USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 21
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CLOSE OF THE METHODIST RÉGIME.
in August of this year. Another settler at Clatsop arriving about this time was Peter Brainard, a young man who came from California with Calvin Tibbets, who brought thence a small band of cattle which was driven to Clatsop plains.4 This was the second cattle expedition in which Tibbets had been concerned, and it added much to the prosperity of that portion of the country. Tibbets and Smith now built themselves houses on the plains, which with the farming improve- ments gave the place an air of permanent occupation.
In February 1843, Frost requested and received his discharge from the Mission. He was suffering from a disease of the throat which unfitted him for exposure, besides which Mrs Frost, a kindly and cheer- ful woman by nature, was much broken down and dis- couraged. They sailed for California and the island of Oahu, August 14, 1843, on the bark Diamond, Captain Fowler, of Scarborough, England, leaving J. L. Par- rish as principal of the Clatsop mission.
The actual mission work performed among the Clatsops was small, for what has been said of the Willamette people is true of the Clatsops, nothing could exceed their degradation. When Frost and Kone had been long enough among them to discover their character, they were glad to avoid them, though when they came in the way, which was seldom, they were instructed for conscience' sake.5
During the previous year a mission station had been begun near Fort Nisqually, on Puget Sound, by Willson. And now Richmond and family are sent thither, Miss Clark accompanying them. It is meet that Miss Clark and Willson should marry, therefore they marry. The site of the Nisqually mission was well chosen for an American settlement north of the
+ Lee and Frost's Or., 324.
5 Wilkes' Nar., U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 344. Parrish, who succeeded Frost, but who is an extreme advocate of the excellence of aboriginal character, says: ' I have seen as bright converts among the Indians as the whites, and that, too, among the Clatsops.' Or. Anecdotes, MS., 37.
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THE NISQUALLY MISSION.
Columbia, particularly if the primary object was to curb the pretensions of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company.
A comfortable log house was ready for the reception of Richmond's family, and a tract of land was claimed on the creek between the fort and the sound. The place had many attractions, lying on the borders of a beautiful prairie skirted with flowering wild shrub- bery, and divided from the sound by a belt of magnifi- cent timber. In the vicinity was a picturesque lake where Wilkes celebrated the Fourth of July in 1841, and gave it the name of American Lake, which it still bears.6
The neighborhood of the fort, and of the large Steilacoom farm, held for sheep-raising by an English- man named Heath, under a lease from the Hudson's Bay Company, redeemed the spot from the loneliness and savagery which made the Clatsop plains at first such an uninviting field. But for agricultural purposes the plain on which the mission was situated was almost worthless, being a bed of gravel covered with a light soil, soon exhausted, and requiring more rain to bring a crop to maturity than fell there during the summer.
It was not the want of success in farming which caused Richmond to ask for his discharge at the end of two years; but because the prospect of usefulness among the natives would not warrant his remaining as a missionary,7 and he had not enlisted to spend his time and talents as a farmer. His family had suffered from the acclimatizing process, aggravated by the in- conveniences of their rude manner of living; and on the 1st of September, 1842, he left for home in the American vessel Chenamas, bound for Newburyport, and the Nisqually mission was not long afterward
6 The lake was never formally named; but on account of the American celebration and the residence of the missionaries, was called American. Lake, and sometimes Richmond Lake, by the settlers of the Puget Sound Company. The prairie was also called the American Plains; and by the natives, 'Boston Illehee.' Evans' Puyallup Address, in New Tacoma Ledger, July 9, 1880.
7 Lee and Frost's Or., 323.
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CLOSE OF THE METHODIST RÉGIME.
abandoned. In the same vessel sailed Mr Whitcomb and family of the Willamette mission, his health being so broken that it was doubtful if he would live to finish the voyage.
At the Dalles, Lee, Brewer, and Mrs Perkins con- tinued to labor at mission work and farming for three years after the arrival of the great reenforcement; but in August 1843, Daniel Lee with his wife went east in the same vessel with Frost. At the same time Dr Babcock dissolved his connection with the Mission, and went with his family on a voyage to the Hawaiian Islands. Toward the close of the summer of 1844 Perkins, after Shepard the most faithful missionary of the Methodists in Oregon, also returned to the United States, and the station at the Dalles, now no longer by any construction worthy to be called a mission, was placed in charge of the Rev. A. F. Waller.
Mrs Shepard, after a year or more of widowhood, married J. L. Whitcomb, superintendent of the mis- sion farms, a worthy man. Mrs Leslie, who had had two daughters since her arrival in the country, lingered in a feeble condition until February 1841, when she died, leaving to her husband the care of five girls, the oldest of whom was fourteen. Had the missionaries been as well acquainted with the needs of their bodies as they were with those of their souls, it would have been better for themselves, their families, and their undertakings altogether. But they knew no more of hygiene, and its influence on the human spirits, than most other excellent people of the same day and cul- tivation, and they suffered accordingly.
Let us now return to the parent Mission, and follow its fortune from the year 1840 It was soon evident to the mind of Jason Lee that a better locality than French Prairie, for both missionary and colonization purposes, might be found. The French Canadians still owed allegiance to Fort Vancouver. A society of
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CHEMEKETA PLAIN.
low, illiterate half-breeds was not the best soil in which to plant American institutions. Let him have something apart from all the world, plenty of room, plenty of agricultural land, with some commercial facilities if possible, and he would clear the ground for a commonwealth of intelligent freemen such as God would delight to prosper. If there were another Columbia River that he might occupy like McLough- lin, placing the natives under tribute, temporal and spiritual, holding the key to the interior by means of a metropolis on the bank of a stream into which ocean vessels might easily enter and depart, with a nobler ambition than to collect the skins of wild beasts, with loftier aims than to keep the country and its inhabi- tants wild and primitive, and stay the hand of progress -in such a case, on this western shore he might rival Raleigh, Smith, Penn, or any of the great founders of empire on the eastern seaboard.
But unfortunately the River Umpqua was not like the Columbia; it offered no safe refuge for the fleets of nations, no site suitable for a commercial metropo- lis. It is true, there were savages present, however averse to conversion, and these might serve as capital in enlisting money and recruits among the religious people of the east. But something more than money and recruits was needed if success was to attend his efforts; there must be good land, and pleasant sur- roundings, and all the conditions stimulating to prog- ress. Thus in pursuance of the grand scheme, more and more possessing him, prior to his departure for the east Jason Lee had selected his position where there was land enough, and all other absolute requirements of the ambitious superintendent, the fine harbor, the magnifi- cent river, alone forgotten by nature, being wanting.
The spot thus chosen was a large and fertile plain, south of the original site, and only ten miles distant. The place was called by the natives Chemeketa, that is to say, 'Here we Rest.'8 In front, on the west,
8 Broum's Willamette Val., MS., 12
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CLOSE OF THE METHODIST RÉGIME,
flowed the Willamette between banks verdant with lowland vegetation. Beyond rose the beautiful Polk county hills, while to the south-east was the line of the Waldo heights, whose softer crests melted into the hori- zon. On the east a forest stretched away toward the purple shadows of the Cascade Range, overtopped here and there by a snowy peak; groves of fir and oak at intervals studded the great plain toward the north. A stream furnished mill privileges; and the whole was central to the great Valley Willamette. The late reinforcement, except the portion detailed elsewhere, as hereinbefore narrated, had been reserved for service at French Prairie, and to his new and charming Place of Rest, on his return from the east, Jason Lee immediately removed his people. Between two thousand and three thousand acres were selected, and a part put under cultivation, but owing to the scarcity of men accustomed to farm labor and to the inexperience of those present, they were obliged to leave the larger part untouched. A mill was greatly needed, and nearly the whole summer was consumed in getting milling and farming machinery on the ground.3 And when the mill was there, the mission- aries could not put it together. The stones were set running the wrong way, and when at work threw out all the wheat.10 The sagacious superintendent had
9 ' We were three or four months before we had any of the conveniences of living, though we had a fleet of five canoes plying between the Mission and Fort Vancouver, where the cargo of the Lausanne was lying. There were so many of us, and the cargoes had to be so light in the canoes, that it was a little for, this family and a little for that family, and a little for the other. We did not fetch any furniture of any amount, because we brought a cabinet- maker, a chair-maker, and such like. There was not a board in the country. Everything had to be taken out of the fir-trees. Our supplies were brought in the canoes to Champoeg, and then we had to get them up by horses and wagons to the Mission, twenty miles above. Well, you start one of those men down with a team to Champoeg, and if after loading up, a whipple-tree broke, or the hold-back to the wagon, or anything of that kind, he had not the first idea of how to fix it up, and abandoned the whole thing on the prairie.' Par- rish's Or. Anecdotes, MS., 10, 26. Wilkes reported finding farm machinery and other valuable property, which the society in the east had paid for, ex- posed to the weather and uncared for about the Mission premises.
10 Parrish says further, that for a long time he used to get as good flour out of a large coffee-mill he had brought with him as could be made at the mill; and that 'half the men who came to Oregon ought to have stayed at home.
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LEE AMONG THE UMPQUAS.
feared some such results from the employment of preacher-mechanics, and had insisted on bringing out a majority of laymen; but the board had thought preachers were wanted for missionary work, and mis- sionary work was their first consideration, while the dominant idea in the mind of Jason Lee was now material development.
As soon as possible the manual-labor school was removed to the new location, that the Indian boys might be made useful on the farm. This school now numbered twenty-five, and the colonists were too busy to instruct these young natives, had they so desired.11
It was impossible to complete the work of removal the first year, or even the second, or until a saw-mill should be in operation, it being the intention to build larger and better houses than those at French Prairie. Of those at the latter place the largest and the best was the hospital, now completed, a frame edifice two stories high, with a double piazza, in which the Mis- sion steward, Abernethy, and three other families, were comfortably domiciled.
After starting the new settlement of Chemeketa plain, which went by the name of "The Mill," for want of a better, Jason Lee set out to select a location among the Umpquas, intending even yet to make a settle- ment at the mouth of their river. In company with White and Hines he proceeded without difficulty or adventure as far as Fort Umpqua, at the junction of Elk Creek and the Umpqua River,12 where they were entertained at the house of Gagnier, agent in charge
They knew nothing about the hardships of a new country ; and the hardships were such that they could not endure them.' He pays a handsome tribute to the women, saying that they were 'noble, splendid women, who stood right up to their duties as well as the men.' Having to eat boiled wheat for a year was nothing compared to the loss of society, which was their greatest trial. Or. Anecdotes, MS., 26.
11 Wilkes says that in 1841 no fixed plan of operations had yet been digested, and that the boys, nearly grown up, were ragged and half-clothed, lounging about under the trees. Wilkes' Nar., U. S. Explor. E.c., iv. 378-9.
12 White relates that on arriving at the top of Elk Mountain, a very sharp and rough ridge, Hines arose in his stirrups, and exclaimed in a very earnest manner : 'My wife never climbs this mountain !' White's Ten Years in Or., 127.
HIST. OR., VOL. I. 13
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CLOSE OF THE METHODIST RÉGIME.
of the fort.13 From this point White returned to the Mission, and Lee and Hines continued their journey toward the coast.
Hines, who is the journalist of this expedition, par- ticularly mentions that Gagnier was unwilling that they should go alone amongst the coast tribes, telling them of Jedediah Smith's adventure near the mouth of the river. It happened, however, that while the
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THE UMPQUA RIVER.
subject was under discussion, a party of natives ar- rived at the fort from the coast, in charge of a brother of Gagnier's Indian wife; and Lee proposed that this fellow should go with them as guide, and to explain the object of their visit. It was finally agreed that the wife of Gagnier should also be of the party; and
13 Fort Umpqua at this period was a substantial storehouse of hewn slabs, a miserable dwelling, and a barn enclosed in a stockade. About eighty acres of land were enclosed, but very little improvement of any kind was ever made at this post, the farming being confined to cultivating a few vegetables and raising cattle. U. S. Ev., H. B. Co. Claims, 12-14, 21-3.
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FORT UMPQUA.
with these two guides and interpreters Lee and Hines proceeded.
The observations upon the river, the scenery, and the facilities for settlement in Hines' journal are clear and to the point. No difficulties were found in reach- ing their destination, the natives seeming well disposed toward their visitors, who held their devotional ser- vices with the bands among whom they encamped, and found them easily impressed, and apt at imitating the forms of devotion.
On arriving at the coast, where were three small villages, they pitched their tent at a little distance from the larger one, and through their interpreter asked an audience. Mrs Gagnier delivered the ad- dress of Lee, explaining the character and purpose of his mission to them, and asked for an expression of their wishes in the matter.14
Hines says the natives appeared solemn and showed a desire to learn; but he hardly dared hope they understood much, though they appeared interested. The prayers impressed them, and the singing of Heber's missionary hymn drew fixed attention. Lee promised them a teacher in the following summer, and the two missionaries then returned to Fort Umpqua,15 where they found Gagnier much alarmed. for their safety.
A chief of the tribe at the fort had seen a patent
1+ The chief's troubled conscience seems to present itself, as he says: 'Great chief! we are very much pleased with our lands. We love this world. We wish to live a great while. We very much desire to become old men before we die. It is true we have killed many people, but we never have killed any but bad people. Many lies have been told about us. We have been called a bad people, and we are glad you have come to see for yourselves. We have seen some white people before, but they came to get our beaver. None ever came before to instruct us. We are glad to see you. We want to learn. We wish to throw away bad things and become good.' This was spoken with violent gestures and genuflections, rising on tiptoe, and stretching his hands above his head, then bending almost to the earth. Hines' Oregon Hist., 104-5.
15 Hines remarks upon the country: 'We found but little land along the river which holds out any inducement to emigrants, the country on both sides becoming more and more mountainous. Whatever the country may be back from the river, it is certain that along the stream it can never sustain much of a population. Hills upon hills and rocks piled upon rocks characterize almost the whole distance from Fort Umpqua to the Pacific Ocean.' Hines' Oregon Hist., 103.
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CLOSE OF THE METHODIST RÉGIME.
shot-pouch which Lee wore about his neck, and be- lieved it a bad medicine with which he intended to kill them all. Gagnier's wife knew this, and with her brother kept watch through the whole night, never permitting the camp-fire to go out, or her eye- lids to close.16 It was not strange that these savages should be alarmed at the shot-pouch. Like the tribes of the Columbia, they had suffered from such fatal diseases since white men came as to have been nearly swept from the earth. Hines tells us that all he could obtain knowledge of in that part of the country were no more than three hundred and seventy-five souls, and expresses his conviction that the doom of extinc- tion is over this wretched race; and that the hand of Providence was removing them to give place to a people more worthy of so beautiful and fertile a coun- try-a doctrine comforting to the missionary who fails to perceive its unfair reflection on Providence.
With such convictions, it was scarcely to be expected that a mission should prosper anywhere; so after a hasty exploration of the Umpqua Valley, the mis- sionaries returned home, and the subject of a station in that quarter was dropped.17
Soon after his return from the Umpqua country, a misunderstanding arose between Jason Lee and Elijah White. The reason of the rupture remains some- what of a mystery. White himself said it was an honest difference of opinion in relation to the best way of carrying on the Mission work. 18 The truth is,
16 Gray, that most mendacious missionary, makes Gagnier an agent of the Hudson's Bay Company for the killing of Hines and Lee, and to render more plausible his horrible hypothesis, he twice falsely quotes from Hines.
17 A newspaper at the Sandwich Islands, commenting on the secular nature of the work in the Willamette Valley, said: 'As settlers we wish them every success, but advise them to drop the missionary in their communications, nowadays.' Polynesian, Nov. 27, 1841.
18 White's Ten Years in Or., 131. Parrishemore pointedly ascribes it to a misappropriation of the Mission funds in Lee's absence. Or. Anecdotes, MS., 108. Gray, who hated White, assigns dishonesty, treachery, libertinism, etc., as the reasons which brought about the difference. Hist. Or., 175; and Ray- mond accuses him of improper relations with the Indian girls of the Mission school. Notes of a Talk, MS., 4. Wilkes says that he was told, when in Ore-
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LEE AND WHITE'S QUARREL.
that White, who was prone to take the upper hand, led Leslie, the superintendent of the work, to spend more money in building the hospital than was ap- proved of by Lee, who had other uses for the money. The disagreement ended in the resignation of White,13 who took passage for home in the Lausanne, in the summer of 1840. As a penalty for being too much influenced by White, Leslie was left without an ap- pointment, and consequently without a salary, when the next annual meeting of the society came round. The affair was unfortunate for the superintendent. White presented himself to the board, and pleaded his cause, which resulted in having his expenses paid, though he was censured for deserting his post without leave from the board. Then he quietly resumed his former practice. Letters received by the Lausanne from Richmond, Kone, and others, comfirmed the un- favorable impression which White was able to give of the superintendent's course.
In these dissensions, which arose soon after the assignment of the reënforcement to their several places, Hines, Waller, Abernethy, and Parrish, with the laymen employed in the Willamette Valley and in the more favorable locations, appeared on the side of the superintendent, while the others arrayed them- selves against him. Probably dissatisfaction with their circumstances had much to do with this ill feel- ing. Some complained that they were not allowed to visit the Mission in the Willamette, or their missionary predecessors, before being sent to the wilderness to hew out uncomfortable homes. But Lee knew the value of time, and the necessity of providing shelter and getting established before winter, and had cause, besides, to fear that if they saw the Willamette Valley they might not go so willingly to another quarter. The misunderstandings which disturbed
gon, that White had been of much service to the country. Wilkes' Nar., U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 375.
19 A Copy of a Document, in Or. Pioneer Assoc. Trans., 1880, 50.
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CLOSE OF THE METHODIST RÉGIME.
the harmony of the Methodist colonists arose to a great degree from the unavoidable trials of a new settlement in the hands of inexperienced persons.
It does not appear, from anything discovered in the writings of the missionaries, that Jason Lee told his associates of his correspondence with agents of the government. Had the disaffected members of the Mission known that they had been used to carry out a colonization project, some expression of their resent- ment on finding themselves the victims of so worldly an artifice would somewhere appear. But the colo- nization scheme is never alluded to as a cause of their disappointment.20
White having resigned, Babcock was called from the Dalles to the Willamette, where the usual summer sickness was disabling the Mission. Chills and fever, ending in a low typhoid, prostrated the white popula- tion and carried off the natives.21
20 Frost says that he does not in the least regret that he embarked in the enterprise, although in the three years he remained in Oregon he ruined his health for life, for he believes he accomplished some good to the Indians by preventing murders, which were formerly frequent amongst them. Lee and Frost's Or., 331-2. Hines, who wrote later, when more was known about the facts, excuses the fraud on the missionary society by explaining that the Indians Lee expected to teach nearly all died during his visit east. Oregon Hist., 236.
21 Parrish says 500 Indians died in the Willamette Valley in 1840. Un- doubtedly an over-estimate, as this number of Indians could not be found within the range of observation of the missionaries in that valley. Or. Anec- dotes, MS., 35. Of the personal affairs of the missionaries from 1840 to 1843, I have gleaned the following: In the summer of 1840 J. L. Parrish lost his eldest son by the prevailing fever. On the 18th of January, 1841, a daughter was born to Mr and Mrs Perkins. On the 16th of February of the same year David Carter of the late reenforcement married Miss Orpha Lankton of the same. Miss Lankton was daughter of Abra and Thankful Lankton of Bur- lington, Connecticut, born October 2, 1806. Mr Carter died in 1849 or 1850, and Mrs Carter again married Rev. John McKinney of the Methodist church. She had three sons by her first husband. She died at So laville, Linn County, September 26, 1873. Portland P. C. Advocate, Nov. 13, 1873. On the 23d of March Mrs Daniel Lee presented her husband with a son, who was named Wilbur Fisk. It was about this time that Mr Whitcomb married Mrs Shep- ard. On the 6th of May, a young man named Joseph Holman, whom I shall have occasion to mention in another place, and who arrived at Fort Vancouver on the day the reenforcement landed, married Miss Almira Phelps of the mission family. Miss Phelps was born July 29, 1814, at Springfield, Mas- sachusetts, and educated at Wilbraham Academy in that state. Mrs Holman died at Salem, Oregon, October 23, 1874. Salem Mercury, Oct. 23, 1874; Portland Advocate, Nov. 13, 1874. On the 28th of February, 1842, Mrs Jason
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A SAD CALAMITY.
About the 1st of September of this year, Cornelius Rogers, who had removed from the Presbyterian mis- sions of eastern Oregon to the Willamette Valley, married Satira Leslie, a girl of fifteen years, eldest daughter of David Leslie. The marriage took place under circumstances at once trying and romantic. Mr Leslie, having lost both his wife and his salary as a member of the Mission, was much concerned about his future, and thinking that in some way a voyage to the Islands, where he would place his elder daughters in school, would help to settle matters for him, made arrangements to embark with his family in the brig Chenamas, the same vessel in which Richmond, Whit- comb, and Bailey, with other families, left Oregon in September 1842. Rogers' proposal came at the last moment, and the marriage took place on board the Chenamas; and it was there arranged that the two older girls should accompany their father, while the two younger should remain in the country with their married sister
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