashioning the tribes as each part was adapted. From the head he made the
Nez Perces, great in council and oratory. From the arms came the Cayuses,
powerful with the bow and war-club. The Klickitats were the product of the
legs, and they were the runners of the land. The belly was transformed
into the gluttonous Chinooks. At the last there was left an indiscriminate
mass of hair and gore. This Speelyei hurled up the far distance to the
east, and out of it sprung the Snake River Indians.
Such is the native physiography and anthropogenesis of the land of the
Oregon.
If now one could rise on the pinions of the Chinook wind (the warm south
wind of the Columbia Basin, of which more anon), and from the southern
springs of the Owyhee and the Malheur could wing his way to the snowy
peaks in British Columbia, from whose fastnesses there issues the foaming
torrent of Canoe River, the most northerly of all the tributaries of the
Great River, he would obtain, in a noble panorama, a view of the land
where the River flows, in its present aspect, as fashioned by the
elemental forces of which we have spoken. But not to many is it given thus
to be "horsed on the sightless couriers of the air," and we must needs use
imagination in lieu of them. Even a map will be the safest guide for most.
Inspection of the map will show that the distance to which we have
referred covers twelve degrees of latitude, while the distance from the
source of the Snake River in the Yellowstone National Park to the Pacific
requires a span of fifteen degrees of longitude. The south-eastern part of
this vast area occupying Southern Idaho is mainly an arid plain; arid,
indeed, in its natural condition, but, when touched by the vivifying
waters in union with the ardent sun, it blossoms like a garden of the
Lord. Upon these vast plains where the volcanic dust has drifted for ages,
now looking so dismal in their monotonous garb of sage-brush, the millions
of the future will some time live in peace and plenty, each under his own
vine and apple-tree. On the eastern boundary, all the way from Western
Wyoming to Eastern British Columbia, stand cordons of stupendous
mountains, the western outposts of the great Continental Divide. These
constitute one spur after another, from whose profound canyons issues river
after river to swell the torrents of the turbid and impetuous Snake on its
thousand-mile journey to join the Columbia. Among these tributary streams
are the Payette, the Boise, the Salmon, and the Clearwater. Yet farther
north, beyond the system of the Snake, are the Bitter Root, the Missoula,
the Pend Oreille, the Spokane, and the Kootenai (we follow here the
American spelling, the Canadian being Kootenay), with almost innumerable
affluents, draining the huge labyrinths of the Bitter Root Mountains and
the Silver Bow.
Thus our northward flight carries us to the international boundary in
latitude 49 degrees.
Far beyond that parallel stretches chain after chain of divisions of the
great Continental Range, the Selkirks, the Gold Range, Purcell's Range,
sky-piercing heights, snow-clad and glaciated. Up and down these
interlocking chains the Columbia and the Kootenai, with their great lakes
and unexplored tributaries, seem to be playing at hide-and-seek with each
other. These rivers form here one of the most singular geographical
phenomena of the world, for so strangely are the parallel chains of
mountains tilted that the Kootenai, rising in a small lake on the western
flank of the main chain of the Canadian Rockies and flowing south, passes
within a mile of the source of the Columbia at Columbia Lake, separated
only by a nearly level valley. Connection, in fact, is so easy that a
canal once joined the two rivers. From that point of contact the Kootenai
flows far south into Idaho, then makes a grand wheel to the north-west,
forming Kootenai Lake on the way, then wheeling again in its tortuous
course to the west, it joins the greater stream in the midst of the
majestic mountain chains which stand guard over the Arrow Lakes. And
meanwhile where has the Columbia itself been journeying? After the parting
from the Kootenai it flows directly north-west between two stupendous
chains of mountains. Reaching its highest northern point in latitude 52
degrees, where it receives the Canoe River, which has come two hundred
miles or more from the north, it turns sharply westward, finding a
passageway cleft in the mountain wall. Thence making a grand wheel toward
the south, it casts its turbid floods into the long expanse of the Arrow
Lakes, from which it emerges, clear and bright, soon to join the Kootenai.
And how far have they journeyed since they parted? The Columbia about six
hundred miles, and the Kootenai hardly less, though having passed within a
mile of each other, flowing in opposite directions.
It will be readily seen from this description that the mountains which
feed the Columbian system of rivers on the east and north, are of singular
grandeur and interest. But now as we bear our way southward again we
discover that another mountain system, yet grander and of more curious
interest, forms the western boundary of the upper Columbia Basin. This is
the Cascade Range. Sublime, majestic, mysterious, this noble chain of
mountains, with its tiaras of ice, its girdles of waterfalls, its
draperies of forest, its jewels of lakes, must make one search long to
find its parallel in any land for all the general features of mountain
charm. But over and beyond those more usual delights of the mountains,
the Cascade Range has a unique feature, one in which it stands unrivalled
among all the mountains of the earth, with the exception possibly of the
Andes. This is the feature of the great isolated snow peaks, stationed
like sentinels at intervals of from thirty to sixty miles all the way from
the British line to California. There is nothing like this elsewhere on
the North American continent. The Sierras of California are sublime, but
their great peaks are not isolated monarchs like those of the Cascades.
The high Sierras are blended together in one mountain wall, in which no
single peak dominates any wide extended space. But in the long array of
the Cascades, five hundred miles and more from the international boundary
to the California line, one glorious peak after another uplifts the banner
and sets its regal crown toward sunrise or sunset, king of earth and air
to the border where the shadow of the next mountain monarch mingles with
its own. Hence these great Cascade peaks have an individuality which gives
them a kind of living personality in the life of any one who has lived for
any length of time within sight of them.
From the north, moving south, we might gaze at these great peaks, and find
no two alike. Baker--how much finer is the native name, Kulshan, the Great
White Watcher--first on the north; Shuksan next, the place where the
storm-winds gather, in the native tongue; then Glacier Peak, with its
girdle of ice, thirteen great glaciers; Stewart next with its dizzy horn
of rock set in a field of snow; then the great king-peak of all, Rainier,
better named by the natives, Takhoma, the fountain breast of milk-white
waters; and after this, Adams, or in the Indian, Klickitat, with St.
Helens or Loowit near at hand on the west; then, across the Great River,
Hood or Wiyeast, with its pinnacled crest; next southward, Jefferson with
its sharp chimney whose top has never yet been touched by human foot; yet
beyond, the marvellous group of the Three Sisters, each with its separate
personality and yet all together combining in one superb whole; then Mt.
Scott, Mt. Thielson, Diamond Peak, Mt. Pitt, and with them we might well
include the truncated cone of Mt. Mazama, once the lordliest of the chain,
but by some mighty convulsion of nature, shorn of crown and head, and now
bearing on its summit instead the most singular body of water, Crater
Lake, on all the American continent.
Fifteen is the number of the great peaks named, but there are dozens of
lesser heights, snow-crowned and regal. The great Cascade chain is,
therefore, the noblest and most significant feature of the topography of
the land of the Columbia. Between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades
lies what is locally known as the Inland Empire, mainly a continuous
prairie or series of prairies and valleys, wheat land, orchard land,
garden land, fertile, beautiful, attractive, broken by an occasional
mountain spur, as the irregular mass of the Blue Mountains, but
substantially an inhabited land, reaching from Colville, Spokane, and the
Okanogan on the north to the Klamath valleys on the south, a region five
hundred miles long by two hundred wide, a goodly land, one difficult to
excel in all the potentialities of use for human needs.
Such are the distinguishing features of the Columbia Basin on the east
side of the Cascade Mountains.
To the west of those mountains is another vast expanse of interior
valleys, not so large indeed and not more fertile, but even more
beautiful, and by reason of earlier settlement and contiguity to the
ocean, better developed.
This series of valleys is enclosed between the Cascade Mountains and the
Coast Range, and in a general way parallels the Inland Empire already
described. But this statement should be qualified by the explanation that
North-western Washington consists of the Puget Sound Basin, which is a
distinct geographical system, while South-western Oregon consists of the
Umpqua and Rogue River valleys, and these valleys though commercially and
politically a part of the Columbia system, are geographically separate,
since they debouch directly into the Pacific Ocean. There is left,
therefore, for the Columbia region proper west of the Cascade Mountains,
the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and the valleys of the Lewis, Kalama, and
Cowlitz in Washington, with several smaller valleys on each side. The
Willamette Valley is the great distinguishing feature of this part of the
Columbia Basin. A more attractive region is hard to find. Mountains
snow-clad and majestic, the great peaks of the Cascades already described,
guard it on the east, while westward the gentler slopes of the Coast Range
separate it from the sea. Between the two ranges lies the valley, two
hundred miles long by about a hundred broad, including the foot-hills, a
succession of level plains, oak-crowned hills, and fertile bottoms. Not
Greece nor Italy nor the Vale of Cashmere can surpass this earthly
paradise in all the features that compose the beautiful and grand in
nature.
Geologists tell us that this Willamette region was once a counterpart of
Puget Sound, only with less depth of water, and that, as the result of
centuries of change, the old-time Willamette Sound has become the
Willamette Valley. It has now become the most thickly settled farming
region of the Columbia Basin, and, as its fitting metropolis, Portland
sits at the gateway of the Willamette and Columbia, the "Rose City,"
handsomest of all Western cities, to welcome the commerce of the world.
The valleys on the Washington side of the Columbia make up together a
region of great beauty, fertility, and productiveness, perhaps a hundred
miles square, and, though yet but partially developed, contain many
beautiful homes.
The larger part of the Columbia Valley west of the Cascade Mountains is,
in its natural state, densely timbered. Here are found "the continuous
woods where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound but his own dashings."
These great fir, spruce, cedar, and pine forests, extending a thousand
miles along the Pacific Coast from Central California to the Straits of
Fuca (and indeed they continue, though the trees gradually diminish in
size, for nearly another thousand miles up the Alaska coast), constitute
the world's largest timber supply. The demands upon it have been
tremendous during the past twenty years, and the stately growths of
centuries have vanished largely from all places in the near vicinity of
shipping points. Yet one can still find primeval woods where the coronals
of green are borne three hundred feet above the damp and perfumed earth,
and where the pillars of the wood sustain so continuous a canopy of
foliage that the sunlight is stopped or filters through only in pale and
watery rays. Hence all manner of vines and shrubs grow with almost tropic
profusion, though with weak and straggling stems.
Throughout the entire Pacific North-west the soil is of extraordinary
fertility. It is largely of volcanic dust as fine as flour and seems to
contain the constituents of plant life in inexhaustible abundance. Even in
the arid belts of Eastern Oregon, where to the eye of the stranger the
appearance is of a hopeless waste, those same elements of plant food
exist, and with water every manner of tree or vine or flower bursts
quickly into perfect life.
The climate of the Columbia Basin is a puzzle to the stranger, but in most
of its aspects it quickly becomes an equal delight. As is well known, the
Japan ocean current exercises upon the Pacific Coast an effect similar to
that of the Gulf Stream on Ireland and England. Hence the states of the
Columbia Valley are much warmer in winter than regions of the same
latitude on the Atlantic Coast or in the Mississippi Valley. Though the
average temperature is higher, yet it is cooler in summer on the Pacific
Coast than on the Atlantic. The Pacific climate has much less of extremes.
The State of Washington has about the same isothermal line as North
Carolina. There is, however, another feature of the Columbia climate not
so well known to non-residents, which is worthy of a passing paragraph.
This is the division of the country by the Cascade Mountains into a humid
western section and a dry eastern one. The mountain wall intercepts the
larger part of the vapour rising from the Pacific and flying eastward, and
these warm masses of vapour are condensed by the icy barrier and fall in
rain on the western side. Hence Western Oregon and Washington are damp and
soft, with frequent clouds and fogs. The rainfall, though varying much, is
in most places from forty to fifty inches a year. But east of the mountain
wall which has "milked the clouds," the air is clear and bright, the sun
shines most of the year from cloudless skies, and there seems to be more
of tingle and electricity in the atmosphere. The rainfall ranges from ten
to thirty inches, and in the drier parts vegetation does not flourish
without irrigation.
Any view of primeval Oregon would be incomplete without a glimpse of the
native race, that melancholy people, possessed of so many interesting and
even noble traits, whose sad lot it has mainly been to struggle against
the advent of a civilisation which they could not understand nor resist,
and before which they have melted away in pitiful impotency. But they have
at least had the highest dignity of defeat, for they have died fighting.
They have realised the conception of the Roman Emperor: "_Me stantem mori
oportet_."
The Oregon Indians have essentially the same characteristic traits as
other Indians, secretiveness, patience, vindictiveness, stoicism; and, in
their best state, fidelity and boundless generosity to friends.
The poor broken fragments of the once populous tribes along the Columbia
cannot but affect the present-day observer with pity. Most of the tangible
memorials of this fallen race have vanished with them. Not many of the
conquerors have been sympathetic or even rational in their treatment of
the Indians. Hence memorials of memory and imagination which might have
been drawn from them and treasured up have vanished with them into the
darkness. Yet many Indian legends have been preserved in one manner and
another, and these are sufficient to convince us that the native races are
of the same nature as ourselves. Some of the legends which students of
Indian lore have gathered, will, perhaps, prove interesting to the reader.
A quaint Nez-Perce myth accounts for the creation as follows: There was
during the time of the Watetash a monster living in the country of Kamiah
in Central Idaho. This monster had the peculiar property of an
irresistible breath, so that when it inhaled, the winds and grass and
trees and even different animals would be sucked into its devouring maw.
The Coyote god, being grieved for the destruction wrought by this monster,
made a coil of rope out of grass and with this went to the summit of
Wallowa Mountains to test the suction power of the monster. Appearing like
a tiny spear of grass upon the mountain, he blew a challenge to the
monster. Descrying the small object in the distance Kamiah began to draw
the air inward. But strange to say, Coyote did not move. "Ugh, that is a
great medicine," said the monster. Coyote now took his station upon the
mountains of the Seven Devils, a good deal closer, and blew his challenge
again. Again the Kamiah monster tried to breathe so deeply as to draw the
strange challenger into his grasp, but again he failed. "He is a very big
medicine," he said once more. And now Coyote mounted the top of the Salmon
River Mountains, somewhere near the Buffalo Hump of the present time, and
again the monster's breath failed to draw him. The baffled Kamiah was now
sure that this was most extraordinary medicine. In reality, Coyote had
each time held himself by a grass rope tied to the mountain.
Coyote now called into counsel Kotskots, the fox. Providing him with five
knives, Kotskots advised Coyote to force an entrance into the interior of
the monster. Entering in, Coyote found people in all stages of emaciation,
evidently having had their life gradually sucked out of them. It was also
so cold and dark in the interior that they were chilled into almost a
condition of insensibility. Looking about him, Coyote began to see great
chunks of fat and pitch in the vitals of the monster, and accordingly he
rubbed sticks together and started a fire, which being fed with the fat
and pitch, soon grew into a cheerful glow. Now, armed with his knives, he
ascended the vast interior until he reached the heart. He had already
directed Kotskots to rouse up and gather together all the emaciated
stowaways and provide that when the monster was cut open they should see
how to rush out into the sunlight. Great as was the monster Kamiah, he
could not stop the persistent hacking away at his heart which Coyote now
entered upon. When the fifth knife was nearly gone, the heart dropped down
and Kamiah collapsed into a lifeless mass. The people under the guidance
of Kotskots, burst out into the sunshine and scattered themselves abroad.
It must be remembered that these were animal people, not human. Coyote
called upon them to wait until he should have shown them a last wonder,
for, cutting the monster in pieces, he now began to fashion from the
pieces a new race of beings to be called men. The portion which he cut
from the head he flung northward, and of this was fashioned the Flathead
tribe. The feet he cast eastward, making them the Blackfeet. So he
continued, making new tribes here and there. But at the last Kotskots
interposed an objection. "You have made no people," he said, "for the
valley of the Lapwai, which is the most beautiful of all." Realising the
force of the suggestion, Coyote mixed the blood of the monster with water
and sprinkled it in a rain over the entire valley of the Clearwater. From
these drops of blood and water, the Nez Perce tribe was formed. The heart
of the monster is still to be seen by all travellers in that country,
being a heart-shaped hill in the valley of Kamiah.
Perhaps the most perfect and beautiful of all Indian fire myths of the
Columbia, is that connected with the famous "tomanowas bridge" at the
Cascades. This myth not only treats of fire, but it also endeavours to
account for the peculiar formation of the river and for the great snow
peaks in the near vicinity. This myth has various forms, and in order that
it may be the better understood, we shall say a word with respect to the
peculiar physical features in that part of the Columbia. The River, after
having traversed over a thousand miles from its source in the heart of the
great Rocky Mountains of Canada, has cleft the Cascade Range asunder with
a canyon three thousand feet in depth. While generally swift, that portion
between The Dalles and the Cascades is deep and sluggish. There are,
moreover, sunken forests on both sides visible at low water, which seem
plainly to indicate that at that point the river was dammed up by some
great rock slide or volcanic convulsion. Some of the Indians affirm that
their grandfathers have told them that there was a time when the river at
that point passed under an immense natural bridge, and that there were no
obstructions to the passage of boats under the bridge. At the present time
there is a cascade of forty feet at that point. This is now overcome by
government locks. Among other evidences of some such actual occurrence as
the Indians relate, is the fact that the banks at that point are gradually
sliding into the river. The prodigious volume of the Columbia, which here
rises from fifty to seventy-five feet during the summer flood, is
continually eating into the banks. The railroad has slid several inches a
year at this point toward the river and requires frequent readjustment. It
is obvious at a slight inspection that this weird and sublime point has
been the scene of terrific volcanic and probably seismic action. One
Indian legend, probably the best known of their stories, is to the effect
that the downfall of the bridge and consequent damming of the river was
due to a battle between Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams,--or, some say, Mt. St.
Helens--in which Mt. Hood hurled a great rock at his antagonist; but,
falling short of the mark, the rock demolished the bridge instead. This
event has been made use of by Frederick Balch in his story, _The Bridge of
the Gods_.
But the finer, though less known legend, which unites both the physical
conformation of the Cascades and the three great snow mountains of Hood,
Adams, and St. Helens, with the origin of fire, is to this effect.
According to the Klickitats, there was once a father and two sons who came
from the east down the Columbia to the region in which Dalles City is now
located, and there the two sons quarrelled as to who should possess the
land. The father, to settle the dispute, shot two arrows, one to the
north and one to the west. He told one son to find the arrow to the north
and the other the one to the west, and there to settle and bring up their
families. The first son, going northward, over what was then a beautiful
plain, became the progenitor of the Klickitat tribe, while the other son
was the founder of the great Multnomah nation of the Willamette Valley. To
separate the two tribes more effectively, Sahale, the Great Spirit, reared
the chain of the Cascades, though without any great peaks, and for a long
time all things went in harmony. But for convenience' sake, Sahale had
created the great tomanowas bridge under which the waters of the Columbia
flowed, and on this bridge he had stationed a witch woman called Loowit,
who was to take charge of the fire. This was the only fire in the world.
As time passed on Loowit observed the deplorable condition of the Indians,
destitute of fire and the conveniences which it might bring. She therefore
besought Sahale to allow her to bestow fire upon the Indians. Sahale,
greatly pleased by the faithfulness and benevolence of Loowit, finally
granted her request. The lot of the Indians was wonderfully improved by
the acquisition of fire. They began to make better lodges and clothes and
had a variety of food and implements, and, in short, were marvellously
benefited by the bounteous gift.
But Sahale, in order to show his appreciation of the care with which
Loowit had guarded the sacred fire, now determined to offer her any gift
she might desire as a reward. Accordingly, in response to his offer,
Loowit asked that she be transformed into a young and beautiful girl. This
was accordingly affected, and now, as might have been expected, all the
Indian chiefs fell deeply in love with the guardian of the tomanowas
bridge. Loowit paid little heed to any of them, until finally there came
two chiefs, one from the north called Klickitat and one from the south
called Wiyeast. Loowit was uncertain which of these two she most desired,
and as a result a bitter strife arose between the two. This waxed hotter
and hotter, until, with their respective warriors, they entered upon a
desperate war. The land was ravaged, all their new comforts were marred,
and misery and wretchedness ensued. Sahale repented that he had allowed
Loowit to bestow fire upon the Indians, and determined to undo all his
work in so far as he could. Accordingly he broke down the tomanowas
bridge, which dammed up the river with an impassable reef, and put to
death Loowit, Klickitat, and Wiyeast. But, inasmuch as they had been noble
and beautiful in life, he determined to give them a fitting commemoration
after death. Therefore he reared over them as monuments, the great snow
peaks; over Loowit, what we now call Mt. St. Helens; over Wiyeast, the
modern Mt. Hood; and, above Klickitat, the great dome which we now call
Mt. Adams.
Of the miscellaneous myths which pertain to the forces of nature, one of
the best is that accounting for the Chinook wind. All people who have
lived long in Oregon or Washington have a conception of that marvellous
warm wind which in January and February suddenly sends them almost summer
heat amid snow banks and ice-locked streams, and causes all nature to
rejoice as with a resurrection of spring time. Scarcely anything can be
imagined in nature more picturesque and dramatic than this Chinook wind.
The thermometer may be down nearly to zero, a foot of snow may rest like a
pall on the earth, or a deadly fog may wrap the earth, when suddenly, as
if by the breath of inspiration, the fog parts, the peaks of the mountains
may be seen half stripped of snow, and then, roaring and whistling, the
warm south wind comes like an army. The snow begins to drip like a pressed
sponge, the thermometer goes with a jump to sixty, and within two hours we
find ourselves in the climate of Southern California. No wonder the
Indians personified this wind. We personify it ourselves.
The Yakima account of the Chinook wind was to the effect that it was
caused by five brothers who lived on the Columbia River, not far from the
present town of Columbus. Now there is at rare intervals in this country a
cold north-east wind, which the Indians on the lower Columbia call the
Walla Walla wind because it comes from the north-east. The cold wind was
caused by another set of brothers. Both these sets of brothers had
grandparents who lived near what is now Umatilla. The two groups of
brothers were continually fighting each other, sweeping one way or the
other over the country, alternately freezing or thawing it, blowing down
trees and causing the dust to fly in clouds, and rendering the country
generally very uncomfortable. Finally, the Walla Walla brothers sent a
challenge to the Chinook brothers to undertake a wrestling match, the
condition being that those who were defeated should forfeit their lives.
It was agreed that Speelyei should act as umpire and should inflict the
penalty by decapitating the losers. Speelyei secretly advised the
grandparents of the Chinook brothers to throw oil on the wrestling ground
so that their sons might not fall. In like manner he secretly advised the
grandparents of the Walla Walla brothers to throw ice on the ground.
Between the ice and the oil it was so slippery that it would be hard for
any one to keep upright, but inasmuch as the Walla Walla grandfather got
ice on the ground last, the Chinook brothers were all thrown and killed.
The eldest Chinook had an infant baby at home, whose mother brought him up
with one sole purpose in view, and that was that he must avenge the death
of his father and uncles. By continual practice in pulling up trees he
became prodigiously strong, insomuch that he could pull up the largest fir
trees and throw them about like weeds. The young man finally reached such
a degree of strength that he felt that the time had come for him to
perform his great mission. Therefore he went up the Columbia, pulling up
trees and tossing them around in different places, and finally passed over
into the valley of the Yakima, where he lay down to rest by the creek
called the Setas. There he rested for a day and a night, and the marks of
his couch are still plainly visible on the mountain side.
Now, turning back again to the Columbia, he sought the hut of his
grandparents, and when he had found it, he found also that they were in a
most deplorable condition. The Walla Walla brothers had been having it all
their own way during these years and had imposed most shamefully upon the
old people. When he learned this, the young Chinook told his grandfather
to go out into the Columbia to fish for sturgeon, while he in the meantime
would lie down in the bottom of the boat and watch for the Walla Walla
wind. It was the habit of these tormenting Walla Walla wind brothers to
wait until the old man had got his boat filled with fish, and then they,
issuing swiftly and silently from the shore, would beset and rob him. This
time they started out from the shore as usual, but to their great
astonishment, just as they were about to catch him, the boat would shoot
on at miraculous speed and leave them far behind. So the old man landed
safely and brought his fish to the hut. The young Chinook then took his
grandparents to a stream and washed from them the filth which had gathered
upon them during all those years of suffering. Strange to say, the filth
became transformed into trout, and this is the origin of all the trout
along the Columbia.
As soon as the news became known abroad that there was another Chinook
champion in the field, the Walla Walla brothers began to demand a new
wrestling match. Young Chinook very gladly accepted the challenge, though
he had to meet all five. But now Speelyei secretly suggested to the
Chinook grandfather that he should wait about throwing the oil on the
ground until the ice had all been used up. By means of this change of
practice, the Walla Walla brothers fell speedily before the young Chinook.
One after another was thrown and beheaded until only the youngest was
left. His courage failing, he surrendered without a struggle. Speelyei
then pronounced sentence upon him, telling him that he must live, but
could henceforth only blow lightly, and never have power to freeze people
to death. Speelyei also decreed that in order to keep Chinook within
bounds he should blow his hardest at night time, and should blow upon the
mountain ridges first in order to prepare people for his coming. Thus
there came to be moderation in the winds, but Chinook was always the
victor in the end. And thus at the present time, in the perpetual flux and
reflux of the oceans of the air, when the north wind sweeps down from the
chilly zones of Canada upon the Columbia Basin, his triumph is but
transient. For within a few hours, or days at most, while the cattle are
threatened with destruction and while ranchers are gazing anxiously about,
they will discern a blue-black line upon the southern horizon. In a short
time the mountain ridges can be seen bare of snow, and deliverance is at
hand. For the next morning, rushing and roaring from the South, comes the
blessed Chinook, and the icy grip of the North melts as before a blast
from a furnace. The struggle is short and Chinook's victory is sure.
Nearly all our native races had a more or less coherent idea of a future
state of rewards and punishments. "The happy hunting ground" of the
Indians is often referred to in connection with the Indians of the older
part of the United States. Our Indians have ideas in general quite
similar. Some believe that there is a hell and a heaven. The Siskiyou
Indians in Southern Oregon have a curious idea similar to that of the
ancient Egyptians as well as of the Mohammedans. This is to the effect
that the regions of the blessed are on the other side of an enormously
deep chasm. To pass over this, one must cross on a very narrow and
slippery pole. The good can pass, but the bad fall off into empty space,
whence they reappear again upon the earth as beasts or birds.
The Klickitat Indians, living along The Dalles of the Columbia have a fine
legend of the land of spirits. There lived a young chief and a girl who
were devoted to each other and seemed to be the happiest people in the
tribe, but suddenly he sickened and died. The girl mourned for him almost
to the point of death, and he, having reached the land of the spirits,
could find no happiness there for thinking of her. And so it came to pass
that a vision began to appear to the girl at night, telling her that she
must herself go into the land of the spirits in order to console her
lover. Now there is, near that place, one of the most weird and funereal
of all the various "memaloose" islands, or death islands, of the Columbia.
The writer himself has been upon this island and its spectral and volcanic
desolation makes it a fitting location for ghostly tales. It lies just
below the "great chute," and even yet has many skeletons upon it. In
accordance with the directions of the vision, the girl's father made ready
a canoe, placed her in it, and passed out into the Great River by night,
to the memaloose island. As the father and his child rowed across the dark
and forbidding waters, they began to hear the sounds of singing and
dancing and great joy. Upon the shore of the island they were met by four
spirit people, who took the girl, but bade the father return, as it was
not for him to see into the spirit country. Accordingly the girl was
conducted to the great dance-house of the spirits, and there she met her
lover, far stronger and more beautiful than when upon earth. That night
they spent in unspeakable bliss, but when the light began to break in the
east and the song of the robins was heard from the willows on the shore,
the singers and the dancers fell asleep.
The girl, too, had gone to sleep, but not soundly like the spirits. When
the sun had reached the meridian, she woke, and now, to her horror, she
saw that instead of being in the midst of beautiful spirits, she was
surrounded by hideous skeletons and loathsome, decaying bodies. Around her
waist were the bony arms and skeleton fingers of her lover, and his
grinning teeth and gaping eye-sockets seemed to be turned in mockery upon
her. Screaming with horror, she leaped up and ran to the edge of the
island, where, after hunting a long time, she found a boat, in which she
paddled across to the Indian village. Having presented herself to her
astonished parents, they became fearful that some great calamity would
visit the tribe on account of her return, and accordingly her father took
her the next night back to the memaloose island as before. There she met
again the happy spirits of the blessed, and there again her lover and she
spent another night in ecstatic bliss. In the course of time a child was
born to the girl, beautiful beyond description, being half spirit and half
human. The spirit bridegroom, being anxious that his mother should see the
child, sent a spirit messenger to the village, desiring his mother to come
by night to the memaloose island to visit them. She was told, however,
that she must not look at the child until ten days had passed. But after
the old woman had reached the island, her desire to see the wonderful
child was so intense that she took advantage of a moment's inattention on
the part of the guard, and, lifting the cloth from the baby board, she
stole a look at the sleeping infant. And then, dreadful to relate, the
baby died in consequence of this premature human look. Grieved and
displeased by this foolish act, the spirit people decreed that the dead
should never again return nor hold any communication with the living.
In concluding this chapter we cannot forbear to call the attention of our
readers to the rare beauty of many of the native Indian names of
localities. These names always have some significance, and ordinarily
there is some such poetic or figurative conception involved in the name as
plainly reveals the fact that these rude and unfortunate natives have the
souls of poets beneath their savage exterior. It is truly lamentable that
some of the sonorous and poetic native names have been thrust aside for
the commonplace and oft-repeated names of Eastern or European localities
or the still less attractive names of discoverers or their unimportant
friends.
Think of using the names Salem and Portland for Chemeketa and Multnomah,
the native names. Chemeketa means "Here we Rest," or, some say, the "Place
of Peace," for it was the council ground of the Willamette Valley Indians.
But the Methodist missionaries thought that it would have a more Biblical
sound and conduce to the spiritual welfare of the natives to translate the
word into its equivalent, Salem. So they spoiled the wild native beauty of
the name for all time. Multnomah means "Down the Waters." But two Yankee
sea captains, with a sad deficiency of poetry in them, tossed up a coin to
decide whether to employ the name of Boston or Portland, the native town
of each, and the latter won the toss.
Oregon has been more fortunate than Washington in its State name, for it
has the unique name, stately and sonorous, which old Jonathan Carver first
used for the River and which is one of the most distinctive of all the
names of States. But whether Oregon is Indian, Spanish, French, or a
corruption of something else, or a pure invention of Carver's is one of
the mooted points in our history. Idaho, too, has one of the most
mellifluous of names, meaning the "Gem of the Mountains."
All three States have many beautiful and appropriate names of rivers,
lakes, mountains, and cities. Such are Chelan, "Beautiful Water";
Umatilla, "The Wind-blown Sand"; Walla Walla, "Where the Waters Meet";
Shuksan, "The Place of the Storm Winds"; Spokane, "The People of the Sun";
Kulshan, "The Great White Watcher"; Snoqualmie, "The Falls of the Moon
God." Seattle derives its name from the old chief Seattle, or Sealth.
The most bitterly disputed name of all is Tacoma _vs._ Rainier, as the
name of the greatest of our mountains. The name of Rainier was derived by
Vancouver from that of an officer of the British navy, a man who never
knew anything of Oregon and had no part or lot in its discovery or
development. Tacoma, or more accurately, _Takhoma_ (a peculiar guttural
which we cannot fully indicate), was the native Indian name, meaning,
according to some, "The Great White Mountain," and according to others
meaning "The Fountain-breast of Milk-white Waters."
With these glances at the character of the land, and its native
inhabitants, we are now ready to see how they became known to the world.
CHAPTER II
Tales of the First White Men along the Coast
Nekahni Mountain and Tallapus--Quootshoi and Toulux--Original Beauty
of Clatsop Plains--The Story Told by Celiast and Cultee--Casting of
the "Thing" upon the Beach--The Pop-corn--Burning of the
Ship--Konapee, the Iron-worker--Franchere's Account of Soto--The
Treasure Ship on the Beach at Nekahni Mountain--The Black Spook and
Mysterious Chest--The Inscription Still Found on the Rock--The Beeswax
Ship--Quiaculliby.
We have told something of the mountains, rivers, and lakes which make up
the framework of our Pacific North-west. We have also tried to see the
land through the eyes of the native red men, and have called back a few of
the grotesque, fantastic, sometimes heroic, sometimes pathetic legends
which they associated with every phase of their country.
Now the very centre of Indian lore, the Parnassus, the Delphi, the Dodona,
of the lower Columbia River Indians, is the stretch of mingled bluff,
plain, lake, sand-dune, and mountain, marvellously diversified, from the
south shore of the Columbia's mouth to the sacred Nekahni Mountain. It is
a wonderously picturesque region. From it came Tallapus, the Hermes
Trismegistus of the Oregon Indians. Its forests were haunted by the
Skookums and Cheatcos. From the volcanic pinnacles of Swallallochast, now
known as Saddle Mountain, the thunder bird went forth on its daily quest
of a whale, while at the mountain's foot Quootshoi and Toulux produced the
first men from the monstrous eggs of that same great bird. In short, that
region was rich in legend, as it was, and still is, in scenic beauty.
It is said by the Indians that a hundred years or more ago it was much
finer than now, for the entire breadth of Clatsop Plains was sodded with
deep green grass and bright with flowers almost the whole year through.
This bright-hued plain lay open to the sea, and across its southern end
flowed three tide streams, having the aboriginal names of Nekanikum,
Ohanna, and Neahcoxie.
It was a veritable paradise for the Indians. The forests were filled with
elk (moosmoos) and deer (mowitch), while fish of almost every variety
thronged the waters, from that king of all fish now known as the royal
chinook of the Columbia down to such smaller fry as the smelt and the
herring, which even now sometimes so throng the lesser streams that the
receding tide leaves them by the thousands on the muddy flats. On the
beach were infinite numbers of clams; and as an evidence of their
abundance we can now see shell mounds by the acre, in such quantity,
indeed, that some of the modern roads have been paved with shells.
This favoured region was the home of the Clatsops. There, too, according
to the legends, the first white men landed. The story of the first
appearance of the white men has reached our own times in various forms,
but the most coherent account is through the word of Celiast, an Indian
woman who died many years ago, but who became the wife of one of the
earliest white settlers and the mother of Silas Smith, now dead, but known
in his time as one of the best authorities on Indian history. Celiast was
the daughter of Kobaiway, a chieftain whose sway extended over the land of
the Clatsops in the time of the Astor Company a century ago. Celiast was
in fact the best authority for many of the Indian legends. But she is not
alone in the knowledge of this appearance of the white men, for a number
of other Indians tell the substance of the same tale. Among others an old
Indian of Bay Centre, Washington, by the name of Charlie Cultee, related
the story to Dr. Franz Boas, whose work in the Smithsonian Institute is
known as among the best on the native races. This is the story, a
composite of that of Celiast and that of Cultee.
It appears that an old woman living near the ancient Indian village of
Ne-Ahkstow, about two miles south of the mouth of the Great River (the
Columbia) had lost her son. "She wailed for a whole year, and then she
stopped." One day, after her usual custom, she went to the seaside, and
walked along the shore towards Clatsop. While on the way she saw something
very strange. At first it seemed like a whale, but, when the old woman
came close, she saw that it had two trees standing upright in it. She
said, "This is no whale; it is a monster." The outside was all covered
over with something bright, which they afterwards found was copper. Ropes
were tied all over the two trees, and the inside of the Thing was full of
iron.
While the old woman gazed in silent wonder, a being that looked like a
bear, but had a human face, though with long hair all over it, came out of
the Thing that lay there. Then the old woman hastened home in great fear.
She thought this bearlike creature must be the spirit of her son, and that
the Thing was that about which they had heard in the Ekanum tales.
The people, when they had heard the strange story, hastened with bows and
arrows to the spot. There, sure enough, lay the Thing upon the shore, just
as the old woman had said. Only instead of one bear there were two
standing on the Thing. These two creatures,--whether bears or people the
Indians were not sure,--were just at the point of going down the Thing
(which they now began to understand was an immense canoe with two trees
driven into it) to the beach, with kettles in their hands.
As the bewildered people watched them they started a fire and put corn
into the kettles. Very soon it began to pop and fly with great rapidity up
and down in the kettles. The pop-corn (the nature of which the Clatsops
did not then understand) struck them with more surprise than anything
else,--and this is the one part of the story preserved in every version.
Then the corn-popping strangers made signs that they wanted water. The
chief sent men to supply them with all their needs, and in the meantime he
made a careful examination of the strangers. Finding that their hands were
the same as his own, he became satisfied that they were indeed men. One of
the Indians ran and climbed up and entered the Thing. Looking into the
interior, he found it full of boxes. There were also many strings of
buttons half a fathom long. He went out to call in his relatives, but,
before he could return, the ship had been set on fire. Or, in the
language of Charlie Cultee, "It burnt just like fat." As a result of the
burning of the ship, the Clatsops got possession of the iron, copper, and
brass.
Now the news of this strange event became noised abroad, and the Indians
from all the region thronged to Clatsop to see and feel of these strange
men with hands and feet just like ordinary men, yet with long beards and
with such peculiar garb as to seem in no sense men. There arose great
strife as to who should receive and care for the strange men. Each tribe
or village was very anxious to have them, or at least one of them. The
Quienaults, the Chehales, and the Willapas, from the beach on the north
side, came to press their claims. From up the river came the Cowlitz, the
Cascades, and even the Far-off Klickitat. The different tribes almost had
a battle for possession, but, according to one account, it was finally
settled that one of the strange visitors should stay with the Clatsop
chief, and that one should go with the Willapas on the north side of the
Great River. According to another, they both stayed at Clatsop.
From this first arrival of white men, the Indians called them all
"Tlehonnipts," that is, "Of those who drift ashore." One of the men
possessed the magical art of taking pieces of iron and making knives and
hatchets. It was indeed to the poor Indians a marvellous gift of Tallapus,
their god, that they should have a man among them that could perform that
priceless labour, for the possession of iron knives and hatchets meant the
indefinite multiplying of canoes, huts, bows and arrows, weapons, and
implements of every sort. The iron-maker's name was Konapee. The Indians
kept close watch of him for many days and made him work incessantly. But,
as the tokens of his skill became numerous, his captors held him in great
favour and allowed him more liberty. Being permitted to select a site for
a house, he chose a spot on the Columbia which became known to the
Indians, even down to the white occupancy of the region, as "Konapee."
Among other possessions, Konapee had a large number of pieces of money,
which, from the description, must have been Chinese "cash." From this some
have inferred that Konapee must have been a Chinaman, and the wrecked ship
a Chinese or Japanese junk. This does not, however, follow. For the
Spaniards had become entirely familiar with China, and any Spanish vessel
returning from the Philippine Islands or from China would have been likely
to have a supply of Chinese money on board.
There is an interesting bit of testimony which seems to belong to this
same story of Konapee. It is found in the book by Gabriel Franchere in
regard to the founding of Astoria, the book which was the chief authority
of Irving in his fascinating narrative entitled _Astoria_. Franchere
describes meeting an old man, eighty years old, in 1811, at the Cascades,
whose name was Soto, and who said that his father was one of four
Spaniards wrecked on Clatsop beach many years before. His father had tried
to reach the land of the sunrise by going eastward, but having reached the
Cascades was prevented from going farther and had there married an Indian
woman, Soto's mother. It is thought likely that the father of Soto was
Konapee. The two stories seem to fit quite well. If this be true, it is
likely that Konapee's landing was as early as 1725. If all the details of
Konapee's life could be known, what a romance might be made of it! There
is no reason to suppose that he ever saw other white men or ever got away
from the region where the fortune of shipwreck had cast him. Yet he was in
possession of one of the greatest geographical secrets of that country,
for the hope of the discovery of some great "River of the West," the
elusive stream which many believed to be a pure fabrication of Aguilar and
other old navigators, had enticed many a "marinere" from many a far
"countree."
In any event it is probable that the Columbia River Indians had got a
general knowledge of the whites and their arts from Konapee long before
the authentic discovery of the river was made. Especially it seems that
from him they got a knowledge of iron and implements fashioned from it.
Captain Cook mentions that when he visited the coast in 1780 the Indians
manifested no surprise at the weapons or implements of iron. In fact even
all whites who supposed themselves to be the first to visit this coast
found the Indians ready to trade and especially eager to get iron. A new
era of trade and business seems to have been inaugurated among these
Clatsops and Chinooks dating from about the supposed time of Konapee. But
he was by no means the only one of his race to be cast upon the Oregon
shore. There is a story of a treasure ship cast upon the beach near
Nekahni Mountain. This mountain, the original home of Tallapus, while on
its summit the great chief god Nekahni himself dwelt, is one of the
noblest pieces of Nature's art all along the shore. Fronting the ocean
with a precipitous rampart of rock five hundred feet high and thence
rising in a wide sweeping park clad in thick turf, and dotted here and
there with beautiful spruce and fir trees, to an elevation of twenty-five
hundred feet, the sacred Nekahni presents as fine a combination of the
beautiful and sublime as can be seen upon a whole thousand miles of coast.
It was a favourite spot with the natives. For lying upon its open and
turfy slopes they could gaze upon many miles of sea, and could no doubt
light up their signal fires which might be seen over a wide expanse of
beach. Very likely there, too, they celebrated the mysterious rites of
Nekahni and Tallapus.
One pleasant afternoon in early summer, a large group of natives assembled
upon the lower part of Nekahni, almost upon the edge of the precipitous
cliff with which it fronts the sea. Gazing into the offing they saw a
great object like a huge bird drawing near from the outer sea. It
approached the shore, and then from it a small boat with a number of men
and a large black box put out to land. Coming to the beach the men took
out the box and also a black man whom the Indians supposed to be a spook
or evil demon. Going a little way up the beach the men dug a hole into
which they lowered the box, and then having struck down the black man they
threw him on top of the box and, covering it up, they returned to the
ship, which soon disappeared from sight. On account of the black man
buried with the box, the superstitious Indians dared not undertake to
exhume the contents of the grave. But the story was handed from one
generation to another, and it came to constitute the story of the
"treasure ship."
In recent times the idea that here some chest, with gold and jewels in
the most approved style of buried fortunes, might be found has caused much
searching. The ground has been dug over for the sight of the regulation
rusty handle which is to lead to the great iron-bound chest with its
doubloons of gold and crucifixes of pearls. Parties have come from the
Eastern States to join the search. One party even secured the guidance of
spirits who professed to locate the treasure. But though the spirit-led
enthusiasts turned over every stone and dug up the sand for many feet
along the beach, they found never an iron-bound chest, and never a sign of
the treasure. There is, however, in plain sight now, on a rock at the foot
of Nekahni Mountain, a character cut in the rock bearing a rude
resemblance to a cross. Some think it looks more like the letters, I.H.S.,
the sacred emblem of the Catholic Church. There is also what seems to be
quite a distinct arrow pointing in a certain direction. But the treasure
remains unfound.
The next legend of the prehistoric white man is that of the "Beeswax
Ship." This, too, has a real confirmation in the presence of large
quantities of beeswax at a point also near Nekahni Mountain, just north of
the mouth of the Nehalem River. Some naturalists claimed at one time that
this substance was simply the natural paraffine produced from the products
of coal or petroleum. But more recently cakes of the substance stamped
with the sacred letters, "I.H.S.," together with tapers, and even one
piece with a bee plainly visible within, may be considered incontestable
proof that this is indeed beeswax, while the letters, "I.H.S." denote
plainly enough the origin of the substance in some Spanish colony. An
interesting point in connection with this is the historical fact that on
June 16, 1769, the ship _San Jose_ left La Paz, Lower California, for San
Diego, and was never heard from again. Some have conjectured that the _San
Jose_ was the "Beeswax Ship," driven far north by some storm or mutiny. As
to the peculiar fact that a ship should have been entirely loaded with
beeswax it has been conjectured that some of the good padres of the
Spanish Missions meant to provide a new station with a large amount of wax
for the sake of providing tapers for their service, the lighted candles
proving then, as they do now, a matter of marvel and wonder to the
natives, and, with other features of ceremonial worship, having a great
effect to bring them into subjection to the Church.
The Indian legend runs on to the effect that several white men were saved
from the wreck of the "Beeswax Ship," and that they lived with them. But
having infringed upon the family rights of the natives, they became
obnoxious, and were all cut off by an attack from them. One story,
however, asserts that there was one man left, a blue-eyed, golden-haired
man, that he took a Nehalem woman, and that from him was descended a
fair-complexioned progeny, of which a certain chieftain who lived at a
beautiful little lake on Clatsop plains, now known as Culliby Lake, was
our Quiaculliby.
Such in brief survey, are some of the stories which preserve the record of
the space betwixt the Indian age of myth and the period of authentic
discovery.
CHAPTER III
How all Nations Sought the River from the Sea and how they Found it
Search for Gold--Economic Effects--Early Extension of Exploration
Westward--Cortez--Magellan--Aguilar--Fables of the Sea--Shakspere and
Swift--Maps--Great Wars of the Seventeenth Century and Downfall of
Spain--Long Delay--Resumption of Exploration--Spanish Settlement of
California--Russia and
Behring--Perez--Heceta--Cook--Fur-trade--Gathering of Nations--The
Yankees--Gray and Kendrick--Meares and Vancouver--The Complete
Discovery--Strife between England and the United States.
The period of the Renaissance is one, which by reason of splendid
achievements in literature, in art, in science, and in discovery, can
hardly be duplicated. We are here especially concerned with the
discoverers. A mingling of motives impelled those dauntless spirits
onward, and among the most potent was the greed for gold. Much American
history is bound up with the mad rush for the precious metals, and the
spread of exploration from the West Indies and Mexico, the first centres
of Spanish power, was one of its results. Only eight years after the
landing of Columbus on San Salvador, the Portuguese Gaspar Cortereal had
conceived the idea of a north-west passage, which in some unexplained
manner became known as the Strait of Anian. In 1543, the Spaniards
Cabrillo and Ferrelo coasted along the shores of California, and the
latter was doubtless the first white man to look upon the coast of Oregon.
In 1577, England appeared in the person of that boldest and most
picturesque of the half-discoverers, half-pirates, of that time, Francis
Drake. In that year he set forth on the wonderful voyage in which he
plundered the treasures of the Spanish Main, cut the golden girdle of
Manila, queen of the Spanish Orient, skirted along the coast of California
and Oregon, and at last circumnavigated the globe. Brilliant as were
Drake's exploits, they did not result in the discovery of our Great River.
In 1592, just a century after Columbus, Juan de Fuca, whose name is now
preserved in the strait leading to Puget Sound, is said to have made that
voyage which is regarded by most historians as a myth, but which affords
so fascinating a bit of narration that it ought to be true. Two hundred
years later John Meares, the English navigator, attached the name of the
stout old Greek pilot to that inlet now familiar to ships of all nations.
With the passage of a few years more, explorations upon the western shore
of America began to assume a more definite form. In 1602 the best equipped
squadron thus far sent out left Acapulco under command of Vizcaino, with
the aim of carrying out Monterey's great purpose for the northward
extension of Spanish power. The fleet being scattered by storm, the
_fragata_ in command of Martin Aguilar ran up the coast as far as latitude
43 degrees. There they found a cape to which they attached the name still
held, Cape Blanco. From that point, following the north-westerly trending
of the coast, they soon came abreast of a "rapid and abundant river, with
ash trees, willows, and brambles, and other trees of Castile upon its
banks." This they endeavoured to enter, but from the strength of the
current could not. "And seeing that they had already reached a higher
latitude than had been ordered by the viceroy and that the number of the
sick was great, they decided to return to Acapulco." Torquemada, the
historian, from whom the account is taken, goes on to say:
It is supposed that this river is one leading to a great city, which
was discovered by the Dutch when they were driven thither by storms,
and that it is the Strait of Anian, through which the vessels passed
in sailing from the North Sea to the South Sea; and that the city
called Quivera is in those parts; and that this is the region referred
to in the account which His Majesty read, and which induced him to
order this expedition.
The interesting question arises, Was the river the Columbia? It is the
only large river on the Oregon coast, though the Umpqua, if at flood
stage, might have given the impression of size. The latitude is not right,
either, though the Spanish narrator does not say how far north of Cape
Blanco they went. But whether or not Aguilar really went so far north as
the Columbia, his voyage was one of much interest. It gave Spain a warrant
to claim the western coast of America; it still further strengthened the
idea of the Strait of Anian; it seemed to confirm the romantic conception
of a great city or group of cities with civilised inhabitants along that
passage way, and it gave the first name to the river, the Rio de Aguilar.
Thenceforth the navigators of all nations accepted as the primary object
of their search some great river of the West. Hidden in the fogs of fancy,
as it lay shrouded in truth in the mists of the ocean, the supposed Rio
de Aguilar yet held the spell of enchantment over many an "ancient
mariner" of many a land. Whatsoever nation could actually find the river
and establish a definite claim to first discovery, would have, by the
generally accepted usage of nations, the right of occupation and
ownership.
That was a fruitful time for fables of the sea, and around the Great River
many of them gathered. The original of Baron Munchausen seems to have
existed in the persons of Captain Lorenzo Ferrer de Maldonado and Admiral
Pedro Bartolome de Fonte. The first of these worthies, whose voyage was
said to have been made in 1588, describes in a very circumstantial manner
his passage through the Strait of Anian and his exit upon the Asiatic side
of the continent. This he averred was marked with a very remarkable rocky
eminence which rendered it wonderfully adapted to fortification and
defence, the mountain being so steep, in fact, that a missile dropped from
the summit would fall directly upon a ship in mid-channel. It is thought
by some students that some unchronicled Spanish navigator may have
actually made the inland passage up the Alaskan coast and that some report
of it may have become transformed into Maldonado's story. Fonte's story
seems to have first appeared in a London publication in 1708, though his
voyage was alleged to have been made in 1640. He told a marvellous tale of
a great river which led to a magnificent lake on whose banks stood a great
city. The river he located in latitude 53 degrees, and he named it the Rio
de los Reyes, or River of Kings. This is far north of the Columbia, but
the account persisted in popular idea for a long time. The name became
associated with those of the Rio de Aguilar and the River of the West.
These and other similar tales, the flotsam and jetsam of ocean myths, gave
something of inspiration and suggestion to literature. For even long
before the alleged exploits of Fonte, the fertile mind of Shakspere had
conceived of Caliban and Ariel and other fancies of the age of Western
adventure. And in the next century the prince of political satirists,
Jonathan Swift, had located almost exactly at the mouth of the Rio de
Aguilar, the land of the Brobdingnagians, while the countries into which
the veracious Gulliver was thrown at a later time, Luggnagg and
Blubdubrib, were in the Pacific at a somewhat indefinite distance from the
land of the Giants.
The land of the Oregon was in short, the land of the great unexplored and
of boundless fancy. Some of the old maps illustrating that period are of
much interest. Zaltieri's map of 1566 shows a generally accurate
conception of the eastern part of America and of the western coast of
Mexico and California, but the entire continent above about latitude 60
degrees is occupied with a _mare septentrionale incognito_. Luck's map of
1582 presents a fairly good conception of Florida and Mexico, but is
entirely astray on the western coast. The Wytfliet-Ptolemy map of 1597 has
a singularly indented coast running nearly east and west in the location
of Oregon, while Cape Blanco and a river, the Rio de los Estrachos, in
about latitude 51 degrees, seem to be an attempt to denote Aguilar's cape
of 1543, and to locate the river by still another name, though in a
higher latitude. Maldonado's map of the Strait of Anian of 1609 is
manifestly manufactured to suit the occasion, and is interesting only as
showing how far mendacity and gullibility could travel hand in hand.
But now the first age of discovery on the coast of Oregon drew to a close.
It cannot be said that much of tangible knowledge had been attained.
Puzzling questions had been raised. Labyrinths of conjecture, with no
definite clues for exit, had been entered. Fascinating romances had been
so interwoven with probable fact that no one could untangle them. A
general conception of a great river and a great north-west passage had
been held up with some distinctness as the goal of navigators. Finally,
most important of all, what had been seen was of so enticingly interesting
a nature and seemed to promise results so important, that they furnished a
motive for continued exploration. It certainly looked as though the
nations would continue the search for the Great River of the West. Spain
had the inside track of all, though Drake and Cavendish and Hawkins had
run down many a richly laden treasure galleon and had laid the booty at
the feet of the Virgin Queen, and many an embittered buccaneer of French
or English race had hounded the flag of Spain across the breadth of half
the seas.
But a great change was impending. There was a new shuffle of the cards in
the hands of the Fates and the Furies as the seventeenth century moved on
apace. Spain's time had come. Her cup of iniquity was now full. Her whole
measure of national policy had been the sword for the pagan and the
inquisition for the heretic. The banished Moors of Granada and the
murdered "Beggars" of Holland and the wasted Incas and Montezumas of
America united to call down the vengeance of Nemesis upon the destroyer of
a fair world's peace.
The stupendous struggles engendered by the Reformation, culminating in the
Thirty Years' War, went on almost without pause for over a century. That
strife, ending at Westphalia in 1648, saw Spain prostrate and the
principle of religious toleration triumphant. But almost immediately
another struggle arose, the natural successor of the first, the struggle
against the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons. As may well be seen, the
nations of Europe were so enchained in the strife against Pope and King
that they had little thought for new discoveries. Over a hundred and sixty
years passed after the voyage of Aguilar before there was another serious
movement of discovery on the coast of Oregon.
This new movement of Pacific exploration, destined to continue with no
cessation to our own day, was ushered in by Spain. There was even yet much
vitality in the fallen mistress of the world. Impelled by both religious
zeal and hope of material gain, the immigration of 1769 went forth from La
Paz to San Diego and Monterey. That inaugurated the singular and poetic,
in some aspects even beautiful, history of Spanish California, an era
which has provided so much of romance and poetry for literature in the
California of our own times. The march of events had made it plain to the
Spanish Government that, if it was to retain a hold on the Pacific Coast,
it must bestir itself. Russia, England, and France, released in a measure
from the pressure of European struggles, were fitting out expeditions to
resume the arrested efforts of the sixteenth century. It seemed plain also
that colonial America was going to be an active rival on the seas. And
well may it have so seemed, for, in the sign of the Yankee sailor, the
conquest was to be made.
But just at that important juncture a most favouring condition arose for
Spain. The government of England precipitated the struggle of the American
Revolution. France soon joined to strike her island rival a deadly blow by
assisting in the liberation of the colonies. For the time, Spain had
nearly a clear field for Pacific discovery, so far as England and France
were concerned. As for Russia, the danger was more imminent. Russia had,
indeed, begun to look in the direction of Pacific expansion a long time
prior to the Spanish immigration to California. That vast monarchy,
transformed by the genius of Peter the Great, had stretched its arms from
the Baltic to the Aleutian Archipelago, and had looked from the frozen
seas of Siberia to the open Pacific as a fairer field for expansion. Many
years elapsed, however, before Peter's great designs could be fulfilled.
Not till 1741 did Vitus Behring thread the thousand islands of Sitka and
gaze upon the glaciated crest of Mt. St. Elias. And it was not till thirty
years later that it became understood that the Bay of Avatcha was
connected by the open sea with China. In 1771 the first cargo of furs was
shipped directly from Avatcha to Canton. Then first the vastness of the
Pacific Ocean was comprehended. Then first it was understood that the same
waters which lashed the frozen ramparts of Kamchatka encircled the coral
islands of the South Sea and roared against the stormy barriers of Cape
Horn.
The Russians had not found the Great River, though it appears that Behring
in 1771 had gone as far south as latitude 46 degrees, just the parallel of
the mouth of the Columbia. But he was so far off the coast as not to see
it.
Three Spanish voyages followed in rapid succession: that of Perez in 1774,
of Heceta in 1775, and of Bodega in 1779. The only notable things in
connection with the voyage of Perez were his discovery of Queen
Charlotte's Island, with the sea-otter furs traded by the natives, the
first sight of that superb group of mountains which we now call the
Olympic, but which the Spaniards named the Sierra de Santa Rosalia, and
finally the fine harbour of Nootka on Vancouver Island, named by Perez
Port San Lorenzo, for years the centre of the fur-trade and the general
rendezvous of ships of all nations. But no river was found.
With another year a still completer expedition was fitted out, Bruno
Heceta being commander and Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, second in
command. This voyage was the most important and interesting thus far in
the history of the Columbia River exploration. For Heceta actually found
the Great River, so long sought and so constantly eluding discovery. On
June 10, 1775, Heceta passed Cape Mendocino, and entered a small bay just
northward. There he entered into friendly relations with the natives and
took solemn possession of the country in the name of His Catholic Majesty
of Spain. Sailing thence northward, he again touched land just south of
the Straits of Fuca, but there he met disaster at the ill-omened point
subsequently named Destruction Island. For there his boat landing for
exploration was set upon by the savage inhabitants, and the entire
boat-load murdered. Moving southward again, on August 15th, in latitude 46
degrees 10 minutes, Heceta found himself abreast of some great river.
Deciding that this must be indeed the mysterious Strait of Fuca, or the
long concealed river of the other ancient navigators, he made two efforts
to enter, but the powerful current and uncertain depths deterred him, and
he at last gave up the effort and bore away for Monterey. Three additional
names were bestowed upon the River at this time. Thinking the entrance a
bay, Heceta named it, in honour of the day, Ensenada de Asuncion. Later it
was more commonly known as Ensenada de Heceta, while the Spanish charts
designated the river as Rio de San Roque. The name of Cabo de Frondoso
(Leafy Cape) was bestowed upon the low promontory on the south, now known
as Point Adams, while upon the picturesque headland on the north which we
now designate as Cape Hancock, the devout Spaniards conferred the name of
Cabo de San Roque, August 16th being the day sacred to that saint.
The original account given by Heceta is so interesting that we insert it
here:
On the 17th day of August I sailed along the coast to the 46th degree,
and observed that from the latitude 47 degrees 4 minutes to that of 46
degrees 10 minutes, it runs in the angle of 18 degrees of the second
quadrant, and from that latitude to 46 degrees 4 minutes, in the angle
of 12 degrees of the same quadrant; the soundings, the shore, the
wooded character of the country, and the little islands, being the
same as on the preceding days.
On the evening of this day I discovered a large bay, to which I gave
the name Assumption Bay, and a plan of which will be found in this
journal. Its latitude and longitude are determined according to the
most exact means afforded by theory and practice. The latitudes of the
two most prominent capes of this bay are calculated from the
observations of this day.
Having arrived opposite this bay at six in the evening, and placed the
ship nearly midway between the two capes, I sounded and found bottom
in four brazas [nearly four fathoms]. The currents and eddies were so
strong that, notwithstanding a press of sail, it was difficult to get
out clear of the northern cape, towards which the current ran, though
its direction was eastward in consequence of the tide being at flood.
These currents and eddies caused me to believe that the place is the
mouth of some great river, or of some passage to another sea. Had I
not been certain of the latitude of this bay, from my observations of
the same day, I might easily have believed it to be the passage
discovered by Juan de Fuca, in 1592, which is placed on the charts
between the 47th and the 48th degrees; where I am certain no such
strait exists; because I anchored on the 14th day of July midway
between these latitudes, and carefully examined everything around.
Notwithstanding the great difference between this bay and the passage
mentioned by De Fuca, I have little difficulty in conceiving they may
be the same, having observed equal or greater differences in the
latitudes of other capes and ports on this coast, as I will show at
the proper time; and in all cases latitudes thus assigned are higher
than the real ones.
I did not enter and anchor in this port, which in my plan I suppose to
be formed by an island, notwithstanding my strong desire to do so;
because, having consulted with the second captain, Don Juan Perez, and
the pilot Don Christoval Revilla, they insisted I ought not to attempt
it, as, if we let go the anchor, we should not have men enough to get
it up, and to attend to the other operations which would be thereby
necessary. Considering this, and also, that in order to reach the
anchorage, I should be obliged to lower my long boat (the only boat I
had) and to man it with at least fourteen of the crew, as I could not
manage with fewer, and also as it was then late in the day, I resolved
to put out; and at the distance of three leagues I lay to. In the
course of that night, I experienced heavy currents to the south-west,
which made it impossible to enter the bay on the following morning, as
I was far to leeward. These currents, however, convinced me that a
great quantity of water rushed from this bay on the ebb of the tide.
The two capes which I name in my plan, Cape San Roque and Cape
Frondoso, lie in the angle of 10 degrees of the third quadrant. They
are both faced with red earth and are of little elevation.
On the 18th I observed Cape Frondoso, with another cape, to which I
gave the name of Cape Falcon, situated in the latitude of 45 degrees
43 minutes, and they lay at an angle of 22 degrees of the third
quadrant, and from the last mentioned cape I traced the coast running
in the angle of 5 degrees of the second quadrant. This land is
mountainous, but not very high, nor so well wooded as that lying
between the latitudes of 48 degrees 30 minutes, and 46 degrees. On
sounding I found great differences: at a distance of seven leagues I
got bottom at 84 brazas; and nearer the coast I sometimes found no
bottom; from which I am inclined to believe there are reefs or shoals
on these coasts, which is also shown by the colour of the water. In
some places the coast presents a beach, in others, it is rocky.
A flat-topped mountain, which I named the Table, will enable any
navigator to know the position of Cape Falcon without observing it; as
it is in the latitude of 45 degrees 28 minutes, and may be seen at a
great distance, being somewhat elevated.
It may be added that the Cape Falcon of Heceta was the bold elevation
fronting the sea, known now as Tillamook Head, while the Table Mountain
was doubtless what we now call Nekahni Mountain, both points especially
the scenes of Indian myth.
Such was the actual discovery of the Columbia River, and as such the
Spaniards justly laid claim to Oregon. Their treaty with the United States
in 1819 was the formal conveyance of their claims to us. Nevertheless
Heceta only half discovered the River. It seems very strange that with the
all-important object of two centuries' search before him, he should so
readily have succumbed to the fear of the powerful outstanding current.
But the Spaniards were not in general the patient and persistent students
of the shores that the English and Americans were. Their charts were in
general worthless. Nevertheless Spain came nearest "making good" of any of
the European powers. In 1779 Bodega and Arteaga sailed far north and
sighted a vast snow peak "higher than Orizaba," which was doubtless St.
Elias. In the same year Martinez and De Haro established themselves at
Nootka. Subsequent voyages of Bodega, Valdez, and Galiano, and their first
circumnavigation of Vancouver Island (named by them Quadra's Island, but,
by mutual courtesy and good-will of the British and Spanish rivals,
designated Vancouver's and Quadra's Island), gave them a clear title to
the Pacific Coast of North America from latitude 60 degrees to Mexico.
But "that is another story." What of the Great River? In the very year of
the declaration of American independence, the most elaborate expedition
yet fitted out for western discovery, set forth from England in command of
that Columbus of the eighteenth century, Captain James Cook. After nearly
two years of important movements in the Southern Hemisphere and among the
Pacific Islands, Cook turned to that goal of all nations, the coast of
Oregon. But the same singular fatality which had baffled many of the
explorers thus far, attended this most skilful navigator and best equipped
squadron thus far seen on Pacific waters. For Cook passed and repassed the
near vicinity of both the Straits of Fuca and the Columbia River, but
without finding either. Killed by the treacherous natives of Hawaii in
1778, Cook left a great name, a more intelligent conception of world
geography than was known before, and greatly strengthened claims by Great
Britain to the ownership of pivotal points of the Pacific. Of all the
great English navigators, Cook is perhaps best entitled to join the grand
chorus that sings the _Songs of Seven Seas_. But he did not see the Great
River of the West. What had become of it? After the fleeting vision which
it accorded to Heceta, it seemed to have gone into hiding.
But a new set of motives came into play immediately after Cook's voyage.
The two ships, the _Resolution_ and _Discovery_, took with them to China a
quantity of furs from Nootka. A few years earlier, as previously stated,
the Russian fur-trade from Avatcha to China had been inaugurated. A great
demand for peltries sprang up at once. A new regime dawned in Chinese and
East India trade. Gold, silver, and jewels had not thus far rewarded the
search of explorers. They were reserved for our later days of need. But
the fur-trade was as good as gold. The North Pacific Coast, already
interesting, assumed a new importance in the eyes of Europeans. The
"struggle for possession" was on. The ships of all nations converged upon
the fabled Strait and River of Oregon. English, Dutch, French, Portuguese,
Spanish, Americans, began in the decade of the eighties to crowd to the
land where the sea-otter, beaver, seal, and many other of the most
profitable furs could be obtained for a trifle. The dangers of trading and
the chances of the sea were great, but the profits of success were yet
greater.
The fur-trade began to take the place of the gold hunt as a matter of
international strife. The manner in which our own country, weak and
discordant as its different members were when just emerging from the
Revolutionary War, entered the lists, and by the marvellous allotment of
Fortune or the design of Providence, slipped in between the greater
nations and secured the prize of Oregon, is one of the epics of history,
one which ought to have some native Tasso or Calderon to celebrate its
triumph.
Following quickly upon the conclusion of the American War, came a series
of British, French, and Russian voyages, which gradually centred more
particularly about Vancouver Island and Nootka Sound. The British exceeded
the others in numbers and enterprise. Among them we find names now
preserved at many conspicuous points on the northern coast: as Portlock,
Hanna, Dixon, Duncan, and Barclay. The most notable of the French was La
Perouse, who was best equipped for scientific research of any one. A
number of Russian names appear at that period, most of which may yet be
found upon the maps of Alaska, as Schelikoff, Ismyloff, Betschareff,
Resanoff, Krustenstern, and Baranoff.
But none of them set eyes on the River, and it seemed more mythical than
ever. As a result, however, of their various expeditions, incomplete
though they were, each nation followed the usual practice of claiming
everything in sight, either in sight of the eye or the imagination, and
demanded the whole coast by priority of discovery.
Never did a geographical entity seem so to play the _ignis fatuus_ with
the world as did the River. Thirteen years elapsed from the discovery of
the Rio San Roque by Heceta before any one of the dozens who had meanwhile
passed up and down the coast, looked in again between the Cabo de Frondoso
and the Cabo de San Roque. Then there came on one negative and two
positive discoveries, and the elusive stream was really found never to be
lost again.
The negative discovery was that of Captain John Meares in 1788. Since
England afterwards endeavoured to make the voyages of Meares an important
link in her chain of proof to the ownership of Oregon, it is worthy of
some special attention. It happened on this wise. Meares came first to the
coast of Oregon in 1786, in command of the _Nootka_ to trade for furs for
the East India Company. With the _Nootka_ was the _Sea-Otter_, in command
of Captain Walter Tipping. Both seem to have been brave and capable
seamen. But disaster followed on their track. For having sailed far up the
coast, they followed the Aleutian Archipelago eastward to Prince William's
Sound. Separated on the journey, the _Nootka_ reached a safe haven, but
her consort never arrived, nor was she ever heard of more. The _Nootka_,
after an Arctic winter of distress and after losing a large part of the
crew through the ravages of scurvy, abandoned the trade and returned to
China. Discouraged by the outcome, the East India Company abandoned the
American trade and confined themselves henceforth to India.
But Meares, finding that the Portuguese had special privileges in the
fur-trade and in the harbour of Nootka, entered into an arrangement with
some Portuguese traders whereby he went nominally as supercargo, but
really as captain of the _Felice_, under the Portuguese flag. With her
sailed the _Iphigenia_ with William Douglas occupying a place similar to
that of Meares. In estimating the subsequent pretensions of Great Britain,
the student of history may well remember that these two mariners, though
Englishmen, were sailing under the flag of Portugal.
Reaching again the coast of Oregon, Meares looked in, June 29, 1788, at
the broad entrance of an extensive strait which he believed to be the
mythical Strait of Juan de Fuca of two centuries earlier, but which he did
not pause to explore. He had resolved to solve the riddle of the Rio San
Roque or the Ensenada de Asuncion or de Heceta, and turned his prow
southward. On July 5th, in latitude 46 degrees 10 minutes, he perceived a
deep bay which he considered at once to be the object of his search.
Essaying to enter, he found the water shoaling with dangerous rapidity and
a prodigious easterly swell breaking on the shore. From the masthead it
seemed that the breakers extended clear across the entrance. With rather
curious timidity for a bold Briton right on the eve of a discovery for
which all nations had been looking, Meares lost courage and hauled out,
attaching the name Deception Bay to the inlet and Cape Disappointment to
the northern promontory, the last a name still officially used.
Meares left as his final conclusion in the matter, the following
memorandum: "We can now assert that there is no such river as that of St.
Roc exists, as laid down in the Spanish charts." In view of this statement
of the case it would certainly seem that he could not be accepted as a
witness for English discovery, even if the Portuguese flag had not been
flying at his masthead.
After bestowing the name of Lookout upon the great headland christened
Cape Falcon by Heceta and known to us as Tillamook Head, Meares squared
away for Nootka, and there he spent a very profitable season in the
fur-trade.
But into the harbour of Nootka that same year of 1788, there sailed the
ship of destiny, the _Columbia Rediviva_, in command of John Kendrick.
With the _Columbia_ came the _Lady Washington_, commanded by Robert Gray.
These were the advance guard of Yankee ships which the energies of our
liberated forefathers were sending forth as an earnest of the coming
conquest of Oregon by the universal Yankee nation.
Gray and Kendrick were engaged in the fur-trade, and their energy and
intelligence made it speedily profitable. It took a long time and a long
arm, sure enough, in that day, to complete the great circuit of the
outfitting, the bartering, the transferring, the return trip, and the
final sale;--three years in all. The ship would be fitted out in Boston or
New York with trinkets, axes, hatchets, and tobacco, and proceed by the
Horn to the coast of Oregon,--six months or sometimes eight. Then up and
down the coast, as far as known, they would trade with natives for the
precious furs, making a profit of a thousand per cent. on the investment.
Gray on one occasion got for an axe a quantity of furs worth $8000. The
fur-barter would take another six or eight months. Then with hold packed
with bales of furs, the ship would square away for Macao or Canton, six or
eight months more. In China, the cargo of furs would go out and a cargo of
nankeens, teas, and silks go in, with a great margin of profit at both
ends. Then away again to Boston, there to sell the proceeds of that three
years' "round-up" of the seas, for probably ten times the entire cost of
outfitting and subsistence. The glory, fascination, and gain of the ocean
were in it, and also its dangers. Of this sufficient witness is found in
vanished ships, murdered crews, storm, scurvy, famine, and war. But it was
a great age. Gray and Kendrick were as good specimens of their keen,
facile, far-sighted countrymen, as Meares and Vancouver were of the
self-opinionated, determined, yet withal manly and thorough Britons.
Among other pressing matters, such as looking out for good fur-trade in
order to recoup the Boston merchants who had put their good money into the
venture, and looking out for the health of their crew, steering clear of
the uncharted reefs and avoiding the treacherous natives, Gray and
Kendrick remembered that they were also good Americans. They must see that
the new Stars and Stripes had their due upon the new coast.
The first voyage of the two Yankee skippers was ended and they set forth
for another round in 1791, but with ships exchanged, Gray commanding the
_Columbia_ on this second voyage. The year 1792 was now come, and it was a
great year in the annals of Oregon, three hundred years from Columbus,
two hundred from Juan de Fuca. The struggle between England and Spain over
conflicting rights at Nootka, which at one time threatened war, had been
settled with a measure of amicability. As a commissioner to represent
Great Britain, Captain George Vancouver was sent out, while Bodega y
Quadra was empowered to act in like capacity for Spain. Spaniards and
Britons alike realised that, whatever the Nootka treaty may have been,
possession was nine points of the law, and both redoubled their efforts to
push discovery, and especially to make the first complete exploration of
the Straits of Fuca and the supposed Great River. There were great names
among the Spaniards in that year, some of which still commemorate some of
the most interesting geographical points, as Quimper, Malaspina, Fidalgo,
Caamano, Elisa, Bustamente, Valdez, and Galiano. A list of British names
now applied to many points, as Vancouver, Puget, Georgia, Baker, Hood,
Rainier, St. Helens, Whidby, Vashon, Townsend, and others, attests the
name-bestowing care of the British commander.
In going to Nootka as British commissioner, Vancouver was under
instructions to make the most careful examination of the coast, especially
of the rivers or any interoceanic channels, and thereby clear up the many
conundrums of the ocean on that shore. With the best ship, the war sloop
_Discovery_, accompanied by the armed tender _Chatham_, in command of
Lieutenant W. R. Broughton, and with the best crew and best general
equipment yet seen on the coast, it would have been expected that the
doughty Briton would have found all the important places yet unfound.
That the Americans beat him in finding the River and that the Spaniards
beat him in the race through the Straits and around Vancouver Island, may
be regarded as due partly to a little British obstinacy at a critical
time, but mainly due to the appointment of the Fates.
On April 27, 1792, Vancouver passed a "conspicuous point of land composed
of a cluster of hummocks, moderately high and projecting into the sea."
This cape was in latitude 46 degrees 19 minutes, and Vancouver decided
that here were doubtless the Cape Disappointment and Deception Bay of
Meares. In spite of the significant fact that the sea here changed its
colour, the British commander was so prepossessed with the idea that
Meares must have decided correctly the nature of the entrance (for how was
it possible for an English sailor to be wrong and a Spaniard right?) that
he decided that the opening was not worthy of more attention and passed on
up the coast. So the English lost their second great chance of being first
to enter the River.
Two days later the lookout reported a sail, and as the ships drew
together, the newcomer was seen to be flying the Stars and Stripes. It was
the _Columbia Rediviva_, Captain Robert Gray, of Boston. In response to
Vancouver's rather patronising queries, the Yankee skipper gave a summary
of his log for some months past. Among other things he stated that he had
passed what seemed to be a powerful river in latitude 46 degrees 10
minutes, which for nine days he had tried in vain to enter, being repelled
by the strength of the current. He now proposed returning to that point
and renewing his effort. Vancouver declined to reconsider his previous
decision that there could be no large river, and passed on to make his
very elaborate exploration of the Straits of Fuca and their connected
waters, and to discover to his great chagrin, that the Spaniards had
forestalled him in point of time.
The vessels parted. Gray sailed south and on May 10, 1792, paused abreast
of the same reflex of water where before for nine days he had tried vainly
to enter. The morning of the 11th dawned clear and favourable, light wind,
gentle sea, a broad, clear channel, plainly of sufficient depth. The time
was now come. The man and the occasion met. Gray seems from the first to
have been ready to take some chances for the sake of some great success.
He always hugged the shore closely enough to be on intimate terms with it.
And he was ready boldly to seize and use favouring circumstances. So, as
laconically stated in his log-book, he ran in with all sail set, and at
ten o'clock found himself in a large river of fresh water, at a point
about twenty miles from the ocean.
The geographical Sphinx was answered. Gray was its Oedipus, though unlike
the ancient Theban myth there was no need that either the Sphinx of the
Oregon coast or its discoverer perish. The River recognised and welcomed
its master.
The next day the _Columbia_ moved fifteen miles up the stream. Finding
that he was out of the channel, Gray stopped further progress and turned
again seaward. Natives, apparently friendly disposed, thronged in canoes
round the ship, and a large quantity of furs was secured.
The River already bore many names, but Gray added another, and it was the
one that has remained, the name of his good ship _Columbia_. Upon the
southern cape he bestowed the name of Adams, and upon the northern, the
name Hancock. These also remain.
The great exploit was completed. The long sought River of the West was
found, and by an American. The path of destiny for the new Republic of the
West was made secure. Without Oregon we probably would not have acquired
California, and without a Pacific Coast, the United States would
inevitably have been but a second-class power, the prey to European
intrigue. The vast importance of the issue then becomes clear. Gray's
happy voyage, that Yankee foresight and confidence in his seamanship and
intuitive suiting of times and conditions to results which marks the vital
turning points of history, differentiate Gray's discovery from all others
upon our north-west coast.
As we view the matter now, a century and more later, we can see that our
national destiny, and especially the vast part that we now seem at the
point of taking in world interests through the commerce of the Pacific,
hung in the balance to a certain extent upon the stubborn adherence by
Vancouver, the Briton, to the preconceived opinion that there was no
important river at the point designated by his Spanish predecessor, and
the contrasted readiness of the American Gray to embrace boldly the
chances of some great discovery. It is true that the "Oregon Question" was
not to be settled for several decades. Much diplomacy and contention,
almost to the verge of war, were yet to come, but Gray's fortunate dash,
"with all sail set, in between the breakers to a large river of fresh
water," gave our nation a lead in the ultimate adjustment of the case,
which we never lost.
We have said that there was one negative discovery--that of Meares--and
two positive ones. Gray's was one of the two, and that of Broughton, in
command of the _Chatham_ accompanying Vancouver, was the other.
On the 20th of May, the _Columbia Rediviva_--a most auspicious name--bade
adieu to the scene of her glory, and with the Stars and Stripes floating
in triumph at her mizzen-mast, turned northward. Again the American
captain encountered Vancouver and narrated to him his discovery of the
Columbia. With deep chagrin at his own failure in the two most important
objects of discovery in his voyage, the British commander directed
Broughton to return to latitude 46 degrees 10 minutes, enter the river,
and proceed as far up as time allowed.
Accordingly, on October 21st, the companion ships parted at the mouth of
the River, the _Discovery_ proceeding to Monterey, while the _Chatham_
crossed the bar, described by Broughton as very bad, and endeavoured to
ascend the bay that stretched out beautiful and broad before them. But
finding the channel intricate and soundings variable, the lieutenant
deemed it advisable to leave the ship at a point which must have been
about twenty miles from the ocean, and to proceed thence in the cutter.
There is one thing observable in Vancouver's account of this expedition of
Broughton, and that is extreme solicitude to establish these two
propositions:--first, that the lower part of the Columbia is a bay and
that its true mouth is at a point above that reached by Gray; and second,
that the River is much smaller than it really is. It is hard to reconcile
the language used in Broughton's report as given by Vancouver with the
supposition of candour and honesty. For while it is true that the lower
part of the River is of bay-like expanse from four to nine miles in width,
yet it is entirely fresh and has all river characteristics. One of the
points especially made by Gray was that he filled his casks with fresh
water. Moreover, the bar is entirely at the ocean limit. So completely
does the River debouch into the Ocean, in fact, that in the great flood of
1894 the clams were killed on the ocean beaches for a distance of several
miles on either side of the outer headlands through the freshening of the
sea.
As to the size of the River, Broughton gives its width repeatedly as half
a mile or a quarter of a mile, whereas it is at almost no point below the
Cascades less than a mile in width, and a mile and a half is more usual.
Broughton expresses the conviction that it can never be used for
navigation by vessels of any size. In view of the vast commerce now
constantly passing in and out, the absurdity of that idea is and has been
for years sufficiently exhibited. The animus of the British explorers is
obvious. By showing that the mouth of the River was really an inlet of the
sea, they hoped to lay a claim to British occupancy as against Gray's
discovery, and by belittling the size of the River they hoped to save
their own credit with the British Admiralty for having lost so great a
chance for first occupation.
Broughton ascended the River to a point near the modern town of Washougal.
He bestowed British names after the general fashion, as Mt. Hood, Cape
George, Vancouver Point, Puget's Island, Young's Bay, Menzies' Island,
and Whidby's River. With true British assurance, he felt that he had
"every reason to believe that the subjects of no other civilised nation or
state had ever entered this river before; in this opinion he was confirmed
by Mr. Gray's sketch, in which it does not appear that Mr. Gray either saw
or was ever within five leagues of its entrance." Therefore he "took
possession of the river, and the country in its vicinity, in His Britannic
Majesty's name."
In view of all the circumstances of Gray's discovery, and his impartation
of it to the British, this language of Vancouver has a coolness, as John
Fiske remarks, which would be very refreshing on a hot day.
On November 10th, the _Chatham_ crossed the bar outward bound for Monterey
to join the _Discovery_.
Such, in rapid view, were the essential facts in the long and curiously
complicated finding of our River. We see that various nations bore each a
part. We see the foundation of the subsequent contention between Great
Britain and the United States.
CHAPTER IV
The First Steps across the Wilderness in Search of the River
Jefferson and Ledyard--Verendrye--Montcachabe, the Indian--The
Indians--The Canadians--Results of the Louisiana Purchase--Fitting out
the Lewis and Clark Expedition--The Winter with the Mandans--Crossing
of the Great Divide--Meeting of Sacajawea and Cameahwait--Descent from
the Mountains to the Clearwater and Kimooenim--Canoe Journey Down the
Snake and Columbia--First Sight of Mt. Hood--Clark in the Role of a
Magician--The Timm or Great Falls--The Sunken Forests--First
Appearances of the Tide--The Winter of 1805-06 at Fort Clatsop--The
Beginning of the Return Trip--Faithfulness of the Indians--Reception
of Lewis and Clark in the States--The Hunt Expedition--The _Voyageurs_
and Trappers--Slow Progress to the Snake River--Disasters and Distress
along the "Accursed Mad River"--Starvation--New Year's Day of 1812--A
Respite from Suffering in the Umatilla--First Sight of the Columbia
and the Mid-winter Descent to Astoria--Melancholy Lot of Crooks and
Day--Results of the Hunt Expedition.
The Pacific North-west was discovered both by land and by sea. To Thomas
Jefferson, the great apostle of Democracy, is due the gathering of
American interests in the far West, and the opening of the road by which
American sovereignty was to reach the Pacific. His great mind outran that
of the ordinary statesman of his time, and, with what seems at first sight
the strangest inconsistency in our political history, he was the
State-rights theorist and at the same time the creator of nationality
beyond any other one of our early statesmen. Away back in 1786, Jefferson
met John Ledyard, one of Cook's associates in his great voyage to the
Pacific Ocean, and grasped from the eager and energetic Yankee sailor, the
idea of American destiny on the Pacific Coast. The fertile mind of
Jefferson may justly be considered as the fountain of American exploration
up the Missouri, across the crest of the Shining Mountains, as they then
called the Rockies, and down the Columbia to the Pacific. Although
Jefferson never himself took any steps beyond the Alleghanies, he was the
inspiration of all the Americans who did take those steps.
Since we are speaking of first steps across the wilderness we should not
forget that those of other nationalities than ours first crossed the
American continent. The honour of the pioneer expedition to the crest of
the Rocky Mountains belongs to the Frenchman, Verendrye. In 1773 he set
forth from Montreal for the Rocky Mountains, and made many important
explorations. His party is said to have reached the vicinity of the site
of Helena, but never saw the sunset side of the Great Divide.
We are told by the interesting French writer, La Page, that the first man
to proceed across the continent to the shores of the Pacific was a Yazoo
Indian, Montcachabe or Montcacht Ape by name. According to the story, his
two-year journey across the great wilderness through every species of
peril and hardship, savage beasts and forbidding mountains and deserts,
hostile Indians often barring his progress for many days, was one of the
most remarkable explorations ever made by man. This Yazoo Indian with the
long name was a veritable Columbus in the nature of his achievements. But
results for the world could hardly follow his enterprise.
The first traveller to lead a party of civilised men through the Shining,
or the Stony Mountains, finally known as Rocky Mountains, to the Pacific
Ocean, was Alexander Mackenzie, a canny Scotchman, leading a party of
Scotch and French Canadian explorers. In 1793 he reached the Pacific Coast
at the point of 52 degrees 24 minutes 48 seconds north latitude. His
inscription upon a rock with letters of vermilion and grease, were read
many years afterwards: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada by land, July 22,
1793."
But the explorations of Canadians were too far north to come within the
scope of the Pacific North-west of our day. We must therefore take up the
American expeditions which proceeded from the master mind of Jefferson.
The first of these was the expedition of Lewis and Clark. This expedition
did more to broaden the American mind and to fix our national destiny than
any similar event in our whole history.
As soon as Jefferson was inaugurated president, he had urged upon Congress
the fitting out of an expedition "to explore the Missouri River and such
principal streams of it as, by its course of communication with the waters
of the Pacific Ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado, or any other
river, may offer the most direct and practical water communication across
the continent, for the purposes of commerce."
But before anything had actually been accomplished in the way of
exploration, that vast and important event, the Louisiana Purchase, had
been effected. The significance of this event was but little understood at
the time, even by statesmen, but Jefferson realised that a great thing
had been accomplished towards the development of the nation. His
enthusiasm and hopefulness spread to Congress and to the leaders of
opinion throughout the land. A like enthusiasm soon possessed the mass of
population, and emigration westward began. Already the older West was
teeming with that race of pioneers which has made up the life and the
grandeur of the nineteenth century. The American hive began to swarm. "Out
West" began to mean something more than Ohio and Kentucky. The distant
sources of the Missouri and the heights of the Shining Mountains, with all
the fantastic tales that had been told of them, were drawing our
grandfathers farther and farther from the old colonial America of the
eastern coast, and were beginning to modify the whole course of American
history. The atmosphere of boundless expectation gathered over farm and
town in the older States and the proposed expedition of Lewis and Clark
fascinated the people as much as the voyage of Columbus fascinated the
Spain of his day.
And what manner of men were in charge of this expedition, thus filled with
both interest and peril? Meriwether Lewis was the leader of the party. He
was a captain in the U. S. Army who was well known to Jefferson and who
had been selected by him as possessed of the endurance, boldness, and
energy which made him the fittest man within Jefferson's knowledge for the
duties of commander. His whole life, from his boyhood days in Virginia,
had been one of bold adventure. It is related that at the tender age of
eight, he was already illustrious for successful midnight forays upon the
coon and possum. He had not received a scientific education, but
immediately upon receiving the appointment of commander of the expedition,
he entered with great energy upon the acquisition of knowledge along
geographical lines which would best fit him for preserving an accurate
record of his journey. William Clark, the lieutenant of the expedition,
was also a United States officer, a man of very good judgment, boldness,
and skill in organising his work, and readiness in meeting every kind of
emergency. The party was made up of fourteen United States regular
soldiers, nine Kentucky volunteers, two French voyageurs, a hunter, an
interpreter and a negro servant. The soldiers were offered the munificent
bounty of retirement upon full pay, with a grant of land. By Jefferson's
directions, the party were encouraged to keep complete records of all they
saw and did. They carried out the instruction so fully that seven journals
besides those of Lewis and Clark themselves, were carefully kept, and in
them a record was made of every important, as well as unimportant,
discovery, even down to the ingredients of their meals and their doses of
medicine. It is safe to say that no expedition was ever more fully or
accurately reported. Although not a single one of the party possessed
literary attainments, there is nevertheless a singular charm about the
combined record which has been recognised to this day by repeated editions
of the work. It was well understood that the success of the expedition
depended largely upon making friends with the Indians, and the explorers
were therefore completely fitted out with beads, mirrors, knives, and all
manner of trinkets.
The summer of 1804 was spent in an easy and uneventful journey of five
months up the Missouri to the country of the Mandan Indians, in what is
now Dakota. There they determined to winter. The winter was devoted to
making the acquaintance of Indians and to collecting botanical and
zooelogical specimens, of which they sent President Jefferson a large
amount by a portion of the party which now left them and descended the
River. And, while speaking of their relations to Indians, it is very
interesting to note the attitude Jefferson instructed them to take in
respect to the native tribes. He insisted upon a policy of peace and
good-will toward all the tribes upon the route. It is observable that
Jefferson refers in a most considerate and friendly manner to the Indians,
and instructs the explorers to arrange, if possible, to have some of the
more important chiefs induced to come back with the explorers to the city
of Washington. He also points out the desirability of urging any bright
young Indians to receive such arts as might be useful to them when in
contact with the white men. Jefferson even goes so far as to advise the
explorers to take along vaccine matter that the Indians might be
instructed in the advantages of vaccination. A number of medallion medals
were made that were intended to be given as presents to Indian chiefs, the
inscription of which was "Peace and Friendship," with the design of
clasped hands. These medals, it may be remarked, seem to have been prized
by the Indians as among their greatest treasures. Several of them have
been found in Indian graves; one even in a grave of the Nez Perce Indians
in Idaho.
While among the Mandans, the expedition was joined by the most attractive
personage in it, that is to say, Sacajawea. This young Indian woman, the
only woman in the expedition, seems to have furnished the picturesque
element in the composition of the party, and she has in later days become
the subject of great interest on the part of students of Pacific Coast
history.
[Illustration: Mt. Adams from the South. Photo. by W. D. Lyman.]
On April 7th, everything was in readiness for resuming their journey up
the River. The explorers embarked again in a squadron of six canoes and
two pirogues.
On the twelfth day of August, an advance party of the explorers crossed
the Great Divide of the Rocky Mountains, the birthplace of mighty rivers.
Descending the western slope, they found themselves in the country of the
Shoshone Indians. Captain Lewis was leading this advance expedition, and,
as he neared the highest point of the pass, he realised the significance
of the transition from the waters of the Missouri to those of the
Columbia. A quotation from his narrative at this most interesting point of
the journey gives the reader a better conception than any description
could, of the feelings of the explorers:
The road was still plain, and as it led directly toward the mountains,
the stream gradually became smaller, till after their advancing two
miles further, it had so greatly diminished in width that one of the
men in a fit of enthusiasm, with one foot on each side of the rivulet,
thanked God that he had lived to bestride the Missouri. As they
proceeded, their hope of seeing the waters of the Columbia rose to
almost painful anxiety; when at the distance of four miles from the
last abrupt turn of the stream, they reached a small gap formed by the
high mountains which recede on either side, leaving room for the
Indian road. From the foot of one of the lowest of these mountains,
which arises with a gentle ascent of about half a mile, issued the
remotest water of the Missouri. They had now reached the hidden
sources of that river, which had never before been seen by civilised
man; and as they quenched their thirst at the chaste and icy
fountain,--as they sat down by the brink of that little rivulet, which
yielded its distant and modest tribute to the parent ocean,--they felt
themselves rewarded for all their labours and difficulties. They left
reluctantly this interesting spot, and pursuing the Indian road
through the interval of the hills, arrived at the top of a ridge from
which they saw high mountains, partially covered with snow, still to
the west of them. The ridge on which they stood formed the dividing
line between the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. They
found the descent much steeper than on the eastern side, and at the
distance of three-quarters of a mile, reached a handsome, bold creek
of cold, clear water running to the westward. They stopped to taste
for the first time the waters of the Columbia.
The party was now upon the western slope of the Great Divide, in the
vicinity of the present Fort Lemhi in Eastern Idaho. They supposed that
they were almost to the Pacific, not realising that a thousand miles of
difficult and dangerous travel and more than two months of time still
separated them from their wished-for goal. The journey, in fact, from the
springs of the Missouri to the navigable waters of the Columbia, proved to
be the most critical of the whole series.
Soon after passing the crest of the mountains, the party encountered a
band of sixty Indians of the Shoshone tribe, coming to meet them at full
speed, upon fine horses, and armed for battle. Captain Lewis, who always
showed great discretion with Indians, took the Stars and Stripes in his
hand, and advanced alone to meet the party. As soon as the Indians
perceived that he was a white man, they showed signs of great rejoicing,
and the three leaders of the war-party, dismounting, embraced the American
captain with great exuberance, shouting words which he afterwards
discovered meant, "We are rejoiced! We are rejoiced!" The valiant captain,
however, was much more pleased with the hearty good-will of their
intentions than in the manner of its expression, inasmuch as they had
transferred a good portion of the war paint from their own faces to his.
Lewis now brought up his companions and entered upon a long and friendly
conference with the chief of the party, whose name was Cameahwait. Captain
Lewis, as the representative of the great American nation, set forth to
the eager listeners about him, a glowing report as to the benevolence of
the Great Father at Washington, and his desire that his brothers of the
West should come into friendly relations with him and trade their furs for
the beads and blankets and knives which the Indians so highly prize. He
also explained to them that they would receive from his government guns
and ammunition which would enable them to cope with the dreaded Sioux or
the pitiless Blackfeet. Captain Lewis also greatly aroused the curiosity
of these Indians by indicating to them that he had with him a woman of
their tribe, and also a man who was perfectly black and yet not painted.
He now made a proposition to Cameahwait to go back with him and his
companions to the forks of the Missouri where they had left the main party
with their goods and boats. Cameahwait very gladly agreed to do this and
also to provide them with horses for the journey westward to the navigable
waters of the Columbia.
[Illustration: Capt. Robert Gray.]
[Illustration: The _Columbia Rediviva_.]
After a journey of several days upon the back trail, the party found
themselves again at the forks of the Missouri, but, somewhat to their
surprise and consternation, the main party was not there. The Indians at
first were very much excited, and, believing that they had been deceived
and that the white men were enticing them to destruction, they were at the
point of wreaking vengeance upon them. But with great tact and boldness,
Lewis gave the chief his gun and ammunition, telling him that if it proved
that he had been a deceiver, they might instantly kill him. Reassured, the
Indians proceeded onward and in a short time they could descry the boats,
making their way slowly up the impetuous stream toward a bold promontory
where the Indians were stationed. In the bow of the foremost boat was
seated Sacajawea, clad in her bright red blanket, and gazing eagerly at
the group of Indians, thinking it possible that they might be of her own
tribe. As the boat approached the band, the keen-sighted little Indian
woman soon perceived that these people were indeed of her own Shoshone
tribe. Quickly disembarking, she made her way to them, when suddenly her
eyes fell upon the chief, Cameahwait. Then to the astonishment of the
white men who were with her, she broke forth suddenly into a torrent of
tears which were soon changed into joyful smiles as the chief, with almost
as much emotion as herself, rushed forward to embrace her. She then
explained to Captain Lewis that Cameahwait was her own brother, whom she
had not seen since, as a little girl, she had been seized by the Mandans
and carried into captivity.
Of course there was now the kindliest feeling between the party of
explorers and the Indians. They found everything that they needed, horses,
provisions, and guides, placed at their disposal. They were at that time,
as would be seen by an inspection of the map, at the head waters of Salmon
River. They hoped that they might find a route down that powerful stream
to navigable water. But the Indians assured them that the river was white
with foam for many miles and disappeared in a chain of terrific snowy
mountains. It became necessary, therefore, to find a more northerly route,
and on the last day of August, with twenty-nine horses, having bidden a
hearty good-bye to the hospitable Shoshones, they turned north-westward
and soon became entangled in the savage ridges and defiles, already
spotted with snow, of the Bitter Root Mountains.
They were at this time among some of the upper branches of the second
largest tributary of the Columbia, named by them Clark's Fork, though at
the present time more commonly known by the more rhythmic title of Pend
Oreille. After several days of the most difficult, and indeed dangerous,
journeying of their entire trip, they abandoned the northern route, turned
southward, and soon reached the wild and beautiful stream which they
called the Kooskooskie, commonly known to modern times as the Clearwater,
one of the finest of all the fine rivers of Idaho, the "Gem of the
Mountains."
But they were not yet by any means clear of danger. The country still
frowned on them with the same forbidding crags, and the same blinding snow
storms as before. They were approaching the starvation point. The craggy
precipices were marked with almost daily accidents to men and beasts.
Their only food was the flesh of their precious horses. Under these
harassing circumstances, it was decided that the wisest thing was for
Captain Clark to take six of his best men and press rapidly forward in
search of game and a more favourable country. After a hard journey of
twenty miles, he found himself upon the crest of a towering cliff, from
which stretched in front a vast open plain. This was the great plain, now
covered with wheat-fields and orchards, lying east and north of the
present city of Lewiston, Idaho. Having made their way down the
declivities of the Bitter Root Mountains to the prairie, where they found
a climate that seemed almost tropical after the bitter cold of the high
mountains, the advance guard camped and waited for the main party to come
up.
Rejoicing at their release from the distressing conditions of their
passage of the Bitter Root Mountains, they passed onward to a beautiful
mountain-enclosed valley, which must have been in the near vicinity of
what is known as the Kamiah Valley of the present time. Here they found
themselves with a large body of Indians who became known subsequently as
the Nez Perces. These Indians appeared to be the most honest, intelligent,
and attractive they had yet met,--eager to assist them, kind and helpful,
although shrewd and business-like in their trading.
The Nez Perces imparted to them the joyful news that the Great River was
not far distant. Seeing the Clearwater to be a fine, navigable stream, the
explorers determined to abandon the weary land journey and once more
commit their fortunes to the waters. They left their horses with the Nez
Perces, asking that they should meet them at that point in the following
spring when they expected to be on their return trip. The scrupulous
fidelity with which the Nez Perces carried out their trust is some
evidence of the oft-made assertion that the treachery characteristic of
the Indians was learned afterwards from the whites.
With five large and well-filled canoes, and with a good supply of eatables
and all the other necessaries of life, the explorers now cast themselves
upon the clear, swift current of the Kooskooskie, and on the 10th of
October reached that striking and interesting place where the beautiful
modern town of Lewiston is located, at the junction of the Clearwater and
the Snake. The turbid, angry, sullen Snake, so striking a contrast with
the lesser stream, received from the explorers the name of Kimooenim, its
Indian name. Subsequently they christened it Lewis's Fork, but the still
less attractive name of Snake is the one by which it is universally known.
The journey of a hundred and twenty miles from the junction of the
Clearwater and the Snake to the junction of the latter stream with the
mighty Columbia, seems to have been a calm and uneventful journey, though
the explorers record every manner of event, whether important or
unimportant. Knowledge of their approach seems to have reached the Indian
world, and when on October 16th they reached the point where the modern
city of Pasco is located, they were met by a regular procession of two
hundred Indians. The two great rivers were then at their lowest point in
the year, and they found by measurement that the Columbia was 960 yards in
width and the Snake, 575 yards. In the glimmering haze of the pleasant
October day they noted how the vast, bare prairie stretched southward
until it was broken by the rounded summits of the Blue Mountains. To their
astonishment, they found that the Sohulks, who lived at the junction of
the rivers, so differed from other Indians that the men were content with
one wife and that they would actually assist her in the drudgery of the
family life. After several days spent in rest and getting fish, which
seemed to throng the river in almost countless numbers, they resumed their
journey upon the magnificent flood of the Columbia. Soon after passing
what we now call the Umatilla Highland, they caught their first glimpse,
clear-cut against the horizon of the south-west, of the bold cone of Mt.
Hood, glistening with its eternal snows. Landing upon the broad prairie
near where Umatilla is now located, Captain Clark shot a crane and a duck.
He then perceived a group of Indians who were almost paralysed with terror
and yet able to make their way with considerable expedition to a little
group of tepees. Having entered one of these, Captain Clark discovered
thirty-two Indians, men, women, and children, all of whom seemed to be in
the greatest terror, wailing and wringing their hands. Endeavouring by
kind looks and gestures to soothe their perturbation, Captain Clark held
up a burning glass to catch a stray sunbeam with which to light his pipe.
Whereupon the consternation of the Indians was redoubled, to be soothed
only by the arrival of the two Indian guides who were accompanying the
party. The terrified Indians explained to the guides that they knew that
Captain Clark must have some bad medicine about him, for he had dropped
out of the sky with a dead crane and a duck, accompanied by a terrible
noise.
[Illustration: Mt. Hood from Lost Lake. Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.]
The Indians being now convinced that he was a mortal man, and, moreover,
having heard the sound of the violin which the negro servant carried with
him, became so enamoured with the strangers that they stayed up with them
all night, and in the morning collected by hundreds to bid them good-bye.
The Indians had now given them to understand that in a short time they
would reach the place which they knew as "Timm." This seems to have been
an Indian word for falls. It still appears in the name Tumwater Falls
applied to the falls at Celilo on the Columbia. A weird, savage place this
proved to be; crags of basalt, thrust through the soil, like clenched
hands, seemed almost to grasp the rushing river. Making several portages,
the voyagers reached that extraordinary place now called The Dalles, or
the "big chute," where all the waters of the Columbia are squeezed into a
crack only a hundred and fifty feet in width. The River, in fact, is
"turned on edge." The explorers, finding the shore so rough that it was
difficult to carry their boats over, steered boldly through that witch's
caldron. Though they must have been carried with frightful rapidity
through the boiling stream, they reached the end of the cataract without
accident. At this point they began to be aware of the fact that they were
reaching the sphere of the white traders from the ocean, for they began to
see blankets, axes, brass kettles, and other articles of civilised
manufacture. The Indians, too, were more saucy, suspicious, and
treacherous than those of the upper country.
Being launched upon the calm, deep flood of the River below The Dalles,
they observed the phenomenon of the submerged forest, which at a low state
of water is still conspicuous. They correctly inferred that this indicated
a damming up of the River at some recent time. They thought indeed that it
could not have been more than twenty years previous. We know, however,
that submerged trees or piles, as indicated by remains of old Roman
wharves in Britain, may remain intact for hundreds of years. This place on
the Columbia is, however, one of the most interesting of its many
interesting phenomena. It is evident that within very recent times,
geologically speaking, there was a prodigious rock-slide from the
mountains which closed the River, producing the cataract of the Cascades
and raising the River above, some forty feet.
Here the explorers had their last portage. On the second day of November
they reached the foot of the Cascades and perceived the movement of the
tide, which made it plain to them that the ocean was near at hand. Yet, in
reality, it was much farther than they thought, for the majestic lower
River extends one hundred and sixty miles from the foot of the last
cataract to the Pacific. It is interesting to notice comments made by the
explorers upon the green and fertile islands at the lower end of the
Cascades, and that spired and turreted volcanic cliff which they called
Beacon Rock, but which we know now as Castle Rock.
The rest of the journey of Lewis and Clark was a calm floating down the
tranquil flood of the lower Columbia in the midst of the fog and clouds
which at that season of the year generally embrace all objects. On
November 7th the mist suddenly broke away before them, the bold
mountainous shores vanished in front, and, through the parted headlands,
they looked forth into the expanse of the ocean.
[Illustration: Eliot Glacier, Mt. Hood. Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.]
Their journey was now ended. They had demonstrated the possibility of
crossing the continent and of linking together the waters of the Missouri
and the Columbia.
The winter of 1805-06 was spent in log buildings at a point named by the
explorers, Fort Clatsop, situated on the Lewis and Clark River at the
south side of the Columbia a few miles from the present site of Astoria.
The location of this fort has been identified in modern times, as has also
the location of the salt cairn, upon what is now known as the Seaside
Beach, commemorated by an inscription.
One of the interesting little human touches in the narrative of Captain
Lewis describes the casting of a whale upon Clatsop Beach and the journey
of the party to see the great marine curiosity, as well as to secure some
of its fat and blubber. The Indian woman, Sacajawea, was to be left behind
to keep camp while they were all at the beach, but she put up the earnest
plea that inasmuch as she had never seen any such curiosity as the "big
fish," and as she had journeyed all those weary miles from the country of
the Mandans, it seemed hard that she should be denied the privilege of
satisfying her eyes with a view of the whale. Lewis remarks that the
request of the poor woman seemed so reasonable that they at once fixed up
camp in such manner that it could be left, and took her with them, to her
intense satisfaction.
After four months spent in the fogs and mists of the coast, and without
seeing any of the ships which the Indians said were accustomed to come in
considerable numbers during the spring and summer, the party turned their
faces homeward on the 23d of March, 1806. The commander posted upon the
fort a notice which read as follows:
The object of this last is that through the medium of some civilised
person who may see the same, it may be made known to the world that
the party consisting of the persons whose names are hereunto annexed
and who were sent out by the Government of the United States to
explore the interior of the continent of North America, did penetrate
the same by way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the discharge
of the latter into the Pacific Ocean, at which they arrived on the
14th day of November, 1805, and departed on their return to the United
States by the same route by which they had come.
They also gave to the chiefs of the Clatsops and Chinooks certificates, to
which they attached great importance and which were afterwards exhibited
to other explorers, setting forth the just and hospitable treatment which
these Indians had accorded the party.
The return from Fort Clatsop to the Missouri was in the main a pleasant
and successful journey without extraordinary event, except the fact that
upon their return they discovered the Willamette River, which, strange to
say, had eluded their observation on their journey down the River in
November. The journal contains the somewhat quaint statement that the
chief cultivable region which they discovered in Oregon was Wapatoo
Island, now known as Sauvie's Island, at the mouth of the Willamette. They
express the conviction that that fertile tract of country and the region
adjoining might sometime support a population of fifty thousand people.
They seem to regard this as an extraordinary prophecy of prosperity.
Inasmuch as there are already over four times that number of people in the
city of Portland, it would seem that Lewis and Clark were hardly "boomers"
in the modern sense of the word.
One interesting thing in connection with the Lewis and Clark expedition
receives special emphasis from them in the account of their return
journey, and that is, the faithfulness, honesty, and devotion of the
Indians when entrusted with any charge, as the care of horses or canoes.
This character of the Indians was so marked that one can hardly avoid the
conclusion that the subsequent troubles with the Indians were due very
largely to abuse by the whites.
No better summary can be given of the scope of this historic journey than
that by Captain Lewis himself in his journal. He says:
The road by which we went out by way of the Missouri to its head is
three thousand ninety-six miles; thence by land by way of Lewis River
over to Clark's River and down that to the entrance of Traveller's
Rest Creek, where all the roads from different routes meet; thence
across the rugged part of the Rocky Mountains to the navigable waters
of the Columbia, three hundred and ninety-eight miles, thence down the
river six hundred and forty miles to the Pacific Ocean, making a total
distance of four thousand one hundred and thirty-four miles. On our
return in 1806 we reduced the distance from the Mississippi to the
Pacific Ocean to three thousand five hundred and fifty-five miles.
The safe return of the explorers to their homes created a sensation
throughout the United States and the world. Leaders and men were suitably
rewarded. Though the expedition was not marked by many remarkable
adventures or dramatic events, and though the narration given by the
explorers is of a plain and simple kind with no attempt at literary
ornamentation, yet occurring, as the expedition did, at such a peculiar
juncture in our history, and having such an effect to bridge the chasm
between the old time and the new, this Lewis and Clark expedition has
continued to receive, and justly, more attention than any other journey in
our history. President Jefferson, paying a tribute to Captain Lewis in
1813, expressed himself thus:
Never did a similar event excite more joy throughout the United
States; the humblest of its citizens have taken a lively interest in
the issue of this journey and looked with impatience for the
information it would furnish. Nothing short of the official journals
of this extraordinary and interesting journey will exhibit the
importance of the service, the courage, devotion, zeal, and
perseverance, under circumstances calculated to discourage, which
animated this little band of heroes, throughout the long dangerous,
and tedious travel.
The expedition of Lewis and Clark may justly be considered as constituting
the first steps across the wilderness. The breadth of the American
continent was now known. The general relations of its rivers and mountain
systems and prairies were understood. Something of its prodigality of
resources became set forth to the world. A dim consciousness of the
connection of this vast Pacific domain with the progress of American
destiny appeared to our grandfathers. And although the wilderness
traversed by this complete expedition did not come into possession of the
United States for many years, yet it might well be said that our
subsequent acquirement of it was due to the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Of the many remarkable explorations which followed, with all of their
adventure and tragedy, we cannot here speak. For several years all the
expeditions to the far West were the outgrowth of the fur-trade. Most
remarkable of these early journeys was that of the Hunt party which was
the land division of the great Astor movement to establish the Pacific Fur
Company. That company was established by John Jacob Astor of New York for
the purpose of making a bold and far-reaching attempt to control the
fur-trade of the Pacific Coast in the interests of the United States.
While the sea division was upon its journey around Cape Horn, the land
division was in process of organisation at St. Louis. Wilson Price Hunt,
the commander of this division, was the second partner in the Astor
company. He had been merchandising for some years at St. Louis, and had
become impressed with the financial profits of the fur-trade as well as
with the vast possibilities of American development on the continent. Hunt
was a fine type of the pioneer promoter of that age. Brave, humane,
cheerful, and resolute, he appears to us as the very flower of the
adventurous Argonauts who were searching for the seal and beaver fleeces
of the far West.
With Hunt were associated four other partners of the expedition, Crooks,
McKenzie, Miller, and McCellan. Accompanying the party were two English
naturalists, Bradbury and Nuttall, who did the first scientific study of
the Rocky Mountain region. There were forty Canadian _voyageurs_ whose
duties consisted of rowing, transporting, cooking, and general drudgery.
The remaining twelve of the party consisted of a group of American hunters
and trappers, the leader of whom was a Virginian named John Day. The
company was in all respects fitted out most bountifully.
There were at that time two great classes of trappers. The first and most
numerous were the Canadian _voyageurs_. These were mainly of French
descent, many of them being half-breeds. Almost amphibious by nature and
training, gay and amiable in disposition, with true French vivacity and
ingenuity, gliding over every harsh experience with laugh and song,
possessed of quick sympathies and humane instincts which enabled them to
readily find the best side of the Indians,--these French _voyageurs_
constituted a most interesting as well as indispensable class in the
trapper's business.
The free trappers were an entirely different class of men. They were
usually American by birth, Virginia and Kentucky being the homes of most
of them. Patient and indefatigable in their work of trapping, yet, when on
their annual trip to the towns, given to wild dissipation and savage
revellings, indifferent to sympathy or company, harsh and cruel to the
Indians, bold and overbearing, with blood always in their eyes, thunder in
their voices, and guns in their hands, yet underneath all of their harsh
exterior having noble hearts, could they but be reached, these now
vanished trappers have gone to a place in history alongside of the old
Spartans and the followers of Pizarro and Cortez in Spanish conquest.
Of the many adventures of the Hunt party on the journey up the Missouri,
we cannot speak. For some reason, although taking a more direct route than
did Lewis and Clark, and having, to all appearance, a better equipped
party, they did not make so good time. Guided by Indians, they crossed
chain after chain of mountains, supposing each to be the summit, only to
find another yet to succeed. At last on the 15th of September, they stood
upon a lofty eminence over which they could gaze both eastward and
westward. Scanning attentively the western horizon, the guide pointed out
three shining peaks, whose bases, he told them, were touched by a
tributary of the Columbia River. These peaks are now known as the Three
Tetons.
And now the party set forth upon the long descent of the western slope,
passing mountain after mountain and stream after stream, some of the way
in boats which the _voyageurs_ made from the green timber of the forests,
and much of the way being obliged to carry their effects around cataracts
and rapids, and thus losing much time. Nevertheless, they found one long
stretch of over a hundred miles upon the upper Snake which they navigated
with comparative ease. But having reached what is now known as the Seven
Devils country in South-western Idaho, they found themselves in a chain of
rapids and precipitous bluffs where neither boats nor horses, apparently
nothing but wings, could be of service. This was in fact the beginning of
over a hundred miles of the most ragged and inaccessible region upon the
whole course of the Snake River, a region which even to this day contains
neither road nor steamboat route, and by which the great State of Idaho is
separated into two divisions, neither directly accessible to the other by
any ordinary modes of travel.
After a forty-mile tramp up and down the river, Hunt decided that the only
way to escape the difficulties with which they were surrounded, was to
divide the party into four divisions, hoping that one of them might find
game and a way out of the forbidding volcanic wastes in which they were
beleaguered. Two of the parties soon returned. One, being in charge of
McKenzie, continued upon its course northward and reached the mouth of the
Columbia, without ever again seeing the main party.
During the weeks that followed, the main party, lost amid the great
mountains which lie eastward from the present vicinity of Baker City and
Wallowa Lake, suffered all the torments of famine and cold. In places the
river ran through volcanic sluiceways, roaring and raging; in some cases,
although within hearing, yet entirely inaccessible, so that although
within sound of its angry raving, the travellers were often obliged to lie
down with tongues parched and swollen for lack of water. The party applied
to this long volcanic "chute" the name of the Devil's Scuttle-hole, and to
the river they applied the name _La Riviere Maudite Enragee_, or "Accursed
Mad River."
The lives of the party were evidently at stake. In the emergency Hunt
determined to divide his force into two divisions, one on the north and
one on the south side of the river. From the 9th of November until the
first part of December they urged on this dismal and heart-sickening
march. They passed a few wretched Indian camps where they managed to
secure dogs for food, and once they got a few horses. The frightened and
half-starved Indians could give them no clear information as to the
location of the Great River, but they signified that they supposed it to
be yet a long way off. The party was evidently approaching something, for
gigantic snowy mountains now loomed dimly through the winter mists.
Finding it impossible to make headway against blinding snowstorms and up
the icy crags, they turned their course down to the river itself and made
a cheerless camp. In the morning they were startled by seeing upon the
opposite side of the river, a group of men more wretched and desolate than
themselves. It soon appeared that this was the other party, which had
entirely failed in finding either food or guidance from the Indians.
Finding it necessary that some provision should be made for these dying
men, Hunt constructed a rude canoe from the limbs of trees and the skin of
one of the horses. In this crazy craft one of the daring Canadian
_voyageurs_ made his way with some of the horse meat, which, poor as it
was, was sufficient to save life for the time.
With their little remaining strength, they pressed on down the river until
they reached another small village of the wretched Snake Indians. Urging
these Indians to provide for them a guide, and at last securing one by the
most bounteous offers of rewards, Hunt succeeded in gathering all of his
party together, with the exception of six sick men whom they were obliged
to leave to the tender mercies of the Indians.
For another fortnight, the cold and hungry party floundered painfully
through the snow across the rugged mountains which lie between what we now
know as the Powder River Valley and the Grande Ronde. Reaching a lofty
mountain height on the last day of December, they looked far down into a
fair and snowless prairie, bathed in sunshine and appearing to the
winter-worn travellers like a gleam of summer. Moreover, they soon
discerned a group of Indian lodges which they judged were well supplied
with dogs and horses. Thither hastening eagerly, they soon found
themselves in a beautiful valley, which from their description must have
been the Grande Ronde Valley. Beautiful at all times, it must have seemed
trebly so to these ragged and famished wanderers.
The next morning the new year of 1812 shone in upon them bright and
cheerful, as if to make amends for the stern severity of the outgoing
year. And now the Canadians insisted upon having their New Year's holiday.
Not even death and famine could rob the light-hearted _voyageurs_ of their
festivals. So with dance and song and with dog meat, roasted, boiled,
fried, and fricasseed, they met the newly-crowned year with their Gallic
happiness and abandon.
The Indians assured them that they could reach the Great River within
three days. But they found it twice that, and their way led across another
lofty chain of snowy mountains, before the canopy of clouds which hung
above them parted. There, looking far down from their snowy eyre, they
beheld the boundless and sunny plains of the Great River. Swiftly
descending the slopes of the mountains, they emerged upon that finest land
of all Eastern Oregon, the plains of the Umatilla. Here they found the
tribe of the Tushepaw Indians with thirty-four lodges and two hundred
horses. More significant than these to Hunt were axes, kettles, and other
implements of white construction, indicating that these Indians had
already come into communication with the traders upon the lower River. In
answer to his eager questions, the Tushepaws informed him that the Great
River was but two days distant and that a small party of white men had
just descended it. Being now certain that this was the advance guard which
had left him at the Devil's Scuttle-hole, Hunt felt sure that they were
safe and was therefore relieved of one great anxiety.
After a few days' rest upon the pleasant prairies and in the comparatively
genial climate of the Umatilla, the party set forth upon horses obtained
from the Tushepaws, and after a pleasant ride of two days across the
rolling prairie, they beheld flowing at their feet, a majestic stream,
deep and blue, a mile in width, sweeping toward the sunset, evidently the
Columbia. At the great falls of the River, known to the Indians as the
Timm or the Tumwater, just above what we now call Dalles City, Hunt
exchanged his horses for canoes. This last stage of two hundred and twenty
miles by boat down the River, was calm and peaceful and a refreshing rest
after the distress and disaster of their winter journey through the
mountains. Not till the 15th of February, however, did they reach the
newly christened town of Astoria. Rounding the bluffs of Tongue Point,
they beheld with full hearts the Stars and Stripes floating over the only
civilised abode west of St. Louis. Westward they saw the parted headlands
between which the River pours its floods into the ocean. As the boats drew
near the shore, the whole population, trappers, sailors, and Indians, came
down to meet them. Foremost in the crowd they saw the members of the party
which had gone on ahead through the Snake River Mountains. Having had no
hope that Hunt and his men could survive the famine and the cold, these
members of the advance guard were the more rejoiced to see them. The
Canadians, with their French vivacity, rushed into each other's arms,
sobbing and hugging like so many schoolgirls. Even the nonchalant
Americans and the stiff-jawed Scotchmen smiled and gave themselves up to
the gladness of the hour. The next two or three days were mainly devoted
to eating and telling stories.
As we have seen, they had lost several of their number from starvation and
drowning along the banks of the Snake River. They had also left six sick
men with the Indians in the heart of the mountains. They had little hope
of ever seeing these again, but the next summer the party on their way up
the Columbia River, saw two wretched looking beings, naked and haggard,
wandering on the river bank near the mouth of the Umatilla. Stopping to
investigate, they discovered that these were Day and Crooks, the leaders
of the party which they had left behind. Their forlorn plight was relieved
with food and clothes, and, having been taken into the boat, they related
their dismal tale. It appeared that they had been provided sufficiently by
the Indians to sustain their lives through the winter. In the spring they
had left the Canadians among the Indians, and had set forth in the hope of
reaching the Great River. But having reached The Dalles, they had been
robbed of rifles and ammunition, stripped of their clothing, and driven
forth into the wilderness. They were almost at the point of a final
surrender to ill-fortune when they beheld the rescuing boat. So, with
joyful hearts, they turned their boat's prow to Astoria, which they
reached in safety. But poor Day never regained his health. His mind was
shattered by the hardships of his journey, and he soon pined away and
died. The barren and rugged shores of the John Day River in Eastern Oregon
take on an added interest in view of the sad story of the brave hunter who
discovered them, and who wandered in destitution for so many days beside
them. Strange to say, the four Canadians who remained among the Indians
were afterwards found alive, though utterly destitute of all things. Hence
it appears that the loss of life in this difficult journey was not great.
The journeys here narrated may be considered as covering what we have
designated as the first steps across the wilderness. Within a few years,
many parties of trappers, explorers, and adventurers, with some
scientists, and a little later, parties of missionaries, made their way
over the great plains, through the defiles of the mountains, and down the
barren shores of the Snake River to the Columbia and the sea. Each party
had its special experiences, and made its special contribution to
geographical or commercial advancement. But to the parties led by Lewis
and Clark and by Hunt, we must accord the greatest meed of praise for
having broken the first pathways across the continent and for having
linked the two oceans by the footsteps of civilised men.
CHAPTER V
The Fur-Traders, their Bateaux, and their Stations
Importance of the Fur-trade as Connected with all Other Parts of the
History--Fur-hunters Compared with Gold-hunters--Sea-otter--Ledyard's
Exploration--The European Inaugurators of the Trade--Beginnings of the
American Trade--The Great British Companies and their Struggles with
the French--Mackenzie's Journey across the Continent--Thompson's
Descent of the Columbia--Union of the Two Great Canadian
Companies--The American Fur Companies--Henry's Fort--The Winship
Enterprise on the River--John Jacob Astor and the Pacific Fur
Company--Rivalry with the North-westers--Arrangements for Expeditions
by Land and Sea, and the Personnel of these--Voyage of the _Tonquin_
and her Disastrous Approach of the River--Founding of
Astoria--Appearance of Thompson and the North-westers--Interior
Expedition and Founding of Fort Okonogan--McDougall, the Smallpox
Chief and Bridegroom of the Indian Princess--Evil Tidings in Regard to
the _Tonquin_--Other Disasters--War of 1812 and Sale of Astoria to the
North-westers--Restoration of Astoria to the Americans--Monopolisation
of the River by the Hudson's Bay Company--Their Expeditions--Hard Lot
of Madame Dorion and her Children--Adventures of Alexander Ross--The
Forts and General Plan of Work--Fort Vancouver and its Remarkable
Advantages--Dr. McLoughlin, or the "White Eagle"--Profits of the
Fur-trade--The Canoes and Bateaux and the _Voyageurs_--The Routes of
the Brigades--Later Americans.
As the reader will doubtless already have discovered, we are presenting
the history of the River topically rather than chronologically. The
various great stages of progress, discovery by sea, discovery by land,
fur-trade, Indian wars, missionary undertakings, international contests,
beginnings of steamboat navigation, and settlement, overlap each other,
and each topic compels us in a measure to anticipate its successors. This
is especially true of the topic treated of in this chapter.
The fur-trade was an important factor in the eras of discovery both by
land and by sea, in the Indian wars and in the era of settlement, while
the strife of nations for the possession of the land of Oregon is almost a
history of the fur companies and their international policies. Remembering
this synthetic nature of these features of our history, we shall
endeavour, with as little repetition as possible, to present a coherent
picture of that great era of the fur-traders.
Without doubt one of the earliest uses to which man has put the lower
animals is that of clothing his body in their captured skins. The
acquisition of furs has been a special feature of the colder climes. It is
obviously also a feature of discovery and conquest, for it is the
wilderness only which yields any considerable number of fur-producing
animals. Thus navigation, commerce, discovery, invention, economics,
finally international wars and policies, have been rooted to a large
degree in this primal business. The fur-hunters have held the hunters of
gold and precious stones and spicery a close race in the rank of world
movers. Indeed it may well be questioned whether results of greater moment
to humanity have not proceeded from the quest for furs than from that for
gold.
The Spaniards expended their energies in the gold and silver hunt in
Mexico and Peru and annihilated the races of those lands in their pitiless
rapacity. The other great exploring nations of the sixteenth century,
especially the French, while not indifferent to the possibility of
encountering the precious metals, found more certain and permanent results
in the less feverish and dazzling pursuit of the wild animals of the
wilderness. Neither the hunters for gold nor those for peltries were the
state-builders and home-builders without whom our American Union would not
exist. But they were the avant-couriers of both. Our land of Oregon has
had the peculiar fortune of being opened by both for both.
China furnished the most active and convenient market for furs to those
who secured their supplies on the Pacific Coast of North America. The
Russians were the first Europeans to enter the Chinese market, and they
began their voyages as early as 1741.
The sea-otter seems to have had its chief habitat on the Pacific shore
from Oregon to Alaska, and, as the ships of all nations began to crowd
upon the location of the fabled Strait of Anian, the trade with the
natives for these precious furs became constantly augmented, until the
curious and interesting creatures, so fatally attractive, were added to
the long list of "lower creatures" whom the greed of the "higher
creatures" has exterminated. A book by Coxe published in London in 1787
first made known to the English-speaking people the rich profits of the
Russians from the transportation of the sea-otter skins to China. He
instanced a case of a profit of $50,000 from a single cargo. It had,
however, been known in 1785 from the report of the voyage of Captain Cook
that the North-west Coast of America contained a new source of wealth from
the accumulation of these furs by the Indians and their eager desire to
trade them for trinkets and implements of civilised manufacture.
The first American to comprehend the greatness of the fur-trade on the
North-west Coast of the Pacific, both as a means of profit to himself and
as a patriotic impulse to direct his own nation into the channels of
westward expansion, was John Ledyard. Thomas Jefferson and John Paul Jones
became deeply interested in Ledyard's extravagant hopes of future wealth
and glory, but all his efforts came to naught, and in 1788 this brilliant
adventurer, just on the eve of setting out to explore the interior of
Africa, suddenly put an end to his own life at Cairo, Egypt. Ledyard
should always be remembered by his countrymen, for, though his glowing
visions were unfulfilled, he was an important link in the great chain
which bound Oregon to our own country.
During these same years, several Englishmen, already noted in the chapter
on discovery, Portlock, Dixon, Hanna, Barclay, and Meares, were actively
engaged in the fur-trade, while the voyages of La Perouse and Marchand
carried the flag of France on the same quest, and Spain's once illustrious
emblem of world dominion was borne by Quadra, Valdes, Galiano, Fidalgo,
Quimper, Caamano, and several others. While these explorers all were
impelled in part by national pride and diplomacy, the hope of sharing the
spoils of the sea-otter droves was the chief lure to the tempestuous seas
of the North Pacific.
In Bullfinch's _Oregon and El Dorado_ is a very interesting narration of
the inception of the American part in the fur-trade of Oregon. In a
building known as the Coolidge Building in Boston a company were gathered
together in 1787 discussing the reports, then first made public, of Cook's
voyages. Mr. Joseph Barrell, a rich merchant of Boston, was much impressed
with Cook's account of the chances of barter with the Indians for furs and
the disposal of them in China for yet more profitable cargoes of teas,
silks, and other characteristic commodities of that land. As a result of
this conference, a company was formed in Boston to prosecute such
enterprise, the members of the company, Messrs. Barrell, Brown, Bulfinch,
Darby, Hatch, and Pintard, being among the foremost of the business men in
Boston in that good year of the creation of the American Constitution.
The enterprising Yankees rapidly drew to the front, so that during the
years from 1790 to 1818, the records show one hundred and eight American
vessels regularly engaged in the business, while only twenty-two English,
with a few Portuguese and French are found. It should, of course be
remembered that the tremendous strife of the Napoleonic Wars was
engrossing the attention of European nations during that time. So well
known did the Boston navigators become in that period that the common name
of Americans used by the Oregon Indians was "Bostons." Robert Gray, the
discoverer of the Columbia River, was fitted out by Bulfinch and others of
the first Boston Company. During the period under consideration the
profits of the traffic were usually very great, though variable, sometimes
actual losses being incurred, while disaster from wreck, storm, scurvy,
and murderous Indians was frequent. During the two years, 1786 and 1787,
if Dixon is to be followed, there were sold in Canton five thousand eight
hundred sea-otter hides for $160,700. Swan figures that with the four
years ending with 1802, forty-eight thousand five hundred skins were sold.
Sturgis states that he knew a capital of $50,000 to yield a gross income
of $284,000. He relates that he had collected as high as six thousand fine
skins in a single voyage and once secured five hundred and sixty of the
best quality in one day. The Indians, however, learned to become very
expert traders, and as they discovered the eagerness with which the whites
sought their furs, they raised the price. They became, moreover, very
capricious and unreliable, so that the phenomenal profits could no longer
be obtained.
The stage of the history of the fur-trade of which we have thus far spoken
may be called its first era of a free-for-all rush to the new seas, with
no vast moneyed interests in any position of leadership. But commercial
conditions were already in existence which were bound to reverse the
situation.
Great operators, gigantic companies, foreshadowings of the great trusts of
the present, with monopolistic aims, were seeking the ear of the British
Government, while enterprises, larger, though not so monopolistic, were
rapidly forming in the United States. The great monopolies of Europe had
indeed existed long prior to the period of the Oregon fur-traders. As far
back as the beginning of the sixteenth century, De Monts, Pontgrave,
Champlain, and other great French explorers had secured monopolies on the
fur-trade from Louis XIII. and his minister, Richelieu. Later La Salle,
Hennepin, D'Iberville, and others had the same advantages. The St.
Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the upper Mississippi were the great
"preserve" of these great concessionaires. The English and their American
Colonists set themselves in battle array against the monopolistic Bourbon
methods of handling the vast domain which the genius and enterprise of De
Monts and Champlain had won for France, with the result that upon the
heights of Abraham the Fleur-de-Lis was lowered before the Cross of St.
George, and North America became English instead of Gallic, and one of the
world's milestones was set for good. Then by one of those beautiful
ironies of history which baffle all prescience, victorious Britain
violated the principles of her own conquest and adopted the methods of
Bourbon tyranny and monopoly, with the result that another milestone was
set on the highway of liberty and the new continent became American
instead of European.
But out of the struggles of that century, French, English, and American,
out of the final distribution of territory, by which England retained
Canada and with it a large French and Indian population, mingled with
English and Scotch,--out of these curious comminglings, economic,
commercial, political, religious, and ethnic, grew the great English fur
companies, whose history was largely wrought out on the shores of the
Columbia, and from whose juxtaposition with the American State-builder the
romance and epic grandeur of the history of the River largely comes.
Many enterprises were started by the French and English in the seventeenth
century, but the Hudson's Bay Company became the Goliath of them all. The
first charter of this gigantic organisation was granted in 1670 by Charles
II. to Prince Rupert and seventeen others, with a capital stock of ten
thousand five hundred pounds. From this small beginning, the profits were
so great that, notwithstanding the loss of two hundred thousand pounds
from the French wars during the latter part of the century, the Company
declared dividends of from twenty-five to fifty per cent.
The field of operations was gradually extended from the south-eastern
regions contiguous to Hudson's Bay until it embraced the vast and dreary
expanses of snowy prairie traversed by the Saskatchewan, the Athabasca,
the Peace, and finally the Mackenzie. Many of the greatest expeditions by
land under British auspices which resulted in great geographical
discoveries were primarily designed for the expansion of the fur-trade.
Just at the critical moment, both for the great Canadian Fur Company, as
well as for discovery and acquisition in the region of the Columbia, a
most important and remarkable champion entered the lists. This was the
North-west Fur Company of Montreal. It was one of the legitimate
consequences of the treaty of Paris in 1763, ceding Canada to Great
Britain. The French in Canada became British subjects by that treaty, and
many of them had extensive interests as well as experience in the fur
business. Furthermore a number of Scotchmen of great enterprise and
intelligence betook themselves to Canada, eager to partake of the
boundless opportunities offered by the new shuffle of the cards. These
Scotchmen and Frenchmen became natural partners in the foundation of
enterprises independent of the Hudson's Bay monopoly. In 1783 a group of
the boldest and most energetic of these active spirits, of whom the
leaders were McGillivray, McTavish, Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher,
Rechebleve, Thain, and Frazer, united in the formation of the North-west
Fur Company. Bitter rivalry soon arose between the new company and the old
monopoly. Following the usual history of special privilege, the old
company, which had now been in existence one hundred and thirteen years,
had learned to depend more on privilege than on enterprise, and had become
somewhat degenerate. The North-westers "rustled" for new business in new
regions. In 1789 Alexander Mackenzie, as one of the North-westers, made
his way, with incredible hardship, down the river which bears his name to
the Frozen Ocean. A few years later he made the first journey to the shore
of the Pacific, commemorating his course by painting on a rock on the
shore of the Cascade Inlet, north-east of Vancouver Island, these words:
"Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one
thousand seven hundred and ninety-three."
As a result of the new undertakings set on foot by the North-westers and
the reawakened Hudson's Bay Company, both companies entered the Columbia
Valley. The struggle for possession of Oregon between the English and
American fur companies and their government was on. In the summer of 1810
David Thompson of the North-west company crossed the continental divide by
the Athabasca Pass in latitude 52 deg. 25'. The North-westers had heard of the
Astor enterprise in New York and realised that they must be up and doing
if they would control the land of the Oregon. Although the character of
soil, climate, and productions of the Columbia Valley was but imperfectly
known, enough had been derived from Lewis and Clark, and from ocean
discoveries to make it plain that the Columbia furnished the most
convenient access to the interior from the sea, and that its numerous
tributaries furnished a network of boatable waters unequalled on the
Western slope, while there was every reason to suppose that its forests
abounded in fur-bearing animals and that its climate would admit of much
longer seasons of work than was possible in the biting winters of the
Athabasca. It became vital to the continental magnitude of the designs of
the Canadian companies that they control Oregon.
For greater topical clearness we will anticipate a little at this point
and state that after several years of intense rivalry it became plain to
the British Parliament that it was suicidal to allow a policy of division
in the face of a common enemy. Hence in 1821, by act of Parliament, the
two companies were reorganised and united under a charter which was to
last twenty-one years (and as a matter of fact was renewed at the end of
that time), and under the provisions of which the North-westers were to
have equal shares in both stock and offices, though the name of the
Hudson's Bay Company, was retained. It will be remembered therefore, that
up to the year 1821, the two great Canadian companies were distinct, and
that during that time the North-west Company was much the more active and
aggressive in the Columbia Valley, but that after that date the entire
force of the Canadian Companies was combined under the name of the old
monopoly. But however bitter the first enmity of the Canadian rivals, they
agreed on the general proposition that the Americans must be checkmated,
and during the score of years prior to their coalition they were seizing
the pivotal points of the Oregon country. During the next two decades
they created a vast network of forts and stations, and reduced the country
contiguous to the River and its tributaries to a system so elaborate and
interesting as to be worthy of extended study. We can sketch only its more
general features. And the more perfectly to understand them, we must
arrest here the story of the great Canadian monopoly and bring up the
movement of the American fur companies.
It may be noted, first of all, that by reason of the quicker colonisation
and settlement and consequent establishment of agriculture and other arts
pertaining to home life, the region of the United States east of the
Mississippi never became the natural habitat of the trapper and fur-trader
to anything like the degree of Canada and the western part of our own
land. Nevertheless extensive fur interests grew up on the Mississippi
during the French regime, and in 1763-4 August and Pierre Choteau located
a trading post on the present site of St. Louis, and the fascinating
history of that great capital began.
Most of the American trading companies confined their operations to the
east side of the Rocky Mountains. But the Missouri Fur Company of St.
Louis, composed of a miscellaneous group of Americans and
Hispano-Gallo-Americans, under the presidency of Manuel Lisa, a bold and
enterprising Spaniard, took a step over the crest of the mountains and
established the first trading post upon the waters of the Columbia. This
was in 1809. Andrew Henry, one of the partners of the aforesaid company,
crossed the mountains in that year and a year later built a fort on a
branch of Snake River. This seems to have been on what subsequently
became known as Henry's River. It was in one of the wildest and grandest
regions of all that wild grand section of Snake River. Henry's River
drains the north side of the Three Tetons, while the south branch, known
afterwards as Lewis and finally as Snake River, drains the south of that
group of mountains. _Henry must be remembered as the first American and
the first white man recorded in history who built any structure upon any
tributary of our River, and the year was 1810._ Both Henry and his Company
had hopes of accomplishing great things in the way of the fur-trade in
that very favourable region. But the next year the Indians were so
threatening that the fort was forsaken and the party returned to the
Missouri. When the Hunt party in the fall of 1811 sought refuge at this
point they found only a group of abandoned huts, with no provisions or
equipment of which they could make any use.
But though Henry's fort was but a transient matter, his American
countrymen were beginning to press through the open gateways of both
mountain and sea. In the early part of 1809 the Winship brothers of
Boston, together with several other keen-sighted Yankees, formed a project
for a definite post on the Columbia River, proposing to reach their
destination by ship. Accordingly they fitted out an old vessel known as
the _Albatross_, with Nathan Winship as captain, William Gale as captain's
assistant, and William Smith as first mate. Captain Gale kept a journal of
the entire enterprise, and it is one of the most interesting and valuable
of the many ship's records of the North-western Coast.
Setting sail with a crew of twenty-two men and an excellent supply of
stores and ammunition, and abundance of tools and hardware for erecting
needful buildings, the _Albatross_ left Boston in the summer of 1809.
After a slow and tedious, but very healthful and comfortable voyage,
stopping at the Hawaiian Islands on the route, the _Albatross_ reached the
mouth of the Columbia River on May 26, 1810. Many American and other ships
had entered the mouth of the River prior to that date, but so far as known
none had ascended any considerable distance. Apparently Gray and Broughton
were the only shipmasters who had ascended above the wide expanse now
known as Gray's Bay, while the Lewis and Clark expedition contained the
only white men who had seen the river above tide-water. The Winship
enterprise may be regarded with great interest, therefore, as the first
real attempt to plant a permanent establishment on the banks of the River.
Winship and his companions spent some days in careful examination of the
river banks and as a result of their search they decided on a strip of
valley land formed by a narrowing of the River on the north and an
indentation of the mountain on the south. This pleasant strip of fertile
land is located on the south bank of the lordly stream, and its lower end
is about forty-five miles from the ocean. Being partially covered with a
beautiful grove of oak trees, the first to be seen on the ascent of the
River, the place received the name of Oak Point. It may be noted that this
name was subsequently transferred to a promontory nearly opposite on the
north bank, and this circumstance has led many to locate erroneously the
site of the first buildings designed for permanent use on the banks of
the Columbia. And such these were, for the Lewis and Clark structures at
what they called Fort Clatsop, erected four and a half years earlier, were
meant only for a winter's use. But the Winship party had glowing visions
of a great emporium of the fur-trade, another Montreal or St. Louis, to
inaugurate a new era for their country and themselves. They designed
paying the Indians for their lands and in every way treating them justly.
They seem in short to have had a very high conception of the dignity and
worth of their enterprise. They were worthy of the highest success, and
the student of to-day cannot but grieve that their high hopes were dashed
with disaster.
Tying the _Albatross_ to the bank on June 4th, they entered at once with
great energy on the task of felling trees, rearing a large log house,
clearing a garden spot, in which they at once began the planting of seeds,
and getting ready to trade with the natives. But within four days the
River began to rise rapidly, and the busy fort-builders perceived to their
dismay that they had located on land subject to inundation. All the work
thus far done went for naught, and they pulled their fort to pieces and
floated the logs down stream a quarter of a mile to a higher place. There
they resumed their buildings with redoubled energy. But within a week a
much more dangerous situation again, and this time permanently, arrested
their grand project. This time it was the very men toward whom they had
entertained such just and benevolent designs, the Indian
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