USA > Idaho > History of Idaho, the gem of the mountains, Volume I > Part 9
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"But not so when the prairies became dry and parched, the road filled with stifling dust, the stream-beds mere dry ravines, or carrying only alkaline water which could not be used, the game all gone to more hospitable sections, and the summer sun pouring down its heat with torrid intensity. It was then that the trail became a highway of desolation, strewn with abandoned property, the skeletons of horses, mules and oxen, and alas! too often, with freshly-made mounds and headboards that told the pitiful tale of sufferings too great to be
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endured. If the trail was the scene of romance, adventure, pleasure and excite- ment, so also was it marked in every mile of its course by human misery, tragedy and death."
Many stories, full of romance and pathos, have been told of the hardships and adventures of those who passed over the Oregon Trail during the early '40s. A large majority of these early emigrants left their old homes provided with everything they thought they might need in a new country. But the way was long and as their teams grew jaded everything that could possibly be dis- pensed with was cast away "to lighten the load." This was especially true after the discovery of gold in California, when all were in haste to reach the diggings and secure a paying claim. Capt. Howard Stansbury, who was then engaged in making some explorations in the West for the Government, says in one of his reports :
"The road was literally strewn with articles that had been thrown away. Bar iron, steel, blacksmith anvils, bellows, crowbars, drills, augers, gold washers, chisels, axes, lead, trunks, spades, plows, grindstones, baking ovens, cooking stoves without number, kegs, barrels, harness, even clothing, bacon and beans were found along the road in pretty much the order named."
Many who set out with high hopes of riches or a home in the Columbia Valley were unable to withstand the hardships of the long wearisome journey across the plains and through the mountain passes. Just how many of these unfortunates perished by the wayside and lie in unmarked graves, without shroud or coffin, will probably never be known. Occasionally a grave would be marked, so that relatives or friends might return when fortune smiled upon them and recover the body of one they loved and never ceased to mourn. One of the numerous pathetic instances of this character is seen in the story of the death of Rebecca Winter, whose resting place was marked by a half-sunken wagon tire, upon which was inscribed her name and age. Years afterward, when the surveyors were running the Oregon Short Line Railroad, they came upon this lonely grave, but it was not disturbed. It was afterward inclosed and a suitable stone erected to mark the spot. The story is well told in the following poem by Anne McQueen:
ON THE OREGON TRAIL
Out on the desert, barren and wide, Watered along by the immigrant tears; Upon the Oregon Trail she died- Rebecca Winter, aged fifty years. Seeking the land of the storied West Opulent land of gold and fame,
Leaving her hearthstone warm, with the rest, From somewhere out of the East, she came.
Maybe the heart in her bosom died For grief for some little grave back home, Leaving all for the man at her side, For women must follow, where man would roam.
Vel. 1-6
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'Twas famine, or fever, or wan despair That hushed the cry of her silent breast ; Close by the trail, where the wagons fare, Rebecca Winter was laid to rest. Somebody-husband, son, or sire- Roughly wrought, seeing not for tears, This, for her grave, on a sunken tire: "Rebecca Winter-aged 50 years."
Long she lay by the Oregon Trail, With sagebrush growing above her head, And coyotes barked in the moonlight pale, And wagon-trains moved on by the dead.
Till, bearing compass and line and chain, Men came, marking a way to the West, Daring the desert's drought and its pain, A daring heart in each dauntless breast. And stumbling into a sagebrush bed, The lineman read-through a mist of tears-
On the wagon tire, that marked her head, "Rebecca Winter-aged 50 years."
"Boys," said the leader, "we'll turn aside, Here, close by the trail, her grave shall stay, For she came first in this desert wide, Rebecca Winter holds right of way."
Today the train glides fast to the West, Rounding the curve where the grave appears;
A white shaft marking her place of rest, "Rebecca Winter-aged 50 years." Here is the shapen and turf-grown mound, And the name carved on the stone today ; But the thought-" 'Tis for all the graves unfound, The others, who died upon the way."
MARKING THE TRAIL
In the states of Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming the legislatures have all made appropriations for the purpose of placing appropriate monuments or markers at the most noted camping places and other historic spots along the trail.
In 1906, and again in 1910, Ezra Meeker, one of the Oregon pioneers, made trips with an ox team over the old highway and raised money at various places along the route to erect such monuments. It has been charged, and perhaps with some reason, that the places marked by Meeker were not always on the exact line of the trail, but where he could raise the most money. One of the markers erected through his instrumentality stands upon the high school grounds
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in the City of Pocatello. Another. was provided for marking the site of old Fort Hall, but the man who was employed to convey the stone to the place where it was to be erected made a mistake and unloaded it at a place called "The Dobies," where at last account it was still lying, no one being able to locate the exact site of the fort. On the southeast corner of the capitol grounds in the City of Boise stands a granite shaft, inscribed :
Pioneer Monument Erected May 9, 1906, by 2,777 School Children of Boise To Perpetuate The Memory of the Old Oregon Trail And to Honor the Pioneers Who Established the First American Government of Oregon.
On April 19, 1911, a bill was introduced in the national house of representa- tives providing for the permanent location of and marking the Oregon Trail from the Missouri River to Puget Sound. The bill was not passed, however, and the Idaho Legislature of 1913 addressed a memorial to Congress urging the passage of this bill, or a similar one, that the recollection of this historic highway might be preserved to future generations.
THE UTAH-CANADA TRAIL
As already stated, the California Trail left the Oregon Trail about eight miles above the American Falls and ran south to Salt Lake: When gold was discovered in Western Montana, this trail was extended northward to the new mining districts and later into Canada. It was used principally for freighting supplies to the mines, though a number of emigrant trains passed over it, and ultimately it became a part of the stage line operated by Ben Holladay from Salt Lake to Helena, Mont.
The trail entered Idaho near the southeast corner of the present Cassia County, followed a course a little east of north to the Snake River, and up the south side of that river (the Oregon Trail) to old Fort Hall. From that point it continued up the south side of the Snake to about where the City of Idaho Falls is now situated. There it crossed the river and, taking a more northerly course, passed through the present counties of Bonneville, Jefferson and Fre- mont. The Pocatello & Silverbow division of the Oregon Short Line Railroad follows in a general way the line of the Utah-Canada Trail.
THE NEZ PERCE TRAIL
Long before the first permanent white settlers came into the Northwest, the Cayuse, Nez Perce and Walla Walla Indians had a well marked trail from their villages to the great buffalo ranges east of the Rocky Mountains, whither they went annually for their great buffalo hunt. From the Walla Walla country, the trail passed up the valley of the Touchet River (called by Lewis and Clark the "White Stallion"), then over the prairie ridges to the Alpowa and down that
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stream to the Snake River. It crossed the Snake not far from the present City of Lewiston, followed a southeasterly course up the Clearwater Valley through Lewis and Idaho counties to the Nez Perce Pass in the Bitter Root Mountains. The first mention of the trail in the white man's history is in the reports of Lewis and Clark, who followed it for some distance on their return eastward in 1806. After reaching Twisted Hair's Village, where they had left their horses the year before, they pursued their old route to the Lolo Pass.
After the discovery of the gold mines about Virginia City, in Western Montana, and Lewiston became the head of navigation on the Snake River, the Nez Perce Trail was traversed by pack trains conveying supplies to Virginia City and the adjacent mining camps. It was on this trail that Lloyd Magruder was so foully murdered in the summer of 1863, an account of which is given in another chapter of this history. On the prairies it was broad and plain, and traces of it could be seen here and there for many years after it fell into disuse.
THE MULLAN ROAD
Next to the Oregon Trail, the Mullan military road was probably the second highway of Idaho in historic importance. Some time prior to 1855, Gov. Isaac I. Stevens, of Washington Territory, was chief of a party of surveyors to make a reconnaissance and report upon the feasibility of a railroad from the head of navigation on the Missouri River to Puget Sound. The object of the Gov- ernment in ordering this survey was to ascertain the approximate cost of the construction of such a railroad, with a view of making it in time a link in a great transcontinental railway.
After the reconnaissance was made, Congress took no further action toward building a railroad. The settlers on Puget Sound then began to urge the estab- lishment of a direct route into their country for emigrants. Fort Benton, near the Falls of the Missouri, was the highest point on the Missouri that could be reached with certainty by steamboats, and on February 5, 1855, President Pierce approved an act of Congress appropriating $30,000 for the construction of a wagon road from that place to Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory, a dis- tance of over six hundred miles.
Capt. John Mullan, who had been a member of Governor Stevens' party in making the preliminary examination of a route for a railroad, was directed by the secretary of war to take charge of the work. It soon became evident that the original appropriation of $30,000 was much too small to complete a passable road through the rough mountainous region. But, as the road was looked upon as the forerunner of a railroad, and was considered by the Government as a necessary convenience in the movement of troops and the transportation of supplies to the military posts of the Northwest, Congress was liberal in the matter of appropriations until a total of $230,000 had been expended upon its construction.
Beginning at Fort Benton, the road ran almost due west up the valley of the Teton River for some sixty or seventy miles. It then veered slightly to the southwest, passed the south end of Flathead Lake, and entered what is now Idaho by way of the St. Regis Pass, near the present Town of Mullan, Shoshone County. From the pass it followed a westerly course, passing along the south shore of Lake Coeur d'Alene and crossing Idaho's western boundary near the
CAPTAIN MULLAN TREE, FOURTH OF JULY CANYON
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line between Benewah and Kootenai counties. In 1861 this portion of the road was changed to the north shore of the lake. Sherman Street in the City of Coeur d'Alene was once a portion of the old military road, the total length of which was 624 miles.
At the time the road was built there were very few people in what is now the State of Idaho to be benefited by it, and even those living on Puget Sound were disappointed in their expectations. Prior to the discovery of gold in Idaho, it is said that only a few companies of soldiers and one emigrant party passed over it. During the years 1861 and 1862, a number of gold seekers came in by this route, though a majority of them came via the Oregon Trail or by boat up the Columbia and Snake rivers to Lewiston, and from there to the mines. Captain Mullan was made superintendent of the road and in 1865 pub- lished his "Miners' and Travelers' Guide," calling attention to the advantages of the road as a thoroughfare to the Northwest. However, as a military road it was never a success, but the hope that it would be the forerunner of a rail- road has been fulfilled. The Northern Pacific, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, and the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company all traverse the state near the line of the old Mullan Road.
There were a number of trails leading from Lewiston to the mining districts in early days, and Fort Hall was also the terminus of several trails radiating in different directions. These and other trails of a local character are mentioned in connection with the early stage routes in Chapter XXI.
CHAPTER VII THE OREGON DISPUTE
RIVAL CLAIMS OF EUROPEAN POWERS-TREATIES OF RYSWICK AND UTRECHT-SECRET TREATY OF 1762-BEGINNING OF ENGLAND'S CLAIM IN THE NORTHWEST-CAPT. ROBERT GRAY-OTHER CLAIMS OF THE UNITED STATES-FIRST NEGOTIATIONS- TREATY OF 1818-THE FLOYD BILL-FORCES AT WORK-TREATY OF 1827-WEB- STER-ASHBURTON TREATY-CAMPAIGN OF 1844-FIFTY-FOUR FORTY OR FIGHT -TREATY OF 1846-ARBITRATION.
A thorough understanding of the many years dispute between the United States and Great Britain, involving the domination of the territory comprising Oregon, Washington and Idaho and that portion of Wyoming and Montana drained through the Columbia River, necessitates an inquiry into the rival claims of the European powers to the territorial control of this continent, extending back to its original discovery.
Columbus sailed on his great voyage from a Spanish port and under the Spanish flag, and in accordance with the prevailing usage of those times, his discoveries vested the sovereignty of the lands he found in that country. This claim was intensified by the bull issued in 1493 by Pope Alexander authorizing Spain to exercise dominion over "All countries inhabited by infidels" and under the then prevailing interpretation of this term, this papal grant, it was claimed, included, in a vague way, the entire continent of North America. Balboa in 1530 crossed the Isthmus of Panama and was the first European to gaze upon the waters of the Pacific Ocean from an American view point, and made claim to all the country coasting on the newly discovered ocean, for his native country, Spain.
Toward the close of the seventeenth century and nearly two hundred years . after Columbus had made his first voyage, France and England each laid claim to extensive holdings east of the Rocky Mountains and although the boundaries of their claimed possessions were not always well defined, that portion of the United States bordering on the Atlantic and extending back to the Appalachian Mountains was generally conceded to Great Britain, and the region drained by the Mississippi to France, based upon the La Salle discoveries of 1682, when in honor of the King of France, he gave the new province the name of "Louisiana."
Catherine, widow and successor of Peter the Great of Russia, in the mean-
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time made claim to the entire Pacific Coast, including Alaska and southward to Prince William's Sound, by virtue of the discoveries of Behring the Danish navigator sailing under the Russian flag.
Under the Treaty of Ryswick concluded in 1697, partial definition and recog- nition was given the respective claims of the European powers and Spain was assured the Pacific Coast from the Isthmus of Panama to latitude 54° 40' where her possessions joined those of Russia, which extended to the Arctic Circle, and the contention of France of dominion of the country drained by the Mississippi and the country about the Great Lakes and along the St. Lawrence was affirmed. Great Britain at that time made no pretense either of territorial domination or commercial rights on the Pacific, although it was conceded that Sir Francis Drake had carried the British flag to the Oregon Coast in 1579. The undis- puted territory of Great Britain lay along the Atlantic Coast from Penobscot Bay to Florida and extended inland to the Allegheny Mountains.
The peace of Ryswick was of short duration and the war that followed, in- volving most of the European powers claiming dominion over American soil, was in 1713 concluded by the peace of Utrecht, and England was reinstated in possession of the Hudson Bay section and given dominion over Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. France still retained Canada but situate as that section was between the English possessions, a long continued peace was an impossibility, and continual trouble followed, culminating in the French and Indian war with England and her colonies and ending in the peace of 1762, which permanently deprived France of all her American possessions, England falling heir to all her territory east of the Mississippi, while Spain by secret treaty made shortly before peace was concluded, acquired that portion of the Louisiana purchase lying west of that river; a grant canceled by treaty between the two nations in 1800 when that territory was retroceded to France. These are the important facts which should constantly be in the minds of students of the history of that period, and were frequent matters of discussion during the subsequent "Oregon Dispute between the United States and Great Britain."
BEGINNING OF ENGLAND'S CLAIM
As before stated, Sir Francis Drake the great English explorer visited the Oregon coast in 1579. The British Government for some unexplained reason made no claim of dominion following Drake's discovery until Captain Cook, another English adventurer, landed at and named Nootka Sound (Vancouver Island) in 1778. Upon these voyages, especially the latter, Great Britain claimed the coast of what is now the northwestern part of the United States. This claim was disputed by Spain in 1789, on the grounds of previous discovery, but in the end Spain was forced to yield. At what is known as the Nootka Sound Con- vention in 1790, she relinquished by treaty all her rights on the Pacific Coast in that quarter to England.
CAPT. ROBERT GRAY
In 1788, two years before the Nootka Sound Convention, Capt. Robert Gray, a veteran of the Revolutionary war, and a man named Kendrick were sent out to the Pacific Coast by some merchants of Boston, for the purpose of in- vestigating the possibilities of the fur trade in the Northwest. They passed
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the winter at Nootka Sound and carried back to their employers a favorable report, which resulted in a second voyage by Captain Gray. Concerning this second voyage, Gabriel Franchere says :
"In 1792 Captain Gray, commanding the ship Columbia of Boston, discovered in latitude 46° 19' north the entrance of a great bay on the Pacific Coast. He sailed into it and having perceived that it was the outlet or estuary of a large river, by the fresh water which he found at a little distance from the entrance, he continued his course upwards some eighteen miles and dropped anchor on the left bank, at the opening of a deep bay. There he made a map or rough sketch of what he had seen of this river, accompanied by a written description of the soundings, bearings, etc., and having finished his traffic with the natives-the object of his voyage to these parts-he put out to sea.
"Soon after he fell in with Capt. (George) Vancouver, who was cruising by order of the British Government to seek new discoveries. Captain Gray acquainted him with the one he had just made and gave him a copy of the chart he had drawn up. Vancouver, who had just driven off a colony of Spaniards established on the coast, under command of Senor Quadra (England and Spain being then at war), despatched his first lieutenant, William R. Broughton, who ascended the river in boats some 120 or 150 miles, took possession of the country in the name of his Britannic Majesty, giving the river the name of the Columbia and to the bay where the American captain stopped, that of Gray's Bay. Since that period the country was seldom visited until 1811, and then chiefly by American ships."
Mr. Franchere was a citizen of Montreal and was one of those employed by John Jacob Astor in the founding of Astoria. At the sale of that post to the North-West Company, he saw the place seized as a British conquest and he continued there for some time after its seizure. Some years later (1819) he published his "Narrative," from which the above quotation is taken. He makes a slight mistake as to Captain Vancouver's driving off the company of Spaniards, as the post at Nootka Sound was merely taken possession of by Vancouver under the treaty of 1790. Notwithstanding this error, his Narrative sustains the claim of the United States to the country, and the fact that he was a British subject added force to his statements. His account was used with telling effect by Thomas H. Benton, United States senator from Missouri, in the final settlement of the Oregon question.
The reader will notice that Captain Vancouver did not change the name of the river, which Captain Gray had named for the vessel in which he sailed, and even went so far as to name the bay at the mouth of the river for the American explorer. These facts were afterward cited as proof that the Columbia River was first discovered by a citizen of the United States and strengthened the claim of this country.
OTHER CLAIMS
Besides the voyages and discoveries of Captain Gray, the United States had additional reasons for claiming the region now embraced in the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. By the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) the boundary between the British possessions on the north and the French Province of Louisiana on the south was fixed to run from the Lake of the Woods westward on latitude
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49° indefinitely. The word "indefinitely" was afterward interpreted to mean "to the Pacific Ocean."
The second incident, which has been regarded by some historians as cor- roborative of the American claim, was the secret treaty between France and Spain in 1762, which they contend transferred to Spain "all the possessions of France west of the Mississippi and south of the forty-ninth parallel," which possessions extended to the Pacific Coast. Bancroft, in his "History of the Pacific States," says: "Had France not already, by secret treaty with Spain, executed about one hundred days before the great transfer to Great Britain, alienated her Pacific Coast possessions, Great Britain would have taken all, and this would so have changed the relation of things that the atlas of the world would have had a different lining. Either the whole must have gone to the United States without controversy at the close of the Revolution, or the title of Great Britain would have been conceded and unquestionable to all the territory between California and the Russian possessions."
But did France really alienate her Pacific Coast territory by the secret treaty of 1762? Did she really have any possessions on the Pacific Coast to alienate? When Louisiana was retroceded to France in 1800 it was "with the same extent which it now has in the hands of Spain and which it had when France possessed it," but just what that extent was does not appear in the treaty or the records of the negotiations. The only reason for an affirmative answer to these questions is found in the interpretation of the boundary estab- lished by the Treaty of Utrecht, which was the "forty-ninth parallel to the Pacific Ocean."
FIRST NEGOTIATIONS
The first attempt to adjust the boundary lines between the United States and the British possessions was made in 1803, at the same time Robert R. Livingston and James Monroe were in Paris negotiating for the purchase of Louisiana. The two treaties were submitted to the United States Senate at the same time. The one providing for the purchase of Louisiana was ratified with- out serious dissent. The fifth article of the treaty with England was rejected by the Senate, because it defined the northwest boundary between the Lake of the Woods and the head of the Mississippi River, but no farther to the west- ward. With this article stricken out, the treaty was sent back to London and the British Government refused to ratify it in the amended form.
Four years later another effort was made to define the boundary. The com- missioners of the two countries fixed upon the forty-ninth parallel as the dividing line "as far as the possessions of the two countries may extend, provided that this agreement shall have no effect upon the claims of the two countries west of the Rocky Mountains." This treaty was never ratified, President Jefferson rejecting it without referring it to the Senate.
When the Treaty of Ghent was under consideration late in the year 1814, the English plenipotentiaries submitted the same articles relating to the north- west Boundary-those rejected by Mr. Jefferson seven years before, but the American representatives took the ground that the only questions for the con- vention to consider were those growing out of the War of 1812, hence the treaty made no mention of the Northwest Boundary.
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