History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848, Part 11

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Mrs. Frances Auretta Fuller Barrett, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: San Francisco : The History Co.
Number of Pages: 850

USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 11

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16 Lee and Frost spell this word Chumporg, and say that it is identical as to location with Campement du Sable. Champoeg, is said to be an Indian word, though it might have come from the French champeaux, or plains, with- out as much change as many names have undergone.

SETTLEMENT OF OREGON.

Louis Pichette left Canada in 1817, with a company of 25 trappers, and wintered on the plains, losing seven of the number, and arriving at Astoria in 1818. Pichette roamed about in California and Oregon for twelve years in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1832 he settled on a farm in the Willamette Valley, where he resided for over 40 years. He died November 20, 1876, aged 78 years. Portland Standard, December 22, 1876; Salem Willamette Farmer, Dec. 22, 1876 ; Salem Statesman, Dec. 22, 1876. Other Canadians whose names appear among the early settlers are Francis Quesnel, who died in 1844, aged 65 years ; Louis Shaugarette, who died in 1835; besides Payette, Bilake, Roudean, Pournaffe, Chamberlain, and probably others. Andre La Chapelle was probably of Pichette's party. He was born in Montreal, August 14, 1781, and left Canada for Oregon in 1817, to join the service of the Northwest Company. In 1819 he was ordered to take a party up the Columbia as far as Boat Encampment, or the ' big bend' of that river, in latitude nearly 52° north, to meet the express from Canada. That year was noted for a great flood on the Columbia, and encampment could be made in few places. There was ten feet of water over the prairie where the town of Vancouver now stands. When headquarters were removed from Astoria to Vancouver, La Chapelle went to Fort Vancouver to reside, and remained in the company's service as a 'leader' until 1841, when he retired and settled with the other Canadians in the Willamette Valley. For 40 years he lived on his farm at Champoeg, and died June 11, 1881, having attained to within two months of 100 years. Portland Oregonian, June 21, 1881; San Francisco Chronicle, June 30, 1881. Francis Dupré, another of the French settlers in the Willamette Valley, died in 1858 at the age of 99 years. These quiet, obedient, simple-hearted people, Arcadians all, were remarkable for their longevity. All had Indian or half-breed wives, and numerous children. Louis Pichette had 21 offspring. I find mentioned the name of Andrew Dubois, and his wife Margaret, who were living on French Prairie in 1840, and had probably been in Oregon several years. Sawyer's Rept. of Cases, ii. 435.

With the overland Astor expedition under Hunt came, with others, Joseph Gervais, always prominent in the French Canadian settlement. After serving the Hudson's Bay Company, and acting for ten years as an independent trap- per, he took a farm on the prairie. Another noted man was Michel La Fram- boise, the leader of the southern annual trapping parties to California, who was so attentive to Kelley when sick. He settled on the west side of the Willamette. Another was Louis La Bonté, who settled on the west side of the river in 1833, in what is now Yamhill. Étienne Lucier, also of Hunt's party, remained to serve the British Company, and afterward settled in the Willa- mette Valley, where in the autumn of 1829 he took a farm on the Willamette where East Portland now stands. He afterward removed to French Prairie. Lucier, according to McLoughlin, was the first settler. La Bonté died in 1860, aged 80 years. Lucier died in 1853, and Gervais in 1861, the age of the latter being 84 years. William Cannon, a Virginian, and a soldier from Fort Mackinaw, settled on the west side of the Willamette River, opposite the falls, and lived to the age of 99 years, dying in 1854. Still another of the arrivals of 1812 was one Montoure, who is always mentioned by his surname. He selected for a farm that rich prairie where Samuel Brown subsequently

WYETH'S MEN.

had an extensive farming establishment, and where the town of Gervais now stands. Montoure sold his improvements to Pierre Depuis, who remained on the farm till 1850, when it was sold to Mr Brown. Simon Plumondeau is said by Dunn, in his Oregon Territory, 236, with another Canadian, Fancault, to have been the first Frenchman to settle in the Willamette Valley, by which he may have meant French Prairie. Plumondeau had served as cock- swain to General Cass in an expedition to the northwest territory, and was a very skilful and reliable boatman and woodsman, and served several Ameri- cans in the Oregon territory, among others Lieutenant Wilkes, in 1841. U. S. Ex. Ex., iv. 338. Among the remnants of Hunt's party in Oregon were Madame Dorion and her son; the woman was still living in the Willamette Valley in 1850.

John B. Wyeth, Oregon, 51, names ten men who in 1832 continued their journey with his brother to the Columbia: G. Sargent, W. Breck, S. Burditt, C. Tibbets, G. Trumbull, J. Woodman Smith, John Ball, Whittier, St Clair, and Abbot. As a matter of fact, there were eleven, the other probably being Solomon H. Smith, who came to Oregon in that year. Robert Campbell of St Louis, originally of the number, does not appear to have reached western Oregon. Abbot, who remained to trap on Salmon River, was, with one of his companions, killed by the Bannack Indians. Townsend's Nar., 225. Gray adds two names, for which I find no authority-Moore and Greely-the former killed by Indians, the latter not accounted for. He makes no mention of John Ball, reputed the first American farmer in the Willamette Valley. Sargent died in 1836, of dissipation. According to Gray, Hist. Or., 191, Whittier was given a passage to the Sandwich Islands by the Hudson's Bay Company, and Trumbull killed himself by overeating at Fort Vancouver.

On the Ist of January, 1833, John Ball was installed as teacher of the half-breed children at Fort Vancouver. From spring till autumn he engaged in farming with Calvin Tibbets in the Willamette Valley. As no American settlers arrived, and disliking the controlling power of the Hudson's Bay Company, he embarked on a whaling vessel for South America. Ultimately he settled at Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mr Tibbets remained in Oregon, and is one of the founders of American settlement in the Willamette Valley. He removed to Clatsop, near the mouth of the Columbia River. Mr Solomon H. Smith succeeded Mr Ball as pedagogne from the 1st of March, remained long enough to fall in love with the Indian wife of the baker, ran away with her and her children, and established a school at the house of Joseph Gervais. Roberts' Recollections, MS., 36; Portland Herald, March 16, 1872; Oregon Spectator, Nov. 1, 1849. After the missionaries arrived and began preaching, Smith met with a change of heart, according to Daniel Lee, though he never returned the baker's wife. Lee and Frost's Ten Years in Or., 269. He proved a good citizen of Oregon, finally settling among his wife's relatives at Clatsop, where he became a thriving farmer, and died at an advanced age. In his worldly affairs his Clatsop wife, to whom he was formally married, was of inaterial benefit to him. Tolmie's Puget Sound, MS., 2. Of those who accon- panied Wyeth in 1834, about twenty reached the lower Columbia; but few of their names have been preserved. We know of James H. O'Neil, Thomas Jefferson Hubbard, Richard McCrary, Paul Richardson, Sansbury, Thornburg,

SETTLEMENT OF OREGON.

and Courtney M. Walker. Thornburg was killed by Hubbard in a quarrel about an Indian woman in 1835. Thornburg being the assailant, Hubbard was allowed to go free. Townsend's Nar., 223-4. Hubbard continued to reside in Oregon, unmolested if not very respectable, settling on a farm two or three miles north of Lafayette. He was active in the affairs of the early American settlement. When the gold discovery in California drew nearly the whole adult male population from Oregon, he built a boat at Oregon City, loaded it with flour, and in it safely sailed to San Francisco, where he sold both cargo and vessel. He also built a saw-mill in the Willamette Valley, and was one of the first to export cattle to California. In 1857 he re- moved to eastern Oregon, and died at the Umatilla reservation April 24, 1877, aged 78 years. Oregon City Enterprise, May 3, 1877; Portland Standard, May 4, 1877. Richard McCrary, meeting with unpleasant adventures as a trapper among the Blackfoot Indians, abandoned fur-hunting, took a Nez Percé wife, and settled on a farm five miles below the mouth of the Willa- mette. Hines' Hist. Or., 132-3.

O'Neil settled in Polk County, where he died in September 1874, aged 74 years. Salem Record, Sept. 16, 1874; Salem Willamette Farmer, Sept. 18, 1874. Paul Richardson did not remain in Oregon, having accompanied the Wyeth expedition only as guide. He was a man of note in his way. Born in Ver- mont about the year 1793, he removed to Pennsylvania, where he married, but unhappily, and abandoned his wife to seek forgetfulness in the wilderness beyond the Missouri, where he became a solitary and fearless explorer. In 1828, according to his own account, he reached the head waters of Fraser River. He crossed the continent a number of times and had countless ad- ventures, which he seldom related. He died in California in 1857, poor and alone, as he had lived. Hayes' Col. Cal. Notes, ii. 292. Besides these few Americans whose antecedents are to some extent known, the names of J. Edmunds and Charles Roe appear in the writings of the Methodist mission- aries of that date; they probably belonged to Wyeth's last expedition. These, so far as known, were the only persons in the country in the autumn of 1834 not connected with the Hudson's Bay Company. See, further, Portland Oregonian, March 9 and 16, 1872; May 4, 1872; July 8, 1876; W. H. Rees, in Oregon Statesman, June 20, 1879; Trans. Or. Pioneer Asso., 1875, 56; McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., passim; Blanchet's Cath. Church in Or., 7-8; S. F. Alta California, April 22, 1853; Portland Herald, March 5, 1872; Salem Statesman, June 20, 1879; S. F. Bulletin, July 25, 1877.

The party accompanying Kelley and Young, on arriving at the Columbia River, consisted of the following persons: John McCarty, Webley John Hauxhurst, Joseph Gale, John Howard, Lawrence Carmichael, Brandywine, Kilborn, and George Winslow (colored). Gray's Hist. Or., 191. This number corresponds with McLoughlin's account, and is probably correct as to names, though Daniel Lee thought there were 'about a dozen,' and gives the name of Elisha Ezekiel, found only in one other place, namely, in U. S. Gov. Doc., 3d Sess., 25th Cong., H. Rept., No. 101. Ezekiel was employed at the mission, which explains the omission from the count at Fort Vancouver. Let Ezekiel have praise for something; he made the first cart-wheel in the Willamette Valley. See Lee and Frost's Ten Years in Or., 129. Joseph Gale was a man

HAUXHURST, WINSLOW, AND MCKAY.

of education, but had spent many years in the mountains with the fur com- panies. He settled in Oregon, and took active part in affairs until the Amer- ican element acquired ascendency. He farmed, went to California as master of the first vessel built in Oregon by American settlers, mined in California, returned to Oregon, and subsequently settled east of the Cascade Mountains, first in the Walla Walla Valley, and afterward in Eagle Creek Valley, on the eastern confines of the state of Oregon, where he died December 23, 1881, aged 92 years. Fond of exploring, he joined several expeditions in search of new mines during the excitement of 1862-7, but finally engaged in farming. A few months before his death he sold $2,000 worth of produce raised on six- teen acres of ground on Eagle Creek. Through all his life in Oregon he enjoyed the respect of his neighbors.

Hauxhurst, a native of Long Island, also stood well in the territory, especially with the missionaries, by whom he was converted in 1837. He built the first grist-mill in the Willamette Valley. McCarty and Carmichael were strongly opposed to the Hudson's Bay Company. None of the others appear to have been conspicuous in any direction, except George Winslow, the negro, who took an Indian wife and settled with her in a cabin on Clackamas Prairie, six miles below Oregon City, and raised a family of black red-skins. George assumed to be a doctor, and complained to subsequent emigrants to Oregon that the advent of Doctor Barclay of the Hudson's Bay Company had ' bust out ' his business. He also sometimes repudiated his antecedents, and related how he came to Oregon in 1811 as cook to John Jacob Astor! Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 13-16. Truth was never a conspicuous ingredient of his character, and in his large stories he sometimes seemed almost to forget his name; as ten years after his arrival in Oregon I find a negro calling himself Winslow Anderson living near Oregon City, and having some trouble with the Indians. Jean Baptiste Deportes Mckay came with Astor's company, and settled at Champoeg in 1831.

CHAPTER IV.

METHODIST OCCUPATION

1834-1838.

REMOVAL OF EFFECTS-FENCING, BUILDING, AND PLANTING-THE SORROW- FUL WORK OF CONVERSION - MISSIONARY FAILURES - DANIEL LEE VISITS THE ISLANDS-ARRIVAL OF KELLEY AND YOUNG-FIGUEROA'S LETTER-ESTRANGEMENT OF EWING YOUNG-ATTACK ON AN INCOMING PARTY BY THE NATIVES OF ROGUE RIVER-THE AFFAIR OF THE DIS- TILLERY-ARRIVAL OF A GOVERNMENT AGENT.

WE left the missionaries with their effects upon the landing at French Prairie. The labor of removal to the spot selected had given the well-trained muscles of Daniel Lee and Edwards ample exercise. Lee relates how they missed the trail in going to the farm of Thomas Mckay for horses, soon after landing, and floundered through quagmires and wet tide-land grass, and how they were welcomed, on finally reaching their destination, by Monsieur La Bonté, whose son Louis assisted in driving the animals. Taking the fur-traders' path over the mountains that border the Columbia and lower Willamette, through the Tuala- tin1 plains, and the valley of the Chehalem, they met at Campement du Sable the canoe party with the goods, and together they soon concluded their journey.

The little company who here pitched their tent, during these last days of the Oregon summer, found before them much to be done. All around prairie, river, and sky; mountain, beast, and man stood inno- cent of contact with human intelligence. Their busi- ness now was to apply this mind-culture of theirs to

1 That is to say, 'lazy man,' from its sluggish movements. Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 22.

( 78

SHELTER AND FOOD.

reclaiming for civilized man this wilderness, and to wage war upon primeval nature. And by so-called humble ways this mighty achievement must be begun. There was the grindstone to be hung, and tools had to be sharpened ; before proceeding to build for themselves a habitation, rails must be split to make an enclosure for the half-wild oxen, and yokes and ox-bows must be made. The task of yoking and driving the re- fractory brutes was one to try the patience, courage, and ingenuity of the missionaries, whose united efforts could scarcely reduce them to submission. The cows, too, lately driven off the pastures, were intractable, and had to be tied by the head, and hobbled, before they could be milked. "Men never worked harder and performed less," says Daniel Lee. The trees being felled, cut into the proper lengths, and squared,2 a building twenty feet by thirty was in the course of erection when the first autumn storm of rain and wind came on, drenching some of the goods, to which a tent proved only a partial protection. By the 1st of November they had a roof over their heads, and a puncheon floor beneath their feet, while a bright fire blazed under a chimney constructed of sticks and clay. The doors of this primitive mansion were hewn out of fir logs, and hung on wooden hinges; a partition divided the house into two apartments, and four small windows, whose sashes were whittled out with a pocket-knife by Jason Lee, admitted the dull light of a cloudy winter. Little by little tables, stools, and chairs were in like manner added. Of bedsteads there is no mention in the writings of the only one of their number who has left any record. A blanket and a plank served for a couch. As to the food of the family, it was as simple as their lodgings. They had shipped nothing from Boston except some salt pork, which was boiled with barley or pease purchased

2 The broadaxe which hewed those logs is now kept as carefully as was the bow of Ulysses. It came round Cape Horn in Wyeth's ship, and was exhibited at the meeting of the Pioneer Association near Salem in 1878. Par- rish's Or. Anecdotes, MS., 13.

METHODIST OCCUPATION.

of the French settlers. Unleavened bread made from. Hour brought from Fort Vancouver, and a little milk, to which was sometimes added a haunch of venison obtained from the natives, completed their list of eat- ables.

To Cyrus Shepard, unable to endure the hardships, McLoughlin gave charge of the school at Fort Van- couver, previously taught by Solomon H. Smith, who had taken up his residence with Joseph Gervais, and whose children, among others, he instructed.3 Shepard rejoined the mission probably soon after the house was made comfortable, about which time C. M. Walker, having fulfilled his engagement with the Lees, entered the service of Wyeth as clerk.

Then came the labor of beginning a farm; and the winter being mild, a field of thirty acres was ploughed and enclosed by a rail-fence, and in the spring was planted and sown in wheat, corn, oats, and garden vegetables. For the security of the prospective crops a barn was erected thirty by forty feet, of logs cut by the Lees and Edwards, assisted by Rora, a Hawaiian, and a Calapooya boy called John, the Canadians of the vicinity helping to lay up the logs. Later, two of the men who came with Kelley and Young were hired to saw logs into planks and boards for flooring and doors, the barn being in some respects an improvement on the house. Shingles were split from four-foot sections of fir logs, and were kept in place by heavy poles, the buts of the second course resting against the pole on the first, and so forth. In this manner a good roof was obtained without nails.4

Such were their secular pursuits. But it must not be forgotten that missionaries had other labors to per-

3 Smith was from N. H., and fairly educated. He was a large, well-formed man, with a ruddy complexion and clear gray eye, intelligent and pleasing in conversation. See appendix, chap. iii., this volume.

4 This method of making a roof was not original with the missionaries, but common to the frontier of Missouri and the settlements of Oregon. The shingles were called ' clapboards,' and were often used for siding a cabin,. being put on perpendicularly.

FUTILE ATTEMPTS AT CONVERSION,

form. The first sermon in this quarter was delivered by Jason Lee on Sunday, the 28th of September, before a mixed congregation of officers and servants of the fur company at Fort Vancouver. On the 14th of December religious services were again held at the same place, when Lee baptized four adults and seven- teen children, and received from the gentlemen of the fort a contribution to the Mission of twenty dollars.ª And now on every Sunday since their arrival at the station, a meeting of the settlers was held at Ger- vais' house, and a sermon preached on the duties of godliness and sobriety, an occasional meeting being appointed for the Champoeg settlement. A sabbath- school also was soon begun at Gervais for the benefit of the children in that neighborhood. But these hebdomadal efforts could hardly be regarded as reg- ular missionary work. Three native children only were received at the Mission house the first winter, namely, two orphans, John, already mentioned, his sister Lucy, who was called Hedding after the Metho- dist bishop of that name, and another lad, all Cala- pooyas. John, being a healthy boy, was required to fell trees and perform other outdoor labor. This was directly opposed to the aboriginal idea of dignity, and contrary to taste and habit; so John soon returned to his former ways, leaving sick and scrofulous Lucy to be cared for and converted by the men-missionaries.

Alas for the wily wickedness of the savage heart ! No sooner did genial spring begin to warm his blood than the other lordly young aboriginal, who had come hither naked and starving in the cold wet winter for comfort and consolation, peremptorily declined all labor, whether of the hand or mind, and marched away to his purple-glowing mountains.

Certain Umpquas in planting-time left a boy with the missionaries, to be taught farming and religion ; but in the midsummer the lad died of consumption, which circumstance Hines says came near bringing

5 Hines' Oregon Hist., 13.

HIST. OR., VOL. I. 6

METHODIST OCCUPATION.

destruction on Daniel Lee and Cyrus Shepard ; 6 but this Lee denies. The Killamooks brought a lad of their tribe to the Mission for instruction, who would neither work nor learn to read; all day long he would sit on the bank of the Willamette gazing tearfully toward the coast, where he was born, exhibiting all the anguish of an exile; hence on the first visit of his people he was permitted to depart. In the midst of the harvest the effect of noxious exhalations from the freshly ploughed earth, which had for a long time been poisoning their blood while unsubstantial diet thinned it, became distressingly manifest in fierce attacks of intermittent fever, each member of the Mission family being in turn prostrated. Fortunately the disease yielded to medicine, and all recovered.

About the beginning of September Louis Shanga- ratte, of the French settlement, suddenly died from the bursting of a blood-vessel, leaving three half- breed orphans and five Indian slaves without a home. Mc Loughlin, zealous for the Mission and the children, desired Jason Lee to take charge of this family, and of whatever property Shangaratte might have left them. The proposition was accepted on condition that the slaves be emancipated. These eight persons proved a burden on the establishment, which was partially relieved by the elopement of two of the natives.7 Soon three of the others, including one of Shanga- ratte's children, died of syphilis, a disease by which

6 Hines' Oregon History, 14. Soon 'after his death his brother came to the Mission, determined to seek revenge for the death of Kenoteesh, by taking the life of Daniel Lee and Cyrus Shepard. He remained overnight, and was prevented from accomplishing his design only by the interposition of an Indian who accompanied him. Bent upon glutting his vengeance on somebody, he crossed the river, and fell upon a band of unarmed Indians, and savagely murdered several of them.' Lee affirms of the lad's death that 'a messenger had been sent to notify his relations of his danger, that they might come and see him before his death, and that they might have no occasion for jealousy in case of his decease, However, some days before they came he was dead. They gathered around his grave, and remained some time wailing aloud; but they appeared to be satisfied that everything had been done well on our part on his behalf; and after a friendly parting, they returned again to their own country.' Lee and Frost's Or., 130.

7 Daniel Lee himself says it was a relief 'in a case where there was so little to hope.' Lee and Frost's Or., 133.

DISCOURAGEMENTS.

more than half the native children in the Willamette and Columbia valleys were infected. A fourth lingered in a scrofulous condition for two years, and then died, leaving but two of these Mission wards remaining. During the autumn the Calapooyas brought a young child, the daughter of a chief who was dying of con- sumption, to be cared for by the missionaries, but she soon followed her father to the grave. Of the four- teen children received the first year, five died before winter and five ran away; of the remaining four two died during the next two years, leaving two for secular and sacred ministrations.8 This was brave work in- deed for champions of the cross. To the poor mission- aries, about this time, the place seemed as profitless as that of dentist to King Stanislaus, obtained by L'Eclure the day upon which the king lost his last tooth ; and Jason and Daniel talked about it, and won- dered if hitherto heaven's light had come to them colored as through a painted window, for it was as clearly apparent to them now, as the mark of the avalanche on the mountain side, that their efforts were a failure. And later Daniel Lee was called upon to satisfy public inquiry by giving the reasons which caused his uncle to abandon the Flatheads and settle among Canadians and half-breeds.9

8 During the winter of 1835 a singular complaint attacked the Indian children. The first symptom was a violent pain in the ear, which rapidly spread through the head, the pulse being feeble and not very frequent. The extremities soon became cold, and a general torpor spread over the system. Unconsciousness and death shortly followed. Parker's Jour., 165.

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History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848, Part 11

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Mrs. Frances Auretta Fuller Barrett, 1826-1902 Publication date: 1886 Publisher: San Francisco : The History Co. Number of Pages: 850

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Mrs. Frances Auretta Fuller Barrett, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: San Francisco : The History Co.
Number of Pages: 850