USA > Washington > Lincoln County > An illustrated history of the Big Bend country, embracing Lincoln, Douglas, Adams, and Franklin counties, state of Washington, pt 1 > Part 4
USA > Washington > Adams County > An illustrated history of the Big Bend country, embracing Lincoln, Douglas, Adams, and Franklin counties, state of Washington, pt 1 > Part 4
USA > Washington > Douglas County > An illustrated history of the Big Bend country, embracing Lincoln, Douglas, Adams, and Franklin counties, state of Washington, pt 1 > Part 4
USA > Washington > Franklin County > An illustrated history of the Big Bend country, embracing Lincoln, Douglas, Adams, and Franklin counties, state of Washington, pt 1 > Part 4
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GENERAL HISTORY.
Through the broken, hilly country through which flow the tributaries of the Columbia the party pressed forward. On the 29th Captain Clarke and his men joined the main party, which had made a wide detour in order to gain information regarding a more feasible route. Although August was not yet passed the weather was quite cold, and during the night ink froze in the pen and frost covered the meadows. Yet the days were warm, and this atmospheric condition grew more pronounced as they drew nearer the "Oregon" climate.
The expedition began the passage across the mountains August 30, 1805. Accompanied by the old guide, his four sons and another Indian, the party began the descent of the Lemhi river. Three days later all the Indians, save the old guide, deserted them. There being no track leading across the mountains it became necessary to cut their way through the dense underbrush. Although the Indian guide ap- pears to have lost his way, on September 4, after most arduous labor in forcing a passage through the almost impenetrable brush, the party came upon a large camp of Indians. The following day a "pow-wow" was held, con- ducted in many languages, the various dia- lects suggesting a modern Babel, but it proved sufficient to inform the Indians of the main ob- ject of the expedition. These Indians were the Ootlashoots, a band of the Tushepaws, on their way to join other bands in hunting buffalo on Jefferson river, across the Great Divide. Part- ing from them the toilsome journey was re- sumed. The party was seeking a pass across the Bitter Root mountains. Game disappeared. O:1 September 14 they were forced to kill a colt, their stock of animal food being exhausted. And with frequent recurrence to the use of horseflesh they pressed on through the wilder- ness. An extract from Captain Clarke's jour- nal of September 18, conveys an idea of the destitute condition of his party :
We melted some snow and supped on a little porta- ble soup, a few cannisters of which, with about twenty
pounds' weight of bear's oil, are our only remaining means of subsistence. Our guns are scarcely of any service for there is no living creature in these mountains except a few small pheasants, a small species of gray squirrel, and a blue bird of the vulture kind, about the size of a turtle dove, or jay. Even these are difficult to shoot.
Arriving at a bold, running stream on Sep- temiber 19, it was appropriately named "Hun- gry Creek," as at that point they had nothing to eat. On September 20 the party passed down the last of the Bitter Root range and gained a comparatively level country. Here they found another band of strange Indians, people who had never looked upon the face of a white man. They proved hospitable and the party remained with them several days. The Indians called themselves Chopunnish, or Pierced-noses, the Nez Perces of to-day. The expedition was now in the vicinity of Pierce City, at one period the capital of Shoshone county, Idaho. On a white elk skin, the chief, Twisted Hair, drew a chart of the country to the west, to explain the geog- raphy and topography of the district beyond. Captain Clarke translates it as follows :
"According to this the Kooskooskee forks (confluence of its north fork) a few miles from this place ; two days toward the south is another and larger fork (confluence of Snake river), on which the Shoshone or Snake Indians fish ; five days' journey further is a large river from the northwest (that is, the Columbia itself ) into which Clarke's river empties; from the mouth of that river (that is, confluence of the Snake. with the Columbia) to the falls is five days' journey further; on all the forks as well as on the main river great numbers of Indians re- side."
On September 23 the Indians were assem- bled, and the errand of the party across the continent explained. The talk satisfied the sav- ages; they sold their visitors provisions for man and beast and parted with amity. But immediate progress was somewhat delayed by illness of different members of the party. They were nearly famished when they encountered
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GENERAL HISTORY.
the Nez Perces, and had eaten too heartily fol- lowing their privations. September 27 they camped on Kooskooskee river and began the building of canoes. Gradually the health of the men was recruited, and the early days of October were passed in making preparations to descend the river. According to Lewis' jour- nal the latitude of this camp was 46 degrees 34 minutes 56 seconds north. It should be re- membered that the Kooskooskee is now the Clearwater, flowing into the Snake river which, in turn, empties into the Columbia. October 8 the party began their long and adventurous voyage in five canoes, one of which served as an advance pilot boat, the course of the stream being unknown. They were soon assailed by disaster, one of the canoes striking a rock and sinking. The river was found to be full of rocks, reefs and rapids. At the confluence of the Kooskooskee and Snake rivers a night's camp was made, near the present Idaho town of Lewiston, named in honor of the commander of this expedition. And from this point the party crossed over into the territory now bounded by the limits of the state of Washing- ton. Experience in this camp finds the fol- lowing expression in Lewis' journal.
Our arrival soon attracted the attention of the In- dians, who flocked from all directions to see us. In the evening the Indian from the falls, whom we had seen at Rugged Rapid, joined us with his son in a small canoe, and insisted on accompanpying us to the falls. Being again reduced to fish and roots, we made an experiment to vary our food by purchasing a few dogs, and after having been accumtomed to horse-flesh felt no disrelish for this new dish. The Chopunnish have great numbers of dogs, which they employ for domestic purposes, but never eat; and our using the flesh of that animal soon brought us into ridicule as dog eaters.
On October II, having made a short stage in their journey, the party stopped and traded with the Indians, securing a quantity of salmon and seven dogs. They were now on the Snake river and proceeding rapidly toward the Col- umbia, known to all the various Indian tribes
in "Oregon" as the "Great River." Dangerous rapids crowded the stream; disasters were en- countered far too frequently to prove assuring to the voyageurs. October 14 another canoe was blown upon a rock sideways and narrowly escaped being lost. Four miles above the point of confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers the expedition halted and conferred with the Indians. During the evening of October 16 they were visited by two hundred warriors who tendered them a barbaric ovation, comprising a procession with drums, torches and vocal music far more diabolical than classical. Here seven more dogs were purchased, together with some fish and "twenty pounds of fat dried horseflesh." At the point where the party were then stationed the counties of Franklin, Yakima and Walla Walla now come together; the junction of the Snake and Columbia rivers. The Indians called themselves Sokulks.
Habit and experience necessarily render ex- plorers more far-sighted and astute than the ordinary citizen of civilized habitat. But the prescience of the former is by no means in- fallible. Lewis and Clarke were now about to set forth upon the waters of the mighty Colum- bia, a famous stream variously known as "The River of the North" and "The Oregon;" a great commercial artery whose convolutions were subsequently to be insisted upon by Great Britain as the northern boundary of "Oregon" territory. But the magnitude of this stream and its future importance in international poli- tics were, of course, unknown to Lewis and Clarke. These explorers had no knowledge of the "terminal facilities" of this stream other than that contributed by the legendary lore of Indians, dim, mythical, and altogether theoreti- cal. And with this absence of even a partial realization of the great significance of his mis- sion Captain Lewis writes in his journal of Oc- tober 17, 1805 :
"In the course of the day Captain Clarke, in a small canoe, with two men, ascended the Columbia. At a distance of five miles he passed
I2
GENERAL HISTORY.
an island in the middle of the river, at the head of which was a small but dangerous rapid."
With this simple introduction to the most important episode of his journey across the con- tinent Captain Lewis faced the Occident that held so much in store for thousands of the future. On the 19th the voyageurs began to drift down the Columbia. Rapids impeded their, course, many of them dangerous. Short portages were made around the more difficult ones, and forty miles down the stream they landed among a tribe known as the Pishguit- pahs who were engaged in drying fish. Here they smoked the pipe of peace, exchanged pres- ents and entertained the Indians with the strains of two violins played by Cruzatte and Gibson, members of the exploring party. October 21 they arrived at the confluence of a considerable stream, coming into the Columbia from the left, and named by the party Lepage, now known as John Day's river. Six years later, John Day, a Kentucky Nimrod, crossed the continent on the trail blazed by Lewis and Clarke, bound for Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia. From the rapids below the mouth of this stream the party gained their first view of Mount Hood. prominent in the Cascade range, looming up from the southwest eleven thousand two hun- dred and twenty-five feet. On the day fol- lowing they passed a stream called by the In- dians Towahnahiooks; to modern geographers known as the Des Chutes. This is one of the largest southern tributaries of the Columbia.
Five miles below the mouth of this stream the party camped. Lewis and Clarke had learned from the Indins of the "great falls," and toward this point they had looked with some apprehension. October 23 they made the descent of these rapids, the height of which, in a distance of twelve hundred yards is thirty- seven feet eight inches. Around the first fall, twenty-five feet high, a portage was made, and below the canoes were led down by lines. At the next fall of the Columbia the expedition camped, among the Echeloots, a tribe of the
Upper Chinooks, at present nearly extinct. They received the white men with much kind- ness, invited them to their huts and returned their visits, but the Echeloots were then at war with another tribe and at all times anxious con- cerning an expected attack by their enemies. Following a long talk with Lewis and Clarke, who were ever ready to extend their good offices toward making peace between hostile tribes, the Echeloots agreed to drop their quarrel with their ancient enemies. Here, too, the chiefs who had accompanied the expedition from the headwaters of the streams, bade the explorers farewell, and prepared to return eastward. Pur- chasing horses of the Echeloots they went home by land.
The closing days of October were passed in descending the Columbia, in which portion of their voyage they met a number of different tribes of Indians, among them the Chilluckitte- quaws, from whom they purchased five small dogs, some dried berries and a white bread or cake, made from roots. They passed a small. rapid stream which they called Cataract river, now known as the Klickitat. Going thirty-two miles farther they camped on the right bank of a river in what is now Skamania county, Wash- ington, which is either the White Salmon or Little White Salmon. On the last day of Oc- tober Captain Clarke pushed on ahead to ex- amine the next of the more difficult rapids, known as "the great shoot." This obstacle was conquered, however, although not without a number of hair-breadth escapes, and on No- vember 2 the party were below the last of all the descents of the Columbia. At this point tidewater commences and the river widens.
From tidewater to the sea the passage was enlivened with incidents sufficient to quicken the pulse of the enthusiastic explorers. Near the mouth of Sandy river they met a party of fifteen Indians who had recently come up from the mouth of the Columbia. By them they were told of three vessels lying at anchor below. It was certain that these craft must be either
I3
GENERAL HISTORY.
American or European, and the explorers could ill conceal their unbounded pleasure and antici- pation. A group of islands near the mouth of the Multnomah, or modernly, Williamette, had concealed this stream, upon which is now situ- ated the city of Portland, from view. The voy- ageurs had missed this important river en- tirely. Proceeding westward the explorers obtained their first sight of Mount Ranier, or Mount Tacoma, nine thousand seven hundred and fifty feet high. Nearing the coast the party met Indians of a nature widely divergent from any whom they had before seen. Captain Lewis says :
These people seem to be of a different nation from those we have just passed; they are low in stature, ill- shaped, and all have their heads flattened. They call themselves Wahkiacum, and their language differs from that of the tribes above, with whom they trade for wapatoo roots. The houses are built in a different style, being raised entirely above ground, with the eaves about five feet high and the door at the corner. * * The * dress of the men is like that of the people above, but the women are clad in a peculiar manner, the robe not reaching lower than the hip, and the body being covered in cold weather by a sort of corset of fur, curiously plaited and reaching from the arms to the hip; added to this is a sort of petticoat, or rather tissue of white cedar bark, bruised or broken with small strands, and woven into a girdle by several cords of the same material.
These Indians, as a tribal nation, have en- tirely disappeared, but their name is perpetu- ated by a small county on the coast of Wash- ington, north of the Bay of Columbia.
Practically the Lewis and Clarke expedition reached the end of its perilous trip across the continent on November 15, 1805. Of this achievement the Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "They had traveled upwards of four thousand miles from their starting point, had encountered various Indian tribes never before seen by whites, had made scientific collections and observations, and were the first explorers
to reach the Pacific coast by crossing the con- tinent north of Mexico."
The closing statement of this article par- tially ignores the expeditions of Sir Alexander Mackenzie who, while he did not cross the continent from a point as far east as Washing- ton, D. C., made a journey, in 1789, from Fort Chipewyan, along the great Slave Lake, and down the river which now bears his name, to the "Frozen Ocean," and a second journey in 1792-3 from the same initial point, up the Peace and across the Columbia rivers, and thence westward to the coast of the Pacific, at Cape Menzies, opposite Queen Charlotte Island. Only to this extent is the statement of the Encyclopaedia Britannica misleading, but it is quite evident that there is no pro- nounced inclination to do an injustice to the memory of Mackenzie.
The Lewis and Clarge party passed the following winter in camp at the mouth of the Columbia. Before the holidays Captain Clarke carved on the trunk of a massive pine this simple inscription :
WM. CLARKE,
DECEMBER 3, 1805, BY LAND FROM THE U. STATES IN 1804 AND 5.
During the return of the expedition the Clarke division came down the Yellowstone, in Montana. On a mass of saffron sandstone, an acre in base, and four hundred feet high, called Pompey's Pillar, twenty miles above the mouth of the Big Horn river, about half way up, the following is carved :
WM. CLARKE,
JULY 25, 1806.
CHAPTER III.
THE OREGON CONTROVERSY.
The strugggle of five nations for possession of "Oregon," a domain embracing indefinite territory, but including the present states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, and a portion of British Columbia, ran through a century and a half, and culminated in the "Oregon Contro- versy" between England and the United States. Through forty years of diplomatic sparring, advances, retreats, demands, concessions and unperfected compromises the contest was waged between the two remaining champions of the cause, the United States and Great Brit- ain. British parlimentary leaders came and went; federal administrations followed each other successsively, and each in turn directed the talents of its able secretaries of state to the vital point in American politics, Oregon.
The question became all important and far reaching. It involved, at different periods, all the cunning diplomacy of the Hudson's Bay Company, backed by hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling; it brought to the front con- spicuously the life tragedy of a humble mis- sionary among the far western Indians, Dr. Marcus Whitman; it aroused the spirited pa- triotism of American citizenship from Maine to Astoria, and it evoked the sanguinary defi from American lips, "Fifty-four forty or fight."
It closed with a compromise, quickly, yet effectually consummated; ratification was im- mediate, and the "Oregon Controversy" be- came as a tale that is told, and from a live and burning issue of the day it passed quietly into the sequestered nook of American history.
To obtain a fairly comprehensive view of this question it becomes necessary to hark back to 1697, the year of the Treaty of Rys-
wick, when Spain claimed, as her share of North America, as stated by William Barrows:
On the Atlantic coast from Cape Romaine on the Carolina shore, a few miles north of Charleston, due west to the Mississippi river, and all south of that line to the Gulf of Mexico. That line continued beyond the Mississippi makes the northern boundary of Louis- iana. In the valley of the lower Mississippi Spain acknowledged no rival, though France was then be- ginning to intrude. On the basis of discovery by the heroic De Soto and others, she claimed up to the head of the Arkansas and the present famous Leadville, and westward to the Pacific. On that ocean, or the South Sea, as it was then called, she set up the pretensions of sovereignty from Panama to Nootka Sound or Van- couver. These pretensions covered the coasts, harbors, islands and even over the whole Pacific Ocean as then limited. These stupendous claims Spain based on dis- covery, under the papal bull of Alexander VI, in 1493. This bull or decree gave to the discoverer all newly discovered lands and waters. In 1513 Balboa, the Span- iard, discovered the Pacific Ocean, as he came over the Isthmus of Panama, and so Spain came into the owner- ship of that body of water. Good old times those were, when kings thrust their hands into the new world, as children do theirs into a grab-bag at a fair, and drew ont a river four thousand miles long, or an ocean, or a tract of wild land ten or fifteen times the size of England.
Nor was France left out at the Ryswick partition of the world. She claimed in the south and in the north, and it was her proud boast that from the mouth of the Penobscot along the entire seaboard to the unknown and frozen Arctic, no European power divided that coast with her, nor the wild interior back of it.
At the date of this survey, 1697, Russia was quiescent. She claimed no possessions. But at the same time Peter the Great, and his minis- ters, were doing some heavy thinking. Results of these cogitations were afterwards seen in
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GENERAL HISTORY.
the new world, in a territory known for many years to school children as Russian America, now the Klondyke, Dawson, Skaguay, Bonan- za Creek, the Yukon and-the place where the gold comes from. Russia entered the lists; she became the fifth competitor, with Spain, Eng- land, France and the United States, for Ore- gon.
Passing over the events of a hundred years, years of cruel wars; of possession and dispos- session among the powers; the loss by France of Louisiana and the tragedy of the Plains of Abraham, we come to the first claims of Russia. She demanded all the Northwest Coast and is- lands north of latitude 51 degrees and down the Asiatic coast as low as 45 degrees, 50 min- utes, forbidding "all foreigners to approach within one hundred miles of these coasts ex- cept in cases of extremity." Our secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, objected to this presumptuous claim. Emphatically he held that Russia had no valid rights on that coast south of the 55th degree. Vigorous letters were ex- changed and then "the correspondence closed." Great Britain took sides with the United States. Our protest was emphasized by pro- mulgation of the now famous "Monroe Doc- trine," the substance of which lies in these words : "That the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for coloniza- tion by any European power."
Subsequently it was agreed between Russia and the United States, in 1824, that the latter country should make no new claim north of 54 degrees, 40 minutes, and the Russians none south of it. With Great Britain Russia made a similar compact the year following, and for a period of ten years this agreement was to be binding, it being, however, understood that the privilege of trade and navigation should be free to all parties. At the expiration of this period the United States and Great Britain received notice from Russia of the discontinuance of
their navigation and trade north of 54 degrees, 40 minutes.
Right here falls into line the Hudson's Bay Company. Between Great Britain and Russia a compromise was effected through a lease from Russia to this company of the coast and margin from 54 degrees, 40 minutes, to Cape Spencer, near 58 degrees. Matters were, also, satisfactorily adjusted with the United States.
The final counting out of Russia from the list of competitors for Oregon dates from 1836. During a controversy between England and Russia the good offices of the United States were solicited, and at our suggestion Russia withdrew from California and relinquished all claims south of 54 degrees, 40 minutes. And now the contest for Oregon was narrowed down between Great Britain and the United States. But with the dropping of Russia it becomes necessary to go back a few years in order to preserve intact the web of this history.
On May 16, 1670, the Hudson's Bay Com- pany was chartered by Charles II. Headed by Prince Rupert the original incorporators num- bered eighteen. The announced object of the company was "the discovery of a passage into the South Sea"-the Pacific Ocean. During the first century of its existence the company really did something along the lines of geo- graphical discovery. Afterward its identity was purely commercial. Twelve hundred miles from Lake Superior, in 1778, the eminent Frobisher and others had established a trading post, or "factory," at Athabasca. Fort Chipew- yan was built ten years later and Athabasca abandoned. From this point Mackenzie made his two overland trips to the Pacific, treated in the two preceding chapters. Commenting upon tliese expeditions, from a political views point, William Barrows, in the "American Commonwealths" series, says :
"The point reached by Mackenzie on the Pacific is within the present limits of British Columbia on that coast (53 degrees, 21 min- utes). and it was the first real. though unde-
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GENERAL HISTORY.
signed step toward the occupation of Oregon by Great Britain. That government was feeling its way, daringly and blindly, for all territory it might obtain, and in 1793 came thus near the outlying region which afterward became the coveted prize of our narrative." (Oregon : the Struggle for Possession.)
Between the United States and possession of Oregon stood, like a stone wall, the Hud- son's Bay Company. It was the incarnation of England's protest against our occupancy. Such being the case it is a fortuitous opportu- nity to glance, briefly, at the complexion of this great commercial potentate of the North- west Coast. Aside from geographical discov- eries there was another object set forth in the Hudson's Bay Company's charter. This was "the finding of some trade for furs, minerals and other considerable commodities." More- over an exclusive right was granted by the charter to the "trade and commerce of all those seas, straits and bays, rivers, lakes, creeks and sounds, in whatsoever latitude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the straits com- monly called Hudson's Straits." The charter extended, also, to include all lands bordering them not under any other civilized government.
Such ambiguous description covered a vast territory-and Oregon. And of this domain, indefinitely bounded, the Hudson's Bay Com- pany became monarch, autocrat and tyrant, rather an unpleasant trinity to be adjacent to the gradually increasing and solidifying do- minion of the United States. Then, with the old company, was united the Northwestern Company, at one time a rival, now a compo- nent part of the great original "trust" of the Christian era. The crown granted to the new syndicate the exclusive right to trade with all Indians in British North America for a term of twenty years. Their hunters and trappers spread themselves throughout the entire north- west of North America. Their fur monopoly extended so far south as the Salt Lake basin of the modern Utah. Rivals were bought out,
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