USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 41
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78
Going into the pine forest which beautifies the foot- hills near the Dalles, they felled trees and made rafts of logs from a foot to eighteen inches in diameter and twenty feet long, which being securely lashed to- gether, the wagons were taken apart and with their loads placed upon them. Sometimes one covered wagon-bed was reserved as a cabin for the use of women and children. A child was born in one of these cabins on a raft,35 between the Dalles and the Cas- cades. Others who had come from Walla Walla by boats kept on to the Cascades in the same manner. Some left their wagons and stock at the Dalles, while the greater number drove their cattle down the river, swimming them to the north side, and ferrying them back again to the south side opposite Vancouver.
On arriving at the Cascades a formidable bar to further progress was discovered. The rafts and boats could not be taken over the rapids. Two weeks were occupied in cutting a wagon-road round the Cascades by which the wagons brought down on rafts could reach the lower end of the portage. In the mean time the autumn rains had set in, and the weather in the heart of the great range was cold and wintry.
The few immigrants who had friends or relatives in 35 Ford's Road-makers, MS., 15.
410
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1843.
Oregon had received some assistance at the Dalles. Robert Shortess met the Applegates at that place with a canoe-load of provisions; but before passing the Cascades portage these were consumed by the party of seventy who had made the voyage from Walla Walla in boats, and they were in danger of starvation. There were no means of transportation at the Cascades, and starving or not, many women and children were compelled to wait for a passage in some boat from below.36
James Waters, who had been among the earlier arrivals at the settlements, became alarmed at the failure of the rear to come up, and feeling sure that they were suffering from want of food, went to Mc- Loughlin, to whom he represented the situation of those still at the Cascades, and asked for credit to obtain provisions for their relief. Though contrary to rule, this favor was accorded, the only condition required being that the provisions should be sold to the immigrants at Fort Vancouver prices, and that Waters should navigate the bateau carrying the sup- plies.37 This timely relief rescued many people from perishing of want and cold.
36 Ford says: 'I had a cousin that brought the long-boat of the Peacock to take us down the river. He had packed across the plains in 1842, and heard that we were coming. There were women and children that had no mode of conveyance, and were waiting for some means of getting away, and I prevailed on my cousin to take them. They were strangers to me, but in distress, and I could stand it better than they could.' Ford fortunately pro- cured four Indian cances, which he lashed side by side, and taking the boards of five wagon-beds, made a platform over them, loading on it the running-gear and other goods, and lashing all down. Then setting up a mast in the centre, with a wagon-sheet for a sail, and with two natives and two white men to assist in managing the craft, not only sailed down to Vancouver, but up to Oregon City, where he arrived on the 10th of November. McLoughlin met Ford as he stepped ashore at the former place with many kindly compliments upon his enterprise. Road-makers, MS., 16-19.
37 Says Applegate, in Views of Oregon History, MS .: 'The first full meal my party of 70 had for three weeks was out of the bounty of Dr McLoughlin, dispensed by Captain Waters.' Concerning the conditions put upon Waters, Burnett remarks: 'Many of the purchasers never paid, but contented them- selves with abusing the doctor and the captain, accusing them of wishing to speculate upon the necessities of poor emigrants. The final result was a con- siderable loss, which Dr McLoughlin and Captain Waters divided equally between them.' Of Waters, whose title of captain came from his having been at the head of one of the emigrant companies, Burnett says: 'He was a most excellent man, possessed of a kind heart, truthful tongue, and patient dispo-
411
FOOD AND CLOTHING.
A small party of the belated immigrants being wind-bound behind Cape Horn for a number of days -a circumstance that frequently happened at this part of the river-were in danger of death by starva- tion, being reduced to eating boiled rawhide, which they had upon their boat. Ford relates that a Mr Delaney had a box of hemp-seed which he consumed. Among them was an immigrant who had been to Vancouver and returned to the Cascades to the assistance of his friends. Remembering that he had breakfasted at a certain spot on his way up the river, he searched upon his knees, in the snow, for crumbs that might have fallen, weeping bitterly, and expecting to perish. But McLoughlin, with his wonderful care and watchful- ness over everybody, being satisfied, from the length of time the party had been out, that they were in distress, sent another boat with provisions to look for and relieve them, which arrived in time to prevent a tragic termination to their six months' journey. 38 A letter in the Oregon Spectator of January 21, 1847, written by one of the immigrants of 1843, declares that they experienced more hardships and sufferings in descending from the Dalles to the Willamette than in all the former portion of their journey, and that almost in sight of the promised land many were saved from perishing by the benevolence of the Hudson's Bay Company and the timely assistance of a fellow- immigrant-presumably Captain Waters.
It might be asked why help was not rendered by the American settlers in the Willamette Valley, and the Methodist Mission. In justice to the missionaries, I must say that some help was rendered, but it appears
sition;' and of McLoughlin, that 'he was one of the greatest and most noble philanthropists I ever saw; a man of superior ability, just in his dealings, and a faithful Christian.' Yet these were the men whom a certain portion of the immigrants of 1843 maligned and hated, although they were indebted to them for saving their lives.
38 Ford's Road-makers, MS., 24-5; Letter of Lieut Howison, in Evans' Hist. Or., MS., 348. The only death that happened at the Cascades, and the ninth on the road, was of a negro woman, a servant of Mrs Burnett, who was drowned by stepping on the edge of a canoe which sheered from under her, when she fell into the river and disappeared. Ford, MS., 21.
412
THE IMMIGRATION OF IS13.
to have been merely the sending of some provisions to personal friends and acquaintances, and was entirely inadequate to the needs of the new-comers. As far as the settlers were concerned, they were too scattered, and had not the means to render much assistance, which required boats as well as provisions in large quantities. It is plain that the greatest sufferers were those who were prevailed upon by Whitman and Mckinlay to leave cattle and wagons at Walla Walla. No lives were lost among those who took the land route,39 and those who had cattle had always something to eat.
Though the main immigration came down from the Dalles in boats, parties of horsemen accompanied the cattle-drivers on shore. One party, consisting of M. M. McCarver, James Chase, the two Doughertys, and a dozen others, took Daniel Lee's cattle trail over the Cascade Mountains into the Willamette Valley. The immigrants all along this portion of the route, whether in boats or ashore, were much annoyed by the natives, who stole the cattle, or who came in large numbers, and when the assistance of one or two was required, would refuse to give it unless all were employed and paid, which was only another form of robbery. Bur- nett mentions one chief who spoke English very well, and was dressed in a suit of broadcloth, with a pair of fine shoes. With absolute authority he commanded his thirty-five subordinates to do no work unless all were engaged. This was the practical working of the head-chief system of Elijah White turned against the Americans.
The lateness of the season when the travellers ar- rived, the last of November, with the difficulty of sheltering so many in a new country, rendered it im- practicable for the majority to select land for a set- tlement before spring. Those who had means bought the necessaries of life of the Hudson's Bay Company ;
39 ' Dr Tolmie used to say that we could go anywhere with a wagon that they could with a pack-horse.' Sylvester's Olympia, MS., 13
413
SELECTION OF HOME SITES.
those who had nothing left, and who could find em- ployment, went to work. Many remained at Oregon City, where a proof of their unconquerable vigor of brain as well as musele was afforded by the founding of a circulating library from the books which had been brought across the plains, an account of which has been given in a previous chapter.
Waldo drove his cattle up into the hills south-east of Salem which bear his name, and made a settlement without delay. Kaiser wintered on the west bank of the Willamette opposite the old mission; but in the spring selected a claim a mile and a half below Salem. The Fords and Nesmith, after remaining a short time at Oregon City, settled at that portion of the Yamhill district which constitutes the present county at Polk.40 McClane settled in Salem and bought the mission mills at that place; Howell on a plain near Salem, which is now known as Howell's Prairie. The Applegates wintered at the old mission, Jesse Applegate being employed in surveying both at Salem and Oregon City. In the spring the three brothers opened farms in Yanı- hill district, near the present site of Dallas.41 Athey
" The Fords were originally from North Carolina, where Nineveh Ford, author of the Road-makers, MS., was born July 15, 1815. They emigrated to Missouri in 1840, but taking the prevalent Oregon fever, joined Burnett's com- pany.
41 Some of the younger members of the Applegate family long resided in the Willamette Valley; but the three elder ones made their homes in southern Oregon; Jesse and Charles in the Umpqua Valley, where they settled in 1849, and Lindsey in the Rogue River Valley, to which he removed in 1859, and several of their children in the Klamath Valley. The Applegates were from Kentucky, where Jesse was born in 1811. The family removed to Missouri in 1822, where Jesse was a protégé and pupil of Edmund Bates, whose voice in congress was ever against the project of settling Oregon from the western states. There is a flattering and kindly tribute to Jesse Applegate in the Or. Proneer Assoc., Trans., 1875, 61, by J. W. Nesmith, in which he says: ' No man did more upon the route to aid the destitute and encourage the weak.' ' As a frontiersman, in courage, sagacity, and natural intelligence he is the equal of Daniel Boone. In culture and experience, he is the superior of half the living statesmen of our land.' Id., 35-6; S. F. Post, Sept. 13, 1877; Ashland Tidings, June 27, 1879. Mrs Jesse Applegate's maiden name was Cynthia Parker, her father being at the time of her marriage a Mississippi flatboatman. He was four times married, and Cynthia was the daughter of his second wife, by whom he had eight children, all boys but this one. Mrs Parker's maiden name was Yount, of Pennsylvania Dutch descent, and Mrs Applegate was brought up by the Younts. One of this family came to California at a period earlier than the advent of Captain Sutter, and settled at Napa, where he had
414
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1843.
was employed on the flouring mill of the milling com- pany at Oregon City, and finally built a house and engaged in the manufacture of furniture, being by trade a cabinet-maker.42
Like Hastings of the year before, Ricord was offered employment by McLoughlin as his legal ad- viser; but he held to the missionaries, as I have else- where related, and in the spring went to the Hawaiian Islands, where he became chancellor to the king, whom he left for the gold-fields of California in 1849.43
a large establishment and mill, with hundreds of Indian servants. Another was a wealthy farmer in Missouri at the time of Mrs Applegate's marriage. After a long and useful life, she died at her residence in Umpqua Valley, in the spring of 1881. Applegate's Correspondence, MS., 30. Lindsey Applegate was born in Henry County, Kentucky, in 1808. Afterward his father, David Applegate, a soldier of the revolution, emigrated to Missouri, where he settled near St Louis, then a small French town, and where Lindsey had few educa- tional advantages. In his fifteenth year he left home to join Ashley in his expedition to the Rocky Mountains. One part of Ashley's company ascended the Missouri in boats; the rest proceeded overland. Young Applegate belonged to the river detachment, which was attacked by the Arickarees, defeated, and driven back to Council Bluffs. Falling ill at this place, he was sent back with the wounded to St Louis. He afterward worked in the lead-mines of Illinois, and served in the Black Hawk war. He was married in 1831 to Miss Eliza- beth Miller of Cole County, Missouri, and removed soon after to the south- western part of the state, where he built the first grist-mill erected in that portion of Missouri, and where he resided till 1843. Mrs Applegate was a woman of superior character and abilities; she died at her home in Ashland in the spring of 1882. Jacksonville Sentinel, July 30, 1879; Ashland, Or., Tidings, Aug. 8, 1879. Charles Applegate was two years the senior of Lindsey. In 1829 he married Miss Melinda Miller, and with her and several children emigrated to Oregon. He is described as a man of iron constitution, deter- mined will, and charitable disposition. He also possessed considerable natural ability as a writer, having published several tales of frontier life. He died at his home in Douglas County, in August 1879; respected by all who knew him. Salem Statesmen, Aug. 15, 1879; Roseburg West Star, Aug. 15, 1879.
42 Athey gives an interesting account in a brief dictation in a manu- script called Workshops, of the introduction of furniture in Oregon, and other inatters. He says: 'At first I made breakfast-tables, bedsteads, chairs, and all articles of common furniture. I had a turning-lathe which I made myself, probably the first one on the Pacific coast. But I could not get enough to do to pay me. They went to shipping old furniture in here from the east. Captain Wm K. Kilborn of the brig Henry brought a cargo of it so nearly in pieces that I charged him more for mending it up than it cost. It was second-hand furniture, stoves, and everything. It was just like coining money to sell that off. Stoves sold for $45 and $60. It was a venture from New- buryport. I afterward did some turning in iron. I bought a wheel from a school-teacher at Vancouver, made a lathe, and used it for turning iron. That was not till 1847, and was nothing more than tinkering and making such things as I wanted for my own use.' Athey was born in Virginia in 1816. He took up a claim on the Tualatin River in 1851, and cleared it, but did not succeed at farming, and sold it after a few years for $1,800. He afterward engaged in building a small steamer.
#3 Honolulu Polynesian, Dec. 27, 1845; Camp-fire Orations, MS., 13.
415
THE TOWN OF LINNTON.
The Garrisons found farms in the Tualatin plains, now Washington County.# Burnett and McCarver took a piece of land on the west bank of the Willamette River, not far above the head of Sauvé Island, and laid out a town which they named Linnton, after Senator Linn; 43 but as no one came to purchase lots, after having cut out a road from the river to the Tualatin plains, they removed in the spring to the vicinity of the present town of Hillsboro, and opened farms near the Garrisons.46 Shively settled on a claim above the old fort of Astoria, which together with the claim of Colonel John McClure, before men- tioned, became afterward the site of the present town of Astoria. Lovejoy remained at Oregon City, em- ployed by McLoughlin as an agent to do business between the Americans and himself, until he became a part owner in the land where Portland now stands, and where he with F. W. Pettygrove laid off that town. 47
With regard to the general condition of the new colonists, it was one of destitution. In subduing a wilderness without reserved supplies there is often a
44 Joseph Garrison died at the Dalles Jan. 17, 1884, aged 71 years. S. F. Alta, Jan. 18, 1884. See also Portland Pac. Christian Advocate, April 9, 1874.
45 Buchanan in a speech remarked that the citizens of Oregon would deserve the brand of ingratitude if they did not name their first city the City of Linn. Cong. Globe, 1843-4, 370. There were two attempts to show gratitude in this way which failed; but the county of Linn, one of the finest in the state, perpetuates his name. Deady's Hist. Or., MS., 77.
46 McCarver was born in Kentucky, but removed to Iowa, where he laid off the town of Burlington, from which he emigrated. Burlington is now a city, while Linnton is unknown. Long afterward he laid out the town of Tacoma, in Washington. Burnett was born in Tennessee in 1807, removing to Missouri when ten years of age. His wife was Miss Harriet Rogers, born in Wilson, and married in Hardeman Co., Tenn. For biographies of the Burnett family, see Recollections of a Pioneer, 1-36.
47 Lovejoy was born in Boston in: 1811. He went to Missouri in 1840, and resided at Sparta, Buchanan County; but losing his health by the malaria of the Missouri bottom-lands, resolved to join White's emigration in 1842, as we know. In the winter of 1843 he accepted from a man named Overton a half-interest in the present site of Portland, Pettygrove buying the other half. The town was laid off, and a road opened to Tualatin plains in 1845. Lovejoy was prominent in the early affairs of the country, but became of feeble intellect before his death, which occurred in the autumn of 1882.
416
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1843.
near approach to starvation for a year or two. Here were many persons expecting to live by agriculture who had neither seed nor farming implements with which to begin. Many had large families, and how to feed them was a question which interested not only the immigrants but the Hudson's Bay Company. McLoughlin was not slow to comprehend the situa- tion. With feelings inimical to the great corporation, these men would never see their children starve while there was plenty within the walls of the company's storehouses. Both his heart and his reason pointed the course to be pursued. Immediate necessities must be relieved, and they must be encouraged to begin at once their only road to self-support, the opening of farms .. Accordingly, without waiting to be asked, he proposed both these remedies for the threatening disaster. He offered credit to the desti- tute, furnishing them what was absolutely required for the present, and seed and farm-tools with which to begin their plantations. Thus he not only dis- armed, to a great extent, the antagonism of the west- ern men, but made himself defenders against the arrogance of the missionaries by excelling them in kindness toward their own countrymen,48 establish- ing at the same time a balance of power between British and American, and between old and new colonists. 43
Notwithstanding this timely help the privations of the immigrants were great. Burnett had stated that during the first two years his family were often with- out meat for weeks at a time, and sometimes without bread, while occasionally both were wanting at the same time. Milk and potatoes, with butter, made a
48 Says Waldo, in his Critiques, MS., 15, 16: 'Jason Lee played the devil up at the Dalles. He said the Mission had always ruled the country, and if there were any persons in the immigration who did not like to be ruled by the Mission, they might find a country elsewhere to go to. It got all over the country, of course, very quickly. That made war with the missionaries at once. We came here pretty independent fellows, and did not ask many favors.' See also White's Ten Years in Or., 253.
19 McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., 3d ser., 10-12
417
SUPPLIES AND PRICES.
satisfying diet, though it happened more than once that even these were absent.
Game was scarce and poor. In the winter wild fowl were numerous, but the lakes and bayous to which they resorted were distant and difficult of ap- proach, and the settlers soon learned not to depend on either wild game or wild fruit. Had they given their time to procuring these supplies, they could have done nothing else. The sudden accession of popula- tion had raised the price of flour to four cents a pound, pork to ten cents, and other articles in pro- portion.50 Indeed, so hard was it to get enough to eat, without going hopelessly into debt, that an In- dian who had come to Applegate's house to beg was moved with pity to divide his own slender store of dried venison with the hungry children.
In the matter of clothing there was the same desti- tution. Fortunate was the man who possessed a suit of dressed buckskin, for when the homespun suits which left Missouri were worn out, there were no others to take their place. The women made dresses out of wagon-covers, and some wore skin clothing like the men. Moccasons took the place of boots and shoes. Happy was he who had an order on either of the three merchants at Oregon City, Ermatinger, Aber- nethy, or Pettygrove, although when it was presented the dearth of goods at the American stores often obliged him to take something he did not want for the thing that he needed,51 the usual demand having exhausted the stock in these places.
The circulating medium of the country as estab- lished by the fur company, being either furs or wheat, was a serious inconvenience.52 The custom of the set- tlers was to deposit with the merchants a quantity of wheat, which represented so many dollars to their credit. Orders on the merchants then became the
50 Niles' Reg., lxv. 137, 216.
51 Nesmith, in Camp-fire Orations, MS., 12; McClane's First Wagon Train, MS., 7; Waldo's Critiques, MIS., passim.
52 Tolmie's Puget Sound, MIS., 14.
HIST. OR., VOL. I. 27
418
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1843.
medium of payment for labor or property. Should the merchant's stock be low, the holder of the order either took what he could get, or else waited. None but the Hudson's Bay Company kept an assortment of general merchandise. The vessels from Boston and New York were freighted with goods of one or two classes, while from the Islands only a few articles could be obtained. There were silly fanatics-self- sacrificing patriots, they imagined themselves-who, to encourage American and discourage British trade, would have nothing to do with the company, and these were put to severe tests. Sometimes it was sugar, tea, coffee, or salt they had to do without; and again not a yard of cotton goods or a half-dozen cups and saucers could be obtained. This being the condition of the market in Oregon City, if a man required a certain article he must take furs or wheat to Vancouver, or he must ask credit at that place till a crop could be raised. But if a stock of the current year was already exhausted, the rules of the company did not allow of opening the next year's stock before the arrival of the annual supplies, lest by the loss of a vessel there should be a dearth in the country for a long period. The wants of the immigration of 1843 produced the effect of a vessel's loss on the company's stores, by exhausting the goods on hand.53
Why it was that none of the immigrants foresaw the circumstances in which they were to be placed, is a question that has never been answered. I think, however, that it is possible to solve it. None of them realized the distance of the Willamette Valley beyond the Rocky Mountains. As Edwards wrote to Bacon, many imagined that all they had to do after reaching Snake River was to embark upon its waters and float down to the mouth of the Co umbia. 54 In-
53 McLoughlin had it in his power to depart from the company's rule, and really did so. Ebberts, in his Trapper's Life, MS., 33-6, gives a broad sketch of the doctor's manner of dealing with and yielding to the American settlers, for which I have not room here. He was more often overruled than otherwise. 54 Sketch of Oregon, MS., 3.
419
THE IMMORTAL PATHFINDER.
stead of this, they found a stream impracticable for navigation, and bordered with sand, rocks, and arte- misia for hundreds of miles. It was owing to the excellence and abundance of their appointments that they accomplished the journey to the Columbia in such good time and with so little loss.55
From the repeated statements made in congress of the facilities for commerce of the mouth of the Columbia, and of the actual trade carried on by the Hudson's Bay Company, they had formed exaggerated ideas of the amount of productions, and the general capacity of the country. For the rest, they were idealists, 'men of destiny' they had been called, who had the same faith that all would be right with them in Oregon which the religionist feels that he will wake in heaven when he sleeps in death. Or, if all was not right, it would be the fault of the British fur company; in which case they would pull down Vancouver about the ears of its venerable factor and help themselves.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.