An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 6

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172

USA > Washington > Skagit County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 6
USA > Washington > Snohomish County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 6

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The party wintered in a log building at a point named by them Fort Clatsop. On the 23d of March, 1806, they turned their faces homeward, first, how- ever, having given to the chiefs of the Clatsops and Chinooks certificates of hospitable treatment and posted on the fort the following notice: "The object of this last is that, through the medium of some civilized person, who may see the same, it may be made known to the world that the party consisting of the persons whose names are here- unto annexed and who were sent out by the gov- ernment of the United States to explore the interior of the continent of North America, did penetrate the same by way of the Missouri and Columbia rivers, to the discharge of the latter into the Pacific ocean, at which they arrived on the 14th day of November, 1805, and departed on their return to the United States by the same route by which they had come."

Of this notice several copies were left among the Indians, one of which fell into the hands of Captain Hall, of the brig Lydia, and was conveyed to the United States.

The expedition made its way with no little diffi- culty up the Columbia river. They discovered on their return a large tributary of that river (the Willamette) which had escaped their notice on their outward journey, and made careful inquiry of the Indians concerning it, the results of which were embodied in their map of the expedition.

At the mouth of the John Day river their canoes were abandoned, their baggage was packed on the backs of a few horses they had purchased from the Indians, and traveling in this manner, they continued their homeward march, arriving at the mouth of the Walla Walla river April 27th. The great chief Yellept was then the leader of the Walla Walla nation, and by him the explorers were received with such generous hospitality that they yielded to the temptation to linger a couple of days before undertaking further journeyings among the mountain fastnesses. Such was the treatment given them by these Indians that the journal of the expedition makes this appreciative

EXPLORATIONS BY LAND

notation concerning them: "We may indeed justly affirm that of all the Indians that we have seen since leaving the United States, the Walla Wallas are the most hospitable, honest and sincere."

Of the return journey for the next hundred and fifty miles, that venerable pioneer missionary, the late Dr. H. K. Hines, writes as follows: "Leav- ing these hospitable people on the 29th of April, the party passed eastward on the great 'Nez Perce trail.' This trail was the great highway of the Walla Wallas. Cayuses and Nez Perces to the buffalo ranges, to which they annually resorted for game and supplies. It passed up the valley of the Touchet, called by Lewis and Clark the 'White Stallion,' thence over the high prairie ridges and down the Alpowa to the crossing of the Snake river, then up the north bank of Clearwater to the village of Twisted Hair, where the exploring party had left their horses on the way down the previous autumn. It was worn deep and broad by the con- stant rush of the Indian generations from time immemorial, and on many stretches on the open plains and over the smooth hills, twenty horsemen could ride abreast in parallel columns. The writer has often passed over it when it lay exactly as it did when the tribes of Yellept and Twisted Hair traced its sinuous courses, or when Lewis and Clark and their companions first marked it with the heel of civilization. But the plow has long since obliterated it, and where the monotonous song of the Indian march was droningly chanted for so many barbaric ages, the song of the reaper thrills the clear air as he comes to his garner bringing in the sheaves. A more delightful ride of a hundred and fifty miles than this that the company of Lewis and Clark made over the swelling prairie upland and along the crystal streams between Walla Walla and the village of Twisted Hair, in the soft May days of 1806, can scarcely be found anywhere on earth."

To trace the journeyings of these explorers further is not within the province of this work. but in order to convey a general idea of the labors and extent of the voyage, we quote the brief sum- mary made by Captain Lewis himself :

"The road by which we went out by the way of the Missouri to its head is 3,096 miles; thence by land by way of Lewis river over to Clark's river and down that to the entrance of Travelers' Rest creek, where all the roads from different

routes meet ; thence across the rugged part of the Rocky mountains to the navigable waters of the Columbia, 398 miles; thence down the river 610 miles to the Pacific ocean-making a total distance of 4,134 miles. On our return in 1806 we came from Travelers' Rest directly to the falls of the Missouri river, which shortens the distance about 579 miles, and is a much better route, reducing the distance from the Mississippi to the Pacific ocean to 3,555 miles. Of this distance 2,515 miles is up the Missouri to the falls of that river ; thence pass- ing through the plains and across the Rocky moun- tains to the navigable waters of the Kooskooskie river, a branch of the Columbia, 340 miles, 200 of which is good road, 140 miles over a tremendous mountain, steep and broken. 60 miles of which is covered several feet deep with snow, and which we passed on the last of June; from the navigable part of the Kooskooskie we descended that rapid river 13 miles to its entrance into Lewis river, and down that river 154 miles to the Columbia, and thence 413 miles to its entrance into the Pacific ocean. About 180 miles of this distance is tide land. We passed several bad rapids and narrows. and one considerable fall, 286 miles above the entrance of this river, 31 feet 8 inches ; the total dis- tance descending the Columbia waters 640 miles - making a total of 3,555 miles, on the most direct route from the Mississippi at the mouth of the Missouri to the Pacific ocean."

The safe return of the explorers to their homes in the United States naturally created a sensation throughout that country and the world. Leaders and men were suitably rewarded. and the fame of the former will live while the rivers to which their names have been given continue to pour their waters into the sea. President Jefferson, the great patron of the expedition. paying a tribute to Captain Lewis in 1813, said: "Never did a similar event excite more joy throughout the United States. The hum- blest of its citizens have taken a lively interest in the issue of this journey, and looked with impa- tience for the information it would furnish. Nothing short of the official journals of this extraordinary and interesting journey will exhibit the importance of the service. the courage, devotion. zeal and per- severance uunder circumstances calculated to dis- courage, which animated this little band of heroes, throughout the long, dangerous and tedious travel."

CHAPTER III

THE ASTOR EXPEDITION

While the limits of this volume render a full treatment of the early Northwest history impossi- ble, it is necessary to write briefly of those mam- moth forces of the first ages of the country, the great fur companies, those gigantic commercial organizations, whose plans were so bold, farreach- ing and comprehensive, and whose theater of action included such vast areas of the earth's surface.

The profits of the fur trade were such as might well entice daring and avarice to run the gauntlet of icebergs, of starvation, of ferocious savages and of stormy seas. The net returns from a single voyage might liquidate even the enormous cost of the outfit. For instance, Ross, one of the clerks of Astor's company, and located at Okanogan, relates that one morning before breakfast he bought of Indians one hundred and ten beaver skins at the rate of five leaves of tobacco per skin. Afterward a yard of cotton cloth, worth, say, ten cents, pur- chased twenty-five beaver skins, the value of which in the New York market was five dollars apiece. For four fathoms of blue beads, worth, perhaps, a dollar, Lewis and Clark obtained a sea otter's skin, the market price of which varied from forty- five to sixty dollars. Ross notes in another place that for one hundred and sixty-five dollars in trinkets, cloth, etc., he purchased peltries valued in the Canton market at eleven thousand two hun- dred and fifty dollars. Indeed, even the ill-fated voyage of Mr. Astor's partners proved that a cargo worth twenty-five thousand dollars in New York might be replaced in two years by one worth a quarter of a million, a profit of a thousand per cent. We can not wonder then at the eager enterprise and fierce, sometimes bloody. competition of the fur traders.

The fur-producing animals of especial value in the old Oregon country were three in number. The first, the beaver, was found in great abundance in all the interior valleys, the Willamette country, as was discovered, being preeminent in this respect. The two others, the sea otter and the seal, were found on the coast. The sea otter fur was the most valuable, its velvety smoothness and glossy black- ness rendering it first in the markets of the world of all furs from the temperate zone of North Amer- ica, and inferior only to the ermine and sable, and possibly to the fiery fox of the far north.

Such, then, was the prospect which prompted the formation of the Pacific Fur Company,, which shall have the first place in our narrative as being

the first to enter the Columbia river basin, though it was long antedated in organization by several other large fur-trading corporations. The sole and prime mover of this enterprise was that famed commercial genius, Jolin Jacob Astor, a native of Heidelberg, who had come to America poor, and had amassed a large fortune in commercial trans- actions. In 1810 there was conceived in the brain of this man a scheme which for magnitude of design and careful arrangement of detail was truly masterful, and in every sense worthy of the great entrepreneur. Even the one grand mistake which wrecked the enterprise was the result of a trait of character which "leaned to virtue's side." Broad-minded and liberal himself, he did not appre- ciate the danger of entrusting his undertaking to the hands of men whose national prejudices were bitterly anti-American and whose previous connec- tion with a rival company might affect their loyalty to this one. He regarded the enterprise as a purely commercial one, and selected its personnel accord- ingly, hence the failure of the venture.

Mr. Astor's plan contemplated the prosecution of the fur trade in every unsettled territory of America claimed by the United States, the trade with China and the supply of the Russian settle- ments with trading stock and provisions, the goods to be paid for in peltries. A vessel was to be despatched at regular intervals from New York, bearing supplies of goods to be traded to the Indians. She was to discharge her cargo at a depot of trade to be established at the month of the Columbia river, then trade along the coast with Indians and at the Russian settlements until another cargo had been in part secured, return to the mouth of the river, complete her lading there. sail thence to China, receive a return cargo of Canton silks, nankeen and tea, and back to New York. Two years would pass in completing this vast commercial "rounding up." An important part of the plan was the supply of the Russian posts at New Archangel. the object being two-fold-first. to secure the profits accruing therefrom, and, second, to shut off compe- tition in Mr. Astor's own territory, through the semi-partnership with the Russians in furnishing them supplies. Careful arrangements had been made with the Russian government to prevent any possible clash between the vessels of the two com- panies engaged in the coast trade. "It was," says Brewerton, "a colossal scheme and deserved to succeed ; had it done so it would have advanced

THE ASTOR EXPEDITION

American settlement and actual occupancy on the northwest coast by at least a quarter of a century, giving employment to thousands, and transferred the enormous profits of the Hudson's Bay and North West British Fur Companies from English to American coffers."

Like a prudent business man, Mr. Astor antici- pated that, though the Northwest Company had no trading posts in the region west of the Rocky mountains and south of fifty-two degrees north, its enmity and jealousy would be speedily aroused when a new competitor entered the field. He resolved to soften enmity by frankness, so wrote to the directors of the British company the details of his plan and generously offered them a third interest in the enterprise. This ingenuousness on his part found no response in the characters of the shrewd and unscrupulous men in whom he had so unwisely confided. Nobleness, in this instance, failed to enkindle nobleness. They met candor with duplicity, generosity with perfidy.

Playing for time. they pretended, Cæsar-like, to take the matter under advisement, and at once despatched David Thompson, the astronomer and surveyor of their company, with instructions "to occupy the mouth of the Columbia, to explore the river to its headwaters, and, above all, to watch the progress of Mr. Astor's enterprise." They then declined the proposal.

But Mr. Astor proceeded with his project ener- getically and skillfully. Ile associated with himself as partners in the enterprise (and here was his great mistake) Donald Mackenzie, Alexander Mackay, who had accompanied Alexander Mack- enzie on his voyage of discovery, hence possessed invaluable experience, and Duncan Macdougal, all late of the Northwest Company, and, though men of great skill and experience, schooled in the preju- dices of the association with which they had so long maintained a connection and able to see only through British eyes. To the partners already enumerated were subsequently added Wilson P. Hunt and Robert Maclellan, Americans ; David and Robert Stuart and Ramsey Crooks, Scotchmen ; a Canadian named John Clarke, and others.

Wilson P. Hunt was given the post of chief agent on the Columbia, his term of office being five years, and when he was obliged to be absent tempo- rarily, a substitute was to be elected by the partners who happened to be present, to act in his place. Each partner obligated himself in the most solemn manner to go where sent and to execute faithfully the objects of the company, but before subscribing to this bond two of the British perfidiously com- municated to the British minister, Mr. Jackson, temporarily in New York, the details of Mr. Astor's plan and inquired of him concerning their status as British subjects trading under the American flag in the event of war. They were given assurance that in case of war they would be protected as

English subjects and merchants. Their scruples thus put at rest, they entered into the compact.

The larger part of the expedition was to go via Cape Horn and the Sandwich islands to the month of the Columbia, there to await the arrival of the Hunt party, which was sent out by land. To convey them thence the ship Tonquin, a vessel of two hun- dred and ninety tons burden, was fitted up for sea. She was commanded by Captain Thorne, a lieu- tenant of the United States navy on leave, and had on board Indian trading goods, the frame timbers for a coasting schooner, supplies of all kinds, and in fact, everything essential to comfort.

Before the vessel had left the harbor, Mr. Astor was apprised that a British war vessel was cruising off the coast for the purpose of intercepting the Tonquin, and impressing the Canadians and British who were on board. This was a ruse of the North- west Company to delay the expedition so that their emissary, Thompson, should arrive at the mouth of the Columbia first. But Mr. Astor secured as con- voy the now famous United States frigate, Consti- tution, commanded by the equally famous Captain Isaac Hull, and the Tonquin, thus protected, pro- ceeded safely on her way. She arrived at her destination March 22, 1811, after a voyage the details of which may be found in Irving's Astoria, Franchere's narrative, or in some of the publications based upon the latter work. On the 12th of the following month a part of the crew crossed the river in a launch and established at Fort George a settlement to which the name Astoria was given in honor of the projector of the enterprise. They at once addressed themselves to the task of con- structing the schooner, the framed materials for which had been brought with them in the Tonquin. An expedition also was made by Mr. Mackay to determine the truth or falsity of the rumor that a party of whites were establishing a post at the upper cascades of the river, but when the first rapids were reached the expedition had to be abandoned, the Indian erew positively refusing to proceed further.

On the 1st of June, the ill-fated Tonquin started north, Mr. Mackay accompanying. We must now pursne her fortunes to their terrible conclusion. Mr. Franchere, a Frenchman, one of Mr. Astor's clerks, is the chief authority for the story. With his account, Irving seems to have taken some poetic license. According to that graceful writer, with a total force of twenty-three and an Indian of the Chehalis tribe called Lamazee, for inter- preter, the Tonquin entered the harbor of Newectee. Franchere calls the Indian Lamanse, and the har- bor, he says, the Indians called Newity. We shall probably be safe in following Bancroft, who sur- mises that the place was Nootka sound, where, in 1803, the ship Boston and all her crew but two had been destroyed.

Captain Thorne had been repeatedly and urgently warned by Mr. Astor against allowing

INTRODUCTORY

more than four or five Indians on board at once, huit the cholerie skipper was not of the kind to listen to the voice of caution. When Indians ap- peared with a fine stock of sea otter skins, and the indications were for a profitable trade, he forgot everything in his eagerness to secure the peltry. But long experience with the whites and the instruc- tions of their wily chief. Maquinna, had rendered these tribes less pliable and innocent than the cap- tain expected. Being unable to strike a bargain with any of them and, losing patience, Thorne ordered all to leave the deck. They paid no atten- tion, and the captain, becoming violently enraged, seized their leader by the hair and hurried him toward the ship's ladder, emphasizing his exit by a stroke with a bundle of furs. The other Indians left forthwith.

When Mr. Mackay, who was on shore at the time, returned to the ship, he became indignant at Thorne, and urged that he set sail at once. Lamanse, the Chehalis Indian, seconded him, asserting that all prospects of profitable trade were destroyed and that a longer stay in the harbor was attended with very great danger, but advice and importunity were vain.

Early next morning a number of Indians, demure and peaceable, paddled over to the vessel. holding aloft bundles of fur as an evidence of their wish to trade. Thorne called Mackay's attention to the success of his method of dealing with the red men. "Just show them that you are not afraid." said he, "and they will behave themselves." The Indians exchanged their furs for whatever was offered, making no remonstrances or demands for higher prices.

Other canoe loads of savages came aboard and still others, the self-satisfied Thorne welcoming all in his blandest manner. The more watchful sailors became suspicious and alarmed, but they well knew that remonstrance against the course of Captain Thorne was vain. Soon, however, even he noticed that the Indians had become massed at all the assailable points of the vessel. He was visibly startled by this discovery, but pretending not to be aware that anything was wrong, he ordered his men to get ready for sailing, and the Indians to leave the vessel.

The latter started toward the ladder, but as they did so, they drew from the unsold bundles of furs the weapons therein concealed.

"In an instant the wild war-yell broke the awful silence, and then the peaceful deck of the Tonquin saw a slaughter grim and pitiless. Lewis, the elerk, and Mackay were almost instantly despatched. Then a crowd, with fiendish triumph, set upon the captain, bent on evening up at once the old score. The brawny frame and iron will of the brave, though foolhardy. old salt made him a dangerous object to attack, and not until half a dozen of his assailants had measured their bleeding lengths on

the slippery deck did he succumb. Then he was hacked to pieces with savage glee. Meanwhile four sailors, the only survivors besides the interpreter, Lamanse, by whom the story was told, having gained access to the hold, began firing on the tri- umphant Indians: and with such effect did they work, that the whole throng left the ship in haste and sought the shore. Lamanse, meanwhile, was spared, but held in captivity for two years. The next day, the four surviving sailors attempted to put to sea in a small boat, but were pursued and probably murdered by the Indians. And then, like a band of buzzards circling around a careass, the Indian canoes began to cluster around the deserted ship."

But an awful retribution was about to overtake the Indians. Cautiously at first, but with more boldness as they observed the apparent lifelessness of everything on the ship, they began next day to climb aboard, and soon several hundred of them were rifling the storehouses, gloating over the dis- figured bodies of their victims, and strutting across the deck, elad in gaudy blankets, and lavishly adorned with beads and tinsels.

Then came a terrible boom, and the Itickless Tonquin, with all on board, both quick and dead, was scattered in fragments over the face of the deep. Her powder magazine had exploded, de- stroying the ship and her enemies in one awful ruin. According to Lamanse, as quoted by Fran- chere, two hundred Indians were destroyed by this explosion.

Franchere was unable to state what caused the ship to be blown up, but surmises that the four sailors attached a slow train to the magazine before their departure. As Franchere is the only known authority, it seems certain that Irving must have fabricated his account, which is to the effect that Lewis, wounded, remained on the ship after the four sailors had gone, and that he enticed the sav- ages aboard, that he might destroy himself and them in one final retribution.

A report that the Tonquin was destroyed reached Astoria in due time, the news being borne by Indians. At first the story was entirely dis- credited, but as time passed and no Tonquin appeared, it became more and more evident that there must be some truth in it. No details of the tragedy were known, however, until Lamanse reappeared some two years later.

On July 15, 1811, David Thompson, with eight white men, arrived at Astoria. His expedition had been long delayed on the eastern side of the Rocky mountains, in the search for a pass. Desertions among his crew also impeded his progress, and the final result was that he had to return to the nearest post and remain over winter. In the early spring he hurried forward. The party distributed many small flags among the Indians along the Columbia, built huts at the forks of the river and took formal

THE ASTOR EXPEDITION

possession of the country drained by the Columbia and its tributaries in the name of the King of Great Britain, and for the company which sent them out. But the main object of the expedition was not realized. They were unable to occupy the mouth of the Columbia, and the perfidy of the Northwest Company failed of its reward. Hostile though the expedition was, it was received at Astoria with open-handed cordiality, Macdougal furnishing Thompson with supplies for the return journey against the urgent remonstrance of David Stuart. Such generosity to one's commercial enemy is, to say the least, a little unusual, but the magnanimity displayed has for some reason failed to call forth the plaudits of historians.

At the time of Mr. Thompson's arrival. David Stuart was about to start for the Spokane country to establish a post, and he delayed his departure for a short time that his and Mr. Thompson's party might travel together. At the confluence of the Columbia and Okanogan rivers, Mr. Stuart erected Fort Okanogan, the first interior post west of the Rocky mountains within the limits of the present state of Washington.

January 8, 1812, a part of the Hunt expedition reached Astoria in a pitiable condition. The ad- ventures of different members of this party form a sad chapter in the history of the fur trade. Hunt was met by overwhelming obstacles from the very first. In his efforts to get men for his expedition he was harassed in every way possible by persons interested in rival fur companies, and when, at last, owing to his own indomitable perseverance and Astor's unstinted purse, he got a party together, the battle was by no means won. In April, 1811, Hunt set his face toward the Pacific. With him were sixty men, four of whom, Crooks, Mackenzie, Miller and Maclellan, were partners, and one, Reed, was a clerk. The rest were free trappers and Canadian voyageurs, except two English natural- ists, Bradbury and Nuttall.

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An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 6

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.) Publication date: 1906 Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1172

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172