An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 17

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

USA > Washington > An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens > Part 17

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

The course of negotiation on the part of the Government relating to Oregon had been such before this time that this proposed movement by Congress came not too soon, nor was it too favorable for the end desired. Let us glance at that course for a moment.

The general direction of the treaty stipula- tions into which our Government had entered with that of Great Britain in regard to Oregon was plainly, in its result, inimical to the inter- ests of the United States. The first great false step was the "treaty of joint ocenpancy," as it was called, in 1818, under the administration of Mr. Monroe, by which, in effeet, our Govern- ment put into the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company, which already flanked the country, the power and right by treaty to enter into it

with their drilled and armed " servants," and took from itself the right to enter any protest against that really armed invasion. That treaty was for ten years, and expired by limitation in 1828, and in that year by another treaty the provisions of the former were extended until one or the other party should give notice for its termination. This was, if possible, a greater blunder than the former, for it perpetuated what else were dead by limitation, and made all subsequent action much more difficult and for- midable. Then the Ashburton negotiation which defined the boundary between the United States and Canada as far west as the summit of the Rocky mountains, should, and unquestionably might, have been pressed to a settlement of that boundary to the Pacific ocean on the same degree of latitude, namely, the forty-ninth. Then, most unphilosophie and unreasonable of all, came President Tyler's rec- ommendation to discountenanee emigration to Oregon, by withholding land from the emigrants until the two Governments had settled the title -a contingency too distant and doubtful to be counted on, and which could only inure to the advantage of the Hudson's Bay Company, re- presenting, and in that sense personating, Great Britain. Thus, by a course of vacillation and timidity, if not incompetency, the Government put in imminent peril its title to Oregon, and nearly lost the stars of our great Northwestern States from the banner of our national Union.

But in America the people are always greater than the Government, and they took up the work of saving what the Government had so nearly lost, and they succeeded where it had failed.

All these facts and influences converged at once on the minds of the people in the autumn of 1842. The newspapers of the land heralded them everywhere. Oregon. the title of the United States to it, and the purpose of immigra- tion into it both as a personal and patriotic im- pulse, were the themes of conversation in the cabins of the frontiersmen of the West and in the homes of the East. The writer heard it,

109

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

talked it, felt it in his home in central New York. It was everywhere,-an impulse, an in- spiration, a movement of the great heart of the American people. By and by we shall see its outcome.

Coincident with this impulse toward Oregon which was moving the heart of the East, Ore- gon itself was thrilling with the same interest for her own destiny. The emigrants of former years were writing flaming and exciting letters to their friends in the East. The missionaries, both of the Methodist and American Boards, as well as the independent missionaries, filled column after column of the great church papers in the Eastern cities with religious and patriotic appeals. For the number of its people at that time, no new country, if ever any old country, had a larger proportion of men of marked ability and high character than Oregon. Among the immigrant civilians were those already named in this chapter with others, with such laymen in the mission work as Whitman, Abernethy, Gray, Campbell, and Brewer; and in the minis- terial field such men as Lee, Leslie, Walker, Griffin, Hines, Waller, Eels, and others, all of whom were men before they were missionaries, and Americans before they were churchmen. These were all employed from within the coun- try itself in awakening, by their private corre- spondence and their published letters, a wide- spread public interest in all the nation on the "Oregon question," and thus it became the question of the hour. These reasons alone are sufficient to account for the large emigration that stood ou the banks of the Missouri river in the early spring of 1843 with their faces look- ing toward the west.

Still there was one personal incident, and one person having such a romantic, if not such a vital, connection with this emigration as to re- quire a candid and somewhat extended discus- sion before we consider the emigration itself. That person was Dr. Marcus Whitman, and the incident was his perilous winter's ride over the frozen deserts and through the snow-blocked mountain passes, from the mission station near

Fort Walla Walla to St. Louis, with the pur- pose of awakening the Government of the United States to some just idea of the value of Oregon, and of the danger of its alienation, as well as to organize and lead back an emigration to take possession of the country as settlers in the inter- est of its Americanization. While something of romanee has been thrown about this " ride," -- and it may have been invested by some wri- ters with greater results than it really accom- plished,-it was certainly a bold and romantic venture, and its results entitle Dr. Whitman to a unique place in the history of this coast. Narrated as briefly as possible, the facts of his journey seem to be about these:

His work among the Indians, like all the In- dian missionary work on the coast, had proved a comparative failure. The board under whose direction he wrought having become dissatisfied with the meager results of that work, had de- cided to abandon that station and had given di- rections accordingly. Dr. Whitman disagreed with the judgment of the board, and sought the approval of his fellow- missionaries in the field of his desire to return to the States, and repre- sent before the boar I the importance of continu- ing it. After some delay, and the exhibition of a determination on his part to go with or withont their approval, their consent was given, and October 3, 1842, fixed as the time for his departure.

Meanwhile the subject of the struggle be- tween the United States and Great Britain for the actual possession of Oregon was at its height Dr. Whitman was an intense Ameri- can, and must have felt keenly the need of early and earnest action in behalf of his own country. He could be of great value to Oregon, coming just from the field, and possibly put the Govern- ment into truer relations to the questions pend- ing than any man then in Washington. Besides, at this juncture the emigration of 1842 was arriving, and the tenor of the news they brought was, the negotiations looking to the surrender of a part or the whole of Oregon to Great Britain, in consideration of certain privileges and rights

110

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

on the fishing banks of Newfoundland, were pending in Washington. This added new force to Dr. Whitman's resolution, and unquestion- ably broadened the purpose of his own mind in his journey. But, it is worthy of remark that, before this intelligence from the immigrants had reached him, his plans were formed and the date of his departure fixed. Circumstances en- abled him to anticipate that date by a couple of lays,-an important consideration to his jour- ney, as winter was already near at hand. While, therefore, the intelligence brought by the immi- gration served to confirm Dr. Whitman in the wisdom of the resolution he had taken, it could not have been the reason of that resolution, as some writers have endeavored to make it appear. Nor does this in any manner depreciate the value of the services of Dr. Whitman nor de- tract from his true fame as one of the most de- voted of missionaries, the most patriotic of citizens, and the most noble and chivalric of men.

Space cannot be given to the details of Dr. Whitman's winter journey over the Rocky mountains to St. Louis; yet as it has a connec- tion with the history of the emigration of 1843, and incidentally with Oregon history in a broader sense, some notice of it must be given.

On the 3d of October, with a single com- panion, he left his mission station at Waiiletpn, on the Walla Walla river, about twenty-five miles from the Hudson Bay fort, and began his perilous ride. His companion was Mr. Abbot Lawrence Lovejoy, a Massachusetts man, as his name sufficiently indicates, who was a member of the immigration of that season, and had only reached Waiiletpn about a week before. He was young and vigorous, of compact and sinewy form and well adapted to brave the hardships that were before him. The writer had a some- what intimate acquaintance with Mr. Lovejoy subsequently, for at least twenty-five years, and often conversed with him in regard to Dr. Whitman's mission to the East at that time, and the circumstances attending their journey. Dr. Whitman himself left no record of it, so

that Mr. Lovejoy's is its authentic story. Ac- cording to that account, after leaving Waiiletpu they traveled rapidly through the Blue mount- ains and up the valley of the Snake river, reaching Fort Hall, a distance of 400 miles, in eleven days. Here the direct line of travel, as pursued by the emigrants who had made a plain wagon road to the Missouri river, led over comparatively low mountain spurs until it reached the high mountain plain that borders Green river, and then through the wide de- pression in the Rocky mountains known as the "South Pass," thence directly down the waters of the Platte river to the Missouri. For some reason the Doctor, instead of following the beaten road, which would have taken him at his rate of travel beyond the South Pass in two weeks from Fort Hall, took a more southern route, via Salt Lake Taos and Santa Fé, and thence to St. Louis. This took him ont of the open way into the wildest and most snowy of the Rocky mountains, and at least doubled the necessary travel. To add to the difficulty and danger of the way selected, the winter storms came on unusually early. While they were yet involved in the mountains between Fort Hall and Fort Uinta, the snows lay deep around them; and between Fort Uinta and Fort Un- compahgre, on the waters of Grande river, the main castern branch of the Colorado, in the Spanish territory and yet west of the mountain summits, it was hardly possible for them to make headway. At this fort they recruited their supplies, and procuring a gnide started for Taos across the main divide of the Rocky mountains, and nearly a thousand miles by the way of their travel from Fort Hall. Four or five days from Fort Uncompahgre they en- conntered a terrific storm, when their guide became confused and Dr. Whitman was com- pelled to return to Fort Uncompahgre to pro- cure a new one, Mr. Lovejoy remaining alone in the mountain camp with the animals for seven days before his return. Recovering their way, it was yet thirty days before they reached Taos, and they suffered greatly on the way from

111

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

cold and scareity of food, being compelled to use mule meat, dogs and such other animals as came in their way. After remaining at Taos a few days they started for Bent's Fort, on the headwaters of the Arkansas river. Still mis- fortunes attended their way. Desiring to reach Bent's Fort more speedily than his loaded pack animals could make the journey, the Doctor selected the best horse, and with blank- ets and a little food rode forward alone. In four days Mr. Lovejoy and the guide arrived, but the Doctor had not been seen or heard of. Mr. Lovejoy returned a hundred miles on the trail, but could only hear from the Indians that a lost white man had been inquiring the way to Bent's Fort. About the eighth day from the time he left his companions he reached the fort, worn, weary and desponding, as he believed God had bewildered him for traveling on the Sabbath-a thing that he had always consci- entiously avoided.

Leaving Mr. Lovejoy at Bent's Fort, he im- mediately pushed forward with a company of mountaineers, and reached St. Louis in Febru- ary. He had been over four months on the road. Why he should have left the plain road leading through a comparatively open country, free from precipitous mountain ranges, over which he himself had traveled, most of it three times, and taken one so much longer, leading through the most rugged portion of the Rocky mountains, and with which he was entirely un- acquainted, has never been decided.

On reaching St. Lonis Dr. Whitman found that the occasion for his perilous winter's jour- ney, so far as it related to the matter of nego- tiations between Great Britain and the United States for the sale of Oregon to the former in any way, did not exist. The treaty between the two powers known as the Webster-Ashburton treaty had been signed on the 9th of August, preceding, nearly two months before his jour- ney. The Oregon boundary had not been in- cluded in the treaty, nor even discussed by Mr. Webster and Mr. Ashburton, representing the two governments. Consequently the danger of

the loss of Oregon by the United States had not been so imminent as he had supposed. Ilis purpose, however, was none the less patriotic, nor his bravery in endeavoring to carry it out the less admirable, but this fact certainly dem- onstrates that all attempts to claim for him the honor of saving Oregon to the United States must prove failures. The danger of losing Oregon was fully averted by the postponement of the boundary question. Ilis presenee in Washington, beginning six months after the treaty was signed, and nearly as long after its ratification by the Senate, could not have in- fueneed the decision of the question in the remotest degree. Nor is there any evidence that he personally ever made such a claim. Indeed it is clear that he did not, but that it was made many years after the occurrences narrated, and long after his tragic death at the hands of the Indians had invested his name with the halo of martyrdom by those who had been associated with him in his missionary work, and grew out of their admiration of his character and their memory of the purpose that largely actuated him, as they understood it, in projecting and performing his celebrated jour- ney. It is not needful to attempt further ex- planation of the claim that was, for a time, strongly current, that Dr. Whitman "alone saved Oregon to the United States." He did his part, others did theirs, but if Dr. Whitman had not lived Oregon would have been, as it now is, a great State of our glorious Union.

On Dr. Whitman's arrival on the frontier he found that great preparations were being made for an emigration to Oregon in the opening spring. The desire and purpose to find a home in the Willamette Valley, the fame of whose climate and produetiveness had already spread far and wide, was becoming a contagion. Re- sponding to that sentiment, Dr. Whitman wrote a small pamphlet describing the country and the route thither, urging people to emigrate, and assuring them that they could take wagons through to the Columbia, and promising to join the emigration and act as its pilot on his

112

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

return from the Eastern States. His pamphlet, added to his personal appeals, added somewhat to the numbers, and largely to the courage and confidence of the emigrants, but he was too late to initiate the great public movement that resulted in the large emigration of that year,-

historically the most important that ever en- tered Oregon, as it put such a preponderance of American people and American sentiment into Oregon as to assuredly settle the position Oregon itself would take in the pending inter- national controversy.

CHAPTER XII.

IMMIGRATIONS, CONTINUED.

GREAT PREPARATIONS FOR EMIGRATION-INCIDENTS OF EMIGRATION-MR. NESMITH'S ACCOUNT-A NEW ERA-LIEUTENANT FREMONT'S EXPEDITION-EMIGRATION OF 1844-DIVIDED INTO COM- PANIES- SETTLEMENT NORTH OF THE COLUMBIA-EMIGRATION OF 1845-PROMINENT MEMBERS -A NEW BUT DISASTROUS ROAD- EMIGRATION OF 1846-PARTY TAKING A NEW ROUTE- MUCH SUFFERING -THE DONNER PARTY-WAGON ROAD ACROSS THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS -- CAUGHT IN THE SNOWS-WINTER IN THE MOUNTAINS-BARLOW AND RECTOR-EMIGRATION OF 1847-VALUABLE ADDITIONS " TRAVELING NURSERY."

Tis as well, once for all that we give some account of the circumstances attending the gathering, departure and journey of an emi- gration over the mountains to the Pacific coast; and as the emigration, of 1843 was so pro- minent in its early history, we have chosen this as the place in which to do so. As to the gather- ing of this emigration on the western frontier of Missouri we shall perinit Hon. J. W. Nes- mith, a young member of the emigration, after- ward for many years one of the most promi- nent public men in the Territory and State, and for six years senator in the Congress of the United States for Oregon, to tell the story in his own well-chosen words. He says:

" Without order from any quarter, and with- out preconcert, promptly as the grass began to start, the cmigrants began to assemble ncar In- dependence, at a place called Fitzhne's Mill. On the seventeenth day of May, 1843, notices were circulated through the different encamp- ments that on the succeeding day those who contemplated emigrating to Oregon would meet at a designated point to organize. Promptly at the appointed hour motley groups assembled. They consisted of the people from all States

and Territories, and nearly all nationalities, the most, however, from Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, and all strangers to one another, but impressed with some crude idea that there existed some imperative necessity for some kind of an organization for mu- tual protection against the hostile Indians in- habiting the great unknown wilderness stretch- ing away to the shores of the Pacific, and which they were about to traverse with their wives and children, household goods and all their earthly possessions.

"Many of the emigrants were from the west- ern tier of counties of Missouri, known as the Platte Purchase, and among them was Peter H. Burnett, a former merchant, who had aban- doned the yardstick and become a lawyer of some celebrity for his ability as a smooth- tungued advocate. He subsequently emigrated to California, and was elected the first governor of the Golden State. Mr. Burnett, or as he was familiarly designated, 'Pete,' was called upon for a speech. Mounting a log the glib-tongued orator delivered a glowing, florid address. He conimenced by showing his andience that the then western tier of States and Territories was

113

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

over-crowded by a redundant population, who had not sufficient elbow room for the expansion of their enterprise and genins, and it was a duty they owed to themselves and posterity to strike out in search of a more extended field and a more genial climate, where the soil yielded the richest return for the slightest amount of cul- tivation, where the trees were loaded with per- ennial fruit, and where a good substitute for bread, called La Camash, grew in the ground, salmon and other fish crowded the streams, and where the principal labor of the settlers would be confined to keeping their gardens free from the inroads of buffalo, elk, deer, and wild tur- keys! He appealed to our patriotism by pictur- ing forth the glorious empire we should estab- lish on the shores of the Pacific; how, with our trusty rifles, we would drive out the British usurpers who claimed the soil, and defend the country from the advance and pretensions of the British lion, and how posterity would honor us for placing the finest portion of our country under the dominion of the stars and stripes. He concluded by a slight allusion to the hard- ships and trials incident to the trip, and dangers to be encountered from hostile Indians on the route, and those inhabiting the country whither we were bound. He furthermore intimated a desire to look upon the tribe of ' noble red men,' that the valiant and well-armed crowd around him could not vanquish in a single encounter.

"Other speeches were made, full of glowing description of the fair land of promise in the far-away Oregon, which no one in the assem- blage had ever seen, and of which not more than half a dozen had ever read any account. After the election of Mr. Burnett as captain and other necessary officers, the meeting, as motley and primitive a one as ever assembled, adjourned with three cheers for Captain Burnett and Ore- gon. On the 20th of May, 1843, after a pretty thorough military organization, we took up our line of march, with Captain John Gantt, an old army officer who combined the character of trappers and mountaineer, as our guide. Gantt had in his wanderings been as far as Green

river, and assured us of the practicability of a wagon road thus far; Green river, the extent of our guide's knowledge in that direction, was not half-way to the Willamette valley, the then only inhabited portion of Oregon. Beyond that we had not the slightest conjecture of the condition of the country. We went forth trusting to the future, and would doubtless have encountered more difficulties than we ex- perienced had not Dr. Whitman overtaken us before we reached the terminus of our guide's knowledge. He was familiar with the whole route, and was confident that wagons could pass through the cañons and gorges of Snake river and over the Blue mountains, which the mountaineers in the vicinity of Fort Hall de- clared to be a physical impossibility.

"Captain Grant, then in charge of the Hud- son's Bay Company at Fort Hall, endeavored to dissuade us from proceeding farther with our wagons, and showed us the wagons that the emigrants of the preceding year had abandoned as an evidence of the impracticability of our de- termination. Dr. Whitman was persistent in his assertion that wagons could proceed as far as the grand Dalles of the Columbia river, from which point he asserted they could be taken down by rafts or batteaux to the Willamette valley, while our stock could be driven by an Indian trail over the Cascade mountains near Mount Hood. Happily Whitman's advice pre- vailed and a large number of wagons with a portion of the stock did reach Walla Walla and the Dalles, from which points they were taken to Willamette the following year. Had we fol- lowed Grant's advice and abandoned the cattle and wagons at Fort Hall, much suffering must have ensned, as a sufficient number of horses to carry the women and children of the party could not have been obtained: besides wagons and cattle were indispensable to men expecting to live by farming a country destitute of snch articles.

"At Fort Hall we fell in with some Cayuse and Nez Perces Indians returning from the buffalo country, and as it was necessary for Dr.

114

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

Whitman to precede ns to Walla Walla, he recommended to us a guide in the person of an old Cayuse Indian called 'Sticcus.' He was a faithful old fellow, perfectly familiar with all the trails and topography of the country from Fort Hall to the Dalles, and although not speak- ing a word of English, and no one in our party a word of Cayuse, he succeeded by pantomime in taking ns over the roughest wagon route I ever saw."

This quotation from Mr. Nesmith must give our readers a fair idea of the courage and deter- mination necessary in this early day to face the dangers and endure the discomforts of a half year's journey, with oxen and wagons as the means of travel, over the desolate plains and through the rugged mountains that lay wide and dark between the Missouri river and the Pacific ocean, a distance of a round two thon- sand miles. But the daily march over dusty and sunbrowned leagues, the night's weird bivonac under the stars, the fording of rushing rivers, the ascent and descent of precipitons mountains, the lone camp-guard, the thundering stampede of horses and oxen, the warning and warding off of Indian attacks amid the crouching of fright- ened children, or the suppressed sobbing of timid women,-these must have been seen and experienced to be understood as they existed in reality from 1841, when emigration began, to 1860, abont which time the pioneer emigrant era may be considered to have closed.

In the emigration of this year were many men whose names became very prominently connected with the history of the country. Among these may be mentioned the Apple- gates, Burnett, Cason, Chapman, Dement, the Fords, the Garrisons, the Hunters, the Howells, the Matheneys, McCarver, Nesmith, Parker, and the Waldos. When the company reached Oregon, besides the gentlemen connected with the various missionary stations, and fifty or more of the former Hudson's Bay Company employes settled on French prairie, there were resident in Oregon abont eighty American men, making in the antum of 1843, with the newly

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 17

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