An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 15

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

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They had not forgotten, and they had not for- given. The Americans were the most forgiv- ing, for they had won the most, and hence could most easily forgive. The British had lost the most, and hence were the sorest and most un- relenting. It was to be expected, therefore, that the struggle for what both so greatly desired, and each believed it owned, would be long and tenacious, and that it would be led through every possible chance and change before it would be finally decided.

We have seen how. in commerce by sea and river, and in the rivalries of the trail and the mountains, the fur companies that represented severally these two nationalities had met each other, and how in every contest of that character the representatives of England had defeated, thwarted and driven away the representatives of the United States, nntil, though there was a legal joint occupancy, there was no real occu- pancy but that of Great Britain. From 1813, when the British flag was raised over Astoria, for a full score of years the stars and stripes waved in the skies of Oregon only as a transient visitor, while the cross of St. George symboled the real ruling power over the country from the

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mountains to the sea. The Hudson's Bay Com- pany, wholly representative of the designs and spirit of the British crown, and intensely loyal to them, held supreme dominion over the whole country. It seemed a foregone conclusion that this powerful organization, with its great wealth, and its unrivaled facilities for transplanting its own numerous. people into the fruitful soil of these Pacific valleys, would win for England the "nine points of law,"-possession of the coun- try. So the issue and the probability stood up to 1834.

In 1834 the contest was re-opened in another form. Another wholly American element was introduced. It came noiselessly, unheralded, without display of march. or flaunt of ensign. It was so small in numbers, and so humble in pretense, that it scarcely arrested the attention of the powerful men who were then at the head of the British power on the banks of the Colum- bia. Its professed and real purpose so com- mended itself to every gracious sentiment of the human heart, that men so really humane as were they could not but give it encouragement and blessing. This element, thus introduced, was what, technically, in the early history of the country was known as the " missionary ele- ment." It came in the persons of four men whose names have been elsewhere mentioned in this book, but which will bear repeating here, namely: Jason Lee, Daniel Lee, Cyrus Shepard and P. L. Edwards, and they were the types and forerunners of all the missionaries, who, for the following decade, practically alone embodied and expressed the American sentiment and the American citizenship, in contrast with the Brit- ish spirit and the British citizenship embodied and expressed by the Hudson's Bay Company.

The one thing that distinguished these men in the relation in which we are now writing of them, and the missions established by them and by those who came subsequently, was their Americanism. They not only came to this coast by the direction of the most intensely American church in the country, but they came under the passport and permit, and henee under the pro-

tection of the Government of the United States, certified to Mr. Lee and his coadjutors by Gen eral John H. Eaton, the honorable secretary of war under Andrew Jackson, president of the United States at that time. This, with their own personal citizenship, gave them a character not less distinctively American than it was missionary. The same statement, in substance, would be trne of all the Potestant missions es- tablished in the country, whether by the great denominational or interdenominational societies, or by individual citizens of the United States. They were all Americans-intensely, radically and loyally American.

We are not ignoring the fact that the mis- sionaries who came to Oregon from 1834 up to 1840 came primarily for the purpose of evan- gelizing the pagan tribes of this great North- west. We are only bringing to view the other fact that in doing or attempting this they never forgot and never slighted or temporized with their national relationship. Patriotism, in its true sense of love of the country that fostered and encouraged their works, and spread the broad aegis of its protection over themselves personally, was a part of their religion. Their feelings were never isolated from the country that thus protected and cherished them, but they "loved its rocks and rills, its woods and templed hills," with a great, venerating, patri- otie love. They might not have done this the more because they were missionaries, in a land where at that time an American citizen could have but a doubtful and precarious sojourn, but they certainly did not do this the less for that reason. Here, then, were the matched contest- ants for the possession and consequent owner- ship of Oregon, -the Hudson's Bay Company on the one side, with the confidence of its past successes and its present power upon it; the mis- sionary stations and missionaries, with their high moral purpose and their American senti- ment, on the other. Providence had thus handed over the conflict of empire on the northwest coast to these contesting elements, and then awaited the issue.

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At this time the Hudson's Bay Company was at the very zenith of its power. Its lead- ers were kings of men. Its cavalcades were on every inter-mountain trail over half a continent. Its fleets of batteaux and canoes were on every lake, and its voyageurs sung to the music of every cascade fram Winnipeg to California, and from the mountains to the sea. A contest of force, of brawn, or even of trade and commerce with it at that time would have been simple madness. Indeed the latter was adventured at this very time by at least two of the ablest and most determined leaders that the history of such commercial partnership among Americans ever produced,-Wyeth and Bonneville,-and both were compelled to hastily retire from the field, Wyeth bequeathing his fortune, with Forts Hall and William, to the Britain, and Bonneville was compelled to fly from starvation on the banks of the Columbia because the very fish of the rivers and game of the hills were denied him by the lordly barons who ruled at Vancouver for themselves and Britain only. So intrenched was this British power behind the great mount- ain ranges of the mid-continent that armies could not march against it if they would; and on the thither side 3,000 leagues of ocean, roamed by the prowling cruisers of the British navy, kept eternal watch and ward over them. Thus they stood, and thus Britannia ruled, not the wave only, but the land as well, when these avaunt couriers of the mighty host of Ameri- cans that ten years later began to follow in their footsteps sat calmly down before this mountain power of commercial supremacy, and that other mountain power of paganism intrenched in the superstitions legends of a hundred generations of petrified intellectual and moral darkness, and began, in their thoughts, if not in their speech, to prophesy to them: "O, thou great mount- ain, be thou plucked up and be thon cast into the midst of the sea."

These men were not a power in themselves to enter this vast contention for the possession of a mighty empire, for there were but four of them; but they were the seed of a power, the

germ of a force, that was to win that empire to American civilization, and plant it in the blue field of our country's banner.

It is now time that we begin to note and measure the growth of that new force that thus confronted the old. The task is difficult, for who can weigh or measure such forces ?-- but we must attempt it.

We have before remarked the faet that these mission establishments were of two classes: First, those organized and sustained by great missionary societies, like the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions; and, second, personal and indepen- dent missions, established and sustained by the inen who themselves wrought in them. But they were all Americans, and nearly all of New England blood, if not of New England birth. That our readers may the better understand the relations, both of men and events, to resultant history, we shall consider these classes separ- ately; and it is the logical order to consider first the class that itself was the first in the order of time. This was the missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1834 the four men already named-Jason Lee, Daniel Lee, Cyrus Shepard and P. L. Edwards-under the direction of that society, established themselves in the very heart of the Willamette Valley, the great agricultural para- dise of Oregon. These were followed, in 1836, by Dr. Elijah White and wife, with two chil- dren; Mr. Alanson Beers and wife, with three children; with Mr. William H. Willson and Misses Anna M. Pittman, Susan Downing and Elvira Johnson. When these arrived, in May, 1837, the first American home was planted in the Willamette Valley. There had scarcely been even the semblance of a home, as we nnder- staud that word, in Oregon previous to that time. Even the able and cultivated leaders of the Hudson's Bay Company had consorted with the Indian women, and their abodes had the odor of the wigwam, and their progeny the taint of Indian blood. But here were educated

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and cultured white women, accustomed to the refinements of the parlors of Boston and Lynn, of Newark and New York, able to grace any social life, as well as to aid in lifting up a fallen and degraded race. Before only pioneer Ameri- can manhood had been here; now pioneer womanhood and childhood, and with them pio- neer home life, were added, and an American community, with all the elements of perpetuity and increase in itself, was established in the very heart of Oregon. Nor should the state- ment be omitted here that, with these men and women and children, the Missionary Board had forwarded a large amount of stores of various kinds to render its community practically inde- pendent of all others. Within six months of the arrival of this company the community was further strengthened, both in its numbers and its character, by the arrival of Rev. David Les- lie and wife with three children, Miss Margaret Smith and Rev. H. K. W. Perkins. Thus, be- fore three years from the arrival of the first company of four men, the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church had planted an American community in the Willamette valley, consisting of men, women and children, with homes and schools and worship, with flocks and herds and plows and harvests, peaceably, but mightily confronting the rule of the Hud- son's Bay Company over the fair realm which it so long had governed. In less than three years more fifty-one more persons were added to this American community by the same mis- sionary authority. These consisted of Revs. J. P. Richmond, Gustavus Hines, W. W. Kone, A. F. Waller and J. H. Frost, and Messrs. Dr. I. L. Babcock, and Messrs. George Abernethy, H. B. Brewer, W. W. Raymond, L. H. Judson, H. Campbell, Josiah L. Parrish and James Olley, all of whom had families, and Misses M. T. Ware, C. A. Clark, E. Phillips, A. Phelps and O. Lankton. So, in less than six years after its first small contingents had reached Oregon, the Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society had not only planted an American community in Oregon, but had made it so strong and so estab-

lished it on strategetic grounds all over the Northwest as to make it ineradicable, -- doing what the United States Government and for- traders and commercial adventurers had failed to do in fifty years of effort.

We turn now to the work of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in the same general field and with a like result. Its first mission in Oregon was established in 1836, two years later than that of the Method- ist society, though the country had been quite thoroughly explored the preceding year by Rev. Samuel Parker, of New York, a very intelligent and careful observer. The persons who for this society established this mission were Dr. Marcus Whitman and wife and Mr. W. II. Gray, all from the State of New York, and all, like those connected with the Methodist community, in- tensely American in training and sentiment. This company of five persons, including the two ladies, crossed the continent from the Mis- souri river on horseback, a distance of nearly 2,000 miles. Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spauld- ing were the first white women of any nation who ever made a home in Oregon, and are for- ever monumented as such in the history of civilization of the Northwest. The American heart lingers over their deeds and their memory with a great love and a great reverence, and is glad to give them the crowning place, of which personally they were so worthy, and which with such bravery they won that of the first American home-makers between the Rocky mountains and the eastern sea. The missions of these people were established in the very heart of what has since become known as the great " Inland Empire," at Waiiletpn, on the Walla Walla river, and at Lapwai on the Clear- water, among the Cayuses and Nez Perces, the two strongest and most promising tribes of the entire coast. In 1838 Messrs. Eels, Walker - and Smith, with their wives, joined them, and they enlarged their work and broadened their field. So, at the close of 1838, the American Board had six American families, representing the best forms of American life and sentiment,

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firmly fixed on the soil of the Oregon of that period; its contribution to the double result of the evangelization of a pagan people and the the Americanization of Oregon.

In addition to these there were what we have called independent missions, established on the individual responsibility of those conducting them, that contributed no slight influence to the great aggregate of American sentiment and life that was now beginning to repress and neutral- ize the sway of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1838 Rev. Harvey Clarke, Mr. Littlejohn and Mr. Smith, Presbyterian self-supporting missionaries, with their wives, came over the mountains, and in 1839 Messrs. Griffin and Munger and their wives entered the country with similar intentions. What we have said of the gentlemen and ladies of the missions of the two great boards would be true in character of all these. They were of the same type of repre- sentative Americans, stood in the same relation to the Hudson's Bay Company, and were as thoroughly at one with the plans and hopes of the United States in regard to the country as were the others. In a sense, indeed, their in- dependence gave them a vantage ground not possessed by the others, and which they were prompt and faithful to use for the cause of the country they loved so tenderly.

Having thus summarily noted the beginning and traced the development of this entirely American force in Oregon up to the autumn of 1840, a period of but six years, we are in pos- session of the following facts:

The entire number of adult men and women that these missionary boards had transplanted from the best life of the old States into Oregon, together with those of the independent missions, was sixty-one, constituting not far from thirty American homes. Probably these homes held at that time not far from 100 children, born to an inheritance of American patriotismn which certainly would not diminish when they con- trasted their own with the homes of those who disputed with them the dominion ot Oregon.

But it was not numbers only, nor indeed was

it numbers chiefly, that gave these American people the prestige of conquest. The names of Leeand Leslie, of Whitman and Waller, of Hines and Parrish, of Abernethy and Gray, of Spauld- ing and Walker, of Clarke and Griffin, of Bab- cock and Campbell, of Eels and Hall sufficiently attest that, for no writer of early Oregon history can fail to give them honorable mention, or to recognize their great influence in molding that history.

Two other facts, of a somewhat material char- acter, illustrate the eminent service of the mis- sions in making civilization a possibility in Oregon. One was the establishment of mills, both for the production of lumber and the grinding of grain for bread, by the missions of both boards; the other was the introduction of a printing press in 1839, by Mr. E. O. Hall, who set up his press in Lapwai, in the mission of Mr. Spaulding, and published elementary books, both in the Nez Perces and Spokane tongues. And so we are brought to the close of 1840.

Meantime we should know what the Hud- son's Bay Company, as representing British pretensions to Oregon, has been doing during the six years that the American missions have been developing into this formidable and op- posing force. Surely such astute leaders as Mc- Loughlin and Douglas could not fail to com- prehend the threat against the position and power of their company that was in the very presence of these missionary establishments near them. Two things were done, both in them- selves well chosen for the end contemplated. First, they introduced in 1838 two French Ca- nadian Roman Catholic priests. These were British subjects, and it was expected, of course, that the influence their profession and character gave them would be exerted against the Ameri- can and in favor of the British rule in Oregon. This the company had a perfect right to do; and this also Messrs. Blanchet and Demers, the two priests, had a perfect right to do. They placed these priests at most important strategetic points; one in the Willamette valley, very near the Methodist missions, and the other was a

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faithful itinerant, visiting the different posts of the company alternately. Also in 1840 the company brought an emigration of 125 persons, men, women and children, from Winnipeg, to settle on Puget Sound. Thus, at the two points where the leaders of that great company feared the influence of the American missions the most, they made the most strenuous effort to counter- vail that influence. They knew the greatness of the prize at issue, and they were not the men to neglect any fair means they could use to win that prize for the government of the country they represented.

We do not blame them for this. On the contrary there is a measure of honor that we accord them. They were faithful to the trust their country reposed in them. They did what they could, and in the best way they could, to counteract the influence that, they conld not but see, left unchecked must give the long disputed Oregon, coveted equally by both England and the United States, to the Ameri- can nation. And here it is proper to say that, though the men whose acts we are here record- ing were both British and Romanist, and this writer is both American and Protestant, there is no record, certainly not up to this date, of any action on the part of either the British or American party that was discolored by criminal nnfriendliness. On the contrary, while doing their duty for the cause they represented, neither forgot that broader duty they owed to universal humanity. Still the results on the one side were much more effective and deter- mining than on the other. Can we tell why? Let ns see, although the observant reader has already canght the drift of the reason in what we have previously said.

The claims and interests of Great Britain in Oregon were sustained on the whole, by a con- glomerate mass of people, of various colors and cultures, and with very little of moral and so- cial adhesiveness. The Briton and the Scotch- man, it is true, were at their head, but the French Canadians constituted the larger por- tion of their followers. What they had of

home life, from the highest to the lowest, was an admixture of these with the females of the various Indian tribes, and served to weaken, rather than to strengthen, the moral and intel- lectual fiber of the best men among them. The traders, the chief factors, and even the gover- nor himself, were as the voyageurs and trail- men in this regard. Their children were, as a body, withont any large and worthy ambition: too high to be Indians and too low to be white men. A home and social life thus tainted never was and never can be a strong political life, and no men could know this better than the really able men whose lives had fallen into these evil coils. One need, therefore, not look beyond this fact for an explanation of the his- toric anomaly so patent here, namely, that the strorger in numbers and positions and oppor- tunity should prove the weaker in a conflict of intellectual and moral, or even political poten- cies.

On the other side, -- the side of the American community, as embodied, np to this time, in missions and missionaries -- there was a homo- geneity of moral and intellectual and national idea that gave it the strength of welded steel, while it had the elasticity of a three-fold cord. They were picked men and women, chosen from among the hardiest and most aspiring people of the new world. They had been trained on the farms and in the shops and at the forges where human frames are annealed into endurance and tempered into elasticity. They were educated, in the best sense of that word. There was neither illiteracy nor ignor- ance among them. They were isolated from contaminating and degenerating contacts. Many of them, both men and women, had high liter- ary ability and culture. They had ambition, -- that supreme propulsion that forever lifts great sonls from the victories of to-day into the wider triumphs of to-morrow. They comprehended their responsibility and accurately measured their opportunity. It may be doubted if the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock as uni- versally endowed and thoroughly equipped body

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of empire-builders as the missionary boards of the United States placed in Oregon from 1834 to 1840. And this was the body of men who stood here alone for American interests and supremacy over against the Hudson's Bay Company, representing English interests and supremacy.

We are not to be understood as saying that there were absolutely no Americans here before 1840 but the missionaries and their families. There were a few, possibly twenty-five in all, but they were mostly of that floating class that linger on the fringes of society, or that wander over the world without a fixed and definite aim. Some of them remained in the county, and under the influence of the stronger power of the missionary organizations became highly useful members of society, and left an honor- able record in its early history. Not strong enough in numbers to constitute a community, it was beyond the possibilities of their condi- tion that they should uphold and make ulti- mately successful the American cause in Oregon.

The writer would not detract from the credit or faine dne any man, or any class of men, from their work for and in our early Oregon; nor would he add to the lanrels of any one more than is dne. But up to this date the American interest here owed more to the influence and work of Jason Lee than to those of any other one man, if not indeed to all the men in the country combined. He was as fully the Cory- phens of the American community as was Dr. MeLoughlin of the Hudson's Bay British influ- enee. He was a man strong in purpose, vigor- ous in execution, retieent and self-contained. Being first in the field, he very early made him- self well acquainted with the country from the Umpqua to Puget Sound, and from the ocean to the Rocky mountains. His manuscript journal, now open before the writer, shows that he placed a very high estimate on the agricul- tural capabilities of the country, and especially of the Willamette valley, and as early as 1835 believed that it would soon be oceupied by a civilized people. His correspondence with the

Board of Missions in whose service he was em- ployed, which was published in New York in 1835-'36-'37 and '38, showed the same thing. Following up his belief on this point, in 1838 he returned overland to the States, and before the missionary board in New York, in the pub- lic prints, and in the presence of great audi- ences in every great eity from Maine to South Carolina, and from New York to St. Louis, he set forth the character, needs and advantages of Oregon. He spent a full year in this employ- ment, visiting Washington and conferring with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War, and receiving substantial help from the officers of the general Government for the furtherance of the purpose for which he was in the East, -- the organization and equipment of a strong re- enforcement for his missionary work. His pur- pose was completely successful, and in October of 1839 he sailed from New York in a ship chartered by the missionary board, with what was really an American colony; ministers, mechanics, farmers, teachers, and with supplies for the work in which they had engaged, to the value of $25,000. It was the largest and best furnished company that, on such a purpose, had aver sailed from any port; and when it reached the Columbia in 1840, with Mr. Lee at its head, it morally fixed the national status of Oregon, because it put the American influence far in advance of the British. The inception, organization and cultivation of that influence was more directly the result of the work of Jason Lee than that of any other one man.

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 15

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