History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888, Part 3

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Mrs. Frances Auretta Fuller Barrett, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1886-88
Publisher: San Francisco : The History Co.
Number of Pages: 836

USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888 > Part 3

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IMPORTS AND PASSENGERS.

all classes. Of these in the first six years not one was a trader; in the following six years seven were traders, but only four brought cargoes to sell to the settlers, and these of an ill-assorted kind. From March 1847 to August 1848 nine different American vessels visited the Columbia, of which one brought a

cotton, woollen goods, and hardware; also a number of passengers, viz .: Mrs Whittaker and 3 children, and Shelly, Armstrong, Rogers, Overton, Norris, Brothers, Powell, and French and 2 sons. The Toulon continued to run to the Islands for several years. On the 26th of June 1846 the American bark Mariposa, Captain Parsons, arrived from New York with goods consigned to Benjamin Stark jun., with Mr and Miss Wadsworth as passengers. The Mari- posa remained but a few weeks in the river. On the 18th of July the U. S. schooner Shark, Captain Neil M. Howison, entered the Columbia, narrowly escaping shipwreck on the Chinook Shoal. She remained till Sept., and was wrecked going out of the mouth of the river. During the summer the British frigate Fisgard, Captain Duntre, was stationed in Puget Sound. Abontthelstof March 1847 the brig Henry, Captain William K. Kilborne, arrived from New- buryport for the purpose of establishing a new trading-house at Oregon City. The Henry brought as passengers Mrs Kilborne and eluldren; G. W. Lawton, a partner in the venture; D. Good, wife, and 2 children; Mrs Wilson and 2 children; H. Swasey and wife; R. Douglas, D. Markwood, C. C. Shaw, B. R. Marcellus, a d S. C. Reeves, who became the first pilot on the Columbia River bar. The goods brought by the Henry were of greater variety than any stock before it; but they were also in great part second-hand arti- cles of furniture on which an enormous profit was made, but which sold readily owing to the great need of stoves, crockery, cabinet-ware, mirrors, and other like conveniences of life. The Henry was placed under the com- mand of Captain Bray, and was employed trading to California and the Islands. On the 24th of March the brig Commodore Stockton, Captain Young, from San Francisco, arrived, probably for lumber, as she returned in April. The Stockton was the old Pallas renamed. On the 14th of June the American ship Brutus, Captain Adams, from Boston and San Francisco, arrived, and remained in the river several weeks for a cargo. On the 22d of the same month the American bark Whiton, Captain Gelston, from Monterey, arrived, also for a cargo; and on the 27th the American ship Mount Vernon, Captain O. J. Given, from Oahu, also entered the river. By the Whiton there came as settlers Rev. William Roberts, wife and 2 children, Rev. J. H. Wilbur, wife, and daughter, Edward F. Folger, Richard Andrews, George Whitlock, and J. M. Stanley, the latter a painter seeking Indian studies for pictures. The Whiton returned to California and made another visit to the Columbia River in September. On the 13th of August there arrived from Brest, France, the bark L'Etoile du Matin, Captain Menes, with Archbishop Blanchet and a Catholic reenforcement of 21 persons, viz .: Three Jesuit priests, Gaetz, Gazzoli, Menestrey, and 3 lay brothers; 5 secular priests, Le Bas, Me- Cormick, Deleveau, Pretot, and Veyret; 2 deacons, B. Delorme, and J. F. Jayol; and one cleric, T. Mesplie; and 7 sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Captain Menes afterwards engaged in merchandising in Oregon. L'Etoile du Matin was wrecked on the bar. On the 16th of March 1848 the U. S. trans- port Anita, Midshipman Woodworth in cominand, arrived in the Columbia to recuit for the army in Mexico, and remained until the 22d of April. About this time the American brig Eveline, Captain Goodwin, entered the Columbia for a cargo of lumber; she left the river May 7th. The Hawaiian schooner Mary Ann, Captain Belcham, was also in the river in April. The 8th of May the Hudson's Bay Company's bark l'ancouver, Captain Duncan, was lost after crossing the bar, with a cargo from London valued at £30,000, and unin-

HIST. OR., VOL. II. 2

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

stock of general merchandise, and the rest had come for provisions and lumber, chiefly for California. All the commerce of the country not carried on by these few vessels, most of them arriving and departing but once, was enjoyed by the British fur company, whose barks formed regular lines to the Sandwich Islands, California, and Sitka.

It happened that during 1846, the year following the incoming of three thousand persons, not a single ship from the Atlantic ports arrived at Oregon with merchandise, and that all the supplies for the year were brought from the Islands by the Toulon, the sole American vessel owned by an Oregon company, the Chenamus having gone home. This state of affairs occasioned much discontent, and an examina- tion into causes. The principal grievance presented was the rule of the Hudson's Bay Company, which prohibited their vessels from carrying goods for per- sons not concerned with them. But the owners of the only two American vessels employed in transpor- tation between the Columbia and other ports had

sured. She was in charge of the pilot, but missed stays when too near the south sands, and struck where the Shark was wrecked 2 years before. On the 27th of July the American schooner Honolulu, Captain Newell, entered the Columbia for provisions; and about the same time the British war-ship Con- stance, Captain Courtenay, arrived in Puget Sound. The Hawaiian schooner Starling, Captain Menzies, arrived the 10th of August in the river for a cargo of provisions. The Henry returned from California at the same time, with the news of the gold-discovery, which discovery opened a new era in the traffic of the Columbia. The close of the period was marked by the wreck of the whale- ship Maine, Captain Netcher, with 1,400 barrels of whale-oil, 150 of sperm-oil, and 14,000 pounds of bone. She had been two years from Fairhaven, Mass., and was a total loss. The American schooner Maria, Captain De Witt, was in the river at the same time, for a cargo of flour for San Francisco; also the sloop Peacock, Captain Gier; the brig Sabine, Captain Crosby; and the schooner Ann, Captain Melton; all for cargoes of flour and lumber for San Francisco. Later in the summer the Harpooner, Captain Morice, was in the river. The sources from which I have gleaned this information are McLoughlin's Private Papers, 2d ser., MS .; Douglas' Private Papers, 2d ser., MS; a list made by Joseph Hardisty of the Hudson's Bay Company, and published in the Or. Spectator, Aug. 19, 1851; Parker's Journal; Kelley's Colonization of Or .; Townsend's Nar .; Lee and Frost's Or .; Hines' Or. Hist .; 27th Cong., 3d Sess., II. Com. Rept. 31, 37; Niles' Reg., Ixi. 320; Wilkes' Nar. U. S. Explor. Ex., iv. 312; Athey's Workshops, MIS., 3; Honolulu Friend; Monthly Shipping List; Pettygrove's Or., MS., 10; Victor's River of the West, 392, 398; Honolulu News Shipping List, 1848; Sylvester's Olympia, MIS., 1-4; Deady's Scrap-book, 140; Honolulu Gazette, Dec. 3, 1836; Honolulu Polynesian, i. 10, 39, 51, 54; Mack's Or., MS., 2; Blanchet's Ilist. Cath. Church in Or., 143, 158.

FLOUR, SALT, AND SALMON.

adopted the same rule, and refused to carry wheat, lumber, or any other productions of the country, for private individuals, having freight enough of their own.

The granaries and flouring-mills of the country were rapidly becoming overstocked; lumber, laths, and shingles were being made much faster than they could be disposed of, and there was no way to rid the colony of the over-production, while money was absolutely required for certain classes of goods. As it was de- clared by one of the leading colonists, "the best families in the country are eating their meals and drinking their tea and coffee-when our merchants can afford it-from tin plates and cups; 31 many articles of cloth- ing and other things actually necessary for our con- sumption are not to be purchased in the country; our children are growing up in ignorance for want of school-books to educate them; and there has not been a plough-mould in the country for many months."

In the autumn of 1845 salt became scarce, and was raised in price from sixty-two and a half cents a bushel to two dollars at McLoughlin's store in Oregon City. The American merchants, Stark and Pettygrove, saw an opportunity of securing a monopoly of the salmon trade by withholding their salt, a cash article, from market, at any price, and many families were thereby compelled to dispense with this condiment for months. Such was the enmity of the people, however, toward McLoughlin as a British trader, that it was seriously proposed in Yamhill County to take by force the salt of the doctor, who was selling it, rather than to rob the American merchants who refused to sell.32

It was deemed a hardship while flour brought from ten to fifteen dollars a barrel in the Hawaiian Islands,

31 McCarver, in Or. Spectator, July 4, 1846. Thornton says Mr Waymire paid Pettygrove, at Portland, $2.50 'for 6 very plain cups and saucers, which could be had in the States for 25 cents; and the same for 6 very ordinary and plain plates. Wheat at that time was worth $1 per bushel.' Or. und Cal., ii. 52.

32 Bacon's Merc. Life in Or. City, MS., 22.

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

and New York merchants made a profit by shipping it from Atlantic ports where wheat was worth more than twice its Oregon price, that for want of shipping, the fur company and two or three American mer- chants should be privileged to enjoy all the benefits of such a market, the farmers at the same time being kept in debt to the merchants by the low price of wheat. Many long articles were published in the Spectator exhibiting the enormous injury sustained on the one hand and the extraordinary profits enjoyed on the other, some of which were answered by James Douglas, who was annoyed by these attacks, for it was always the British and not the American traders who were blamed for taking advantage of their oppor- tunity. The fur company had no right to avail them- selves of the circumstances causing fluctuation; only the Americans might fatten themselves on the wants of the people. If the fur company kept down the price of wheat, the American merchants forced up the price of merchandise, and if the former occasionally made out a cargo by carrying the flour or lumber of their neighbors to the Islands, they charged them as much as a vessel coming all the way out from New York would do, and for a passage to Honolulu one hundred dollars. In the summer of 1846 the super- cargo of the Toulon, Benjamin Stark, jun., after carry- ing out flour for Abernethy, refused to take the return freight except upon such terms as to make acceptance out of the question; his object being to get his own goods first to market and obtain the price consequent on the scarcity of the supply.33 Palmer relates that the American merchants petitioned the Hudson's Bay Company to advance their prices; and that it was agreed to sell to Americans at a higher price than that charged to their own people, an arrangement that lasted for two years.34

33 Or. Spectator, July 23, 1846; Howison's Coast and Country, MS., 21; Waldo's Critiques, MS., 18.

34 Palmer's Journal, 117-18; Roberts' Recollections, MS., 67.

INFLUENCE OF MONOPOLY.

The colonists felt that instead of being half-clad, and deprived of the customary conveniences of living, they ought to be selling from the abundance of their farms to the American fleet in the Pacific, and reaching out toward the islands of the ocean and to China with ships of their own. To remedy the evil and bring about the result aspired to, a plan was pro- posed through the Spectator, whereby without money a joint-stock company should be organized for carry- ing on the commerce of the colony in opposition to the merchants, British or American. This plan was to make the capital stock consist of six hundred thousand or eight hundred thousand bushels of wheat divided into shares of one hundred bushels each. When the stock should be taken and officers elected, bonds should be executed for as much money as would buy or build a schooner and buy or erect a grist-mill.

A meeting was called for the 16th of January 1847, to be held at the Methodist meeting-house in Tuala- tin plains. Two meeting were held, but the conclu- sion arrived at was adverse to a chartered company ; the plan adopted for disposing of their surplus wheat being to select and authorize an agent at Oregon City to receive and sell the grain, and import the goods desired by the owners. A committee was chosen to consider proposals from persons bidding, and Governor Abernethy was selected as miller, agent, and importer. Twenty-eight shares were taken at the second meet- ing in Yamhill. An invitation was extended to other counties to hold meetings, correspond, and fit them- selves intelligently to carry forward the project, which ultimately would bring about the formation of a char- tered company.35 The scheme appeared to be on the

35 The leaders in the movement seem to have been E. Lennox, M. M. Mc- Carver, David Hill, J. L. Meek, Lawrence Hall, J. S. Griffin, and Caffen- burg of Yamhill; David Leslie, L. H. Judson, A. A. Robinson, J. S. Smith, Charles Bennett, J. B. McClane, Robert Newell, T. J. Hubbard, and E. Dupuis of Champoeg. Or. Spectator, March 4 and April 29, 1847; S. F. Cali- fornia Star, Feb. 27, 1847.

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

way to success, when an unlooked-for check was re- ceived in the loss of a good portion of the year's crop, by late rains which damaged the grain in the fields. This deficiency was followed by the large immigration of that year which raised the price of wheat to double its former value, and rendered unnecessary the plan of exporting it; while the Cayuse war, following closely upon these events, absorbed much of the surplus means of the colony.

Previous to 1848 the trade of Oregon was with the Hawaiian Islands principally, and the exports amounted in 1847 to $54,784.99.36 This trade fell off in 1848 to $14,986.57; not on account of a decrease in ex- ports which had in fact been largely augmented, as the increase in the shipping shows, but from being diverted to California by the American conquest and settlement; the demand for lumber and flour begin- ning some months before the discovery of gold.37

The colonial period of Oregon, which may be likened to man's infancy, and which had struggled through numerous disorders peculiar to this phase of existence, had still to contend against the constantly recurring nakedness. From the fact that down to the close of 1848 only five ill-assorted cargoes of American goods had arrived from Atlantic ports,33 which were partially

36 Polynesian, iv. 135. I notice an advertisement in S. I. Friend, April 1845, where Albert E. Wilson, at Astoria, offers his services as commission merchant to persons at the Islands.

37 Thornton's Or. and Cal., ii. 63.

38 The cargo of the Toulon, the last and largest supply down to the close of 1845, consisted of '20 cases wooden clocks, 20 bbls. dried apples, 3 small mills, 1 doz. crosscut-saws, mill-saws and saw-sets, mill-crauks, ploughshares, and pitchforks, 1 winnowing-machine, 100 casks of cut nails, 50 boxes saddler's tacks, 6 boxes carpenter's tools, 12 doz. hand-axes, 20 boxes manufactured tobacco, 5,000 cigars, 50 kegs white lead, 100 kegs of paint, ¿ doz. medicine- chests, 50 bags Rio coffee, 25 bags pepper, 200 boxes soap, 50 cases boots and shoes, 6 cases slippers, 50 cane-seat chairs, 40 doz. wooden-seat chairs, 50 doz. sarsaparilla, 10 bales sheetings, 4 cases assorted prints, one bale damask tartan shawls, 5 pieces striped jeans, 6 doz. satinet jackets, 12 doz. linen duck pants, 10 doz. cotton duck pants, 12 doz. red flannel shirts, 200 dozen cotton hand- kerchiefs, 6 cases white cotton flannels, 6 bales extra heavy indigo-blue cot- ton, 2 cases negro prints, 1 case black velveteen, 4 bales Mackinaw blankets, 150 casks and bbls. molasses, 450 bags sugar, etc., for sale at reduced prices for cash.' Or. Spectator, Feb. 5, 1846.

THE COLONIAL PERIOD.

replenished by purchases of groceries made in the Sandwich Islands, and that only the last cargo, that of the Henry in 1847, brought out any assortment of goods for women's wear,39 it is strikingly apparent that the greatest want in Oregon was the want of clothes.

The children of some of the foremost men in the farming districts attended school with but a single gar- ment, which was made of coarse cotton sheeting dyed with copperas a tawny yellow. During the Cayuse war some young house-keepers cut up their only pair of sheets to make shirts for their husbands. Some women, as well as men, dressed in buckskin, and in- stead of in ermine justice was forced to appear in blue shirts and with bare feet.4 And this notwithstanding the annual ship-load of Hudson's Bay goods. In 1848 not a single vessel loaded with goods for Oregon entered the river, and to heighten the destitution the fur company's bark Vancouver was lost at the en- trance to the river on the 8th of May, with a valuable cargo of the articles most in demand, which were agri- cultural implements and dry-goods, in addition to the usual stock in trade. Instead of the wives and daugh- ters of the colonists being clad in garments becoming their sex and position, the natives of the lower Columbia decked in damaged English silks+1 picked up along the beach, gathered in great glee their summer crop of blackberries among the mountains. The wreck of the Vancouver was a great shock to the colony. A large amount of grain had been sown in anticipation of the

39 The Henry brought 'silks, mousseline de laines, cashemeres, d'écosse, balzarines, muslins, lawns, brown and bleached cottons, cambrics, tartau and net-wool shawls, ladies and misses cotton hose, white and colored, cotton and silk handkerchiefs.' Id., April 1, 184+

4º These facts I have gathered from conversations with many of the pio- neers. They have also been alluded to in print by Burnett, Adams, Moss, Nesmith, and Minto, and in most of the manuscript authorities. Moss tells au anecdote of Straight when he was elected to the legislature in 1843. He had no coat, and was distressed on account of the appearance he should make in a striped shirt. Moss having just been so fortunate as to have a coat made by a tailor sold it to him for $40 in scrip, which has never been redeemed. Pioneer Times, MS., 43-4.

#1 Crawford's Nar., MS., 147; S. F. Californian, May 24, 1848.

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

demand in California for flour, which it would be im- possible to harvest with the means at hand; and al- though by some rude appliances the loss was partially overcome it could not be wholly redeemed. To add to their misfortunes, the whale-ship Maine was wrecked at the same place on the 23d of August, by which the gains of a two years' cruise were lost, together with the ship.

The disaster to this second vessel was a severe blow to the colonists, who had always anticipated great profits from making the Columbia River a rendezvous for the whaling-fleet on the north-west coast. Some of the owners in the east had recommended their sail- ing-masters to seek supplies in Oregon, out of a desire to assist the colonists. But it was their ill-fortune to have the first whaler attempting entrance broken up on the sands where two United States vessels, the Peacock and Shark, had been lost.42 Ever since the wreck of the Shark efforts had been made to inaug- urate a proper system of pilotage on the bar, and one of the constant petitions to congress was for a steam-tug. In the absence of this benefit the Oregon legislature in the winter of 1846 passed an act estab- lishing pilotage on the bar of the Columbia, creating a board of commissioners, of which the governor was one, with power to choose four others, who should examine and appoint suitable persons as pilots.43

The first American pilot was S. C. Reeves, who arrived in the brig Henry from Newburyport, in March 1847, and was appointed in April.# He went immediately to Astoria to study the channel, and was believed to be competent.45 But the disaster of 1848

#2 During the winter of 1845-6, 4 American whalers were lying at Vancou- ver Island, the ships Morrison of Mass., Louise of Conn., and 2 others. Six seamen deserted in a whale-boat, but the Indians would not allow them to land, and being compelled to put to sea a storm arose and 3 of them per- ished, Robert Church, Frederick Smith, and Rice of New London. Niles' Reg., 1xx. 341.

43 Or. Spectator, Jan. 7, 1847: Or. Laws, 1843-9, 46.

4 The S. I. Friend of Feb. 1849 said that the first and third mates of the Maine had determined to remain in Oregon as pilots.

45 The Hudson's Bay Company had no pilots and no charts, and wanted

THE COLUMBIA ENTRANCE.

caused him to be censured, and removed on the charge of conniving at the wreck of the Vancouver for the sake of plunder; a puerile and ill-founded accusation, though his services might well be dispensed with on the ground of incompetency.46

If the sands of the bar shifted so much that there were six fathoms in the spring of 1847 where there were but two and a half in 1846, as was stated by captains of vessels,47 I see no reason for doubting that a sufficient change may have taken place in the winter of 1847-8, to endanger a vessel depending upon the wind. But however great the real dangers of the Co- lumbia bar, and perhaps because they were great,43 the

none, though they had lost 2 vessels, the William and Ann, in 1828, and the Isabella in 1830, in entering the river. Their captains learned the north channel and used it; and one of their mates, Latta, often acted as pilot to new arrivals. Parrish says, that in 1840 Captain Butler of the Sandwich Islands, who came on board the Lausanne to take her over the Columbia Bar, had not been in the Columbia for 27 years. Or. Anecdotes, MS., 6, 7. After coming into Baker Bay the ship was taken in charge by Birnie as far as Astoria, and from there to Vancouver by a Chinook Indian called George or 'King George,' who knew the river tolerably well. A great deal of time was lost waiting for this chance pilotage. See Townsend's Nar., 180.

46 The first account of the wreck in the Spectator of May 18, 1848, fully exonerates the pilot; but subsequent published statements in the same paper for July 27th, speak of the removal on charges preferred against him and others, of secreting goods from the wreck. Reeves went to California in the autumn in an open boat with two spars carried on the sides as outriggers, as elsewhere mentioned. In Dec. he returned to Oregon in charge of the Span- ish bark Joven Guipuzcoana, which was loaded with lumber, flour, and pas- sengers, and sailed again for San Francisco in March. He became master of a small sloop, the Flora, which capsized in Suisun Bay, while carrying a party to the mines, in May 1849, by which he, a young man named Loomis, from Oregon, and several others were drowned. Crawford's Nar., MS., 191.

47 Howison declared that the south channel was 'almost closed up' in 1846, yet in the spring of 1847 Reeves took the brig Henry out through it, and con- tinued to use it during the summer. Or. Spectator, Oct. 14, 1847; Hunt's Merch. Mag., xxiii. 358, 560-1.

48 Kelley and Slacum both advocated an artificial mouth to the Columbia. 25th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Com. Rept. 101, 41, 56. Wilkes reported rather adversely than otherwise of its safety. Howison charged that Wilkes' charts were worthless, not because the survey was not properly made, but because constant alterations were going on which rendered frequent surveys neces- sary, and also the constant explorations of resident pilots. Coast and Coun- try, MS., 8-9. About the time of the agitation of the Oregon Question in the United States and England, much was said of the Columbia bar. A writer in the Edinburgh Review, July 1845, declared the Columbia 'inaccessible for 8 months of the year.' Twiss, in his Or. Ques., 370, represented the entrance to the Columbia as dangerous. A writer in Niles' Reg., Ixx. 284, remarked that from all that had been said and printed on the subject for several years the impression was given that the mouth of the Columbia 'was so dangerous to navigate as to be nearly inaccessible.' Findlay's Directory, i. 357-71; S. I.

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

colonists objected to having them magnified by rumor rather than alleviated by the means usual in such cases, and while they discharged Reeves, they used the Spectator freely to correct unfavorable impressions abroad. There were others who had been employed as branch pilots, and who still exercised their vocation, and certain captains who became pilots for their own or the vessels of others;49 but there was a time fol- lowing Reeves' dismissal, when the shipping which soon after formed a considerable fleet in the Colum- bia, ran risks enough to vindicate the character of the harbor, even though as sometimes happened a vessel was lost at the mouth of the river.

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History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888, Part 3

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Mrs. Frances Auretta Fuller Barrett, 1826-1902 Publication date: 1886-88 Publisher: San Francisco : The History Co. Number of Pages: 836

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Mrs. Frances Auretta Fuller Barrett, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1886-88
Publisher: San Francisco : The History Co.
Number of Pages: 836