Two studies in the history of
' Pacific Northwest
EfiiQond S. Meany
Washington, 1911.

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TWO STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE
PACIFIC NORTHWEST
1. The Towns of the Pacific Northwest were not Founded
on the Fur Trade
2. Morton Matthew McCarvek, Frontier City Builder

BY
EDMOND S. MEANY

Reprinted from the Annual Report of the American Historical Association,
for 1909, pages 163-179

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WASHINGTON 1911

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X. TWO STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST,
1. THE TOWNS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST WERE NOT FOUNDED
ON THE FUR TRADE.
2. MORTON MATTHEW MCCARVER, FRONTIER CITY BUILDER.

By EDMOND S. MEANY,
Professor in the University of Washington.

163

1. THE TOWNS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST WERE NOT FOUNDED ON
THE FUR TRADE.

By Edmond S. Meant.

At the meeting of the American Historical Association in 1893
Prof. Frederick J. Tumer, of the University of Wisconsin, read a
paper on " The Significance of the Frontier in American History,"
which has exercised a profound influence on subsequent students and
writers. In that paper Prof. Tumer says :
The trading posts reached by these trails were on the sites of Indian villages
which had been placed in positions suggested by nature ; and these trading posts,
situated so as to command the water systems of the country, have grown into
such cities as Albany, Pittsburg, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Council Bluffs, and
Kansas City. Thus civilization in America has followed the arteries made by
geology, pouring an ever richer tide through them, until at last the slender
paths of aboriginal intercourse have been broadened and interwoven into the
complex mazes of modern commercial lines.^
In a more recent publication the same distinguished author expands
his thesis and uses these words :
Practically all of the Indian villages of the tributaries of the Great Lakes and
of the upper Mississippi were regularly visited by the trader. The trading
posts became the nuclei of later settlements; the traders' trails grew into the
early roads, and their portages marlied out the location for canals. Little by
little the fur trade was undermining the Indian society and paving the way for
the entrance of civilization.^
While conceding the full value and validity of the thesis as ap
plied to that portion cf the United States lying east of the Kocky
Mountains, it is the purpose of this present paper to demonstrate
that west of those mountains, in the Pacific Northwest, or the old
Oregon country, the evolution of civilization did not follow the lines
so successfully elaborated by Prof. Tumer.
It should be stated at once that the quest for furs and the primitive
trading posts have important places in the history of old Oregon, but
J- American Historical Asociation, Annual Report, 1893, p. 210.
2 Frederick J. Turner, Rise of the New West (in " TLe American Nation, a History,"
ed. Hart, Vol. XIV), 113-114. lo5

166 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
much of the charm of that history lies in the fact that it was not the'
trading posts that became the towns.
The area in question was first observed from the sea by the Span
iard, Bartolome Ferrelo, in 1543, and by the English captain, Drake,
in 15T9, but civilized man did not touch foot on that soil until the
famous landing by Bruno Heceta, in 1775. Fur traders and ex
plorers of different nationalities skirted the shores from that date
until the crucial year of 1792 saw the discovery and exploration of
Puget Sound by the Englishman, Capt. George Vancouver, and the
discovery and naming of the Columbia River by the American, Capt.
Robert Gray. It was inevitable that fur trade in such a wilderness,
participated in by representatives of different nations, should arouse
international contentions. And it is certain that from Gray's dis
coveries, in 1792, the new Republic of the United States was destined
to have an interest in the long-drawn battle of diplomacy.
France, though represented among the explorers, did not gain a
foothold. Spain finally abandoned her little fort at Nootka in 1795
and withdrew south of the forty-second parallel. Russia, in a treaty
with the United States in 1824 and in another with Great Britain in
1825, fixed the southern boundary of her claims at 54° 40'. It re
mained for Great Britain and the United States to determine which
should acquire sovereignty in the area thus limited. Each nation
recognized in the contention the three necessary fundamentals of
discovery, exploration, and occupation.
The American cause, starting with Gray's discovery of the Colum
bia River in 1792, was strengthened by the explorations of the Lewis
and Clark expedition in 1805-6, and by the Winships' attempt in 1809
and the Astorians' success in 1811 in planting a fort at the mouth of
the great river. American possession of a large part of Oregon
appeared secure up to this point, when suddenly all seemed aban
doned or destroyed in the War of 1812. Astor's partners treacher
ously sold the fort to British rivals, representatives of the Northwest
Co., and while the transfer was being made the British sloop of war
Raccoon entered the river and anchored before the fort, the name of
which was promptly changed from Astoria to Fort George.
During those same years the British cause was even stronger than
the American, especially in the northern part of old Oregon. Van
couver's discovery and exploration of Puget Sound, Vancouver
Island, and the adjacent shores, were followed by Mackenzie's over
land exploration in 1793, a dozen years before the arrival of the
Lewis and Clark expedition. From 1805 on the representatives of
the Northwest Co. were planting trading posts on the Fraser, Okano
gan, Spokane, and other rivers. The purchase of Astoria carried
with it the three interior posts on tributaries of the Columbia thus

TOWNS OP THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. 167
erasing the last vestige of American occupation. The British fur
traders were in complete possession.
But possession by fur traders did not carry with it British sover
eignty. In fact, when the War of 1812 was terminated by the Treaty
of Ghent, the antebellum condition as to territory was interpreted
to include Astoria, probably because of the presence of the sloop
of war at the time of the transfer. In October, 1818, an American
agent, J. B. Prevost, arrived at the mouth of the Columbia, and this
lone citizen, representing the American Government, saw the British
flag lowered from Fort George and the Stars and Stripes raised
in its place over Astoria. In a few days he left and the British
fur traders resiuned sway. At that time, and for more than a dozen
years thereafter, there was not a single American citizen in Oregon
to represent his country's supposed share in the sovereignty over
any part of the region.
In that same month of October, 1818, when the American agent
participated in the interesting ceremonies of temporarily restoring
the Stars and Stripes at Astoria, there was concluded in London
a treaty relating to boundaries in America. Article III of that
treaty provided that any country claimed by either party on the
northwest coast of America westward of the Stony Mountains
should —
be free and open, for the term of 10 years from the date of the signature
of the present convention, to the vessels, citizens, and subjects of the two
powers; it being well understood that this agreement is not to be construed
to the prejudice of any claim which either of the two high contracting parties
may have to any part of said country, nor shall it be taken to affect the claims
of any other power or State to any part of the said country; the only object
of the high contracting parties in that respect being to prevent disputes and
differences amongst themselves.'
This was the famous treaty of joint occupancy, and as the 10-year
period drew to a close in 1827 a special treaty was concluded at
London extending indefinitely the joint occupancy feature, and add
ing the provision that either party could terminate that agreement
by giving to the other party due notice of 12 months.'^
It is worth while to note here how three great Americans were con
tinued in contact with the diplomacy of this Oregon question. Three
of the five American commissioners who concluded the treaty of peace
at Ghent on December 24, 1814, were John Quincy Adams, Henry
Clay, and Albert Gallatin. In 1818, when the treaty of joint occu
pancy was signed, Adams was Secretary of State, Clay was Speaker
of the House, and Gallatin was minister to France, but was ordered
to London to assist Richard Rush in making that treaty. In 1827,
1 Treaties and Conventions between tlie United States and otiier Powers, 1776-1887,
416-417. /
2 Ibid., 426-427.

168 AMEBICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
when the joint occupancy feature was renewed, Adams was President,
Clay was Secretary of State, and Gallatin was minister to Great Brit
ain. The interest of Adams in the question was certainly persistent,
for his faithful diary shows that on March 25, 1843, he called on Sec
retary of State Daniel Webster after the conclusion of the Webster-
Ashburton treaty, and had three hours of consultation in which
Oregon was considered.^
There is every reason why the British should have been perfectly
complaisant in signing those two treaties of joint occupancy in 1818
and 1827, for in the region affected there was not one single American
trader or settler, while there were many successful British trading
posts. Bancroft cites a House of Commons report on the Hudson's
Bay, Co., dated 1857, locating 30 posts, nearly all of which were
within the region under discussion, and many of them were in suc
cessful operation when the joint occupancy treaties were negotiated.^
The Northwest Co. and the Hudson's Bay Co. were united in 1821,
and in 1825 headquarters were moved from Fort George to the newly
established Fort Vancouver, which became the capital of the British
fur traders' dominion over the vast area between Spanish territory
on the south and Russian territory on the north, and between the
Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. A few American fur
traders visited the Indians along the coasts, and a few even crossed
the mountain barriers and attempted to get a portion of the trade
by land routes, notably Jedediah S. Smith, in 1828, and Capt. B. L. E.
Bonneville and Nathaniel J. Wyeth, from 1832 to 1836. Wyeth had
the foresight to attempt the addition of fish packing to the industry
of fur trading. But the Hudson's Bay Co., with its immense re
sources and its generations of trained officers and men, easily over
came such efforts at competition.
The development of the country was proceeding along the tradi
tional lines of expanding the fur-trading posts into villages and
towns. There is no doubt that, if that development had not been
interrupted, the map of the Pacific Northwest would now show many
examples of the evolution pointed out by Prof. Turner. As it is, but
4 of the 30 posts mentioned by the House of Commons report have
continued as settlements of white men. These are Fort Vancouver,
now the seat of Clark County, Wash ; Fort Walla Walla, now Wal-
lula. Wash.; Boise, now the capital of Idaho; and Victoria, now the
capital of British Columbia; and Astoria, Oreg., which was not in
cluded in that list of 1857. The other posts have declined or disap
peared, some of them being identified by interesting survivals of
ruined log houses or blockhouse forts.
1 Cliarles Francis Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, XI, 344-347.
2 Hubert Howe Bancroft, Works, XXVII, 448.

TOWNS OE THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. 169
There is no desire to minimize the great influence of the fur trade
in extending the white man's civilization in wild territory. We are
interested here in but one phase of that influence in a particular
region. The present writer has said elsewhere :
As the ermine drew the Russian eastward to the Pacific, so the beaver drew
the American westward to the same ocean. In that ocean were found furs
much more valuable than the beaver. However, the deck of the vessel was the
trading post, and profits were counted in Boston, London, or St. Petersburg.
But the beaver was by no means to be despised.'
For centuries the fur of the beaver had been highly prized and
extensively used, especially for hats. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
is the line — On his head a Flaundrlsh bever hat,
and " hattes of biever " were recorded as early as the twelfth century.''
A sudden and extensive change in the world-wide fashion of wearing
beaver hats would certainly affect the trade in beaver skins and arrest
the development of posts engaged in that trade into villages and
cities. That kind of a change took place with the result indicated
when the silk hat supplanted that of beaver. The silk hat was made
in Florence late in the eighteenth century and was introduced into
France about 1825, after which it speedily became the vogue. That
this new fashion in hats had a profound effect on the theme before
us is made apparent by two letters written by John Jacob Astor from
Europe in 1830. One letter was to St. Louis withdrawing his
partnership in a fur-trading company and the other was to a friend
in New York saying:
I very much fear beaver will not sell well very soon unless very fine. It
appears that they make hats of silk in place of beaver.''
The date of those letters and the practical prophecy they contain
are both important.
It now remains to trace a change more potential and more far-
reaching than the one just indicated. During the decade from 1835
to 1845 there arose, in some way, between Great Britain and the
United States an understanding that when the joint occupancy
treaty should be finally interpreted on the fundamentals of discovery,
exploration, and occupation, the quality of the occupation should
govern. The trapper or fur trader would not count as against the
actual settler or farmer; the trading post was not to be weighed in
the same balance as the village of the true pioneer. We have a fine
piece of evidence on this point from one whose words have a peculiar
and pertinent authority. Dr. William Fraser Tolmie arrived at
1 Meany, History of the State of Washington, 55-56.
2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, article Hat.
' H. M. Chittenden, History of the American Fur Trade, I, 364.

17G AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
Fort Georges (Astoria) in 1833, to serve as Hudson's Bay Co. phy
sician. He rose in rank until he was the company's chief representa
tive on Puget Sound at the time of the settlement between Great
Britain and the United States. He then removed to Victoria, British
Columbia, where he lived the rest of his long life, an honored pioneer
of the Pacific Northwest. After he had completed a half century of
experiences on the coast, this loyal subject of Great Britain was in
vited by the president of the Oregon Pioneer Association to partici
pate in the annual meeting of 1884 at Salem, which he did by sending
a lengthy letter. In this letter he says:
Had they [Hudson's Bay Co.] promptly adopted my suggestion, in 1844, their
flocks of sheep might have overspread the unoccupied prairies between Nis-
qually and Cowlitz ere the 15th of June, 1846, in which case their rights would
have been confirmed to these lands by the treaty.'
Here we have a British recognition of the fact that in 1844 sheep
and potatoes would count for more than beaver and mink in the diplo
macy of Oregon. Continuing, the Doctor's letter says:
But, in that time, there was a general British supineness, in retrospect
strongly contrasting with the enlightened, thoughtful energy of the natural
leaders of the American pioneers, and the intelligent readiness of all for self-
government. * * * True, most part of the country sought for was lost, but
it must be remembered that, between 1834 and 1846, the United Kingdom had —
besides several fighting and other troubles in various parts of the world — great
embarrassment in regard to Canada, during 1837-38 in a state of open rebellion.
What seems more natural in such a case than that apathy as to further acquisi
tion of territory in North America should have prevailed in British councils?
When the War oi 1812 was declared the Oregon case may be said
to have rested on an even basis as far as are concerned the claims of
Great Britain and the United States. During the three decades fol
lowing that war there was a perfect sequence of events that in an un
usually fortunate, though now apparently natural, way worked to
the advantage of the American cause. These were the recognition of
the American claim to Astoria in the Treaty of Ghent, the joint occu
pancy treaties of 1818 and 1827, the purchase of Florida in 1819,
which included a quitclaim deed to any Spanish claims that might re
main in the Northwest,^ the treaty with Russia in 1824, the injury to
the beaver trade through the development of the silk hat, the Cana
dian rebellion of 1837, which created an apathy on the part of the
British Govemment toward extending territory in America, and the
success of the Hudson's Bay Co. in holding Oregon as a game pre
serve until the time was ripe for a race toward actual settlement.
Geography and geology contributed no small share to this solution.
St. Louis was the metropolis of the western American fur trade.
1 Transactions of the Twelfth Annual Reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association for
1884. Salem, Oreg., 1885, pp. 25-37.
2 Treaties a^d Conventions, 1776-1887, 1016-1021.

TOWNS OP THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. 171
' Between St. Louis and the barrier of the Rocky Mountains lay vast
plains, part of which were known as the " Great American Desert."
This double barrier checked the westward movement for a time,
cracial for our theme, until conditions could mature for the great
migrations between 1840 and 1860. That critical time is thus stated
by Prof. F. G. Young:
The vanguard of the pioneers had reached the western limits of Iowa, Mis
souri, and Arkansas. Settlement of the plains beyond before the age of rail
roads was out of the question. The next move, then, must be, as it were, a
flight to the Pacific coast, where communication with the civilized world would
again be open by the sea.*
To the northward, however, the system of rivers permitted the
British fur traders to extend their chain of posts on into Oregon,
giving them a kind of possession, which subsequently proved a
hindrance rather than a help when it was concluded to consider the
quality of occupation.
The first actual occupation by the Americans was made when the
bands of missionaries sent by the Methodist Episcopal Church and
the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions from
1834 to 1844 planted in Oregon their missions and their homes. In
1842 and more especially in 1843 the regular stream of American
immigration into Oregon began. The question of actual occupation
was then taking on a meaning which the British fur traders were
quick to discern. They had already allowed some of their retired
servants to settle on farms, and in 1839 had begun a systematic
development along this line through the agency of their subsidiary
Puget Sound Agricultural Co. In 1841 they imported a number
of British settlers from the Red River territory. Though abun
dantly successful in establishing trading posts and in ruling a wild
territory from their stockaded forts, their efforts at establisliing
agricultural settlements or securing actual occupation were feeble
indeed as compared with those of the onrushing trains of American
immigants. However, this last stage of the race for sovereignty was perfectly
fair. The treaty of joint occupancy was still in effect. It was April,
1846, when the American Government gave Great Britain notice that
that treaty would be abrogated at the end of the stipulated 12
months. Matters had come to such a pass at that time that, instead
of waiting for the lapse of 12 months, the treaty fixing the boundary
was concluded on June 15, 1846, less than 2 months from the date
of the notice. A recent Canadian writer has gone so far as to
say that had the joint occupancy continued another dozen years,
until the Fraser River gold excitement of 1857-58, the Americans
1 F. G. Young, ed., The Correspondence and Journals of Capt. Nathaniel .1. Wyeth, in
Sources of the History of Oregon, I, xiii-xiv.

172 AMEBICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
would have wrested what is now the Province of British Columbia
from the British Crown.^
Though the treaty of boundaries was concluded in 1846, a final
adjustment between the United States and the Hudson's Bay Co.
was not reached until September 10, 1869. During that store
of years the stations were held by representatives of the Hudson's
Bay Co., but the posts dwindled away in power and importance.
At the last many of them became the homesteads of the British care
takers, who became American citizens to acquire title. The present
writer has visited Nisqually, once the chief settlement of white men
on Puget Sound, and on the homestead of Edward Huggins, the last
Hudson's Bay clerk at the fort, found many ruins and relics of the
old days. Likewise a visit to ColviUe, the old capital of the upper
Columbia trade, disclosed the fact that the McDonald family main
tained there a farm, using the old blockhouse fort for a henhouse.
The American settlers built for themselves fresh new towns, the
nuclei being usually a sawmill, a water power, a mine, or a convenient
crossroads in the farming districts. Many of the pioneers had to
build forts and stockades to protect their homes from Indians, but
the dramatic life of the fur trade had vanished before the dawn of
the real era of town building in old Oregon.
1 James White, " British Diplomacy and Canada," in University Magazine, VII (October,
1908), 398-414.

2. MORTON MATTHEW McCARVER, FRONTIER CITY BUILDER.

By Edmond S. Meant.

The westward movement in American history is well exemplified
in the life of Morton Matthew McCarver, whose career deserves more
attention than it has hitherto received. He was one of those keen,
brave, mentally alert Kentuckians, whose deeds have enlivened and
enriched so many pages of western annals.
His parents, Joseph McCarver and Betsey Morton McCarver,
moved, in 1799, from the woods of southwestern North Carolina into
the wilderness of Kentucky and settled in Madison County near the
new town of Lexington. There on January 14, 1807, was bom to
them the son who received the name of Morton Matthew. The
mother was a leader in the sect of Shakers, and as such maintained
a rule of the home that became irksome to the restless boy who
eagerly fed upon stories of the rivers and a farther west. At the
age of 14 the lad left his home, and by that act became " dead " to
his strict Shaker mother, who ever after refused to see him again.
Like Lincoln, who was born in the same region two years later than
he, this boy received his introduction to the great outside world by
a flatboat trip down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. For a few
years in Louisiana and Texas he acquired many rough experiences,
the bitter lesson most thoroughly learned being that a poor white
boy had small chance for advancement in that region at that time.
He retumed to Kentucky, obtained employment and proceeded
vigorously with his self-education. In 1829 he moved into the newer
State of Illinois, and on May 6, 1830, married Mary Ann Jennings,
of Monmouth. He moved about from place to place, worked and
traded, accumulating experience and property. He desired to cross
the Mississippi River and secure a foothold in the wild Indian lands
of the western banks. He picked out a place on which to build a
new town. The Black Hawk War broke out and young McCarver
fought with the Illinois troops. He was present when Black Hawk's
173

174 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
beaten tribe signed the treaty with Gen. Winfield Scott, by which
the Indians gave up the lands that later became eastern Iowa.
The site that he wanted for a town was a rocky bluff which the
Indians called Shokoquon and which the white men called Flint
Hill. There were then associated with McCarver two kinsmen,
Simpson S. White, who had married Mrs. McCarver's sister, and
Amzi Doolittle, who had married Mr. White's sister. When the
treaty was signed in 1832 these three men were the first to cross the
river and take possession of that coveted hill. But the treaty had
stipulated that the lands should not be opened to settlement until
June 1, 1833. Soldiers came and drove the town builders away.
They returned to the claim, and again the soldiers drove them off and
burned their cabins. When the legal date arrived the three deter
mined men crossed the river at daybreak, and this time they were
not disturbed. They were joined by a Vermonter named John B.
Gray, who urged the case so strongly that the town builders con
sented to call the new place Burlington, though for several years
the local name of Flint Hill persisted, and, in fact, the post office was
so called at first. A flat-bottomed ferryboat propelled by oars was
maintained by McCarver and associates to give Burlington its first
transportation facilities.
In September, 1834, McCarver, in the presence of citizens and sol
diers at Montrose, read a proclamation by Gov. Stevens T. Mason,
of Michigan Territory, declaring that the laws of the United States
and of Michigan had been extended over the country in the " Black
Hawk Purchase." Two years later, when Iowa had been transferred
to the care of Wisconsin Territory, Congress enacted a law donating
640 acres for town purposes to each of the towns of Burlington, Fort
Madison, Bellevue, Dubuque, Peru, and Mineral Point. McCarver,
George Cubbage, and W. A. Corell were appointed commissioners to
carry out the provisions of this law. McCarver devoted himself
earnestly to this task, though the beneficent plan worked against the
ready sale of his own town lots.
Iowa became a Territory in 1838, and on January 7, 1839, the first
governor, Robert Lucas, as commander in chief of the Iowa military
forces, issued an order appointing Morton M. McCarver to the posi
tion of commissary general. He took much interest in the office.
The title of general clung to him through life. He saw active service
in a similar office during Indian wars in Oregon. For a time Mc
Carver prospered in Iowa. He did not confine himself to the expan
sion of his town of Burlington, but took part in the development of
lead mines near Dubuque and traveled about the Territory. The
widespread panic of 1837 seriously affected western interests. Mc
Carver began to fear that Burlington could not hold its own in the
race with such cities as Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis,

MORTON MATTHEW McCARVER. 175
and New Orleans. The settlers of Iowa were spreading out into
agricultural communities. He was hearing of a land of promise
much farther to the westward. American missionaries had gone
there and planted homes as well as missions. American settlers
began to cross the plains for Oregon. It was highly desirable that
settlers should go there. The joint occupancy treaty of 1827 was
still in force between Great Britain and the United States. The
British fur traders were in possession, and some retired employees
of the Hudson's Bay Co. had taken up homes. Prior to the arrival
of the missionaries there were no American homes in Oregon, and
now there was beginning the race toward a settlement of the sover
eignty of that region by actual occupation by either British subjects
or American citizens. To encourage American effort in this race.
Senator Linn, of Missouri, was passing through Congress a lav,'
granting 640 acres to each family and 160 additional acres to eacl;
minor child.
Here was a combination of conditions that presented an irresistible
lure to the venturesome spirit of Gen. McCarver. It was with diffi
culty that he resisted the temptation to join the migration of 1842
consisting of 111 persons, headed by Dr. Elijah White, Medorem
Crawford, L. W. Hastings, A. L. Lovejoy, and Columbia Lancaster.
His ardor had no chance of being weakened during the succeeding
12 months, as there were agitations and public meetings in his
neighborhood at which the Oregon question was discussed in all its
phases. He joined the great Oregon caravan of 1843. There were
nearly 1,000 persons in this migration. Peter H. Bumett, who later
became the first governor of California, was made captain and Mc
Carver was one of the council of nine. This migration was one of the
crucial events in American history on the Pacific coast. It gave the
Americans a real standing in that region, it solved the main portion
of the problem of the joint occupancy treaty, many men of the party
took active parts in the struggling provisional govemment, and from
that time there was no more of doubt as to whether Oregon could or
would be peopled by actual settlers.
McCarver had joined the party without cattle or household impedi
menta. True to his town-building in.stinct, he formed, on the trail,
an agreement with Burnett, and when they had crossed the Rocky
Mountains, he pushed on ahead of the party and selected a j)lace for
a town on the Willamette River. In honor of Missouri's Senator
and Oregon's friend, he called the place Linnton. By the time his
partner Bumett and the other immigrants arrived he was ready to
expand and build up his new city. In this he failed. Oregon City,
at the falls of the Willamette, in addition to the adjacent water
power, was nearer the farming lands, and between Oregon City and
Linnton, Portland arose and overshadowed both. McCarver after-

176 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
wards claimed that the real reason for his failure at Linnton was a
lack of nails. They did not have enough of these useful articles for
the commonest needs, and a new town on rush orders could not be
built without nails.
He had left his family in Iowa, but he promptly sent for them.
His letter, going by way of Hawaii, England, and the Atlantic States
to Iowa, took 10 months in passage. His family, therefore, did not
arrive until 1845. Finding his town venture unpromising he secured
a farm and began work there with his characteristic energy. Retain
ing, however, his faith in the future commercial and industrial
growth of the region, he acquired property in the new towns and
was keenly alive to all development. It is worth noting that while
crossing the mountains to Oregon he wrote that it would be perfectly
feasible to construct a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific,
thus becoming one of the earliest prophets of a transcontinental rail
road. The first legislative committee chosen for the reorganized provi
sional govemment included the newly arrived McCarver, and, on
assembling at Oregon City, on June 18, 1844, the committee elected
him speaker. He must have felt much at home, for on July 5, 1843,
the legislative committee's report had been approved by the people,
adopting as the law of the land almost the entire body of laws en
acted by the legislature of Iowa Territory in Burlington, at its first
session in 1838-39. The McCarver committee enacted a number of
wholesome measures, including a stringent prohibition law for the
protection of the primitive settlement and a law prohibiting slavery.
Ardent Kentuckian and Democrat as he was, McCarver gave earnest
support to both these measures.
While apparently a plunger in business, McCarver was an honor
able man. The panic of 1837 had left him with $10,000 of debts in
Iowa. These he paid with money acquired on the Pacific coast. He
gave full credit to Dr. Marcus Whitman for that missionary's help
in guiding the immigration of 1843. Though anxious to do all he
could to strengthen the American claims to all of Oregon, he gave
abundant praise to Dr. John McLoughlin and James Douglas, of the
Hudson's Bay Co., for their many kindnesses to needy American im
migrants. He was grievously disappointed when the treaty of 1846
gave the British part of old Oregon, but he at once became active
toward securing congressional and executive action for the regular
government of what was then American territory beyond further
dispute. While these questions were absorbing the attention of the pioneer
legislators, there came the startling announcement that gold had been
discovered in California. There was a stampede from Oregon and
McCarver was one of the first to go, hurrying, as was his invariable

MORTON MATTHEW McCARVER. 177
custom, on horseback. He secured a claim on Feather River. Again
he believed he could do better at town building. He entered into an
agreement with the Sutters, father and son, to build a town on their
land, and in the autumn of 1848 William H. Warner was hired to
survey and plat the town, which they called Sacramento. All was
going well when, to McCarver's great chagrin, he was supplanted by
his old partner, Peter H. Burnett, in the management of the enter
prise. He then bought some of the lots, became a landlord and mer
chant, and operated a schooner in trade with the bay. Sacramento,
needing local -govemment, elected 11 men to what was called a legis
lature. McCarver was one of these. When Gen. Riley, the military
governor, called for a convention to devise a plan for a Territorial
government or adopt a State constitution, a meeting was held in
Sacramento, over which Gen. McCarver presided. Gen. Riley's call
was approved, and later McCarver was elected one of the delegates
to the convention, which met at Monterey on September 1, 1849.
He was one of the men who worked effectively toward framing that
famous document so that California would be admitted a " free " and
not a " slave " State.
A flood at Sacramento discouraged McCarver. He sold his inter
ests, speculated awhile in San Francisco, became interested in
schooners plying between Hawaiian and Pacific coast points, and then
settled down as a farmer near Oregon City. He became a model
agriculturist, originating three new varieties of apples and obtaining
a medal as a special prize for the best display of fruits in the Agri
cultural and Horticultural Fair in San Francisco in 1853.
When the Methodist missionaries began to close some of their sta
tions, they transferred the one at The Dalles to the American Board
of C'Ommissioners for Foreign Missions (known as the Whitman
Missions in Oregon). McCarver negotiated to secure possession of
the site, intending to build a town there, but finding the title entan
gled, he abandoned the plan.
He participated in three Indian wars in Oregon, most of the time
in his familiar, though arduous, work as commissary general. When
the Fraser River gold excitement broke out in 1857 he hastened to
the scene, but contented himself with buying a few lots in Victoria,
British Columbia, which he subsequently sold at a profit.
In 1862 he joined another stampede to the newly discovered gold
fields of Idaho. He organized the firm of McCarver, Clark & Town-
send and did a thriving business in Bannock City, since called Idaho
City. Crime was rampant in Idaho then. Hasty justice was some
times meted out by committees of vigilantes. While sojouming in
Auburn, Idaho, Gen. McCarver was called on to preside over one of
these popular tribunals. Not long after this he left his business to
73885°— 11  12

178 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
the care of his two partners while he went to New York to sell stock
in some quartz mines. The Civil War had just ended, business was
disturbed, and he failed. While he was gone Idaho City was burned
and McCarver returned to Portland.
His first wife had died in 1846, and in 1848 he had married Mrs.
Julia A. Buckalew, a widow. Two children had survived their
mother and to this second union had come five children. While
always a generous provider, it would seem in all reason that he would
now seek to give them a permanent home, but such was not to be.
His family and friends were unable to restrain him when he became
imbued with the idea that he could build a city on Puget Sound that
would be all ready for the coming of the promised railroad.
Obtaining financial support from business friends in Portland, he
saddled his horse and started alone for Puget Sound. This was late
in March, 1868. He had studied all available maps, and by a sin
gular foresight analyzed the problems of commerce by sea in contact
with transportation by rail through adjacent mountain passes. He
selected Comraencement Bay, so named by the Wilkes expedition in
1841, and soon began to build there his last city. The place was at
first known as Commencement Citj' and sometimes as Puyallup, for
a river of that name that flows into the bay. When McCarver heard
that a book called " The Canoe and the Saddle," by Theodore Win
throp, contained the statement that the Indians had called the great
snow-crowned mountain " Tacoma," he at once chose that as the name
for his city. His letters of this period reveal a wonderful hope and
energy. In platting the town he used the ideas obtained at Sacra
mento. He immediately urged and aided in the building of a saw
mill. He explored and exploited the adjacent and tributary agri
cultural lands. He was one of the first discoverers of coal 'in that
vicinity and frequently sought aid in bringing that product to market
through his loved town. While speculation was rife as to what point
the Northern Pacific Railroad Co. would select for its western ter
minus, he was confident that Tacoma would be chosen. He finally
realized this hope in 1873, and he felt content that he had achieved
the founding of a great city.
He had selected a cemetery for the new city, and his was the first
adult body laid away there in a grave of his own choosing. The
whole community mourned the death of the " Old General," who
departed this life on April 17, 1875.
In one aspect of the westward movement Morton Matthew McCar
ver was but a fleck of foam on the great human wave that swept
irresistibly over the plains and mountains from the Mississippi to the
sea, but it must be acknowledged that that fleck of foam was fre
quently on the crest of the surging wave and was often first to splash
itself on the inundated wilderness. He was a many-sided leader

MORTON MATTHEW McCARVER. 179
whose far-seeing plans have aided thousands of American citizens,
who cherish his memory with affectionate regard.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Gen. McCarver's daughter Virginia became the wife of Thomas W.
Prosch, whose home has been in Seattle for many years. The mate
rial for this paper has been derived from conversations with Mrs.
Prosch and her daughters, Edith and Beatrice, who have been mem
bers of my history classes; from family records in this home, and
especially from the little book privately published in Seattle in 1906
by Mr. Prosch, entitled " McCarver and Tacoma."

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