USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 22
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Rogers returned to the Mission with his wife and the two children, and prepared to remove to the Wil- lamette Falls. During the winter Raymond arrived from Clatsop to procure supplies for that station, which were to be carried in a large canoe belonging to the Mission, and in which Rogers determined to embark 'for the falls, with his wife and her youngest sister. Dr White, who had lately returned to Oregon, and Nathaniel Crocker, of Lansingville, New York, who
Lee gave birth to a daughter, soon after which she died, leaving to the super- intendent only his infant girl as the fruit of two marriages. This child was named Lucy Anna Maria, after both of Lee's wives, and was taken charge of by Mrs Hines, to whom she became as a daughter. Her own mother, whose maiden name was Lucy Thompson, and who was from Barre, Vermont, was buried in the cemetry at the new mission, to which place and to the same grave were removed the remains of that Anna Maria after whom the child was named. Miss Lee was educated at the Oregon Institute and Willamette Uni- versity, in which she was employed as a teacher for several years. When about twenty-two years old she married Francis H. Grubbs, another teacher, and taught with him in the university and several other Methodist schools. Her constitution was delicate, and she died in 1881 at the Dalles, at the age of thirty-nine years. Hines' Or. Hist., 316; Hines' Or. and Institutions, 240, 247, 257; Independence, Or., Riverside, June 13, 1879; S. I. Friend, iv. 53.
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had also lately arrived in the country, being desirous of seeing the mouth of the Columbia, decided to accompany Raymond to Clatsop.
A sad calamity awaited them. The Willamette was running with great force, the winter rains having swollen its flood. On coming to the rapids above the falls the passengers all left the canoe, which was thereupon let down with a rope to a point near the landing, where Mr and Mrs Rogers, Aurelia Leslie, White, and Crocker, with four Indians, again entered it. Raymond and three Indians remained on shore to hold the line while the canoe dropped down to the proper landing. It passed this by a short distance, and was brought alongside a large log, used as a landing. As White touched the shore with one foot he endeavored to hold the canoe with the other, but the slight impetus given it by his first movement, and the force of the current catching the bow, which was up stream, threw the canoe out into the river, which was moving on toward the cateract with resist- less power.
It was in vain that those on shore endeavored to cling to the rope. They were drawn into the water, and forced to relinquish their hold to save them- selves. Then the freed craft darted like an arrow toward the fatal verge; a cry of anguish went up from the doomed, the plunge was made, and five white persons and two Indians descended into the rocky vortex from which none of them ever issued alive. Only two of the bodies were recovered, those of Rogers and Crocker. Two of the Indians sprang into the water when the danger was first perceived, and gained the shore.
This event occurred February 4, 1843, and threw a gloom over the whole Mission colony. The previous December James Olley, local preacher and carpenter to the Mission, while endeavoring to raft some logs to the mill, to make lumber for finishing his house, had been drowned in the Willamette. The loss of life by
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OREGON INSTITUTE.
sickness and accident in the Mission circle in the space of five years was thirteen, ten being in the flush of youth and prime of life, while three of them were chil- dren. When to these is added the mortality among the Indians and half-breeds, the impression might be that the climate was deadly. Yet the climate of Oregon has since been proven exceedingly salubrious; and to the causes of disease already enumerated, there seems nothing more to add except the theory advanced by some writers, that a disease when newly introduced into a country is most virulent.22
Meanwhile the superintendent is perfecting his plans for the foundation of a Methodist state. At the first annual meeting of the Methodist society in May 1841, a committee is appointed to select a loca- tion for the manual-labor school, which is chosen not far from the Mission mills, on the southern bor- der of the Chemeketa plain. Here a building costing ten thousand dollars is erected, in which an Indian school is kept for about nine months, beginning in the autumn of 1842, which comes to a close through the causes long tending in this direction. 23
The education of the children of the missionaries and settlers, now twenty in number, is a subject more pleasing to contemplate than the education of the natives. On the 17th of January, 1842, a meeting is held at the house of Jason Lee, who is now living at the new settlement, to prepare for the establishment of an educational institution for the benefit of white children, and a committee appointed to call a public meeting and prepare the way; the committee to con- sist of J. L. Babcock, Gustavus Hines, and David Leslie, the last named having returned from the Islands in April, by the fur company's vessel Llama, Captain Nye. The meeting is held on the 1st of February following, at the old mission house on
22 Darwin's Voyaye round the World, 434-6.
23 Crawford'& Missionaries, MS., 4; Hines' Or. and Institutions, 160.
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French Prairie, and it is decided to begin at once to lay the foundation of this institution. The name selected is the Oregon Institute; and the first board of trustees are Jason Lee, David Leslie, Gustavus Hines, J. L. Parrish, L. H. Judson, George Aber- nethy, Alanson Beers, Hamilton Campbell, and J. L. Babcock.
Present at this meeting is the Rev. Harvey Clark, an independent Presbyterian missionary, who is then living on the Tualatin plains, and about whom more will be said by and by. This gentleman exhibits much interest in education, and is put upon a com- mittee with Lee, Hines, Leslie, and Babcock to select a location. Their choice falls on a beautiful situation, at the southern end of French Prairie; but owing to a deficiency of water, this spot is abandoned for a plain known s the Wallace Prairie, about three miles north from the mill, on an eminence half a mile south of the farm of one Baptiste Delcour, and near a fine spring of water.
Having proceeded thus far, a prospectus is drawn up on the 9th of March, and a constitution and by- laws on the 15th.24 Soon $4,000 is pledged, in sums
24 This constitution and by-laws may be found in full in Hines' Oregon and its Institutions, 143-51, a work of 300 pages, devoted to advertising the Wil- lamette University. It was published in New York in 1868. By the first article the institute is placed forever under the supervision of some religious denomination. By the second it is made an academical boarding-school, until it shall be expedient to make it a university. The third declares that the ob- ject of the institution is to educate the children of white men ; but no person shall be excluded on account of color who possesses a good moral character, and can read, write, and speak the English language intelligibly. The re- ligious society which shall first pledge itself to sustain the institution is by article fourth entitled to elect once in three years nine directors, two thirds of whom shall be members of this society, whose duty it shall be to hold in trust the property of the institution, consisting of real estate, notes, bonds, securities, goods, and chattels ; and any person subscribing $50 or more shall be entitled to a vote in the business meetings of the society relating to the institution. The school is divided into male and female departments, to be taught and controlled by male and female teachers ; and placed in charge of a steward, whose duty it is to provide board and to direct the conduct of the resident pupils ; besides which a visiting committee of the society shall ex- amine all the departments, and make public reports. Annual meetings are to be held to fill vacancies in the board of trustees, appoint visiting committees, and transact other business. Should no society pledge itself before the last of May 1842 to sustain the institution, then the business shall be transacted
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ranging from $10 to $500, all but $350 being sub- scribed by the missionaries. On the 26th of October it is resolved at a meeting of the Methodist society of Oregon, to make the pledge required by the con- stitution of the proposed institution of learning, and assume proprietorship of the property in the hands of the board, which is done. A building is commenced soon after, under the superintendence of W. H. Gray, formerly of the Presbyterian mission ; and in the course of the year following $3,000 has been expended in its construction.
There was one more scheme in which the superin- tendent of the Oregon missions was deeply interested, but to which he did not care publicly and personally to commit himself. This was no less than the acquisi- tion for the Methodist colony of the water-power at the falls of the Willamette. To this place, as we have seen, John McLoughlin held the prior claim, and the unsettled condition of the Oregon boundary allowed him to maintain it; but from this the Metho- dists were plotting to drive him, standing ready to take his place when he should have been forced to abandon it.
It was a plan worthy of persons who, professing piety, had turned the sanctified gold of their sup- porters into personal profit.
Their intention was made known by report to Mc- Loughlin soon after the arrival of the great reën- forcement. He at once notified Lee of facts with which every one was already well aware, namely, that possession had been taken of the place by him in 1829, at which time, and since, improvements had been made, consisting of several houses and a mill-
by those who subscribe $50 or upwards, until such time as some society shall so pledge itself. The by-laws provide that no subscription is binding until some society has come forward and assumed the responsibility of maintaining the Oregon Institute, and as nothing can be done without funds, and as there is no other Protestant religious society in the Willamette Valley able to take charge of the proposed school, it falls, as it was intended to do, to the Metli- odist Episcopal church.
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race. Furthermore, he declared his intention to hold the property as a private claim when the boundary should be finally determined. The ground claimed was "from the upper end of the falls across to the Clackamas River, and down where the Clackamas falls into the Wallamette, including the whole point of land, and the small island in the falls on which the portage was made. " 25
The correspondence appears to have been begun in July 1840, soon after Waller had been sent to estab- lish a mission at the falls, in which he was generously assisted by McLoughlin, who gave him permission to erect a house out of some timbers that had been pre- viously squared by himself for a mill. After giving the notice mentioned, McLoughlin concluded his letter with these words: "This is not to prevent your build- ing the store, as my object is merely to establish my claim."
A satisfactory reply was returned, and Waller pro- ceeded in the erection of a building, divided into two apartments, one of which served as a dwelling and the other as a store-room for the goods of the Mis- sion. And yet Hines tells us that Waller was left without an appointment by Lee in 1840, in order that he might assist "in the erection of mills on the Wallamette River.' ' 26
For some reason no mill was begun at the falls at this time; but in 1841 Felix Hathaway, in the em- ployment of the Mission, began to build a house on the island, at which McLoughlin again took alarm and remonstrated with Waller in person. At this inter- view Waller, without directly denying the intention of the Mission to hold the site at the falls, quieted the apprehensions of McLoughlin by stating that he had taken a claim on the Clackamas River below McLoughlin's claim. At the same time Hathaway desisted from his building operations on the island,
25 McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., Ist ser. 12.
26 Hines' Or. Hist., 90.
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WALLER'S WICKEDNESS.
while McLoughlin himself put up a small house, and matters ran smoothly until the autumn of 1842, when a report was again brought to McLoughlin that Waller intended to dispute his claim at the falls; but on speaking to Lee on the subject, the superin- tendent assured him that Waller had no such design.
By this time, however, McLoughlin had caught the drift of missionary operations in Oregon, and began again improving his claim, having it surveyed and laid off in lots, some of which he gave and some he sold to persons who arrived in the country that season. The first to select a lot in Oregon City, as the site of the first town in Oregon was named by its founder, was Stephen H. L. Meek, a mountain man who had desired to settle in the Willamette Valley. When Meek proceeded to select a spot on which to build, he was interrupted by Waller, who asserted that he claimed thereabout a mile square, within which limits building-lots were at his sole disposal.
Informed by Meek of Waller's position, McLough- lin appealed to Lee, who replied, modifying his former denial of such intentions by alleging that he had only stated that he understood Waller to say that he set up no claim in opposition to McLoughlin's; but that if the doctor's claim failed, and the Mission put in no claim, he should consider his right paramount to that of any other; adding " from what I have since heard, I am inclined to think I did not understand Mr Waller correctly, but I am not certain it is so. You will here allow me to say, that a citizen of the United States by becoming a missionary does not renounce any civil or political right. I cannot control any man in these matters, though I had not the most distant idea, when I stationed Mr Waller there. that he would set up a private claim to the land." 27
According to the recommendation of Lee, Mc- Loughlin next sought an interview with Waller, who reiterated his former assertion that he set up no claim
27 Letter of Jason Lee, in McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., Ist ser. 5, 6.
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in opposition to him, but should, in case he withdrew, be the next claimant. He further requested leave to keep possession of some land he had cleared, and allow some persons to whom he had given lots to retain them ; a proposition to which McLoughlin agreed, provided an equal amount of land should be given to him out of Waller's claim adjoining, to which Waller consented. But before the survey was completed, Waller retracted, saying, before two or three wit- nesses, "Do you keep yours, I will keep mine." 28 But the next day he had again altered his mind, and wished to make the exchange. When McLoughlin declined, Waller returning several times to the sub- ject, the doctor at length paid him for clearing the land in question, and again the matter rested. In this transaction Lee, thinking the charge made by Waller extortionate, appeared in his character of superin- tendent, and refused to accept more than half the amount demanded, the negotiations being conducted through McLoughlin's agent, Hastings, an American lawyer, who came to Oregon in company with White, two months previously.
Waller's vacillating course could only be explained upon the hypothesis that he was endeavoring to hold the falls claim for the Mission, and the land at the Clackamas for himself, and was unwilling to trust the Mission to make good the land he had agreed to ex- change with McLoughlin. Meantime the purpose of the missionaries was being developed by the forma- tion of the Island Milling Company in 1841, three fourths of whose members belonged to the Mission, and the remainer being settlers, who were allowed to take that amount of stock in order that it could be said that the enterprise was a public one, and not a missionary speculation. But had it in reality been to benefit the settlements, a site thirty or forty miles
28 The witnesses were L. W. Hastings, J. M. Hudspeath, and Walter Pomeroy, immigrants of 1842. Crawford's Missionaries, MS., 20-1. Huds- peath laid off Oregon City as far as Eighth strest in the autumn of 1842. Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 24.
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ABERNETHY USES SHORTESS.
up the valley would have been preferable.29 In Octo- ber 1842, the Island Milling Company had erected a saw-mill on the island part of McLoughlin's claim, intending to follow it as early as possible with a grist-mill.30
McLoughlin now became satisfied that it was the intention of the missionaries to seize his land, and deprive him of his rights. Hence to save his inter- ests he built a saw-mill on the river bank near by, and gave notice that a grist-mill would soon be added. Indignant at what they chose to term the arbitrary proceedings of the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly, a petition to congress was framed. This was done by George Abernethy, who kept the Mission store at Oregon City, and from notes furnished chiefly by Robert Shortess,31 a convert of the Mission before Lee had turned his attention to colonization and self- aggrandizement. The memorial is known as the Shortess petition, for Abernethy was unwilling to have his own name connected with it, and to avoid this it was copied by Albert E. Wilson, employed in an American trading-house established in Oregon City in 1842.32
This petition was of considerable length, and set
29 'This is the best site in the country for extensive flouring or lumber inills.' Farnham's Travels, 172.
30 Crawford's Missionaries, MS., 25-6; MeCracken's Early Steamboating, MS., 6.
31 Robert Shortess was a native of Ohio, but emigrated from Missouri. He arrived in 1839 or 1840 alone, or nearly so. I find him writing a letter to Daniel Lee in January 1841, in which he announces his conversion to God from a state of gloomy infidelity. He was a man of good attainments and exten- sive reading, but possessed an ascetic disposition and extreme party feelings. He immediately adopted the anti-Hudson's Bay tone, and maintained it, as it suited his temperament. He invented the phrase 'salmon-skin aristocracy,' as applied to the gentlemen of that company. Gray, who thoroughly sympa- thized with his anti-British spirit, says that he and many others should have a pension for maintaining the rights of Americans on the west coast. Shortess and Gray represented the extreme of American fanaticism. Shortess died in 1877 near Astoria, where he had lived as a recluse. Gray's Hist. Or., 297; Strong's Hist. Or., MS., 35; Applegate's Views, MS., 38; Ashland, Or., Tidings, Sept. 14, 1877; Crawford's Nar., MS., 135; White's Emigration to Or., MS., 5, 6.
32 Such is the statement of Shortess made to Elwood Evans by letter in 1867. Abernethy was afraid that his standing with the fur company would be injured if his connection with the petition was known. Evans' Hist. Or., MS., 260.
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forth the manner in which the British fur company opposed American enterprises. The futile Wyeth attempt to establish trade on the Columbia was cited, and the failure of the Island Milling Company to drive McLoughlin from the possession of his claim; the milling company had commenced operations on the island before being informed by McLoughlin that the land was claimed by him, so they affirmed. Mc- Loughlin held a number of claims in the Willamette Valley, and American settlers feared to let him know they had taken up land lest their supplies should be cut of. Besides, a house had been erected at the falls by order of Mr Slacum, to secure the claim for him.
McLoughlin was further charged with refusing to allow the fur company's vessels to become common carriers between the Hawaiian Islands and the Colum- bia River, and with paying one Hastings, a lawyer, five dollars for drawing a deed of a lot in Oregon City. McLoughlin had no right, they said, to the land he granted or sold, and could not have any until congress gave it to him. They also complained that United States officers of distinction were entertained at Fort Vancouver with lavish attentions, and even a credit was granted to the sub-Indian agent, then in the country, furnishing him with funds and supplies to carry on his business.
The real motive of the memorial was betrayed in that paragraph which complained that when the mill- ing company had, with much exertion, built a saw- mill at the falls, McLoughlin had done the same with ease; and asserting that now competition had been introduced in the lumber and flour trade, their business would be practically worthless, because McLoughlin would be sure to undersell them. To cure these evils and others, they asked congress to take immediate action, and that good and wholesome laws should be enacted for the territory.33
33 The petition contained several flagrant misrepresentations, among others that when a cow died, which had been loaned to the settlers, they were re-
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THE SHORTESS PETITION.
The petition was signed by about sixty-five persons, half of them not having been more than six months in the country. The signers knew little of the under- hand war waged on McLoughlin by the missionaries and those whom they controlled in the Willamette Valley; they affixed their names without caring to know the tenor of the document, and because they were asked to do so.34
While neither Jason Lee nor Abernethy signed the petition, for which they were ashamed to become responsible, nevertheless their influence was felt. Shortess, having secured signers enough to present a respectable showing, made a forced voyage to over- take William C. Sutton, then on his way to the States. He came up with him at the Cascades, and delivered to him that absurd document which afterward figured in the reports of congress as the voice of the people, to the great annoyance of McLoughlin. The doctor
quired to pay for it. McLoughlin refers to this statement in A Copy of' a Document, in Trans. Or. Pion. Assoc., 1880, and says that cattle were some- times poisoned by eating a noxious weed that grew in the valley, but that no attempt was ever made to recover their value from the settlers. In all the statements made, it was intended to create a feeling in the congressional mind that the British fur company was directly and maliciously oppressing American citizens, and to gain credit themselves for the patriotism with which these tyrannical measures were resisted.
Then followed in a puerile strain a recital of injuries inflicted upon American trade by the fur company. An instance of this was in the Canadian practice followed by McLoughlin of having the wheat-measure struck to settle the grain in purchasing wheat from the settlers ; forgetting to state that when it was found that Oregon wheat weighed 72 1bs. instead of 60 Ibs. per bushel, a difference of sixpence was made in the price. In regard to the charge con- cerning Hastings, they neglected to state that he was an American, or that the deeds he drew up were for lots freely given to American citizens ; nor (lid they remember that they had no legal elaim themselves to the land in Oregon. It was forgotten that Slacum had promised the Canadians that their rights to their lands should be respected ; and that McLoughlin was not different from any other settler, except that they asserted that he held the Oregon City claim for the Hudson's Bay Company, and not for himself, which he denied. McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., Ist ser. 30. And they seemed to forget that in times past they had been the recipients of the very favors that they now complained were bestowed on their countrymen.
34 In a letter to McLoughlin, written by L. W. Hastings, the latter ex- presses his surprise that the petition should have been signed, not only by many respectable citizens, but by several of his party who arrived in the pre- vious autumn; and that on inquiry they were ready to affirm they had been imposed upon, and that they supposed they were only petitioning the United States to extend jurisdiction over the country. McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., Ist ser. 38.
HIST. OR., VOL. I. 14
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addressed a letter to Shortess, April 13, 1843, asking for a copy of the petition circulated by him, and which he was informed contained charges injurious to himself and the company he represented, but Shortess refused his request.35 Such were the methods by which the members of the Methodist Mission exhib- ited their hostility to the man who had pursued one unvarying course of kindness to them and their coun- trymen for eight years, with no other cause than their desire to deprive him of a piece of property which they coveted. "As might well be imagined," says one, "many of the brethren fell into temptation after buffeting Satan some years in Oregon."3
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