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 State Histo 
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 ship as the 
 settlement i 
 
 Children or tne west are requirea to spend too much 
 time on the settlement of New England and too little on 
 their own section. A study of the various charters granted 
 to the early colonists by the sovereigns of England is in- 
 teresting to the scholar, but to the American boy or girl 
 the meeting of the free and honest pioneers of Oregon in 
 the open air at Champoeg means vastly more. 
 
 The Indian wars that were fought in our valleys and 
 mountains have a greater significance than the troubles 
 with the Pequots, and the devotion of Jason Lee and the 
 martyrdom of Whitman are unsurpassed in the annals of 
 any country or time. 
 
 The Story of Oregon and Its People " gives for the 
 first time the History of Oregon in a form suitable as a 
 text-book for school use, and the favor with which it has 
 already been received proves that the teachers of the state 
 are alive to the necessity of such instruction. 
 
 ORDER FROM 
 
 THE J. K. GILL CO. 
 
 PORTLAND 
 
 Distributers 
 
THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 AND ITS PEOPLE 
 
 By CHARLES H^ CHAPMAN, Ph. D. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 O. P. BARNES, Publisher 
 

 Copyright, 1909, 
 By O. p. Barnes 
 
 CI. A 24 5 89 2 
 AUi 19 1909 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To the student of human affairs the history of the 
 settlement of Oregon will ever be a tale of absorbing 
 interest. Coming as the last of those westward move- 
 ments by which the American commonwealths were 
 peopled, Oregon more closely typifies the home-seeking 
 and the home-making spirit of the Saxon race than 
 any of her sister states. 
 
 The early pioneers of Oregon were not driven to 
 make the hazardous journey by the lash of religious 
 persecution, nor were they impelled to brave the hard- 
 ships of the plains and mountains by the desire for 
 gold. Sustained only by the ambition to found a home 
 for themselves and their children in the distant West, 
 or led by the unselfish zeal of the missionary, they 
 went about their task soberly and seriously, and with 
 a resolute purpose that never faltered in the presence 
 of danger. 
 
 Certainly the children of no land under the sun have 
 a nobler heritage of brave and honest ancestry than 
 those of Oregon, and if THE STORY OF OREGON 
 AND ITS PEOPLE shall bring this fact and its mes- 
 sage closer to the hearts of the young it will have 
 served the purpose for which it was written. 
 
 June, 1909. O. P. Barnes. 
 
COVER DESIGN 
 
 The design on the cover is reproduced from a photo- 
 graph of Hermon Atkins MacNeil's statue, "The 
 Coming of the White Man," which stands in the City 
 Park at Portland, Oregon, facing the gorge through 
 which the white man first floated down the Columbia. 
 
 "The group is that of two Indians, Chief Multnomah 
 and a young brave. The figures have a peculiar beauty 
 and dignity of their own . Into the figure of Multnomah 
 the artist has put the pride of all the Indian tribes, as 
 he has endowed the young brave with a youthful 
 curiosity, — the strong characteristics of the two, indi- 
 vidual, yet harmonious in their relations to each other." 
 — Harriet Warner Chapin, in The Pacific Monthly. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I Discovery of the Columbia 9 
 
 II The Northwest Company 21 
 
 III The Lewis and Ci.ark Expedition 24 
 
 IV John Jacob Astor's Colony 40 
 
 V Rule of the Fur Company 49 
 
 VI The First Pioneers 54 
 
 VII The Mission at Salem 64 
 
 VIII The Whitman Missions 79 
 
 IX Agitation for \ Provisional Govern- 
 
 ment 88 
 
 X The Emigration of 1842 99 
 
 XI Progress of the Whitman Missions 103 
 
 XII The Provisional Government 108 
 
 XIII The Emigration of 1843 113 
 
 XIV Under the Provisional Government 121 
 
 XV The Emigrations of 1844 and 1845 125 
 
 XVI Opening of the Southern Route 128 
 
 XVII The Whitman Massacre and the Cay- 
 
 use War 134 
 
 XVIII Oregon Made a Territory 137 
 
 XIX Condition of Oregon in 1848 141 
 
 XX Discovery of Gold 145 
 
 XXI Development. Indian Wars 148 
 
 XXII The Inland Empire 154 
 
 XXIII Internal Communication. Land Grants 157 
 
 XXIV Oregon Today 164 
 
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 ^ A Scene on the Columbia i6 
 
 vMap of the Mouth of the Columbia 17 
 
 ^Portraits of Lewis and Clark 32 
 
 ^ Map of Oregon Trail and Route of Lewis 
 
 AND Clark 35 
 
 • Fort George (Astoria) 48 
 
 V Map of the Oregon Country South of the 49TH 
 
 Parallel 57 
 
 ^ Reverend Jason Lee 64 
 
 .Fort Vancouver 80 
 
 The Days of Old 96 
 
 The First House in Portland 112 
 
 nIbefore the Railroad 128 
 
 A Mountain Canyon 144 
 
 The New Oregon Trail 160 
 
 Railroad Map of Oregon 161 
 
 \ Industrial Map of Oregon 167 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 Discovery of the Columbia 
 
 1. The River of the West.— During the first half of 
 the eighteenth century that part of the United States 
 which lies west of the Mississippi River and north of 
 the forty-second parallel of latitude was claimed by 
 France as part of Louisiana. The province of Louisiana 
 also included much territory south of the forty-second 
 parallel, but the history of Oregon is not concerned 
 with it.^ Before the close of her colonial wars with 
 England in 1763, France ceded Louisiana to Spain, 
 but for many years prior to that event the country 
 between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains 
 was diligently explored by French travelers and Jesuit 
 missionaries. In their books of travel which are very 
 numerous, these men repeated accounts given them 
 by the Indians of a great river beyond the Shining 
 Mountains.^ It was naturally said to flow into the 
 Pacific Ocean and was known by various names such 
 as River of the West, River Thegayo, Rio de Aguilar. 
 One of the French explorers, Lepage Dupratz, fell in 
 
 ^The forty-second parallel of latitude forms the boundary between 
 Oregon and California. 
 
 ^The Frenchmen called the Rocky Mountains "Shining Mountains" 
 because of the glittering rock pinnacles which are visible at a great 
 distance, or perhaps because of the white snow peaks. Later they 
 were called Stony, and finally Rocky Mountains. 
 
10 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 with a Yazoo Indian, who had crossed the Shining 
 
 Mountains and traveled down the River of the West 
 
 until he was turned back by a war between the tribes 
 
 dwelling on its banks, but in those days no white man 
 
 had yet seen it. Thus we owe to the French the faint 
 
 beginnings of our knowledge of the great river which 
 
 separates the states of Oregon and Washington and 
 
 drains the Inland Empire. 
 
 2, The Oregon. — The first English-speaking traveler 
 
 who had anything to say about the River of the West 
 
 was Jonathan Carver, a native of Connecticut, who 
 
 set out from Boston in the year 1766, and spent two 
 
 years in the country around the head of Lake Superior 
 
 and westward. He may have penetrated to the 
 
 sources of the Missouri, but probably not. Very 
 
 likely the Red River of the North was the western 
 
 limit of his adventures.^ In his book of travels which 
 
 was published in London in 1778, Carver speaks of the 
 
 River of the West calling it the "Oregon." He says 
 
 the Indians told him that it rose near the sources of 
 
 the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi and the Red River 
 
 of the North. The question of how Carver obtained 
 
 the name Oregon has puzzled later writers. The plain 
 
 implication from his narrative is that he heard it from 
 
 the Indians, but this is not to be beUeved because it 
 
 does not occur in any Indian language. Neither the 
 
 natives with whom Carver conversed nor those who 
 
 dwelt on the banks of the Columbia had any word 
 
 ^What Carver has to say about the country west of the headwaters 
 of the Mississippi is largely translated from the writings of French 
 travelers and missionaries. There is but little reason to believe that 
 he actually saw what he tried to describe. 
 
DISCOVERY OF THE COLUMBIA 11 
 
 which resembled Oregon.'* We may therefore suppose, 
 if we like, that Carver misunderstood some name which 
 the Indians gave him, or, to judge more harshly, he 
 may have fabricated it. At any rate, the name 
 "Oregon" can be traced to Carver's book of travels 
 and to no other source. Just how it originated may 
 always remain among those puzzles which provide 
 historians with fertile matter for conjecture and con- 
 troversy. It never came into common use for the 
 River of the West, but was afterward applied to the 
 whole tract of country north of California and west of 
 the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 3. The Name Oregon. — The melodious name Oregon 
 seems to have pleased the fancy of the world from the 
 time when Carver first published it, though it was not 
 by any means universally known and used for many 
 years. Captain Gray, who discovered the Columbia, 
 knew nothing of it or he would not have felt at liberty 
 to bestow the name of his ship upon the great river; 
 nor does it appear in the journal of Lewis and Clark 
 which was written between the years 1804 ^^id 1806. 
 Still as time passed, the name Oregon was coming into 
 vogue among those persons who had occasion to speak 
 of the Pacific Coast region. Jeiferson employed it in 
 his instructions to Lewis and Clark for instance, which 
 indicates that it was in good literary repute when he 
 wrote. Undoubtedly, however, it was the poet Bryant 
 who made the name Oregon popular by using its sonor- 
 
 ■•Mofras, an acute and observant Frenchman who visited Oregon 
 in 1841-2, says that the word "Oregon" is not found in the language 
 of any Indian tribe that dwells on the banks of the Columbia. 
 
12 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 ous syllables to enhance the solemn music of Thana- 
 
 topsis. 
 
 4. Search for the Columbia. — The vague accounts of 
 
 the River of the West, which Carver and the French 
 
 explorers had given, were confirmed by the natural 
 
 supposition that the waters from the Pacific slope of 
 
 the Rocky Mountains must find their way to the ocean 
 
 somewhere. With this thought more or less clearly 
 
 in mind, and haunted, too, by the old belief that there 
 
 was a passage across the continent from the Atlantic, 
 
 navigators who sailed along the western coast of North 
 
 America before 1792 were on the watch either for the 
 
 mouth of a great river or for a navigable channel toward 
 
 the inland regions. They sought, also, northward of 
 
 San Francisco for a good harbor, but for the most part 
 
 they sought vainly since the coast in this region is 
 
 singularly devoid of inlets which ships can enter easily. 
 
 The Pacific Coast was frequented by vessels, and it 
 
 stands to reason that many captains must have noticed 
 
 the outflow of water from the mouth of the Columbia 
 
 and wondered what lay beyond it toward the interior; 
 
 but the entrance was guarded by an array of dangerous 
 
 breakers miles in width, and before Captain Gray, none 
 
 sefem to have crossed the bar. The ships which began 
 
 the passage failed to finish it.'^ As early as 1775 the 
 
 Spanish navigator Heceta, on a voyage of discovery 
 
 along the coast, saw the mouth of the Columbia and 
 
 attempted to enter it, but the breakers and the strong 
 
 '■^The navigation at the mouth of the Columbia was beset with 
 terrors for the early ship captains. Mofras says it was as dangerous 
 a passage as he had ever seen. The government engineers have made 
 the channel perfectly safe for modern vessels. 
 
DISCOVERY OF THE COLUMBIA 13 
 
 seaward current foiled him. The famous Captain 
 Cook coasting northward passed by the river but he 
 did not find it. In 1778 Captain John Meares, who 
 was an EngHshman saiUng under the Portuguese flag, 
 explored the coast with a rather definite purpose to 
 discover the River of the West. He had seen it marked 
 on Spanish charts under the name of St. Roque, which, 
 of course, the mapmakers had drawn from Heceta's 
 observations. Meares found the mouth of the Colum- 
 bia in the latitude which the charts indicated, but 
 he mistook it for a mere indentation in the coast, and 
 made up his mind that the Spanish mapmakers had 
 blundered and misled him. In an unforgiving spirit 
 he changed the name of the northern cape at the mouth 
 from St. Roque to "Disappointment" and called the 
 inlet Deception Bay. Posterity has dealt out poetic 
 justice to these names. The cape is still called Dis- 
 appointment, which is fair enough since Meares was 
 actually disappointed, but inasmuch as the inlet was 
 not a bay and did not deceive him, though he deceived 
 himself, the title he gave to it has been dropped. 
 
 5. Gray's First Voyage. — Captain Robert Gray, the 
 American navigator who really discovered the Colum- 
 bia River, made two voyages to the Pacific coast. In 
 both of them he sailed from Boston in the employ of 
 a firm of fur traders. Upon the first, which ended 
 August 10, 1790, he traded with the Indians along the 
 coast of Oregon and Washington and in a small boat 
 explored an inlet which may have been the mouth of 
 the Columbia.^ When his cargo of furs was complete, 
 
 ^Bancroft says it was Tillamook Bay, and he may be right. 
 
14 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 Gray sailed homeward by way of China and circum- 
 navigated the globe. By his ship's log he had traveled 
 50,000 miles when he re-entered Boston harbor. 
 Though the firm which employed him did not make a 
 great deal of money by his first voyage, they were 
 proud of his feat. It was something of an achievement 
 to sail around the world in those days, and not many 
 American sailors had done it. The fur traders were 
 also encouraged by Gray's accounts to believe that 
 they could build up a profitable business with the mari- 
 time Indian tribes. Accordingly they speedily sent 
 Gray forth on a second voyage in the same ship, 
 "Columbia" by name, in which he had sailed before. 
 It was in the spring of 1791 that he reached the Oregon 
 coast again. Sailing northward toward Vancouver 
 Island he saw the mouth of the Columbia and for nine 
 days tried to enter it.'^ The outward rush of the waters 
 and the breakers finally bafiled him as they had earlier 
 sailors, and he gave up the attempt until the next spring. 
 He passed the winter of 179 1-2 at Clayoquot Harbor, 
 Vancouver Island. During the rainy months he kept 
 his sailors employed by building a small sloop which 
 he named the "Adventure." This was the second sea- 
 
 ^This is a necessary inference from what Vancouver says in his 
 account of his meeting with Gray : " Mr. Gray stated that he had been 
 some several days attempting to enter it, which at length he had 
 been unable to effect in consequence of a very strong outset." How 
 very British Vancouver must have been not to suspect that this 
 strong outset implied a great river. He seems to have mistaken 
 Sand Island for the main southern shore and to have overlooked the 
 true mouth altogether. 
 
DISCOVERY OF THE COLUMBIA 15 
 
 going vessel built on the Pacific coast north of San 
 Francisco.* 
 
 6. Discovery of the Mouth of the Columbia. — Early in 
 April, 1792, Gray sailed to the southward from his 
 winter harbor in the ship "Columbia." He was evi- 
 dently determined to find out what the strong seaward 
 current at Deception Bay signified. In the first days 
 of May he was off the mouth of the Columbia, and on 
 the nth he crossed the bar and entered the river. 
 Being the first white man to behold its wide waters and 
 to sail upon them, Gray had the right to name the 
 stream. He called it the Columbia for his ship. The 
 world has accepted this name for the river of the West 
 in preference to Oregon or to any of the others by which 
 it was formerly known, but Gray's name of "Cape 
 Hancock" for Cape Disappointment has fallen into 
 disuse. Gray sailed twenty-five miles up the Columbia. 
 Then it puzzled him to find the channel among the 
 shoals and he turned his prow to the west. On the 
 20th of May he crossed the bar outward and sailed 
 away to the north on his business of buying furs. His 
 trade with the Indians prospered and when his ship 
 was laden he voyaged homeward, once more circum- 
 navigating the earth. To sailors like Captain Gray, 
 who have shrewdness in practical affairs united with 
 keen scientific curiosity, the world owes many impor- 
 tant geographical discoveries. 
 
 7. Vancouver's Arrival. — In the summer of 1792, 
 while Gray was trading and exploring along the coast 
 
 ^Captain Meares built the first. It was called the " Northwest 
 America." 
 
16 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 of 6regon and Washington, Captain Vancouver of the 
 British navy was also there with two vessels on business 
 for his government.* Vancouver sailed on the larger 
 vessel, the ** Discovery," while his consort, the "Chat- 
 ham," was commanded by I^ieutenant W. R. Brough- 
 ton. They reached Cape Mendocino in April, 1792, 
 and thence proceeded northward exploring minutely 
 as they coasted along. Vancouver expressed his sur- 
 prise that there should be no good harbors on such a 
 long stretch of coast line. The reader is more surprised 
 that when he finally found one of the best in the world 
 he had not the judgment to recognize it. He passed 
 the mouth of the Columbia on the 27th of April but 
 mistook it for a petty inlet unworthy of notice. Still 
 going to the north, leaving behind the great discovery 
 he might have made, and with the glory of it forever 
 lost to him and his country, he fell in with Gray near 
 the Straits of Fuca. Gray was then on the point of 
 sailing southward to raake his second and successful 
 effort to enter the Columbia. He told Vancouver of 
 his trying to make the passage for several days the 
 year before and finally giving it up, but, with true 
 
 ^Vancouver's business was to explore the coast and possibly to 
 execute certain provisions of the Nootka Convention. This treaty 
 between England and Spain was made on October 28, 1790. It 
 pacified quarrels which had grown out of their conflicting claims to 
 the Northwest Coast. Each nation pretended to derive title from the 
 discoveries of the early navigators. Cook, for example on the English 
 side, and Heceta on the Spanish. In 1789 both Spanish and British 
 parties tried to settle at Nootka Sound, which brought matters to a 
 crisis and led to the conclusion of the Nootka Convention. The 
 general purport of this treaty was an agreement for joint occupation^ 
 Spain's rights came down to the United States through the Louisiana 
 
MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER 
 
DISCOVERY OF THE COLUMBIA 19 
 
 British perversity, His Majesty's Captain insisted that 
 the inlet was of no consequence in spite of the strong 
 outward flow of water. He admitted that the phenom- 
 enon was difficult to account for, yet he obstinately 
 refused to account for it on the only rational hypothesis 
 of a great river there discharging into the sea. For- 
 tunately for America, Gray was less inclined to let his 
 theories outweigh facts. 
 
 8. Broughton Enters the Columbia. — Vancouver lin- 
 gered on the coast north of the Columbia during the 
 summer, gradually working his way into higher lati- 
 tudes. On August 28th he anchored in Nootka Sound. 
 In the meantime after entering the Columbia, Gray 
 had touched at Nootka and left there a chart of the 
 river's mouth. This Vancouver obtained and took 
 with him when he sailed southward in October. On 
 the 19th of that month he was again off the mouth 
 of the Columbia, but fearing to attempt the entrance 
 with his own vessel, he sent in Lieutenant Broughton 
 with the ''Chatham" to explore the river. ^° Broughton 
 sailed up the channel as far as he thought his ship 
 
 Purchase, perhaps, and the Joint Occupation Treaty of 1818 between 
 us and England may have been nothing more than a continuation 
 of the Nootka arrangement. On January 1, 1794, Spain and England 
 concluded another treaty which confirmed the Nootka arrangement 
 for joint occupation. About a year later the Spaniards removed all 
 their portable goods from Nootka, but they gave up none of their 
 formal claims to the country. From that time to this no other white 
 settlement has been established at the spot. It lay just north of the 
 forty-ninth parallel and its good harbor made it in a modest way an 
 international resort for the fur traders. Consult Schafer's History 
 of the Pacific Northwest. 
 
 ^"^When Broughton entered the Columbia he found the British brig 
 "Jenny" there before him. Broughton named Baker's Bay after the 
 
20 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 could go safely then took to his launch and made his 
 way to a point on the Washington side about loo miles 
 from the mouth. To this place he affixed his command- 
 er's name, Vancouver, which it still bears. 
 
 9. Names of Points on the Columbia. — Many of the 
 prominent places up and down the Columbia owe their 
 names to Lieutenant Broughton. Mount Hood he 
 named for an English Lord," Walker's Island for one 
 of his men. Tongue Point was so called because of its 
 shape, and Gray's Bay in honor of the discoverer of the 
 Columbia. ^^ Thus the first systematic exploration of 
 the Northwest Coast was made by Vancouver, a British 
 naval officer, under the direction of his government, 
 while Gray's discovery of the Columbia was the fruit 
 of individual enterprise. His ship was one among 
 many vessels which traded with the Indians along the 
 coast for furs, and it is likely that the captains of these 
 vessels made many discoveries which have never been 
 recorded.^' 
 
 captain of the "Jenny." One easily conjectures that many little 
 barks may have slipped into and out of the Columbia before 1792 
 without leaving any record. The tale of Dupratz's Yazoo Indian 
 that the natives at the mouth of the river had seen ships and white 
 men even in his day is not necessarily baseless. 
 
 "Samuel Viscount Hood an English Admiral, born 1724, died 1816. 
 
 *'Most of the historic points on the coast north of California and 
 south of Alaska owe their names to Vancouver. His account of his 
 explorations was published in sumptuous style in 1798. It was widely 
 read and the names which it affixed to the places mentioned were 
 accepted by the world once for all. 
 
 '^Some historians say that captafns who happened upon good 
 harbors would conceal their discoveries from rival traders. This was 
 very natural. They were seeking profit, and cared nothing for 
 geography. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Northwest Company 
 
 10. The Northwest Company. — In 1792 and for 
 some years later there was free competition among 
 all comers in the fur trade with the Indians on the 
 Northwest Coast. But even at that time the great 
 Northwest Company of Montreal had begun to stretch 
 its long arms toward the Pacific. It had already 
 monopolized the fur business of the interior country 
 from the Hudson Bay slope to the Rocky Mountains. 
 This powerful and indefatigable company was organ- 
 ized in Montreal in the winter of 1783-4 by a number 
 of Scotchmen who had taken up the fur trade in 
 Canada after the country was ceded to Great Britain 
 by the French. ^^ The old Hudson Bay Company, 
 which was chartered by King Charles II in 1760, 
 claimed indefinite rights over the whole of the British 
 possessions north of the United States and at first 
 asserted a monopoly of the fur trade throughout the 
 entire region, vast as it was. The Northwest Company 
 successfully resisted this effort of their older rival. 
 With wonderful energy they pushed westward, build- 
 ing forts and laying the foundations of permanent 
 trade with the Indians as they advanced. By the 
 
 "Canada passed over to the English in 1764. The cession from the 
 French included the Mississippi Valley. Louisiana had been trans- 
 ferred secretly to Spain the year before. 
 
22 THE STORY O^ OREGON 
 
 year 1792 the scattered posts of the Northwest Com- 
 pany occupied the Canadian territory to the eastern 
 base of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 11. Alexander Mackenzie. — ^The most enterpris- 
 ing of their factors was Alexander Mackenzie. This 
 ardent and tireless explorer was born in Scotland and 
 emigrated to Canada in his boyhood. Thoroughly 
 trained in the secrets of the fur trade, he was also an 
 enlightened traveler whose geographical discoveries 
 made him famous. In the year 1785 he joined the 
 "X Y Company" of Montreal, which was formed to 
 compete with the Northwest Company, but in 1787 
 the rivals united into one corporation under the name 
 of the latter, and Mackenzie then became one of its 
 partners and agents. His station in the year 1789 
 was at Fort Chippewayan on the remote and dismal 
 shore of Athabasca Lake. Setting out from this 
 post in the spring of 1789, Mackenzie journeyed down 
 the river which bears his name to the Arctic Ocean, 
 making a safe return in the fall of the same year. In 
 the fall of 1792 he set out from Fort Chippewayan on 
 a second exploring trip, this time going to the west. 
 He followed up the Peace River to its sources in the 
 Rocky Mountains and there, overtaken by the snows 
 of winter, he lay with his men till May. By June 
 Mackenzie reached the summit of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, and first of all white men from the beginning of 
 the world, saw the waters parting at his feet some to 
 reach the Atlantic Ocean and some to wander through 
 verdant vales and yawning chasms to the Pacific. 
 He reached the river now called Fraser and voyaged 
 
THE NORTHWEST COMPANY 23 
 
 down its course in canoes for two hundred and fifty miles ; 
 then he struck to the west again and finally, not far from 
 the parallel of fifty-two degrees north latitude, stood up- 
 on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Mackenzie was the 
 first white man to cross the continent north of the Mexi- 
 can line. Before he set out upon his return he painted 
 this inscription in vermilion letters upon a promontory 
 looking toward the sea: ''Alexander Mackenzie, from 
 Canada by land, the twenty-second of July, one thou- 
 sand seven hundred and ninety-three." His journey 
 opened a pathway to the Pacific for the Northwest 
 Company of fur traders and their adventurous pioneers 
 soon followed in his steps. Thus the race began be- 
 tween Great Britain and the United States for the 
 possession of the Oregon country^^ with the British in 
 the lead.^'' 
 
 '^The Oregon country included all the territory from the Rocky 
 Mountains to the Pacific north of California and south of Alaska. 
 
 *^Long before 1803 the agents of the Northwest Company were 
 building forts on the streams which finally reach the Columbia. The 
 progress westward was continuous. When Astor began his enterprise 
 at the mouth of the Columbia in 1810 they were prepared to combat 
 and ultimately rout him. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 The Lewis and Clark Expedition 
 
 12. Origin of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. — The 
 exploring expeditions of Sir Alexander Mackenzie de- 
 veloped naturally from the tendency of the Northwest 
 Company to expand its trade. The famous Lewis 
 and Clark expedition across the continent to the Pacific, 
 which occurred some ten years later, developed just as 
 naturally from the tendency of the United States to 
 expand its territory and population. The former was 
 conceived and executed by a single great adventurer. 
 The latter was conceived by the most intelligent 
 American of his generation and executed by two sub- 
 ordinates of consummate ability. Thomas Jefferson 
 planned the expedition which Lewis and Clark con- 
 ducted. Its course began at St. Louis and ended at 
 the mouth of the Columbia. Like Xenophon's Ana- 
 basis, Marco Polo's journey to Cathay, and the first 
 voyage of Columbus across the Atlantic, the explor- 
 ing expedition of Lewis and Clark had excited the 
 imagination of the world, and as time passes historians 
 become more and more deeply impressed with its im- 
 portance. It was authorized by Congress in response 
 to a special message from President Jefferson which 
 he transmitted on January i8, 1803. 
 
 13. Jefferson's Interest in the West. — Jefferson's 
 alert and comprehensive intellect had long been in- 
 
THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION 25 
 
 terested in the country beyond the Mississippi. He 
 loved to hear of its mountains, its Indian tribes, its 
 desert wastes and the strange beasts which roamed 
 them." Now and then he had received for his scien- 
 tific collection specimen bones of extinct monsters 
 which formerly dwelt in those remote and almost un- 
 known regions and he eagerly sought for more.^^ From 
 the close of the Revolution, too, his imagination had 
 been kindled with lofty dreams of an imperial Nation 
 which should stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
 Ocean. In those early times the adventurous John 
 Ledyard wrote,^^ "The American Revolution invites 
 to a thorough discovery of the continent," evi- 
 dently thinking of a future when the United States 
 would cover the continent. Jefferson knew Ledyard 
 and encouraged him in his schemes of exploration. 
 As early as December, 1783, Jefferson in writing to 
 George Rogers Clark to propose tentatively a trip 
 beyond the Mississippi hinted that the English would 
 
 "The most interesting was the buffalo, then common on the plains 
 but now almost extinct. The story of the buffalo illustrates the 
 folly of permitting greed to operate without restraint. 
 
 ^^Scientists were then making those investigations into fossil re- 
 mains which later enabled Darwin and others to write the history of 
 life from its humble beginnings to the advent of man. Jefferson took 
 all knowledge for his field. 
 
 "Schafer gives an interesting account of Ledyard. He was a Con- 
 necticut Yankee with a strong taste for rash adventures and a brain 
 which projected new schemes as fast as his old ones failed. He sailed 
 with Captain Cook, published a book in 1783 which interested Ameri- 
 can merchants in the Pacific fur trade, fell a victim to the senseless 
 tyranny of Russia, and finally died on his way to seek for the sources 
 of the Nile. 
 
26 'THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 probably try to plant colonies there. ^^ No doubt 
 jealousy of England played a part in keeping Jeffer- 
 son's interest in the western country active from the 
 close of the Revolution to the time when he actually 
 despatched Lewis and Clark upon their journey. No 
 man knew better than he what was going on in the 
 world. He was informed of Sir Alexander Mackenzie's 
 trip to the Pacific and he knew enough of the energy 
 of the Northwest Company to foresee what its con- 
 sequences would be. Already in 1803 the British 
 traders had invaded the country about the tributaries 
 of the Missouri. Their occupation of the whole region 
 west of the Mississippi was only a question of time 
 unless American enterprise should meet and turn 
 them back. 
 
 14. Jefferson and France. — But Jefferson's im- 
 mediate anxieties concerning the Valley of the Miss- 
 issippi and the entire western country related to 
 France. By the treaty which closed the Revolu- 
 tionary War, England had given up her claims to the 
 territory east of the Mississippi and south of Canada. 
 In 1 803 this was in the possession of the United States 
 and it was rapidly filling with settlers from the older 
 states. Kentucky then had a white American popu- 
 lation of some 180,000; Ohio had 45,000. Altogether 
 
 2°This tentative project never came to anything. In 1792 Jefferson 
 induced the American Philosophical Society to raise a subscription 
 for western exploration. Meriwether Lewis was put at the head of 
 the expedition, but it got no further than Kentucky. This was not 
 Lewis's fault. The botanist Michaux who was to take an important 
 part was a Frenchman and his government recalled him just in time 
 to spoil the trip. 
 
THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION 27 
 
 there were many more than 325,000 white Americans 
 in the Mississippi Valley when Lewis and Clark set 
 out on their journey. ^^ At the beginning of 1803 the 
 country between the Rocky Mountains and the Miss- 
 issippi, which was called Louisiana, belonged to 
 France. In 1763 the French had ceded it to Spain, 
 but in 1800 the powerful Napoleon, who then domi- 
 nated European affairs, compelled the feeble Span- 
 iards to return it. He had a wonderful project of 
 building up a great colonial empire and making 
 France, by means of it, the leading naval power of 
 the world. The colonial empire would create mari- 
 time trade; this would train sailors and multiply ships. 
 His ideas were by no means fanciful, but he had too 
 many other things on his hands to carry them out. 
 
 15. Mouths of the Mississippi. — With Louisiana 
 went the possession of the mouths of the Mississippi. 
 To the settlers in the West this meant a great deal 
 since the products of their farms and forests could 
 reach the markets of the world only by way of New 
 Orleans. 22 They understood that the French could 
 shut them out from the city entirely if they chose, or 
 could capture the profits of their labor by extortionate 
 charges for storage, transfers and commissions. Who- 
 ever held New Orleans was commercial despot of the 
 
 2»Schafer puts the population at 325,000 in 1800. It could not 
 have been much short of half a milHon in 1803. 
 
 "At that time there were no railroads, of course. From the 
 Mississippi Valley to the East there were not even wagon roads, and 
 if there had been ever so good ones it would still have been cheaper 
 to transport products by water to New Orleans. Cattle could be 
 driven to market across the mountains, but no heavy freight could 
 be carried so far. 
 
28 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 Mississippi Valley. Even while Spain owned it the 
 people were restless. From France, a much stronger 
 and more aggressive nation which had long been 
 planning to regain control of the Mississippi Valley, ^^ 
 they expected active ill-treatment. From this state 
 of things two consequences were almost certain to 
 follow. Either the West would separate from the 
 Union and fight the French independently for the 
 control of the Mississippi, or it would embroil the whole 
 country in a war for the same purpose. ^^ 
 
 16. Jefferson's Designs, — To avert the danger 
 of war and preserve the Union, Jefferson designed 
 two measures of far reaching statesmanship. The 
 first was a proposal to purchase from Napoleon 
 the city of New Orleans and the adjacent land on the 
 east bank of the Mississippi known as West Florida. 
 This would insure commercial freedom to the West 
 and soothe the irritation of the settlers. Jefferson's 
 second design was to despatch an overland exploring 
 expedition up the Missouri River to the Pacific. By 
 this he hoped to accomplish several desirable objects, 
 to build up friendly trade with the Indians along the 
 Missouri and westward to the mountains, to attract 
 
 2^The offensive Genet was commissioned in 1793 to intrigue for the 
 cession of the Mississippi Valley to France among other things. 
 
 2*In the early years of the nineteenth century the Mississippi 
 Valley settlers were not very strongly attached to the Union. Wash- 
 ington wrote to Governor Harrison of Virginia that "A touch of a 
 feather would turn them any way," toward Spain, independence or 
 a foreign protectorate. Undoubtedly the purchase of Louisiana 
 did more than any other event to unite the country. With the elec- 
 tion of Andrew Jackson to the Presidency the last possibility of 
 secession in the West disappeared. 
 
THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION 29 
 
 the fur trade of the Northwest Coast eastward by the 
 overland route, to hasten the settlement of the Miss- 
 issippi Valley by American pioneers, thus forestalling 
 the intrigues of the EngHsh and the French, to balk 
 the advance of the Northwest Fur Company in the 
 region of the upper Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to 
 establish intimate commercial relations between the 
 East and the developing West and, last, but by no 
 means least, among the motives which governed 
 Jefferson's vast intelligence, to satisfy his keen scien- 
 tific curiosity and promote the science of geography. 
 
 17. Purchase of Louisiana. — At the beginning of 
 the year 1803 Jefferson began the execution of both 
 these designs. He despatched Monroe to France to 
 negotiate with Napoleon for the purchase of New 
 Orleans and West Florida, ^^^ and he sent to Congress 
 the famous message which outlined the plan of the 
 expedition to the Pacific. Congress received the mes- 
 sage on January 18, 1803, and promptly voted the 
 necessary funds. The negotiations with Napoleon 
 prospered beyond all expectation. Busied with new 
 combinations in European affairs the great iconoclast 
 offered to sell the whole of Louisiana to the United 
 States hoping thus to upbuild a formidable military 
 and commercial rival to England, his implacable foe. 
 Jefferson leaped at the amazing opportunity and with 
 one stroke of his pen made America an imperial nation 
 
 ^^West Florida was a narrow tract along the gulf east of the Missis- 
 sippi. The United States claimed it under the Louisiana Purchase, 
 and Spain as a part of Florida up to 1819. The United States then 
 obtained undisputed title to it. 
 
30 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 and insured to democratic institutions the scepter of 
 the world. 
 
 18. Meriwether Lewis. — For the leader of the 
 exploring expedition Jefferson selected his friend 
 Meriwether Lewis, a young Virginian whom he had 
 known for years and who was his private secretary 
 at the beginning of 1803. Lewis was attractive in 
 mind and person, well educated and a lover of wood- 
 craft. Better still, he was a born leader of men who 
 knew well how to choose and to command his fol- 
 lowers. Through all the adventures and perils of the 
 expedition not a jar occurred between the leaders, 
 there was no suggestion of complaint or mutiny and 
 but one man perished. Of this good fortune by far 
 the greater part must be attributed to the consum- 
 mate gift of Lewis for leadership and command. 
 Historians have lingered pensively over the romantic 
 qualities and the mysterious fate of this adventurous 
 hero. When he had returned from the Pacific covered 
 with renown and apparently ready for a long career 
 of supreme usefulness to his country, death suddenly 
 struck him down. This was in 1809 when Lewis was 
 thirty-five years old. Some say that he was mur- 
 dered, others that he perished by his own hand in a 
 moment of melancholy. Just how he died no man 
 knows. 
 
 19. William Clark. — With Jefferson's consent Lewis 
 selected for his associate in the command of the ex- 
 pedition William Clark, a younger brother of the 
 Indian fighter George Rogers Clark, to whom Jeffer- 
 son had vaguely suggested an exploring trip to the 
 
THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION 31 
 
 Pacific in 1783. He was a man of good ability and 
 solid character. Upon the return of the expedition 
 Jefferson appointed him superintendent of Indian 
 affairs for Louisiana. He died in 1838 at the age 
 of sixty-eight. 
 
 20. Personnel of the Expedition. — Both Lewis and 
 Clark had served in the army and for their followers 
 they chose in the main men of the military type who 
 were inured to hardship and obedience. Eighteen sol- 
 diers were enlisted from the western posts. Nine hunters 
 from Kentucky, brave young men loyal and true, 
 also joined. Clark took along his negro servant, and 
 these men with one exception went through to the 
 Pacific and returned. The exception was Sergeant 
 Charles Floyd who died on the way up the Missouri, 
 where Sioux City now stands. His companions buried 
 him near the river. The party also included two 
 French interpreters who were familiar with Indian 
 languages and customs. Up the Missouri as far as the 
 Mandan Villages, sixteen other soldiers and watermen 
 accompanied the expedition, but at that point they 
 were sent back. 
 
 21. Beginning of the Expedition. — ^Toward winter 
 in 1803 the party was assembled at St. Louis and went 
 into camp on the Illinois shore at the mouth of the 
 River DuBois.^^ Until spring Captain Clark passed 
 the time building boats and arranging the minute 
 
 '^Jefferson's negotiations with Napoleon had already resulted in the 
 sale of Louisiana to the United States, but the formal transfer was 
 delayed until March 9, 1804. Hence St. Louis was virtually a foreign 
 city in the fall of 1803 and hardly suitable for the winter quarters of 
 a party under American command. 
 
32 THE STORY OI^ OREGON 
 
 details of the trip, while Lewis diligently gathered what- 
 ever information he could obtain from traders and 
 trappers about the route up the Missouri. They knew 
 the river pretty well as far as the villages of the Man- 
 dan Indians, but not beyond. On the 14th of May, 
 1804, the expedition finally embarked and began its 
 voyage up the Missouri traveling in three boats, a 
 rather large one with twenty-two oars, and two small 
 craft of which the first was rowed with seven oars and 
 the other with six. On the eleventh day of the jour- 
 ney, May 25th, they passed La Charette where Daniel 
 Boone the famous pioneer had made his home on the 
 outskirts of civihzation.-^ By June 5th they had reached 
 the mouth of the Kansas River, and just a month after 
 starting they passed the Platte. At both these rivers 
 they met parties of fur traders coming down from the 
 interior, some of them bringing great quantities of 
 beaver. Thus the invasion of the plains and the 
 Rocky Mountains by the white trappers had already 
 begun, but fifty years were to elapse before their vic- 
 tory over the desert and the Indians would be com- 
 plete.^* Carrying out Jefferson's instructions to cul- 
 
 '^La Charette was a settlement near the mouth of Femme Osage 
 Creek, about 45 miles by water above St. Louis. Daniel Boone set- 
 tled there in the spring of 1799 with his family. The Spaniards gave 
 him some nine hundred acres of land, but he failed to register his 
 title properly and it was lost to him later for some years. In 1810 
 Congress finally restored his estate. When Boone was on his way to 
 Missouri his old acquaintances asked why he was going so far away. 
 "I want more elbow room," was his reply. He found it at La 
 Charette, though the tide of emigration finally overflowed him. His 
 old age was serene. He died in 1820. 
 
 '^The adventures of these hardy scouts and trappers were related in 
 
^ 
 
THE LEWIS AND CI^ARK EXPEDITION 33 
 
 tivate friendship with the Indians, the explorers held 
 councils with the chiefs of the neighborhood on the 
 east bank of the Missouri not far from the mouth of 
 the Platte at the site of the future city of Council 
 Bluffs. Thence they pursued their way northward 
 through the Dakota country between the monotonous 
 banks of the Missouri, the current of the turbid river 
 ever powerful and treacherous, the scenery almost 
 the same day after day for almost four months longer. 
 Then at the end of October they reached the villages 
 of the Mandan Indians and laid by for the winter. 
 
 22. The Winter Among the Mandans. — The Man- 
 dans were a kindly people well disposed toward the 
 whites and famiHar with traders and trappers. Lewis 
 and Clark built a primitive log fort here and passed 
 the time till spring as best they could. The leaders 
 were busy providing for the party, inquiring about 
 the country to the west and preparing their reports 
 for the President. The men found not a little diver- 
 sion in sharing the sports of the Indians. Among 
 other incidents which broke the tedious sameness of 
 the dreary winter months was a visit by some British 
 fur traders from the north, agents of the great North- 
 west Company, which then as always was alert to learn 
 everything touching its commercial interests. Doubt- 
 less they sent back a tale to Montreal which hastened 
 
 popular form in the "Dime Novel" literature which was widely read 
 by young men as late as 1870, and doubtless played its part in stimu- 
 lating emigration westward. The dime novel finally gave way to the 
 "Cowboy Story" just as the trapper was replaced by the cattleman 
 on the range. 
 
34 THE STORY OI^ OREGON 
 
 the forward movement of the eager monopoly toward 
 the Pacific. 
 
 23. From the Mandans to the Shoshones. — Leaving 
 the hospitable Mandans on April 7, 1805, the party 
 struck westward following the course of the upper 
 Missouri through a country which no longer wearied 
 them by its monotony. The route now lay through 
 territory which had never been explored by whites. 
 The charm of mystery and the excitement of danger 
 attended every step of the way. All through the 
 Dakota country they had seen vast herds of buffaloes, 
 now they encountered the ferocious grizzly bear, the 
 terror of the mountains. Steadily forging westward 
 they passed the mouth of the Yellowstone and the 
 great falls of the Missouri and on the twelfth of August, 
 1805, Captain Lewis stood on the height which divides 
 the Atlantic from the Pacific slope and crossed a clear 
 stream of icy water flowing toward the Columbia. 
 Not long afterward they encountered the Shoshone 
 Indians who supplied them with horses for the long 
 and difficult overland trail to the Columbia. Boats 
 could not be used on this section of the journey be- 
 cause the rivers raged through abysmal canyons along 
 the steep ocean ward slope of the mountains. 
 
 24. Sacajawea. — Their welcome among the Sho- 
 shones was made warmer by Sacajawea, the wife of 
 Charboneau, one of their interpreters, who had joined 
 the party at the Mandan villages. Sacajawea was a 
 Shoshone whom the Mandans had taken captive in 
 her girlhood and her brother happened to be one of 
 the leading chiefs of her people when Lewis and Clark 
 
THE IvEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION 37 
 
 came among them. There was great joy over her 
 return after so many years and naturally she was able 
 to secure many favors for the explorers. From the 
 Shoshone country the party followed the Lolo Trail 
 across the Bitter Root Mountains to the mouth of the 
 North Foi-k of the Clearwater River, which they reached 
 in October, 1805. 
 
 25. From the Shoshones to the Ocean. — This part 
 of the journey was beset with many hardships. The 
 way had to be explored almost step by step, the moun- 
 tain sides were steep and rocky, the deep canyons dan- 
 gerous to cross, while all the time the men were suffer- 
 ing from hunger. When, on September 20th, they 
 finally came to a hospitable village of Nez Perces In- 
 dians, it is not surprising that the famished travelers 
 overate. Even Captain Clark made himself sick at 
 the feast and had to wait a day or two to recover. At 
 the mouth of the North Fork of the Clearwater the 
 party built five canoes. In these they embarked on 
 the 7th of October, leaving their horses with the kindly 
 Nez Perces, and began the voyage down the Clearwater 
 to the Lewis or Snake, thence down the Lewis to the 
 Columbia, and finally down the Columbia to the Ocean. 
 This part of the journey was completed in just a month. 
 On the 7th of November, 1805, they heard the breakers 
 on the Columbia bar and looked out upon the wide 
 ocean. Their great historic enterprise was accom- 
 plished. 
 
 26. The Return. — Three miles from the mouth of 
 Lewis and Clark River, a little stream which flows into 
 Young's Bay near Astoria, the party built a shelter 
 
38 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 from the winter rains, naming it Fort Clatsop, and 
 there passed the time not without hardship until the 
 23rd of March, 1806, when they set out homeward. 
 The return trip was rich in excitement and discovery, 
 but no serious mishap befell the adventurers and in the 
 mild days toward the end of September ,^^ just six 
 months from the time when they left the Pacific, they 
 reached St. Louis, having completed with admirable 
 ability and success one of the crowning achievements 
 of history. 
 
 27. Results of the Expedition. — In subsequent ne- 
 gotiations with England for the possession of the 
 Oregon country the Lewis and Clark expedition gave 
 the United States firm standing ; it confirmed our claim 
 against Spain for the parallel of forty-two degrees as 
 the northern boundary of California, and above all, 
 it aroused a lively interest throughout the nation in 
 the land beyond the Rocky Mountains. Although the 
 journal of the expedition was not published before 
 1 8 14, still accounts were printed immediately and 
 widely read. There is no doubt that Jefferson's great 
 enterprise turned the American spirit of pioneering 
 adventure strongly toward the farther West. This 
 trend of national feeling never died out but constantly 
 increased. It led to the formation of fur-trading 
 companies, it incited parties of settlers to push deeper 
 and deeper into the country beyond the Mississippi, 
 
 =»The date was September 23, 1806. The party had been on the 
 way, going and returning, two years and a half. The student should 
 read some full account of this remarkable expedition, such as " First 
 Across the Continent" by Noah Brooks. 
 
THE LEWIS AND CI.ARK EXPEDITION 39 
 
 and it finally culminated in a steady tide of emigra- 
 tion which made Oregon an inseparable part of the 
 Union. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 John Jacob Astor's Colony 
 
 28. The Columbia Indians. — Lewis and Clark found 
 the banks of the Columbia fairly well populated with 
 Indians, but they were filthy and poverty stricken. 
 Their principal food was fish either fresh or dried which 
 they varied by devouring dogs and relished with wa- 
 patoes and berries. ^'^ Their clothing was but scanty, 
 and beyond the preparation of food they had no in- 
 dustry except basket weaving. With savages of this 
 low type there was small hopes of establishing trade 
 at once; still it was possible that they might be edu- 
 cated to better things and taught to desire some of the 
 conveniences or joys of the white men. In that case 
 they might be stimulated to trap the beaver which 
 abounded in the tributaries of the Columbia, par- 
 ticularly about the head waters of the Willamette, 
 and thus a profitable exchange might grow up. Fol- 
 lowing their instructions from Jefferson, Lewis and 
 Clark described the condition of the Columbia Indians. 
 Learning of the possibilities of trade with them, 
 John Jacob Astor, a famous New York merchant, 
 
 "The wapato is the tuberous root of a water plant. It was common 
 in the shallow waters of the Columbia flats until the carp was intro- 
 duced. This useless and destructive fish almost eradicated the wapato 
 and for a time made the wild ducks which fed on them too scarce to 
 please the hunters. The squaws gathered wapatoes by wading out 
 into the shallow water and uprooting them with their toes. 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR'S COLONY 41 
 
 organized a magnificent plan to combine the fur busi- 
 ness of the Northwest Coast with that of the Missis- 
 sippi Valley, under his own control. 
 
 29. Astor's Previous History. — Mr. Astor had been 
 engaged in the fur trade through Montreal for a long 
 time before the return of Lewis and Clark, and his 
 acute and searching intelligence had mastered all its 
 secrets. He understood how the voyagers collected 
 the furs from the hunting Indians in the remote forests 
 and transported them by canoe to the posts of the 
 Northwest Company scattered over the vast territory 
 between the head waters of the Mississippi and the 
 Arctic Ocean and stretching westward far beyond the 
 summit of the Rocky Mountains. ^^ From the solitary 
 posts in the wilderness the furs were collected at cen- 
 tral stations and thence every year transported to Mon- 
 treal whence they were distributed to the markets of 
 the world. Astor had hitherto been merely a dis- 
 tributor. He now aspired to become the rival and 
 perhaps the conqueror of the Northwest Company. 
 At any rate he planned to forestall it along the Mis- 
 souri and Columbia and exclude it from the trade of 
 Louisiana and the Northwest Coast. 
 
 30. Astor's Great Project. — The first step in the 
 execution of his vast enterprise was to organize the 
 American Fur Company^^ through which he planned 
 
 ^'By 1813 the Northwest Company was building forts in eastern 
 Washington. 
 
 ^^The American Fur Company was organized in 1808, two years 
 after the return of Lewis and Clark. The connection of events was 
 therefore close. In the same year, 1808, Mr. Henry, an agent of this 
 company, established Fort Henry on the Snake River (more properly 
 
42 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 to control the fur trade of the country from the Great 
 Lakes to the headwaters of the Missouri. Naturally 
 the central post for this company would be St. Louis, 
 since to that city the furs could move down stream 
 from the head waters of the Platte, the Kansas, the 
 Missouri and the Mississippi. The American Fur Com- 
 pany, in Astor's imperial imagination, was to rule the 
 eastern half of his commercial realm. To rule the 
 western half, the country from the summit of the 
 Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, he established a post 
 at the mouth of the Columbia. Strategetically the situa- 
 tion of this post was as excellent as that of St. Louis. 
 The trade of a great interior region would reach it by 
 merely following the course of the Snake, the Clark, 
 the Columbia and the Willamette rivers with their 
 lesser tributaries. By seizing the key positions at the 
 mouths of the Missouri and Columbia rivers and estab- 
 lishing a continuous line of posts along the inland waters 
 up the Missouri and down the Columbia, Astor planned 
 to control the fur trade of the continent from the Great 
 Lakes to the Pacific, and he planned well. His project 
 failed through the imbecility or treachery of his sub- 
 ordinates and not through inherent defect. 
 
 31. Founding of Astoria. — To execute that part of 
 his project which related to the Pacific Coast and the 
 Columbia River, Astor organized, in June, 1810, the 
 Pacific Fur Company. He provided the entire capital 
 for the company and held half of its one hundred 
 shares of stock. The remaining shares were equally 
 
 Lewis River), See Schafer's judicious remark upon the name of this 
 river. He consistently calls it Lewis as everybody ought. 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR'S COLONY 43 
 
 divided among his partners. ^^ These liberal terms 
 were made in order to attract to the new company a 
 number of the ablest members of the Canadian North- 
 west Company. The attempt was successful. Several 
 of Astor's partners and many of his minor employees 
 were men who had transferred their services if not their 
 allegiance from the Canadian to the American enter- 
 prise. He determined to send his first party to the 
 mouth of the Columbia by sea around Cape Horn. It 
 set sail from New York September 6, 1810, in the ill- 
 fated ship Tonquin under the cantankerous Captain 
 Thorn^'' who enlivened the long voyage by incessant 
 quarreling with his Canadian passengers. ^"^ When the 
 mouth of the Columbia was reached, March 22, 181 1, 
 a storm was raging and the breakers on the bar terri- 
 fied the sailors. A wiser captain would have waited 
 for fair weather, but Thorn sacrificed seven men to his 
 impatience by sending them out in the ship's boat to 
 sound the channel among the breakers. Two days 
 later, just at nightfall, the Tonquin passed the bar in 
 safety, though the wind still blew a tempest, and the 
 next morning she sailed farther up the channel and 
 found a secure anchorage. The men selected a site 
 
 ^^For the first five years Astor was to bear all the loss and divide 
 the profits with his associates. W. P. Hunt of New Jersey, one of 
 the partners, was appointed agent for the first five years and was to 
 reside at the headquarters on the Pacific coast. The particulars are 
 given in Bancroft. 
 
 ^*E. W. Wright in his Marine History of the Pacific Northwest 
 speaks of Jonathan Thorn as "a headstrong and surly captain." 
 
 ^^There were thirty-three of Astor's men on board the "Tonquin." 
 Twenty-seven of them were from Canada and twenty had been con- 
 nected with the Northwest Company in one capacity or another. 
 
44 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 for their post, named it Astoria in honor of their chief 
 partner, and began operations by erecting a storehouse 
 and landing the supplies from the Tonquin. On April, 
 1 2th, at the spot where the city of Astoria now stands, 
 they started to build a rude log fort which was finished 
 toward the end of July. 
 
 32. Loss of the Tonquin. — It was part of Mr. Astor's 
 wide plan that a supply ship should reach Astoria each 
 year by way of Cape Horn, land provisions and trad- 
 ing goods for the post, and then proceed along the 
 coast northward to collect furs from the Indians. 
 Laden with her rich cargo the vessel was then to sail 
 for Canton, where the furs would be sold, and taking 
 on a new cargo of Chinese goods she would sail for 
 home, reaching New York again after a voyage of two 
 years. In pursuance of this plan the Tonquin left 
 Astoria on June 5th, long before the fort was finished, 
 and sailed to the North to trade with the Indians for 
 furs. At Gray's Harbor Captain Thorn took on board 
 an Indian interpreter. Some two years later this man 
 made his way back to Astoria and brought the par- 
 ticulars of the terrible catastrophe which befell the 
 Tonquin in Clayoquot Harbor, on the coast of Wash- 
 ington.^® The savages in this part of the world were 
 known to be treacherous and before Captain Thorn 
 sailed from New York Astor warned him to beware 
 of them. But the foolish captain disregarded all pre- 
 cautions. During the first day's barter at Clayoquot 
 
 ^^The interpreter is the sole witness. All accounts of the destruction 
 of the "Tonquin" are based on the narrative which Franchere gives 
 verbatim. The accounts vary only because different writers have 
 sought to improve upon the facts by adding picturesque details. 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR'S COLONY 45 
 
 he fell into a rage with one of the chiefs and thrust 
 him off the ship. The natural effect of this insult was 
 to make the savages furious and when they gathered 
 around the vessel the next day in their canoes pretend- 
 ing friendship and eagerness to trade, Thorn should 
 have known that they were really seeking revenge. 
 Some of his men urged him to be on his guard but his 
 obstinate conceit was invincible.^' He not only per- 
 mitted the Indians to fill the ship's deck and distribute 
 themselves as they liked, but he and his men mingled 
 with them unarmed. He could not have furthered 
 the plot of the angry savages better had he deliberately 
 planned to do so. At a certain signal they fell upon 
 the helpless crew and captain and slew them all ex- 
 cept four men who had climbed to the rigging and 
 thence slipped down into the cabin where they ob- 
 tained firearms. With guns in their hands these four 
 men easily drove the Indians from the vessel. If the 
 crew had been armed in the first place as common sense 
 required there would have been no massacre on board 
 the hapless Tonquin. The four men who cleared the 
 deck of the savages put to sea in a boat the next day. 
 Some canoes set out in pursuit of them but whether 
 they were overtaken and slain or whether they per- 
 ished on the open sea, the interpreter never could learn. 
 Nobody knows what became of them. When the four 
 sailors had rowed away from the Tonquin the Indians 
 cautiously approached and discovering no signs of dan- 
 ger finally crowded upon the deck. Perhaps five hun- 
 
 ^' Captain Thorn's conduct reminds one of Braddock at Fort Du 
 Quesne. 
 
46 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 dred of them had gathered on the bloody scene of the 
 massacre when suddenly a terrific explosion occurred. 
 Either by accident or design the magazine of the Ton- 
 quin had been fired and two hundred of the savages 
 perished with the ship. The interpreter gave himself 
 up as a slave, but two years later his friends at Gray's 
 Harbor rescued him, and thus the story of the destruc- 
 tion of the Tonquin came to light. 
 
 33. Advance to the Interior. — By July 15, 181 1, 
 while the fort at Astoria was still incomplete, a party 
 of Astor's men made ready to depart for the interior 
 to explore the country and build up trade with the 
 Indians, but they were delayed for eight days by a 
 visit from David Thompson, the geographer of the 
 Northwest Fur Company. Acting for his company 
 Mr. Thompson had been busy on the western slope 
 of the Rocky Mountains since 1807. He had estab- 
 lished posts on the Kootenai, on Lake Pend d'Oreille, 
 on Clark's Fork in the Flathead country, and finally 
 on the Spokane River. Thus the great monopoly 
 was making its way steadily toward the Ocean. The 
 arrival of Astor's men at Astoria probably discon- 
 certed Thompson's plans for there is little doubt that 
 his trip to the mouth of the Columbia was for the pur- 
 pose of building a fort at that strategic point. Astor's 
 men received him hospitably, though they did not fore- 
 go their intention to push forward into the upper coun- 
 try because he had been there before them. Eight 
 days later the Astor party set out under David Stuart 
 and actually built a post on the Okanogan River where 
 they carried on a successful trade the next winter. 
 
JOHN JACOB ASTOR'S COLONY 47 
 
 34. Progress of the Colony. — Upon the whole, things 
 went fairly well with Astor's project, and if the War of 
 1 812 had not broken out his success would probably 
 have been brilliant. Considering the great distance 
 of Astoria from New York and the wild, ungovern- 
 able character of the men upon whom he had to depend, 
 the preliminary mishaps were no more serious than 
 might have been expected. The destruction of the Ton- 
 quin was nothing more than a miserable incident. It did 
 not essentially injure the enterprise. An overland party 
 which Astor despatched from St. Louis in March, 181 1, 
 under W. P. Hunt, one of his partners, met with terri- 
 ble hardships on the journey to Astoria, but most of 
 the men finally reached the fort in safety. Hunt him- 
 self with some of them arrived in February, 181 2, and 
 the others straggled in during the following weeks . The 
 party was badly led but not by any means destroyed. 
 A little afterward, on May 10, 1812, Mr. Astor's second 
 ship, the Beaver, anchored at Astoria with men and 
 supplies, which put new heart into the enterprise. 
 The preliminary difficulties had been surmounted and 
 fortune seemed ready to smile upon the daring adven- 
 ture of the New York merchant, when the War of 181 2 
 broke out and put the finishing stroke to his hopes. 
 
 35. The Loss of Astoria. — W. P. Hunt was to be 
 the managing agent at Astoria for the first five years, 
 but when the news reached the fort that war had begun 
 between America and Great Britain he was absent on 
 a fur-trading expedition and Donald McDougal, one 
 of the Canadian partners was in charge. Hunt had 
 sailed away in the Beaver on August 4, 181 2, and did 
 
48 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 not return for an entire year. In the meantime agents 
 of the Northwest Company haunted the fort and were 
 probably more or less actively engaged in tampering 
 with the loyalty of the men. They sowed discourage- 
 ment and dissensi6n and insisted that a British ship 
 would soon appear for the capture of the post. Natu- 
 rally the sympathies of Astor's Canadian partners were 
 with the British. Both patriotism and old associa- 
 tions inclined them to yield to the solicitations of the 
 Northwest Company's emissaries, and by the time 
 Hunt returned to Astoria, August 4, 1813, they had 
 resolved to abandon the enterprise. He sailed away 
 again in search of some vessel to rescue the goods and 
 furs and did not return until February 28, 18 14. While 
 he was away the weak or treacherous partners of Astor 
 sold all his property to the Northwest Company and a 
 number of them reentered its service. On the 12th 
 of December, 18 14, a British sloop of war took pos- 
 session of the place and the name Astoria was changed 
 to Fort George. Thus ended Astor's courageous enter- 
 prise at the mouth of the Columbia. Had he been able 
 to secure loyal subordinates there can be little doubt 
 that his success in the end would have been mag- 
 nificent. He selected the most skillful men he could 
 find, but at the critical moment they played him false. 
 The result was that the profits of the fur trade in the 
 Oregon country went to the British for many years to 
 come. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 Rule of the Fur Company 
 
 36. AstoriaResftored to the United States. — For the next 
 twenty years after the ruin of Astor's project the his- 
 tory of Oregon is the history of the operations of the 
 Northwest and Hudson Bay Fur Companies in that 
 region. Under the terms of the Treaty of Ghent which 
 closed the War of 1812, the United States demanded 
 the restoration of Astoria and after some diplomatic 
 delay and parleying the British government per- 
 mitted an American commissioner, J. B. Prevost, to 
 run up the stars and stripes at the fort on October 6, 
 1818. This in form at least restored the sovereignty 
 of the country to the United States but it made no 
 difference in its practical control. That had been in 
 the hands of the Northwest Company from the day 
 its agents bought out Astor's partners and it remained 
 there still. 
 
 37. Settlement Deferred. — Even the formal restora- 
 tion of the sovereignty of Oregon was soon made nuga- 
 tory, for on October 20, 18 18, the United States and 
 Great Britain concluded a treaty which put off the 
 settlement of their conflicting claims^^ for ten years 
 
 ^®The British laid stress on the explorations of Vancouver and 
 Broughton and the fact that Broughton had taken formal possession 
 of the country along the Columbia. The Americans, with greater 
 force, emphasized the discovery of the Columbia by Gray, and the 
 fact that he had shown Broughton the way into the river. Our claim 
 
50 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 and provided in the meantime for a joint occupation 
 of the country. The question of sovereignty was left 
 open and the subjects of both nations were given equal 
 rights of trade and settlement in Oregon. ^^ No doubt 
 each government expected that its own citizens would 
 occupy the country in overwhelming numbers and 
 practically decide the question of ownership in that 
 way before the treaty of joint occupation expired. 
 That did not happen however for many years to come. 
 Ten years later, in 1828, the condition of Oregon was 
 much the same as in 1818^ and the treaty was renewed 
 for another period and only terminated in 1846. 
 
 38. Union of the Fur Companies. — Up to the year 
 1 82 1 the attention of the Northwest Company was 
 partially diverted from the fur trade to a bitter struggle 
 with its older rival, the Hudson Bay Company. The 
 contest, which almost amounted to a civil war, im- 
 paired the energies of both companies and wasted 
 their resources. Wise men on both sides perceived 
 the advantages of cooperation instead of ruinous com- 
 
 was strengthened by the consideration that the British had done 
 nothing to occupy the Oregon country up to 1811, while we had sent 
 out the Lewis and Clark expedition and Astor had estabhshed his 
 post at the mouth of the Columbia. Upon the whole the United 
 States seems to have yielded a good deal in agreeing to joint occupa- 
 tion. 
 
 ^^By this treaty the parallel of forty-nine degrees was fixed as the 
 boundary between the United States and Canada from Lake of the 
 Woods to the Rocky Mountains. From that point westward the 
 boundary of course remained unsettled. The British had their hearts 
 Bet on the Columbia, the Americans claimed as far north as 54° 40'. 
 Spain still had a vague claim to the Oregon country but in 1819 she 
 gave up to the United States everything north of 42°, retaining Cali- 
 fornia. 
 
RULE OF THE FUR COMPANY 51 
 
 petition, and in 1821 the two companies were united. 
 Before that date the fur trade along the Columbia 
 had been conducted mth fair profits, but upon the 
 whole rather languidly. Now all was changed. 
 
 39. Dr. McLoughlin Sent to Oregon. — In 1824 the 
 new organization, called the Hudson Bay Company, 
 sent out Dr. John Mclvoughlin to take charge of its 
 business in the Columbia region. This remarkable 
 man had a genius for organization and command. 
 He was of a resolute character with great kindliness 
 of disposition. He never tolerated the slightest dis- 
 obedience in his wide domain and yet his subordinates 
 seem to have mingled genuine affection with un- 
 bounded respect for him.^*' In dealing with the In- 
 dians he first of all convinced them of his power to 
 enforce his will. When they became submissive, as 
 they invariably did, he treated them with a mingling 
 of paternal severity and kindness which won their 
 hearts and made them the loyal servants of the Com- 
 pany. Dr. Mclyoughlin was an excellent man of busi- 
 ness and an admirable ruler over the wild country 
 which had been assigned to him and the adventurous 
 characters who inhabited it, but he was much more 
 than a mere man of business. He was a far-sighted 
 statesman, enlightened in conduct and liberal in his 
 opinions. He developed the fur trade in the Oregon 
 country until it became the most profitable part of 
 the Company's vast domains. At Vancouver where 
 
 ^''His po&ts covered the country from the Umpqua River in the 
 south to the extreme headwaters of the Columbia and Snake Rivers in 
 the north and east. 
 
52 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 he established his headquarters, he introduced farm- 
 ing and stock raising, planted an orchard and built a 
 sawmiU and a gristmill. 
 
 40. Settlement Begun. — The ancient policy of the 
 Hudson Bay Company forbade men to settle in the 
 fur country. It was desired to keep the western 
 wilderness forever as a game preserve inhabited only 
 by wild Indians and the traders. McLoughlin aban- 
 doned this unwise policy. He encouraged a number 
 of men who had left the company's service to settle 
 in Oregon and aided them to establish farms. ^^ Travel- 
 ers, explorers, and men of science were always welcome 
 at the Vancouver fort. Even rival traders like Nathan- 
 iel Wyeth were received politely, though Dr. McLough- 
 lin knew very well how to guard his commercial in- 
 terests against their encroachments. Finally, when the 
 missionaries began to arrive and the trains of immi- 
 grants to follow them, although McLoughlin nmst have 
 foreseen the inevitable consequences to the fur busi- 
 ness and to British dominion, nevertheless he sold 
 them supphes, relieved their distress and encouraged 
 them with wise counsel. Dr. McLoughhn was often 
 misunderstood by the pioneers and sometimes maligned, 
 but the verdict of history will be that he is clearly 
 entitled to be called the "Father of Oregon." 
 
 41. Life in Oregon. — Until the arrival of Jason Lee 
 with his missionary party in 1834, we must therefore 
 think of Oregon as a great game preserve for the Hud- 
 son Bay Company. Except for the Indians and 
 traders, its forests were solitudes. Its rivers were 
 
 *'They livfd in the neighborhood of Champoeg. 
 
RUIvE OF THE FUR COMPANY 53 
 
 traveled, only by the canoes which annually bore their 
 loads of beaver and other furs to Vancouver, and ex- 
 cept for a few white men and half castes who had 
 settled on the Willamette above Salem, its fertile 
 lands were untilled. The voyageurs who paddled the 
 canoes of the company up and down the rivers were a 
 picturesque breed of men, worthy predecessors in 
 romantic charm to the gold seekers and cowboys. At 
 Fort Vancouver life went on with a certain decorum 
 which looked much like civilization. The manners 
 and conversation at the table were refined, but the 
 officers' Indian wives^^ were not permitted to dine with 
 their husbands, and it was not till 1832 that a school 
 existed for their children."'^ 
 
 "All the white men had Indian wives. The officers at Fort Van- 
 couver were married to squaws of either full of half blood. McLough- 
 lin'swife was half white. Duncan McDougal, who helped sell out 
 Astor at Astoria, was retained in command there by the Northwest 
 Company and married the daughter of old Chief Concomly. 
 
 *^In the winter of 1832]John Ball, who came out with Wyeth on his 
 first trip, taught school at the fort. Learning their letters must have 
 been an odd experience for the little half-breed boys and girls who had 
 never done anything but run about and ride ponies. One can believe 
 that education would not have made better trappers and traders of 
 the boys, but they never got enough of it at Vancouver to injure them. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The First Pioneers 
 
 42. Remoteness of Oregon. — Why was it that so 
 few American settlers or adventurers disturbed the 
 sway of the British fur companies in Oregon from 
 1 8 14 to 1834? There were several reasons. The tide 
 of American life was steadily surging toward Oregon 
 and the Pacific during all that period, but we must 
 remember that the great area of the Mississippi Valley 
 had to be occupied before the billows could roll farther 
 westward. Immigration into this territory was ex- 
 tremely rapid but the region was so vast that every- 
 body who came found land good and plentiful for many 
 years. When at last the best had been selected and 
 people began to crowd each other a little in Illinois, 
 Indiana, Ohio and Missouri, then the eyes of the ad- 
 venturous turned to the remote West and fortune be- 
 gan to beckon alluringly from the fertile vales beyond 
 the Rocky Mountains. Again, the reader must re- 
 member how slowly popular knowledge of Oregon 
 grew. Lewis and Clark had told little that could 
 attract the homeseeker. Their attention dwelt upon 
 the possibilities of trading in furs with the Indians. 
 The prospect of making the Columbia region a land of 
 farms seemed to them remote and shadowy, if they 
 thought of it at all. Besides, they never saw the 
 best parts of Oregon. When the unhappy stragglers 
 
THE FIRST PIONEERS 55 
 
 of W. P. Hunt's party returned to the states they 
 brought a tale of woe which was not Ukely to induce 
 others to repeat their journey; but the hunters and 
 trappers of the land beyond the Mississippi continually 
 pressed forward toward Oregon and finally entered it 
 both from the south and the east. 
 
 43. Adventures of Jedediah Smith. — As early as 1826 
 Jedediah S. Smith with a party of men in the service 
 of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company entered the 
 country west of Great Salt Lake, discovered the Hum- 
 boldt River and crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains 
 into the Sacramento Valley." Here he established a 
 camp and returned to Salt Lake the next summer. 
 The same summer, 1827, Smith set out with a number 
 of companions to return to the Sacramento Valley, 
 but on the way the Indians attacked him and slew all 
 of the party except himself and two others. The 
 three fugitives made their way with incredible 
 hardship to the camp in the Sacramento Valley, and 
 thence Smith led his men with their valuable store 
 of furs northward along the coast to the Umpqua 
 River. Here he was again attacked by treacherous 
 savages and barely escaped with his life, losing all his 
 party but three men. Leaving his property in the 
 
 "In 1822 General W. H. Ashley formed a fur company at St. Louis 
 which sent parties into the best beaver districts to trap out the streams. 
 Jedediah S. Smith, David Jackson and W. L. Sublette, to whom he 
 sold his business in 1826, pursued the same poHcy. Smith made his 
 trips for this company. Schafer gives the particulars. Sublette was 
 one of the famous characters of the old trapping days. Ashley's men, 
 in 1823, discovered the South Pass by which later the Oregon trail 
 crossed the mountains. 
 
56 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 hands of the Indians who had captured it, Smith made 
 his way to Vancouver. Here, August, 1828, he was 
 kindly received by the officials of the Hudson Bay 
 Company who despatched a party to the Umpqua to 
 punish the Indians and recover his furs. Thomas 
 McKay, the leader of the party, fulfilled his mission 
 successfully.''^ The furs were brought to Vancouver 
 and Smith received some $40,000 for them from the 
 Hudson Bay Company. The immediate consequence 
 of this adventure was that the Company, perceiving 
 how rich in furs the southern country must be, began 
 to push their trapping expeditions toward California. 
 Smith saw much of the Willamette Valley and undoubt- 
 edly told of its beauties wherever he roamed through- 
 out the west. 
 
 44. Ewing Young. — In 1832 Ewing Young, a fa- 
 mous trapper from Santa Fe, followed Smith's route as 
 far north as the Umpqua. At that point he turned 
 eastward and crossed the mountains, finally making 
 his way back to Calif ornia.^^ These trips opened the 
 route between Oregon and California and some use 
 was made of it by the pioneers to bring in stock. In 
 
 "Soon after this McKay built a fort for the Hudson Bay Company 
 on the Umpqua. It was held by a solitary Frenchman with his Indian 
 wife. The Company sent him goods twice a year. Otherwise he had 
 no communication with the world, Mrs. Dye tells the circumstances 
 in her pleasant way in her book on " Dr. McLoughlin and Old Oregon." 
 
 ^''Ewing Young returned to Oregon with a band of horses and a 
 small party of men in 1834. The trip was undertaken for the sake of 
 Hall J. Kelley who was then on his way to the Columbia. Young be- 
 came a noted figure in pioneer history. Pattie's narrative of his trip 
 to the Pacific, which was published in 1832, helped stir up interest in 
 that part of the world. 
 
^•. u 
 
 THE OREGON COUNTRY SOUTH OF THE 49th PARALLEL 
 
THE FIRST PIONEERS 59 
 
 the days of the gold seekers it became a much traveled 
 highway. 
 
 45. Difficulties of the Routes to Oregon. — Men like 
 Jedediah S. Smith and Ewing Young must have spread 
 accounts of Oregon far and wide throughout the west- 
 ern country. Moreover, by this time, 1830, the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley was populous enough to permit of an- 
 other great westward migration, but no leader had 
 yet appeared to start the movement, and there were 
 other difficulties in the way. Between the fertile strip 
 west of the Mississippi and Oregon there was a wide 
 stretch of country which was then supposed to be 
 desert. Much of it really was desert, and beyond this 
 tract lay the mountains over which it was not certain 
 that wagons could be taken. The matter of a prac- 
 ticable wagon road was very important to the westerner 
 who might wish to go to Oregon. Dwelling far from 
 the sea, they could not send their goods by water and 
 they were loath to leave them behind. In fact they 
 would not attempt to go where they could not trans- 
 port their belongings. Three trails were ultimately 
 opened across the desert and the Rocky Mountains. 
 The most northerly one Lewis and Clark had followed, 
 but that was out of the question for wagons, while the 
 powerful and treacherous Blackfeet Indians, hostile 
 finally to the whites, made travel upon it extremely 
 hazardous. The Santa Fe Trail which ran from Mis- 
 souri southwest to New Mexico led far away from 
 Oregon. It was the middle trail, running from In- 
 dependence up the Platte River and across the South 
 Pass in the mountains, which finally became the great 
 
60 THE STORY 01? OREGON 
 
 emigrant route. Ashley's trappers discovered the 
 South Pass as early as 1823, and in 1830, the next year 
 after his misfortunes on the Umpqua, Jedediah S. 
 Smith with some companions drove loaded wagons to 
 the head of Wind River in the Rocky Mountains and 
 brought back word that they could easily have taken 
 them over the Pass. It was the gradual opening of a 
 practicable wagon road to Oregon which really made 
 emigration possible. The progress of wheeled vehicles 
 through the mountains was more important in the 
 history of Oregon than almost any other series of 
 events. Hence it is worth while for the student to 
 remember that in 1833 Captain Bonneville actually 
 drove wagons through the South Pass along the line 
 of the Oregon trail to westward flowing waters. 
 
 46. Bonneville's Enterprise Fails.— Captain Bonne- 
 ville's purpose was to invade the Oregon country and 
 compete in the fur business with the Hudson Bay 
 Company on its own ground. Beginning his adven- 
 turous career as a fur trader in 1832, he spent three 
 years in the region of the Lewis River (Snake River) 
 and pushed his explorations as far as Fort Walla 
 Walla, which is now called Wallula. But Captain 
 Bonneville had to contend with the wiles of both the 
 independent American traders and the thoroughly 
 organized agents of the Hudson Bay Company, and 
 between them they m.ade short work of his commer- 
 cial ambitions. His enterprise failed completely.*' 
 
 47. Wyeth and Kelley.— The efforts of Nathaniel 
 
 •■'The student will find it interesting to read Washington Irving'e 
 "Adventures of Captain Bonneville." 
 
THE FIRST PIONEERS 61 
 
 J. Wyeth to carry on the fur trade in Oregon also 
 failed, but he is a more notable figure in history 
 than Captain Bonneville because of his connection 
 with Jason Lee. Wyeth made two expeditions to 
 Oregon for the purpose of trade, and both were futile. 
 He seems to have been a man of a romantic disposi- 
 tion who plunged into western adventure without 
 much real knowledge of its conditions and hardships. 
 His interest in the Pacific Coast was awakened by the 
 writings of Hall J. Kelley, a Boston school-teacher, 
 whose mind became a little unbalanced with excite- 
 ment over the Oregon controversy with Great Britain, 
 and who kept his schemes of occupation and settlement 
 before the public for many years beginning with 1815. 
 He gathered a great deal of information about Oregon, 
 organized a society to promote its colonization, and in 
 spite of his vagaries, interested many persons of con- 
 sequence in his plans. ^^ Finally, Kelley made a trip 
 to the Pacific Coast which was as full of adventure as 
 
 *^In 1832 Kelley set out from Boston to make a trip to Oregon, the 
 land of promise. He chose to go by way of Mexico and thence through 
 California where he fell in with Ewing Young in the summer of 1834. 
 Young went with him to Oregon taking along about a dozen men 
 and a band of horses. On the Umpqua Kelley fell ill of intermittent 
 fever, but La Framboise of the Hudson Bay Company treated him 
 with quinine and venison broth and soon cured him. Arriving at 
 Vancouver Kelley found that Young and himself had been posted 
 by the Spaniards as horse thieves. Dr. McLoughlin could therefore 
 hardly receive him on the footing of a gentleman, though he pro- 
 vided for Kelley's necessities, and in 1836 sent him back to Boston, 
 which he never ought to have left, by way of the Sandwich Islands. 
 W^yeth was at Vancouver during this period but he paid no attention 
 to Kelley. This seems somewhat ungrateful seeing that it was 
 Kelley's writings which started Wyeth westward. 
 
62 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 the most romantic heart could desire, but it did not 
 lead to any definite results. 
 
 48. Wyeth's First Expedition.— Nathaniel J. Wyeth 
 began operations in much the same way as Astor did. 
 He sent his goods for the Indian trade around Cape 
 Horn and set out with a small party to go to Oregon 
 overland and meet the vessel at Vancouver. The ship^^ 
 sailed in the fall of 1831. Wyeth and his men set out 
 the next spring going first to Baltimore by water and 
 thence by the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad west- 
 ward for sixty miles. Down the Ohio River to St. 
 Louis they went by steamer, and in the same way up 
 the Missouri as far as Independence, where the Oregon 
 Trail struck northwestward for the Platte. Even then 
 this trail was pretty well traveled as far as Green River. 
 At Independence Wyeth fell in with William Sublette, 
 the famous trapper, who was starting for the moun- 
 tains with sixty-two men. He guided the party safely 
 across the plains but in the mountains the men fell 
 sick from the hardships they had to endure. Disap- 
 pointed and forlorn they grew mutinous. Some de- 
 serted, but with the eleven men who remained true to 
 him Wyeth pushed on through starvation and hostile 
 Indians to Vancouver. In a wretched condition he 
 
 ^^Wyeth's ship was wrecked in the Sandwich Islands. His party 
 consisted of his brother, his cousin and nineteen workingmen of 
 various trades. They prepared for the expedition in grand style, 
 holding regular drills, dressing in uniform and carrying a fine outfit of 
 weapons. Before leaving for Baltimore, Wyeth held a Wild West 
 show in Boston Harbor for ten days. The expedition was a holiday 
 affair almost to the base of the Rocky Mountains. Then it took on a 
 more serious aspect and all but eleven of the bold adventurers went 
 back home. 
 
THE FIRST PIONEERS 63 
 
 reached the fort October 24, 1832. Although Wyeth 
 came as a rival in trade Dr. McLoughlin received him 
 with boundless hospitality. Of course he could not 
 buy furs without his goods, which had been lost with 
 his ship, but he studied the conditions of the country, 
 laid new plans, and in 1833 returned to Boston filled 
 with the determination to undertake another expedi- 
 tion under better auspices. ^° He was now resolved to 
 combine salmon fishing with the fur trade, and he in- 
 duced the Boston merchants who had formerly aided 
 him to fit out another ship for Oregon. This vessel, 
 famous in the annals of the Pacific Coast, was named 
 the May Dacre.^^ She sailed late in the year 1833, 
 while Wyeth set out overland on his second expedition 
 the following March. 
 
 "°Dr. McLoughlin must have known that Wyeth 's trip was the be- 
 ginning of the end of the British monopoly in Oregon. Other parties 
 were certain to follow and agricultural settlement must speedily drive 
 out the beaver. Still he met Wyeth as he did the later immigrants 
 with noble hospitality, though he never forgot the interest of the Com- 
 pany. Some of Wyeth 's eleven men stayed in Oregon and took up 
 farms. 
 
 **Wyeth was a man of vigorous physique and engaging personality 
 who won confidence wherever he went. He had no difficulty in ob- 
 taining the ship and supplies for this second expedition nor in raising 
 men to follow him. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Mission at Salem 
 
 49. The Nez Perces Send for the Bible. — At about 
 the time when Wyeth made his first trip to the Columbia 
 one of those seemingly unimportant events occurred in 
 the West which now and then alter the aspect of human 
 affairs and determine the course of history. In 1831, 
 or perhaps a year later, the Nez Perce Indians for some 
 unknown reason decided to send four of their leading 
 men to St. Louis to ask for the white man's "Book of 
 Heaven." It is quite likely that the Indians had 
 learned from the wandering trappers something of the 
 beauties of the Christian religion, coupled with such criti- 
 cisms upon their own primitive rites as those freespoken 
 men would not hesitate to make. The Nez Perces were 
 a comparatively intelligent tribe with vigorous bodies 
 and active brains. Doubtless their curiosity was 
 awakened. They were eager to learn the way to 
 heaven which the trappers must have pictured to them 
 as an extremely attractive place. They remembered 
 General Clark from the time, nearly thirty years be- 
 fore, when he was in their country on his expedition 
 to the coast, and of course they also knew that he was 
 then the government's Indian agent at St. Louis. 
 Hence it was natural enough for them to send to him 
 for a copy of the Bible and some one to explain it to 
 them. 
 
REVEREND JASON LEE 
 
The: mission A^t salem 65 
 
 60. Consequences of the Visit of the Nez Perces. — 
 
 The four messengers from the Nez Perces reached St. 
 Louis safely and were kindly received by General Clark. 
 When three of them fell sick Clark took them into his 
 house and cared for them,^^ but in spite of his ministra- 
 tions two died. The other two spent the winter in St. 
 Louis and in the spring went back to their own country 
 without a missionary, but they had kindled a fire behind 
 them in the minds of men which was not to be quenched 
 until Oregon had been settled by civilized immi grants. ^^ 
 Christianity is emphatically a missionary religion 
 The zeal of the churches to spread the gospel among 
 the heathen may sometimes slumber but it never dies. 
 The news of these Indians and their pathetic errand 
 roused it to strenuous activity. The churches had 
 heard a Macedonian call and missionaries with holy 
 zeal took up the cross and bore it among the western 
 savages. Civilization and liberty attended their foot- 
 steps. The Methodists were the first to act. G. P. 
 Disosway published an account of the four Nez Perces 
 in the Methodist papers in February, 1833. In March, 
 just as Wyeth was starting back home from Vancouver, 
 President Wilbur Fiske of Wilbraliam College, issued 
 one of those trumpet calls for men which have never 
 
 *'G. P. Disosway, the man who gave the money to found the Metho- 
 dist missionary society in 1819, saw them lying sick in Clark's house 
 and talked the matter over with Clark. Disosway sent the news of 
 the visit of the Indians and their errand far and wide. 
 
 "They seem to have returned by the Lewis and Clark route. One 
 more died at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Catlin, the Scotch trav- 
 eler and artist, went with them for two thousand miles of the way 
 and painted their pictures which are reproduced in Atwood's "Con- 
 querors.'' 
 
66 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 failed to enlist new volunteers in the army of the 
 martyrs. "Money shall be forthcoming," he wrote. 
 ''All we want is the men. Who will go?" 
 
 51. Jason Lee Appointed Missionary Superintendent 
 and Joins Wyeth. — The first volunteer was Jason Lee, 
 Canadian by birth, ordained to preach in the Methodist 
 church in the United States. He was a man of strong 
 body, gifted with great common sense, burning elo- 
 quence and the power to lead and control men. Ap- 
 pointed Superintendent of the Flathead missions in 
 July, 1833, Lee spent the rest of the summer traveling 
 and preaching in the cause. Meanwhile, almost as if 
 providential forethought had arranged it, Wyeth was 
 fitting out his second expedition in Boston. On De- 
 cember 13th, Lee met him at Cambridge and, taking 
 advantage of opportunity, agreed with Wyeth to ship 
 his goods in the May Dacre and to join his overland 
 party in the spring. ^^ There is no doubt that Lee had 
 large plans from the outset, intending to make his mis- 
 sion a nucleus for settlement and American dominion. 
 With the zeal of the missionary he combined the far- 
 sighted wisdom of the statesman.^^ In the middle 
 
 "Schafer says the May Dacre "went down the coast in the fall." 
 She did not actually set sail on her voyage until after December 13. 
 The train of coincidences in preparation for Lee's mission seems half 
 miraculous. First came Wyeth's former trip in which he learned 
 western ways and became an accomplished guide and plainsman, 
 knowing the trail, the Indians, and places for feed and water. The 
 missionary zeal of the churches awakens as if to take advantage of 
 Wyeth 's experience, and Jason Lee meets him in the nick of time to 
 join fortunes with him. For those who see design in human affairs 
 was there ever a more striking example? 
 
 ^^Jason Lee was keenly alive to the importance of money even to 
 a missionary. He raised a large sum by his sermons. 
 
THE MISSION AT SALEM 67 
 
 of March, 1834, when he joined Wyeth at Indepen- 
 dence the party was assembUng.^^ In April it started 
 across the plains following the route which became 
 later the Oregon Trail. It was a gay cavalcade con- 
 sisting of seventy men and two hundred and fifty 
 horses, well provided for and well led. Wyeth was 
 himself by this time a seasoned plainsman, while his 
 old friend Milton Sublette, a trapper of long experience 
 and many adventures, was also of the band. Jason 
 Lee with his fellow missionaries kept somewhat on 
 the outskirts of the worldly party sedately driving 
 their cattle." Naturally Jason Lee could not help 
 preaching to Wyeth's wild followers, and at first they 
 rather resented his rebukes, but as time passed and 
 they began to understand his wide humanity and feel 
 his deep sincerity they ceased to ridicule him. Re- 
 spect and even affection took the place of rancor, and 
 the conscientious missionary became a favorite with 
 the free plainsmen. 
 
 52. From Independence to Fort Hall. — Striking 
 west from Independence the party crossed the Kansas 
 River on the sixth day out, then turning northward 
 and riding through plains covered with thrifty grasses, 
 on the twentieth day they came to the South Fork of 
 
 ^'Lee had four companions, his nephew Daniel Lee, who was also a 
 preacher and apparently a good one, and three lay brethren, Cyrus 
 Shepherd, P. L. Edwards and C. M. Walker. 
 
 ^^Lee took his cattle as far as Walla Walla but there, since the 
 season was late and feed scarce, he traded them to the Hudson Bay 
 Company. At Vancouver Dr. McLoughHn loyally turned over eight 
 cows to Lee and sent men to help him drive them to Salem. The 
 Hudson Bay Company, however, disliked to sell breeding animals 
 to the settlers. 
 
68 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 the Platte whose broad but shallow stream they fol- 
 lowed for six days more over a level prairie where the 
 buffalo grazed in numberless thousands. The trail 
 now crossed the South Fork of the Platte by a ford 
 and struck through a desert waste to the northern 
 branch which it followed on the southern side, over a 
 country of rugged hills past Scott's Bluff, where in the 
 older days an unhappy trader falling sick was deserted 
 by his companions and left to die; then through great 
 forests it ran to the banks of the Laramie Fork where 
 Fort Laramie was afterward to stand. On the ist of 
 June, Wyeth with Jason Lee still in his train, crossed 
 the Laramie, and a week later, June 7, 1834, after pass- 
 ing the gloomy Black Hills, the party came down into 
 a barren plain where sage brush grew. Two days 
 later they bade farewell to the Platte which they had 
 followed so long and traversed a forlorn waste to In- 
 dependence Butte on the banks of the Sweetwater. 
 On the granite face of this landmark famous trappers 
 had chiseled their names, William Sublette and his 
 brother Milton, the loyal friend of Wyeth, Bonneville, 
 and others of the adventurous tribe. Some of Wyeth 's 
 party climbed the granite cliff and added their names 
 to the enduring roll. Looking ninety miles to the 
 northwest they could see the white peaks of the Wind 
 River Mountains piercing the sky and inviting them 
 onward, but it was not till the 14th of June that they 
 took up the trail again, for on the Sweetwater there was 
 pasture for the hungry horses and rest for the men, 
 while thenceforward as far as the Sandy River, which 
 was their next station, there was neither grass nor 
 
THE MISSION AT SALEM 69 
 
 water.^^ Down the Sandy they traveled to the Green 
 River, reaching it June 19th, and came to the "rendez- 
 vous," a fertile valley sunk in the desolate plain where 
 grass grew luxuriantly, buffalo, antelope and elk 
 abounded and the streams were full of fish. This was 
 a great meeting place of trappers. Wyeth's party 
 found many others there before them and until July 2nd 
 they lingered in the lovely nook, while there was trad- 
 ing, carousing and wild jollity among the men. Since 
 drink was plentiful Jason Lee must have witnessed 
 scenes at Green River which saddened his heart." 
 Traveling northwest from Green River Wyeth en- 
 countered, July 9, Thomas McKay, an agent of the 
 Hudson Bay Company, who was hunting with a 
 party of Canadians and Indians. ^^ The next day he 
 fell in with Bonneville and his men who had been on 
 a long trip and were resting in camp. They had now 
 reached a section of the wilderness where enterprise 
 was active. On July 14 they came to the Lewis 
 (Snake) River. Here Wyeth decided to erect a fort, 
 which he called Fort Hall. While Wyeth's men were 
 at work on the fort, which was a substantial structure, 
 
 ^^On the Sweetwater Jason Lee wrote a letter home which was 
 printed in the Christian Advocate. It read to the wondering Metho- 
 dists Uke a message from the other world. The Sweetwater seemed 
 far away to easterners in those days. Perhaps to many of them it is 
 not much nearer now. 
 
 "The usual performances at the rendezvous were something fright- 
 ful. Bancroft says that on this occasion there was the " usual mixture 
 of mirth and murder brooding, of obstreperous jollity, whooping, 
 roaring and wolfish snarling." It was no place for a tenderfoot. 
 
 ^"McKay's Indians were pleased to learn that Lee was a missionary. 
 To show their good will they gave him two horses. 
 
70 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 Thomas McKay visited the place, perhaps with an eye 
 to business/^ and on Sunday, July 27th, two of his wild 
 followers ran a horse race in which one of them lost his 
 life. At the funeral of this unhappy man Jason Lee 
 preached his first sermon west of the Rocky Mountains. 
 53. From Fort Hall to Vancouver. — On July 30, 
 1834, the missionaries left Wyeth at Fort Hall and 
 keeping company with Thomas McKay drove their 
 cattle straight through to Walla Walla, which they 
 reached by September i. Wyeth lingered to see the 
 fort completed and the United States flag raised over 
 it, August 5th; then, on the next day, he again took the 
 trail westward. At Walla Walla he rejoined Lee and 
 his party, who had disposed of their cattle to the Pludson 
 Bay people and had engaged a barge to carry themselves 
 down the river to Vancouver. Wyeth took passage with 
 the others and all arrived safely at Vancouver by Sep- 
 tember 16, 1834. Jason Lee preceded the rest of the 
 party by a few days and was waiting for them with 
 Dr. McLoughlin in front of the fort when they arrived. 
 Thus ended the memorable journey which began the 
 colonization of Oregon.*^ 
 
 ^^The Hudson Bay Company forthwith built a rival fort at Boise 
 which captured all of Wyeth's trade. 
 
 ^^The student should follow Wyeth and Lee across the continent 
 with a map of the Oregon Trail before him. This was one of the great 
 historic highways along which empire has traveled. Lee escaped the 
 worst part of the trail, from the Walla Walla River to The Dalles, by 
 taking to the water. The hardships of the pioneers were most severe 
 near The Dalles, since they reached it when the season was late, the 
 rains were coming on, their beasts were worn, their wagons broken 
 down, and their food almost gone. By giving timely assistance at this 
 critical place Dr. McLoughlin saved many lives from time to time. 
 
THE MISSION AT SALEM 71 
 
 54. Wyeth's Second Failure. — Wyeth's ship, the 
 May Dacre, entered the Columbia the day after his 
 party reached Vancouver. This was of course a lucky 
 coincidence since it enabled both Wyeth and the mis- 
 sionaries to proceed with their plans without delay. 
 Wyeth after exploring the country around the mouth of 
 the Willamette fixed upon Wapato, or Sauvie's, Island 
 for the site of his trading post and at a spot near the 
 the southern end of the island , he began a structure which 
 he named Fort William. This fort was completed in the 
 winter of 1834-5, together with several good log houses. 
 Wyeth raised the United States flag over the post 
 when it was done. In all ways he acted like an ener- 
 getic, capable, patriotic man of affairs, but his enter- 
 prise was not successful. Dr. McLoughlin was ex- 
 tremely polite to him, but he used his great influence 
 with the Indians to hold their trade for the Hudson 
 Bay Company. The salmon fishery was less lucrative 
 than Wyeth had expected. In spite of all his efforts 
 his enterprise languished. By the summer of 1836 
 he had broken up his establishment on Sauvie's Island. 
 He then returned to Boston and finally sold all his 
 possessions in the Oregon country, including Fort 
 Hall, to the Hudson Bay Company. 
 
 55. Founding of Lee's Mission. — The plans of 
 the missionaries had a far different outcome. Ever 
 since he entered Oregon Jason Lee had doubtless been 
 vigilantly seeking a suitable site for his station. He 
 had been commissioned to preach to the tribes on the 
 upper Columbia and the Lewis Rivers, but in his own 
 
72 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 mind agriculture was inseparably linked with the suc- 
 cess of the gospel, and in those apparently desert wastes 
 he could at that time see no prospect of fruitful fields."^ 
 He therefore kept his mind open as to the choice of a 
 site until he had consulted with Dr. McLoughlin and had 
 explored the lower part of the Willamette Valley. In 
 this charming region he found that Indians were numer- 
 ous and that their souls were at least as much in need 
 of salvation as those of the Nez Perces. He saw that 
 the situation was almost perfect for a farming colony 
 and he could not discern without further acquaintance 
 how hopelessly indolent, diseased and worthless the 
 valley Indians were. Jason Lee therefore altered his 
 original plans and chose for the site of his mission 
 a spot in the Willamette Valley not far from where 
 Salem now stands.®" To this place the missionaries 
 transferred their goods from the May Dacre and forth- 
 with began the erection of a house from squared logs. 
 By the first of November they were under shelter 
 from the autumn rains. 
 
 56. Oregon in 1834. — Since the real settlement of 
 Oregon by Americans begins with this missionary 
 colony on the Willamette, it will be well to pause here 
 and review the condition of the country. Oregon was 
 at that time completely controlled by the Hudson 
 Bay Company whose efficient head factor was Dr. 
 
 "Irrigation and wheat farming have transformed this desolate 
 region into a productive empire, but Jason Lee could not foresee the 
 distant future. He chose wisely in the circumstances. 
 
 "It was two miles above Joseph Gervais's farm, on the east bank 
 of the Willamette, and sixty miles from its mouth, 
 
THE MISSION AT SALEM 73 
 
 John McLoughlin. The principal post of the monopoly 
 was at Vancouver, but it had numerous other posts situ- 
 ated at advantageous points from the Umpqua to the 
 extreme upper tributaries of the Columbia and Lewis 
 Rivers. From all these places the harvest of furs was 
 brought annually to Vancouver and thence sent away 
 by sea. It was the policy of the Hudson Bay Com- 
 pany to make this state of things perpetual since set- 
 tlement would naturally interfere with the production 
 of furs. Still the benign character of Dr. McLoughlin 
 did not permit him to adhere rigorously to this bar- 
 barous policy, and, somewhat contrary to the rules of 
 the Company, he had encouraged several French 
 Canadians, old servants who wished to lead a peaceful 
 life, to take up farms on French Prairie^^ and had sup- 
 pHed them with tools, cattle and seed. Here they 
 dwelt in idyllic serenity, not very industrious, knowing 
 nothing of the world, content with their Indian wives, 
 their half-breed children and their slaves. Living 
 on French Prairie at the time of the arrival of Jason 
 Lee there were also a few white men who had come 
 into the country with W. P. Hunt on his unfortunate 
 overland trip in 1812. In October, 1834, Hall J. 
 Kelley brought in a little band of whites from Califor- 
 nia, among them the noted Ewing Young, who after- 
 
 "French Prairie includes the tract from Champoeg south to Lake 
 La Biche and, from Pudding River to the Willamette. It is a fertile 
 garden spot. To the northwest across the Willamette lies the 
 charming Chehalem valley where Thomas McKay took up his farm 
 and where Ewing Young afterward built his sawmill. North of 
 French Prairie Hes the rich valley of the Tualitin River. This entire 
 tr^-ct is extremely productive. 
 
74 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 ward took up farms here and there along the Willa- 
 mette; and when Wyeth finally gave up and left the 
 country a number of his men joined the American 
 colony.''" At the time of Jason Lee's arrival the white 
 settlers in the Willamette Valley, Americans and 
 Canadians, numbered about a dozen men. 
 
 57. Progress of Lee's Mission. — The missionaries 
 labored at building and farming with their own hands. 
 As soon as their house was habitable they began to 
 plow and fence land. By spring, 1835, they had thirty 
 acres enclosed with a rail fence and planted with wheat, 
 corn, oats and vegetables. They also built a barn 
 which was probably more comfortable than their house 
 since its floors and doors were made of sawed lumber." 
 
 '^Joseph Gervais came with Hunt. So did Michel La Framboise, 
 who saved Hall J. Kelley's life when he fell sick on the way to Van- 
 couver. John Ball, who came with Wyeth on his first trip, taught 
 the first school west of the mountains at Vancouver in 1833, beginning 
 January 1. In the following March Solomon H. Smith, probably an- 
 other of Wyeth 's men, succeeded Ball. With Kelley and Ewing Young 
 in 1834, eight men reached the Columbia. One of them, George Win- 
 slow, was a negro. The most noted member of the party, after the two 
 leaders, was Joseph Gale who helped build the first vessel launched 
 in Oregon, "The Star of Oregon," and sailed to California as her 
 master. After mining in California he returned to Oregon and lived 
 in various parts of the state, finally settling in the beautiful mountain 
 retreat called Eagle Valley about thirty miles from Baker City. Here 
 from sixteen acres of land he sold $2,000 worth of produce in one year, 
 though this would not be deemed a very heavy yield now from the 
 irrigated soil of that delectable garden. Joseph Gale died in Eagle 
 Valley at the age of ninety-two years. 
 
 ^^Two of the men who came with Hall J. Kelley were hired to saw 
 the lumber by hand. The buildings were shingled with "shooks" 
 split from four-foot fir bolts. Cedar, which would have been better, 
 does not seem to have been availpible at the mission. 
 
THE MISSION AT SALEM 75 
 
 At the same time the missionaries kept up reHgious 
 services among the settlers and made more or less 
 effort to interest the Indians; but the natives were 
 a pitiful race to whom the gospel seems to have m.ade 
 but a feeble appeal. A number of orphan children 
 from different localities came to the mission at one time 
 and another to be educated in the Christian religion, 
 and some of them were perhaps benefited, but many 
 died. Some were fatally diseased when they came to 
 the mission, others contracted tuberculosis as savages 
 so often do when they try to live in houses. The 
 numerous deaths among the children at the mission, 
 as well as the sickness among the whites themselves, ^^ 
 seem to have inspired the Indians with a superstitious 
 aversion to the place. The missionaries failed to win 
 their confidence and never exercised much influence 
 over them. 
 
 58. The Willamette Cattle Company. — Since their 
 labors among the Indians met with so little encourage- 
 ment, Jason Lee and his colleagues naturally devoted 
 themselves after a time to the spiritual and temporal 
 interests of the whites. They not only preached every 
 Sunday at Gervais's house, but they also opened a 
 Sunday school and, in 1836, formed a Temperance 
 
 '^^The missionaries seem to have paid too little attention to pure 
 air and hygiene. Jason Lee was frequently sick during the first year 
 or two, though he was naturally a robust man, and his wife died 
 within a year after she arrived. The whites ascribed much of their 
 sickness to "malaria," but we hear of no malaria among the settlers 
 at other places. There was much overcrowding and some neglect 
 of obvious precautions. When Anna Marie Pitman, Lee's bride, 
 arrived at the mission house it contained thirty-eight Indian children 
 of whom more than twelve were sick. 
 
76 "tut StORY OF OREGON 
 
 Society to combat the evil influence of a distillery 
 which Ewing Young threatened to estabHsh.^* In 
 January, 1837, they efficiently assisted the settlers to 
 form the Willamette Cattle Company to which Dr. 
 McLoughlin and William A. Slacum also subscribed.'" 
 The object of the company was to purchase a herd of 
 cattle in California where they were numerous and 
 cheap and drive them overland to Oregon." Eleven 
 men were despatched on this errand of whom P. L. 
 Edwards and Ewing Young were the leaders, and 
 Slacum, to promote the good of the colony, gave them 
 free passage on his ship, the Loriot. They set out from 
 the mission on January 17, 1837, and reached California 
 
 *^Young was embittered by the accusation of being a horse thief which 
 Dr. McLoughlin and everybody else in Oregon seem to have be- 
 lieved for some time. It was finally contradicted by Governor Figueroa 
 himself and Dr. McLoughlin did what he could to make amends for 
 his error, but Young remained unforgiving, assumed the attitude of a 
 misanthrope and diligently talked against British control. He ob- 
 tained some of the implements of his distillery from Wyeth when Fort 
 William was abandoned in 1836, but the persuasions of the Temper- 
 ance Society with those of William A. Slacum induced him to abandon 
 the plan. 
 
 ^"Slacum was sent to the Pacific coast in 1835 by President Jackson 
 to collect information for the government. At the instance of Hall 
 J. Kelley, who had returned to the east and told a woeful tale of 
 British persecution and tyranny in Oregon, Slacum was despatched 
 thither from California to investigate the condition of the settlers and 
 find out what he could about the country. He charted the Colum- 
 bia, mapped the Indian villages, visited Dr. McLoughlin and so- 
 journed a few days with the missionaries at Salem. The need of 
 cattle naturally impressed him and he helped along the project of 
 importing a herd from California. Slacum left Oregon Feb. 10, 1837. 
 
 ^^Cattle were still scarce in Oregon as late as 1839, when Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin declined to supply a British squadron with beef. He never 
 refused cattle to the settlers when it was possible for him to furnish 
 them. 
 
THE MISSION AT SALEM 77 
 
 toward the end of the month. After vexatious delays 
 a herd of eight hundred cattle was procured from the 
 Spaniards which the men drove to Oregon, suffering 
 extreme hardships on the route. It was the 12th of 
 September, 1837, when they reached the Rogue River, 
 and the middle of October before they completed their 
 journey to the mission. About six hundred head of 
 cattle were brought safety through which were dis- 
 tributed among the subscribers to the company at 
 seven dollars and sixty-seven cents a head. The in- 
 troduction of this herd marks the beginning of real 
 agricultural progress in the Willamette Valley. 
 
 59. Arrival of Reinforcements. — The year of 1837 
 not only saw agriculture placed upon a firm basis in 
 the Willamette Valley, but it also brought welcome 
 recruits to the missionaries. On the i8th of May 
 a party arrived at Vancouver which had sailed from 
 Boston almost a year before and suffered a long delay 
 at the Sandwich Islands. Besides several children, 
 this party included eight adults, among them a phy- 
 sician, the celebrated EHjah White," whose services 
 and counsel were, greatly needed at the mission, a 
 blacksmith named Alanson Beers, who must have been 
 almost as useful as the physician, and W. H. Wilson, 
 a ship carpenter from New Bedford." But the most 
 interesting member of this party was Miss Anna Maria 
 Pitman of New York, who came out with the partially 
 
 ''Dr Elijah White was a shallow, intriguing man of popular manners 
 and not too much principle. He had difficulty with Lee about the 
 finances of the new hospital and went back east. 
 
 "Beers was a Connecticut blacksmith. Wilson was a strong, kindly 
 man liked by everybody. He had been a whaler. 
 
78 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 formed purpose of marrying Jason Lee.'^ After a 
 romantic courtship attended by long rides and pleas- 
 ant camping trips, their wedding took place on the i6th 
 of June. The yth of September, 1837, saw the arrival 
 at Vancouver of a second party destined to strengthen 
 Lee's mission. It had sailed from Boston in the Janu- 
 ary preceding and consisted of two ministers, three 
 women and three children.^^ These recruits raised 
 the population of the mission to sixty persons, of whom 
 about half were white and the rest Indians. The 
 women must have humanized the life of the place a 
 great deal and probably their mundane common sense 
 soon made the conditions both physically and spirit- 
 ually more healthy than they had been. The Willa- 
 mette mission is now firmly established. If not very 
 successful in saving the Indians, it has become the 
 center of a vigorous American colony and we shall 
 leave it for a time to follow the more tragic fortunes 
 of the Whitman missions in the interior. 
 
 '*Miss Pitman was a woman of much charm. She had some poetic 
 gifts and was extremely devout. Her fate was a sad one as we shall 
 see. 
 
 "The ministers were H. K. W. Perkins and David LesHe. With 
 Leslie came his wife and three little daughters. The other women 
 were Margaret Smith and Miss Johnson, both unmarried. Misa 
 Smith married William Johnson, November 21, 1837. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 The Whitman Missions 
 
 60. Parker and Whitman Set Out for Oregon. — 
 
 Moved by the pathetic story of the four Nez Perces 
 who came to St. Louis seeking the Bible and the white 
 man's God, the American Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions in March, 1835, sent out the Reverend 
 Saiuel Parker to make a preliminary exploration of 
 the Oregon field. Parker was a man of studious habits, 
 refined tastes and strict piety. To the westerners he 
 seemed rather punctilious in his deportment, but he 
 must have been inspired with fervent zeal to undergo 
 the hardships he did in the missionary cause and he 
 must withal have enjoyed the adventures of travel 
 for he explored the country about the Columbia and 
 Lewis Rivers with exemplary thoroughness. When 
 he reached St. Louis, April 4, 1835, he was joined by 
 Dr. Marcus Whitman, whom the American Board had 
 appointed to be his associate. Whitman was a much 
 younger man than Parker, being then thirty-two years 
 old. He was of robust frame, spare and sinewy, with 
 blue eyes, and hair which was already turning gray. 
 Mentally alert, he was enterprising almost to rashness, 
 extremely persistent, and in emergencies his courage 
 never faltered. A touch of the romantic softened the 
 somewhat rugged outlines of his character. He loved 
 to surprise his friends with little dramatic episodes. 
 For example, when he reached the east after the fearful 
 
80 The story of Oregon 
 
 winter journey of which we shall speak later, he did 
 not discard his leathern garments but wore them in 
 church, in the houses of his friends, and at Washington 
 among the government officials. 
 
 61. Parker's Travels. — From St. Louis to Liberty, 
 Missouri, Parker and Whitman traveled by steamer. 
 At Liberty they joined a caravan led by Fontenelle, 
 a trader of the American Fur Company, and under his 
 convoy crossed the pMins to Green River, where they 
 fell in with a band of Flatheads and Nez Perces who 
 were delighted to learn of their purpose 7^ Convinced 
 by this that missions would be welcomed by the In- 
 dians of the Columbia, Whitman returned to the east 
 to procure the necessary means while Parker continued 
 his journey to the far west. As far as Pierre Hole on 
 the head waters of the Lewis River he traveled under 
 the protection of Captain Bridger who was going that 
 way with sixty men, but from Pierre Hole to Fort 
 Walla Walla he traveled with no companions but the 
 Indians. The route lay over the Salmon River and 
 Kooskooskie Mountains, on whose desolate ranges 
 Parker underwent dire suffering, but finally, August 
 28, 1835, he reached the hospitable country of the Nez 
 Perces and was received with a joyous welcome. 
 Arriving at Walla Walla on October 6, Parker ex- 
 
 "Parker and Whitman did not at the outset follow the same route 
 as Jason Lee. They went from Liberty to Council Bluffs and struck 
 westward from Belleview, a place on the west bank of the Missouri a 
 few miles below Omaha. Parker showed from the outset his insati- 
 able appetite for travel. From Liberty he improved a three weeks 
 delay by visiting Leavenworth and from Belle vue he made a side trip 
 to see Borne missionaries to the Pawnees. 
 
THE WHITMAN MISSIONS 81 
 
 perienced the rare luxuries of dining at a table and 
 sitting on a chair, and Pambrun, the agent, tempted 
 him to linger by spreading a feast of roast duck with 
 bread, milk and sugar; but his eager soul permitted 
 him only two days rest at the fort. On the 8th of 
 October he embarked in a canoe provisioned by the 
 careful Pambrun and with three sturdy Walla Wallas 
 for oarsmen he descended the Columbia through rapids 
 which sometimes frightened him, visiting the savages 
 by the way and receiving everywhere a glad welcome, 
 to The Dalles, where he arrived on the 12th. Here he 
 met Captain Wyeth on a journey to his post at Fort 
 Hall and received from that accomplished adventurer 
 a useful vocabulary of the Chinook jargon." At The 
 Dalles Parker exchanged his Walla Walla canoemen 
 for Wascos, and resumed the descent of the river 
 through dismal rains, but on the i6th he was surprised 
 by the sight of the men at work around Dr. McLough- 
 lin's sawmill, and on the afternoon of the same day the 
 Chief Factor welcomed the persevering missionary at 
 Vancouver. Resolute in pursuing his duty, Parker 
 stayed but one day at the fort. Then he went on board 
 the May Dacre, Wyeth's ship which had brought Jason 
 Lee's goods, now beginning her homeward voyage, and 
 sailed down to the mouth of the Columbia, everywhere 
 studying the Indians as they sought the ship to trade 
 and contrasting the degraded character of these redmen 
 
 ^^The Chinook jargon is a mongrel language containing a few hun- 
 dred words derived from English, French, Chinese, Indian and 
 perhaps other sources. Traders and travelers used it along the 
 Columbia and up the northwest coast. There are white men still 
 living who can speak it. 
 
82 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 with the sturdy manUness of the tribes of the upper 
 river. The winter of 1835-6 Parker passed at Van- 
 couver enjoying the abundant hospitaHty of Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin. In the spring, April 14, 1836, he set out 
 on his journey homeward, intending to go by way of 
 Green River and across the plains, but the Nez Perces, 
 with whom he was traveling, insisted upon taking the 
 trail over the Salmon River Mountains where the mis- 
 sionary explorer had nearly lost his life by hardship 
 the year before. Rather than go with them over that 
 dreadful route he gave up his plan of making the over- 
 land trip to the east and resolved to return by water. 
 On the way back to Vancouver he visited Walla Walla 
 again and near there selected Waiilatpu as the site of 
 a mission. ^^ He also mingled duty and pleasure in 
 trips up the Lewis River and across the country to 
 Fort Colville. From Vancouver he sailed for the 
 Sandwich Islands in the fall of 1836 and reached his 
 home at Ithaca, New York, in May, 1837, after a jour- 
 ney which had lasted more than two years and in 
 which he had visited almost every tribe of Indians 
 dwelling near the Columbia. 
 
 62. Whitman's Journey to Fort Hall. — Meanwhile 
 Dr. Marcus Whitman returned to New York in the fall 
 of 1835 and was commissioned by the American Board 
 to superintend the planting of a mission among the 
 Columbia River Indians. During the following win- 
 
 ''^Waiilatpu was near the mouth of Mill Creek twenty-two miles 
 from Fort Walla Walla on the north bank of the Walla Walla River. 
 The site was in a valley covered with a rich growth of rye grass 
 while on the surrounding hills bunch grass flourished. 
 
THE WHITMAN MISSIONS 83 
 
 ter he made his preparations. In February, 1836, he 
 was married to Narcissa Prentiss, a woman of rare 
 charm and great piety and devotion, who made him a 
 faithful helpmate in his difficult work. Whitman and 
 his wife began their journey to the west without asso- 
 ciates, for there were not many who wished to take 
 part in an adventure so distant and hazardous, but at 
 Pittsburg they met the Reverend H. H. Spalding and 
 his wife who were persuaded to join them.'^ At 
 Liberty, Missouri, the party was reinforced by W. H. 
 Gray from Utica, New York, who had been engaged 
 as a mechanic, and joining a caravan of the American 
 Fur Company's traders they set out for the Columbia 
 by way of Council Bluffs and the River Platte. Like 
 Jason Lee, Dr. Whitman had the wisdom to under- 
 stand that any successful mission among the Indians 
 must be based upon agriculture ; he therefore provided 
 himself with a plow and with seeds to begin farming 
 as well as with an outfit of blacksmith's tools. At 
 Liberty he added sixteen cows to his equipment for a 
 colony, and besides horses for riding and the packsaddle, 
 he also procured a one-horse wagon.*" At Laramie 
 
 '^Spalding was a recent graduate from Lane Theological Seminary 
 and newly married. He and his wife were on the way to the Osages 
 as missionaries when Whitman fell in with them. Perhaps the al- 
 teration of their plans did not at that time seem very great. Every- 
 thing west of the Mississippi seemed about equally remote to the 
 easterners. Spalding was not a brilliant man but he had consider- 
 able ability. W. H Gray was a fine young man without much 
 education but with good natural gifts. His History of Oregon shows 
 that he knew what was going on around him and had his own opinion 
 of events. 
 
 *°The hght wagon was taken principally on Mrs. Spalding's account. 
 Her health suffered from the hardships of the journey and she was 
 
84 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 the goods were transferred to pack horses and all the 
 wagons left behind except the light vehicle which was 
 necessary for Mrs. Spalding's comfort. When the 
 party reached the rendezvous at Green River the In- 
 dians, who were there in large numbers, gave them a 
 grand reception with a military exhibition in war paint 
 and feathers. Here also they met Wyeth, who was 
 returning to the east after the final failure of his enter- 
 prise and the sale of his property to the Hudson Bay 
 Company. 
 
 63. From Fort Hall to Vancouver. — From Green 
 River the route ran to Fort Hall on the Lewis through 
 a country which wheeled vehicles had never yet 
 traversed. The trappers advised Whitman that his 
 light wagon could not get through to the Fort, but 
 with characteristic persistence he declined to abandon 
 it. As a matter of fact he drove the wagon not only 
 to Fort Hall but beyond that point to Boise, though 
 for the last stage he had to remove two of the wheels, 
 thus reducing it to the humble estate of a cart. It is 
 quite certain that he could have driven it through to 
 Walla Walla had his horses been in good condition.®^ 
 
 not able to ride horseback. The Whitman party also had two heavy 
 wagons which were abandoned according to custom at Laramie. Horse 
 vehicles had been driven far beyond Laramie, even to Wind River, as 
 early as 1829, but the road was still rough in 1836. Whitman drove 
 the light wagon himself and got safely over the South Pass to Green 
 River, with Mrs. Spalding. 
 
 *^The famous cart was laid up at Boise and left there four years. In 
 1840, Joe Meek drove it across to Whitman's mission at Waiilatpu. 
 By that time the road was pretty well broken. The difficulties of the 
 highway through the mountains from Laramie were probably not so 
 great as people imagined at first. There was a natural road through 
 the South Pass. 
 
THE WHITMAN MISSIONS 85 
 
 The missionary party arrived at Fort Walla Walla on 
 September i, 1836, two years after Jason Lee reached 
 the same spot, and thence, with a pause of a day or 
 two to enjoy the hospitality of the post, they set out 
 for Vancouver, which received them with a royal wel- 
 come on the 12th. In entertaining the wayworn mis- 
 sionaries, and in particular the women. Dr. McLoughlin 
 lived up to his reputation. ^^ Whitman negotiated 
 with him for assistance from the Company as it might 
 be needed, bought a supply of goods to replace those 
 which he had been forced to abandon here and there 
 along the route and with Spalding and Gray returned 
 up the Columbia to begin the missions. The women 
 were left behind for the winter at the Fort. 
 
 64. The Missions at Waiilatpu and Lapwai. — Whit- 
 man established the first mission at Waiilatpu, the 
 place which Parker had chosen.*^ Timber being scarce, 
 the house was built of adobes, large bricks made of 
 clay and baked in the sun. The enthusiastic Indians 
 lent a hand and some help was supplied from Fort 
 Walla Walla. When this house was done another 
 station was begun at Lapwai on the Clearwater River 
 a dozen miles above its mouth.®* Here the Spaldings 
 
 ^'During his stay of a few days at Vancouver, Dr. Whitman made 
 the acquaintance of Jason Lee. 
 
 ^^Parker chose the site at Waiilatpu in the summer of 1836. Whit- 
 man began to build in the fall of the same year. Parker must have 
 left some word for him at the fort or among the friendly Indians. 
 The latter would have been delighted to take charge of a letter 
 or convey a message by word of mouth. They were vastly pleased 
 to have the missionaries come among them. 
 
 **It seems that Lapwai was also selected by Parker. It was only 
 a little way from the point where Lewis and Clark took to the water 
 on their trip westward. It was about one hundred and twenty 
 miles east of Waiilatpu in the heart of the Nez Perce country. 
 
86 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 were stationed while Dr. Whitman and his wife took up 
 the mission work at Waiilatpu. In the spring of 1837 
 he planted an acre of potatoes and twelve acres of corn, 
 together with peas and barley. The land was fertile, 
 as Parker had foreseen, and the crops flourished. In- 
 duced by Whitman's success the surrounding Indians, 
 who were far superior to the valley tribes both in vigor 
 and intelligence, soon began to open small farms and 
 raise supplies for themselves. Cattle obtained from 
 the east multiplied rapidly and became so numerous 
 in a few years that the Indians began to own herds. 
 They were interested in the schools which the mission- 
 aries opened. Religion seems to have been exceed- 
 ingly attractive to them, at least in theory, and in 
 course of time some of them were taken into the church. 
 65. Progress of the Missions. — Whitman and his 
 associates spared no pains to make the Indians self- 
 supporting and to teach them to lead settled lives. 
 Besides holding religious services and opening schools 
 they taught the wild savages how to till their fields, 
 built rude mills to grind their grain, and on a little 
 press, sent from the Sandwich Islands by the mission- 
 aries there, Whitman printed portions of the Bible 
 which he and his fellow-workers had translated into 
 the Indian tongue. In the spring of 1837, Gray was 
 sent east to procure reinforcements for the mission. 
 Successful in his errand he returned in the fall of 1838 
 with a party of seven persons besides himself and wife. 
 A new station was then occupied in the Spokane coun- 
 try farther north than Waiilatpu. The American 
 Board missions now seemed to be firmly planted. 
 
THE WHITMAN MISSIONS 87 
 
 They had begun with brilUant prospects and the 
 savages had welcomed them with enthusiasm. The 
 missionaries, particularly the women, had many hard- 
 ships to endure and their lives were lonely, but they 
 enjoyed the consolations of work well done and occa- 
 sionally they met together at Waiilatpu for worship 
 and society as well as business.®^ 
 
 ^'For a time at least the Whitman missions reached the Indians 
 much more successfully than did the Methodists in the valley of the 
 Willamette, but Waiilatpu never became a center of American 
 colonization Hke Salem. To Whitman belongs the credit of intro- 
 ducing irrigation in the country around Walla Walla. It may be that 
 history will give him more praise for this in the long run than for any 
 of his other deeds, numerous and meritorious as they were. The 
 people who came with Gray and his wife were Gushing Eels, Elkanah 
 Walker and A. B. Smith with their wives and M. C. Rogers. Eels, 
 Walker and Smith were ministers. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Agitation for a Provisional Government 
 
 66. Senator Linn's Efforts for Oregon. — From the 
 year 1837 the thread of Oregon affairs becomes inter- 
 woven more and more completely in the great web of 
 national history. As we have seen, W. A. Slacum, 
 the government agent who had been sent by President 
 Jackson to investigate the condition of the settlers in 
 Oregon, set sail for the east in February, 1837. In 
 December of the same year his careful and full report 
 was laid before Congress. It aroused an interest in 
 Oregon which never afterward slumbered and moved 
 a few far-sighted leaders, principally Dr. Lewis F. Linn, 
 senator from Missouri, to take immediate action look- 
 ing toward the occupation of that important territory 
 by the United States.*^ In January, 1838, Linn in- 
 troduced a bill to establish a territorial government in 
 Oregon. Congress did not pass the bill, partly from 
 indifference to the subject, but chiefly because Linn 
 treated the claims of Great Britain with a levity which 
 might have led to trouble. But he was not discouraged. 
 In the following June he presented to Congress a lengthy 
 report upon Oregon which recounted the history of the 
 region, told what was then known of its climate and 
 resources, and gave it a romantic interest by describing 
 
 ^'Gallatin renewed the treaty of the joint occupation in 1837 for ten 
 years more. Then the Oregon question slumbered in Congress until 
 Slacum 's report came in. Doubtless the approaching expiration of 
 the treaty was one cause of the newly aroused interest in 1838. 
 
AGITATION FOR A PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 89 
 
 the Oregon Trail over which the Whitman party had 
 passed two years before with the missionary women. 
 Linn's report was scattered broadcast throughout the 
 country and became a textbook for the pioneers who 
 soon began to throng the highway across the plains." 
 
 67. Lee Seeks Aid in the East for his Missions. — 
 While the reports of Slacum and Linn where thus turn- 
 ing the attention of the country forcibly to Oregon, 
 Jason Lee arrived from his mission field to fan the 
 flame to fervent heat. By this time the great mind 
 of the missionary statesman had conceived a definite 
 plan to conquer Oregon for the Union by establishing 
 stations at strategic points from the Umpqua to Puget 
 Sound and from Astoria to The Dalles. Daniel Lee 
 actually opened a mission at The Dalles in the spring 
 of 1838,®® but clearly the resources of the colony were 
 too slender to carry out the broad enterprise which 
 had been planned and it was decided that Jason Lee 
 should return to the east to solicit men and money 
 from the faithful. 
 
 68. Lee's Further Purpose. His Wife's Death. — 
 Lee went with another purpose also, which was to urge 
 Congress to establish a territorial government in 
 Oregon. Before he left the W^illamette Valley a con- 
 vention was called and a memorial to Congress pre- 
 pared which was entruste*d to his care. It described 
 
 "Schafer says that copies of this report were among the " very few 
 books taken across the plains." 
 
 **The Dalles mission started out with a deceptive promise of success. 
 There is a story that on one occasion eight hundred Indians were con- 
 verted. Perhaps a few of the degraded, diseased and thievish tribe 
 were actually benefited. 
 
90 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 the delightful climate and overflowing resources of 
 Oregon, set forth the prospects of trade with the Sand- 
 wich Islands and China, dwelt upon the ambition of 
 the settlers to found a commonwealth and narrated 
 the inconveniences which they suffered from the 
 absence of government and laws. All the men at the 
 mission signed the memorial. Ewing Young and ten 
 other colonists also signed it as well as nine of the 
 French Canadians. ^^ Bearing the memorial with him, 
 Jason Lee left for the east at the end of March, 1838, 
 going by way of Vancouver, The Dalles, Walla Walla 
 and Fort Hall.^'' He left his wife, who had come from 
 the east to marry him the year before, at Salem. As 
 he sped across the mountains and traversed the sandy 
 stretches of the trail beside the shallow Platte in the 
 wilderness, the Angel of Death entered the home he 
 had left to serve his country and his God. At the 
 Pawnee mission not far from Council Bluffs, a message 
 which McLoughlin had sent across the continent over- 
 took him, and alone in his chamber Jason Lee read the 
 letter which told him his wife was dead." She was 
 
 *°Ewing Young had cleared his reputation of all stain and had be- 
 come a leading man in the colony. The French Canadians had been 
 won over by the predominating influence of Jason Lee, who was as 
 much a master of men as McLoughlin himself. Young's irreconcil- 
 able hostility to the Hudson Bay Company began to produce impor- 
 tant results in this memorial. 
 
 ^"McLoughlin left Vancouver for England about the same time. 
 When he returned he brought his son with him. At Walla Walla 
 Lee visited Whitman. They had met before at Vancouver the fall 
 Whitman arrived. 
 
 ^^Mrs. Dye describes stage by stage the pathetic progress of Mc- 
 Loughlin's letter until it overtook Lee at the Pawnee mission. The 
 student will follow the storv with emotion. 
 
AGIITATION FOR A PROViSIONAt GOVERNMENT 9l 
 
 buried under the fir trees in the land of promise where 
 she died, while he went bravely forward upon his 
 errand. 
 
 69. The Peoria Party of Emigrants. — As soon as 
 Lee crossed the Mississippi, he began to lecture to large 
 audiences in the churches describing the attractions 
 of Oregon for the settler and asking for subscriptions 
 to the missionary cause. At Peoria, Illinois, one of 
 the two Indians who had accompanied him fell sick 
 and was left there through the winter of 1838-9."^ 
 His tales of the salmon in the Columbia added to the 
 interest which Lee had already excited, and, in the 
 spring of 1839, Thomas J. Farnham with a party of 
 fourteen men left Peoria to make the overland journey 
 to Oregon, where they hoped to engage in business. 
 Most of the party dropped away during the trip, 
 so when Farnham reached Waiilatpu he had but 
 three companions.^^ Farnham visited Daniel Lee, who 
 was by that time established in his mission at The 
 Dalles, tarried for a while at Vancouver, saw the mis- 
 sion at Salem, and then returned to the east carrying 
 a second memorial from the pioneers asking the United 
 States to extend its protection and laws over Oregon. 
 
 "P. L. Edwards,who went out with Jason Lee in 1834, returned with 
 him at this time. Edwards went with Ewing Young to CaHfornia to 
 buy cattle in 1837 and suffered great hardships. A man named 
 F. Y. Ewing and two Chinook boys also accompanied Lee. 
 
 '^Four others of Farnham's Peoria party, Holman, Cooke, Fletcher 
 and Kilborne, reached Vancouver in May, 1840, on the same day as 
 the passengers from the "Lausanne." They had traveled leisurely 
 and wintered in the Rocky Mountains. Their appearance was nat- 
 urally unkempt. Mrs. Dye describes the party as "four ragged 
 boys." All of Farnham's party seem to have been young men. 
 
92 THK story of OREGON 
 
 70. Lee's Memorial. Cushing's Report. — The me- 
 morial which had been entrusted to Jason Lee was pre- 
 sented to Congress in January, 1839, by Senator Linn, 
 the staunch friend of Oregon. It drew the attention 
 of Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts who forthwith 
 wrote to Lee for further information about the Columbia 
 country. Lee replied, January 17, 1839, that with the 
 reinforcement he was about to take to Oregon the 
 population of the mission would rise to seventy persons, 
 that there were already forty-five white men settled in 
 the country with Indian wives and that some twenty 
 more would go overland from the west in the spring. 
 If the government would take measures to secure the 
 rights of settlers, Lee thought most of the mission force 
 as well as the other whites would remain permanently 
 in the country. The measures needed were: first, an 
 assured title to the land which they might take up 
 and second, the protection of the United States govern- 
 ment and laws. Supplied with this new information 
 from Jason Lee, Cushing in 1839 presented a report upon 
 Oregon to the House of Representatives. By these 
 means, Oregon was forced gradually upon the attention 
 of the national legislature. The government became 
 impressed with the value of the territory, and the pur- 
 pose to make it a part of the Union grew into shape. 
 
 71. The Lausanne Party. — Meanwhile, all through 
 the winter and summer of the year 1839, Jason Lee 
 labored unremittingly to raise men and money for the 
 Willamette mission. The response was marvelous for 
 the times. A sum of forty-two thousand dollars was 
 subscribed, while thirty-six adult persons with sixteen 
 
AGITATION FOR A PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 93 
 
 children volunteered to return with him to Oregon. 
 They shipped on the Lausanne at New York on Octo- 
 ber lo, 1839, and sailed for Oregon with an adequate 
 outfit of supplies for the colony. They passed around 
 the Horn in safety, touched at Hawaii and landed at 
 Vancouver on the first of June, 1840. 
 
 72. Lee's Assignments. — Following out his noble 
 scheme of founding a state by planting missions, Jason 
 Lee stationed his reinforcements at various strategic 
 points. J. H. Frost went to the pining settlement at the 
 mouth of the Columbia, A. F. Waller to Willamette 
 Falls, and J. P. Richmond to Fort Nesqually on Puget 
 Sound. W. W. Cone and Gustavus Hines were sent 
 to the Umpqua, but the mission which they began did 
 not succeed. Brewer and Babcock were added to the 
 forces at The Dalles. The other members of the party 
 on the Lausanne joined the colony at Salem. At 
 about this time some of the Rocky Mountain trappers 
 also located not far from Salem, thus adding a new 
 and strong American tendency to the forces at w^ork 
 in the colony .^^ 
 
 ®*The colony now contained a hundred whites, or more. They 
 had grown restless under the overshadowing power of the Hudson 
 Bay Company and would have desired closer relations with Wash- 
 ington purely from sentiments of patriotism even if they had suffered 
 no inconveniences. The Company had treated them fairly, some- 
 times generously, but as Americans they naturally wished to live 
 under their own government. The mountain trappers sought the 
 settlement because the dissolution of the American Fur Company in 
 1840 had thrown them out of employment. Some interesting items 
 pertaining to the settlement of the valley may be collected in this 
 note better than elsewhere. In 1838 the Jesuits, Blanchet and 
 Demers, began their missions among the Indians. Blanchet located 
 among the Canadians on French Prairie and did a good work. In 
 
94 THE STORY OI^ OREGON 
 
 73. Expedition of Lieutenant Wilkes. — The year 
 1838, as the student will have noticed, was remarkable 
 for agitation'of the Oregon question from many different 
 sources. It was sufficient to stimulate the government 
 at Washington to send out a fleet, named the Pacific 
 Exploring Expedition, under Lieutenant Charles Wilkes 
 with instructions to report upon the country. Wilkes 
 traveled faithfully through the Willamette Valley and 
 kept an account of what he saw and did. At Sauvie's 
 Island he found Joseph Gale and his companions en- 
 gaged in building ''The Star of Oregon" and much ham- 
 pered by lack of material, such as spikes and ropes, 
 
 1839 the North Litchfield Association of Connecticut, Presbyterian, 
 fitted out two missionaries, J. S. Griffin and Ashabel Hunger. 
 Griffin settled on Tualitin Plains after wintering at Lapwai. In the 
 year 1839 Captain John Couch of the brig "Maryland" took up a land 
 claim in North Portland and E. O. Hall brought the printing press 
 from Hawaii to the Whitman mission. This press ended its career 
 at Oregon City. The "Oregon Spectator," begun in 1846, was printed 
 on it. In September, 1840, another party of Presbyterian mission- 
 aries arrived in Oregon and settled on Taulitin Plains. They came 
 from Quincy, Illinois. Their names were Harvey Clark, A. T. Smith 
 and P. B. Littlejohn, each with his wife. Littlejohn went east in 
 1845, but the other two remained and became leading citizens. On 
 his way to Oregon, Smith made a loom for Mrs. Spalding at Lapwai 
 and helped build a gristmill there. In 1841 he took up a claim in 
 Washington County and lived there the rest of his life. S. A. Clark 
 visited him there in 1885 and took down his story. The arrival of 
 immigrants from so many different parts of the country shows that 
 the efforts of Hall J. Kelley, Jason Lee and others had awakened a 
 wide interest in Oregon. The Frenchman, Mofras, who visited 
 Oregon in 1841-2, found in the entire Columbia country two hundred 
 Americans, and one hundred Englishmen, the latter in the service 
 of the Hudson Bay Company. There were also three hundred 
 French Canadians of whom one hundred were in the service of the 
 Company. In the fall of 1842 Dr. White's party arrived, largely 
 increasing the number of Americans. 
 
AGITATION FOR A PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 05 
 
 with which Dr. McLoughhn had hesitated to supply 
 them. He rather suspected that they might turn out 
 to be pirates. Wilkes ascertained their good inten- 
 tions and induced McLoughlin to sell them what they 
 needed. ^^ At French Prairie, where he dined with the 
 good Father Blanchet, Wilkes found the Canadians 
 living an idyllic life on their comfortable farms. Pass- 
 ing a few other farms belonging to scattering settlers, 
 Wilkes came to the old mission^^ where Mr. Abernethy 
 and three other men were living with their families 
 in the hospital built by Dr. Elijah White. Thence 
 he went on to Salem, talking with the settlers and in- 
 specting the missionary work. At Oregon City, where 
 he talked with the Methodist missionary. Waller, 
 Wilkes heard a great deal about the tyranny and ex- 
 actions of the Hudson Bay Company, and in general 
 among the settlers he learned of a desire for a pro- 
 visional government to rule the country until it should 
 be formally taken over by the United States. But 
 with this aspiration Wilkes felt Httle sympathy. In 
 his opinion the Americans were not yet numerous 
 enough to establish a government, and he saw no rea- 
 son why they should be displeased with the Company 
 which had aided them in many ways, sold them large 
 supplies of goods on credit, protected them from the 
 Indians and furnished them a market for their prod- 
 
 •'What they actually did was to sail to California and trade the 
 ship for cattle. They said they were going to leave Oregon because 
 there were no white women for wives, but most of them came back 
 with the cattle. 
 
 *^In the spring of his return in the " Lausanne" Jason Lee removed 
 the mission to Chemeketa, that is, Salem. 
 
96 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 uce. In conversation with the settlers Wilkes dis- 
 couraged the project of forming a provisional govern- 
 ment and in his report when he returned east he spoke 
 slightingly of their reasons for discontent with actual 
 conditions. Naturally Lieutenant Wilkes did not 
 please the settlers by his opinions and comments.®' 
 He sailed for California on October 5, 1841. 
 
 74. Death of Ewing Young. — In the winter of 1 841-2 
 the undaunted pioneer, Ewing Young, died in the prime 
 of life leaving a considerable estate with no heirs present 
 in Oregon to claim it. How to dispose of this property 
 was a question which interested the settlers from its 
 very nature while it also emphasized their lack of laws 
 and a regular government. At Young's funeral a call 
 was issued for a general meeting on February 17, 1841, 
 ostensibly to deliberate upon the disposal of his estate, 
 but when the meeting convened, with Jason Lee in the 
 chair and Gustavus Hines for secretary, it resolved to 
 elect a committee to draft a constitution and cod 2 of 
 laws. On the next day, February 18, David Leslie 
 
 *^He was severe upon the mission people for leaving their new farm 
 machinery out in the winter rains. This habit has not yet entirely 
 disappeared in Oregon. Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hud- 
 son Bay Company, and Duflot de Mofras, from the French legation 
 in Mexico, also visited Oregon in 1841. Wilkes estimated sixty 
 white families and ten thousand cattle in the Willamette Valley. 
 Probably he was mistaken about the number of the cattle. Holman, 
 in his Life of McLoughlin, says fresh beef was scarce at Vancouver 
 in 1841. If there were only three thousand cattle, each family, 
 including the Canadians, would have had some twenty-four head and 
 beef would not have been scarce among the settlers. In 1841 there 
 were thirty-five thousand bushels of wheat raised in the Willamette 
 Valley according to Simpson. Of course there were other crops in 
 proportion. Hogs were very numerous. 
 
AGITATION FOR A PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 97 
 
 was made chairman. It seems that Lee retired in 
 order to concihate the French colonists who might 
 have been jealous of him as the superintendent of the 
 Methodist missions. The committee was then selected 
 ««with Father Blanchet at its head, and Dr. Ira h. 
 Babcock of the Methodist mission was appointed 
 supreme judge with probate powers. He was in- 
 structed to follow the laws of New York until the pro- 
 posed code should be compiled, and, to give the com- 
 mittee time for this work, the convention adjourned 
 till the 7th of June. It is thus clear that the settlers 
 went far beyond the ostensible purpose of their meet- 
 ing, and took decided steps toward establishing a 
 government for themselves. 
 
 75. The Provisional Government in Abeyance. Dr. 
 
 Babcock appointed an administrator for Ewing Young's 
 intestate property on April ij,'^ but when the colonists 
 reconvened on June 7th, they found that nothing had 
 been done toward compiling a constitution and code. 
 In fact Father Blanchet, partly under Dr. McLoughlin's 
 influence, believed that the time had not yet come when 
 the settlers needed a government with formal laws. 
 He laid much stress on the interesting fact that so far 
 ^^Besides Blanchet, the committeemen were Jason Lee, David 
 Donpierre, Gustavus Hines, Robert Moore, J. L. Parrish, Etienne 
 Lucier, WiUiam Johnson and a Canadian named Charlevon. The 
 names show that the French and American elements were about 
 equally represented. 
 
 ^''Curiously enough, although there had as yet been no crime in the 
 colony, the proceeds of Ewing Young's estate were applied to build 
 a jad m Oregon City. Some twenty years later Ewing's son Joaquin 
 made claim to the property and the legislature restored its value to 
 him 
 
98 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 the settlement had been almost free from crime. 
 Accordingly Blanchet very properly withdrew from 
 the chairmanship, and W. J. Bailey was chosen in his 
 place. The meeting then adjourned to the first Thurs- 
 day in October, but before that date the opposition of 
 Lieutenant Wilkes, previously mentioned, had so 
 dampened the ardor of the colonists that the project 
 was dropped for the time, at least publicly. The 
 private agitation of course continued ceaselessly, for 
 it is not consistent with the nature of Americans to live 
 without a constitution and laws. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 The Emigration of 1842 
 
 76. White Appointed Indian Agent. — In his letter 
 to Representative Caleb Cashing of Massachusetts, 
 January 17, 1839, Jason Eee had urged that the United 
 States should designate some person to act as magis- 
 trate and governor in Oregon. This recommendation 
 was not forgotten by those in the east who had the 
 interests of Oregon at heart and in 1842, through the 
 efforts of Senator Linn and others, the government 
 was moved to send out an Indian agent. Since the 
 conflicting claims of Great Britain had not yet been 
 adjusted it would not have been seemly to complicate 
 the question by appointing a governor. ^'^'^ For this 
 humble office Dr. Elijah White was selected. ^''^ Be- 
 sides his formal commission as Indian agent he re- 
 ceived vague oral directions to act as a sort of magis- 
 trate among the whites and was urged by the govern- 
 ment to take with him to the coast as many emigrants 
 as he could collect. ^^- 
 
 '""In the summer of 1842 Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton were 
 discussing the matters at issue between the United States and Great 
 Britain,'and in August they signed the so-called Ashburton Treaty. 
 The Oregon question was somewhat dwelt upon between them but, 
 to the great disappointment of the westerners, it was not settled. 
 Great Britain still clung to the Columbia as her southern boundary, 
 while Webster had set his heart upon the forty-ninth parallel. 
 
 ^"^ After his difference with Jason Lee in 1840, White returned east 
 by sea and had since been living at his home in Lansing. 
 
 '°*It thus appears that Washington was moving unerringly, if some- 
 what gradually, toward the assimilation of Oregon. By this time 
 it was pretty well admitted on all sides that the United States would 
 hold the territory south of the Columbia. 
 
100 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 77. White's Party of Emigrants. — There was already 
 a hvely interest in Oregon among the bold spirits of 
 the west, and White by his lectures and talks with ad- 
 venturous young men had no difficulty in collecting 
 the largest band of emigrants which had thus far ever 
 crossed the plains to the coast. He left Independence 
 on May i6, 1842, with about one hundred and twenty 
 persons under his charge, of whom fifty-two were men 
 over eighteen years of age. This was a formidable 
 reinforcement to the American colonists in Oregon. 
 Since the American Fur Company had now dissolved 
 and its caravans were no longer at the service of the 
 emigrants, White's party had to rely upon its own re- 
 sources. To meet the necessities of the case, they 
 adopted regulations for the journey which were sub- 
 stantially the same as those followed by the great 
 emigration of 1843, and those who crossed the plains 
 in subsequent years. A captain was elected, a pilot 
 or guide appointed, and rules adopted for the march 
 by day and the encampment by night. Camp was 
 pitched at four o'clock, when wood and water were at 
 hand. The wagons were drawn up in a circle which 
 served both as a fortification and a pen for the horses 
 and cattle. At sunset the stock, which had been 
 turned out to graze, was brought within the ring of 
 wagons^"' and tethered. The families prepared their 
 meals separately but after nightfall they met in social 
 converse enlivening the time with^°* singing and inno- 
 
 ^"'The party had eighteen large Pennsylvania wagons drawn by 
 oxen, besides many mules and horses as well as cows. 
 
 ^o^Schafer describes from original sources the working of a similar 
 code in the emigration of 1843. White's party got along fairly well 
 though not entirely without dissension. The interesting fact is that 
 their rules brought them safely to their dest^na^ion. 
 
THE EMIGRATION OF 1 842 101 
 
 cent amusements, and for sleep the women and children 
 retired to the covered wagons while the men bivouacked 
 on the ground under tents. Following the Oregon 
 Trail, White's party reached Fort Laramie June 23, 
 where they rested a week and procured supplies at 
 exorbitant prices.*"^ Here also many of the emigrants, 
 taking bad advice, sold their oxen and wagons, receiv- 
 ing goods or horses in exchange. Those who kept 
 their wagons drove them through to Fort Hall without 
 serious difficulty and might have driven them farther, 
 but at this place the goods were transferred to pack 
 horses, and it was left to the emigrants of 1 843 to go 
 through to the Columbia with wagons for the first 
 time. From Fort Hall, White traveled faster than his 
 companions. He made his way rapidly to Vancouver, 
 visiting Whitman as he passed Waiilatpu. The main 
 body, which followed in two divisions, also enjoyed 
 Whitman's hospitality when they reached his station. 
 The last of them passed Walla Walla about the middle 
 of September, a week or two before the energetic doctor 
 received the news from the east which caused him to 
 set out upon his famous winter ride. White reached 
 Vancouver September 20, 1842, and on September 23d, 
 addressed a meeting of the settlers at Champoeg, 
 where he recounted the purpose of his appointment 
 and spoke of the intention of the government to foster 
 the colony. The members of his party sought work 
 here and there throughout the settlements in the 
 
 ^''^Flour was a dollar a pint and coffee and sugar a dollar a pound . 
 The next year members of the big emigration complained because 
 Dr. Whitman charged them a dollar a bushel for wheat. 
 
102 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 Valley. McLoughlin, ever thoughtful and generous, 
 hired some of them at fair wages. Others were em- 
 ployed at Oregon City by the Methodist Mission which 
 was making improvements there.^'^^ 
 
 ^"''Probably most of the men with families settled at Oregon City. 
 During the winter of 1842-3 the number of buildings at that place 
 increased from three or four to thirty. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Progress oi^ the Whitman Missions 
 
 78. Whitman's Discouragements. — Toward the end 
 of September, 1842, not long after White's party 
 passed Waiilatpu, Dr. Whitman received orders from 
 the American Board to discontinue the mission at that 
 place and also the one at Lapwai where Spalding 
 was laboring. It appears that many discouragements 
 had beset the work at these stations. The first en- 
 thusiasm of the savages for Christian instruction had 
 speedily given way to childish petulance. Sometimes 
 they were submissive to the missionaries, sometimes 
 impudently hostile. The country under inteUigent 
 cultivation turned out to be exceedingly fertile and 
 large crops were raised both at Waiilatpu and Lapwai. 
 Some of the Indians also planted fields, but their 
 labors were fitful and inconstant. Since 1840 Whitman 
 had received little or no encouragement from the 
 American Board. Reinforcements had not arrived 
 to cheer and aid him. Even the few helpers whom 
 he secured at one time and another were Hkely to 
 desert him.^"^ In the spring of 1840 the Jesuit Father 
 Demers began a brilliantly successful mission among 
 the Indians in Whitman's vicinity, which was liberally 
 supported with men and money from Europe. This 
 created religious divisions among the savages, as a mat- 
 
 ^"^W. H. Gray, for instance, one of his original party, left for the 
 valley in 1842 to superintend the construction of the Oregon Institute. 
 
104 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 ter of course, and added much to Whitman's difficulties. 
 He also had to contend with the evil influence of cer- 
 tain depraved whites who roamed lawlessly among 
 the savages sowing discord. The air was full of dis- 
 couragement, perhaps of peril, for nobody could pre- 
 dict what the fickle and wayward Indians might do at 
 any moment. Finally toward the end of September 
 came the order from the east to close the missions. 
 A man less determined than Whitman and less con- 
 secrated to his ideal would have given up in despair. 
 79. Whitman's Winter Journey. — A meeting of the 
 missionaries associated with Whitman was called 
 forthwith to consider the order of the American Board. 
 They agreed that the missions at Waiilatpu and Lapwai 
 ought not to be abandoned, and at his request gave him 
 permission to visit the east and lay the subject before 
 the Board. McKinley, the Hudson Bay Company's 
 agent at Fort Walla Walla, advised him that it was 
 not then too late in the season to make the journey 
 by way of Santa Fe. His natural courage and im- 
 petuosity urged him to attempt it. Hastily arranging 
 his affairs for a long absence,*''^ he set out on October 3, 
 1842, for Fort Hall, accompanied only by a guide and 
 by A. Iv. Love joy, a belated member of Dr. Elijah 
 White's party, who by a fortunate coincidence was 
 still at Waiilatpu and was persuaded by Whitman to 
 join in his almost desperate adventure. When they 
 reached Fort Hall it seems that there was still time to 
 cross the mountains by the usual emigrant trail, and 
 
 ^''^Whitman confided his wife to McKinley's care and invited two 
 of his friends to spend the year of his absence with her. 
 
PROGRESS OF THE WHITMAN MISSIONS 105 
 
 Whitman would have taken that route had he not 
 received warnings of hostile Indians. This together 
 with the information he had received from McKinley 
 induced him to turn southward over the much longer 
 trail by way of Taos and Bent's Fort. In this section 
 of the journey the travelers were overtaken by ter- 
 rible storms. The pitiless cold of the mountains tor- 
 mented them and hunger brought them to the verge 
 of death. Still they persevered. Whitman's in- 
 domitable will animating his iron frame triumphed 
 over all obstacles and the two hardy travelers finally 
 reached Bent's Fort in safety. This was in January, 
 1843. Love joy remained at the fort until the follow- 
 ing summer when he returned northward in time to 
 join the great emigration at Fort Hall. ^^^ 
 
 80. Whitman in the East. — Whitman pushed on 
 without delay to the east by way of St. Louis and 
 made his appearance, dressed in his pioneering garb 
 of furs and buckskins, both in Boston and Washing- 
 ton. In the former city he pleaded with the Ameri- 
 can Board to rescind their order of abandonment and 
 renew their support of the missions at Waiilatpu and 
 Lapwai, but he pleaded in vain, except that he ex- 
 torted permission to labor with the Indians if he de- 
 sired at his own expense. With this cold comfort from 
 the obdurate board, he went to Washington where he 
 
 '"^Lovejoy reached Oregon with the emigrants and settled first at 
 Oregon City as McLoughhn's business agent. In the winter of 1843 
 he purchased the site of Portland in partnership with F. W. Petty- 
 grove. The first house in Portland was built at the corner of Front 
 and Washington streets in 1844, and the town was laid out in 1845. 
 Lovejoy, who was originally from Boston, died in 1882. 
 
106 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 renewed the recommendations so often made to the 
 government before, and from so many different sources, 
 to estabUsh a line of forts along the Oregon Trail for 
 the protection and sustenance of emigrants. Unde- 
 terred by his chill reception in the east, Whitman 
 turned his face toward Oregon again in the spring of 
 1843 with his zeal still burning brightly, and by the 
 1 8th of May was at Independence ready to join the 
 assembled emigrants. ^^^ 
 
 81. Indian Troubles at Waiilatpu. — Among the 
 Cayuses in the vicinity of Waiilatpu a conviction had 
 gradually taken shape that the whites would sooner or 
 later deprive them of their land. The arrival of Dr. 
 White's party of emigrants, in the fall of 1842, seemed 
 to confirm the unfortunate belief and when Whitman 
 soon afterward left for the east the Indians took it for 
 granted that he would return with a band of settlers 
 who would occupy the territory near V/aiilatpu. This 
 naturally increased their hostility to the missionaries, 
 and Whitman had not been long away when the un- 
 grateful savages burned one of his mills. As soon as 
 White received the news of the outrage he proceeded 
 to the country of the Cayuses, and, in his capacity of 
 Indian Agent for the government, succeeded in bringing 
 the chiefs into a council at Lapwai where he cajoled 
 them in the ineffectual manner which at that time was 
 
 ""His outfit for the journey across the mountains was slender. It 
 is reported that he had no provisions but a boiled ham, expecting to 
 shoot game enough to eat. He seems to have been disappointed in 
 this particular and the other emigrants had to feed him. Daniel 
 Waldo, for instance, relieved his wants more than once. 
 
PROGRESS OF* The whitman MISSIONS 107 
 
 supposed to be wise, and induced them to adopt a code 
 of laws by which penalties were provided for murder, 
 arson, theft, and the other crimes most common among 
 them. Under White's persuasion they also elected 
 a head chief with rather wide executive authority. 
 The laws made a pretty appearance on paper, but to 
 the savage mind they carried a meaning entirely dif- 
 ferent from White's and in the sequence they did more 
 harm than good inasmuch as they were made to justify 
 insolent trickery."^ But White succeeded in restoring 
 some sort of peace between the savages and the mis- 
 sions so that crops were raised in the summer of 1843 
 and supplies were for sale at Waiilatpu when the 
 famished emigrants arrived in the fall. Thus White, 
 on behalf of the United States, exercised some real 
 influence over the Indians, while he tried without much 
 success to assume a certain vague authority over the 
 colonists. 
 
 "'Kipling's phrase "half devil and half child" applies with singular 
 force to these savages about Waiilatpu. They were friendly one 
 day and hostile the next without apparent cause. They lied, 
 stole and murdered almost at the very moment when they were pray- 
 ing most fervently. They wanted pay for cultivating their own 
 fields. Some of them even demanded pay for saying their prayers. 
 When the emigrants of 1843 came through, these Indians would steal 
 their horses at night and demand a shirt the next morning for restor- 
 ing them. Altogether they were a hopeless tribe. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 The Provisional Government 
 
 82. Agitation for a Provisional Government. — The 
 
 colonists desired a more formal and stable government 
 than Dr. White could offer them. In the fall of 1842 
 they again made overtures to the Canadians to assist 
 in establishing some provisional arrangement, and 
 met with another rebuff through the influence of Dr. 
 McLoughhn and Father Blanche t. The former very 
 properly deemed that his loyalty was due to Great 
 Britain. The latter, speaking for the Frenchmen, 
 declared in substance that a provisional government 
 would bring more inconvenience than benefit. He 
 refused to pay taxes and asserted that a militia would 
 simply breed trouble between the whites and Indians, 
 while the more laws they had in the colony the more 
 roguery would thrive."^ But there was no lull in the 
 agitation. It was kept up through the winter of 
 1842-3. The ravages of wild beasts among the horses 
 and cattle perpetually stimulated it, and on February 
 2, 1843, a number of settlers who had gathered more 
 or less formally at the Oregon Institute issued a call 
 for a general meeting which convened on the second 
 Monday in March. "^ The ostensible purpose was to 
 
 ^"Father Blanchet agreed very well with some modern theorists 
 like Tolstoi. It is interesting to hear these opinions from the lips 
 of a man of education who was then Uving in the conditions which 
 the absence of the law produces. 
 
 "^From the purpose for which it was called this is known as the 
 "Wolf Meeting." 
 
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 109 
 
 devise some sort of protection against wild animals, 
 which was effected by offering bounties for the slaughter 
 of wolves, lynxes, bears and panthers. This com- 
 pleted the business of the first day. 
 
 83. Organization of the Provisional Government. — On 
 the second day the settlers took up a much more impor- 
 tant matter. They appointed a committee of twelve men 
 to consider the propriety of "taking steps for the civil 
 and military protection of the colony. ' ' Some of the col- 
 onists were more interested in this than in the destruc- 
 tion of the wild beasts, and they naturally seized the 
 opportunity to forward their purpose . The agitation for 
 a provisional government was steadily carried on, some 
 favorable sentiment was aroused even among the Cana- 
 dians, and when the time seemed to be ripe for action 
 the committee called a mass meeting at Champoeg on 
 May 2, 1843. The colonists duly assembled and lis- 
 tened to the committee's report in favor of establishing 
 a government, but the motion to adopt it hung in 
 doubt for some time and might have been lost had 
 it not been for the bold initiative of Joe Meek, a stal- 
 wart and picturesque mountain man, who marched 
 to the right where the party for the organization was 
 to stand in dividing, and called upon those who favored 
 the report to follow him. His courage decided the 
 issue. The factions consumed an hour in dividing, 
 but when the votes were counted there were fifty-two 
 for the provisional government and only fifty against it. 
 
 84. The First Organic Law. — The opposing faction 
 then withdrew and those who remained proceeded to 
 elect officers under the new government. They chose 
 
110 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 a supreme judge, a clerk and recorder, three magistrates, 
 three constables, a major and three captains of militia, 
 and naturally Joe Meek was made high sheriff. Be- 
 fore adjourning the colonists appointed a legislative 
 committee to draft a code of laws and report to the 
 people on July 5, 1843."* The settlers assembled at 
 Champoeg on July 4, and listened to an eloquent 
 oration by the Reverend Gustavus Hines in honor of 
 the occasion. Early the next morning the meeting 
 was called to order and the code recommended by the 
 committee, the "First Organic Law" of Oregon, was 
 adopted. It was largely modeled on the laws of Iowa 
 which were declared to be the "laws of this territory 
 in civil, military and criminal cases where not other- 
 wise provided for." The report speaks of the country 
 as "Oregon territory" which for the purposes of "tem- 
 porary government" was divided into four districts. 
 Following the terms of the report, the pioneers then 
 proceeded to adopt, as "fr'^e citizens of this territory," 
 certain "articles of compact," "for the purpose of 
 fixing the principles of civil and religious liberty as the 
 basis of all laws and constitutions of government that 
 may hereafter be adopted.""^ This fundamental com- 
 
 "^This committee was paid at the rate of a dollar and a quarter a 
 day for each member, the money to be raised by subscription. Pay 
 was allowed for six days* work only. 
 
 "^Philosophers have speculated a great deal about the origin of 
 government. A little attention to facts like those narrated above 
 would solve the problem for them. The general course of events 
 has been the same in every case though it has sometimes taken cen- 
 turies elsewhere to accomplish what the Oregon pioneers did in a 
 year or two. The four legislative districts were named Twality, 
 Yamhill, Clackamas and Champoick. The primitive orthography 
 will not trouble the reader. 
 
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 111 
 
 pact established religious liberty, provided for trial 
 by jury, promised to encourage "schools and the means 
 of education," and forbade slavery. It limited the 
 suffrage to white males, vested the executive power 
 in a committee of three persons and the legislative 
 power in a committee of nine. A supreme court and 
 probate courts were also established. ^^^ The expenses 
 of the new government were to be defrayed by sub- 
 scription, which proved to be an ineffectual expedient 
 and soon had to be altered. But there were various 
 factions to be conciliated and the people undoubtedly 
 adopted the best plan that could be devised in the 
 circumstances."^ Much of this scheme of government 
 was made to fit the list of officers who had been chosen 
 at the meeting on May 2nd, and who were now con- 
 firmed in their positions. 
 
 85. The First Land Law. — The people also adopted 
 a law of land claims which was of more practical in- 
 terest to settlers than anything else they did. Claims 
 were limited to 640 acres, but they might be "square or 
 oblong" in shape^ This in practice came to mean 
 any shape whatever, so that many of the old claims 
 wound deviously along the course of streams. They 
 
 "°The compact declared that the people were entitled to "propor- 
 tionate representation in the legislature." Many years were to 
 elapse before this was truly attained. The nearest the pioneers came 
 to it was to provide for a majority representation which leaves the 
 minority out altogether and is far from being "proportionate." 
 
 "^The members of the executive committee were David Hill, Alan- 
 son Beers, a lay member of Lee's mission, and Joseph Gale who built 
 the "Star of Oregon." They were not the strongest characters in the 
 community, but, probably for that very reason, were the most 
 avaliable. 
 
112 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 had to be designated by natural boundaries or corner 
 marks and recorded in a book kept by the territorial 
 recorder. This liberal land law was a powerful attrac- 
 tion to new settlers. Oregon was now provided with a 
 government and a code of laws in readiness for the 
 great emigration which arrived in the fall of the same 
 year, 1843. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Emigration of 1843 
 
 86. Causes of the Emigration. — While the colonists 
 were framing the First Organic Law of Oregon at 
 Champoeg the great emigration was moving slowly 
 across the plains. In the spring of 1843 there seemed 
 to be a general understanding throughout Missouri 
 and the neighboring states that a large party would 
 start for Oregon as soon as the season opened. The 
 causes which had excited the migratory impulse were 
 numerous and complicated. At the bottom of it lay 
 of course the economic motive, for the story had gone 
 far and wide that in Oregon there was free land for 
 everybody with abundant crops and high prices. The 
 people of the Mississippi Valley, dwelling in the heart 
 of the continent without railroads and with no seaport 
 but remote New Orleans, were hard put to it to dispose 
 of their produce and, for all their fertile soil, their farms 
 were almost worthless in the market while corn, their 
 great staple, was sometimes burned for fuel on the 
 river steamers. The Willamette Valley on the other 
 hand was near the Ocean and easily accessible to the 
 markets of the Sandwich Islands, of Russian Alaska 
 and the Orient. 
 
 87. Other Motives. — To the economic motive for 
 the emigration we must add the powerful influence of 
 that hatred of Great Britain which still burned in the 
 breasts of the western pioneers. The long contest 
 
114 tHE STORY 01^ OREGON 
 
 over the Oregon country had at times almost threatened 
 war. The westerners beHeved, perhaps they hoped, 
 that it would only be settled by war, and there were 
 eager young men who longed to be on the ground to 
 take a hand in the fight. Nor must we forget the 
 attraction to those bold and hardy souls of the journey 
 itself, the long and adventurous march across the plains, 
 hunting the buffalo, guarding against the cunning 
 savage, fording the rivers, gazing into far-off vistas 
 from the lofty passes of strange mountains and sleep- 
 ing under the stars. Hardship itself has its charm 
 for vigorous youth, and adventure in untried lands calls 
 with irresistible allurement. The lectures of Jason 
 Lee were not forgotten in which he had told of the 
 wide Willamette Valley with its deep soil, its abundant 
 native grasses, its perennial springs and its gentle hills 
 rising by slow degrees on the east and the west to the 
 fir-clad mountains. The speeches in Congress on the 
 Oregon question had been widely read and had set 
 many hearts throbbing with interest in the new and 
 remote land. In the summer of 1842, Elijah White 
 journeying westward at the head of his hundred and 
 twenty emigrants had written back from the moun- 
 tains, as Jason Lee did on his pioneer trip, that all was 
 well with his adventurers, that they would reach the 
 promised land in safety, and that a trusty pilot would 
 be on hand the next spring for those who wished to 
 follow. 
 
 88. Gathering of the Companies. — So as spring 
 opened the companies which had been organizing in 
 the winter of 1842-3 at many places in Ohio, Kentucky, 
 
THE EMIGRATION OF 1 843 115 
 
 Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri began 
 to draw together at Independence. At the head of 
 some of these little bands were men of great ability 
 and wide influence who were willing to try their for- 
 tunes in Oregon. Of course their example was fol- 
 lowed by many of less note."^ Sometimes a whole 
 family of brothers took the trail with their wives, their 
 children, and their household goods loaded in wagons 
 drawn by oxen. Sometimes the little primary party 
 was a band of boyhood friends. Through April and 
 the first weeks of May, 1843, they came gathering in at 
 Independence. On May 20th, the assembly had become 
 large enough to organize and adopt a code of rules for 
 the overland march. "^ Peter H. Burnett was elected 
 
 ^"Peter H. Burnett of Weston, Missouri, led a large party. Jesse 
 Applegate with his brothers, Lindsay and Charles, and Daniel Waldo 
 brought a company from St. Clair county in the same state. These 
 men became leaders in Oregon affairs. Jesse Applegate had fine 
 literary gifts. His writings on the history of his day are highly 
 valued. Bancroft has collected all the particulars of the journey. 
 Two or three typical facts will convince the student of the vivid 
 interest which the westerners felt in Oregon. In 1838-39 the legis- 
 lature of Illinois memorialized Congress for a speedy settlement of 
 the Oregon question and occupation of the country. In 1840, seven 
 citizens of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, asked Congress to build a road 
 to Astoria and plant there a government colony. The same year a 
 petition of the same purport went in from forty citizens of Indiana. 
 The Oregon fever was a spirit that had slowly developed. Its final 
 outbreak was perfectly natural and needs no miraculous explanation. 
 
 "^Schafer has followed the emigration with scholarly enthusiasm. 
 His researches have brought to light much new and interesting in- 
 formation. Peter H. Burnett kept a diary of the trip. Jesse Apple- 
 gate, "Captain of the Cow Column," described his experiences to the 
 Pioneer Association in 1876. 
 
116 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 captain and J. W. Nesmith orderly sergeant with nine 
 councilmen to aid in settling difficulties. ^^^ 
 
 89. Beginning of the Journey. — On May 22nd, the 
 journey began with John Gantt for guide. The weather 
 was fine and the road good, still the conduct of a 
 mixed company of nearly a thousand persons, some 
 with baggage and cattle, others with few impediments, 
 presented many difficulties and at the crossing of the 
 Big Blue E-iver it was divided into two sections, each 
 of sixty wagons. Those who had few loose cattle to 
 delay them led the van. The men encumbered with 
 herds marched in the rear; but the two sections kept 
 always within supporting distance of each other and 
 at Independence Rock a new arrangement was made.^^^ 
 The day's routine was much the same as with Elijah 
 White's party of the preceding year. At four o'clock 
 in the morning activity began. Fires were kindled, 
 the herds collected, breakfast cooked and eaten. Then 
 the tents were struck, the circle of wagons broken up 
 and the oxen yoked. Each section of sixty wagons 
 was divided into fifteen platoons of four, and the lead- 
 ing platoon of the day before fell into the rear as the 
 march began. At seven o'clock the trumpet sounded, 
 the guide took his place in the van, the teamsters 
 shouted to their oxen and the long procession moved 
 slowly forward, forging steadily ahead until noon when 
 
 '^"Burnett resigned after eight days' service and William Martin 
 took his place. Nesmith became United States senator from Oregon 
 and his descendants are still leading figures in the state. 
 
 ^2^For better protection against the Indians the sections were broken 
 up into small parties. This brought congenial persons together and 
 led to many lasting friendships. 
 
'The: emigration of 1843 117 
 
 a pause was made at a spot selected beforehand by the 
 provident guide, and men and cattle rested and ate. 
 At one o'clock they got under way agam and plodded 
 onward till the sun was low. Then the wagons were 
 drawn up in a circle, the unyoked oxen were turned 
 out to graze, each wagon was fastened to the one ahead 
 by its chains and tongue so as to form a barrier to pro- 
 tect the stock and ward off hostile Indians, the supper 
 was cooked and eaten, the evening was passed in such 
 diversion as the pilgrimage permitted, the night watch 
 was set and the long day ended with the deep slumber 
 of the weary body and the free mind. 
 
 90. From Fort Hall to the Grande Ronde. — Thus 
 they traveled day after day in wearisome routine 
 through June, July and August without serious mis- 
 hap, reaching Fort Hall on August 2 7th.^22 Here, as 
 with former parties the question arose whether they 
 should leave their wagons or not. The road was un- 
 tried, their cattle were footsore, the season was late. 
 To many it seemed best to follow the example of their 
 predecessors and exchange their wagons for pack- 
 horses; but Dr. Whitman advised them not to do so. 
 He knew the way as well as anybody; he offered his 
 services as guide to the Columbia and the emigrants 
 finally yielding to his persuasion determined to con- 
 tinue the journey as they had begun. ^-^ After a few 
 days rest at Fort Hall they again yoked their oxen to 
 
 ^"This was the rear of the party. The advance with Dr. Whitman 
 reached Fort Hall somewhat sooner. Whitman had joined the emi- 
 grants at the Platte River, 
 
 ^^^Perhaps their decision was unavoidable. There were not enough 
 pack horses obtainable to carry their goods. 
 
lis I'HE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 the wagons and took up the march to the Columbia 
 over the most toilsome and difficult stretch of the 
 journey.^-* Now, with the autumnal storms at hand 
 and hunger staring them in the face, it behooved the 
 emigrants to press forward with incessant diligence. 
 Dr. Whitman did his most valuable service to them 
 and earned their everlasting gratitude by pressing 
 home the danger of loitering on this dreary desert. ^-^ 
 They forded the Snake with all their goods by raising 
 the wagon beds on blocks. Up the desolate canyon of 
 the Burnt River, where the banks were obstructed by 
 a tangle of fallen timber, they drove along the bed of 
 the stream and upon the ridge at its head for the first 
 time since leaving Independence, they had to dig a 
 roadway. From that time until they reached the 
 Grande Ronde Valley travel was everywhere difficult 
 because of the broken country, but there was no lin- 
 gering, and on October ist, the main body of the emi- 
 grants camped in that lovely spot and rested their 
 eyes upon its running brooks and emerald pastures 
 encircled with mountain forests of pine. It was a 
 veritable oasis and they would fain have stayed where 
 nature promised so bountifully, but starvation drove 
 them onward and pitiless winter threatened at the 
 fore. On October 2nd, as they rose in the morning the 
 mountain sides were white with snow. 
 
 "*The emigrants of 1843 had not escaped the error of believing that 
 when they had reached Fort Hall the journey was nearly finished. This 
 accounts for the failure of their provisions before they came to 
 Waiilatpu. 
 
 '^^Much of the dreary desert now bears luxuriant orchards or 
 waves with verdant alfalfa, all because of irrigation. 
 
THE EMIGRATION OF 1 843 119 
 
 91. From the Grande Ronde to the Willamette Val- 
 ley. — Between the Grande Ronde Valley and the plains 
 of the Umatilla towered the giant ridge of the Blue 
 Mountains covered with heavy timber through which 
 a road must be cut for the wagons. None had ever 
 gone that way before. Forty stalwart pioneers swung 
 their axes in the primeval forest to clear the way, and 
 ever onward in their rear the heavy wagons, with the 
 household goods and the women and children, toiled. ^^® 
 Five days sufficed for the passage of the Blue Moun- 
 tains and brought the emigrants in sight of the plains 
 of the Umatilla, where the wide horizon stretched away 
 to Waiilatpu. On October 10, 1843, they camped 
 within three miles of Waiilatpu, Whitman's mission, 
 and replenished their failing provisions from the fields 
 and gardens which he in his zeal had planted. Be- 
 tween Walla Walla and Vancouver the emigrants met 
 their severest trials. Some who left their cattle to 
 winter at the mission almost perished of hunger. 
 Some were imperiled in the Columbia at the Cascades 
 and The Dalles as they tried to pass the rapids on frail 
 rafts. All were subjected to the rains of autumn and the 
 bitter cold of the mountains. But most of the stock 
 was ferried across at The Dalles, driven to Vancouver 
 and then brought back. Wagons, goods and families 
 were transported by water and, before the end of No- 
 vember the emigrants were safe in the Willamette 
 
 "^J. W. Nesmith carried an axe all the way through the Blue Moun- 
 tains and was loved by everybody for his steady strength of body 
 and character. He had a singular power to make friends, and what 
 is better keep them. The Applegates were among the choppers and 
 so was Burnett. 
 
120 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 Valley, where they found a civilized government and 
 code of laws ready to guide their efforts in building a 
 state. 
 
 92. The First Winter in Oregon. — The selection of 
 land claims was generally put off till spring on account 
 of bad weather. Those who had means procured 
 supplies from the Hudson Bay Company. Those who 
 had no means went to work. Oregon City was a 
 favorite resort during the winter of 1843-4. Here 
 there was a better social life than elsewhere in the 
 valley. There was also work to be had, and the new- 
 comers showed that the journey had not impaired their 
 mental vigor by founding a circulating library with 
 the books they had brought across the continent. 
 This influx of almost a thousand Americans decided 
 the question of the ownership of Oregon and largely 
 determined the future of the state. The leaders of 
 the emigrants became the leaders in social and poHtical 
 life and held their preeminence for many years. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Under the Provisional GovERNMENt 
 
 93. Close of Jason Lee's Career. — Of the settlers 
 who reached Oregon in the fall of 1843, not all were 
 friendly to the Methodist missions. Many believed 
 that the mission at Salem under the direction of Jason 
 Lee had unwisely diverted its labors from the Indians 
 to the white colonists and in particular there was com- 
 plaint that it held too much land. Disquieted by this 
 sentiment, which he knew to be prevalent among the 
 settlers, and by reports which had reached him that 
 damaging accounts of his conduct had been laid before 
 the Methodist Missionary Society, Jason Lee resolved 
 to make another journey to the east. On February 
 3, 1844, he left Oregon for the last time, saihng by way 
 of the Sandwich Islands, to plead with the govern- 
 ment for the security of the mission lands and with the 
 Missionary Society for his own good name. In the 
 latter purpose he had been forestalled by his enemies, 
 for his successor as Superintendent of the Mission was 
 already on the way to Oregon v/hen Lee sailed. At 
 Washington he conversed with the President and a 
 number of eminent men who reassured him concerning 
 the safety of the mission claim, though they could 
 promise him nothing definite. His defense before the 
 Missionary Society did not lead to his restoration as 
 Superintendent. Disappointed, he retired to Stan- 
 stead, the little town at the head of Lake Memphrema- 
 gog, where he was born, and there on March 12, 1845, 
 
122 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 he died. His services to Oregon were very great. Be- 
 sides actually planting the first colony in the Willamette 
 Valley his powerful mind stamped a religious and 
 literary character upon Oregon life which persists to 
 this day. The interesting fact that crime was almost 
 unknown in the Willamette Valley for several years 
 may be ascribed largely to the excellent influence of 
 the missionaries. The permanent side of his work 
 was mental and spiritual. Its outward achievements 
 were soon swept away or greatly changed. His 
 manual labor school was sold to the Oregon Institute 
 which was removed to Salem in 1844, and in June of 
 that year his successor, the Rev. George Gary, dissolved 
 the old mission and sold its buildings. 
 
 94. Revision of the Code. — Thus Jason Lee, the 
 true founder of a commonwealth, took his leave of 
 Oregon, but the tide of events stayed not for him. 
 On the second Tuesday in May, 1844, the election of 
 the legislative and executive committees under the 
 new Provisional Government took place. ^-^ Power fell 
 largely into the hands of the newcomers of 1843 who 
 proceeded to cure some of the defects in the funda- 
 mental law. Convinced that no government can sur- 
 vive without raising taxes, they provided for a regular 
 levy and insured its collection by ordaining that no 
 
 "^Dr Elijah White addressed the committee in favor of the law. 
 In December of this year, 1844, an act was passed to erect a jail at 
 Oregon City from the proceeds of Ewing Young's estate. The 
 eagerness of the colonists for laws and a jail contrasts curiously with 
 the fact that crime was virtually unknown among them. Perhaps 
 there never was a community in the world where life came nearer to 
 the ideal of the golden age than in this pioneer colony of Oregon. 
 
UNDER THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 123 
 
 person who declined to pay taxes should enjoy the 
 protection of the colony. His land might be taken 
 from him or his cattle stolen and he would have no 
 redress. He was also deprived of the right to vote. 
 The weak executive committee was abolished and a 
 governor substituted, while the judiciary was re-formed. 
 Besides these changes in the provisional code the legis- 
 lative committee of 1 844 repealed the land law and 
 enacted a better one. The right to take up claims was 
 restricted to free whites over eighteen years of age, and 
 to widows and white men under eighteen who were heads 
 of families. The claimant must also be an actual 
 resident. None of the early legislation of Oregon was 
 more important than the land laws because it was the 
 hunger for independent farms that had been the funda- 
 mental inducement to the emigrants. 
 
 95. Marriage and Liquor Laws. — The marriage law 
 which the committee adopted forms a curious comment 
 upon the social conditions in the new colony where the 
 men largely outnumbered the women. The marriage 
 of a man of sixteen with a girl of twelve was legalized, 
 though the consent of their parents was required. 
 It should also be recorded to the credit of the legisla- 
 tive committee that it passed a prohibitory liquor law, 
 one of the first in history for so large a territory. In 
 the sentiment which inspired it we may undoubtedly 
 trace the wholesome influence of Jason Lee. 
 
 128 
 
 "^This remark was often made by Judge C. B. Bellinger, the suc- 
 cessor of Matthew P. Deady in the United States District Court. 
 Judge Bellinger was a man of wide culture, liberal sentiments and 
 profound knowledge of pioneer conditions. 
 
124 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 96. Ratification of the Provisional Government. — 
 
 The legislative committee of 1844, although it made 
 great changes in the Organic Law neglected to submit 
 its acts to the people for ratification. This omission 
 was corrected by the succeeding committee which 
 made further alterations and brought the government 
 of Oregon into close resemblance to that of an ordinary 
 American state. The provisional government thus 
 revised and improved was finally ratified by popular 
 vote July 26, 1845. The thoughtful student will be 
 interested in tracing the slow growth of the pioneer 
 community from a condition of primitive anarchy 
 where all men were their own masters to an organized 
 commonwealth where each had sacrified much of his 
 original liberty for the good of the whole, and indeed for 
 his own greater good. The development of govern- 
 ment in Oregon was literally by a process of con- 
 tract.129 
 
 ""The philosophic and enlightened Jesse Applegate maintained 
 that the legislature had no law-making power except such as the 
 people had expressly delegated, all the rest inhered in the citizens. 
 We may find here, if we like, the fundamental principal of the initia- 
 tive and referendum indigenous in a genuine American brain. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Emigrations of 1844 and 1845 
 
 97. Emigration of 1844. — The migratory impulse in 
 the Mississippi Valley which had brought a large com- 
 pany to Oregon in 1843 continued to operate for a 
 number of years. In the spring of 1844 it was stimu- 
 lated by good reports from those who had gone before. 
 They had driven their ox-wagons through to the 
 Willamette Valley and opened the road. The expense 
 of the journey was found upon the whole to be moderate. 
 Prices were high for produce and markets open, while 
 the soil was found to be as fertile as any in the world. 
 The word which went back across the mountains to the 
 eager and adventurous souls from the Mississippi to the 
 Alleghanies was encouraging in every way.*^° In the 
 spring of 1844 ^ company of some 1,400 persons took 
 the trail for Oregon. A wet season delayed them on 
 the plains of the Platte and made their arrival late at 
 Fort Hall so that their provisions ran out and they 
 were compelled to subsist on such scanty supplies as 
 they could obtain at Walla Walla and from the cunning 
 savages. Moreover the autumn rains overtook them 
 on the way and although most of them finally reached 
 the Willamette Valley it was in a state of destitution 
 for many and through great hardships for all. 
 
 98. Difficulties of the New Settlers. Progress. — 
 Naturally they repined while the winter weather lasted 
 and their complaints were embittered by the lack of 
 
 ""Schafer quotes their enthusiastic letters to their friends. 
 
126 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 supplies in the colony. The Hudson Bay Company 
 had little or nothing in the way of food and clothing 
 to sell at that time, while the emigrants of the preced- 
 ing year had drawn heavily upon the hospitality and 
 supplies of the colonists. Hence until spring broke 
 there was some actual suffering among the new arrivals 
 and much discomfort. But with the sunshine and 
 flowers gaiety succeeded to gloom. The latest emi- 
 grants took up land, sowed their fields and before an- 
 other winter they had become an integral part of the 
 community. They were old settlers themselves ready 
 to help welcome another band of emigrants from the 
 states. In the fall of 1845 some three thousand came, 
 just about doubling the population of the country and 
 raising the total vote for governor above one thousand 
 at the next election. By the close of 1845 three new 
 counties had been organized, Polk, west of the Willa- 
 mette and Vancouver and Lewis north of the Columbia. 
 The American settlements in the two latter began with 
 members of the immigrant party of 1844. Some of 
 them wintered at Vancouver and the next spring, 1845, 
 followed M. T. Simmons to Puget Sound where they 
 took up claims. ^^^ 
 
 99. Submission of the Hudson Bay Company. — 
 In apportioning taxes the legislative committee natur- 
 ally met the difficulty of assigning a status to the Hud- 
 
 "*0n the way they passed the cabin of John R. Jackson who also 
 belonged to the emigrants of 1844 and had settled north of the Cow- 
 litz. The Hudson Bay Company already had farms opened at 
 Puget Sound under the name of the Puget Sound Agricultural Com- 
 pany. 
 
THE) EjMIGRAl^IONS OI^ 1 844 AND 1 845 127 
 
 son Bay Company's employees and property under 
 the provisional government. If the Company de- 
 clined to pay taxes it would become an outlaw and 
 receive no protection. Thus its condition would be 
 perilous, for the colonists were now numerous and 
 many of them hostile to everything British while the 
 government at London seemed in no haste to promise 
 assistance in case of difficulty. In these circumstances 
 the committee opened negotiations with Dr. McLough- 
 lin and finally, in 1845, received his consent to pay 
 taxes and accept the benefits of the laws of Oregon. 
 With this action the fur company disappears from the 
 politics of the coast as a separate power. Dr. Mc- 
 lyoughlin deserves high commendation for his action 
 in this matter as well as for his humanity to the emi- 
 grants and his consistent generosity; but he was mis- 
 understood both in Oregon and England, receiving 
 blame when he should have been praised. Weary of 
 difficulties which seemed endless he resigned from the 
 headship of the company in Oregon in the fall of 1845 
 and went to live at Oregon City where he had property. 
 Here he passed the remainder of his singularly beau- 
 tiful and useful life. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 Opening of the Southern Route 
 
 100. White's Search for a Pass. — In the summer of 
 1845 the legislative committee framed a memorial to 
 Congress asking for a territorial government among 
 other things, and entrusted it to Dr. Elijah White for 
 transmission to Washington since he had determined 
 to go there on business of his own. Just before setting 
 out White explored somewhat in the mountains east 
 of the Willamette Valley for a pass by which emigrants 
 might come directly to the upper Willamette and 
 avoid the Blue Mountains and the dangers at The 
 Dalles. He did not succeed in discovering the pass 
 but he seems to have had strong faith that it existed 
 and to have told one of the emigrant parties, which 
 he met near Fort Boise, that the Willamette Valley 
 might be reached by a route which would avoid the 
 hardships that had befallen those who went by way of 
 The Dalles and save some two hundred miles of travel. 
 His plan was to follow the Malheur River for a certain 
 distance and then strike across the unknown country 
 to the pass supposed to exist in the mountains at the 
 head of the Willamette Valley. 
 
 101. A Misguided Party. — Either misled by White's 
 advice or for some reason unknown, about one hundred 
 and fifty wagons from the emigration of 1845 undertook 
 to follow this precarious route with Stephen H. L. 
 Meek for a guide. For some days they kept to an 
 
OPENING OF THE SOUTHERN ROUTE 129 
 
 abandoned trail of the fur trappers but after that the 
 desolate Malheur Mountains had to be crossed where 
 the stones wore the feet of the oxen to the quick and 
 grass and water could not be found. Pushing forward 
 through a scorched and barren land, thirst and starva- 
 tion brought death upon the weaker members of the 
 party and broke the spirit of the strongest. Since 
 their stock was perishing unless water was soon dis- 
 covered, they could neither go forward nor return, 
 and one of those terrible tragedies of the desert seemed 
 imminent in which whole bands of human beings are 
 swallowed up by death leaving no record of their suffer- 
 ings but their whitened bones. But this fate was 
 happily averted. After days of search in every direc- 
 tion some of the outriders came upon a tributary of the 
 Des Chutes River which the surviving adventurers 
 joyfully followed down to The Dalles and thence made 
 their way to the Willamette Valley. 
 
 102. Exploration of the Southern Route. — The other 
 emigrants of 1845, of whom there were altogether about 
 three thousand, also suffered more or less between Fort 
 Hall and the Willamette Valley, like those who had 
 preceded them. Indeed this had come to be recog- 
 nized as the most difficult part of the entire journey 
 and many efforts were made to discover a better route. 
 In 1845 S. K. Barlow obtained from the legislature a 
 charter for a road around Mount Hood which would 
 enable travelers to reach the Valley without making 
 the passage at The Dalles. He actually constructed 
 the road but it remained difficult to traverse and it was 
 agreed that a better one was desirable. With the 
 
130 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 purpose of opening such a route Jesse Applegate, with 
 his brother Lindsay, and a party of fifteen men left 
 their homes in Polk county, June 22, 1846, to seek for 
 a practicable opening into the Valley from the south. 
 To the foot of the Siskiyou range they had only to 
 follow the California trail which was by that time well 
 beaten. Their only departure from it was to lay their 
 course through the canyon of the Umpqua instead of 
 traversing the high ridges adjacent to it where the 
 savages had harassed the early travelers. At the 
 Siskiyous, being then only six miles from the Califor- 
 nia line, they turned eastward and by practicable 
 passes attained the summit of the Cascades on July 
 4, 1846, whence they soon reached the Klamath River 
 and obtained a beautiful view of its fertile valley. 
 Making their way up the Klamath River they reached 
 Klamath Lake, rounded its southern end and passed 
 on, with ceaseless vigilance against the treacherous 
 Modocs, to Lost River, which they forded on a ledge 
 of rock. Steadily forging ahead by a difficult but not 
 impracticable route through a rocky desert inter- 
 spersed with springs and oases, they came, on July 8, 
 to the ridge which divides the lake region of Oregon 
 from the Humboldt River and the basin of Great Salt 
 Lake. As the explorers pressed forward toward the 
 Humboldt River they did not escape the miseries of 
 the desert. Heat and thirst tormented them and the 
 irons and ashes of some wagons which they found in 
 a lonely canyon seemed to warn them of impending 
 doom. But they were not the men to forsake their 
 purpose either for superstitious or real terrors. July 
 
OPENING OF THE SOUTHERN ROUTE 131 
 
 1 8th, brought them to the Humboldt River which they 
 followed until they came to an extensive meadow where 
 they camped and rested three days to recruit their 
 horses, resuming the march on the 25th by a route 
 where grass and water were abundant. Their purpose 
 was to explore through to Bear River, "^ but before they 
 reached it their provisions ran short and Jesse Apple- 
 gate with four others proceeded to Fort Hall for sup- 
 plies while the rest of the party pushed on to the des- 
 tination. 
 
 103. Emigrants on the Southern Route. — While 
 Jesse Applegate and his party were at Fort Hall, 
 August, 1846, the emigrants of that year were passing. 
 He represented to them truthfully that the southern 
 route by which he had come to Fort Hall was prefer- 
 able in many respects to the road along the Snake and 
 Columbia Rivers. The grass was everywhere better 
 except in the alkali desert, which might be avoided for 
 the most part, while in the Klamath, Rogue and Ump- 
 qua valleys it was both excellent and plentiful with 
 abundance of water. There were no mountains to 
 cross except the Cascades which offered an easier pass 
 than the one on the Barlow road south of Mt. Hood. 
 Persuaded by these facts an emigrant caravan of about 
 a hundred wagons chose the southern route. They 
 left Fort Hall August 9, 1846, and reached the ren- 
 dezvous of Jesse Applegate 's party at Thousand 
 Springs in the Humboldt region on the 12th. Here 
 it was settled that the Applegates with all but two of 
 
 "'About sixty miles from Fort Hall. 
 
132 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 their men should push ahead in company with volun- 
 teers from the emigrants to blaze and cut a road for 
 the wagons which were to follow with Levi Scott and 
 David Goff for guides. The advance party did their 
 work faithfully and there is no fault to find with the 
 guides; but the emigrants, in spite of urgent counsel 
 from Jesse Applegate, lingered on their dangerous way 
 during the pleasant days of autumn and, most unhap- 
 pily, they had no Marcus Whitman to spur them on- 
 ward by incessant rebukes. The chill rains of October 
 caught some of the belated emigrants in the Rogue 
 River Valley sixty miles from the Umpqua canyon 
 which they only reached on the 4th of November, so 
 worn with travel were their miserable cattle, and, in 
 the narrow passage, some who had abandoned their 
 wagons were compelled to wade for miles through the 
 swollen stream with their enfeebled bodies chilled to 
 the bone. In the Umpqua Valley they ate the last of 
 their provisions and undoubtedly many would have 
 perished had not timely succor arrived from the Apple- 
 gates and their comrades. It was February, 1847, 
 before the last of the emigrants found shelter in Fort 
 Umpqua. The sufferings of the first party to pass 
 over it somewhat discredited the southern route. 
 Still in the fall of 1847 Levi Scott guided another band 
 of emigrants over it who reached the Willamette Valley 
 in prime condition and in good season. Thus its 
 desirability was established and during the troubles 
 with the Indians in the north which now broke out 
 it pioved of great use. It was the explorations of 
 
OPENING OF THE SOUTHERN ROUTE 133 
 
 Jesse Applegate's party that opened up southern 
 Oregon to settlement. *^^ 
 
 *"In 1849 he removed from Polk County to Yoncalla in the Umpqua 
 Valley and his brother Charles settled near him. Lindsay Applegate 
 chose a site on Ashland Creek for his home. It was where Ashland, 
 now stands and on the line of the road he had helped open. The 
 descendants of these brothers still dwell in the verdant meadows 
 of the Klamath country. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The Wpiitman Massacre and the Cayuse War 
 
 104. The Massacre. — The return of Marcus Whit- 
 man from the East with the emigrants of 1843 availed 
 Uttle for his pining missions. The Indians received 
 him with fickle enthusiasm, but they soon resumed 
 their impudent, half -hostile conduct and the mission- 
 aries had less and less influence over them as the years 
 passed. In the summer of 1847 the children of the 
 passing emigrants were suffering from measles/^^ and 
 of course the disease was communicated to the In- 
 dians. ^^^ Dr. Whitman treated both whites and savages 
 with the same remedies. The former recovered while 
 the latter almost always died. This was clearly an 
 unhappy consequence of their habits of life but the 
 poor creatures explained it by saying that Whitman 
 was giving them poison instead of medicine and they 
 resolved to treat him as they did their own medicine 
 men whose sorcery failed. A plot was formed to 
 murder Dr. Whitman on November 29, 1847, and it was 
 carried out. In the afternoon of that day the devoted 
 missionary who had given his best years to the welfare 
 of the Indians was massacred by them together with 
 
 "*When we read of the plagues which attacked the immigrants it 
 seems astonishing that so many of them reached their destination. 
 They must have been of hardier frames than the men and women 
 of our day, thpugh, perhaps after all, their children would display 
 the same qualities if necessity demanded it. 
 
 ""They would have caught it from the garments they stole if in 
 no other way. 
 
THE WHITMAN MASSACRE AND THE CAYUSE WAR 135 
 
 his wife and seven other persons. Within a few days 
 five more whites were slain while some fifty women 
 and children, emigrants staying at the station for the 
 most part, were taken captive to be held as hostages 
 against the vengeance of the colonists in the Willa- 
 mette Valley. The effects of the Whitman massacre 
 were felt both in the Willamette Valley and at Wash- 
 ington, the capital of the Nation. 
 
 105. Release of the Captives. — Undoubtedly the 
 captives held by the Cayuses as well as Spalding and 
 his family at Lapwai owed their Hves to the energetic 
 action of the officers of the Hudson Bay Company. 
 With all expedition after the massacre, Agent McBean 
 sent a messenger from Walla Walla to Vancouver with 
 the news which was received at the fort on December 
 7, 1847, and by the next day had spread through the 
 Valley exciting fears all the more terrible because the 
 extent of the massacre was unknown and what might 
 follow could only be imagined. Many believed that 
 the Indians would fall upon the colony from all sides 
 in a concerted attack for the extermination of the 
 whites. From Vancouver, Peter Skeene Ogden set 
 out with all speed for the country of the Cayuses and 
 by the exercise of that wonderful influence which the 
 fur company had gained over the savages by years of 
 justice and kindly firmness he obtained the release of 
 the captives and despatched them with the Spaldings 
 to the Willamette Valley where their woes were miti- 
 gated by the care of sympathizing friends. Drawing 
 heavily upon their slender resources and straining their 
 credit with the Hudson Bay Company, the colonists 
 
136 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 equipped a regiment of troops which proceeded to the 
 Cay use country in midwinter under CorneHus Gilliam, 
 and after months of exasperating warfare with the 
 Indians brought them partially to terms. ^^'^ 
 
 ""Hostilities continued fitfully till the spring of 1850 when five of 
 the murderers were secured. They were executed at Oregon City 
 on June 3, 1850. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 Oregon Made a Territory 
 
 106. A Memorial to Congress. — With the troops on 
 their way to the Cayuse war went Joe Meek bearing 
 a memorial to Congress which the Oregon legislature 
 had prepared in their dire emergency and entrusted 
 to him for delivery. It recounted the calamity which 
 had befallen the colony and told of the well-grounded 
 fear that many of the powerful tribes had formed an 
 alliance against the settlements. The memorialists 
 declared that they had not the means to repel attacks 
 so formidable, and recalling how often they had 
 hitherto appealed in vain to the national government 
 for protection, protesting their unwavering loyalty 
 to the country and pleading their rights as citizens, 
 they reiterated the prayer that Congress should aid 
 them in the extremity of their distress and grant them 
 the permanent benefit of the laws of the Union. "We 
 shall look with glowing hopes and restless anxiety for 
 the coming of your laws and your arms." Thus ran 
 their pathetic appeal. It was the 4th of March, 1848, 
 before Joe Meek and his nine companions could ar- 
 range to separate from the army in the Cayuse coun- 
 try and depart for the east. Once on the way, how- 
 ever, they traveled swiftly and at the end of sixty days 
 they were at St. Joseph, Missouri.^" Six days more 
 brought them to St. Louis, whence the news of the 
 '"O time and changel Who would call such traveling swift today? 
 
138 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 Whitman massacre flashed over the telegraph to every 
 part of the country. 
 
 107. End of Joint Occupation. — It came at a critical 
 moment. During the five years which followed the 
 great emigration in 1843, the Oregon question agitated 
 the country incessantly. Meetings to urge Congress 
 to act were held in many towns of the Mississippi 
 Valley. In July, 1843, an Oregon Convention was held 
 at Cincinnati that was attended by a hundred delegates 
 and whose proceedings interested the whole country. 
 This convention declared for 54° 40' as the northern 
 boundary of Oregon under the impulse of stern hos- 
 tility to Great Britain. The Democratic party sym- 
 pathized with this program so strongly that it was 
 made part of their platform in 1844, and their candi- 
 date, James K. Polk, went into office on a wave of the 
 "fifty-four forty or fight" enthusiasm. Tyler went 
 out of office March 4, 1845, with **the one wish" of 
 settling the Oregon controversy unfulfilled. Polk 
 took up the task where his predecessor had left it and 
 in spite of the slogan which had helped to elect him 
 offered to compromise on the 49th parallel, but Great 
 Britain refused, and when the President finally with- 
 drew his offer, stating that no further concessions 
 would be made, and terminated the joint occupation 
 arrangement by authority of Congress, war seemed 
 imminent."^ Wise counsels on both sides averted 
 
 "'The war feeling was stronger in Oregon than in any other part 
 of the country, but it was strong enough everywhere. A British 
 vessel of war was anchored in the Columbia and Douglas, who had 
 succeeded McLoughlin, mounted cannon at Vancouver. The pioneers 
 made many threats. 
 
OREGON MADE A TERRITORY 139 
 
 the calamity however. In June, 1846, Great Britain 
 signified her readiness to accept the 49th parallel which 
 she had refused so often, a treaty to that effect was 
 signed on June 15, 1846, and Oregon became definitely 
 a part of the United States. 
 
 108. Oregon Made a Territory.— But for all that it 
 continued under the provisional government three 
 years longer. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois pre- 
 sented a bill to erect Oregon into a territory at the 
 session of 1846-7, but the clause forbidding slavery 
 which he copied from the First Organic Law^^^ excited 
 the hostility of the pro-slavery southerners and it was 
 rejected. James Buchanan, who was then Secretary 
 of State, thought it worth while to try to soothe the 
 disappointment of the Oregonians by a letter notable 
 for smoothness rather than point, and Thomas H. 
 Benton, their tireless friend in placing the blame upon 
 Calhoun encouraged them to hope for action at the next 
 session of Congress. When Congress met President 
 Polk vigorously pleaded the cause of Oregon in his 
 message, but the pro-slavery opposition was no less 
 virulent than before and might have succeeded in 
 obtaining further delay had not public opinion, fired 
 by the news of the Whitman massacre, irresistibly 
 demanded action. Joe Meek reached St. Louis on 
 May 17, 1848, and gave his terrible report to the coun- 
 try. Going thence to Washington he delivered his de- 
 spatches to the President who at once transmitted them 
 to Congress with an urgent message. The opposition 
 
 "'The Oregon pioneers copied it from the ordinance of 1787, which 
 established the Northwest Territory. 
 
140 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 then reluctantly gave way, and on August 14, 1848, 
 Oregon was made a territory of the Union. General 
 Joseph Lane of Indiana who had become prominent 
 in the Mexican war was appointed the first territorial 
 governor by President Polk, while Joseph L. Meek, 
 who is affectionately known in history as "Joe" Meek, 
 was made United States Marshal in recognition of his 
 valorous activities. Late in August Governor Lane 
 with Meek and others set out for Oregon by the Santa 
 F^ route. From San Francisco they finished the 
 journey by water, reaching Oregon City, the temporary 
 capital, on March 2, 1849, and the next day Governor 
 Lane proclaimed that he had entered on the duties of 
 his office and that the laws of the United States were 
 thenceforth to be in force in Oregon."** 
 
 ""From June 3, 1845, to March 3, 1849, George Abernethy was 
 governor of Oregon under the provisional government. This in- 
 cludes the entire period between the disuse of the executive committee 
 and the appointment of Lane. Lane resigned June 18, 1850, and from 
 1851 to 1859 represented Oregon in Congress. In 1859 he was 
 elected to the Senate for the short term of two years and in 1860 was 
 nominated for Vice-President with Breckenridge. After this date 
 Lane's southern sympathies made him unpopular in Oregon and he 
 lived in retirement, dying in 1881. His services in the Indian wars 
 were of great value. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Condition of Oregon in 1848 
 109. Oregon in 1848.— Before the beginning of 
 Autumn, 1848, the Cayuse war had been brought to a 
 close and Congress had erected Oregon into a territory. 
 At about the same time news reached the settlers that 
 gold had been discovered in California in the preceding 
 January. Profound economic changes in the territory 
 followed upon this discovery, but before describing 
 them it may be best to glance at the progress which 
 Oregon had made in the fourteen years since Jason Lee 
 came over the mountains with Wyeth and planted the 
 seeds of civilization on the banks of the Willamette. 
 Of course conditions were still primitive but the savages 
 had almxost disappeared from the Valley, the rule of the 
 Hudson Bay Company had given way to American 
 law, and the irregular industry of the trappers and 
 himters had been succeeded by farming and stock rais- 
 ing. The white population amounted to some 12,000 
 persons in 1848 and the best land of the Valley had 
 been taken up; but comparatively little had been 
 fenced in. Most of the country was still an open range 
 where cattle freely roamed and grazed. Opulent 
 settlers had herds of 2,000 head or more. The grass 
 was luxuriant and the natural increase of the cattle 
 provided an easy living for their owners. The free 
 life of the range was more attractive to the young men 
 of the colony than plowing and cultivating the soil, 
 
142 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 and therefore we read without surprise that com- 
 paratively Uttle land was farmed. From twenty to 
 fifty acres of grain would be found on a claim of 640 
 acres. The low price of grain and the scarcity of im- 
 plements also contributed to make agriculture irk- 
 some. Wheat was thrashed by driving horses over the 
 sheaves, ^^^ and the usual price was sixty-two and one- 
 half cents a bushel, though in 1845 after the great in- 
 rush of immigrants it rose to a dollar and a half. In 
 1848 there were nine gristmills in the territory, while 
 numerous sawmills made lumber cheap and plentiful. 
 110. Discomforts of the Pioneers. — Foreign trade 
 had not thriven as well as the pioneers expected. It 
 was somewhat discouraged by the dangers at the 
 mouth of the Columbia where a number of ships were 
 wrecked about the year 1848, but the principal 
 impediment was the lack of a circulating medium. 
 Coin was very scarce. Wheat, orders on merchants, 
 and government paper all passed current within the 
 colony, but of course outsiders would not receive them 
 in exchange for manufactured goods. Hence it was 
 impossible for the settlers to procure civilized clothing. 
 Children went to school wearing a single garment which 
 resembled the Roman toga. Men and women were 
 clad in buckskin. Sometimes a gown was pieced to- 
 gether from on old blanket or from the remnants of 
 grain bags. Judges went barefoot and legislators were 
 hard put to it to buy a new coat. They had abundant 
 wealth but they lacked the common comforts of life 
 
 *"The first thrashing machine was built at Oregon City in 1848 by 
 Wallace and Wilson. It became popular immediately. 
 
CONDITION OF OREGON IN 1 848 143 
 
 because they could not exchange for it. Schoolbooks 
 were also scarce. An edition of Webster's Spelling 
 book was printed at Oregon City in 1847, but this ex- 
 cellent work could not impart a complete education. 
 Arithmetics, geographies and the like were also needed 
 and they were not to be had. Internal communica- 
 tion was still slow and difficult. There were some 
 small boats on the rivers but not many. Heavy 
 articles were transported in ox wagons and horseback 
 riding was the favorite method of going about. Much 
 practice made the people good riders. Young men 
 went courting on their ponies with their blankets in 
 a roll behind the saddle. It was the fashion to camp 
 on the cabin floor at bedtime and ride away after 
 breakfast the next morning. Young people married in 
 their teens and families were large. Oregon City, with 
 a population of six hundred, was the largest town in 
 Oregon. Portland was but a hamlet with two frame 
 and several log houses. ^''^ Salem was a little village, and 
 Eugene, Albany and Corvallis were still only land 
 claims. 
 
 111. Pioneer Schools. — The settlers had not for- 
 gotten education in spite of their hardships and 
 the scarcity of books. The common school system had 
 not yet been organized. The Catholics already had 
 three schools, one for boys at St. Paul, while at both 
 Oregon City and St. Mary they had built schools for 
 
 "'The site of Portland, 640 acres, was taken up by Overton in 1843. 
 He sold it in 1845 to Love joy and Pettygrove, who laid out the town 
 and sold lots to settlers. The first house was a log cabin at the corner 
 of Front and Washington streets, built in 1844. 
 
144 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 girls. Jason Lee's Oregon Institute was flourishing 
 at Salem. At Rickreall in Polk county there was a 
 protestant school called the Jefferson Institute. Pacific 
 University at Forest Grove originated in 1846 with 
 a school, afterward Tualitin Academy, which Harvey 
 Clark taught on his land claim. Mrs. Tabitha Brown, 
 who came to Oregon in 1846 by the Southern route, 
 joined him and opened an orphans' school in a log 
 cabin on his land where by 1 848 she had forty children 
 enrolled. In that year the Reverend G. H. Atkinson 
 arrived with authority from the Congregational Home 
 Missionary Society to organize a college, and Clark 
 gave him 200 acres of land while Tabitha Brown 
 donated a city lot and $500 cash for the good cause. 
 Of course their private schools now merged into the 
 larger project, and in 1853 it was chartered as Pacific 
 University. 
 
 112. Social Conditions. — Ministers were more numer- 
 ous than either doctors or lawyers. There was preach- 
 ing everywhere on Sunday, though church buildings 
 were not yet numerous. Oregon City, the metropolis, 
 had three, and the only others besides the Catholic 
 Churches, were at Salem and Hillsboro. The popula- 
 tion in general was healthy, orderly and happy. Life 
 was simple, but it was wholesome. Crime was almost 
 unknown, the climate was mild and salubrious and 
 labor was light. The period between 1834 ^^^ ^^4^ 
 was the golden age of Oregon. The people now plunged 
 into the feverish excitement of the gold discoveries 
 and the Arcadian simplicity of the Eden by the Wil- 
 lamette passed away forever. 
 
A MOUNTAIN CANYON 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Discovery of Gold 
 
 113. The Rush to the Diggings. — California was 
 acquired by the United States by conquest in the 
 Mexican War and its possession was confirmed by the 
 treaty of February 2, 1848, which arranged the terms 
 of peace. On January 24, ten days before the treaty 
 was signed, gold was discovered on the American River 
 about fifty miles above Sutter's fort. News of the 
 discovery spread rapidly and soon great crowds were 
 hurrying from all parts of Cahfornia to the diggings. 
 Before winter the news had crossed the Rocky Moun- 
 tains creating wild excitement everywhere. Thou- 
 sands of men, both in the Atlantic states and in the 
 Mississippi Valley, prepared to start for the land of 
 gold as soon as spring should open. The easterners 
 went by way of the Isthmus of Panama; those from 
 the west followed the emigrant trail. Twenty-five 
 thousand persons, nearly all men, were on the way as 
 soon as spring opened and others followed them all the 
 summer through. Thus emigration and settlement 
 were diverted from the northern section of the Pacific 
 Coast to Cahfornia which was settled up rapidly, far 
 outstripping Oregon in the race for population."^ 
 
 '"In 1850 California had 92,000 population, Oregon 14,000. In 
 1870 Oregon, Washington and Idaho had 130,000, California 560,000. 
 So much did the discovery of gold change the development of the 
 country as it had begun under natural conditions. 
 
146 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 114. The Gold Fever in Oregon. — The news that 
 gold had been discovered in California was learned in 
 Oregon toward the close of the summer of 1848, about 
 the time when the Cay use war was concluded. It 
 produced the same excitement there as in the rest of 
 the country. Hired hands left their work, soldiers 
 deserted, the servants of the Hudson Bay Company 
 forgot their traditional loyalty, farmers forsook their 
 farms and public officials resigned to take the trail for 
 the land of gold. Within a year Oregon lost perhaps 
 two-thirds of her adult male population. Some of 
 them became permanent residents of California and 
 helped to form the civilization of that interesting state, 
 but most of them returned in a short time bringing 
 with them coin to pay off debts, improve their farms, 
 build houses and stimulate trade. The men who 
 stayed quietly on their farms and raised supplies to 
 feed the miners probably reaped a richer harvest than 
 those who toiled in the diggings. The inrush of ad- 
 venturers to California provided an eager market for 
 all that could be produced in Oregon. Prices were 
 high and times were good. To illustrate the impetus 
 which Oregon agriculture received from the California 
 demand it is worth while to mention that by 1851 
 the orchards which had been set out in the Willamette 
 Valley in 1847 began to bear; at Oregon City a good 
 crop of apples and cherries was harvested and four 
 bushels of apples were sold in San Francisco for $500. 
 Moreover, though the tide of emigration set strongly 
 toward California, Oregon was not badly slighted. 
 
DISCOVERY OF GOI.D 147 
 
 Out of the 40,000 persons who came to the Coast in 
 1850 Oregon received 8,000, which assured a steady if 
 not exceptional growth. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 Development. Indian Wars 
 115. Internal Development. — Meanwhile the in- 
 ternal development of Oregon proceeded apace. In 
 1849 the legislature established the irreducible school 
 fund and levied a tax for public schools. Boards of 
 directors were also provided for, and regular school 
 meetings authorized. Thus education passed under 
 the control of the state, a move which tended to make 
 social conditions more attractive to desirable settlers 
 from the east. Another advance toward social stabil- 
 ity was made when, September 27, 1850, Congress 
 passed the "Donation Land Law." This act con- 
 firmed the title of the original settlers to their claims 
 by assigning to each family resident in the territory 
 before 1850 a square mile of land, half going to the 
 wife and half to the husband. Unmarried men re- 
 ceived only 320 acres, while unmarried women re- 
 ceived nothing, which seemed to smack of injustice, 
 since it is admitted by everybody that the women 
 had done fully as much as the men to overcome diffi- 
 culties and build up a commonwealth. Male emigrants 
 coming to Oregon between 1850 and 1853 received 
 under the donation law 160 acres of land. If the man 
 was married 160 more went to the wife. This pro- 
 vision is said to have induced many young people to 
 rush prematurely into matrimony.^" The special 
 
 "*Some historians hold that the donation law retarded the develop- 
 ment of the state by making the farms too large and the population 
 too sparse. Certainly a square mile of land seems to be ample for 
 the support of a single family. In 1854 Congress granted 160 acres 
 to each orphan child of any emigrant who had died before 1850. 
 Under this act Jason Lee's daughter held a claim. 
 
DEVELOPMENT. INDIAN WARS 149 
 
 privileges under the donation law expired in 1855. 
 After that time claims were taken up in Oregon under 
 the general statutes of the United States. 
 
 116. Settlements in Southern Oregon. — The southern 
 route which Jesse Applegate and his comrades had 
 opened was more or less used by immigrants each year 
 and by 1850 some of them had begun to locate here 
 and there on the attractive lands of the Rogue River 
 and Umpqua Valleys. Naturally the continuous travel 
 of pack trains back and forth between Oregon and 
 California also made this part of the country better 
 known and stimulated settlement. In the spring of 
 1850 two parties entered the Umpqua Valley for the 
 purpose of taking up land and laying out towns. One 
 from Oregon was led by Jesse Applegate, the other was 
 from California. The two parties united their interests 
 and in consequence of their efforts settlers soon began 
 to flock to the Valley of the Umpqua. The California 
 prospectors pushed unremittingly northward in search 
 of new diggings. Before long they had crossed the 
 Siskiyous into Oregon and miners were to be found at 
 many places in the Rogue River and Umpqua Valleys 
 as early as 1 850. Prospecting and settlement went hand 
 in hand. The Indians were troublesome, robbing and 
 murdering without mercy whenever they dared, but 
 upon the whole General Lane at the head of the set- 
 tlers kept them pretty well in check up to the summer 
 of 1851. 
 
 117. Indian Troubles on Rogue River.— The time 
 had now come when the Indians from Puget Sound to 
 the Rogue River Valley, including those in Eastern 
 
150 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 Washington and Oregon, began to perceive clearly the 
 consequences which must follow from the constant 
 influx of whites. They foresaw that they must lose 
 their lands unless they could drive out the settlers and 
 prevent others from coming. The result was a more 
 or less concerted movement of the savages against the 
 settlers all along the border and intermittent warfare 
 which did not cease entirely until the power of the 
 Modocs was destroyed in 1873. The Rogue River 
 Indians had always been intolerant of intruders, 
 treacherous, wily and cruel. The settlers did not make 
 much effort to conciliate them. Isolated outrages 
 finally, in 1851, merged into hard fighting and it was 
 not until 1856 that the Rogue River tribes were en- 
 tirely subdued and placed upon reservations. While 
 the war continued settlements were founded at Coos 
 Bay and Port Orford partly as bases for military opera- 
 tions. Coal was discovered at Coos Bay and trade grew 
 up with San Francisco. The strength of the whites 
 in the Rogue River Country was greatly increased in 
 the fall of 1 85 1 by the discovery of rich placers on 
 Jackson Creek which attracted many prospectors from 
 California, while in spite of the savagery of Indian war- 
 fare settlers continued to take up land along the Rogue 
 River and its branches. 
 
 118. Before the close of the Rogue River War the 
 Indians east of the mountains broke out into open 
 hostilities in defense of their lands. The severe fight- 
 ing began in 1855, and was not brought to an end till 
 1858. Most of the tribes were united in a league 
 against the whites, while the federal military authorities 
 
DEVEIvOPMENT. INDIAN WARS 151 
 
 failed to cooperate effectively with the legislature of 
 Oregon. This circumstance undoubtedly prolonged the 
 war and needlessly increased the hardships of the set- 
 tlers, but by the close of the year 1858 most of the In- 
 dians had been compelled to enter into treaties by 
 which they gave up their right to roam over the coun- 
 try and consented to live upon reservations. From 
 1 86 1 to 1869 there was again desultory Indian fighting 
 east of the mountains in which the whites had little 
 to boast of until General Crook took command of the 
 federal troops. He soon compelled the savages to sue 
 for peace, in 1868, and received the thanks of the 
 Oregon legislature for bringing hostilities to a close. 
 119. The Modoc Trouble. — With all the Oregon 
 Indians the government at Washington pursued a 
 policy of paternal indulgence which was seldom ap- 
 preciated and sometimes excited contempt. It was 
 particularly unfortunate with the Modocs, a tribe 
 living about Klamath Lake and on the border between 
 Oregon and California. These savages, under the 
 leadership of a chief called Captain Jack, were treated 
 with a lack of firmness which ultimately encouraged 
 them to go on the warpath, in 1872. The troops and 
 settlers were not very successful against them at first 
 and the Indians gained a number of petty advantages 
 which made them bolder than before. They com- 
 mitted terrible outrages on the settlers and were able 
 to escape direct attack by taking refuge in the lava 
 beds of that district which are veined with fissures 
 where parties could lie concealed and through which 
 they could flee when pursued. Finally, in April, 1873, 
 
152 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 Captain Jack's band fulfilled the measure of their 
 crimes by treacherously murdering some peace com- 
 missioners who were parleying with them. The mili- 
 tary then began to act vigorously against them. In 
 May, 1873, the fighting was brought to an end and in 
 the following October Captain Jack and three of his 
 companions were hanged, while the Modocs were re- 
 moved to the Indian Territory. 
 
 120. Oregon Admitted into the Union. — Besides his 
 services in the Indian wars, General Joseph Lane, who 
 was territorial delegate in Congress from 1851 to 1859, 
 obtained much beneficial legislation for his constitu- 
 ents. In 1852, for example, the mail service which 
 had always been dilatory and inefiicient, was improved 
 at his instance. He also secured an appropriation to 
 open a military road from the Umpqua to the Rogue 
 River Valley, and another from Scottsburg on the 
 Umpqua to connect with this. General Lane also 
 introduced a bill in 1856 for the admission of Oregon 
 into the Union as a state, but owing to the slavery dis- 
 sensions it did not pass. The territorial legislature, 
 however, submitted to the electors in June, 1857, the 
 question whether or not a constitutional convention 
 should be held. The vote being favorable, the conven- 
 tion was called to meet at Salem on the third Monday 
 in August. The delegates chosen from the various 
 counties attended, and after a discussion which lasted 
 four weeks they agreed upon a state constitution which 
 was duly submitted to the voters and ratified on the 
 9th of November, 1857. 'The total number of votes 
 
DEVELOPMENT. INDIAN WARS 153 
 
 was 10,400 of which 7,195 were in favor of the consti- 
 tution. On February 14, 1859, Congress formally ad- 
 mitted Oregon into the Union. "^ 
 
 ^"Washington became a state in 1889, Idaho in 1890. Both were 
 originally parts of Oregon. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 The Ini^and Empire 
 
 121. Early Settlements in Eastern Oregon. — Whit- 
 man and his fellow missionaries had shown as early as 
 1837 that the land in the Walla Walla Valley was re- 
 markably fertile, and the later efforts of that devoted 
 pioneer proved how easily tracts apparently sterile 
 might be made to produce abundant crops by irriga- 
 tion. Still to the eyes of the passing immigrants the 
 country in Oregon and Washington east of the Cas- 
 cades presented but a desolate spectacle, and it was not 
 till about 1855 that settlers began to feel attracted in 
 that direction. By this time they had learned that 
 great areas of the semi-arid region had rainfall enough 
 to produce wheat without irrigation, while numerous 
 valleys had been explored where crops of all kinds 
 could be raised. The outbreak of Indian troubles in 
 1855 retarded the settlement of eastern Oregon for 
 ten years or more after that date, but on October 
 31, 1858, General Harney of the Oregon military de- 
 partment opened the Walla Walla Valley to settle- 
 ment, and the fact that 2,000 claims were taken 
 up there and in the Umatilla region during the 
 next summer indicates how well the value of 
 the land had become understood. Out of the emi- 
 gration of 1859, which numbered some 30,000 souls, 
 about 10,000 made Oregon and W^ashington their 
 destination. Eight hundred people located in the 
 
THE INLAND EMPIRE 155 
 
 Walla Walla Valley while others pushed on into the 
 charming Yakima country, and still others began settle- 
 ments in the Grande Ronde where the weary immigrants 
 of 1843 had longed to tarry but dared not because it 
 was so far from supplies and shelter. Now Walla 
 Walla had become a distributing center whence pack 
 trains permeated the whole Inland Empire and the 
 dangers of isolation had partially passed away."® In 
 the winter of 1 86 1-2 La Grande was founded and 
 grew rapidly, while settlers began to cultivate the fer- 
 tile soil of the surrounding valley. Great excitement 
 followed the discovery of gold on the John Day and 
 Powder Rivers in 1861. Prospectors flocked to the 
 new diggings from California and the entire coast. 
 Towns sprang up in a day when fresh mines were 
 opened and vanished when they were exhausted, but 
 there were permanent results also. The Powder River 
 Valley was settled by farmers in the prosperous summer 
 of 1862 and Baker City was founded. 
 
 122. A Period of Great Activity. — This was a time of 
 great activity throughout the Inland Empire. Mining 
 flourished in numerous places, farming had begun at 
 almost every accessible point and the business of trans- 
 portation by pack trains was diligently pursued by 
 enterprising men some of whom afterward made their 
 mark in the state. Portland had become the great 
 central market for the northwest and its growth was 
 now rapid. Pack trains from The Dalles made regular 
 trips into the John Day country, but those from Walla 
 
 ""A wagon road was built from Walla Walla into the Grande Ronde 
 in 1863. 
 
156 THE STORY O^ OREGON 
 
 Walla covered a much wider territory, some of them 
 even crossing the Rocky Mountains and meeting steam- 
 boat traffic on the Missouri from the east. 
 
 123. The Flood of 1861 and the Winter that Fol- 
 lowed. — A terrible flood devastated the entire coast 
 region in the fall of i86i. Every river valley from 
 California to Puget Sound was overflowed. Houses 
 were swept away and property of all kinds destroyed. 
 A winter followed of such severity that the pack trains 
 could not penetrate the eastern region with supplies 
 and the miners who had neglected to lay in provisions 
 starved and froze in the inaccessible mountains. The 
 next spring there was a great freshet in the Columbia 
 which virtually annihilated the beginnings of settle- 
 ment on its alluvial flats. This succession of mis- 
 fortunes naturally checked the development of Oregon 
 somewhat, but it was only for a moment. The sum- 
 mer of 1862 was one of rapid growth, especially in the 
 Inland Empire which received 10,000 immigrants be- 
 fore fall. By 1870 this region of great possibilities 
 was producing more wheat and other supplies than the 
 mines could consume and the people were impatient 
 for a railroad which might afford them an outlet to the 
 markets of the world. ^^' 
 
 "^The navigation of the Columbia was impeded by rapids here and 
 there which made transhipments necessary so that water carriage 
 was expensive. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 Internal Communication. Land Grants 
 
 124. The Military Wagon Road. — The problem of 
 internal communication has always been a serious one 
 in Oregon. Even to this day it has not been entirely 
 solved. The pioneers went about the country on horse- 
 back and moved their heavy goods in ox- wagons. 
 Later steamboats were placed on the rivers which of 
 course made things much better for those who dwelt 
 upon their banks but did little for others. Roads 
 were needed everywhere but to build them required 
 resources beyond the power of a young community to 
 supply. Congress sought to aid Oregon in this im- 
 portant particular by granting to the state the odd 
 numbered sections in a strip six miles wide from 
 Eugene to the eastern boundary for the construction 
 of a military wagon road across the Cascade Moun- 
 tains. The legislature turned this magnificent dona- 
 tion over to a private corporation, The Oregon Cen- 
 tral Military Wagon Road Company, which actually 
 built a road to the summit of the Cascades, but it was 
 never of much use. The road from Ashland to Kla- 
 math over the old Applegate trail, which was opened 
 in 1868, was preferred by most travelers. In 1873 the 
 Oregon Central Military Wagon Road Company sold 
 its right to a San Francisco corporation, and thus most 
 of the benefit of the grant was forever lost to the state. 
 
 126. Swamp and School Lands. — The early legis- 
 
158 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 latures were not especially happy in the management 
 of the land grants which the state received from Con- 
 gress. In 1870 provisions were made for the selection 
 and sale of swamp lands under the Act of 1850 which 
 were so ill-considered that they actually retarded 
 settlement and turned over large tracts to speculators 
 almost without compensation. Oregon received from 
 the government altogether 3,250,000 acres of land for 
 the benefit of the irreducible school fund."^ In 1881 
 when 500,000 acres had been sold the returns to the 
 school fund amounted to $600,000. The Agricul- 
 tural College which was established at Corvallis in 
 1868, received a grant of 90,000 acres from Congress 
 while the state university had 46,000 acres. The 
 university was founded in 1862 and opened in 1867, 
 when it had a fund of $75,000 from the sale of its 
 lands."« 
 
 126. Isolation of the Early Settlements. — Western 
 Oregon has been divided by nature into three distinct 
 regions, the valleys of the Rogue, the Umpqua and 
 the Willamette Rivers, a narrow strip of arable coast 
 being attached to each. These valleys are separated 
 from one another by mountains more or less difficult 
 to traverse like the states of ancient Greece, and in con- 
 sequence the communities which settled them developed 
 independently. There was little social or commercial 
 
 ^*^This fund was established by the legislature in 1849. 
 
 "''Ten thousand dollars of this fund came from the proceeds of the 
 confiscated estate of Dr. McLoughlin at Oregon City. This was 
 restored to his heirs by the legislature. The citizens of Lane county 
 raised fifty-two thousand dollars in aid of the university, which was 
 invested in a site and the first building. 
 
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS. LAND GRANTS 159 
 
 intercourse with outsiders. ^^^ In Eastern Oregon the 
 natural barriers between the different parts are still 
 more numerous and more difficult to traverse. There 
 we find the valleys of the Powder, the Umatilla and 
 the John Day Rivers, the Grande Ronde,the Klamath, 
 and numerous little nooks like Eagle Valley, all 
 separated by lofty mountains from their neighbors. 
 Wagon roads were built between them at an early 
 date but the people were not satisfied with this slow 
 and difficult means of communication. As settle- 
 ments multiplied and products increased the need of 
 markets, the duties of government, the growing in- 
 terests which all the inhabitants of the state possessed 
 in common stimulated the demand for railroads. 
 
 127. Railroad Building. — The numerous early rail- 
 road projects finally culminated in two lines which 
 were built from Portland along the east and west sides 
 of the Willamette. Ground for the west side line was 
 broken in Portland on April 14, 1868; that for the one 
 on the east side two days later. For some time little 
 work was done upon either because funds were lack- 
 ing, but in August, 1868, the picturesque and adven- 
 turous Ben Holliday, who had made his appearance 
 in Oregon, bought out the east side road and began 
 to push its fortunes with vigor. By December of the 
 next year he had completed twenty miles, enough to 
 secure title to a land grant in controversy between the 
 companies. He then raised money by marketing 
 bonds of his railroad in Germany, m.anaged by skillful 
 
 ""The Coos Bay region has always had more intimate commercial 
 relations with San Francisco than with Portland. 
 
160 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 intrigues to obtain control of the west side line and 
 built southward on both sides of the river. In 1873 
 the Oregon and California Railroad, as the east side road 
 was now called, was completed to Roseburg which 
 remained the terminus until 1887 when the Southern 
 Pacific, which had then obtained possession, extended 
 it to Ashland and united it finally with the California 
 system. 
 
 128. Henry Villard. — Ben Holliday having fallen 
 into financial difficulties, the German bondholders in 
 1876 gave the management of the Oregon and Cali- 
 fornia Railroad to Henry Villard who was one of the 
 truly great railroad builders of the last century. He 
 carried out the majestic project of building the North- 
 ern Pacific line and completed it to Portland in 1883. 
 When the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company 
 was incorporated by Portland capitalists, in 1876, 
 Villard was made its president. Under his manage- 
 ment the lines of the company were built eastward to 
 connect with the Union Pacific and northward into 
 the wheat growing and mining regions of Washington. 
 Its bridge over the Willamette at Portland, known as 
 the "steel bridge," was completed in 1888 and the 
 union station soon afterward. The railroad connecting 
 Portland with Astoria was opened for traffic in 1898. 
 Villard 's worthy successor in railroad building, James 
 J. Hill, completed the great bridge over the Columbia 
 at Vancouver and another only less magnificent over 
 the Willamette in the fall of 1908. By way of these 
 bridges the North Bank road runs trains between 
 
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS. LAND GRANTS 163 
 
 Portland and Spokane. Thus Oregon has ample rail- 
 road connections with the outer world, but its system 
 of internal communication is still far from complete. ^^* 
 
 "'The student will see from the. map that Oregon east of the Cas- 
 cades and south of the Columbia is almost destitute of railroads. 
 This isolates from the markets of the world a large and very fertile 
 territory. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Oregon Today 
 
 129. Social Conditions. — At the present time, 1909, 
 Oregon is a state with 600,000 population. It is still 
 a land of equality as it was in the beginning. The 
 inhabitants are strongly democratic in sentiment and 
 inclined to take advanced views of political problems. 
 The direct primary, the initiative and referendum 
 and proportional representation have been incorpo- 
 rated in the constitution while the voters display 
 marked independence in casting their ballots. It is 
 also a land of comfort, the per capita wealth of the 
 state being somewhat more than $1,000 so that the 
 political unrest cannot be ascribed to the pressure of 
 want. Nor does ignorance prevail. On the contrary 
 Oregon has an excellent common school system and 
 the percentage of illiteracy is low. In the last few 
 years the development of high schools has been rapid, 
 partly under the benign stimulus of the state univer- 
 sity. The university has reached the stage where it 
 is well supported by the legislature. Popular prej- 
 udice against the higher studies is dying out as it 
 always has sooner or later in other states. The Agri- 
 cultural College at Corvallis has naturally won popular 
 affection more rapidly and has a larger attendance. 
 Its work comes near to the daily life of the people be- 
 ing concerned with horticulture, dairying and the 
 mechanic arts. The normal school system of Oregon 
 is still in an unsettled condition but its place in the 
 
OREGON TODAY 165 
 
 scheme of education is of course assured. The best 
 endowed denominational college in the state is the 
 Pacific University at Forest Grove, but there are 
 several others whose usefulness is admittedly great. 
 Whitman College at Walla Walla in Washington, not 
 far from the site of the labors and tragic death of 
 Marcus Whitman, bids fair to become an institution 
 of the foremost rank. Oregon has no large cities 
 except Portland, but there are many towns of moderate 
 size whose inhabitants enjoy most of the advantages 
 of urban life. Free public libraries have been founded 
 in most of them, in some cases through the unselfish 
 efforts of women's clubs. Naturally the Portland 
 Public Library is the largest and best in the state. 
 It has about 80,000 volumes which circulate among 
 400,000 borrowers annually. 
 
 130. Industries. — The products of Oregon are ex- 
 ceedingly diversified. Logging and lumbering form 
 a very important industry as might be expected in a 
 state where almost every section is well supplied with 
 timber. Gold mining still flourishes, although the 
 placers have usually been exhausted and the metal 
 is now extracted from ores. Wheat raising is still the 
 great agricultural resource of the Inland Empire, but 
 in the Willamette Valley it has given way somewhat 
 to fruit raising and dairying. Apples and prunes are 
 produced everywhere in the Valley and of late years 
 enterprising farmers have planted orchards of walnuts 
 which give promise of abundant returns. Of course 
 all the domestic animals are reared on the fertile farms 
 of the Willamette. Angora goats have been intro- 
 
166 THE STORY OF bREGON 
 
 duced with promising results, and dairying has been 
 greatly developed, but in this direction there is still 
 ample room for progress. The Umpqua Valley closely 
 resembles the Willamette in its products, but in the 
 Valley of the Rogue River there is a decided tendency 
 to make fruit the principal crop owing to unusual 
 natural advantages. The apple, the pear, the grape 
 and the peach arc extraordinarily prolific in this 
 region and the fruit is esteemed in the markets of the 
 world for beauty and flavor as well as for keeping 
 qualities. In the narrow strip of tillable land along 
 the coast of Oregon dairying is everywhere pursued 
 with great success. The coal mines in the region of 
 Coos Bay steadily increase in importance. Several 
 towns on the seashore have become flourishing sum- 
 mer resorts. ^^^ The salmon industry has declined from 
 its former importance owing to unwise methods of 
 fishing, but wholesome regulations have been enacted 
 which may, with the cooperation of the fishermen, 
 ultimately restore the phenomenal runs of the time of 
 Lems and Clark. 
 
 131. Hood River. — Nowhere in the world, perhaps, 
 has scientific fruit growing been pursued with such 
 unwearied diligence and brilliant success as at Hood 
 River. 
 
 132. Irrigation. — The enviable conditions of rural 
 life at Hood River result largely from the economic 
 and educational influences of irrigation. The rainfall, 
 which is sufficient to nourish luxuriant vegetation, is 
 
 '"Empire City and Marshfield were founded in 1853. The first 
 coal was shipped to San Francisco in 1855- 
 
OREGON TODAY 169 
 
 supplemented by leading water over the orchards in 
 ditches. This requires small farms, intelligent agri- 
 culture and intimate cooperation among neighbors. 
 It is therefore a great civilizing influence as well as 
 an inestimable source of wealth. Irrigation in Oregon, 
 as well as in other states which have areas of deficient 
 rain, has been aided by the kindly intervention of the 
 general government. Projects at Umatilla, Klamath 
 and Malheur have been initiated by the federal engi- 
 neers and everywhere in this eastern region of the state 
 as soon as water is led over the fields the desert dis- 
 appears and abundant crops spring up. Fruit, grain 
 and in particular alfalfa, flourish on land where the 
 early immigrants saw nothing but desolate sand and 
 wearisome sage brush. In divers charming nooks 
 among the mountains, like Eagle Valley, irrigation 
 has been practiced for many years. The intelligent 
 farmers of the Grande Ronde are applying it to increase 
 the natural productiveness of their land, and the more 
 progressive leaders of rural thought even in the Willa- 
 mette Valley have begun to experiment with it. 
 
 133. Portland. — Portland, the largest city in Oregon, 
 has become a true metropolis with an abundant supply 
 of pure water from a mountain stream, an art museum, 
 a great public library, excellent schools, beautiful 
 homes, flourishing newspapers^^^ and fine business 
 
 *"The Oregonian, founded in the winter of 1850-1, ranks with the 
 best newspapers in the United States. Harvey W. Scott has edited it 
 since 1865. The first number appeared December 4, 1850. T. L. 
 Dryer was the first editor. The Spectator, the first newspaper in 
 Oregon, was estabhshed in 1846 at Oregon City, by the Oregon Print- 
 ing Association and appeared twice a month. 
 
170 THE STORY OF OREGON 
 
 houses. The World's Fair held here in 1905 to celebrate 
 the hundredth anniversary of Lewis and Clark's jour- 
 ney across the continent, attended as it was by mul- 
 titudes from all parts of the country, made the beauties 
 and commercial advantages of Portland widely known. 
 The heights around the city and the Willamette River 
 which flows through it are incomparably beautiful, 
 while the citizens have added a singular charm by 
 cultivating roses which flourish here in great luxuriance. 
 Enthusiasts have named Portland the "Rose City" 
 not inappropriately, and a pleasing event of each year 
 is the Rose Festival, celebrated in the lovely days of 
 early June, which attracts throngs of visitors to wit- 
 ness the display of beautiful flowers. 
 
INDEX 
 
 The numbers refer to sections, numbers preceded by "n" 
 refer to notes. 
 
 Abeniethy, George, 73, n 140 
 Admission, 120 
 Adventure, Tlie, 5 
 Agricultural College, 125, 129 
 Albany, 110 
 American Board, GO-2-5, 78- 
 
 9, 80 
 American Fur Co., 30, Gl-2, 
 
 77, n 32, n 94 
 Applegate, Lindsay, 102 
 Applegate, Jesse, 103, n 133 
 Apples, 114, 130 
 Ashburton Treaty, n 100 
 Ashland, n 133 
 Ashley, W. H., 45, n 44 
 Astor, J. J., 29, 30-1-2, 35, 
 
 30, n 33 
 Astoria, 26, 31-2-3-4-5-0 
 Atkinson, G. H., Ill 
 
 Babcock, Dr. Ira L. 
 Bailey, W. J., 75 
 Baker's Bay, n 10 
 Baker City, 121 
 Ball, John, n 43 
 
 74-5 
 
 Bancroft, n 
 Barlow, S. K., 102 
 Beaver, The, 34, 30 
 Beers, Alanson, 59 
 Bellinger, C. B., n 128 
 Benton, T. H., 108 
 Blackfeet Indians, 45 
 Blanchet, Father, 73-4-5, 82, 
 
 n 98, n 112 
 Blue Mountains, 91, 100 
 Boise, n 81 
 
 Bonneville, Capt., 45-0-7, 52 
 Boone, Daniel, 21, n 27 
 Bridger, Capt., 01 
 Broughton, Lieut. W. R., 7, 
 
 8, 9, n 10 
 Brown, Mrs. Tabitha, 111 
 Bryant, Wm. C, 3 
 Buchanan, James, 108 
 Burnett, P. H., 88, n 118 
 
 Calhoun, John C, 108 
 California and Oregon R. R., 
 
 127-8 
 Canadians, 56, 68, 82-3 
 
172 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Carver, Jonathan, 2, n 3 
 Cascade Mountains 102, 103 
 Cattle, 52-3-8, G2-4, 89, 91, 
 
 n 57, n 71, n 97, n 99 
 Cayuse War, 105, n 130 
 Champoeg, 77, 83-4 
 Chinook Jargon, 61, n 77 
 Clark, Geo., Rogers, 19 
 Clark, Wm. 21, 25, 49, 50 
 Clark, Harvey, 111, n 94 
 Clayquot Harbor, 5, 32 
 Coal, 117 
 
 Columbia River, 23, 31 
 Columbia, Ship, 
 Coin, 110, 114 
 Cone, W. W., 72 
 Coos Bay. 117 
 Cook, Capt., 9 
 Council Bluffs, 21 
 Couch, Capt. J,, n 94 
 Cowlitz River, n 131 
 Crook, Gen., 118 
 Gushing, Caleb, 70, 70 
 
 Dalles, The, 01, 07, n 02 
 Deception Bay, 4 
 Demers, Father, 78, n 94 
 Disappointment, Cape, 4 
 Disosway, G. P., 50, n 52 
 Donation Act, 115, n 144 
 Douglas, J., n 138 
 Dupratz, Lepage, 1 
 
 Eagle Valley, 132, n GO 
 
 Edwards, P. L., 58, n 50 
 Eels, Gushing, n 85 
 Emigrants, 40, 86, 101-2, 121, 
 
 n 134 
 Empire City, n 152 
 England, 66, 107 
 
 Farnham, T. J., 69^ 
 
 Fiske, Pres. W., 50 
 
 Flathead Indians, 61 
 
 Flood, 123 
 
 Floyd, Sergt. C, 20 
 
 France, 14, 17 
 
 Eraser River, 11 
 
 French Prairie, 50, 73, n 65 
 
 Frost, J. H., 72 
 
 Fuca, Straits of, 7 
 
 Gale, Joseph, 73, n 68 
 
 Gantt, J., 89 
 
 Gary, Rev. G., 93 
 
 George, Fort, 35 
 
 Gervais, J., 58, n 66 
 
 Ghent, Treaty of, 36 
 
 Gilliam, C, 105 
 
 Goff, David, 103 
 
 Gold, 109, 113, 114, 121, 122 
 
 Gray, Capt. Robert, 3, 5, 0, 7, 
 
 8, n 7 
 Gray, W. H., 02-3^5 
 Green River, 52, Gl-2-3 
 Griffen, J. S., n 96 
 
 Hall, Fort, 52-3-4, 61-3, 77, 
 90 
 
INDEX 
 
 173 
 
 Harney, Gen., 121 
 
 Heceta, 4, n 9 
 
 Hines, Gustavus, 72-4, 84, n 
 
 98 
 Holliday, Ben, 127 
 Holman, J. D., n 93 
 Hood, Mt., 9 
 Hood River, 131 
 Hudson Bay Co., 10, 36, 38, 
 
 40, 43, 46, 52-3-4-6, 62, 73, 
 
 92-8-9, 105 
 Humboldt River, 43 
 Hunt, W. P., 34, 35, 42, 56, 
 
 n 33 
 
 Idaho, n 145 
 Inland Empire, 121 
 Irrigation, 121, 132, n 63, n 85 
 
 Jack, Capt., 119 
 
 Jefferson, Thos., 3, 7, 12, 13, 
 
 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21-7,nl8, 
 
 n 20 
 Jenny, The, n 10 
 John Day River, 121 
 Joint Occupation, 37, 107, 
 
 n 86 
 
 Kelley, Hall J., 47, 56, n 48 
 
 La Grande, 121 
 Land Grant, 124, 127 
 Land Law, 85 
 
 Lane, Gen. J., 108, U6, 120, 
 n 140 
 
 Lapwai, 64, 78-9, 80-1, 105, 
 
 n 84 
 Laramie, Fort, 52 
 Lausanne, The, 71-2 
 Lava Beds, 119 
 Ledyard, J., 13, n 19 
 Lee, Daniel, 67-69, n 56, n 57 
 Lee, Jason, 47, 51-2-3-4-5- 
 
 6-8-9, 62-3-7, 68-9, 70-1- 
 
 2-4-6, 87, 93-4, n 54, n 57, 
 
 n 58 
 Leslie, David, 74, n 75 
 Lewis and Clark, 3, 12, 13, 14, 
 
 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 42, 
 
 45 
 Lewis, Meriwether, 18, 21-3, 
 
 n 20 
 Lewis River (Snake), 25, n 32 
 Linn, I. F., 66, 70, 76 
 Lolo Trail, 24 
 Loriot, The, 58 
 Louisiana, 1, 14, 17, n 14, n 
 
 n 25, n 26 
 Lovejoy, A. L., 79, n 109 
 
 Mackenzie, Sir A., 11, 12, 13 
 
 Mails, 120 
 
 Mandan Indians, 20-1-2-34 
 
 Marshfield, n 152 
 
 May Dacre, The, 48, 51, 54, 
 
 55, 61, n 54 
 McBean, 105 
 McDougal, D., 35 
 McKay, T., 43, 52, 53, n 45 
 
174 
 
 INDEX 
 
 McLoughlin, Dr. J., 39, 48, 
 50-3-4-5-6-8, 61-3-8, 73- 
 5-7, 82, 99, n 50, n 149 
 
 Meares, Capt. J., 4, n 8 
 
 Meek, J., 83-4, 106-8 
 
 Meek, Stephen H. L., 101 
 
 Memorial to Congress, 68-9, 
 70 
 
 Methodist Missions, 50-1, 74- 
 7, 93 
 
 Missionaries, 40, 50-3-4-5-7- 
 9, 65, n 85 
 
 Modoc Indians, 117, 119 
 
 Mofras, n 4, n 5 
 
 Names of Columbia Points, 9 
 Napoleon, 14, 16, 17, n 26 
 Nesmith, J. W., 88, n 120, 
 
 n 126 
 Nez Perces, 25, 49, 50, 60-1 
 Nootka Convention, n 9 
 Nootka, n 9 
 Northwest Fur Co., 35-6-9, 
 
 n 16, n 31 
 Northern Pacific R. R., 16, 22 
 
 29, 31, 33 
 
 Ogden, P. wS., 105 
 
 Oregon, 27, 37, 39, 40-1-2-4- 
 
 5-7-8, 56 
 Oregon in 1841, n 97 
 Oregon and California R. R., 
 
 127, 128 
 Oregon City, 92, n 106 
 
 Oregon Country, n 15 
 
 Oregon Institute, 82, 93, 111, 
 n 107 
 
 Oregon, Name, 2, 3 
 
 Oregon Question, n 40, n 41, 
 n 102, n 118, n 138 
 
 Oregon Railroad and Naviga- 
 tion Co., 128 
 
 Oregon Trail, 45, 48, 51, 66, 
 77, 80, n 62 
 
 Oregon Spectator, n 94, n 153 
 
 Oregonian, The, n 153 
 
 Organic Law, 95, 108 
 
 Pacific Fur Co., 31 
 Pacific University, 11, 129 
 Pack Trains, 121, 122 
 Pambrun, 61 
 
 Parker, Samuel, 60-1-4, n 76 
 Perkins, H. K. W., n 75 
 Pitman, Anna M., 57, 68, n 74 
 Polk, Pres., 107-8 
 Portland, 122, 132, n 142 
 Port Orford, 117 
 Prevost, J. B., 36 
 Printing Press at Missions, 94 
 Provisional Government, 73- 
 
 4-5, 83 
 Puget Sound, n 131 
 
 Quincey, 111., 96 
 
 Railroad Building, 127 
 Red River of the North, 2 
 
INDEX 
 
 175 
 
 Richmond, J. P., 72 
 
 River of the West, 1 
 
 Rocky Mountain Fur Co., 43 
 
 Rogue River, 130 
 
 Rogue River Indians, 117 
 
 Sacajawea, 24 
 
 Salem, 55, 120 
 
 Salmon, 54 
 
 Sauvie's Island, 54, 73 
 
 School Fund, 115, 125 
 
 Schools, 41, 111, 115 
 
 Scott, H. W., n 153 
 
 Scott, Levi, 103 
 
 Shepherd, Cyrus, n 56 
 
 Shining Mountains, 1, n 2 
 
 Shoshone Indians, 23-24 
 
 Siskiyou Mountains, 116 
 
 Slacum, W. A., 58, 66, n 70 
 
 Slavery, lOS 
 
 Smith, J. S., 43-4-5, n 44 
 
 Smith, Sol. H., n 66 
 
 Snake River (see Lewis 
 
 River) 
 South Pass, 45^. 
 Spalding, H. H., 62 
 Sublette, Wm., 48, 52 
 
 Taxes, 94 
 
 Temperance Society, 58, n 69 
 
 The Dalles, 122 
 
 Thompson, D., 33 
 
 Thorn, Capt., 31-2, n 34 
 
 Tonquin, The, 31, 32, 34 
 
 Tualitin Academy, 111 
 Tyler, Pres., 107 
 
 Umpqua River, 43-4-5, 56, 
 
 72, 116, n 48 
 University, State, 125, 129, n 
 
 149 
 
 Vancouver, Fort, 39, 41, 43, 
 48, 50-3-6-9, 61-3, n 42 
 
 Vancouver, Capt. Geo., 7, 8, 
 9, n 8, n 9 
 
 Villard, H., 128 
 
 Wagon Road, 45 
 
 Waiilatpu, 61-4, 69, 77-8-9, 
 
 80-1, 91, n 78, n 83 
 Walker, C. M., n 58 
 Walla Walla, 46, 53, 61-3, 
 
 77, 121, 122 
 Waller, A. F., 72-3 
 Wapato, n 31 
 Wapato Island, 54 
 War of 1812, 34 
 Washington, n 144 
 White, Dr. Elijah, 59, 73, 76- 
 
 7-9, 81-2-7-9, 100-1, n 104 
 Whitman College, 129 
 Whitman, M., 59, 60-1-2-3-4 
 
 5, 77-8-9, 81, 90-1, n 105, 
 
 n 122 
 Whitman Massacre, 104 
 Whitman, MfS., 62, 64 
 Wilkes, Lieut., C. 73-5 
 
176 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Willamette River, 100 
 Willamette Valley, 43, 55, 56 
 William, Fort, 54 
 Wilson, W. H., 59 
 Wolf Meeting, n 113 
 World's Fair, 132 
 Wright, G. W., n 30 
 
 Wyeth, N. J. 
 1-2-3-4-6, 
 50 n 51 
 
 40, 47, 48, 50^ 
 61-2, n 49, n 
 
 Young, Ewing, 44-5, 56-8, 
 68, 74-5, n 46, n 48, n 69, 
 n 99 
 
AUG 191909 
 
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