History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888, Part 6

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 6

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).

8 Hancock's Thirteen Years' Residence on the Northwest Coast, a thick manuscript volume containing an account of the immigration of 1845, the settlement of the Puget Sound country by Americans, the journey to California of the gold-hunters, and a long list of personal adventures with Indians, and other matter of an interesting nature, is cne of my authorities on this period. The manuscript was written at the dictation of Samuel Han- cock, of Whidbey Island, by Major Sewell. See Morse's Notes of the History and Resources of Washington Ter., ii. 19-30. It would seem from Hancock's MS. that the Puget Sound Company, like the Willamette people, overtook and assisted a party of immigrants who had been forsaken by that pilot in the Sierra Nevada, and brought them through to the Sacramento Valley.

EFFECT OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD DISCOVERY.

sierra swarmed with pack-trains9 all the autumn. Their first resort was Yuba River; but in the spring of 1849 the forks of the American became their prin- cipal field of operations, the town of Placerville, first called Hangtown, being founded by them. They were not confined to any localities, however, and made many discoveries, being for the first winter only more numerous in certain places than other miners; and as they were accustomed to camp-life, Indian-fighting, and self-defence generally, they obtained the reputa- tion of being clannish and aggressive. If one of them was killed or robbed, the others felt bound to avenge the injury, and the rifle or the rope soon settled the account. Looking upon them as interlopers, the Californians naturally resented these decided meas-

ures. But as the Oregonians were honest, sober, and industrious, and could be accused of nothing worse than being ill-dressed and unkempt and of knowing how to protect themselves, the Californians mani- fested their prejudice by applying to them the title 'Lop-ears,' which led to the retaliatory appellation of 'Tar-heads,' which elegant terms long remained in use.10

It was a huge joke, gold-mining and all, including even life and death. But as to rivalries they signi- fied nothing. Most of the Oregon and Washington adventurers who did not lose their life were success- ful; opportunity was assuredly greater then in the

This may have been the other division of Lassen's company, though Hancock says there were 25 wagons, which does not agree with Burnett.

9 One of the first companies with pack-animals was under John E. Ross, an immigrant of 1847, and a lientenant in the Cayuse war, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. Ross states that Levi Scott had already settled in the Umpqua Valley, and was then the only American sonth of the Cala- pooya Mountains. From Scott's to the first house in California, Reading's, was 14 days' travel. See Ross' Nar., MS., passim.

10 Ross' Nar., MS., 15; Crawford's Nar., MS., 194, 204. The American pioneers of California, looking for the origin of the word Oregon in a Spanish phrase signifying long-ears, as I have explained in vol. i. Hist. Or., hit upon this delectable sobriquet for the settlers of that country. With equal justice, admitting this theory to be correct, which it is not, the Oregonians called them tar-heads, because the northern California Indians were observed to cover their heads with tar as a sign of mourning.

OREGONIANS IN THE MINES.

Sierra Foothills than in the Valley Willamette. Still they were not hard to satisfy; and they began to re- turn early in the spring of 1849, when every vessel that entered the Columbia was crowded with home- loving Oregonians.11 A few went into business in California. The success of those that returned stimu- lated others to go who at first had not been able.12

11 Among those who went to California in 1848-9 are the following: Robert Henderson, James McBride, William Carpenter, Joel Palmer, A. L. Lovejoy, F. W. Pettygrove, Barton Lee, W. W. Bristow, W. L. Adams, Christopher Taylor, John E. Ross, P. B. Cornwall, Walter Monteith, Horace Burnett, P. H. Burnett, John P. Rogers, A. A. Skinner, M. M. MeCarver, Frederick Ramsey, William Dement, Peter Crawford, Ilenry Williamson, Thomas MeKay, William Fellows, S. C. Reeves, James Porter, I. W. Alder- man, William Moulton, Aaron Stanton, J. R. Robb, Aaron Payne, J. Math- eney, George Gay, Samuel Hancock, Robert Alexander, Niniwon Everman, John Byrd, Elisha Byrd, William Byrd, Sr, William Byrd, Jr, T. R. Hill, Ira Patterson, William Patterson, Stephen Bonser, Saul Richards, W. H. Gray, Stephen Staats, J. W. Nesmith, J. S. Snooks, W. D. C'anfield, Alanson Husted, John M. Shively, Edmund Sylvester, James O'Neal, Benjamin Wood, William Whitney, W. P. Dougherty, Allen McLeod, John Edmonds, Charles Adams, John Inyard, Miriam Poc, Joseph Williams, Hilt. Bonser, William Shaw, Thomas Carter, Jefferson Carter, Ralph Wilcox, Benjamin Burch, William H. Rector, Hamilton Campbell, Robert Newell, John E. Bradley, J. Curtis, H. Brown, Jeremiah Mckay, Priest, Turney, Leonard, Shurtzer, Loomis, Samuel Cozine, Columbia Lancaster Pool, English, Thomp- son, Johnson, Robinson, and others.

12 P. W. Crawford gives the following account of his efforts to raise the means to go to California: He was an immigrant of 1847, and had not yet acquired property that could be converted into money. Being a surveyor he spent most of his time in laying out town sites and claims, for which he re- ceived lots in payment, and in some cases wheat, and often nothing. He had a elaim on the Cowlitz which he managed to get planted in potatoes. Owning a little skiff called the E. West, he traded it to Geer for a hundred seedling apple-trees, but not being able to return to his claim, he planted them on the land of Wilson Blain, opposite Oregon City. Having considerable wheat at McLoughlin's mill he had a portion of it ground, and sold the flour for cash. He gave some wheat to newly arrived cmigrants, and traded the rest for a fat ox, which he sold to a butcher at Oregon City for twenty-five dollars cash. Winter coming on he assisted his friend Reed in the pioneer bakery of Portland. In February he traded a Durham bull which he pur- chased of an Indian at Fort Laramie and drove to Oregon, for a good sailing boat, with which he took a load of hoop-poles down the Columbia to Hunt's mill, where salmon barrels were made, and brought back some passengers, and a few goods for Capt. Crosby, having a rough hard time working his way through the floating ice. On getting back to Portland, Crawford and Will- iams, the former mate of the Starling, engaged of the supercargo Gray, at sixty dollars each, steerage passage on the Undine then lying at Hunt's inill. The next thing was to get supplies and tools, such as were needed to go to the mines. For these it was necessary to make a visit to Vancouver, which could not be done in a boat, as the river was still full of ice, above the mouth of the Williamette. He succeeded in crossing the Columbia opposite the head of Sauvé Island, and walked from the landing to Vancouver, a distance of about six miles. This business accomplished, he rejoined his companion in the boat, and set out for Hunt's mill, still endangered by floating ice, but

EFFECT OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD DISCOVERY.

There was a complete revolution in trade, as re- markable as it was unlooked for two years before, when the farmers were trying to form a cooperative ship-building association to carry the products of their farms to a market where cash could be obtained for wheat. No need longer to complain of the absence of vessels, or the terrible bar of the Columbia. I have mentioned in the preceding chapter that the Henry and the Toulon were the only two American vessels trading regularly to the Columbia River in the spring of 1848. Hitherto only an occasional vessel from Cal- ifornia had entered the river for lumber and flour; but now they came in fleets, taking besides these ar- ticles vegetables, butter, eggs, and other products needed by the thousands arriving at the mines, the traffic at first yielding enormous profits. Instead of from three to eight arrivals and departures in a year, there were more than fifty in 1849, of which twenty were in the river in October awaiting car- goes at one time.13 They were from sixty to six or or seven hundred tons burden, and three of them were built in Oregon.14 Whether it was due to their

arriving in time to take passage. Such were the common incidents of life in Oregon before the gold products of the California mines came into circulation. Narrative, MS., 179-187.

13 About the last of December 1848 the Spanish bark Joren Guipuzcoana, S. C. Reeves captain, arrived from San Francisco to load with Oregon pro- ductions for the California markets. She was fastened in the ice a few miles below the mouth of the Willamette until February, and did not get out of the river until about the middle of March. Crawford's Nar., MS., 173-91. The brig Maleck Adhel, Hall master, left the river with a cargo Feb. 7, 1849. Following are some of the other arrivals of the year: January 5th, schr. Starling, Captain Menzies; 7th, bk. Anita, Hall; brig Undine, Brum; May 8th, bks. Anita, Hall; Janet, Dring; ship Mercedes; schrs. Milwaukie; Vul- dova ; 28th, bk. J. W. Carter; brig Mary and Ellen; June 16th, schr. Pio- neer; bk. Undine; 25d, bk. Columbia; brigs Henry, Sacramento, El Placer; July 2d, ship Walpole; 10th, brigs Belfast, L'Etoile du Matin; ship Silvie de Grasse; schr. O. C. Raymond; brig Quito; 28th, ship Huntress; bk. Louisi- ana; schr. Gen. Lane; Aug. 7th, bk. Carib; 11th, bks. Harpooner, Madonna; ship Aurora; brig Forrest; bks. Ocean Bird, Diamond, Helen M. Leidler; Oct. 17th, brigs Quito, Hawkes; O. C. Raymond, Menzies; Josephine, Melton; Jno. Petit; Mary and Ellen, Gier; bks. Toulon, Hoyt; Azim, Mckenzie; 22d, brig Sarah McFarland, Brooks; 24th, brig Wolcott, Kennedy; Nov. 12th, bk. Louisiana, Williams; brigs Mary Wilder; North Bend, Bartlett; 13th, ship Huntress, Upton; 15th, bks. Diamond, Madonna; 25th, brig Sac- ramento; bk. Seguin, Norton; brig Duc de Lorgunes, Travillot.

14 The schooner Milwaukie, built at Milwaukie by Lot Witcomband Joseph

OREGON SHIPPING.

general light draft, or to an increased knowledge of the channels of the mouth of the river, few accidents occurred, and only one American vessel was wrecked at or near the entrance this year;15 though two French ships were lost during the summer, one on the bar in attempting to enter by the south channel, then changed in its direction from the shifting of the sands, and the other, by carelessness, in the river between Astoria and Tongue Point.16

That all this sudden influx of shipping, where so little had ventured before, meant prosperity to Oregon tradesmen is unquestionable. Portland, which Petty- grove had turned his back upon with seventy-five thousand dollars, was now a thriving port, whose

Kelly, was of planking put on diagonally in several thicknesses, with a few temporary sawed timbers and natural crooks, and was sold in San Francisco for $4,000. The General Lane was huilt at Oregon City by John McC'lellan, aided by McLoughlin, and ran to San Francisco. Her captain was Gil- man, afterward a bar pilot at Astoria. She went directly to Sacramento with a cargo of lumber and farm products. The Pioneer was put together by a company at Astoria. Honolulu Friend, Sept. 1, 1849.

13 The brig Josephine was becalmed, whereupon her anchor was let down; but a gale blowing up in the night she was driven on the sand and dashed to pieces in the breakers. She was loaded with lumber from the Oregon City Mills, which was a total loss to the Island Milling Company. Or. Spectator, Jan. 10, 1850.

16 This latter wreck was of the Silvie de Grasse which brought Thornton home from Boston. She was formerly a packet of 2,000 tons, built of live- oak, and running between New York and Havre. She loaded with lumber for San Francisco, but in descending the river ran upon a rock and split. Eighteen years afterward her figure-head and a part of her hull stood above the water. What was left was then sold to A. S. Mercer, the iron being still in good order, and the locust and oak knees and timbers perfectly sound. Oregonian, in Puget Sound Gazette, April 15, 1867. The wreck on the bar was of L'Etoile du Matin, before mentioned in connection with the return to Oregon of Archbishop Blanchet, and the arrival of the Catholic reenforce- ment in 1847. Returning to Oregon in 1849, the captain not finding a pilot outside undertook to run in by the south channel, in which attempt he was formerly so successful, but its course having shifted, he soon found his ship fast on the sands, while an American bark that had followed him, but drew 10 fcet less water, passed safely in. The small life-boats were all lost in lowering, but after passing through great dangers the ship was worked into Baker Bay without a rudder, with a loosened keel and most of the pumps broken, aid having been rendered by Latta of the Hudson's Bay Company and some Indians. A box rudder was constructed, and the vessel taken to Port- land, and landed where the warehouse of Allen and Lewis later stood. The cargo belonged to Francis Menes, who saved most of it, and who opened a store in Oregon City, where he resided four years, finally settling at St Louis on French Prairie. He died December 1867. The hull of the Morning Star was sold to Couch and Flanders, and by them to Charles Hutchins, and was burned for the iron and copper. Eugene La Forrest, in Portland Oregonian, March 28, 1868.

HIST. OR., VOL. II. 4

EFFECT OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD DISCOVERY.

shore was lined with a fleet of barks, brigs, and ships, and where wharves and warehouses were in great demand.17 In Oregon City the mills were kept busy making flour and lumber,18 and new saw-mills were erected on the Columbia. 19

The farmers did not at first derive much benefit from the change in affairs, as labor was so high and scarce, and there was a partial loss of crops in conse- quence. Furthermore their wheat was already in store with the merchants and millers at a fixed price, or contracted for to pay debts. They therefore could not demand the advanced price of wheat till the crop of 1849 was harvested, while the merchant-millers had almost a whole year in which to make flour out of wheat costing them not more than five eighths of a dollar a bushel in goods, and which they sold at ten and twelve dollars a barrel at the mills. If able to send it to San Francisco, they realized double that price. As with wheat so with other things,20 the speculators had the best of it.

17 Couch returned in August from the east, in the bark Madonna, with G. A. Flanders as mate, in the service of the Shermans, shipping merchants of New York. They built a wharf and warehouse, and had soon laid the founda- tion of a handsome fortune. Eugene La Forrest, in Portland Oregonian, Jan. 29, 1870; Deady, in Trans. Or. Pioneer Assoc., 1876, 33-4. Nathaniel Crosby, also of Portland, was owner of the O. C. Raymond, which carried on so profit- able a trade that he could afford to pay the master $300 a month, the mate $200, and ordinary seamen $100. He had built himself a residence costing $5,000 before the gold discovery. Honolulu Friend, Oct. 15, 1849.

18 McLoughlin's miller was James Bachan, a Scotchman. The island grist- mill was in charge of Robert Pentland, an Englishman, miller for Abernethy. Crawford's Nar., MS.

19 A mill was erected in 1848 on Milton Creek, which falls into Scappoose Bay, an inlet of the lower Willamette at its junction with the Columbia, where the town of Milton was subsequently laid off and had a brief cxistence. It was owned by T. H. Hemsaker, and built by Joseph Cunningham. It began running in 1849, and was subsequently sold to Captain N. Crosbey and Thomas W. Smith, who employed the bark Louisiana, Captain Williams, carrying lumber to San Francisco. Crawford's Nar., MS., 217. By the bark Diamond, which arrived from Boston in August, Hiram Clark supercargo, Abernethy received a lot of goods and took Clark as partner. Together they built a saw and planing mill on the Columbia at Oak Point, opposite the original Oak Point of the Winship brothers, a more convenient place for getting timber or loading vessels than Oregon City. The island mill at the latter place was rented to Walter Pomeroy, and subsequently sold, as I shall relate hereafter. Another mill was erected above and back of Tongue Point by Henry Marland in 1849. Id .; Honolulu Friend, Oct. 3, 1849.

2) In the Spectator of Oct. 18, 1849, the price of beef on foot is given at 6 and 8 cents; in market, 10 and 12 cents per pound; pork, 16 and 20 cents;

MIND AND HABITS UNSETTLED.

When the General Lane sailed from Oregon City with lumber and provisions, there were several tons of eggs on board which had been purchased at the market price, and which were sold by the captain at thirty cents a dozen to a passenger who obtained for them at Sacramento a dollar each. The large increase of home productions, with the influx of gold by the return of fortunate miners, soon enabled the farmers to pay off their debts and improve their places, a labor upon which they entered with ardor in anticipation of the donation law. Some of those who could arrange their affairs, went a second time to California in 1849; among the new companies being one of several hun- dred Canadians and half-breeds, under the charge of Father Delorme, few of whom ever returned alive, owing to one of those mysterious epidemies, developed under certain not well understood conditions, attack- ing their camp.21

On the whole the effect of the California gold dis- covery was to unsettle the minds of the people and change their habits. To the Hudson's Bay Company it was in some respects a damage, and in others a benefit. The fur-trade fell off, and this, together with the operation of the treaty of 1846, compelling them to pay duties on goods from English ports, soon effected the abandonment of their business in United States territory. For a time they had a profitable trade in gold-dust, but when coined gold and American and Mexican money came into free circulation, there was an end of that speculation.22 Every eireumstance now conspired to drive British trade out of Oregon

butter, 62 and 75 cents; cheese, 50 cents; flour, $14 per barrel; wheat, $1.50 and $2 per bushel, and oats the same. Potatoes were worth $2.50 per bushel; apples, $10. These were the articles produced in the country, and these prices were good. On the other hand, groceries and dry goods, which were imported, cost less than formerly, because, while consumption was less, more cargoes were arriving. Iron and nails, glass and paint were still high, and cooking-stoves brought from $70 to $130.

21 F. X. Matthieu, who was one of the company, says that out of 600 only 150 remained alive, and that Delorme narrowly escaped. Refugee, MS., 15; Blanchet's Hist. Cath. Ch. in Or., 180.

22 Roberts' Recollections, MS., 81; Anderson's Northwest Coast, MS., 38.

EFFECT OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD DISCOVERY.

as fast as the country could get along independently of it; and inasmuch as the fur company had, through the dependence of the American community upon them, been enabled to make a fair profit on a large amount of goods, it was scarcely to be regretted that they should now be forced to give way, and retire to new territory where only fur companies properly be- long.

Among the events of 1849 which were directly due to the mining episode was the minting of about fifty thousand dollars at Oregon City, under an act of the colonial legislature passed at its last session, without license from the United States. The rea- sons for this act, which were recited in the preamble, were that in use as currency was a large amount of gold-dust which was mixed with base metals and im- purities of other kinds, and that great irregularities in weighing existed, to the injury of the community. Two members only, Medorum Crawford and W. J. Martin, voted against the bill, and these entered on the records a formal protest on the ground that the measure was unconstitutional and inexpedient.23 The

23 Grover's Or. Archives, 311, 315. The act was approved by the governor Feb. 16, 1849. According to its provisions the mint was to be established at Oregon City; its officers, elected annually by the house of representatives, were to give each $30,000 bonds, and draw a salary of $1,999 each perannum, to be paid out of proceeds of the institution. The director was empowered to pledge the faith of the territory for means to put the mint in operation; and was required to publish in some newspaper in the territory a quarterly state- ment, or by sending such a report to the county clerk of each county. The act provided for an assayer and melter and coiner, the latter being forbidden to use any alloys whatever. The weight of the pieces was to be five penny- weights and ten pennyweights respectively, no more and no less. The dies for stamping were required to liave on one side the Roman figure five, for the pieces of five pennyweights, and the Roman figure ten, for the pieces of ten pennyweights, the reverse sides to be stamped with the words Oregon Territory, and the date of the year around the face, with the 'arms of Ore- gon' in the centre. What then constituted the 'arms of Oregon' is a ques- tion. Brown, Will. Valley, MS., 13, says that only parts of the impression remain in the Oregon archives, and that it has gone out of the memory of everybody, including Holderness, secretary of state in 1848. Thornton says that the auditor's seal of the provisional government consisted of a star in the centre of a figure so arranged as to represent a larger star, containing the letters Auditor O. T., and that it is still preserved in the Oregon archives. Relies, MS., 6. But as the law plainly described the coins as having the arms of Oregon on the same side with the date and the name of the territory, then if the idea of the legislators was carried out, as it seems to have been, a beaver

THE QUESTION OF COINAGE.

reason for the passage of the act was, really, the low price of gold-dust, the merchants having the power to fix the rate of gold as well as of wheat, receiving it for goods at twelve dollars an ounce, the Hudson's Bay Company buying it at ten dollars and paying in coin procured for the purpose.24

The effect of the law was to prevent the circulation of gold-dust altogether, as it forbade weighing. No steps were taken toward building a mint, which would have been impossible had not the erection of a terri- torial government intervened. But as there was henceforth considerable coin coming into the country to exchange at high prices for every available product, there was no serious lack of money.25 On the con- trary there was a disadvantage in the readiness with which silver was introduced from California, barrels of Mexican and Peruvian dollars being thrown upon the market, which had been sent to California to pay for gold-dust. The Hudson's Bay Company allowed only fifty cents for a Peruvian dollar, while the Amer- ican merchants took them at one hundred cents. Some of the Oregon miners were shrewd enough to buy up Mexican silver dollars, and even less valuable coins, with gold-dust at sixteen dollars an ounce, and take

must have been the design on the territorial seal, as it was on the coins. All disbursements of the mint, together with the pay of officers, must be made in the stamped pieces authorized by the act; and whatever remained of profits, after deducting expenses, was to be applied to pay the Cayuse war expenses. Penalties were provided for the punishment of any private person who should coin gold or attempt to pass unstamped gold. The officers appointed were James Taylor, director; Truman P. Powers, treasurer; W. H. Willson, melter and coiner, and G. L. Curry, assayer. Or. Spectator, Feb. 22, 1849.

"+ Barnes' Or. and Cal., MS., 9; Buck's Enterprises, MS., 8; Brown's Will. T'al., MS., 14. This condition of the currency caused a petition to be drawn up and numerously signed, setting forth that in consequence of the neglect of the United States government the colonists must combine against the greed of the merchants in this matter. There was gold-dust in the territory, they declared, to the value of two millions of dollars, and more arriving. Besides the losses they were forced to bear by the depreciation of gold-dust, there was the inconvenience of handling it in its original state, and also the loss attending its frequent division. These objections to a gold -dust currency being likely to exist for some time, er as long as mining was followed, they prayed the legislature to pass a coinage act, which was done as I have said. Or. Archives, MS., 188.

25 Deady's Hist. Or., MS.

EFFECT OF THE CALIFORNIA GOLD DISCOVERY.

them to Oregon where dust could be readily obtained at twelve or fourteen dollars an ounce. 26 The gold coins in general circulation were Spanish doubloons, halves, and quarters. Such was the scarcity of con- venient currency previous to this overplus that silver coin had been at a premium of ten per cent,27 but fell rapidly to one per cent.

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.

History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888, Part 6

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