An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 14

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056

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His character was as marked as his presence. He had a very high sense of personal honor, and his integrity was beyond question. He was generons and humane to an unusual degree. Quite a number, now among our wealthy and distinguished citizens, owe their first commer- cial positions in the trade of this coast to his helpful hand. And, after the acrimonies aris- ing from the position of the Hudson's Bay

Company, of which he was chief factor, as the overwhelming monopoly of the coast, have passed largely ont of the personal remembrance of the people, and Dr. McLoughlin is remem- bered only as the man and the citizen that he appeared after he closed his connection with that gigantic corporation, there is no name held in higher veneration by the citizens of Oregon than his.

With the Hudson's Bay Company, the period from 1821 to 1833 was an era of growth, and yet of consolidation. Nothing occurred to dis- turb the equanimity of its rule. Its power touched every center and circumference of the vast territory of its operations. Trne, some American fur companies, like that of Sublette, Smith and Bridger, or some independent trad- ers and trappers like Bonneville and Wyeth, now and then ventured over the line of its assumed rights along the gorges of the Rocky monntains, but the Hudson's Bay Company had only to speak and they disappeared. Even before this era it had absorbed Astor's com- . pany, as we have before noticed. It would extend this portion of our work unduly were we to follow in detail the adventures of the gentlemen and servants of this company through this decade of its greatest power and prosper- ity. During this time the diplomatic debate between Great Britain and the United States as to the ownership of Oregon passed through many changes, but seemed not to advance toward any settlement. Both parties were claimants of the country, but both were wary, procrastinating, and fearful of a final tender of terms. Great Britain seemed to have justest reason to postpone decision. The Hudson's Bay Company was British. It held the situa- tion with a grasp it seemed nothing could nn- loose. Its brigades of boats were on every stream and its hunters and trappers on every trail. There were literally none to oppose them. Their small but wonderful circle of leaders like Simpson, MeLonghlin and Douglas, were planning with marvelous foresight and ability to retain for England what their former

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enterprise and courage had apparently gained, all the Pacific coast from California to the Russian possessions,-a region they well knew to be among the fairest and most fruitful on the globe. They held a first mortgage-that of possession upon it. Give them but time and they would do the rest. So diplomacy waited upon possession, trusting that might would make right, and the young republic on the Atlantic shore would in some critical and nerv- ous hour surrender to power what was clearly her own right in law. But both Britain and the Hudson's Bay Company had left ont of their account the element most determinative of history, as we shall subsequently see. Mean- while the relations of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany with competitors in its field, whether associated or individual, require some consid- eration.

Subsequent to the defeat of the grand project of John Jacob Astor, as already related, the ex- pedition of Captain Bonneville was the first that held within itself any real threat to the suprem- acy of the Hudson's Bay Company in the region then known as Oregon. As it seems needful, to maintain the continuity of history, and en- able our readers to understand the latent, as well as the obvious, causes that finally wrought out the history of the Pacific Northwest, to give some brief account of that expedition, a few sentences regarding Captain Bonneville here will be acceptable to the reader:

He was of French parentage, born in the city of New York about the close of the American Revolution. He inherited all the French vola- tility and fervor of imagination, though it was disciplined in his early years by mathematical studies. He was educated in the United States Military Academy at West Point, from which he entered the army, and was for a number of years stationed on the far western frontier. The inactive and uneventful life of a soldier in time of peace ill snited his active and adventurous temperament, and naturally his eyes turned to- ward the unexplored regions of the Rocky mountains as the field offering incident and ex-

citement enough to gratify his ambition. He obtained leave of absence from the army, and secured from the major-general commanding it, from the secretary of war and from the presi- dent more than a quasi-indorsement of his plans. He succeeded in interesting with him- self Alfred Seaton, of New York, a gentleman of high respectability and influence, and formed an association with adequate means for the prosecution of his expensive project. Mr. Sea- ton was the more ready to aid Captain Bonne- ville from having been associated with Mr. Astor's enterprise, as he was one of the patriot- ic American youths who were at Astoria at the time of its surrender to the British. He hoped to contribute to the raising again of the flag of his own country on the shores of the Columbia. Captain Bonneville was also on close terms with Mr. Astor himself.

Prepared for his adventurous expedition, Captain Bonneville found himself in the early spring of 1832 on the western frontier at Fort Osage, Missouri, where he enlisted a force of 110 men, mostly experienced in the craft of the plains and mountains, and ready for any enter- prise of profit or danger. On the 1st of May of that year he began his march westward.

To Captain Bonneville belongs the historic distinction of first conducting wagons to and over the summit of the Rocky mountains. This was a distinct gain for civilization, as it intro- duced civilized methods of locomotion in the place of those of the barbarous Indian or the white marauder. These first meant every suc- ceeding wheel of trader or emigrant or locomo- tive; and, though the world did not see it, they meant the Pacific coast for the Americans instead of the English.

The exciting adventures of his journey west- ward cannot be followed here. His route was across the then unpathed solitudes where now are the wonderful States of Kansas and Ne- braska, and he opened for wagons the identical road traveled by emigrants from western Mis- souri to Oregon until the rail-car displaced the ox-wagon, nearly forty years after he had pio-

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

neered the way. From the 1st of May to the 24th of July his long cavalcade of wagons and horsemen moved slowly westward and upward. At noon of that day he was beyond the divide of the Rocky mountains and encamped on a branch of Green river, then called Seeds-Kee Agio, or Sage Hen river. On the 27th of July he reached Green river-the " rendezvous " of the trappers and traders of the Rocky mountains for that year,- at least a hundred miles within the limits of Oregon as the maps then described it.

He had now entered a region of indescribably wild and broken mountain ranges, and hence he determined here to abandon his wagons- the first, we repeat, ever to pass the gates of the Rocky mountains- and on the 22d of August packed his horses and began his march still westward, having selected the valley of Salmon river, near where Salmon City, in Idaho, is now sitnated, as the place for his winter's cantonment.

A full year was spent in the region contiguous to this place, and the following December he established his winter quarters on the Portneuf river. But his main purpose in coming to the mountains was yet unfulfilled. When all was settled for his people in their winter encamp- ment, with three trusted and hearty mountain- cheers he mounted his horse on Christmas morn- ing of 1833, for an expedition of great peril, as well as of great historic importance, namely, to penetrate the Blue mountains, visit the establishments of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Columbia river, and gain sneh informa- tion as he conld of the country itself and of the great company that controlled it.

There is a temptation to the pen of the writer to follow this wonderful midwinter journey of this wonderfully resolute explorer down the stormn- swept plains of the Snake river, amid the snow- clad summits of the Blue mountains, across the alway interesting "Grande Ronde" valley, then along a devious way among the heights of "Immaha," as Bonneville writes it, and finally, of the Columbia and to Fort Walla Walla, the Columbia river east of the Cascade mountains; but space forbids the thrilling account.

Captain Bonneville reached Fort Walla Walla on the 4th day of March, 1834. Though re- ceived politely, as a man, by Mr. Pambrun, in charge for the Hudson's Bay Company, when he sought to purchase some supplies for his re- turn journey to the Portneuf, he was plainly told he could have nothing. The policy of that company was to discourage all trade and all traders but its own. While Captain Bonneville was a gnest he could have food and polite at- tention as such, but when Captain Bonneville was on the trail, a trader representing an Amer- ican interest, he was to the Hudson's Bay Com- pany a foe, and it were better to that great British corporation if he perished than if he lived. He could therefore have nothing. Piqued and irritated, and disdaining to receive courtesies as a man that were forbidden him as an American, on the 6th day of March, having received the hospitality of the Hudson's Bay Company ouly two days, he set ont on his return to his people in the valley of Snake river. After many vicis- situdes among the snows of the Blue mountains he reached the place of their encampment on the 1st of June.

The result of this exploration of Captain Bon- neville was to satisfy him of two things: First, that an American trade could profitably be opened in the valley of the Columbia; and, sec- ond, that any such attempt would meet the determined and unscrupulous opposition of the Hudson's Bay Company. Future events demon- strated that in the first judgment he was mis- taken, while in the second he was unhappily correct. Still such was the conviction of his own mind that, one year later, he prepared to put his opinions to the test by a second visit to the Columbia at the head of a trading company of twenty-three men. He left his encampment on Bear river on the 3d day of July, 1834. again traversed the dreary plains of Snake river, pene- trated the Blue mountains near the line of the old "emigrant road" and reached the Umatil- la river (called "Ottolais" by him) about the middle of September. Being now within thirty miles of Fort Walla Walla, he sent forward a

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detachment of his company to procure food, as he was in danger of famine. They met with a peremptory refusal of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, who added to the inhospitality of refusing food for the almost famishing camp, an attempt to seduce the men from the service of Captain Bon- neville by most tempting offers of employment if they would abandon his employ. They refused, and returned to the camp of the captain empty- handed. He instantly broke up his camp, fol- lowed down the Umatilla river to the Columbia, and endeavored to open a trade with the Indians for fish and other food, but the Hudson's Bay Company had forbidden them to hold any com- munication with the Americans, and they kept almost entirely out of his sight. He endeavored to force his way down the Columbia river to the Willamette, where he intended to establish his winter quarters, but it was everywhere the same: not an article of provisions could be obtained. To keep his men from starvation two of his horses were killed for food. But to nnhorse his company even to sustain life here was certainly to lose all their lives. An enemy he could not see confronted him everywhere, and inhospitable nature seemed in league with that enemy to de- stroy him. The reader need not be told that that unseen enemy was the dread and deadly influence of the Hudson's Bay Company, poison- ing the suspicious and timid minds of the In- dians against all that was American. The way before him to the Willamette was unknown. That valley itself was only a fable to his men, lovely and rich indeed as a fable, but they dared not venture farther. Nothing seemed to remain to him but a hasty return to the Blue mountains, where deer and elk could be found for food, or death by starvation on the driving Columbia sands. The alternative of return and life was chosen, and reluctantly he faced his company eastward for the mountains. Thus Bonneville's struggle to establish an American traffic on the Columbia in opposition to the Hudson's Bay Company ended in utter failure. Few among the men of the mountains and plains at that time had the courage and cantion and will of Bonneville,

and where he failed none need hope to sneceed.

In subsequent years Bonneville, then a major in the United States army, was put in cominand of the troops of the United States stationed at the old Hudson's Bay post of Vancouver, and there the writer met and conversed with him in the antumn of 1853, suave, intelligent, filled with pioneer memories, and delighting to re- count the incidents of his three years in the mountains of eastern Oregon from 1832 to 1835, where, though ostensibly a mere trader, he was really under the sanction of the president of the United States as an observer of the attitudes and power of the Hudson's Bay Company, the rep- resentative and embodiment of the British Gov- ernment in Oregon.

After the power of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany had compassed the defeat of Bonneville's well-laid schemes, the next to try his prowess against it was Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Cam- bridge, Massachusetts. Indeed, Mr. Wyeth's adventure was partly contemporaneous with Captain Bonneville's, though its disastrous cul- mination was somewhat later. Like all men who assay such gigantic undertakings, Mr. Wyeth was ardent, enthusiastic, determined and capable of inspiring others with his own spirit. In 1832 he organized an emigrating company of twenty-two persons in Massachusetts, for the purpose of proceeding to Oregon, and, together with establishing a trade with the Indians, oc- enpy portions of the country as settlers.

With this company he started westward. Knowing little of practical life on the frontier, it was not until they reached St. Louis and be- gan to come in contact with such men as the Sublettes that the true character and great diffi- culty of their undertaking began to dawn upon their minds. Some of his party turned back. but Mr. Wyeth was made of hardy stuff, and with others he pushed forward, and finally reached the Columbia river and Vancouver; and, having made a somewhat cnrsory examina- tion of the country, and being greatly impressed with its beanty and resources, returned to Bos- ton and immediately entered on preparations to

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forward a ship load of suitable merchandise the following year for the Columbia, while he, with an associated company of men, should return to Oregon by land and enter the list of competition with the Hudson's Bay Company in the very center of its power.

In connection with this journey of Mr. Wy- eth occurred an event that incidentally illustra- ted the ability and disposition of the Hudson's Bay Company to do anything at any cost neces- sary to control the trade of all the West. It was this:

On his return eastward the year before, Mr. Wyeth had entered into a contract with one of the Sublettes in the Rocky mountains for the delivery of a large invoice of merchandise at the rendezvous of the following year. Mr. Wyeth, true to his part of the contract, brought forward the goods and had them at the rendezvous on Green river the latter part of June. Mr. Sub- lette is said to have violated his part of the con- tract under the urgent advice of others, and Mr. Wyeth found himself in the middle of the con- tinent with a large invoice of merchandise for which he had no market. He was highly and justly indignant, and told Mr. Sublette and his associates, who were trying to monopolize the American trade with the Indians, that he "would roll a stone into their garden that they would not be able to get rid of." He immediately packed his goods, went on westward a few days' journey and erected Fort Hall, on Snake river, where he deposited his goods and opened a trade with the Indians and mountain men. The Hudson's Bay Company immediately established Fort Boise, farther down Snake river, as a rival to Fort Hall. Unable to cope with that com- pany, Mr. Wyeth accepted an offer from it for the purchase of Fort Hall, and thus in a few months fulfilled his justifiable threat to Mr. Sublette and his associates by installing the Hudson's Bay Company several hundred miles farther cast than it had ever established a post before. No rival could stand before that company west of the summits of the Rocky mountains.

This done, Mr. Wyeth proceeded westward to

Vancouver to await the arrival of his vessel, the brig May Dacre, that was expected in Septem- ber. In due time she arrived, anchored in the lower mouth of the Willamette river, and be- gan discharging her cargo on Wapatoo, now Sauvies, island, where Mr. Wyeth erected a trading post called Fort William, in which he deposited his goods, and where he assayed to open up a traffic. His position was both well and poorly chosen. It was central to the lower Columbia and to the tribes that dwelt upon its banks, who traveled mostly in canoes. It was easy of access from the tribes of the Willamette. It was where sea-going craft could easily reach it. In these respects his position was well chosen. But it was within fifteen miles of Vancouver, the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, and in immediate rivalry with its most astute and accomplished leaders. In this respect his location was poorly chosen, and a very short time mnade it necessary for him here, as at Fort Hall, to accept the best terms he could obtain of that company and abandon his enterprise, and even the country itself. Mr. Wyeth, in a memorial to Congress on the Ore- gon question in 1839, says of that company: " Experience has satisfied me that the entire weight of that company will be made to bear on any trader who shall attempt to prosecute his business within its reach. * *

No sooner does an American concern start in this region than one of its trading parties is put in motion. A few years will make the country west of the mountains as completely English as they can desire."

With this complete failure of Mr. Wyeth's enterprise terminated the last organized effort of American traders to establish a successful rival to the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon, either for trade or the protection of American interests and the advancement of American claims to the country itself; and 1834 elosed and 1835 was nshered in with British suprem- acy, represented by the Hudson's Bay Company, apparently assured in all the country of the Columbia.

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At this time, 1834, the Hudson's Bay Com- pany had more than twenty posts in Oregon, and over 2,000 men in the various branches of their employ. There were probably not a hun- dred Americans in the same territory, and they were hunters and trappers, isolated and wander- ing over a vast region of country, too few to be formidable, and too dependent on the hospi- tality of that company to be dreaded as rivals. This showed Mr. Wyeth's statement to be true, that "the United States as a nation are un- known west of the mountains." The Hudson's Bay Company ruled supreme, and there seemed no probability to those on the ground that its supremacy would soon, if ever, be shaken. It is well, therefore, that we panse here and take a brief survey of what Oregon was in this su- preme hour of Hudson's Bay domination.

It will be remembered that we are now writ- ing of Oregon as it was understood in 1834, ex- tending from the 42° to 54° 40' of north lati- tude, and from the Pacific ocean to the Rocky mountains. It was the distinct and avowed policy of the ruling company to keep back all settlement and hold the country only for the production of game. White men, therefore, were unwelcome intruders, unless they were of those races ready to intermarry with Indian women, and thus render themselves fit for the barbaric purposes of that company. They would have no civilization, as we understand civiliza- tion. The greatest and ablest and best men among them were intermarried with the native women, and half-breed children swarmed around their habitations. These conditions were a necessity of their policy, and that policy was the only means of securing the ends for which the lIudson's Bay Company was organized, and for which it existed. We are speaking of this policy of the company as we saw it in the last days of its existence in Oregon, when it seemed to us so strange that intelligent and educated English, Scotch, and Canadian gentlemen could ever have fallen into such barbaric modes of domestic living. But we were then comparing their life with the ideals of our own New York

training, and were ignorant of the history and avowed purposes of the company whose best social products we saw. When these were studied we plainly saw that this was not per- verse criminality in the people we saw around ns, but a commercial necessity in their relations of life. Anything that meant or typed the civilization of an American village would of necessity have been the gerin of its destruction to the end for which all this system lived and wrought. Illustrating this, a statement of a chaplain at Moose Factory may be quoted. Ile said: " A plan I had devised for educating and training to some acquaintance with agriculture native children was disallowed. * * A * proposal for forming a small Indian village near Moose Factory was not acceded to, and, instead, permission 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 company . would not give them even a spade to commence their new mode of life!"

Coming to understand that this policy was the wisest, indeed the only means of perpetu- ating the company itself, we soon found that the "gentlemen of the company," as they were called, personally were indeed gentlemen, while as officers of the company they were necessarily opposed to all that made for civilization. Hence we are able to write of Dr. McLoughlin as a man as we have truly written. Let the reader himself apply these reflections to the Oregon of 1834, and he will understand what, socially and commercially, the Hudson's Bay Company, at its very best estate, and in the day of its su- premest power, had made of one of the finest lands upon which shines the universal sun; and in this knowledge he will understand just what the Hudson's Bay Company meant to do for humanity. Almost necessarily its life was en- tirely hid behind the lids of its own ledger, and to quote the language of Hazlit, it "had no ideas but those of custom and interest, and that on the narrowest scale."

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We have said that the supremacy of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Columbia, and through that company the ultimate ownership of Oregon by Great Britain, was "apparently assured " in 1834. But the genius and prophet of the downfall of the great company, and the defeat of British plans for the possession of the

country, was then surveying Oregon, looking through the blue eyes of a pioneer missionary, who landed at Vancouver within a few days of the arrival of Mr. Wyeth, of whose coming and going we have previously spoken. Our next chapter will tell something of influences that proved too mighty for that power.

CHAPTER X.

THE MISSIONS AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE NORTHWEST.

THE GREAT RIVALS-EARLY FORM OF THE CONTEST-A NEW ELEMENT INTRODUCED-THE NEWLY MATCHED CONTESTANTS -HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY AT THE ZENITH OF ITS POWER-OREGON'S ONLY OCCUPANTS-ARRIVAL OF FOUR MEN-THEIR SUPPORT AND PATRONAGE-THEIR AMERICANISM -THE GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY POWER-TWO CLASSES-THE METHODIST MISSIONS-MIS- SIONS OF THE AMERICAN BOARD-INDEPENDENT MISSIONS FACTS-WHAT THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY IS DOING -- THE PEOPLE OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY -- THE AMERICAN PEOPLE- JASON LEE, THE CORYPHEUS OF AMERICAN SENTIMENT-HIS VISIT TO THE EAST AND RETURN- MISSIONS THE CENTERS OF AMERICAN SENTIMENTS AND PEOPLE-CONTEST MORALLY CLOSED.

F ROM the time that the claims of France and Spain to the Oregon country were finally transferred to the United States in 1803, there was, as our readers have seen, no claimant contesting with the United States for the ownership of the country but England. Its final possession by one or the other of these great powers was evidently in the way of the destiny of empire. They were nations of one blood, except that in the United States there was a deeper tinge of the cavalier in the veins of the people than in England. Their very re- lationship and similarity of origin and of char- acter, made them essentially rivals, jealons of each other's power, and anxious to place bar- riers in the way of each other's advancement. Besides, the United States were not far enough removed from the close of a successful rebellion against the misgovernment of England, in which rebellion this country had snatched the guerdon of her nationality from the dismembered em- pire of Great Britain, for either to have come to an era of real friendliness and national fra- ternity. The very actors in the events of 1776 and 1784, both in England and America, were yet in places of power in the two countries.

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 14

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902 Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 1056

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056