Illustrated history of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra counties, with California from 1513 to 1850, Part 14

Author: Fariss & Smith, San Francisco
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: San Francisco, Fariss & Smith
Number of Pages: 710

USA > California > Lassen County > Illustrated history of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra counties, with California from 1513 to 1850 > Part 14
USA > California > Plumas County > Illustrated history of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra counties, with California from 1513 to 1850 > Part 14
USA > California > Sierra County > Illustrated history of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra counties, with California from 1513 to 1850 > Part 14

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

1813, news was received of the war between Great Britain and the United States, and the expected arrival 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 navigation, 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 Phæbe 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 encouragement to Mr. Astor that he solicited, and should have received, and this region was left to the occupation 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 Vancouver, 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 1845. The charter of the company having expired, 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 American 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, Congress passed an act expelling British traders from all the territories east of the Rocky mountains, and the American Fur Company, at the head of which Mr. Astor had been for many years, began to send trappers to the head-waters of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. American trappers also penetrated into New Mexico and estab- lished a trade between St. Louis and Santa Fé. 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 savages caused its abandonment by the manager, Mr. Henry, in 1810.

In 1823, Gen. W. H. Ashley, a St. Louis merchant long engaged in the fur trade, pushed a trapping 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, both of which bodies of water were discovered by him that year, 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 hundreds 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 themselves against the attacks of savages, and send them out in different directions during the trapping season, to assemble the next summer at a grand rendezvous 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 mountains 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 evi- dently mistaken, as there is no record of any party crossing the Rocky mountains previous to the expe- dition 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 collection of furs, and specimens of placer gold he had discovered on his return journey near Mono lake [sce article on the Discovery of Gold], led to his being sent again the next season, with instructions 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 filibusters and sent to San Diego, but were released upon a certificate from the officers of some Amer- ican vessels which chanced 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 Columbia ; 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, I consider it the most safe point for me to remain, until such time as I can cross 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 necessaries of life, wild meat being our principal subsistence. I am, Reverend Father, your strange but real friend and Christian brother,

May 19th, 1827.

J. S. SMITH.

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 treacherously murdered by savages, losing all their traps and furs. These men escaped to Fort Vancouver and related their misadventure to Dr. Mclaughlin, 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 outrage go unpunished, an expedition was sent out, chas- tised the savages and recovered most of the stolen property. Smith and a portion of this company 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 they were 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 . the name of the leader of this pioneer party, but by one of those lapses of ignorance and carelessness, by means of which history is constantly 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. A recent discovery may throw some light upon the events of this disastrous expedition. The story is best told by Hon. E. Steele in a letter to the Yreka Journal, November 4, 1874. Mr. Steele says :-

" WHEN? BY WHOM? AND WHY? The above inquiry was suggested to my mind on arriving at Battle's milk-ranch, on the north fork of McCloud river, on my late visit to Modoc county. At the ranch I met the old gentleman, Mr. Battle, who asked me to take a walk with him to the summit of a hill on the north side of the river, and about six hundred yards distant therefrom, to examine an old trough that he had unearthed there. On arriving at the spot designated, I found a trough about sixteen feet long, about eighteen inches wide and a foot deep, dug out of a cedar tree, that lay under the surface of the ground about three feet, and was much decayed by time. The trough had been hewn out of a tree about two feet through, as near as I could judge, and then the inside burned, the work bearing evi- dences of having been executed with a good, sharp axe and by a handy axeman. It was buried in the summit of the hill in a red-clay soil, and had lain there until it had nearly decayed, the form and charac- ter of the wood and the charred coating of the inside only remaining. The earth had been so long upon it that it had assumed its natural appearance of an undisturbed soil, no evidence being discernable of its ever having been dug, roots of the shrubs and trees passing all through the clay above the trough. Upon the surface of the ground, lying lengthwise over the spot upon which the trough was buried, was an old pine tree, about three feet in diameter, which had blown down since the ground had been disturbed, in falling burying some of its branches a foot or more into the soil, and which had lain thus until it was nearly rotted away, the portion directly over the trough having been consumed by fire. About ten feet from the south end of the trough were some old, rusty gun-locks, buried about one foot under ground.

" The only account which we can get of the trough was the history of its burial, as given by an aged Indian, which induced the excavation by Mr. Battle. The Indian's story was that, when he was a small boy, three white men, a people before then never seen by the Indians, were discovered by him

making a caché of blankets, etc., in this trough, or canoe, as he called it. He went to the spot, and after looking around for a while, he fixed upon a place to commence digging, and there found the old gun-locks and some other trifling things, but not his canoe. He again made observation, and fixed upon another place about ten feet further north, and on digging there, the canoe was found in it. He further said there was a camp of other white men, at the time, about fifteen miles off, which was discovered by the Indians, and the white men killed. Then these, he said, left. He could give no date or time other than that it was when he was a small boy, and he is now an old man, probably fifty years or upwards. The Indians undoubtedly raised the caché, as nothing was found in the trough, and no cover over it, the hollow side being upwards."

In connection with this discovery and the tale of the Indian, it will be remembered that the party of Hudson Bay Company men, under McLeod, when caught by the snows of winter cached their furs . and other articles somewhere on the McLeod river, which they went back for afterwards, but found to be spoiled. None of this party was killed by natives, and in that respect the story of the Indian does not tally. On this subject Stephen Meek says that McLeod's (whose name, he says, was John McCloud) party was attacked on this river by the Indians, and all killed but McLeod himself and one companion, who succeeded in making their way back to Vancouver after many months of privation and terrible suffering. The information about McLeod came from J. Alexander Forbes, for years agent of the Hud- son Bay Company in California, and author of Forbes' California, written in 1835 and published in London in 1839, and presumed to be far better posted on the subject than Mr. Meek, although the latter gentleman assures us that he has often conversed with McLeod about the affair. In the fall of 1880, a government agent passed through that section, seeking traces of an old exploring expedition sent out a number of years before Fremont visited the coast, and which never returned. By patient and careful search, he had followed them to the eastern slope of the Sierra, in northern Nevada, but had there lost all trace of them. An effort is being made to secure the old gun-locks that were found, so that by them some clue to their unfortunate possessors may be obtained. By the carelessness of thoughtless parties, these relics have been mislaid, but hope is entertained of finding them, and thus, possibly, of answering the question, who were they ?

Upon the return of McLeod's unfortunate party to the fort, another, under Capt. Peter Ogden and accompanied by Smith, started for the new trapping-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 Mountain Company, William Sublette and David Jackson retired, also, and the new partners were Milton Sublette, James Bridger, Robert Campbell, Fitzpatrick, Frapp and Jarvàis. 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 Van- derburg 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 Com- pany 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 Vancouver 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 head-waters 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 Hudson Bay party under Laframbois was trapping there. Young ascended King's river to the foothills and struck north, reaching the San Joaquin 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 Sacramento 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. sur- vived the general reign of death fled from the approach of the whites, for to them did they ascribe the visit of the death angel. The chief of a small band of these survivors, still living in Capay valley, says that the first white men came there and camped for a few days and hunted, then passed over the moun- . tains to the west. When they had gone the Indians took sick and died, his father, mother and friends, and they believed the white men had brought the "great death." Col. J. J. Warner, of Los Angeles, was with Ewing Young on this expedition.

Still another band of trappers visited the valley in 1833. Captain Bonneville sent Joseph 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 followed to the sink and then decided to cross the mountains into California. Stephen H. Meek, now living in Siskiyou county and pursuing his old occupation of hunting and trapping, was a member of this party and has related the particulars to. the writer. While looking for water, one of the men, a Canadian trapper named Baptiste. Truckee, came upon the Truckee river, near the Meadows, and rode back to camp in haste, swinging. his hat and shouting, "A great river ! A great river !" His name was then given to the stream .* They continued up the river and then tried to cross the mountains, but got no farther than Donner lake, fearing to attempt the passage through the snow, it being then early in

*There have been published two other versions of the christening of this river, but the writer has considered them all and believes this to be the correct one. The circumstances mentioned in the others admit of explanation satisfac- tory to this incident.

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December. Retracing their steps, they passed through Washoe valley, discovered Carson and Walker rivers, named after Kit Carson and Joseph Walker, and finally crossed through Walker's pass and camped on the shore of Tulare lake. Walker then took ten men and passed down the San Joaquin valley, visited Monterey, where they spent several weeks in jollification with the natives, and then returned to the camp at the lake. They retraced their steps to the Humboldt, had a difficulty with the natives, turned south to the Colorado, and finally reached the rendezvous on Green river.

The company failed entirely to accomplish its mission, and the disappointment and loss of this expe- dition, 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 Company, 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 Company, and retired to civilized life. This left the consolidated company and a few " lone traders " the only competitors of the great English corporation. For several years longer the competition was maintained, but gradually the Hudson Bay Company, by reason of its position and superior management, absorbed the trade until the American trappers, so far as organized effort was concerned, abandoned the field.

Every party of American trappers that passed through California left a few of its number here, 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, withdrew from this region in 1845, and the fur business in California came to an end. During the time they visited California their headquarters were at Yerba Buena. Trapping stations were established at French Camp, in San Joaquin county, and at French Camp, in Yolo county. Michael Laframbois, the celebrated Tom McKay, a half-breed named Finley, and Ermetinger conducted the California trapping expeditions, the last one, in 1844, being led by Ermetinger. It was the policy of this company to avoid all trouble with the natives, and, by just and even generous treatment, bind the Indians to them by a community of interest. Yet they never let an act of treachery or bad faith go unpunished. And thus, by an exhibition of justness on the one hand and power on the other, main- tained unquestioned authority among the savages of a hundred tribes, and over thousands of miles of wilderness. California was but one little corner of their dominions. A simple jargon, containing a vocabulary of but eighty words, was prepared by them, and spread among all the Indian tribes with whom they had dealings, and by this means a common language was introduced which all could speak. It is known as the Chinook jargon. Had the American companies pursued the same policy as their great English rivals, far different would have been the result of their enterprises.

The rigid discipline maintained by this great corporation is aptly illustrated by the case of Erme- tinger, who led the last California company back to Fort Vancouver. F. T. Gilbert, in his History of Yolo County, says : "After the return of Ermetinger to the fort, he was so injudicious as to marry a woman he loved, without first obtaining the consent of the company. It was against their policy to allow the men to burden themselves with a family, because they would enter reluctantly upon expedi- tions that were likely to cause a protracted separation. This flagrant breach of discipline was considered to be one that called for a punishment that would serve to prevent a repetition of the offense, and the unfortunate Ermetinger was ordered to head an expedition at once, its destination being Siberia. Through long years he was kept in those frozen regions, always moving a little farther from the young bride that had been left behind, until he passed through the frigid zone overland to St. Petersburg, in Russia. It's all a sad tale, a romance in real life ; one of those events that prove truth to be stranger than fiction. The years passed by, and the young wife, growing old, watched at the outer door for one

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Illustrated history of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra counties, with California from 1513 to 1850, Part 14

Author: Fariss & Smith, San Francisco Publication date: 1882 Publisher: San Francisco, Fariss & Smith Number of Pages: 710

Author: Fariss & Smith, San Francisco
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: San Francisco, Fariss & Smith
Number of Pages: 710