An illustrated history of the Big Bend country, embracing Lincoln, Douglas, Adams, and Franklin counties, state of Washington, pt 1, Part 5

Author: Steele, Richard F; Rose, Arthur P
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Spokane, Wash.] Western Historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 652

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 5
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 5
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 5
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 5

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undersold or crushed. The company held at its mercy all individual traders from New Foundland to Vancouver; from the head of the Yellowstone to the mouth of the Mackenzie. With no rivals to share the field, the extent of territory under the consolidated company seems almost fabulous-one-third larger than all Eu- rope; larger than the United States of to-day, Alaska included, by, as Mr. Barrows states, "half a million of square miles." And it was preparing, backed by the throne of England, to swallow and assimilate "Oregon." Con- cerning this most powerful company Mr. Bar- rows has contributed the following graphic de- scription :

"One contemplates their power with awe and fear, when he regards the even motion and solemn silence and unvarying sameness with which it has done its work through that dreary animal country. It has been said that a hun- dred years has not changed its bills of goods ordered from London. The company wants the same muskrat and beaver and seal; the In- dian hunter, unimproved, and the half-breed European, deterioating, want the same cotton goods, and flint-lock guns and tobacco and gew-gaws. To-day as a hundred years ago the dog-sledge runs out from Winnipeg for its solitary drive of five hundred or two thousand or even three thousand miles. It glides silent as a spectre over those snow-fields and through the solemn, still forests, painfully wanting in animal life. Fifty, seventy, and hundred days it speeds along, and as many nights it camps without fire, and looks up to the same cold stars. At the intervening points the sledge makes a pause, as a ship, having rounded Cape Horn, heaves to before some lone Pacific is- land. It is the same at the trader's hut or 'fac- tory.' as when the sledge man's grandfather drove up the same dogs, the same half-breeds or voyageurs to welcome him, the same foul, lounging Indians, and the same mink-skin in exchange for the same trinket. The fur ani- mal and its purchaser and hunter, as the land-

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scape, seem to be alike under the same immut- able law of nature :--

"'A land where all things always seem the same,' as among the lotus-eaters. Human pro- gress and Indian civilization have scarcely made more improvement than that central, silent partner of the Hudson's Bay Company -- the beaver."

Originally the capital stock of this com- pany, at the time the charter was granted by Charles II, was $50,820. Through profits alone it was tripled twice within fifty years, going as high as $457,380, without any addi- tional money being paid in by stockholders. The Northwest Company was absorbed in 1821 on a basis of valuation equal to that of the Hudson's Bay Company. Then the con- solidated capital stock was $1,916,000, of which $1,780,866 was from profits. And during all this elapsed period an annual divi- dend of ten per cent had been paid to stock- holders. One cargo of furs, leaving Fort George for London in 1836, was valued at $380,000. In 1837 the consolidated company organized the Puget Sound Agricultural Com- pany. This was intended to serve as an offset to encroachments of colonists from the United States which settled in Oregon. In 1846 the English government conceded United States claims to Oregon, and at that period the Hud- son's Bay Company claimed property within the territory said to be worth $4,990.036.67.

With such gigantic and powerful competi- tion for the territory of Oregon it is surprising that even as determined a government as the United States should have succeeded in oust- ing it from its trespass on our property. Nor could this have been accomplished had it not been for the pluck, skill, determination and in- domitable energy of our hardy pioneers. While the sale of rabbit skins alone in London, in one year, ordinarily amounted to thirteen hundred thousand, the company found its profit also in the beaver, land and sea-otter, mink. fisher, muskrat, fox, raccoon, sable, black, brown and 2

grizzly bear and buffalo. And in search for these fur-bearing animals the hunters of the company braved every danger and spread themselves over the wild half of North Amer- ica. So far from carrying out the provisions of its charter relating to geographical discovery, early in the nineteenth century the company threw every obstacle possible in the way of such discoveries. Evidently it feared rivals. Sir John Barrow, in his history of Arctic Voyages, says: "The Northwest Passage seems to have been entirely forgotten, not only by the ad- venturers who had obtained their exclusive charter under this pretext, but also by the na- tion at large: at least nothing more appears to have been heard on the subject for more than half a century."

And what of the darker deeds of this mys- terious, silent, yet powerful commercial aggre- gation? In 1719 it refused a proposal from Mr. Knight that two vessels be sent by him to look up a rumored copper mine at the mouth of an arctic river. In 1741 the company showed signs of hostility toward a Mr. Dobbs, engaged in the same enterprise. The failure of Captain Middleton, commissioned by the Lords of Admiralty to explore northern and western waters of Hudson's Bay, is attributed to a bribe of five thousand pounds received from the company. The beacon light at Fort York was cut down in 1746 to insure the com- plete wreck of an exploring party then aground in that vicinity. Much of the information con- cerning auriferous deposits brought back by Mackenzie from his two journeys was sup- presed. The Hudson's Bay Company had set its face against mineral development. Even that industry was a rival. Following the assas- ination of Dr. Marcus Whitman by Indians, in 1847, one of the suvivors of the massacre was refused the protection of Fort Walla Walla then under command of an agent of the Hud- son's Bay Company. On the whole this aggre- gation of Englishi capital seems to have been as antagonistic to English enterprise as to

GENERAL HISTORY.

American commerce, but all the time working like a mole under ground.

Previous to the War of 1812 England had strenuously urged the Ohio as the western limit of the colonies. She seduced various Indian tribes to oppose western immigration. In 18II General Harrison, afterward president, at- tempted to hold a friendly conference with the great Tecumseh. The meeting was disrupted by the latter, and it required the battle of Tippe- canoe to teach the warriors a bloody object les- son. Then followed the War of 1812. In this Great Britain made an effort to recover the northwest, but failed signally. But the Hud- son's Bay Company was England in North America. And when the nation failed the com- mercial syndicate succeeded-for a time. While the United States had legal, she had not, owing to the interference of this company, actual pos- session and occupancy.

Following the close of the Revolution and the treaty of 1783, an attempt was made to run a northern boundary for the United States. It looked well on paper. It traversed wild, unex- plored territory unknown to either party to the agreement.

"Thus," says Barrows, "the northwest point of the Lake of the Woods was assumed for one bound from which the line was to run, to the northwestern point of the lake and thence 'due west,' to the Mississippi. The clause in the treaty reads thus: 'to the said Lake of the Woods, and thence through the said lake to the most northwestern point thereof, and from thence on a due west course to the river Missis- sippi.' But the head of the river proved to be a hundred miles or more to the south. So that little prominence in our otherwise straight boundary is the bump of ignorance developed by two nations. The St. Croix was fixed by treaty as the boundary on the northeast, but a special 'Joint Commission' was required in 1794 to determine 'what river is the St. Croix,' and four years afterward this commis- sion called for an addition to their instructions

since their original ones were not broad enough to enable them to determine the true St. Croix."

In 1841 another commission ran a boun- dary from the head of the St. Croix, by the head of the Connecticut, to the St. Lawrence ; thence through the middle of its channel and the middle of the lakes to the outlet of Lake Superior, occupying the whole of seven years. And yet the line had not been carried through Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods. Fi- nally, in 1818, this was done and an agreement reached, though this line was not on the 49th parallel, from the Lake of the Woods. to the Rocky Mounmtains, the line that was offered by Great Britain, accepted by one administra- tion, refused by another, and finally adopted in- stead of "Fifty-four forty or fight." Still the English commission was loath to part with the Mississippi valley. They asked for a right of way to the headwaters of that stream. At the same time the southern limits of their northern possessions did not come within one hundred miles of the source of the Mississippi from whence its waters flow more than three thou- sand miles to the Gulf of Mexico. The com- mission, however, abandoned this claim and turned, to stand resolutely on latitude 49 de- grees. During negotiations with England, in 1818, a compromise was effected which pro- vided for a joint occupation of Oregon for ten years. In 1827 it was renewed, to run indefin- itely, with a provision that it could be termin- ated by either party on giving one year's notice. The Ashburton-Webster treaty of 1842 fixed the line between the St. Croix and St. Law- rence. In 1846 another commission failed to accomplish results in extending a line to the westward through their inability to agree on the "middle of the channel" between the main- land and Vancouver Island.

Not until 1872 was this latter question de- cided. It was submitted to the Emperor of Germany as final arbiter. He decided favor- ably to the claim of the United States. Thus this boundary question was prolonged eighty-

GENERAL HISTORY.

nine years. under eight treaties and fifteen spec- ifications, until final adjustment in its entirety. The Oregon boundary remained in dispute up to 1847. It may here be appropriately re- marked that the Joint Boundary Commission of 1818, agreeing on the 49th parallel, might have carried the line to a satisfactory point had they not been stopped by fur traders. Two companies were then attempting to gain pos- session of the territory.

The expedition of Lewis and Clarke, 1804- 6. opened the eyes of England. Jealous lest Americans should gain an advantage, Laroque was sent by the Northwestern Company to sprinkle the Columbia river country with trad- ing posts. But Laroque gained no farther westing than the Mandan Indian village on the Missouri. In 1806 Fraser, having crossed the mountains, made the first English settlement by erecting a post on Fraser Lake. Others soon followed and New Caledonia came into exist- ence. It had remained for daring frontiers- men to open the dramatic contest for posses- sion of Oregon. Diplomats and ministers had dallied and quibbed. Now the contest had be- come serious and earnest. A German immi- grant, John Jacob Astor, was destined to play a prominent part in future strategetic movements for this possession. At forty years of age he was established in the fur business on the great lakes. Later he had another post at the mouth of the Columbia river. Astoria, a freight port for furs incoming, and beads and trinkets out- going. In 1810 he dispatched an expedition of sixty men from St. Louis to the Columbia. Ffteen months after, depleted by death, the sur- vivors reached Astoria. Another company of about the same number arrived by way of Cape Horn some time earlier. Other ships followed. and in 1813 Mr. Astor suffered the loss of the Lark, shipwrecked on the Sandwich, now the Hawaiian Islands. Nor was this the worst. Of Mr. Astor's partners, a majority had sold out to the Northwest Fur Company of Montreal. an English organization. Property which Mr.

Astor had valued at $200,000 had been thrown away for $40,000. He saw signs of treachery. But so far. despite these handicaps, he had out- witted his competitors. They had planned to forestall him at the mouth of the Columbia. The failure of Laroque had defeated this scheme. Another division of the Northwest Company, in 1811, had attempted to reach there ahead of the sagacious American trader, This party was snowbound and compelled to winter in the mountains. When they eventually ar- rived Astoria was a reality. The importance of these events is worthy of notice. Had Laroque or the other parties anticipated Astor, strong and cumulative evidence would have been af- forded England of prior possession, and this evidence would have been a powerful leverage during the long controversy which followed concerning the northern boundary of Oregon.

Then, too, the defection of Astor's partners who had sold out to the Northwest Company led to an incident in the Oregon Controversy which is significant. Mr. Barrows says :

"The leading partner in it, and the one who afterward led off in its sale, received them (representatives of the Northwest Company) in a friendly and hospitable way, and not as rivals; when they returned from their vain expedition he supplied them, not only with pro- visions, but with goods for trading purposes up the river, where they established trading huts among the Indians and became rivals of the Americans. Strange to say when the ques- tion of priority of occupation and national sov- ereignty was under discussion at London, fif- teen years afterward, the English put in these huts of this returning company, as proof that the English were as early if not earlier in the Columbia than the Americans."

Here is a case in point which eloquently il- lustrates the supremacy of commercialism over sentimental statesmanship. Astor's partners had turned over the post. practically, to the Northwestern Company. The United States had been solicited by Great Britain. previous to

GENERAL HISTORY.

the War of 1812, to favor the Northwest Com- pany as against Mr. Astor, and this request had been refused. When the war opened Eng- land flamboyantly dispatched a naval force to the Columbia under orders "to take and destroy everything American on the Northwest Coast." On the arrival of this fleet in 1813, the com- mander had the barren satisfaction of running up the English colors and naming the post St. George. Already it had passed into English hands via the Northwest Company.

Bad faith of his partners and the chances of war had, temporarily defeated the plans of Mr. Astor. American interests on that coast were under a cloud. But the United States was destined to win out. The War of 1812 was fairly on. It had been declared on June 12, 1812; the treaty of peace was signed Decem- ber 14, 1814. It contained this clause ma- terially affecting our interests in Oregon : "All territory, places and possessions whatsoever, taken by either party from the other during the war * shall be restored without de- lay." Did this provision cover Astoria? Ap- parently the English thought not, for when, in 1817, an American vessel was put in readiness to occupy that post Mr. Bagot, the English minister at Washington, opposed it. Two points are noted in his protest : The post had been sold to the Northwest Company prior to the war; therefore never captured. Secondly, "the territory itself was early taken possession of in his majesty's name, and had since been considered as forming a part of his majesty's domains." But repossession was granted despite the protest. In 1818 the Stars and Stripes again waved over Astoria and the name "St. George" was relegated to the limbo of the obsolete.

But the Oregon Question was not dead : only hibernating. It sprang into life at the behest of the eloquent Rufus Choate. From his seat in the senate he said :

"Keep your eye always open, like the eye of your own eagle, upon the Oregon. Watch

day and night. If any new developments or policy break forth, meet them. If the times change, do you change. New things in a new world. Eternal vigilance is the condition of empire as well as of liberty."

For twenty-seven years the threads of dip- lomatic delay and circumlocution were spun out concerning the status of Oregon. Theoret- ically Astoria had been restored to us; prac- tically the Northwest fur traders thronged the land. The English company had built a stock- ade fort. It looked as if they intended to hold possession of the mouth of the Columbia vie et armis. Indian tribes ranged themselves on the side of the English. Their minds had been poisoned ; insiduous words had been breathed into their ears to the effect that the Americans would steal their lands; the English wanted only to trade with them for furs. And for more than ten years following the treachous sale of Astoria, there were scarcely any Americans in the country. Greenhow in his "History of Oregon and California," declares that at the period when the Hudson's Bay Company was before parliament, in 1837, asking for renewal of its charter, they "claimed and received the aid and consideration of government for their energy and success in expelling the Americans from the Columbia regions, and forming set- tlements there, by means of which they were rapidly converting Oregon into a British colony."

Astoria was restored to the United States by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. Yet in that document there is no allusion made to the Northwest Coast, or in fact, any territory west of the Lake of the Woods. Our instructions to the American plenipotentiaries were to concede nothing to Great Britain south of the forty- ninth parallel. Thus the question was left in abeyance with no defined boundary between English and American territory west of the Lake of the Woods. The southern boundary of Oregon was, also, in doubt. It was not definitely fixed until the Florida Purchase.

GENERAL HISTORY.

Then it was decided that parallel forty-two, on the Pacific, running east from that ocean to the Arkansas, down the river to longitude one hun- dred; on that meridan south till it strikes the Red river; down the Red river to longitude ninety-four; due south on it to the Sabine river; and down the Sabine to the Gulf of Mexico, should define the southern and western boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. which up to that period had remained indefin- ite. This act fixed, also, the southern boundary of Oregon.

Until 1820 congress remained dormant so far as Oregon interests were concerned. Then it was suggested that a marine expedition be dispatched to guard our interests at the mouth of the Columbia and aid immigration from the United States. Nothing resulted. In 1821 the same question was revived, but again permitted to relapse into desuetude. Mr. Barrows does not use language too strong when he says : "There appeared to be a lack of appreciation of the case, and there was a skepticism and leth- argy concerning that half of the union, which have by no means disappeared."

In 1814 the question having been reopened in London Mr. Rush claimed for the United States from the forty-second to the fifty-first parallel. This section would embrace all the waters of the Columbia. Per contra the Eng- lish demanded possession of the northern half of the Columbia basin. This would have given us, as the northern boundary of Oregon, the Columbia river from a point where it intersects the forty-ninth parallel to its mouth. It is well to examine, at this point, what such a boundary would have meant to Washington. Had it been accepted there would, probably, never have been any state of Washington, at least, not as sub- sequently defined. It would have meant the loss of the following territory, comprised in the counties of Klickitat. Skamia. Cowlitz, Clark. Wahkiakum. Pacific. Chehalis. Mason, Lewis. Pierce. Jefferson. Clallam, Kitsap. King. Snohomish, Skagit. Whatcom, Yakima, Kitti-

tas, Chelan, Okanogan and Ferry, a territory comprising forty-three thousand, seven hun- dred and sixteen square miles, two-thirds of the area of the present state of Washington.

Thus remained the status of the dispute un- til 1828. Joint occupancy had now continued ten years. It must be conceded that the coun- try, owing to this provision, was now numeri- cally British. And English ministers were eager to avail themselves of the advantages of this fact. They said: "In the interior of the territory in question the subjects of Great Britain have had, for many years, numerous settlements and trading posts-several of these posts on the tributary streams of the Columbia, several upon the Columbia itself, some to the northward and others to the southward of that river. * * * In the whole of the territory in question the citizens of the United States have not a single settlement or trading post. They do not use that river, either for the pur- pose of transmitting or receiving any produce of their own to or from other parts of the world."

Yet why was this the condition in Oregon at that period ? Simply because the aggressive- ness of the Northwestern Company had op- posed American colonization and fought each and every advance made by our pioneers, com- mercially and otherwise. Nor can it be denied that for many years Oregon was unappreciated by the east. To-day it appears, to unreflecting minds, an extravagant boast to say that only one-fifth of the domain of the United States lies east of the Mississippi river. And yet the statement is true. Only in 1854 did the initial railway gain the banks of the Father of Waters -at Rock Island. From there progress to the northwest was, for many years, slow, perilous and discouraging. Truly, it was a difficult matter for Oregon to assert herself. In 1828 an "Oregon wave" had swept over congress. amid considerable feverish interest and pro- longed eloquence. Protracted debate was had on a bill to survey the territory west of the

GENERAL HISTORY.

mountains between 42 degrees and 54 degrees 40 minutes, garrison the land and extend over it the laws of the United States. The measure was defeated, again the question slumbered.

But the daring American pioneers of the west were by no means idle. Unconsciously they were accomplishing far more toward a final settlement of the "Oregon Question" than all the tape-bound documents sleeping in the pigeon-holes of English parliamentary and American congressional archives. Of these pioneers Captain Bonneville should not pass unnoticed. He was of the army, and with one hundred of his men he made a two years' hunt- ing, trapping and fur-trading expedition, from the Missouri to the Colorado, and thence to the Columbia. In 1832 Nathaniel J. Wyeth or- ganized a company of twenty-two persons, in Massachusetts, for western exploration. En- thusiastic descriptions of Oregon, written by Hall J. Kelly, had contributed greatly to awak- en this interest among the scholarly young men who formed Wyeth's party. On July 4, 1832, they had arrived at Lewis' Fork of the Colum- bia. Among them were sickness, disappoint- ment and insubordination. Here the company divided. Several left to return east; among them Jacob and John, brothers of Captain Wyeth. Nathaniel Wyeth and his remaining companions reached Snake river, and one hun- dred miles north of Salt Lake, established a trading post. He was ruined by the ever ag- gressive Hudson's Bay Company, which placed a rival post, Fort Boise, below Fort Hall. British ministers had impudently declared that Oregon was settled by Englishmen; that Americans had no trading posts within its lim- its. And why not? Read the following from Mr. Wyeth's memoir to congress :

"Experience has satisfied me that the entire weight of this company ( Hudson Bay) will be made to bear on any trader who shall attempt to prosecute his business within its reach. * * * No sooner does an American start in this region than one of these trading parties

is put in motion. A few years will make the country west of the mountains as completely English as they can desire."

To the same congressional committee Will- iam A. Slocum, in a report, goes on record as follows: "No individual enterprise can com- pete with this immense foreign monopoly es- tablished in our waters. * * The In- dians are taught to believe that no vessels but the Company's ships are allowed to trade in the river, and most of them are afraid to sell their skins but at Vancouver or Fort George."

Small wonder that at this time there were less than two hundred Americans west of the Rockies. And Canadian law, by act of par- liament, was extended throughout the region of the Columbia. Theoretically it was joint occupation ; practically British monopoly. So late as 1844 the British and Foreign Review said, brutally: "The interests of the company are of course adverse to colonization .* * * The fur trade has been hitherto the only chan- nel for the advantageous investments of capital in those regions."

Truly the Hudson's Bay Company had adopted a policy of "multiplication, division and silence." Because meat and beef conduced to pastoral settlements, so late as 1836, the company opposed the introduction of catttle. One of the missionaries stationed at Moose Factory has written this : "A plan which I had devised for educating and training to some ac- quaintance with agriculture native children, was disallowed. * A proposal made for forming a small Indian village near Moose Factory was not acceded to; and instead, per- mission only given to attempt the location of one or two old men, no longer fit for engaging in the chase, it being carefully and distinctly stated, by Sir George Simpson, that the com- pany would not give them even a spade toward commencing this mode of life."

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An illustrated history of the Big Bend country, embracing Lincoln, Douglas, Adams, and Franklin counties, state of Washington, pt 1, Part 5

Author: Steele, Richard F; Rose, Arthur P Publication date: 1904 Publisher: [Spokane, Wash.] Western Historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 652

Author: Steele, Richard F; Rose, Arthur P
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Spokane, Wash.] Western Historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 652