USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 51
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
The murmurs which had for some time been breathed against their guide now became angry threatenings ; the people refused to listen to his coun- sel when the trail became lost, and he was warned that his life was in danger. Meek realized what it was to be at the mercy of a frenzied mob in the wilder- ness, but was unwilling to desert them, because he knew from the general contour of the country and the advice of natives that they would reach the Columbia River in a few days by continuing a certain course.15
14 S. A. Clarke, in Portland Daily Bee, Feb. 6, 1869. See Staat's Address, in Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1877, 50-1.
15 Tetherow, writing in the Or. Spectator, March 18, 1847, says that Meek procured an Indian guide to conduct him to the Dalles; and another writer in the same paper of February 18, 1847, says that the wanderers went as far HIST. OR., VOL. I. 33
514
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1845.
A hurried consultation took place, and by the advice of Samuel Hancock, Meek, who was supposed to have fled, was to secrete himself, while some of his friends would prepare to start with him the following morn- ing for the Dalles. 16 This plan was carried out, and on the afternoon of the second day they reached a tributary of Des Chutes River; the joy of the suffer- ing men, women, and children, expressing itself in silent tears or loud cries, according to age and tem- perament.
Continuing down the stream and coming to the main river, they found it to flow through a deep cañon with walls so precipitous that the only way in which water could be procured was by lowering a vessel at the end of two hundred feet of rope in the hands of a man, himself held by a strong rope in the grasp of his fel- lows. Following the river, they came at last to a place where the cattle could be driven down and crossed by swimming; but which was not considered a safe ford- ing-place for the wagons. To overcome this difficulty, a wagon-bed suspended from a cable stretched be- tween the banks was drawn back and forth by means of rollers and ropes; and in this vehicle families and goods were transported to the other side.
While this aerial ferry was in process of construc- tion the main body began to overtake them, and Meek was informed that the father of two young men who had died that day, in consequence, as he believed, of the hardships of this route, had sworn to take Meek's life before the sun should set. Not doubting that the vow would be kept, if the incensed father met him while his wrath was hot, the unfortu- nate guide fled with his wife to the camp of some
south-west as Silver Lake, or Klamath Marsh, which would have brought . them opposite Diamond Peak pass. It is doubtful if they went so far, as there were other marshes more central.
16 Hancock's Thirteen Years, MS., 75. Elisha Packwood also says that Meek was not so bad a man as he was pictured by the immigrants; and that at the very time they were so anxious to hang him, if they had submitted he would have brought them to the settlements. Morse's Wash. Ter., MS., i. 59.
515
SUFFERINGS AND DEATH.
natives, and was sent across the river in a manner similar to that described, except that not even a basket was used to support himself and wife in mid- air, being upheld merely by a slip-noose.
Procuring horses from the natives, Meek hastened to reach the Dalles, where he made known to Waller and Brewer the condition of the lost companies,17 and besought their aid; but they rendered no assistance.18 He succeeded, however, in finding a guide in the person of Moses Harris, who had deserted White's party the first day out from the Dalles, and happened to be at this place. Harris gathered a few horse- loads of food and hurried to the relief of the immi- grants, whom he found at the crossing of Des Chutes, and which was not more than thirty-five miles from the Dalles, near where Tyghe Creek comes into this river.19
The passage of the river detained them for two weeks,20 and they arrived at the Dalles about the middle of October, having lost about twenty of their company from sickness. As many more died soon after reaching the settlements, either from disease
17 Hancock's Thirteen Years, MS., 78-81
18 Elisha Packwood, who was also among the lost immigrants, as they have always been called to distinguish them from those who kept to the beaten path, relates that Meek made great exertions to get a guide and some persons to go to their assistance from the mission, but without success; and says, in plain terms, that it was through sheer heartlessness that he was refused. Morse, who took down Packwood's statement, says it is the testimony of all the old pioneers 'that for rank selfishness, heartlessness, avarice, and a desire to take advantage of the necessities of the emigrants to the utmost, the mis- sion at the Dalles exceeded any other institution on the Northwest Coast. This is a terrible charge, but a conversation with fifty different pioneers who crossed the plains in an early day will satisfy any one of the fact.' Morse's Wash. Ter., MS., i. 60-1.
19 Moses Harris, commonly known as Black Harris, or the Black Squire, among mountain men, like others of his class, had the gift of story-telling, and was noted for a famous fiction about a petrified forest which he had seen, on which the leaves and birds were preserved in all the beauty of life, the mouths of the birds still open in the act of singing ! Burnett's Recollections of a Pioneer, 155. Harris is described as No. 2, on page 125 of Gray's Hist. Or., and he was, I believe, made a character in Moss' novel of the 'Prairie Flower,' before mentioned. One of Stephen Meek's famous stories was of a Rocky Mountain belle with hair eighteen feet long, which was folded up every morning in the form of a pack, and carried on the shoulders of an attendant. San José Argus, Nov. 16, 1867.
20 Palmer's Jour., 64; Bacon's Merc. Life Or., MS., 6.
516
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1845.
already contracted, or from overeating at the Dalles food which in their starving condition they would not wait to have properly prepared.
Notwithstanding their long detour and two weeks' delay, it does not appear that the lost companies were longer travelling than the main caravan. Palmer arrived at the Dalles with his company on the 29th of September, or about the time they came to the cross- ing of Des Chutes River. Here awaited them the trials which had beset previous caravans. I find the
condition of the whole body spoken of in the Oregon Spectator of January 21, 1847, as wretched in the extreme. This paper says that the supply of boats being wholly inadequate to their speedy conveyance down the Columbia, and their stock of provisions failing at the Dalles, famine and a malignant disease raging among them, a misery ensued which is scarcely paralleled in history. The loss of life and property was enormous. The people of Oregon City despatched necessaries to their relief, and Cook, owner of the only sail-boat in the country, gave them the use of his vessel.21 The Hudson's Bay Company, as usual, lent their bateaux.22
In a country like western Oregon, where the princi- pal travel was by river navigation, it seems strange that there should have been no more boat-building. The explanation lies probably in the fact that most of the population were landsmen, who knew nothing of ship-carpentry. Besides this insufficient reason, for there were some seafaring men in the country, there was so much to do on their farms to make sure of food and shelter for themselves and the expected incoming of each year, that they had given too little thought to providing transportation; and unforeseen circumstances attended every arrival for a number of years.
21 The sloop Calapooya, 25 tons, built at Oregon City by Captain Cook, an Englishman, in 1845. Bacon's Merc. Life Or., MS., 12.
22 For assisting these suffering people, McLoughlin says Lieutenant Vava- sour charged him with disloyalty.
517
PALMER'S WAGON-ROAD.
When Palmer's company reached the Dalles they found sixty families awaiting transportation by two small boats, which would require at least ten days. The season was so far advanced that Palmer feared detention for the winter; and impatient of the weari- ness and expense of such delay, they determined to attempt the crossing of the Cascade Mountains with their wagons. This plan was strongly opposed by Waller and Brewer. Knighton had returned discour- aged, for he, in company with Barlow and seven others, had penetrated twenty-five miles into the mountains without finding a pass, although Barlow was still seeking one.
On the 1st of October, Palmer, with fifteen families and twenty-three wagons, left the Dalles to join Bar- low and his company, which was reduced to seven wagons. On arriving at Tyghe Creek, at the mouth of which, some five miles below, the lost immigrants were then crossing, Palmer turned up the stream, and overtook Barlow's company on the 3d. Here leaving the train, Palmer with one man began exploring for a wagon-road. At first the undertaking seemed likely to succeed. By travelling up one of the long, scan- tily timbered ridges that characterize the eastern slope of the Cascade Range, ten miles were made with ease; after which came a bushy level, followed by a shorter ridge running in a general direction westward, but covered with heavy forest. From this apparent gain in height and distance they were then obliged to descend to a densely wooded bench, from which, still descending, they reached a stream which they called Rock Creek, beyond which began again the ascent over a hill long and steep, covered thickly with a fine growth of spruce timber, and on the other side of the hill was a cedar swamp, which, however, they found passable where the dammed-up stream which formed it was confined within banks. Con- tinuing westward a few miles, their course was sud- denly interrupted by a deep and wide cañon, compelling
518
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1845.
them to travel northward toward Mount Hood; dark- ness overtaking them thirty-six miles from camp.
On the following morning a descent to the bottom of the cañon was effected, and a stream was discov- ered which evidently came down from Mount Hood, the waters overflowing the banks during the night, and subsiding during the day. It had a sandy bottom, and was very irregular in width, varying from two rods to half a mile. On this low ground there were scrubby pines, alder thickets, rushes, and a little grass. Returning to the higher ground, and exploring back beyond the point where they first came to the bluff, a descent was discovered, gradual enough to admit the passage of wagons. Unacquainted with the ex- tent and roughness of the Cascade Mountains, Palmer believed that by travelling up this gulf he would arrive at the summit, imagining that Mount Hood rose from or upon the axis of the range, whereas it is far to the east of it. In this belief he returned to camp for provisions to prosecute his explorations in that direction, being soon followed by Barlow, who had taken the same general route with no definite success.
Observing that in the mountains, owing to the density of the forest, the grass was insufficient for their cattle, the leaders thought proper to send the greater part of the herds back toward the Dalles to be driven over the trail north of Mount Hood, send- ing at the same time a horse-train to that place for a further supply of food, it being evident that some time would be consumed in getting through to the Willa- mette.
Work was then commenced upon the road, which was opened in three days as far as Rock Creek, chiefly by means of fire, which consumed the thickets of arbutus, alder, hazel, and other growths very difficult to penetrate and laborious to cut away.
On the morning of the 11th Palmer, Barlow, and
519
OVER THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS.
a Mr Lock set out again in advance to anticipate the road-makers by marking out their route. Their course was up Rock Creek to a branch coming in from the left, following which for a short distance and find- ing it impracticable, they turned north, and came unexpectedly into the cattle trail where it crossed a barren sandy plain stretching away seven or eight miles west to the foot of Mount Hood. Following this trail six miles to the summit of the ridge leading to the snow-peak, they explored unsuccessfully for the expected route down this side. Ridges and cañons thousands of feet high and deep environed the base of this majestic mountain. Icy precipices opposed their passage; and in the lower ground there were marshes filled with snow-water. After two days' severe labor they returned once more to camp, to find the wagons advanced as far as the small branch of the creek be- fore mentioned; but the company was much discour- aged with the slow progress, and annoyed with the constant straying of their cattle and the thieving of the savages. Upon consultation it was determined to make one more essay at exploration, while the road was being opened to the sandy plain near the base of Mount Hood, the wagons remaining at the small stream called Camp Creek.
The third attempt revealed equal difficulties, and although by no means convinced that a wagon-road through the Cascade Mountains was impracticable, the explorers were aware that the rainy season was at hand, and that rain in the valleys meant snow at this elevation. They therefore hastened to camp, where provisions were already nearly exhausted, and made arrangements for leaving the wagons and baggage in charge of a guard, while the women and children were carried through to the Willamette without fur- ther delay, on horses, by the cattle trail, which plan was immediately executed. Hardly had they started when the rain began to descend. The trail led over open and elevated ground; the cold was benumbing,
520
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1845
and a thick fog, of the temperature of melted snow, settled over the heights. On the third day so com- plete was the obscuration that the trail was lost, and Palmer's advance party of four, which included two women, became bewildered, and the women were left alone on their horses in the rain, while the men ram- bled about for two hours in search of the path, which Palmer fortunately discovered. Soon after this peril was over a breeze sprang up which cleared away the fog; and in the evening, to their great joy, they were met by a party from Oregon City,23 who, upon hear- ir, of the attempt to cross the Cascade Range with wagons, and of the scarcity of food among the com- panies, had loaded a train of eleven horses with flour, coffee, sugar, and. tea for their relief. Not finding them as soon as expected, and not knowing where to look for them, the rescuers turned back, but prompted by some secret impulse, when six miles on the home- ward course, returned and soon encountered Palmer's party, and thus undoubtedly saved many lives. The provisions were taken in charge by Palmer and one of the relief party, while the others returned to Oregon City with the two women and one man of Palmer's company.24 It was found on reascending the Mount Hood ridge that the weather was even worse than before, the same icy fog being encountered, while the trail was now covered with snow, and to get the heavily loaded horses over the slippery ascents and descents was a severe and dangerous toil for man and beast. On arriving at the camp, October 20th, a mis- erable spectacle was presented. Several families were entirely without food, and all nearly so. The work- oxen, and most of the cattle, were being driven by the able-bodied men to the Willamette, while the women,
23 N. and C. Gilmore and Stewart are the names of this party given in Palmer's Journal.
24 These were Mr and Mrs Buffum and a Mrs Thompson. The only names mentioned in the narratives are: Rector, Bacon, Barlow, Lock, Palmer, Tay- lor, Caplinger, Creighton, Farwell, Buckley, Powell, Senters, Smith, and Hood.
521
SUFFERINGS IN THE MOUNTAINS.
children, and enough men to care for their safety were here awaiting the arrival of horses which Barlow and Rector, who had started on the 16th, intending to explore for a road as they passed, were to send back from Oregon City. A few half-starved cattle yet remained, the only resource of the destitute people.
After being furnished with food, a few families immediately set out for Oregon City on the pack- horses. Others followed on foot through the snow, having loaded their weak oxen with some necessary articles. By the 25th all the families had departed except those of Barlow, Rector, and Caplinger, who were still awaiting the arrival of the horses. Palmer remained until this date assisting to build a storehouse for the baggage left, which was named Fort Deposit and placed in charge of a small guard. As Palmer and three others were leaving the camp they met Barlow and Rector coming in.
They had reached Oregon City after undergoing much suffering from being lost in the mountains for several days. Barlow, being older than his companion, and much exhausted, frequently fell in walking, and became alarmed lest he should break a leg, and be compelled to die alone in the wilderness; and piteously inquired of Rector what he would do in such an event. "Eat you !" growled Rector, and stalked on. Look- ing back he beheld his friend's face bathed in tears, which smote his heart, and he returned to comfort him. Not long after this incident they came to a small stream flowing westward, which was regarded as a happy omen, and soon they heard the tinkling of cow-bells on the cattle trail. So great was their joy that for some minutes they could not command their voices to call for help.25 Palmer's party passed many families on the way. Two of them had lost all their provisions in the night through the greed of their hungry horses, the snow having entirely cov- ered the grass, and these nine persons scantily clad,
25 Victor's River of the West, 375-6.
522
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1845.
the children with feet almost bare, with nothing to eat, were still eighty miles from the settlements. Their wants were partially relieved by others in a not much better condition. Three of those who had first reached Oregon City were met returning with horses; and a company was found at the crossing of the Sandy cutting out a road toward the settlements from this point; the low land along the stream being covered with a heavy growth of fir and cedar.
Two of the horses in Palmer's party became too weak to proceed and were left. Of the eleven sent with provisions, not one survived. On the 30th Palmer arrived at the house of Samuel McSwain of the pre- vious year's pilgrimage, who subsequently sold his claim to Philip Foster, and it became the recruiting station in crossing the mountains. The next night was spent at the house of Peter H. Hatch, in the Clackamas Valley. On the 1st day of November he arrived at Oregon City, having passed a month in the Cascade Mountains; but it was not until December that the last of the belated people arrived in the Willamette Valley.26 Nor did those who last reached the Co- lumbia River arrive in the valley any earlier. The same detentions and misfortunes which awaited every company here were meted out to these. A raft of logs becoming water-soaked, four women, mother and three
26 Bacon's Mercantile Life Or. City, MS., 7. Joel Palmer was born near the foot of Lake Ontario, Canada, 1810, of Quaker parentage. When a boy he went to Pennsylvania, and married in Buck County; removing afterward to Indiana, where he was a large canal contractor and then a farmer; being also a member of the legislature in the winter of 1844-5. The excitement on the boundary question was then at its height, and influenced him to go to Oregon. Palmer returned to the States in 1846 to bring out his family. He kept a journal of his travels, which he published. In a manuscript called Palmer's Wagon Train, he gives an account of the publication of his Journal, and of the main incidents of the return to Oregon. He says that he contracted in Cincinnati for the printing of the narrative of his journey to and from Oregon, with his observations on the country, the condition of the people, the government, and other matters, the whole constituting a fund of informa- tion of value to persons intending to emigrate. He expected to have his book ready to sell to the immigration, and to realize from it enough to pay most, if net all, the expense of his second journey; but although he waited almost two months, he never received more than a dozen or two copies, and was compelled to leave it behind for the publisher to dispose of as he pleased. This is to be regretted, as it is one of the best of its kind.
523
INCOMERS BY SEA.
daughters, were put on shore between the Dalles and Cascades, the son and father remaining with the raft. When darkness came the raft could not be found, and the desolate women, after building a fire, sat down by it to spend the night in the wet forest. But the fire attracted others in similar trouble, and they were rescued from impending dangers.27 The incidents, pathetic and humorous, which attended the journey- ings of three thousand persons would fill a volume. I only attempt to point out such as led to certain results in the history of the colony, and gave rise to certain legislation.28
27 W. P. Herron, in Camp-fire Orations, MS., 17; James Morris, in Id., 18. 28 One of the most curious chapters in the history of overland travel is that which relates to a party who probably never reached their destination. It appears that a man named James Emmet, a Tennessean, in the winter of 1844-5 gathered from Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee principally, a com- pany of men, women, and children, amounting in all to over one hundred persons, about forty-five of whom were able to bear arms. In the month of Jannary they left Iowa City for Oregon with twenty-one wagons, a number of horses, cattle, and farming utensils-Emmet being chosen guide of the expedition. Instead of rendezvousing at any of the points from which com- panies usually started, or waiting for the grass to come up in the spring, they proceeded at once, under Emmet's direction, to take a north-west course, which soon carried them beyond the settled portion of the territory. After travelling north-west for a couple of weeks they turned a little more north to the Iowa River, which they ascended for a considerable distance, and then turned due west, plunging into an ocean of wilderness and prairie, without compass or anything to guide them except the rising and setting sun. After pursuing this course for forty days, and not reaching the Missouri River. some of the men became alarmed, and only the most strenuous exertions of Emmet and his adherents prevented their turning back in a body. The per- suasions and threats of these men, together with the consciousness of being already so far into the wilderness that to return was about as dangerous as to go forward, kept them from abandonding the effort to reach the Missouri, In the mean time their provisions were becoming exhausted, game on the prairie was scarce, bridges had to be built, and numerous difficulties beset them that had not been expected, such as being obliged to keep along the bottoms of streams in order to find feed for their cattle, whether those streams flowed from or toward the west, the direction they wished to pursue, and to keep near the timber for game to eke out their own rapidly dwindling stock of food. After three months of aimless wandering over a trackless desert, they reached the Vermilion River, which empties into the Missouri about one hundred and fifty miles north of the Platte, where the Missouri makes a great bend to the south; but they were still several days from the main stream, and following down the Vermilion, they reached the fort at the junction, with eighteen men, and about half the number of women and chil- dren that had started from Iowa City. Some had turned back, in spite of persuasion, and some had camped higher on the Vermilion to rest and hunt buffalo. While they were encamped at Vermilion, the steamer General Brooks came down from the month of the Yellowstone River with a cargo of furs. When this company reached the post at the mouth of the Vermilion River
524
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1845.
There is a marked difference between the people who came to the Pacific coast by sea and those who crossed the continent, that is not accounted for by the fact that one class came from the Atlantic seaboard, and the other from the western frontier; because the origin of both classes was the same. These western men came in larger numbers, and Americanized Ore- gon, stamping upon its institutions, social and political, their virtues and their failings. There was an almost pathetic patience and unlimited hospitality, born of their peculiar experiences rather than of any greater largeness of heart or breadth of views.
The immigration of 1845 did not differ essentially from the previous ones, except that it was drawn more from the middle states, or rather less from the Missouri border. Like their predecessors, they unex- pectedly became indebted to the charitable offices of the British fur company, whom they had intended at the outset to drive from the country, and had their views much modified; though as events afterward proved, they accepted the modification with reluctance and even opposition.
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.