USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 25
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There was as yet no reason to desire governmental interference. The Americans were not yet overstep- ping the boundary fixed in the British imagination as their rightful limits; and perhaps Douglas foresaw that the presence of a war-vessel would alarm them, and lead them to call upon their government.
Captain Belcher, on his side, was outspoken in his contempt for the unmilitary appearance of forts George and Vancouver. "No Fort Vancouver ex- ists," he says; "it is merely the mercantile post of the Hudson's Bay Company." 14 And the captain's sneer was just, inasmuch as the total armament of Fort Vancouver at this time consisted of a little three- pounder. 15
Belcher, like Simpson, Dunn, and Beaver, blamed McLoughlin for encouraging so many missionary set- tlers.16 Indeed, it is evident that while the Ameri- cans feared British influence, the English were no less alarmed about American predominance.
In their petition to congress the American settlers also alleged that the British government had recently made a grant to the fur company of all the lands lying between the Columbia River and Puget Sound, and that the company were actually exercising acts of ownership, opening extensive farms,17 and shipping to
13 ' Belcher,' says Roberts, 'thought himself slighted, but I think Douglas was only carrying out his orders.' Recollections, MS., S.
14 Belcher's Voyage, i. 295, 298.
15 Matthieu's Refugee, MS., 18.
16 Belcher's Voyage, i. 297. 'By a strange and unpardonable oversight of the local officers, missionaries from the United States were allowed to take religious charge of the population; and these artful men lost no time in intro- ducing such a number of their countrymen as reduced the influence of the British settlers to complete insignificance.' Boston Miss. Herald, Dec. 1866.
17 As if that were not what the Americans were doing on the south side of the Columbia. But as to the government making grants, it could no more do so than the American government, before the boundary should be defined. The Agricultural Association could not even incorporate before the crown of
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PROGRESS OF EVENTS.
foreign ports vast quantities of the finest pine lum- ber.18
Such was the memorial for which Leslie, superin- tendent of the Mission pro tem., and Bailey, an attaché of the same institution, were responsible, whatever Farnham had to do with drawing it up. Farnham remained among the hospitable missionary families un- til the middle of November, when he repaired to Fort Vancouver to wait for the departure of the company's vessel, the Nereid, in which he embarked for the Sand- wich Islands early in December. When he reached Oahu he addressed a letter to the United States sec- retary of war, in which he informed the government that the Hudson's Bay Company had taken upon lease, for a term of twenty years, the exclusive right to hunt, trap, and control by law the Russian possessions in America, Sitka only excepted, possession to be given in March 1840; that the British government had granted a large tract of land to the English fur company, who were making grants and sales to indi- viduals; that the company were making large quan- tities of flour to supply the Russians, with whom they had a contract for a term of years; were getting out lumber for California and the Hawaiian Islands, 19 and opening extensive farms in the Cowlitz Valley. He mentioned the arrival of the English emigrants, and stated as a significant fact that among them was a gunner, for whom he could see no use, as the com- pany confessed there was no danger from the Indians in the vicinity of their forts; he also alluded to a rumor that the fur company had cannon buried on
Great Britain became possessed of the territory; so that actually the Puget Sound Company was on about the same basis as the Methodist Mission; one was under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the other of the Methodist Missionary Society, and neither had nor could have any real title to the lands they held.
18 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 514; Gray's Hist. Or., 194-6. The only saw-mill of the company at this period was that above Vancouver, which turned out about 3,000 feet daily.
19 In his letter Farnham says the company's mill turned out 3,000 feet of lumber every 48 hours instead of every 24.
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FARNHAM'S LETTER.
Tongue Point, above Astoria, where they had built a house,20 and referred to the English surveying squad- ron, and a report that Captain Belcher had declared England's claims to the Columbia River to rest upon priority of discovery. Though not all true, there was much in his communication of interest to the United States.
Among other things, he stated that the Canadian settlers in the Willamette and Cowlitz valleys were favorable to the American claim, and would yield willing obedience to American law-an assertion that required modification. The French Canadians were by nature an amiable, light-hearted, industrious, and well-disposed people, ready to submit to authority, and fond of a quiet life. They were by training ren- dered obedient to the officers of the fur company, and even more so to the teachings of their Catholic priests. They were friendly to the American settlers, and looked up to the missionaries. They had been prom- ised a square mile of land when the United States should extend jurisdiction over them. So far they were favorable to American institutions; but should McLoughlin and their priest counsel them to withhold their support, they would obey notwithstanding the temptation of free farms. Such was the character of all the company's servants who settled in the country.21
It was not true that the British company controlled by law the Russian possessions in America, or strove to govern the American settlers in the Willamette Valley.22 By an act of parliament the laws of Can-
20 Mr Birnie had a potato-field on Tongue Point, but whether simply to raise potatoes, which did not grow well at Astoria, or to hold this promontory for some other purpose, is not known.
21 ' They are now all out of service and renewing their endless lives on the plains -- part American, part English, some Indian, and still all French. Blessings on the Jeans, the Jaques, the Baptistes, the Jeromes !' Portland Oregonian, Nov. 11, 1854; Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1876, 36.
22 Farnham said in his Travels, 175-6, what he did not venture to say to the secretary of war, namely, that the American settlers 'were liable to be arrested for debt or crime, and conveyed to the jails of Canada, arrested on American territory by British officers, tried by British tribunals, imprisoned in British prisons, and hung or shot by British executioners !'
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PROGRESS OF EVENTS.
ada were extended over British subjects in the terri- tory west of the Rocky Mountains, but this was never enforced so far as Russians or Americans were con- cerned. Even a Canadian could not be dealt with in Russian territory.23 But jealousy of the Canadian jurisdiction led the Americans to appoint as justice of the peace among themselves, in 1838, David Leslie. So that without any legal authority whatever Leslie was dispensing justice in the Willamette Valley at the very time that he and Farnham complained that there was a justice of the peace at Fort Vancouver, in what the company held to be British territory, and he actually tried a British subject for theft not long after.24
Farnham's report on the country itself was not pleasing to the colonists, who spoke of him with dis- respect after the publication of his Travels.25 He dis- paraged the climate, which was too dry in eastern and too moist in western Oregon; he found the forests, where they existed, too heavy, and in other places not heavy enough; and the mouth of the Columbia unfit for the purposes of commerce. 26 Holding these opinions, it is no wonder that he departed from the country without attempting to carry out the purposes for which the Peoria company was formed.
23 An example of this want of jurisdiction in Russian America was furnished shortly after Farnham was in Oregon. McLoughlin's son John was sent to Fort Stikeen, where he was placed in charge. But he was young, and did not know how to manage his inen, one of whom murdered him. When Sir George Simpson visited the company's posts in 1841-2 he arrested the mur- derer, who was a Canadian, but did not know how to bring the criminal to justice, as neither Canada nor Russia had any court of criminal jurisdiction in the country. He took the criminal to Sitka, but as the crime was not committed there, nothing could be done with him. Simpson's Nar., ii. 182; Hast. Northwest Coast, this series.
24 This was in 1841. A canoe, in which were some of the goods of Mr Kone's family, was upset in the Willamette River, and a box containing some of Mrs Kone's clothing, coming ashore, was picked up by a Canadian, whose wife, an Indian woman, appropriated it to her own use. This led to the arrest and trial of the responsible party before the missionary judge.
25 Niles' Register, lviii. 242. Wilkes, in his Narrative, iv. 388, says they were dissatisfied with his not putting the memorial, and his letter to the sec- retary of war, into his book. Gray, in Hast. Or., 186-7, is very abusive of him, and says he was expelled from the Peoria party, which, according to Holman, one of the seceders, is not true.
26 27th Cong., 3d Sess., Sen. Doc. 102.
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LATE ARRIVALS.
Four other members of the original party reached Fort Vancouver in the following May, just when the Lausanne, bearing the reenforcement of Jason Lee, touched her landing. These were Holman, Cook, Fletcher, and Kilborne. They had proceeded leisurely from post to post of the fur-traders, and been com- pelled to winter in the Rocky Mountains. When they reached Fort Vancouver they were clad in skins, bare- headed, heavily bearded, toilworn, and sadly travel- stained, yet looking so boyish and defiant, that the ship's company at once set them down as four runa- ways from homes in the States. McLoughlin, with his usual kind impulse, at once sent them to the dairy.27 Like Farnham, these four seemed to have given up all thought of their projected city at the mouth of the Columbia, and were content to be incorporated with the settlers of the Willamette.28
The Peoria company were not the only adventurers who made in 1839
' The first low wash of waves, where soon Shall roll a human sea.'
A second party, eleven in number, started from Illi- nois this season, and followed the same route as the first, but did not reach Oregon as a party.29 As
27 Holman's Peoria Party, MS., 1-4.
28 Joseph Holman attached himself to the Mission as a carpenter, and inarried in 1841 Miss Almira Phelps, as already mentioned. In 1843 he took a land claim near Salem, and farined it for 6 years. Subsequently he was merchant, penitentiary commissioner, superintendent of the construction of the state-house at Salem, and president of the Pioneer Oil Company at that place. Holman was born in Devonshire, England, in 1817, and emigrated to the United States at the age of 19, and to Oregon at the age of 22. Portland West Shore, Nov. 1876; Portland Standard, July 2, ISSO. Holman's Peoria Party, MS., is a narrative of the adventures of the 4 young malecontents who abandoned Farnham on account of Sidney Smith, and agrees substan- tially with Farnham's account up to the time they separated at Bent Fort. Holman's dictation was taken by S. A. Clarke of Salem in 1878, and contains several facts which do not appear in any printed anthority. Of Holman's companions, Fletcher settled in Yamhill County, where he died. Cook sur- vived him at Lafayette, in that county. Kilborne went to California in 1842. 29 The name of one of this party has been preserved, that of Robert Moore, who reached Oregon in 1840. He was born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, October 2, 1781, of Irish parentage. He removed to Mercer County, where he married Margaret Clark. They were the parents of 10 children. Moore served in the war of 1812; and in 1822 emigrated to Genevieve County, Mis-
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PROGRESS OF EVENTS.
if missionaries were not likely to outnumber the natives in Oregon, the North Litchfield Association of Connecticut, in 1839, fitted out two young men for that field of labor. They were Rev. J. S. Griffin and Asahel Munger. Munger was already married; Griffin found a young woman at St Louis who was willing to join her fortunes with his, and who married him at a moment's notice, as seems to have been the fashion with missionaries of that period. Placing themselves under the protection of the American Fur Company, they proceeded to Westport, Missouri, where they were joined by several persons bound for California.30
souri. He was a member of the legislature of that state, and advocated free- state doctrine. In 1835 he removed to Illinois, where he laid out the town of Osceola; but becoming enamored of the far-off Oregon, left his family and sought the famed Willamette Valley. Selecting a claim on the west side of the falls, he made himself a home, which he called 'Robin's Nest,' where he was joined by his family, and where he spent his remaining days, having acted well his part in the early history of the country. He died September 1, 1857. Oregon Argus, Sept. 12, 1857; Wilkes' Nar., U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 370; Address of M. P. Deady, in Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1875. Another pioneer of this period was a Rocky Mountain trapper, named George W. Ebberts, who settled in Oregon in 1839, where he was known as Squire Ebberts, or the Black Squire. He was born in Bracken County, Kentucky, June 22, 1810. At the age of 19 he engaged with Wm Sublette to go to the mountains as a recruit. He served 6 years in the American Company, and 3 years in the Hudson's Bay Company, leaving the mountains in the autumn of 1838 and wintering at Lapwai. Farnham describes an interview with him. Seeing a white man on the bank of the river above the falls of the Willamette, he went ashore to speak to him, and found him sitting in a driz- zling rain by a large log fire. He had already made one 'improvement ' and sold it, and was beginning another. He could offer no shelter, and took Farn- ham across the river to the log cabin of William Johnson, which contained a fireplace and a few rude articles of furniture. Ebberts finally settled in the Tualatin plains, with several other mountain men who arrived a year or two later. Brown's Miscellanes, MS., 22. Ebberts' Trapper's Life, a manuscript narrative of scraps of mountain adventure and pioneer life, shows a man with- out education, but full of good fellowship, brave, and frank. Ebberts lived in the Tualatin plains. William Johnson, above mentioned, was a Scotchman. He had been in the naval service of the United States. Subsequently he became a trapper in the Hudson's Bay service, and when his term expired settled near Champoeg, and took an Indian wife. By her he had several children, to whom he gave such educational advantages as the country afforded. Walkes' Nar., U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 371-2; Farnham's Travels, 173. Johnson died in September 1876.
30 Farnham, who fell in with these persons at Fort David Crockett, in Brown Hole, says one had the lofty intention of conquering California, others of trading, farming, etc., on the lower Columbia, and others to explore the wonders of nature on the shores of the Pacific. Travels, 120. The names of this party were William Geiger, J. Wright, Peter Lassen, and Doctor Wisli- zenus and a German companion. A second party for California consisted of D. G. Johnson, Charles Klein, William Wiggins, and David D. Dutton. Two
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QUARRELS AMONG THE EMIGRANTS.
This company, like Farnham's, quarrelled by the way. The missionaries as well as the secular trav- ellers lost their patience and good temper, and even the ladies of the party were not without their little differences.31 From revelations made by Gray, and newspaper articles published by Griffin several years later, we learn that the Snakes stole some of the mis- sionaries' horses, and that Griffin wanted to leave Munger and his wife at Fort Hall, on this account. The animals were recovered, however, and a concilia- tion effected. They all finally reached the Presby- terian missions in safety.32
In 1840 came another party of missionaries, of the Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Harvey Clark, A. T. Smith, and P. B. Littlejohn, each with his wife.
of the California adventurers turned back at Fort Hall, no guide for Califor- nia being obtainable, but the others accompanied the missionaries to Oregon, where, when the Lausanne arrived in the following spring, Lassen, Dutton, Wiggins, Wright, and John Stevens took passage for California aud settled there. Solano Co. Hist., 458; Sonoma Co. Hist., 61-2; San José Patriot, in S. F. Bulletin, June 5, 1879. The Germans probably went overland to Cali- fornia, as their object was to explore. Johnson sailed for the Hawaiian Islands.
31 Farnham's Travels, 120.
32 Griffin and wife wintered at Lapwai, and Munger and wife at Waiilatpu. Geiger, who with Johnson declared they were sent by people in the States to take observations of the country relative to immigration, being unable to explore it as he had hoped, consented to take the place of Shepard in the Methodist Mission school, which he retained until the arrival of the reënforce- ments of the following year, when he joined the mission at Waiilatpu, but afterward went to California. Munger and wife wintered at Waiilatpu and Griffin and wife at Lapwai. Griffin was a man lacking in good judgment ; he had, moreover, an unkindly disposition, and in the matter of religion was little less than a fanatic. Early in the spring of 1840 he and his wife set out for the Snake country with the idea of establishing a missionary station and stock-farm. They were accompanied only by a native guide, who deserted them at Salmon River. After several weeks of painful travel they reached Fort Boisé, and were kindly received by Payette. Griffin's experience had damped his ardor for pioneering in the Snake country, and he returned to Waiflatpu. In the autumn of the same year he went to Vancouver, remained there as the company's guest during the winter, and in 1841, with Mc- Loughlin's assistance, began farming on the Tualatin plains. Lee and Frost's Or., 210. Notwithstanding the favors Griffin received from the company, he afterward became one of its most bitter opponents, partly because Mc- Loughlin had embraced the Catholic religion. Victor's River of the West, 377-8. Munger remained at Waiilatpu until near the middle of 1841. He was a good carpenter and useful to Whitman; but about that time the latter noticed that Munger showed signs of mental derangement, and fearing the effect of this on the natives, he suggested to the missionary that he return to the States. Munger started with his wife and child and a single male companion, May 13, 1841. Finding the American Fur Company broken up at Green
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PROGRESS OF EVENTS.
They designed to sustain themselves independently of the orders of any board, but failed to find any field for their labors, and after remaining a year at the missions in the interior, settled on the Tualatin plains. Littlejohn returned to the States in 1845, but Clark and Smith subsequently became leading citizens in the
country. 83 With this party also arrived the first fam- ily of avowed emigrants that came to Oregon or the Pacific coast. It consisted of Joel P. Walker, wife, and five children, all of whom went to California in 1841,34 and Herman Ehrenberg, who had led, and con- tinued to lead, an adventurous life in several parts of the continent. He went to the Hawaiian Islands soon after reaching the Columbia River.35
River, he turned back to Oregon, and going to the Willamette Valley, began working for the Mission at Salem. Here his mental affliction grew worse, until finally he determined to work a miracle to convince the world of his inspiration, and nailing one of his hands to the wall above the fireplace in his shop, so roasted himself in the fire that he died within three days. Lee and Frost's Or., 211; McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., ser. 2; Astoria Marine Gazette, June 13, 1866; Gray's Hist. Or., 185; Simpson's Nar., i. 161. 33 Centennial history of Tualatin Academy and Pacific University, in Port- land Oregonian, Feb. 12, 1876.
34 Walker had expected to meet a company of forty persons ready for Ore- gon, but was disappointed. According to his Narrative, MS., it was the promise of land held out in Linn's bill which caused the movement. His history belongs properly to California, but since he set out for Oregon, he may be claimed as its first regular overland immigrant with a family. He, like the missionaries, had two wagons. The fur company had thirty carts. The wagons came as far as Fort Hall only. Walker was born in Goochland County, Virginia, in 1797, and like all the western men, kept moving toward the border, first to Tennessee, then to Missouri. When only seventeen he enlisted under Jack- son to fight Indians in Alabama, and subsequently in the Seminole war in · Florida. In 1822, with Stephen Cooper, he engaged in trade with the Mexicans at Santa Fé, and thus began what afterward became such an important branch of commerce. Finally he settled in Sonoma County, California. There is a manuscript Narrative by him, in which he says little of Oregon, except that his daughter Louisa who was born at Salem, January 14, 1841, was the first child of American parentage born in that territory, a statement which is erroneous.
35 Herman Ehrenberg emigrated to the United States from Germany at an early age. He was at New Orleans when the Texan war broke out, and was one of the few of the New Orleans Grays who survived the defeat of Fan- nin and the barbarous massacre of prisoners after the battle of Goliad. After the war ended he returned to Germany, and induced a large emigration of his countrymen to Texas. In 1840 he was in St Louis, and determined to cross the continent with a party forming for that purpose. From Oregon he went to the Hawaiian Islands, and after wandering for a few years in Polyne- sia, went to California and joined Frémont in his efforts to free that country from Mexican rule. The Gadsden purchase next attracted his restless nature, and in 1857 he settled near Tubac, and engaged in silver-mining in the Santa
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THE MOUNTAIN MEN.
Some weeks after the missionaries had left Fort Hall a council was held there by certain hunters and trap- pers, now without occupation and destitute through the dissolution of the American Fur Company. This corporation had broken up that same year without making provision of any kind for their servants. Most of these men had adopted their vocation in youth, and now, in the prime of life, were almost as poor as when they took to the mountains- a fact due in part to the policy of the company, but in a large measure to their own improvident habits. 36
As it was now absolutely necessary to seek the settlements in order to live, seven of them determined to go to Oregon with their Indian wives and chil- dren, about their only worldly possessions, and begin life anew. Their names were Robert Newell, C. M. Walker, J. L. Meek, William Craig, Caleb Wilkins, William M. Doty, and John Larison. Newell, Meek, and Wilkins decided to make for the Columbia River by the route discovered the previous year, and already spoken of. Newell had two wagons, which he had taken as payment for guiding the Clark party from Green River to Fort Hall; 37 Wilkes had another which had been left by Walker, and these they re- solved to take with them. Ermatinger approved the plan and purchased one of Newell's wagons, which he
Rita Mountains, Arivica, Cerro Colorado, and other parts of Arizona. He was a civil engineer and scientist of more than ordinary ability and reputa- tion. The town of Ehrenberg, Yuma County, was laid out by him and named after him. He was killed at Palm Springs on the California desert. Yuma Arizona. Sentinel, Feb. 23, 1878.
36 Farnham gives a pathetic picture of one of these deserted mountain inen, Joseph L. Meek, who afterward became as famous in the Oregon colony as he already was in the mountains. 'Meek was evidently very poor; he had scarcely clothing enough to cover his body; and while talking with us the frosty winds which sucked up the valley made him shiver like an aspen leaf. He reverted to his destitute condition, and complained of the injustice of his former employers; the little remuneration he had received for the toils and dangers he had endured on their account, etc-a complaint I heard from every trapper whom I met on my journey.' Travels, 127-8.
37 Walker says that the guide of the Clark party was named Craig, but as Craig and Newell were together at that time, the difference is unimportant. I have a letter of Newell's which agrees with Walker in every particular but this.
HIST. OR., VOL. I. 16
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PROGRESS OF EVENTS.
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