USA > California > Siskiyou County > History of Siskiyou County, California > Part 4
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CENSUS.
1849 January (Estimated) 26,000
1850 . 107,000
1852 264,435
1860
June . 379,994
1870
560,247
1880 864,836
The governors of California since the American conquest are as follows :-
TERRITORIAL.
TERM.
Com. John D. Sloat .. July 7, 1846-Aug. 17, 1846
Com. R. F. Stockton. . Aug. 17, 1846-Jan. - , 1847
Col. John C. Fremont .. Jan. - , 1847-Mar. 1, 1847
Gen. S. W. Kearny ... Mar. 1, 1847-May 31, 1847
Col. R. B. Mason . . . . May 31, 1847-Apr. 13, 1849
Gen. Bennett Riley . . Apr. 13, 1849-Dec. 20, 1849
STATE. INAUGURATED.
Peter H. Burnett*
December 20, 1849
John Me Dougal
January 9, 1851
John Bigler
January 8, 1852
John Bigler January
8, 1854
J. Neely Johnson
January
8, 1856
John B. Weller
January
8,1858
Milton S. Latham*
January 8,1860
*Resigned.
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HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
John G. Downey
January 14, 1860
Leland Stanford .
January 8, 1862
Frederick F. Low+
December 2, 1863
Henry H. Haight.
December 5, 1867
Newton Booth*
December 8, 1871
Romualdo Pacheco
February 27, 1873
William Irwin.
December 9, 1875
George C. Perkins.
January 8, 1880
CHAPTER IV. THE TRAPPERS IN CALIFORNIA.
FOR twenty years, while California was a Mexican territory, the streams of the great Sacramento val- ley, and in the northern portion of the State, were constantly visited by bands of trappers, belonging both to the several American fur companies and to the great Hudson Bay Company. A brief outline of the character of these companies will be necessary to a proper understanding of the nature of the trap- per occupation of California.
The first and most important of these is the cele- brated Hudson Bay Company. Very soon after the first colonization of America, the shipment of furs to England began, and, in 1670, Charles II. granted a charter to Prince Rupert, the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Craven, Lord Ashley, and others, giving them full possession of the country about Hudson bay, including all of British America not occupied by the Russians and the French. They established forts and a system of government, and became a most powerful corporation. The Canadians estab- lished a trading post at Mackinaw, and many indi- viduals were engaged independently in the fur trade beyond the limits of the territory occupied by this vast monopoly. In 1783 these traders united in one association, called the Northwest Company, and soon became formidable rivals to the English company. It was Mckenzie, of this new organization, who, in 1789, penetrated to the Arctic ocean by the way of Slave lake and Mckenzie river, and, in 1792, crossed the Rocky mountains, discovered Frazer river, and, on the twentieth of July, reached the Pacific ocean, near King's island, in latitude 52°. From this time the competition was sharp and brisk between the rival associations, and they both became powerful and well settled. The expedition of Lewis and Clark to the Columbia and their residence among the Mandans, in the winter of 1804-5, attracted the attention of these companies to this region, and, in 1806, Simon Frazer, a partner in the . Northwest Company, established a post on Frazer lake.
The pioneer among American traders in this re- gion was John Jacob Astor, who had been engaged in the fur business in the East since 1784, as founder
and manager of the American Fur Company. In 1810 he organized the Pacific Fur Company, and sent the ten-gun ship Tonquin to the mouth of the Columbia, where it arrived March 22, 1811. Mc- Dougal, Tom McKay and David Stuart, partners in the company, were passengers. They erected a fort near the mouth of the river, and named it Astoria. Captain Thorn then sailed with the vessel along the coast, to trade with the natives, and himself and all on board, save the interpreter, were killed by Indians at Vancouver's island. In July a party of the North west Company, under Mr. Thompson, ar- rived at Astoria, with the intention of taking pos- session of the mouth of the Columbia river, but, finding themselves anticipated by the Americans, retraced their steps to Montreal. On the fifteenth of February, 1812, a party of the Pacific Fur Company, under Wilson Price Hunt, arrived at Astoria, after an overland journey of privation and danger lasting eighteen months. In May, of the same year, the ship Beaver arrived from New York with supplies. Posts had been established on Okinagan, on the Spokane, and above the mouth of the Shahaptan, but, in 1813, news was received of the war between Great Britain and the United States, and the expected ar- rival of a British war vessel.
The interior posts were abandoned, and the non- arrival of supply ships from New York, caused by the uncertainties of war and the dangers of naviga- tion, so unsettled McDougal, the partner in charge, that when two parties of the Northwest Company, under McTavish and Stuart, arrived at Astoria, in October, 1813, and announced the expected arrival of two war vessels, the Phoebe and Isaac Todd, he sold all the property to that association for one-third its value, and, to show his bad faith, soon after became a partner in the same company. A little later the Raccoon arrived and took possession of Astoria in the name of His Britannic Majesty, and changed the name to Fort George. The fort was restored to the United States in 1818, under provisions of the treaty of Ghent, but the government failed to grant the en- couragement to Mr. Astor that he solicited and should have received, and this region was left to the occupa- tion of the Northwest Company. After a war of two years between the rival English companies, in which a bloody battle was fought in the Red River country, they united, in 1824, in one corporation, under the name of the Hudson Bay Company, the principal establishment on the coast being Fort Van- couver, built by the Northwest Company in 1821. For years they dominated this region, having posts in the whole Columbia basin, until the establishment of the boundary line north of Washington Territory compelled them to withdraw into British America, in 1844. The charter of the company having ex-
+ Term increased from two to four years. ' Resigned.
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HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
pired, it now possesses no territorial rights, and is simply a trading company, handling, with C. M. Lampson & Co., of London, the bulk of the fur trade of the world.
Next in importance are the companies of Ameri- can trappers that approached from the east, crossed the Rocky mountains and made their way to the Pacific coast. In 1762 the province of Louisiana, embracing all of the western portion of the United States not claimed by Spain, belonged to France, and the governor chartered a fur company under the name of Pierre Ligueste Laclede, Antoine Maxan & Co. Laclede established St. Louis the following year, and it became a headquarters for the fur trade similar to Mackinaw and Montreal. The business of this company and many others that engaged along the Missouri in the trapping of beaver became very large. The acquisition of Louisiana by the United States threw this trade into the hands of the Americans. In 1815 Con- gress passed an Act expelling British traders from all the Territories east of the Rocky mountains, and the North American Company, at the head of which Mr. Astor had been for many years, began to send trappers to the head waters of the Mis- sissippi and Missouri rivers. American trappers also penetrated into New Mexico and established a trade between St. Louis and Santa Fè. Up to this time but one attempt had been made by trappers to penetrate the Rocky mountains, and that was in 1808 by the Missouri Fur Company, at the head of which was a Spaniard named Manuel Lisa. Posts were established on the upper Missouri and one on Lewis river, the south branch of the Columbia, but the failure of supplies and the hostility of the sav- ages caused its abandonment by the manager, Mr. Henry, in 1810.
In 1823, Gen. W. H. Ashley, a St. Louis mer- chant long engaged in the fur trade, pushed a trap- ping party into the Rocky mountains. He went up the Platte to the Sweetwater and up that stream to its source, discovered the South Pass, explored the head-waters of the Colorado, or Green, river and returned to St. Louis in the fall. The next year he again penetrated the mountains and built a trading fort on Lake Ashley, near Great Salt lake, and returned, leaving there one hundred men. From that time the head-waters of the Missouri and its tributaries, the Green and Columbia rivers and their tributaries, were the trapping ground of hun- dreds of daring men, whose wild and reckless life, privations and encounters with the savages make a theme of romance that has occupied the pen of Washington Irving and many authors of lesser note, and been the source from which the novelists of the sensational school have drawn a wealth of
material. It was the custom to divide the trappers into bands of sufficient strength to defend them- selves against the attacks of savages, and send them out in different directions during the trapping sea- son, to assemble the next summer at a grand ren- dezvous previously appointed, the head-waters of the Green river being the favorite locality for the annual meeting. In the spring of 1825 Jedediah S. Smith led a company of this kind, consisting of about forty men, into the country west of Great Salt lake, discovered Humboldt river and named it Mary's river, followed down that stream and crossed the Sierra Nevada into the great valley in July. He collected a large quantity of furs, established a headquarters on the American river near Folsom, and then with two companions recrossed the mount- ains through Walker's pass and returned to the general rendezvous on Green river, to tell of the wonderful valley he had visited.
Cronise speaks of American trappers having penetrated into California as early as 1820, but is evidently mistaken, as there is no record of any party crossing the Rocky mountains previous to the expedition of Mr. Ashley in 1823, save Lewis and Clark in 1804, Missouri Fur Company in 1808, and the Pacific Fur Company under Wilson P. Hunt in 1811. Jedediah S. Smith must stand in history as the first white man to lead a party overland into California.
The return of Smith with such a valuable collec- tion of furs and specimens of placer gold he had dis- covered on his return journey near Mono lake, led to his being sent again the next season with instruc- tions to thoroughly inspect the gold placers on the way. This time he went as a partner, Mr. Ashley having sold his interest to the Rocky mountain Fur Company, consisting of William Sublette, Jedediah S. Smith and David Jackson. He passed as far south as the Colorado river, and here had a battle with the Indians, in which all but himself, Turner and Galbraith were killed. They escaped and arrived at the Mission San Gabriel, where they were arrested as fillibusters and sent to San Diego, where they were released upon a certificate from the officers of some American vessels that chaneed to be on the coast, that they were peaceful trappers and had passports from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. This certificate bears date December 20, 1826, and in the following May we find them in camp near San José, where the following letter was written to Father Duran, who had sent to know what their presence there signified :-
REVEREND FATHER :- I understand through the medium of one of your Christian Indians, that you are anxious to know who we are, as some of the Indians have been at the mission and informed you that there were certain white people in the country. We are Americans on our journey to the River Co.
20
HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
Inmbia; we were in at the Mission San Gabriel in January last. I went to San Diego and saw the general and got a passport from him to pass on to that place. I have made several efforts to cross the mountains, but the snows being so deep, I could not succeed in getting over. I returned to this place (it being the only point to kill meat), to wait a few weeks until the snow melts so that I can go on; the Indians here also being friendly, 1 consider it the most safe point for me to remain, until such time as I can eross the mountains with my horses, having lost a great many in attempting to cross ten or fifteen days since. I am a long ways from home, and am anxious to get there as soon as the nature of the case will admit. Our situation is quite unpleasant, being destitute of clothing and most of the neces- saries of life, wild meat being onr principal subsistence. I am, Reverend Father, your strange but real friend and Christian brother, J. S. SMITH.
May 19th, 1827.
Reuniting himself with the company he had left on the American river the year before, Smith started for the Columbia river. Near the head of the Sacramento valley he passed out to the west, reaching the ocean near the mouth of Russian river, and followed the coast line as far as the Umpqua river, near Cape Arago, when all but himself, Daniel Prior and Richard Laughlin, were treach- erously murdered by savages, losing all their traps and furs. These men escaped to Fort Vancouver and related their misadventure to Dr. MeLaughlin, the agent of the Hudson Bay Company. Smith proposed to the agent that if he would send a party to punish the Indians and recover his property, he would con- duct them to the rich trapping grounds he had just left, and for this reason as well as because it was the policy of that corporation never to let an out- rage go unpunished, an expedition was sent out, chastised the savages and recovered most of the stolen property. Smith and a portion of this com- pany returned to Vancouver, while the balance, led by Alexander Roderick McLeod, entered California that fall by the route Smith had come out, and trapped on the streams of the valley. In the early part of the winter he was caught in a severe snow- storm on one of the tributaries of the . Sacramento, in Shasta county, and narrowly escaped starvation. They lost all their horses, and cached their furs, and after terrible suffering and exposure made their way back to Vancouver. This stream has since borne his name, but by one of those lapses of ignorance and carelessness, by means of which history is con- stantly being perverted, the stream is set down upon the maps as the McCloud. The reason for this is that the pronunciation of the two names is quite similar, and that Ross McCloud, a very worthy and well-known gentleman, resided on the stream in an early day, but not for a quarter of a century after it received its baptism of McLeod. The original and true name should be restored to it.
Upon the return of McLeod's unfortunate party to the fort, another, under Capt. Peter Ogden and
accompanied by Smith, started for the new trap- ping grounds by a different route. They passed up the Columbia and Lewis rivers to the source of the latter, at which point Smith left them and returned to the rendezvous of his company, to report his many misfortunes. He sold his interest in the Rocky Mountain Company in 1830, and in 1831 was treacherously killed by Indians while digging for water in the dry bed of the Cimeron river, near Taos, New Mexico, and was buried there by his companions. This is the last resting-place of the pioneer overland traveler to the beautiful valley of California. After Smith took his leave on Lewis river in 1828, Ogden's party continued south-west through Utah and Nevada and entered the San Joaquin valley through Walker's pass. They trapped up the valley to its head and then passed over to the coast and up to Vancouver by the route Smith had formerly traveled.
When Smith sold his interest in the Rocky Mount- ain Company, William Sublette and David Jackson retired also, and the new partners were Milton Sub- lette, James Bridger, Robert Campbell, Fitzpatrick, Frapp, and Jarvais. In 1831 the old American Fur Company that had been managed so long by Mr. Astor but now superintended by Ramsey Crooks, began to push into the trapping grounds of the other company, and sent out a large and well-appointed party under the command of Major Vanderburg and Mr. Dripps. Great rivalry sprang up between the two companies, intensified the following year by the appearance of a third competitor, in the person of Capt. B. L. E. Bonneville, with a well-organized party of one hundred and ten men, and a small party of Massachusetts men under Nathaniel Wyeth, who built a fort in 1834 on Snake river, called Fort Hall, and sold it to the Hudson Bay Company the following year.
In the spring of 1832, Michael Laframbois entered the Sacramento valley at the head of a party of Hudson Bay Company's trappers, visiting the streams as far south as Tulare lake, and returned over the usual route along the coast to Fort Van- couver the following spring.
In the winter of 1829-30 Ewing Young had led a party into the San Joaquin valley, through Walker's pass, and had trapped on the streams of that valley and those that flow into Tulare lake. He had for several years been in charge of trapping parties that operated upon the headwaters of the Del Norte, Rio Grande and Colorado rivers. In the fall of 1832, Young again entered the valley from the south by the Tejon pass, when the Hud- son Bay party under Laframbois was trapping there. Young ascended King's river to the foot- hills and struck north, reaching the San Joaquin
RESIDENCE OF JOSIAH DOLL, 320 ACRES, SCOTT VALLEY, SISKIYOU CO., CAL.
-
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HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
where it debouches from the mountains. A canoe was made in which the men navigated the stream down to the mouth of the Merced, where they were joined by the balance of the party. Having found on both of these streams evidences of a recent visit by trappers, they struck across the country with the design of getting in advance of their rivals, and on the Sacramento, ten miles below the site of Sac- ramento city, they came upon Laframbois and his party. Young pushed on to the mouth of Feather river, then went west and camped for a while in Capay valley, finally crossed the mountains to the coast and continued north to the Umpqua, where Smith had met with such a disaster five years before. They then recrossed the mountains to the eastward, pursuing their occupation on the tributary streams of the Columbia, entering the Sacramento valley again in the winter of 1833-4, from the north. They continued towards the south, trapping on the various streams, and finally passed out to the east by the Tejon pass.
The condition of the Indians in the valley as Young passed down this last time was truly pitiful. During the previous summer an epidemic scourge had visited them and swept away whole villages and tribes. Where before had been many happy bands of natives who gazed upon their white visitors with awe and astonishment, now was mourning and desolation, and the few remaining natives that had survived the general reign of death fled from the approach of the whites, for to them did they ascribe the visit of the death angel. There are a few still living who survived this terrible visitation, and they refer te it with sorrow and sadness.
Still another band of trappers visited the valley in 1833. Captain Bonneville sent Jos. R. Walker with a party of forty men to explore the country about Great Salt lake, the company starting from the Green river rendezvous in July, 1833. They suffered from want of food and water in the desert to the west of the lake, until they struck Mary's, or Ogden's river, now the Humboldt, which they fol- lowed to the sink and then decided to cross the mountains into California.
(See biography of Stephen H. Meek, below.)
The company failed entirely to accomplish its mission, and the disappointment and loss of this expedition, as well as failure in other ventures, caused Captain Bonneville to abandon the fur trade and return to the States. In 1835, the two rival fur companies united as the American Fur Com- pany, Bridger, Fontenelle and Dripps being the leaders. The same year, also, Mr. Wyeth sold Fort Hall and his stock of goods to the Hudson Bay Com- pany and retired to civilized life. This left the con- solidated company and a few " lone traders " the only
competitors of the great English corporation. For several years longer the competition was main- tained, but gradually the Hudson Bay Com- pany by reason of its position and superior manage- ment absorbed the trade, until the American trap- pers, so far as organized effort was concerned, aban- doned the field.
Every party of American trappers that passed through California left a few of its number there, and when the fur trade began to break up, in 1838 and the succeeding few years, many of them came to settle here and in the Willamette valley, in Oregon. The Hudson Bay Company, whose agents here from 1833 were J. Alexander Forbes and W. G. Ray, with- drew from this region in 1845, and the fur business in California came to an end. There is now residing in Siskiyou county and still pursuing his old occupa- tion of hunting and trapping, one of these old mount- ain men, Stephen H. Meek, whose portrait and biography are given in this volume. Also living at Los Angeles is Col. J. J. Warner, who was here in 1832-34 with the Ewing Young party. Mr. Forbes, the Hudson Bay Company's agent, resided in Oak- land until his death a few months ago.
STEPHEN HALL MEEK.
There is probably not now living a mountain man who has had so varied an experience and so many wild adventures, hair-breadth escapes and battles with savage animals and no less savage men, as the veteran trapper, Stephen H. Meek. He was born in Washington county, Virginia, on the Fourth of July, 1807, and is a relative of President Polk. He attended the common schools of the day when young. When scarcely twenty years of age he became imbued with that restless spirit of adventure that has since been a marked characteristic of his life, and left his home for the then comparatively unknown West. St. Louis was at that time the center of the fur trade of the United States, and when he reached that city he engaged with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, to work in their warehouse. He was placed by the celebrated William Sublette in the cellar, with sev- eral other green hands, to "rum the beaver," which operation consisted of spreading the skins out upon the cellar floor and sprinkling them with rum for preservation. Sublette left them with the remark, "Don't you boys get tight, now," at which idea they laughed. Soon the fumes from the rum began to affect them, and it was not long before they were reeling about the cellar apparently helplessly drunk. Sub- lette then put in an appearance and pretended to be angry with them. "Can't I leave you here alone for a few minutes without your getting drunk? Do you think that is the kind of men I want about me? Here," said he, " drink this," and he drew a cup of
22
HISTORY OF SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
rum from the barrel. This had the effect of making them sober again, and Sublette again left them with the remark, "The next time you rum the beaver just rum yourselves first."
In 1829 he went to Lexington, Missouri, and worked in a steam saw-mill erected by his brother, Hiram C. Meek, then a merchant of that place and now living in Jackson, Amador county, California, at the advaced age of ninety-three years. In the spring of 1830, Meek joined a party being taken to the mountains by William Sublette and Robert Campbell, and there commenced that wild life of adventure he led so many years. The great annual gathering of the trappers that season was held at the favorite rendezvous on Green river, and four rival companies were there competing for the pat- ronage of the Indians and free trappers, the Rocky Mountain Company, the American Company, the Hudson Bay Company, and an independent com- pany. It was the custom to send trapping parties, or brigades, in different directions to trap, all of them assembling again the next summer at some rendezvous previously agreed upon. Meek joined the brigade of Milton Sublette and went to the Lewis fork of the Columbia river and wintered at Blackfoot lake. In the fall of 1831 he was again with Milton Sublette, and trapped in the Black Hills, near where Fort Laramie was afterwards built, on the head-waters of the Platte. The winter was spent on Powder river, and in the spring they went to Wind river and trapped on that stream, the Yellowstone, Mussel Shell river, and back through Jackson's hole to Wind river, the rendez- vous being at the mouth of Tar, or Popyoisa, river, a tributary of that stream. In the fall of 1832 Meek went to the Blackfoot country with Bridger's brigade ; crossed to Powder and Yellowstone, and then to the Missouri ; went up that stream to the three forks, and up the left-hand fork to the head of Big Gray Bull river, a tributary of the Yellowstone; then to Green river, and finally wintered on Snake river, where Fort Hall was afterwards built. In the spring they trapped Salmon, Snake and Point Neuf, and then went to Green river rendezvous. There he hired to Capt. B. L. E. Bonneville to accompany an expedition of thirty-four men under Joseph Walker to explore the Great Salt lake. They got too far west, and finally started down the Mary's, or Humboldt, river for California, over a country entirely unknown to the trappers. They discovered Truckee, Carson and Walker rivers, Donner lake and Walker's pass, through which they went and pitched their camp for the winter on the shore of Tulare lake, in December, 1833. Walker with a party of ten men went to Monterey and returned in March, when they broke camp and
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