USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888 > Part 5
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71 Mrs Thornton wrote to the S. I. Friend that she was very comfortably settled in a log-house, walked a mile to her school every morning, and was never more contented in her life.
33
CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.
Tualatin County, Rev. J. S. Griffin secretary;72 but no legislative action was taken until a later period. Besides the spelling-book printed in 1847, Henry H. Evarts printed an almanac calculated for Oregon and the Sandwich Islands.73 It was printed at the Spec- tator office by W. P. Hudson.
Professional men were still comparatively rare, preachers of different denominations outnumbering the other professions.74 In every neighborhood there was preaching on Sundays, the services being held in the most commodious dwellings, or in a school-house if there was one. There were as yet few churches. Oregon City, being the metropolis, had three, Catholic, Methodist, and Congregationalist." There was a Methodist church at Hillsboro, and another at Salem, and the Catholic Church at St Paul's, which com- pleted the list in 1848.
The general condition of society in the colony was, aside from the financial and Indian troubles which I have fully explained, one of general contentment. Both Burnett and Minto declare in their accounts of those times that notwithstanding the hardships all
72 Or. Spectator, Feb. 18, 1847.
73 S. I. Friend, Feb. 1848; Thornton's Hist. Or., MS., 27.
74 I find in the S. I. Friend, Sept. 1847, the following computation: Inhabi- tants (white), 7,000. This, according to immigration statistics, was too small au estimate. About 400 were Catholics. Methodists were most numerous. There were 6 itinerating Methodist Episcopal preachers, and 8 or 10 local preachers, besides 2 Protestant Methodist clergymen. Baptist missionaries, 2; Congregational or Presbyterian clergymen, 4; and several of the Christian denomination known as Campbellites; regular physicians, 4; educated lawyers, 4; quacks in both professions more numerous. I have already mentioned the accidental death of Dr Long by drowning in the Willamette at Oregon City, he being at the time territorial secretary. IIe was succeeded in practice and in office by Dr Frederick Prigg, elected by the legislature in December 1846. He also died an accidental death by falling from the rocky bluff into the river, in October 1849. He was said to be a man of fine abilities and education, but intemperate in his habits. Or. Spectator, Nov. 2, 1849; Johnson's Cal. and Or., 274.
75 Deady's Hist. Or., MS., 71. Harvey Clark first organized the Congre- gational church at Oregon City in 1844. Atkinson's Address, 3; Oregon City Enterprise, March 24, 1876. In 1848 Rev. Horace Lyman, with his wife, left Boston to join Atkinson in Oregon. He did not arrive until late in 1849. He founded the first Congregational church in Portland, but subsequently became a professor at the Pacific University. Home Missionary, xxii. 43-4; Or. Spec- tator, Nov. 1. 1849.
37
QUALITY OF THE POPULATION.
endured, there were few who did not rejoice sincerely that they had cast their lot in Oregon.76 Hospitality and good-fellowship prevailed; the people were tem- perate77 and orderly; and crime was still rare.78
Amusements were few and simple, and hardly nec- essary in so free and unconventional a community, except as a means of bringing the people together.
76 Minto, in Camp Fire Orations, MS., 17; Burnett's Recollections, MIS., i. 170; White's Emigration to Or., MS., 11; Simpson's Nar., i. 170.
17 The missionaries, the women of Oregon city, and friends of temperance generally, were still laboring to effeet prohibition of the trattic in spirituous liquors. The legislature of 1847 passed an amendment to the organic law, enacting that the word 'prohibit' should be inserted in the place of 'regulate' in the 6th section, which read that the legislature should have power to 'regulate the introduction, manufacture, and sale of ardent spirits.' Or. Lotus, 1543-9, 44. No change could be made in the organic law without submitting it to the vote of the people at the ensuing election, which being done, a majority were for prohibition. Grover's Or. Archives, 273-4. When the matter again came before the colonial legislature at its last session, that part of the governor's message referring to prohibition was laid on the table, on motion of Jesse Applegate. A bill to amend the organic laws, as above provided, was subsequently introduced by Samuel R. Thurston, but was rejected by vote, on motion of Applegate. Id., 293. Applegate's independent spirit revolted at prohibition, besides which he took a personal gratification from securing the rejection of a measure emanating from a missionary source. Surely all good people would be naturally averse to hearing an uncultivated savage who was full of bad whiskey, singing in Chinook:
'Nah! six, potlach blue lu (blue ruin), Nika ticka, blue lu, Hiyu blue lu, Hyas olo, Potlach blue lu.'
Which freely translated would run:
' Hallo ! friend, give me some whiskey; I want whiskey, plenty of whiskey; Very thirsty ; give me some whiskey.'
Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 56-7.
78 In the Spectator of July 9, 1846, there is mention of an encounter with knives between Ed. Robinson and John Watson. Robinson was arrested and brought before Justice Andrew Hood, and bound over in the sum of $200. In the same paper of July 23d is an item concerning the arrest of Duncan MeLean on suspicion of having murdered a Mr Owens. An affray occurred at Salem in August 1847 between John H. Bosworth and Ezekiel Popham, in which the latter was killed, or suddenly dropped dead from a disease of the heart. Id., Sept. 2, 1847. In 1848 a man named Leonard who had pawned his rifle to one Arim, on Sauvé Island, went to recover without redeeming it, when Arim pursued him with hostile intent. Leonard ran uutil he came to a fallen tree too large for him to scale in haste, and finding Arim close upon him he turned, and in his excitement fired, killing Arim. Leonard was arrested and discharged, there being no witnesses to the affair. Arim was a bully, and Leonard a small and usually quiet man, who declared he had no intention of killing Arim, but fired accidentally, not knowing the rifle was loaded. Leonard left the country soon after for the gold-mines and never returned. Crawford's Nar., MS., 167. I cite these examples rather to show the absence than the presence of crime.
38
CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.
Besides church-going, attending singing-school,79 and visiting among the neighbors there were few assem- blages. There was occasionally a ball, which was not regarded by the leading Protestant citizens as the most unquestionable mode of cultivating social rela- tions. The Canadian families loved dancing, and balls were not the more respectable for that reason; 80 but the dancers cared little for the absence of the élite. Taking them all in all, says Burnett, "I never saw so fine a population;" and other writers claimed that though lacking in polish the Oregon people were at this period morally and socially the equal of those of any frontier state.81 From the peculiar conditions of an isolated colony like that of Oregon, early mar- riages became the rule. Young men required homes, and young women were probably glad to escape from the overfilled hive of the parental roof to a domicile of their own. However that may have been, girls were married at any age from fourteen upward, and in some instances earlier;82 while no widow, whether
79 James Morris, in Camp Fire Orations, MS., 20, says that the first sing- ing-school in the country was taught by a Mr Johnson, and that he went to it dressed in a suit of buckskin dyed black, which looked well, and did not stretch out over the knees like the uncolored skin.
80 Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 32. In Minto's Early Days, MS., and Mrs Minto's Female Pioneering, MS., there are many pictures of the social condi- tion of the colony. The same in Camp Fire Orations, MS., a report by my stenographer, of short speeches made at an evening session of the pioneers at their annual meeting in 1878. All the speakers except Mrs Minto declared they had enjoyed emigrating and pioneering. She thought both very hard ou females; though throughout all she conducted herself as one of the noblest among women.
81 Home Missionary, xx. 213-14.
82 As a guide to descent in the pioneer families I here affix a list of the marriages published in the Spectator from the beginning of 1846 to the close of 1848. Though these could not have been all, it may be presumed that people of social standing would desire to publish this momentous event : 1846-Feb. 25, Samuel Camphell to Miss Chellessa Chrisman; March 29, Henry Sewell to Miss Mary Ann Jones Gerish; April 2, Stephen Staats to Miss Cordelia Forrest; April 12, Silas Haight to Mrs Rebecca Ann Spalding ; May 4, Pierre Bonnin to Miss Louise Rondeau; May 10, Isaac Staats to Miss Orlena Maria Williams; May 10, Henry Marlin to Miss Emily Hipes; June 4, David Hill to Mrs Lucinda Wilson; June 14, J. W. Nesmith to Miss Caro- line Goff; June 17, Alanson Hinman to Miss Martha Elizabeth Jones Gerish ; June 28, Robert Newell to Miss Rebecca Newman; July 2, Mitchel Whit- lock to Miss Malvina Engle; July 4, William C. Dement to Miss Olivia Johnson ; J. B. Jackson to Miss Sarah Parker; July 25, John G. Campbell to Miss Rothilda E. Buck; July 26, Joseph Watt to Miss Sarah Craft; Aug.
39
CLIMATE AND TEMPERATURE.
young or middle-aged, long remained unmarried. This mutual dependence of the sexes was favorable to the morals and the growth of the colony; and rich and poor alike had their houses well filled with children.
But what of the diseases which made such havoc during the early missionary occupation? Strangely enough they had disappeared as the natives died or were removed to a distance from the white race. Not- withstanding the crowded state of the settlers every winter after the arrival of another immigration, and notwithstanding insufficient food and clothing in many instances, there was little sickness and few deaths. Dr White, after six years of practice, pronounced the country to be the healthiest and the climate one of the most salubrious in the world.83 As to the tem- perature, it seems to have varied with the different seasons and years. Daniel Lee tells of plucking a strawberry-blossom on Christmas-day 1840, and the
2, Sidney Smith to Miss Miranda Bayley; Aug. 16, Jehu Davis to Miss Mar- garette Jane Moreland; Sept. 1, H. H. Hyde to Miss Henrietta Holman; Oct. 26, Henry Buxton to Miss Rosannah Woolly; Nov. 19, William P. Dougherty to Miss Mary Jane Chambers; Nov. 24, John P. Brooks to Miss Mary Ann Thomas. 1847-Jan. 21, W. H. Rees to Miss Amanda M. F. Hall; Jan. 25, Francis Topair to Miss Angelique Tontaine; Feb. 9, Peter H. Hatch to Miss S. C. Locey (Mrs Charlotte Sophia Hatch, who came to Oregon with her husband by sea in 1843, died June 30, 1846); April 18, Absalom F. Hedges to Miss Elizabeth Jane Barlow; April 21, Joseph B. Rogers to Miss Letitia Flett; Henry Knowland to Mrs Sarah Knowland; April 22, N. K. Sitton to Miss Priscilla A. Rogers; June 15, Jeremiah Rowland to Mrs Mary Ann Sappington; July 8, John Minto to Miss Martha Ann Morrison ; Aug. 12, T. P. Powers to Mrs Mary M. Newton-this was the Mrs Newton whose husband was murdered by an Indian in the Umpqua Valley in 1846; Oct. 14, W. J. Herren to Miss Eveline Hall; Oct. 24, D. H. Good to Miss Mary E. Dunbar; Oct. 29, Owen M. Mills to Miss Priscilla Blair; Dec. 28, Charles Putnam to Miss Rozelle Applegate. 1848-Jan. 5, Caleb Rodgers to Miss Mary Jane Courtney; Jan. 20, M. M. McCarver to Mrs Julia Ann Buckalew; Jan. 27, George M. Baker to Miss Nancy Duncan; Jan. 30, George Sigler to Miss Lovina Dunlap; Feb. 19, R. V. Short to Miss Mary Geer; March IS, Moses K. Kellogg to Mrs Elizabeth Sturges; April 16, John Jewett to Mrs Harriet Kimball-Mrs Kimball was the widow of one of the victims of the Waiilatpu massacre; May 4, John R. Jackson to Mrs Matilda N. Coonse; May 22, John H. Bosworth to Miss Susan B. Looney; June 28, Andrew Smith to Mrs Sarah Elizabeth Palmer; July 2, Edward N. White to Miss Catherine Jane Burkhart; July 28, William Meek to Miss Mary Lnel- ling; Dec. 10, C. Davis to Miss Sarah Ann Johnson; Dec. 26, William Logan to Miss Issa Chrisman. The absence of any marriage notice for the 4 months from the last of July to the 10th of December may be accounted for by the rush of the unmarried men to the gold-mines about this time.
83 T'en Years in Or., 220.
40
CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.
weather continued warm throughout the winter; but on the 12th of December 1842 the Columbia was frozen over, and the ice remained in the river at the Dalles till the middle of March, and the mercury was 6° below zero in that month, while in the Willamette Valley the cold was severe. On the other hand, in the winter of 1843 there was a heavy rainfall, and a disastrous freshet in the Willamette in February. The two succeeding winters were mild and rainy,84 fruit form- ing on the trees in April; and again in the latter part of the winter of 1846-7 the Columbia was frozen over at Vancouver so that the officers of the Modeste played a curling match on the ice. The winter of 1848-9 was also cold, with ice in the Columbia. The prevailing temperature was mild, however, when taken year by year, and the soil being generally warm, the vegetables and fruits raised by the first settlers sur- prised them by their size and quality.85 If any fault was to be found with the climate it was on the score of too many rainy or cloudy days; but when by com- parison with the drier climate of California it was found to insure greater regularity of crops the farm- ing community at least were satisfied.86 The cattle- raisers had most reason to dread the peculiarities of the Oregon climate, which by its general mildness flattered them into neglecting to provide winter food for their stock, and when an occasional season of snow and ice came upon them they died by hundreds; but this was partly the fault of the improvident owner.
The face of nature here was beautiful; pure air from the ocean and the mountains; loveliness in the
84 Clyman's Note Book, MS., 82-98; Palmer's Journal, 119.
85 A potato is spoken of which weighed 3} lbs., and another 33 lbs .; while turnips sometimes weighed from 10 to 30 lbs. Blanchet raised one of 172 lbs. £6 The term 'web-foot' had not yet been applied to the Oregonians. It became current in mining times, and is said to have originated in a sarcastic remark of a commercial traveller, who had spent the night in a farm-house on the marshy banks of the Long Tom, in what is now Lane County, that children should be provided with webbed feet in that country. 'We have thought of that,' returned the mistress of the house, at the same time dis- playing to the astonished visitor her baby's feet with webs between the toes. The story lost nothing in the telling, and Web-foot became the pseudonyme for Oregonian,
41
THE COMMONWEALTH ESTABLISHED.
valleys dignified by grandeur in the purple ranges which bordered them, overtopped here and there by snowy peaks whose nearly extinct craters occasionally threw out a puff of smoke or ashy flame,87 to remind the beholder of the igneous building of the dark cliff's overhanging the great river. The whole country was remarkably free from poisonous reptiles and insects. Of all the serpent class the rattlesnake alone was armed with deadly fangs, and these were seldom scen except in certain localities in the western portion of Oregon. Even the house-fly was imported,68 coming like many plants, and like the bee, in the beaten trail of white men.
Such was the country rescued from savagism by this virtuous and intelligent people; and such their general condition with regard to improvement, trade, education, morals, contentment, and health, at the period when, after having achieved so much without aid from congress, that body took the colony under its wing and assumed direction of its affairs.
87 Mount St Helen and Monnt Baker were in a state of eruption in March 1850, according to the Spectator of the 21st of that month. The same paper of Oct. 18, 1849, records a startling explosion in the region of Mount Hood, when the waters of Silver Creek stopped running for 24 hours, and also the destruction of all the fish in the stream by poisonous gases.
68 McClane says that when he came to Oregon there was not a fly of any kind, but fleas were plenty. First Wagon Train, MS., 14. W. H. Rector has said the same. Lewis and Clarke, and Parker, expiate upon the fleas about the Indian camps.
CHAPTER II.
EFFECT OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD DISCOVERY.
1848-1849.
THE MAGIC POWER OF GOLD-A NEW OREGON-ARRIVAL OF NEWELL- SHARP TRAFFIC-THE DISCOVERY ANNOUNCED-THE STAMPEDE SOUTH- WARD -OVERLAND COMPANIES - LASSEN'S IMMIGRANTS - HANCOCK'S MANUSCRIPT-CHARACTER OF THE OREGONIANS IN CALIFORNIA-THEIR GENERAL SUCCESS-REVOLUTIONS IN TRADE AND SOCIETY-ARRIVAL OF VESSELS-INCREASE IN THE PRICES OF PRODUCTS-CHANGE OF CUR- RENCY-THE QUESTION OF A MINT-PRIVATE COINAGE-INFLUX OF FOREIGN SILVER-EFFECT ON SOCIETY-LEGISLATION-IMMIGRATION.
AND now begins Oregon's age of gold, quite a dif- ferent affair from Oregon's golden age, which we must look for at a later epoch. The Oregon to which Lane was introduced as governor was not the same from which his companion Meek had hurried in pov- erty and alarm one year before. Let us note the change, and the cause, before recording the progress of the new government.
On the 31st of July 1848, the little schooner Hono- lulu, Captain Newell, from San Francisco, arrived in the Columbia, and began to load not only with pro- visions, but with shovels, picks, and pans, all that could be bought in the limited market. This created no surprise, as it was known that Americans were emigrating to California who would be in want of these things, and the captain of the schooner was looked upon as a sharp trader who knew how to turn an honest penny. When he had obtained everything to his purpose, he revealed the discovery made by Marshall in California, and told the story how Ore- (42 )
43
THE NEWS IN OREGON.
gon men had opened to the world what appeared an inexhaustible store of golden treasure.1
The news was confirmed by the arrival August 9th of the brig Henry from San Francisco, and on the 23d of the fur company's brig Mary Dare from the Hawaiian Islands, by the way of Victoria, with Chief Factor Douglas on board, who was not inclined to believe the reports. But in a few days more the tidings had travelled overland by letter, ex-Governor Boggs having written to some of his former Missouri friends in Oregon by certain men coniing with horses to the Willamette Valley for provisions, that much gold was found on the American River. No one doubted longer; covetous desire quickly increased to a delirium of hope. The late Indian disturbances were forgotten; and from the ripening harvests the reap- ers without compunctions turned away. Even their beloved land-claims were deserted; if a man did not go to California it was because he could not leave his family or business. Some prudent persons at first, seeing that provisions and lumber must greatly in- crease in price, concluded to stay at home and reap the advantage without incurring the risk; but these were a small proportion of the able-bodied men of the colony. Far more went to the gold mines than had volunteered to fight the Cayuses;2 farmers, mechanies, professional men, printers-every class. Tools were dropped and work left unfinished in the shops. The farms were abandoned to women and boys. The two newspapers, the Oregon Spectator and Free Press, held
1 J. W. Marshall was an immigrant to Oregon of 1844. He went to Cali- fornia in 1846, and was employed by Sutter. In 1847 he was followed by Charles Bennett and Stephen Staats, all of whom were at Sutter's mill when the discovery of gold was made. Brown's Will. Val., MS., 7; Parsons' Life of Marshall, 8-9.
" Burnett says that at least two thirds of the population capable of bear- ing arms left for California in the summer and autumn of 1848. Recollections, MS., i. 325. ' About two thousand persons,' says the California Star and Californian, Dec. 9, 1848. Only five old men were left at Salem. Brown's Will. Val., MS., 9. Anderson, in his Northwest Coast, MS., 37, speaks of the great exodus. Compare Crawford's Nar., MS., 166, and Victor's River of the West, 483-5. Barnes, Or. and Cal., MS., S, says he found at Oregon City only a few women and children and some Indians.
44
EFFECT OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD DISCOVERY.
out, the one till December, the other until the spring of 1849, when they were left without compositors and suspended.3 No one thought of the outcome. It was not then known in Oregon that a treaty had been signed by the United States and Mexico, but it was believed that such would be the result of the war; hence the gold-fields of California were already regarded as the property of Americans. Men of family expected to return; single men thought little about it. To go, and at onee, was the chief idea.4 Many who had not the means were fitted out by others who took a share in the venture; and quite dif- ferent from those who took like risks at the east, the trusts imposed in the men of Oregon were as a rule faithfully carried out.5
Pack-trains were first employed by the Oregon gold- seekers; then in September a wagon company was organized. A hundred and fifty robust, sober, and energetic men were soon ready for the enterprise. The train consisted of fifty wagons loaded with mining implements and provisions for the winter. Even planks for constructing gold-rockers were carried in the bottom of some of the wagons. The teams were strong oxen; the riding horses of the hardy native Cayuse stock, late worth but ten dollars, now bringing thirty, and the men were armed. Burnett was elected captain and Thomas MeKay pilot." They went to Klamath Lake by the Applegate route, and then turned south-east intending to get into the California emigrant road before it crossed the Sierra. After travelling several days over an elevated region, not well watered nor furnishing good grass, to their surprise
8 The Spectator from February to October. I do not think the Free Press was revived after its stoppage, though it ran long enough to print Lane's proclamation. The Oregon American had expired in the autumn of 1848.
4 Atkinson, in the Home Missionary, 22, 64; Bristow's Rencounters, MS., 2-9; Ryan's Judges and Criminals, 79.
5 There was the usual doggerel perpetrated here as elsewhere at the time. See Brown's Or. Miscel., MS., 47.
6 Ross' Nar., MS., 11; Lovejoy's Portland, MS., 26; Johnson's Cal. and Or., 185-6.
45
THE EXODUS.
they came into a newly opened wagon-road, which proved to be that which Peter Lassen of California had that season persuaded a small party immigrating into the Sacramento Valley to take, through a pass which would bring them near his rancho.7
The exodus thus begun continued as long as weather permitted, and until several thousand had left Oregon by land and sea. The second wagon com- pany of twenty ox-teams and twenty-five men was from Puget Sound, and but a few days behind the first,8 while the old fur-hunters' trail west of the
7 After proceeding some distance on Lassen's trail they found that others who had preceded them were as ignorant as they of what lay before them; and after travelling westward for eight miles they came to a sheer wall of rock, constituting a mountain ridge, instead of to a view of the Sacramento Valley. On examination of the ground it was found that Lassen and his com- pany had been deceived as well as they, and had marched back to within half a mile of the entrance to the valley before finding a way out of it. After exploring for some distance in advance the wagons were allowed to come on, and the summit of the sierra was reached the 20th of October. After passing this and entering the pine forest on the western slope, they overtook Lassen and a portion of his party, unable to proceed. He had at first but ten wagons in his company, and knew nothing more about the route than from a generally correct idea of the country he could conjecture. They proceeded without mishap until coming to the thick timber on the mountains; and not having force enough to open the road, they were compelled to convert their wagons into carts in order to make the short turns necessary in driving around fallen timber. Progress in this manner was slow. Half of the immigrants, now fcar- fully incensed against their leader, had abandoned their carts, and packing their goods on their starving oxen, deserted the other half, without knowing how they were to reach the settlements. When those behind were overtaken by the Oregonians they were in a miserable condition, not having had bread for a month. Their wants were supplied, and they were assured that the road should be opened for them, which was done. Sixty or eighty men went to the front with axes, and the way was cleared for the wagons. When the for- est was passed, there were yet other difficulties which Lassen's small and exhausted company could never have removed. A tragedy like that of Don- ner Lake was averted by these gold-seekers, who arrived in the Sacramento Valley about the Ist of November. Burnett's Recollections, MS., i. 328-366; Lovejoy's Portland, MS., 27; Barnes' Or. and Cal., MS., 11-12; Palmer's Wagon Trains, MS., 43.
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