USA > Oregon > Pioneer days of Oregon history, Vol. I > Part 6
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had kept the chiefs who came to them as hostages, they could have commanded the situation. The fact was they could not afford to go to war ; that was only pretence. What they needed was diplomacy; and that was finally accom- plished by the aid of two Chinook chiefs, so that they at last got some of the goods back and forgave the remainder as a compromise for the deaths of the men killed in the outset.
In the year 1816 a party was fitted out to trap beaver in the Willamette, but the natives warned them not to con- tinue up the river unless they paid tribute for the privilege. This was another instance of utilizing a river gorge, or pass, where a portage was necessary, to exact tribute for the priv- ilege. The hunters resented the demand and determined to force their way rather than establish a precedent that could not be easily evaded. If they had been better versed in Indian diplomacy they would have assented and established an inoffensive precedent, that would have been no disadvan- tage, as we shall see ; but as it was, the next day they found the river bank lined with natives on both sides. They as- sumed menacing postures, but the traders determined to push on. The advance called out a shower of arrows. One man was wounded and in anger they fired back, and a native -a chief at that-was killed. The expedition could not succeed against hundreds of savages in arms, who were in ambush, while they were in open day ; so they returned to Fort George, sadly discouraged.
Afterwards the chief's death was compromised by pay- ment of agreed value and peace restored. When the next effort was made to hunt in the Willamette a more efficient officer was in command who understood Indian character. On being summoned to stop, as they passed the falls, he
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headed his boats for the shore, landed, inviting all to smoke a friendly pipe, in that manner paid all the tribute they ex- pected and went on his way. Thereafter the same practice was continued and the natives were happy and satisfied, feel- ing that their rights had been respected.
After the return of Stuart and Kieth from the Cascades, discomfited, Stuart wounded and much goods and fifty guns left behind, a council of war was held at Fort George and native chiefs invited to attend. The Chinooks were glad of a chance to become allies of the whites ; soon McTavish, with sixty-two men and a small brass cannon, were embarked in six canoes, the two Chinook chiefs as negotiators, on their way to the Cascades-to find the villages deserted. They sent word by stragglers that they were prepared to annihi- late the tribe if their goods were not sent back. The chiefs sent word declining to even smoke, or talk, or make any terms, until McTavish succeeded by strategy in seizing a chief to hold as security. It was rather hard on them to see their principal chief held captive, in bonds, tied neck and heels, and be told: "Now bring in our things, or your chief dies !"
They howled dismally for awhile-but that was waste effort. The guns all came back and most of the goods, when it was agreed that the balance could offset the two men killed in the outset. It was understood that goods in transit were to be let alone or the violators would be shot, and they need expect no recompense for those killed in act of trans- gression. The Chinook chiefs assisted in negotiation, but thought their white allies acted cowardly in not creating havoc by waging war. The Cascade Indians were occasion- ally troublesome under the Northwesters, but were far more
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tractable ; so much so, that McKensie, when conducting a valuable cargo over that portage, consigned it to the care of a chief who had a very doubtful reputation, and found every article accounted for. The Indians appreciated being treated with confidence, and if judicious firmness and kind- ness had been used would have been more tractable from the first.
But the Northwesters were not successful in inspiring confidence and had to fight their way. The same year sev- eral more were killed at The Dalles ; in the fall an affair oc- curred on the upper river, as a party was on the way to Okanogan. They were poling against the current when Indians came in canoes and tried to rob them. As blows did not answer, they tried powder and ball, when two Indians were killed and one wounded. They intrenched on an island and the hills around blazed with signal fires. They pre- pared to fight to the death, and many wrote messages that they hoped would reach their friends after their fall. They concluded it was best to buy a peace, and pay for the dead ; so forty-eight went ashore with a flag of truce to ask a par- ley. Then came an hundred and fifty warriors and forty mourners for the dead, all armed and chanting a dirge ; be- hind the half-naked and painted mourners were a multitude of mounted men. The chiefs refused the calumet of peace ; would accept no price, however great ; nothing would do but to surrender two white men for sacrifice. Kieth said that could never be ; white men must have their rights respected if they were to live among them. Some agreed to accept the offer, but the majority demanded vengeance. Each party stood, grasping their weapons. Every member of the whites was determined to die hard-and it was ten to one!
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Possibly there was never greater tension known to human life since Time began than as that little band waited the crack of doom!
A tramp of horses is heard and twelve mounted warriors dash into the vacant space between the opponents! They dismount ! The leader greets Kieth kindly, then turns to his own people. He is young, handsome, fearless-as he ap- peals to ask them what they would do.
"Friends and relatives! Three snows only have passed since we were a poor, miserable people! Our enemies, the Shoshones, during the summer stole our horses, by which we were prevented from hunting, and drove us from the banks of the river, so we could not fish. In winter they burned our lodges by night ; they killed our relatives ; they treated our wives and daughters like dogs, and left us either to die from cold and starvation or become their slaves !
"They were numerous and powerful. We were few and weak. Our hearts were as the hearts of little children. We could not fight like warriors, and were driven like deer about the plains. When thunder roared and rains poured, we had no shelter. No place save the rocks where we could lay our heads. Is such the case to-day? No, my relatives. It is not. We have driven the Shoshones from our hunting grounds, on which they dare not now appear, and have re- gained possession of the lands that were our fathers, in which they and their fathers lie buried. We have horses and food in abundance, and can sleep unmolested with our wives and children, without dreading midnight attacks. Our hearts are great within us and we are now a nation !
"Who, then, my friends, have made this change? The white man! In exchange for our horses and furs they gave
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us guns and ammunition. Then we grew strong. Killed many of our enemies and made them fly from our lands. Shall we treat such men with ingratitude? Never! Never! The whites have never robbed us, and why should we rob them? It was very bad and they did right to kill the rob- bers !"
When the mourners for the dead showed dissatisfaction at this, he said, yet louder: "Yes! They did right to kill the robbers, and who will dare to contradict me?" Then, with passionate words he told how his own father had been killed when his friends had deserted him ; invoked vengeance on thieves and cowards, and showed how the whites would come in force to revenge the death of their friends. "Then, where would they get guns and ammunition? They would be at the mercy of their enemies. If they refused the com- pensation offered, he and his band would join the whites- for they were right." He spoke thus for two hours, with all the Indian's power of appeal and illustration. The Walla Wallas were induced to smoke the pipe of peace and accept the terms offered.
This brave and handsome young chief was Morning Star. At twenty-five he had succeeded his father, a chief of great influence and bravery, who had been killed in battle. The young man had performed prodigies of valor and nineteen scalps hung to the neck of his war steed-all killed by him- self in three years, to appease the spirit of his father. "His handsome features, eagle glance, noble bearing, and fine per- son stamped him as one of nature's noblemen. He com- manded the respect of the old and homage of the young."
That was the way they escaped, and it is not often that a more striking incident has occurred than this to preserve life
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in peril. It was by such experiences that the wild region was ruled and many a time no such interposition was possible.
Donald McKensie came from Montreal to establish a fort on the Walla Walla. This was not agreeable to the others, but he was firm, and his coming opened a new era, as he was the man for the time. Taking forty men, he went up the Co- lumbia ; had a boat wrecked at the Cascades and entrusted its cargo to a chief, who cared for it six months and was proud of the confidence shown him. In 1817 he made mat- ters more agreeable than they had ever been before. He came nearer to bringing order out of chaos than any one had under Northwest management ; he proved more capable, as a manager of savages, as well as of business matters, than any who had preceded him. He accomplished results with little apparent effort and inspired his subordinates to have faith in him, as well as in themselves.
In the summer of 1818 orders came to Fort George to furnish McKensie one hundred men to build a fort on the Walla Walla, or Nez Percés, as it was also called. Up to that time the Fort George magnates had frustrated his efforts, so nothing had been accomplished. The magnates of the company had now asserted themselves ; so he went to Walla Walla (now Wallula) and commenced work with a large force. The Indians were not friendly ; timber was cut and floated down an hundred miles, and the natives looked on sullenly, wanted pay for everything used, and would not sell them food; but work went on until there was a fortress well built and well defended. Then McKensie had to make peace with the Cayuses and allied tribes. Finally, he won them over to be friends, and made a peace between them and the Shoshones, so that the business of trading need not be
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interrupted. Until McLoughlin came McKensie was the greatest and most successful of all the chief factors of the Northwest Company, or of the Columbia region.
About this time the oldest and most renowned of the Walla Walla chiefs, having lost his sons by war and disease, buried the sixth and last of all, and was so disheartened that he threw himself into the grave and ordered it to be filled. He was thus buried alive, mid wailing and lamentings of all the tribe. Here is a picture of Indian stoicism and fatalism that is at least worthy of our respect. Can we doubt that natural affection had full force among a people of which this is true?
Part of the Northwestern's force were Iroquois from Can- ada. When McKensie went into the Snake River country twenty-five of these left the company to trap and hunt on their own account, sinking to lowest depths of debasement. When tired of this life they returned to the service of the company. McKensie was not successful in keeping the tribes at peace with each other, and as they occasionally laid plots for the murder of the whites it was not a lovely life. Oskononton was one of these Iroquois who revolted from Mc- Kensie and came back very penitent; he was sent to the Lower Columbia. With others he went to trap on the Cow- litz. While attempting to violate the women he was killed. They reported it as a murder, and Kieth sent more Iroquois, under Ogden, to look into it. As soon as they came to a Cowlitz village these miscreants fired, killing twelve men and children. Two hundred miles south, in the Umpqua, a force of trappers were so enraged because the natives would not sell their women, that they murdered fourteen, then pursued and killed more ; becoming afraid, they left for the Willa- mette, sending four messengers to tell at Fort George how
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they had been nearly assassinated by Umpqua savages. At Oak Point, on the Columbia, the four messengers were in turn murdered by the Clatskanine band. Such mismanage- ment and fearful misconduct made it difficult to attain suc- cess. The next year Donald McKensie was called east again and promoted to command at Red River, so his good man- agement was lost to the western department.
The fur companies did not in any practical sense sub- due the wilderness, but did an immense work in exploring the vast region west of the divide. It must have been a temptation to the Indians when a small force came among them loaded with goods to tempt their cupidity. Success with the business of trapping and trading depended on knowledge of Indian nature, firmness, grit, courage, with skill and tact. It was necessary to possess these traits, and none of the Northwesters, save McKensie, had those quali- ties, so their course involved constant trouble, robbery, mur- der and treachery on part of the natives. The Iroquois were worse than the Canadian French, and made a practice of stealing women and invading every tie that stood in the way of their lust and rapacity. They needed taming worse than did the Indians of the country, while their being of the same race could have given them influence for good. Those who were civilized exercised a good influence, as witness their teaching the Upper Columbia tribes the truths of the Chris- tian religion.
Kieth was not the man to control these, nor to placate the natives and exercise over them beneficent rule. The ten years-from 1814 to 1824-of the rule of the Northwest Fur Company, were marked by bloodshed, rapine and terror, at times on the part of the Indians and often on the part of
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the whites. The condition of things lessened possibility for profit as well as caused loss of life.
It was asserted that two-fifths of all employed during the era of the fur trade west of the Missouri River lost their lives, in one way or another, as consequence of such wild and savage conditions ; while it was very different in the domain of the Hudson's Bay Company, where business was conducted with discipline and so managed as to conciliate the native tribes. Much of this was due to use of alcohol, which was easily transported and diluted when sold; and much more to the infamous way the Iroquois and others prostituted the Indian women, which resulted in venereal disease that destroyed the natives and ruined the whites. Take it all in all, and in many respects that invasion of the Pacific Northwest was in the outset debasing, and a hideous blot on the history of that time. Men acted, often, with un- licensed brutality that left the Indians no right to respect them and invited the murder and treachery that resulted. The Indian was possessed of some character and self-respect in the beginning, but lost this while he only gained loss of manhood and worse debasement than they ever knew of old. There were exceptions of whites who were not base, while a few of the natives, like the Flatheads, refused to sell their daughters or permit the whites to marry them. In 1823-24 several stations had to be abandoned because the natives were hostile ; humanity will side with them, because they resented the stealing of their wives. The Beaver Indians, in the Rocky Mountains, killed five who ravished their wives. Such was the history of the time; there was need for some one whose principles could summon force to come back there and work a reformation.
CHAPTER XII
LIFE AMONG THE INDIANS
WHAT the conditions of life were among the Indians when the whites first came, is an interesting question, and one that never can be decided. The first comers were of the fur trade, exclusively, whether they came by sea in ships, or, if trappers and mountain men, came over the intermountain area of ranges and wilderness. They were hardly civilized them- selves, and had no object in view but to trade to advantage. The records of the fur company have furnished the most accurate details of life among the Indians, but while they were at times interested in witnessing native ways and study- ing character, or listening to myths, legends and superstitions that bordered on religious belief, they seem to have made no study of Indian life from an ethnological standpoint. We cannot know as much as would easily have been possible, if connected effort had been made by fairly competent men, but we know enough to understand that great diversity of character was manifested by the native race within a com- paratively short distance. For instance, the fish-eating tribes were less manly in form and feature, and even in char- acter, compared with the inland tribes who were hunters- even if they were fish eaters in part. Along the coast, north of the Columbia, the natives were savage and treacherous, while on the south they were comparatively peaceable. On the sound, through the Willamette and on the Columbia
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below the Cascades, they were generally peaceable, while in Southern Oregon they were treacherous and savage.
There were strong differences between the tribes along the Columbia River, east of the Cascades, as to their lan- guage, their nature, their conduct, and in some degree as to their ways of life. Had a firm but kindly policy of peace, with readiness to resist savagery and imposition, that recog- nized the rights of the natives and studied their best inter- ests, been followed from the beginning under the lead and governance of a man like Dr. John McLoughlin, there could have been truer progress made and more good as result, to both whites and Indians. Such has been the course pursued by the British Government in Canada, and no similar wars, massacres, troubles and uncertainty have existed there as has been experienced through the United States territory from the beginning.
The various tribes were often at war, and if weak or cowardly, they were overcome by their neighbors and re- duced to slavery. In early time prominent Indians had their slaves ; often they were children, taken captive in their raids. It is not necessary to waste sympathy on the entire race from the standpoint of ultra-civilization, and credit them with rare sensibility and human perfections, but it was certainly true that they loved their country and often fought bravely to preserve their rights. It is true that their rights were in- vaded and little effort made to treat them fairly or do them justice ; even when treaties were made, they have not been performed-through negligence often-and the result has. been that the native tribes have considered themselves out- raged and have risen in their wrath to resent insult and injury.
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Many a time, in the history of settlement, all has gone well until some brutality, on the part of irresponsible and murderous white vagabonds, has been committed, that the outraged natives revenged on the first white men or families that offered as victims. With them all whites were of a race, and a wrong done by one was due from all. This will ac- count for many a deed of savagery and vindictive hate that was avenged, that led to wars and made lasting bitterness. Many a time the Indian has shown truth, loyalty and nobil- ity of character that has not been appreciated. Many a time, too, he has risen in peace councils that followed bloody wars, and his simple but heartfelt oratory has shown that he had exhausted all efforts for peace before he took the war path. I have always remembered a story told me by Judge W. R. Dunbar, who in his youth was interpreter at a council held after the Rogue River war of 1856, that described the dignity and pathos with which two Indian warriors stood forth before the commissioners and explained the imposition they endured, the wrongs they suffered, and tried to excuse and forget, until insult was so added to injury that they rose in their wrath, with the firebrand and scalping knife as avengers of their right. They endured until patience ceased to be a virtue.
The. Indians were not merely savage and heathen ; they were proud as a race, had their virtues and their vices, and usually responded to kind treatment with confidence and loyalty. They were ignorant and superstitious, and by nature were savages, but had the qualities of kindness and affection, love of home and country, and understood the prin- ciples of right and wrong. Unfortunately for them, they too often made their first acquaintance with white men
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through the medium of the worst of the race; men who were ignorant, unscrupulous, immoral, reckless, and often were a disgrace to the civilization they could only misrepresent.
When the Astor Company landed at Astoria they found the Chinook nation in possession, their rights extending east to Oak Point and north to the Chehalis country and Gray's Harbor, where the Chehalis River empties. To the south of the Columbia were the allied Clatsop, Nehalem, Tillamook and Nestucca bands, occupying a beautiful country. Over it all the Chinook tongue was in use, though differing in dialect. I got this from Dr. William C. McKay, whose mother was princess of the race, and he was always one of its representatives. The Clatsops were a strong family, oc- cupying south to Tillamook Head and the valleys east of Saddle Mountain, a region that abounded in game. They were good hunters and also expert fishermen. Besides that elk, deer and bear abounded, they had fish, clams and wild fowl. They built parks to decoy game, used hedges of brush and thorn, with rock ledges and natural obstructions to fence in a large area, with outwings to turn the game as they de- sired. At the proper time a large number would make a circuit to drive game in gradually to the centre park, so when they closed they had great numbers of bears, elk and deer, all herded together in this park, or corral ; then expert hunters went in among them and killed what they needed. They practically had game laws that were effective, and game did not diminish or become extinct. They were as careful as stockmen are of their herds to-day.
Mr. John Minto was here in the fall of 1844 and knew well leading natives who were in the Willamette; from them, and especially from Jo Hutchins, who was unusually well
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informed and intelligent, he learned of their traditions and custonis. What he told of the modes of supplying winter meat is of interest as showing their wisdom and good man- agement, also their economical use of the gifts of nature. Under the reckless waste of the whites the buffalo were slaughtered for their robes and the meat was wasted; before our race the deer, elk, buffalo, and bear-all the wild game- became practically extinct on the immense ranges they had occupied; beaver, otter and fur seal disappeared from the land and the sea. But the Indians preserved all these with a wisdom and economy we may at least respect, so prudently and wisely that the supply remained intact as surely as are the individual flocks and herds so well cared for in civilized lands to-day.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT FALL HUNT IN THE WILLAMETTE
THE Calipooia Indians, who occupied the Willamette valley, had their peculiar ways, and it is interesting to preserve a record of their year's proceedings. Old Quinaby and Jo Hutchins who lived at Grande Ronde both told how their tribes prosecuted a great fall hunt for the purpose of laying in meat for winter. The bands that occupied the region that included the east side of the valley, from the Molalla to the Santiam, all united in this annual round-up or battue. It required a great force of men to carry out the programme. They formed a cordon around all the territory indicated. Men were placed in position along the rivers named and in- cluding the foothills of the Cascades. The great square encircled all of Marion County (as constituted to-day ) that is not rough mountainous country. To have placed men a quarter of a mile apart would have required fully five hundred. They called into active service boys able to draw a bow, and old men not incapable of duty. At a given signal, made by a fire kindled at some point as agreed, they commenced burning off the whole face of the country and driving wild game toward a common centre. This annual hunt was conducted under the orders of the most famous war chief, and all others had to receive instructions and live up to them. There was considerable skill required to do this correctly and effectively. If badly managed, the game could
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