An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 16

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

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A single other point in our view of the rela- tions of these missionary stations to the Ameri- eanization of Oregon it is necessary to notice. It is this: The stations became the centers around which acereted whatever there was of American sentiment or American people in the country. This was especially true of the Willamette sta- tion. True to its purpose, and the nation under whose charter it pursued that purpose, the Hud- son's Bay Company would do nothing to induce or foster American settlement. While it would sell its goods to Americans, it would buy noth-

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ing from them. This was the surest system of antagonism it could possibly have adopted. It had forced the Americans out of the country before the missionary stations were established, and, until an organization able to cope with itself in mercantile operations could take up work of colonizing the country, it could keep them out. Rivalry in trade it did not fear, for that it could easily destroy. But the mission- ary establishments, while independent and self- supporting, were not trading posts. Even their object in the country eommended itself to the better feelings of the gentlemen of that company, and, without turning absolute bar- barians, they could not molest them. This they would not, perhaps could not do. Hence they could not prevent the ministry of hospi- tality, which the missionaries were always ready to exercise toward their countrymen, and all

others, indeed, who came to their doors or pitched their tent under the shadows of their sanctuary. And so, though the missionaries were not traders, nor their stations depots of commerce, they were, in the only way in which rivalry could have been successful against the Hudson's Bay Company, the rivals of that erst and mighty monopoly; and, by the time any considerable number of American citizens were prepared to follow the path they had blazed out into the valleys of Oregon in 1842, they had prepared an asylum for them, and broken the right arm of the power of the Hudson's Bay Company, and never afterward did it, or the British nation, which it had so ably repre- sented, recover supremacy in Oregon. Morally the contest was ended, and Oregon was Ameri- canized.

CHAPTER XI.

IMMIGRATIONS.

GERMS OF HISTORY-QUESTION OF IMMIGRATION DISCUSSED-HALL J. KELLEY --- HIS MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS -- SOCIETY ORGANIZED-ITS PLAN OUTLINED --- KELLEY'S EFFORTS TO OPEN TRADE- HIS FAILURE -- FROM 1835 TO 1841-IMMIGRATION OF 1841-AMERICANS -- HUDSON'S BAY- IMMMIGRATION OF 1842 -- ITS IMPORTANCE-DR. E. WHITE-OTHER IMPORTANT CHARACTERS -- MR. CRAWFORD'S STORY-IMMIGRATION OF 1843-ITS IMPORTANT PLACE IN ILISTORY -CAUSES THAT IMPELLED IT-GENERAL DIRECTION OF NEGOTIATIONS -- IMPULSE OF EMMIGRATION.

N the story of emigration to the Pacific coast from the Atlantic slope and the valleys of the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, are found the real germs of its history. There is in this story a romance of enterprise, patriot- ism, adventure and ambition, finely illustrating the genius of the American people as it has ex- hibited itself since Jamestown in the South and Plymonth Roek in the North became the early altars of its conseeration to the service of sub- duing a wild continent and building up within it a splendid empire of liberty. It was only a

continuation of the activity of that genius of free conquest that first sent the hardy sons and daughters of l'lymouth out over the Hudson and Genesee, and over the plains of western New York and Ohio, and the not less hardy and more volatile sons and daughters of Jamestown over the Alleghanies and down across the blue and green hills and vales of Kentucky and Tennessee to the shores of the Mississippi even before the Revolutionary war had ceased to echo ou the hills of the Carolinas. It is not neces- sary to claim that these who passed, in the '30s

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and '40s, the gates of the Rocky mountains were greater and nobler than those who, before the beginning of the century, had forced those of the Alleghanies to give these a title to all the honor that bravery and hardihood and patriot- ism ean possibly confer upon mortals. It were honor enough that these sons were worthy of their sires, and that the daughters, whose pres- ence graced and illuminated the mountain biv- onacs of a two or three thousand miles emigrants' trail to Oregon, and were the lone settler's cabin's chief charm and glory on the prairie shores of the Willamette during the decade of 1840 and 1850, were worthy of the mothers whose com- pany was alike the joys and inspiration of the two or three hundred miles' trail to the Ohio and the Tennessee in the decades of 1790 and 1800. There was, indeed, more of danger and more of deprivation in the earlier than in the later hegira, but both fully paralleled any great conquering movement of humanity in any period of the world's history. If there was in these less of the noise of battles, and less of the ban- nered heraldry of war, there was not necessarily less of real victory, but rather the more, for the victories of peace are always nobler than those of war. An American must needs dwell with peculiar pride on the fact that this great, resist- less, on-sweeping flow westward of the most strongly impulsed of the great mass of the "common people" of this continent, was what finally settled the most vexing and troublesome questions of international dispute that this coun- try ever encountered. Diplomacy must needs wait on immigration, and a nation's claim must wait on the people's possession. Nothing can be settled without the people. The grants of kings long since discrowned, the edicts of par- liaments in capitals far beyond the seas, the charters of corporations and companies given by assumed owners are nothing. It is the people that assure ultimately all claims and pretenses by their own presence and will and work. So it was on the Pacific coast, and in tracing the history of immigration thither we trace the movement of the people that finally and poten-

tially settled all "Oregon questions," and gave the United States her most magnificent seaboard and her fairest and most fruitful realm.

The question of the possibility of peopling this coast by emigration was settled by a move- ment that was somewhat beyond the calcula- tions of the mere political economist. It was the religious, the missionary, the faith element that opened the way, not as an end, but as a re- sult of its adventure. The subject of emigra- tion to the Pacific coast had been long debated in the Eastern States, but until these avannt couriers had actually, in a single summer, passed to the western shores, it was deemed impractica- ble if not impossible. In 1804-'05-'06 Lewis and Clarke and their company of men, schooled in the hardest discipline of woodcraft, had needed three or four years to make the journey and re- turn. In 1810-'11 Wilson Price Hunt, with the land portion of John Jacob Astor's great mercantile association, had suffered famine, starvation, almost death in the wild mountains and amid the thirsty deserts of Snake river, and had finally reached the mouth of the Columbia, more dead than alive, after two seasons of the most desperate effort. To carry women and children and household goods and gods over such mountains and across sneh deserts was felt to be the scheme of enthusiasts. Still the en- thusiasts were right, and their enthusiasm, as is often the case, was the highest and most fore- sighted reason.

The first effort to induce emigration to Oregon of which we can find any record was made in 1817 by Hall J. Kelley, of Boston. The ques- tion of the restoration of Astoria to the United States, under the provisions of the treaty of Ghent, was then pending between the United States and Great Britain, and Mr. Kelley, with the instinct of true statesmanship, urged the immediate occupation of the country in dispute by American settlers. There was no response, and yet, undismayed, he continued his appeals and efforts until, in 1829, he organized a com- pany called "The American Society for the Set- tlement of the Oregon Territory," which was

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incorporated by the legislature of Massachu- setts. In 1831 the society presented a memorial to Congress, ably setting forth its designs, de- scribing the beauty and value of the country, showing the evident designs of Great Britain upon it, and closing with this rather remarkable and impressive appeal :

" Now therefore your memoralists, in behalf of a large number of the citizens of the United States, would respectfully ask Congress to assist them in carrying into operation the great pur- pose of their institution; to grant them troops, artillery, military arms and munitions of war, for the security of the contemplated settlement; to incorporate their society with the power to extinguish the Indian title to such tracts and extent of territory, at the month of the Colnm- bia and the junction of the Multnomah with the Columbia, as may be adequate to the landable aim and pursuits of the settlers, and with such other rights, powers, rights and immunities as may be at least equal and concurrent to those given by Parliament to the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, and such as are not repugnant to the stipulations of the convention made between Great Britain and the United States, when it was agreed that any country on the Northwest coast of America to the westward of the Rocky mountains should be free and open to the citi- zens and subjects of the two powers for a terin of years; and to grant them such other rights and privileges as may contribute to the means of establishing a respectable and prosperous community."

Congress gave no heed to this prayer-whether wisely or unwisely may be subject of debate. Whether its non-action deferred or changed the ultimate decision of the " Oregon question " can- not be told. The writer is inclined to the opin- ion that the time had not come for decisive measures,-that at this juncture the advantages of the situation were with England instead of the United States, and England was better pre- pared to assert and maintain her authority over the country then than was the United States. While, therefore, Mr. Kelley's theory was wise

and statesmanlike, and the only one that could ultimately win, the time had not yet come for the decisive action by Congress that was asked in that petition. The " Society," however, was not discouraged. Mr. Kelley was appointed its general agent, and continned his enthusiastic efforts and appeals. In 1831, Mr. Kelley, for the society issued a " circular " to persons de- siring to unite in an " Oregon settlement to be commenced in the spring of 1832, on the de- lightful and fertile banks of the Columbia river." The circular stated that "it has been contemplated for many years to settle with the free and enlightened but redundant population from the American Republic, that portion of her territory called Oregon, bounded on the Pacific ocean and lying between the forty- second and forty-ninth parallels of north lati- tude."

The plan of the company thus outlined was to have been carried into effect in 1832, but the failure of Congress to provide for any assistance for the enterprise cansed it to be abandoned for that year. One of its agents however, Mr. Na- thaniel J. Wyeth, of whose history and work mention is made elsewhere in this history, did cross the continent with a small body of Boston men in 1832 and returned the following year to prepare for a large personal venture in the line of emigration and trade. So clearly did Mr. Kelley comprehend the geographical and com- mercial relations of Oregon at that time that he had laid out npon paper splendid city plats at the month of the Columbia, where Astoria now is, and at the junction of the Multnomah-or Willamette - and the Columbia river where Portland now is, and in these eities yet to be each immigrant was to have a "town lot," and somewhere else a farm.

Mr. Kelley's personal connection with Oregon was but slight and short. Attempting to freight a vessel and failing, he sought to open avenues of overland trade through Mexico whose reve- nne officers confiscated the greater part of his goods. He finally reached Vancouver October 15, 1834. His health soon failed and in March,

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1835, he departed for his home, having lost $30,000 in his efforts to colonize Oregon. But while losing this he gained a place in history, and his name is gratefully mentioned as the earliest and one of the truest friends of the " Americanization of Oregon." No history of Oregon can be written that does not thus record the name of Hall J. Kelley. Many men have found a much lower place in history at much greater cost and effort, so that, to him, his finan- cial loss for Oregon was moral and historic gain for himself.

From 1835 to 1841 there was little that might be called immigration to the Pacific coast. Trne, various missionary companies arrived in the country, as noted elsewhere, but few of these contemplated at first a permanent residence, al- though many of the persons comprising these companies did remain and took place among the most intelligent, patriotic and enterprising citizens. Also quite a number of persons who had formerly been connected with the various trapping and trading companies in the Rocky mountain regions had grown tired of their precarious and dangerous employment, and came down into the Willamette valley and set- tied upon land claims. Some of these, too, held honorable and useful places in the subsequent history of the country, and did much to help forward the cause of the Americanization of Oregon. The records of both these classes will appear in their proper places in their history.

In the antumin of 1841 the first regular emi- gration to the country, constiting of 111 persons, came through the fastnesses of the mountains, thus nearly doubling the white pop- ulation at once. Probably at the end of 1841, in all the region that now constitutes the States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, there were not over 300 whites, not counting those connected with the Hudson's Bay Com- pany. The emigration of this year, believing it impossible to cross the mountains with wagons, made no attempt to do so, but per- formed the laborious journey of 2,000 miles trom the Missouri frontier on horseback. How

they could have been so misled in regard to the difficulties of the way appears a mystery, since Bonneville ciglit years before, and Dr. Whit- man six years before, had each taken wagons far beyond the crests of the Rockies, and the American Fur Company had frequently taken them as far as Wind river, but a little eastward of the crest. But as they were misled, so determined was their purpose of emigration that they cheerfully performed the herculean task of packing all their goods on horses and mnles, loading and unloading them morning and evening, for the entire 2,000 miles.

Meantime while the first spray of the rolling sea of American emigrants that was soon to follow was touching the shores of Oregon, the Hudson's Bay Company, seeing the danger to their own purposes of permitting the people of the United States to gain a preponderance in the country, organized a scheme of emigration from their own Red river colonies. Sir George Simp- son, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, who crossed the country from Montreal to Van- couver during the summer of 1841, described this emigration as consisting of twenty-three families, the heads being generally young and active. They reached Vancouver in Septem- ber, and were located by the company near their Cowlitz farm, in the vicinity of the head of Puget Sound. Quite a number of them, being dissatisfied with their location, moved the next year to the Willamette valley, not- withstanding the desire of the company to strengthen the pretensions of Great Britain to the country north of the Columbia river by retaining them there.

The emigration of 1842, for various reasons, took a very important place in the early history of the coast. It consisted of only 109 persons in all, but nearly half of them were adults, and inany of these were men who subsequently at- tained considerable prominence in the country and contributed not a little to its prosperity. With this company came Dr. Elijah White, who bore a commission as sub-Indian agent for the region west of the Rocky mountains, and

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has the historical distinction of being the first commissioned representative of the Government of the United States resident west of the Rocky mountains. Dr. White's place in Oregon his- tory is somewhat unique. He came to the country first as a physician to the Methodist mission, but on account of a disagreement with its superintendent, Rev. Jason Lee, and other members of the mission, returned to the East- ern States. His residence of some years in Oregon and his general intelligence in regard to the country itself, had made it easy for him to secure the attention of the Government, and, though his mental and moral character- istics did not commend him to the people of Oregon, he now returned commissioned to the most important place in the colony. While Dr. White personally was obnoxious to many of the people whose relations to the Indian tribes he was to arbitrate, yet the fact that he returned bearing a Government commission went far to reconcile the people toward him, as it was a proof that the Government was not entirely forgetful of the feeble Pacific colony, however slow it seemed to be in asserting its interest in them. He had also been one of the main promoters of the emigration, using his prominence as an appointee of the govern- ment to gain recruits to the standard of the emigrants, and the people were gratefully glad for any influence that added white faces to the dark visage of humanity on the western coast. So, much of the antipathy of the people to Dr. White as a man and a missionary was allowed to slumber, or was kept out of sight, and the good he could do them as an officer of the Government the rather thought of. The justice of history, which neither criticises with prejudice nor praises with partiality, compels the statement that his work was often useful to the rising commonwealth, although on the whole he sadly disappointed the hopes, if not the expectations, of the people.

With this emigration came L. W. Hastings and A. L. Lovejoy, two men who became prom- inent in the history of the Territory, and also

F. X. Matthieu and Medorum Crawford, men who for half a century in political and civil life exercised a molding and salutary influence.

As this was the the first emigration that at- tempted the entire journey across the plains with wagons, it is proper that we let one of its number, Hon. Medorum Crawford, tell a part of the story of the journey in his own way, pre- mising that at Green river it was deemed best to dismantle half the wagons and resort to the more primitive method of packing for the re- mainder of the journey. Of the journey from Green river Mr. Crawford says:

" Horses, mules and oxen were packed with such clothing, utensils and provisions as were indispensable for our daily wants, and with heavy hearts many articles of comfort and con- venience which had been carefully carried and cared for during the long journey were left be- hind. About the middle of August we arrived at Fort Hall, then an important trading post belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company. From Captain Grant, his officers and employes we received such favors and assistance as can only be appreciated by worn-out and destitute emi- grants. Here the remaining wagons were left, and our company, no longer attempting to keep up an organization, divided into small parties, all traveling as fast as their circumstances would permit, following the well-beaten trail of the Hudson's Bay Company from Fort Hall to Walla Walla, now Wallula. The small party to which I was attached was one month travel- ing from Fort Hall to Dr. Whitman's, where we were most hospitably received, and supplied with flour and vegetables in abundance, a very acceptable change after subsisting almost en- tirely on buffalo meat from Fort Laramie to Fort Hall, and on salmon from Fort Hall to Whitman's. In fact, there had not been in any mess a mouthful of bread since leaving Laramie.

" From Walla Walla Dr. White and some others took passage down the Columbia river on the Hudson's Bay Company's boats or canoes, and still others, and the larger portion of the emigrants, crossed the Cascade mountains on

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the old Indian trail. From Fort Hall to the Willamette no precaution was taken against, nor slighest apprehension felt of, Indian hostility; nor were we in any instance molested by them; on the contrary they furnished us with salmon and game, and rendered us valuable assistance for very trifling rewards. From Walla Walla to the Willamette falls occupied about twenty days, and, all things considered, was the hardest part of the entire journey. What with the drifting sands, rocky cliffs and rapid strcams along the Columbia river, and the gorges, torrents and thickets of the Cascade mountains, it seems incredible how, with our worn-ont and emaciated animals, we ever reached our desti- nation."

Those who in later years and under more fa- vorable conditions traversed the same road, when they read this description of the disorganized and careless journey of the emigration of 1842, wonder how a single one of that company sur- vived the perils of that 1,000 miles journey from Fort Hall to the Willamette settlements arising from Indian hostilities, lack of food, and the incidental dangers of wilderness travel. That they did seems little less than a miracle.

When this immigrant company had become blended with the former white population, the entire eensus showed less than 500 sonls.

In the history of immigration into Oregon we come now to the one that, historically, has had greater prominence and wider consideration than any other, namely, that of 1843. It will require a somewhat broader treatment than any other, because so many personal elements have entered into its consideration, and because some names, dear to the people of this coast, and of the whole conntry, were identified with it. There has been much controversy abont the part played in its history by Dr. Whitman, and many of the ablest writers of the coast have ventured history and criticism and opinion npon it, -- perhaps all tinged, more or less, with the hues of romance, which the acts of so chivalrous and determined a leader as Dr. Whitman were well calculated to throw over it. It came, too, in

the crisis of our national controversy with Great Britain in regard to the ownership and boundary of Oregon, and seemed, at least to a superficial observation, the decisive factor in its determi- nation in favor of the United States. For these reasons it becomes necessary to diseuss both the motives and the facts that distinguished this above all other immigrations. In doing so we shall endeavor to leave out of sight claims made, for the first time, by writers a quarter of a century after the events recorded transpired, conceived, it may be, under the influence of very partial friendship and companionship; or if not that, then in the prejudice of opposition and personal rivalry, either of which cannot assist careful and judicial historic conclusions. Only as we carefully mark the trend of events and discussions relating to Oregon, both in Oregon itself and the Eastern States, around the fireside s of the people and in the halls of Congress, and study them in relation to the philosophy of human action as we understand it, can we arrive at a just and satisfactory conclusion. And, in writing the history of the immigration of 1843, if we cannot write thus it will be impossible to give any adequate and proper understanding of it. First of all, then, the causes that im- pelled it.

With the conclusion of the treaty between Great Britain and the United States, which ter- minated in an agreement of " joint occupancy " of the country by the citizens of the two powers with equal rights and privileges, the public mind in the United States settled into the eou- clusion that the ultimate ownership of the country would be determined by real occupancy. It was tolerably evident that the people, whether English or American, would decide the question that negotiation could not settle, and that neither party felt willing to submit to the decision of arms: that homes and herds, plows and factories, schoolhonses and churches, would become the determining factors in the confliet. In the light of this conclusion the immigration of 1843, far more than those preceding it, must be studied.

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The people of the western frontier had be- come familiar with Oregon. The praises of its mild climate and the stories of its wonderful productiveness had been recited in their ears by returning travelers and adventurers, and many of their own kinsmen had already settled in it and written back the same wonderful recitals. In consequence the frontiersmen who are always trembling with the excitement and love of ad- venture, felt the thrill of desire to try the en- ticing journey-enticing to them because of its very perils-to the better land and brighter clime beyond the western mountains. Besides the " Oregon bills," which had been introduced into Congress by Senator Linn of Missouri, in the fall of 1842, making provision for the estab- lishment of a line of "stockaded forts from some point on the Missouri and Arkansas rivers into the best pass for entering the valley of the Ore- gon; and also at or near the month of the Co- Inmbia river;" and also to " secure the grant of 640 acres of land to every white male inhabitant of the Territory of Oregon of the age of eight- een years and upward," besides other provisions highly advantageous to the settlers, had given assurances to the people that their action in re- moving to and settling in Oregon would cer- tainly receive the strong support of the Govern- ment.

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 16

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