USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 20
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While Mr Cushing was in correspondence with Jason Lee, he received letters from the secretary of this organization, and in reply to inquiries as to its object, was told in a letter of the 6th of January, 1839, that it was designed, first, to civilize and christianize the Indians, and secondly, to avail themselves of the advantages offered by the territory for agriculture, commerce, and manufactures.
" Having reached the territory," says the secretary, 23 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Rept. 101, 25, 28.
175
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE.
"we shall seek such points of settlement as will afford the greatest facilities for intercourse with the tribes ; for agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; and also for defence, in case of hostilities from any quarter. For the benefit of the Indians, we propose to establish schools in which instruction in elementary science will be connected with labor; the males being made ac- quainted with farming, or some useful mechanical art, and the females with household duties and economy. ... For our own emolument, we shall depend principally upon the flour trade, the salmon fishery, the culture of silk, flax, and hemp, the lumber trade, and per- haps a local business in furs. We shall establish a regular commercial communication with the United States, drawing supplies of men and goods from thence ; and ultimately, we shall contemplate the opening of a trade with the various ports of the Pacific. A few years only will be required to fill the plains of Oregon with herds as valuable as those of the Spanish savannas, and various sources of profit will reveal themselves as the increase of the population shall make new resources necessary. We shall wish that. no person in connection with us may have a claim upon any tract of land unless he shall actually settle upon and improve that land. ... We shall, of course, be very unwilling to settle in a savage wilderness, without first having obtained a sufficient title to the land we may occupy, and without being assured that political obstacles will not be thrown in the way of our prosperity.
"We are confident that our settlement, more than anything else, would subserve the purposes of our government respecting the Oregon Territory. Our re- lations with the Indians will give us an influence over them which Americans will hardly obtain by any other means, and which, at a future day, may be found an advantage to the United States. We shall by the same means, as well as by our local situation, be pre- pared to hold in check the avarice of a foreign power,
176
COLONIZATION.
and to establish and maintain American interests generally, with the least expense to the nation and the best prospect of bloodless success."
If Jason Lee had anything to do with the forma- tion of this society, it does not appear; and yet its objects and those of Kelley were identical with his own; it is possible that Lee's action with the govern- ment in his colonization scheme led the society to con- sider itself forestalled, or possibly it depended upon the success of certain measures in congress which Lee put in motion ; at any rate, the society never sent. out any persons as emigrants.
On the 28th of January, 1839, the memorial drawn up before Lee left Oregon was presented to the senate. by Linn of Missouri, and ordered to be printed. On the 11th of December, 1838, Linn introduced a bill in the senate authorizing the occupation of the Columbia or Oregon river; organizing a territory north of latitude 42° and west of the Rocky Mountains, to be called Oregon Territory; providing for the establishment of a fort on the Columbia, and the occupation of the country by a military force of the United States ; establishing a port of entry, and requiring that the country should be held subject to the revenue laws of the United States. On the 22d of February he made a speech in the senate supporting a bill to pro- vide protection for the citizens of the United States in the Oregon Territory, or trading on the Columbia River.24 It is not necessary to follow the action of congress further, in this place. The reference is here made to point out the agency of Jason Lee in direct- ing that action, and the strong influence he seems to have wielded in Washington as well as with the mis- sionary board. How much his suggestions, especially concerning land matters, moulded subsequent legisla- tion will be made evident in considering the action of the government at a later period. A proof of the favor with which his designs were regarded by the
24 Linn's Life and Services, 224.
177
THE MISSION FAMILY.
cabinet is furnished by the appropriation of consid- erable money from the secret-service fund, for the charter of the Lausanne, as related by one of her passengers.25 Lee kept the secret, and so did those who gave him the money, until the boundary ques- tion was settled between the United States and Great Britain.
Everything being finally arranged, the mission fam- ily, a term by which this emigration was more par- ticularly designated, assembled at New York, whence the Lausanne was to sail. Jason Lee had certainly improved his time in several respects; for the so lately bereaved husband was returning comforted with a new wife. Following are the names of the members of this reenforcement: Mr and Mrs Jason Lee ; Rev. Joseph H. Frost, wife and one child ; Rev. William W. Kone and wife; Rev. Alvan F. Waller, wife and two children ; Rev. J. P. Richmond, M. D., wife and four children ; Ira L. Babcock, M. D., wife and one child ; Rev. Gustavus Hines, wife and one child ; George Abernethy, mission stewart, wife and two children ; W. W. Raymond, farmer, and wife; Henry B. Brewer, farmer, and wife; Rev. Lewis H. Judson, cabinet-maker, wife and three children; Rev. Josiah L. Parrish, blacksmith, wife and three children; James Olley, carpenter, wife and children; Hamilton Campbell, wife and children ; David Carter, Miss Chloe A. Clark, Miss Elmira Phillips, Miss Maria T. Ware, Miss Almira Phelps, teachers; Miss Orpha Lankton, stewardess; and Thomas Adams, the Chi- nook whom Mr Lee had brought with him from Oregon. The other Chinook, Brooks, had died.
It was on the 10th of October, 1839, that the Lau- sanne sailed. The mission family gathered on the
25 Fry and Farnham not being able to furnish a ship to bring out the mis- sionaries for the price offered by the society, the government paid fifty dol- lars additional for each person. Parrish, who relates this, says also that he was not aware of this assistance by the government until he had been seven years in Oregon. Or. Anecdotes, MS., 8.
HIST. OR., VOL. I. 12
178
COLONIZATION.
steamer which was to convey them to Sandy Hook, where the ship was anchored. Assembled there were many friends, and some strangers drawn thither by curiosity regarding so unprecedented a missionary exodus. Religious services were held conducted by the reverend doctors Bangs and Anderson, secre- taries of the American Board. Stronger to move the heart than sound of brass or stretched strings is the music of the human voice; and as prayer and song fell upon the ears of those excited by hopes and fears, their souls were stirred within them, and sobs, tears, and embraces mingled with the farewell benedictions, as the travellers stepped from the steamer to the ship. No company ever sailed from that port whose departure was watched with more interest by reli- gious and political circles.
The ship reached the harbor of Honolulu on the 11th of April, 1840, where all disembarked, and were hos- pitably entertained until the 28th, when they set sail for the Columbia River. During their sojourn, Lee held a conference with Kamehameha III., relative to an exchange of productions between the Islands and Oregon, and an informal treaty of commerce was entered into, to the manifest pleasure of the king.26
Before the Lausanne reached its destination, it may be well to glance over the condition of things at the Mission during Lee's absence. In June had occurred the death of Mrs Lee, as previously related; in Au- gust White's infant son was drowned, the first boy 27
26 Hines' Hist. Or., 80.
27 From a comparison of dates, it appears that the first child of white parentage born in Oregon was Alice Clarissa Whitman, born at Waiilatpu, March 4, 1837, and drowned in the Walla Walla River June 22, 1838. Jason Lee White was born in July 1836; he was eleven months old at the time of his death. Lee and Frost's Or., 212. While canoes were the only means of trav- elling by water, fatal accidents were not infrequent, which makes the coinci- dence in the mode of death of the first two infants less notable. On the 15th of September, 1837, Joseph Beers was born, and in 1882 resided in Marion Co., the oldest American native of Oregon. On the 15th of November, 1837, a daughter named Eliza was born to Mr and Mrs Spalding at Lapwai, and she afterward married a Mr Warren of Brownsville, Linn County. The next birth was that of Jason Lee's son, June 6, 1838, who died soon after, and who was
179
THE LOGIC OF RELIGION.
born in the Willamette Valley of white parentage. This accident occurred at the cascades of the Colum- bia, a canoe containing Mr and Mrs Leslie and Mrs White and her infant being upset. Mrs White and Mr Leslie escaped with great difficulty.
The house occupied by Mr Leslie was burned in December, with all the personal effects of the family, a loss the more severe on account of his wife's serious illness. Their pecuniary loss was met by the board.
An event of this year was the forming of the second cattle company, numbering twenty-seven men, under the command of T. J. Hubbard. Its object, like that of the first, was to bring cattle from California. In pursuance of this plan, a party proceeded as far south as Rogue River, where they were attacked by natives. The men scattered in the mountains, some wounded and suffering many hardships, but all finally reaching the settlements.
Late in December protracted revival meetings were held at the Mission, Mr Leslie preaching with earnest- ness and power; and besides his own daughters and White's adopted son, there were added to the church a number of the settlers and many of the natives.28
At the Dalles, Lee and Perkins found the effect of their teachings very different from what they had expected. It was easy for an Indian to believe in miraculous power; old superstitions concerning spirits
the fifth child, and third boy-though J. L. Parrish claims him for the first. See an article in the Riverside, a weekly newspaper published at Independence, Oregon, June 13, 1879. On the 7th of December, 1838, a son was born to Mr and Mrs Walker, at Waiilatpu, the first boy of white parentage in eastern Oregon, or what is now Washington. Olympia. Transcript, Dec. 16, 1876; Seattle Pacific Tribune, Dec. 1, 1876; Corvallis Gazette, June 23, 1876. A son was born to Mr and Mrs W. H. Gray about this time. In the autumn of 1838 a daughter was born to Mr and Mrs Shepard, named Anna Maria Lee, and a son to Mr and Mrs Perkins.
28 Among the converts were James O'Neal, Charles Roe, S. G. Campbell, Baptiste Desportes Mckay, J. P. Edwards, and Solomon Smith. Daniel Lee says: 'The scene was awful. Poor C. felt as if he was just falling into hell, and with great earnestness besought the prayers of all present. Prayer went up, and shouts of praise followed, for the soul of the prisoner was soon re- leased. About nine o'clock several of the boys and girls came rushing into the room, fell upon their knees, and began crying aloud for mercy.' Lee and Frost's Or., 167-8. The excitement continued for some weeks.
180
COLONIZATION.
of good and evil, and their influence on human affairs, prepared them to accept the Christian belief, but in a sense surprising to their teachers. The principal point in the Methodist faith is the efficacy of prayer, which was impressed upon the minds of the Indians in their first lessons, causing them earnestly and sincerely to strive for that state which they imagined necessary to the working of the spell which was to bring them their hearts' desires. On being disappointed, they lost faith, and reproached their teachers.
Said an Indian to Perkins, "I want a coat. Per- kins replied, "You must work and earn one." "Oh," says the neophyte, "I was told if I took your religion, and prayed for what I wanted to have, I should get it. If I am to work for it, I can earn a coat at any time of the Hudson's Bay Company." 29
On one occasion a chief at the Cascades set adrift a canoe belonging to Daniel Lee in order to sell him one of his own. To secure his friendship and prevent a repetition of the theft, Lee presented him a musket, which so affected the chief that when he met another of the missionaries at Fort Vancouver he assured him that his people now all obeyed Lee's instructions, and as for himself, "his heart was full of pray."30 They often stopped in the midst of their supplications to demand pay for praying.31
In the autumn of 1839 the natives at the Dalles, by this time convinced that prayer did not place them on an equality in worldly goods with their teachers, be- came so intrusive and committed so many thefts that the missionaries began to fear for their lives; and Dan- iel Lee took the precaution to provide himself with arms and ammunition from Fort Vancouver, intending to garrison the mission house, and to resist any hostile attempts. To his relief and astonishment on return- ing to the Dalles he found Mr Perkins in the midst of a "work of God," among the Indians. Several of
29 Raymond's Notes, MS.
30 Lee and Frost's Or., 230.
31 Oregon City Argus, April 18, 1857.
181
PERKINS AT THE DALLES.
the natives had begun to pray, and one was converted, which greatly encouraged Mr Perkins.
The meetings were continued all winter, Mr and Mrs Perkins following up the good beginning and visiting all the tribes along the river in their neigh- borhood. In the spring a camp-meeting was held among the Kliketats, when twelve hundred Indians were present, and during the winter and spring several hundred, thought to be converted, were baptized and admitted to communion.
The account of a large Indian church at the Dalles, shortly afterward published in the east, created great enthusiasm among religious people. But this was hardly written before the converts began to fall from grace. A chief was killed by an enemy, and the hearts of the Indians were cast down. "What was the good of praying?" they asked. Their chief had prayed, and now he was dead. If prayer would not avert death, why pray? If they remained Christians they would not be permitted to avenge the murder of their relatives, or to fight their enemies; and though Perkins restrained them at that time from violence, they were not satisfied that it was the better way. They assumed an importance, too, now that they were Christians. Perkins sent away a native boy for some misconduct, soon after which the boy died. This became the occasion for demanding pay, as Perkins was held responsible for the death of one of the tribe. Their demands not being complied with, the savages became insolent, and indemnified themselves by stealing horses. They even pretended to be offend- ed because they were not honored by a visit from the superintendent (" the missions, from whom they probably hoped to receive presents for their efforts at good behavior. To control these capricious natures was beyond the power of any missionary.
Elijah White was again afflicted by the death, on the 16th of August, 1839, of his adopted son,
182
COLONIZATION.
George Stoughtenburg, who, while attempting to ford the Willamette on horseback, about a mile below the Mission, was drowned. That autumn Shepard was seriously ill with a scrofulous trouble, which necessi- tated the amputation of his leg; he did not long sur- vive the operation, his death occurring on the 1st of January, 1840. For two years he had suffered from the disease. He left a wife and two infant daughters."
Thus passed away from his work in the Methodist Mission its most faithful and successful servant, whose gentleness had won him the hearts of all his asso- ciates. He was a large, fine-looking man, but little over forty years of age at the time of his death. With Shepard died all interest in the hopeless scheme of educating the native children of the Willamette. We cannot blame his associates for feeling its hopelessness ; to them it was a rootless Sahara, upon which the sun might beat for centuries without bringing forth fruit enough to feed a whippoorwill. And yet his was a self-sacrificing, generous nature, that never lost faith in the power of love to redeem the lowest humanity.
Such was the condition of affairs in the spring of 1840. The Lausanne not arriving as early as was ex- pected, Daniel Lee, who had been waiting a few days at the Willamette Mission, grew impatient, for his be- trothed was among the passengers, and he hastened forward to meet the ship at its anchorage. Solomon Smith accompanied him with his Clatsop wife, who wished to return to her own people as a missionary, having experienced a change of heart; and on the 16th of May they started on their trip, and held re- ligious services with the Indians wherever they found it convenient to land. They had just encamped on the 21st of May at Chinook, when a vessel was seen coming up the channel under Cape Disappointment, and anchoring in Baker Bay. Lee lost no time in going on board, and in meeting his uncle and the 32 He was born in Phillipston, Massachusetts, August 16, 1799.
183
SILENT CENSURE.
great reënforcement. Miss Maria T. Ware was the one above all others whom he sought; for to her he had been engaged for some time, and on the 11th of June following they were married.
Jason Lee, impatient over the necessary delay, and anxious as to the accommodation of so large a company, took a canoe and went in advance to the Mission. When there he handed over the ship's list of passen- gers, headed by the name of Mr and Mrs Jason Lee, that he might notify his old companions that he had returned with another wife. He made no remark on the subject, and nothing was said to him. Deeply stirred had been the sympathies of his old associates as they thought of his return to his desolate home; and now the revulsion of feeling was so great that the supremacy of Jason Lee in their hearts was thence- forth a thing of the past.
CHAPTER VIII.
CLOSE OF THE METHODIST RÉGIME. 1840-1841.
SETTLEMENT OF CLATSOP PLAINS-THE NISQUALLY MISSION SITE-DANIEL LEE RETURNS EAST-THE WILLAMETTE STATION-TRIALS OF INEX- PERIENCED PIONEERS-EXPLORATION OF THE UMPQUA VALLEY-WHITE DETERMINES TO LEAVE OREGON-ACCIDENT AT THE FALLS-THE OREGON INSTITUTE-PLAN TO DRIVE McLOUGHLIN FROM THE FALLS-CONDUCT OF WALLER-PARTS PLAYED BY HASTINGS AND ABERNETHY-INGRATITUDE AND TRICKERY-LEGALITY OF CLAIMANTS TO OREGON CITY-LEE SUPER- SEDED BY GEORGE GRAY-PROGRESS OF COLONIZATION.
As soon as information of the arrival of the Lau- sanne reached him, McLoughlin sent fresh bread, butter, milk, and vegetables to meet the vessel in the river; and on her arrival at Fort Vancouver, he in- vited the whole ship's company to take tea with him. The invitation was accepted by Captain Spaulding and several others. On the following day rooms were made ready for the whole fifty-three persons, who were quartered and fed at Fort Vancouver during the several weeks unavoidably spent before places could be assigned them.1
Having acquainted himself with the existing con- dition of the Mission and the territory, Jason Lee allotted to the colonists their several fields of labor. The points selected covered the places likely to be of most importance in the country when the United States should extend jurisdiction over it.
1 Journal of Spaulding, in U. S. H. Rept. 830, 27th Cong., 2d Sess .; Ander- son's Northwest Coast, MS., 263; McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., 2d ser 9; Hines' Oregon Hist., 90.
( 184 )
185
ON THE CLATSOP PLAINS.
Before returning from the mouth of the river, Daniel Lee had already accompanied Solomon Smith and wife to Clatsop plains, where were good farming and pasture lands, though not conveniently situated, being eighteen miles from Astoria, and reached by eight miles of rather rough water in Meriwether Bay, or as it is now called, Young Bay, and ten miles of land journey among alternate marshes and sand-dunes. But as Americans foresaw that a city would be built at the entrance of the Columbia, few considerations would weigh against the importance of securing this location. Daniel Lee and Frost were accordingly de- tailed to erect a station on the Clatsop plains. Lee seems to have preferred staying at the Dalles, and Frost spent most of the summer between the missions and the forts of the fur company, apparently waiting for some one to provide a pleasant place for hin.
At length, after his family had been a long time the guests of Mr Birnie2 at Astoria, Kone was sent as associate, and they set to work with the aid of Solomon Smith to prepare a residence among the Clatsops; but having only Smith to assist them, and Frost being afraid of canoes, bears, savages, and, in a general way, of everything not to his liking, they made little progress, and the autumn rains came on before the green log house was ready for use, or the Mission goods had been brought from Astoria. However, by the time the December storms had set in, with the strong south-west winds and floods of rain, they had comfortable covering; but at night their floor was often covered with sleeping Indians of the filthiest habits, and through the leaky roof the water came down upon their beds. These trials were increased by the difficulty of getting to Astoria for supplies, the marshes being overflowed and the plains a quagmire Fortunately, about Christmas they were reënforced by Calvin Tibbets, who had determined to settle near the sea-coast, and by a negro named Wal-
2 See Portland Daily Oregonian, Dec. 29 1854 ; Roberts' Rec., MS., 100.
186
CLOSE OF THE METHODIST RÉGIME.
lace, a deserter from the American brig Maryland, then in the river.
With this help the missionaries began to explore for a road to the landing which should be on firm ground; instead of which, they found upon the shore of the Columbia, about half-way between Young Bay and Point Adams, four miles from their house, a convenient place for building; and it was decided
C.Disappointment
Bake
Colu
er Bay
Bau
Cathlamet
Point Adams
Fort Stevens.
Methodist
Mission
John Day is
CUTSOR PLAIN
R. Nechooris
Invit Rivers
Young River
Skippanom R.
Tillamook Head
R
Noahcanacom
Nehalem R.
THE CLATSOP COUNTRY.
that it would be better to remove to this place, where supplies could be brought all the way in boats, than to make a road to the locality first selected. Upon this idea Frost, Kone, Smith, and Tibbets at once commenced preparations for building. By the 10th of February, 1841, a one-story log house, twenty by thirty feet, floored and roofed with rough lumber from the Fort Vancouver mill, was ready for occupation,
Fort Clatsop
Waluakt Cr.
187
AFFAIRS AT CLATSOP.
and thither the families and goods were removed. Mrs Kone, who had been ill, was carried in a chair the greater part of the way, while Mrs Frost and the children walked, there being as yet no horses or cattle on the plains, and the distance by the beach, the only practicable route, being seven miles.
As soon as the household goods were transported to the new place, Smith and Tibbets put up cabins near the mission house, and the settlement of Clatsop may be said to have begun,3 especially as Smith set about cultivating a vegetable garden on the plains as soon as spring opened; and with much difficulty brought down two horses by boat from the Willa- mette settlements.
During the summer, Frost and Solomon Smith explored a route to the Willamette by way of the coast and the Tillamook country. So far as known, no white men had visited this part of the coast since 1806, when Captain Clarke partially explored it, and the trail from Tillamook Bay to the Willamette Val- ley was then known to the Indians only. But Smith and Frost, with an Indian guide, reached the settle- ments in safety at the end of two weeks, and drove back to Clatsop by the same route some cattle and horses, to stock the plains of that excellent grazing region.
In November of this year, in view of his wife's health, Mr Kone applied for permission to return to the states, which was granted, and he took leave of Oregon after a residence of a year and a half, leaving no grand achievement, and harboring in his breast no regrets for his lost occupation. Before leaving, he had been detailed to superintend the mission farm opened at Clatsop, and a house was in process of erection for him, at the original spot chosen by Lee and Frost, on the plains. In 1842 Mr Raymond and family, with Miss Phillips, occupied this house, and took charge of the farm. Frost also removed thither
3 Wilkes' Nar., U. S. Erplor. Ex., iv. 344.
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