An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 21

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

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" Your fundamental act against that institu- tion, copied from the ordinance of 1787 (the work of the great men of the South in the great days of the South, prohibiting slavery in a terri- tory far less northern than yours), will not be abrogated. Nor is that the intention of the prime mover of the amendment. Upon the record the judiciary committee of the Senate is the author of that amendment, but not so the fact. It is only the midwife of it. Its anthor is the same mind that generated the . Fire- Brand Resolutions,' of which I send you a copy, and of which the amendment is the legiti- mate derivation. Oregon is not the object. The most rabid propagandist of slavery cannot expect to plant it on the shores of the Pacific in the latitude of Wisconsin and of the Lake of the Woods. A home agitation for election and and disunion purposes is all that is intended by thrusting this fire-brand question into your bill as it ought not to be. I promise you this in the name of the South, as well as of the North, and the event will not deceive me. In the mean- time the president will give you all the protec- tion which existing laws will enable him to extend to you, and until Congress has time to act your friends must rely upon you to con- tinne to govern yourselves as you have hereto- fore done under the provisions of your own voluntary compact, and with the justice, har- mony and moderation which is due to your own character and to the honor of the American name. * * *

" In conclusion, I have to assure you that the same spirit which has made me the friend of Oregon for thirty years, which led me to de-

nounce the joint-occupation treaty the day it was made, and to oppose its renewal in 1828, and to labor for its abrogation until it was ter- minated; the same spirit which led me to reveal the grand destiny of Oregon in articles written in 1818, and to support every measure for her benefit since,-the same spirit still ani- mates me and will continue to do so while 1 live,-which I hope will be long enough to see an emporium of Asiatic commerce at the mouth of your river, and a stream of Asiatic trade pouring into the valley of the Mississippi through the channel of Oregon."

These letters fully explained to the people of Oregon the political condition of the questions relating to their interests, as well as communi- cated to them the courage of assured expecta- tion. Their provisional government was meet- ing, in a reasonable way, the necessities of internal order, and, except for a feeling of national orphanage that must have oppressed the ten or twelve thousand Americans in the country, there was not much real detriment to the country in the delay. That feeling, how- ever, made the disappointment bitter indeed.

To stimulate, as far as possible, the action of Congress, Governor Abernethy, and many of the leading gentlemen of the Territory, requested IIon. J. Quinn Thornton, supreme judge under the provisional government, to proceed to Washington and labor with Congress in behalf of Oregon. Acceding to their request Mr. Thornton left Oregon the latter part of October and arrived in Washington about the middle of May, 1848. Ile was received in a very cordial manner by the friends of Oregon in Congress, and by the president, and, acting under their advice, prepared a memorial setting forth the needs and conditions of the people of Oregon, and it was presented to both Houses of Congress.

In addition to the memorial, Mr. Thornton drafted a bill for the organization of a Terri- torial govornment, which was introduced and placed upon its passage. Containing a clause prohibiting slavery, this bill was as objection- able to the pro-slavery force in Congress as was

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that which had been defeated two years before. Led by Jefferson Davis and John (, Calhoun, the party resisted, with a desperate determina- tion, every step of the progress of the bill. By all the tactics known to legislative bodies it was opposed and resisted. It was approaching the time fixed upon for the final adjournment of Congress, Angust 14, and every effort was made to prevent the vote being taken. But the friends of the bill had made their arguments, and resolved to remain in session until its ene- mies yielded to a vote. A violent altercation, which came near resulting in a duel, occurred between Senators Benton of Missouri and But- ler of South Carolina, but after every expedient of filibuster and delay had been resorted to by the enemies of the bill, the vote was taken on the bill at about 8 o'clock on the morning of August 13, 1848, the Senate having been in ses- sion all night, and the bill was passed. Within a few hours after its passage President l'olk affixed his signature to it, and the "Territory of Oregon" became a legal fact.

Connected with the influences that hastened the result, and contributing no little to it, were the occurrence of the "Whitman massa- cre," which is elsewhere in this book separately treated of, and the sending of Joseph L. Meek as a special messenger overland to Washington, to convey the intelligence of the terrible affair, and contribute what he could to the purpose for which Mr. Thornton had already gone. The massacre occurred on the 29th day of November, 1847, abont six weeks after Mr. Thornton's departure. The country was plunged into a state of grief and alarm. How far the murderous purposes and combinations of the Indians extended no one could tell. The Provisional Legislature was then in session at Oregon City. That body, on the 10th of Decem- ber, on motion of J. W. Nesmith, resolved to dispatch a special messenger to Washington at once "for the purpose of seenring the immedi- ate influence and protection of the United States Government in our internal affairs." On the 16th of December, Joseph L. Meek was

chosen as such messenger, and $1,000 appro- priated for his expenses. Mr. Meek was a member of the Legislative Assemby, but im- mediately resigned his seat for the purpose of complying with the desires of that body, as, in- deed, of all the people of Oregon.

The selection of Mr. Meek as messenger to carry dispatches to Washington was, in most respects, a very suitable one. The inission was one of great peril and hardship. It was win- ter, and the route lay over nearly 2,000 miles of entirely unsettled deserts and mountains, on which the winter storms and snows held a ter- rible tyranny. A journey over them by sum- mer was difficult and dangerons enough, and one by winter had seldom been attempted, and more seldom accomplished.

Mr. Meek was a " mountain man." He had spent many years as a liunter and trapper, rang- ing the valleys of the upper Missouri, Colum- bia and Snake rivers, Colorado and Salt Lake, and all the mountain regions from Missouri to California and Oregon. His familiarity with the region to be traversed, his unusual courage, quick wit, and great powers of physical endur- ance pre-eminently qualified him to undertake the hazardons mission. His credentials from the Legislature and governor, and a memorial and other documents to be presented to the Government at Washington, were prepared and furnished him, and on the 4th of Jannary he set ont on his mission, no less perilous than important.

The incidents of this winter journey of Mr. Meek belong to the romance of an era long since departed, the chronicle of which lives only in the memories of the few remaining gray-haired men whose early manhood belonged to it. Our space permits only the most gen- eral reference to them.

On reaching The Dalles of the Columbia, such was the excited condition of the Indians between the Cascade and Blue mountains, that the mes- senger and his small party, consisting of John Owen and George Ebberts, were compelled to remain at that place several weeks, as it would

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then have been impossible to have made their way through the hostile tribe.

When the troops of the provisional govern- ment arrived on their way to the scene of the Whitman massacre, Mr. Meek accompanied them as far as Wafilitpu, the scene of that dire- ful tragedy. One of Mr. Meek's own children, who was in the care of Dr. Whitman and his wife, had been a victim of Cayuse treachery at that time. The place and scene of the murder was most full of sad and impressive recollections and impressions, as the troops and the party of Meek committed the remains of the victims of that terrible day to the earth, before he con- tinued on his journey. This done, a company of the troops escorted his small party, now con- sisting of seven men, as far as the base of the Blue mountains, where the lone travelers were cast loose on the vast wintry world that lay coldl and white for more than a thousand miles be- fore them.

Their ronte lay over the Blue mountains into Grande Ronde valley, thence to Powder river, and down Burnt river to Snake, then up the great valley of that stream to the Rocky mount- ains, and thence down the eastern slope of the continent to St. Joseph, on the Missouri river, which they reached in a little over two months from the Willamette valley. It is hardly prob- able that there was another man in Oregon who could have accomplished this journey with the celerity with which it was accomplished by J. L. Meek. What remained to be done was for him more difficult. If we give a page to the consideration of the unique place, Mr. Meek, and others like him, held in early Oregon his- tory, this will be better appreciated, and one chapter of our story will be more clearly read. To do this we take him as the most prominent, if not the best type of that element in the social and civil life of early pioneer times in Oregon.

Joseph L. Meek was a Virginian by birth. In his early youth he found his way to St. Louis, where, in 1828, he engaged himself to Mr. Will- jam Sublette, then and for years thereafter one of the ablest leaders of the fur trade of the Rocky

mountains, and with his company went into the work of hunting and trapping in the great mountain regions of the interior of the conti- nent. In various relations connected with such men as Sublette, Bridger, Fontenelle, Smith, Bonneville and others, he spent his life until 1840, when, the fur trade having almost entirely failed in the mountains, he resolved to seek a home in the Willamette valley. Taking his wife, an Indian woman, and family of half-breed children, he abandoned the mountains and took up his residence on a beautiful land claim about twenty miles west of where the city of Portland now stands, on what was then known as " Tualatin plains," when he thus and there entered upon a life associated with the purposes and work of civilization. Ile was just in the ma- turity of his physical powers, and a man of a fine and engaging presence. Tall, lithe, well- rounded, erect, with black hair and sparkling black eyes, a face radiant with self-satisfied good humor, and having a smooth and easy utter- ance, he could always secure the attention of men.

Technically he was uneducated. Really he was educated though unlettered. Ilis education was that of experience and adventure and dan- ger,-an education that goes further in the mak- ing of a man than mere letters. It gave to him an induration of physical force that was admira- ble. It did not elevate his moral nature com. mensurately. It imparted a keenness of per- ception to his intellectual faculties, while it did not broaden and elevate his reason. It quickened his instinctive sagacity into adroitness, while it did not furnish it a strong basis of conscientious- ness. Conscious physical power and a long period of wild and varried adventure gave to his naturally independent nature an abandon that verged on recklesness. The wild stories of the camps in which he spent his youth and early manhood, with their frequent excesses and carousals, colored his forms of thought and speech with a spirit of exaggeration which often went beyond the limits of fact or truth. Thus his education,-the education of the camp and

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the trail and the wigwam, crystallized him into that unique personality that is known in early Oregon history as "Jo Meek",-a personality that was not without its importance in place and power in the early pioneer days in which these later days of a more specions civilized pretense were conceived and born, and that helped in no inconsiderable degree to make these later and better days a possibility and a fact. Without him and such as he then was, these conld not have been now. So we honor these men of the olden times.

It is scarcely possible for a man of to-day, as he steps out of a gilded palace car, on the banks of the Missouri after a three-days run from Portland to Omaha, to imagine the appearance of " Jo Meek " as he stepped down from the back of his mule after his two-months ride from Oregon, on that March evening in 1848. IIe was dressed in buckskin pants, with a blanket capote and wolf-skin cap, with moccasins on his feet. His hair and beard were long and nnkempt. He had neither money nor friends, and his only source of hope to reach Washing- ton was in his mission and himself, and these proved an open sesame wherever he went. When he reached Washington, only a conple of weeks after the arrival of Mr. Thornton, the documents he brought and his personal intelli- gence and influence aided no little in hastening the action of Congress for the relief of Oregon in the adoption of the bill for the organization of a Territorial government.

After Mr. Polk had signed the bill on the 13th of August he made haste to complete his part of the work of organizing the Territory by the appointment of its officers. His own term of office as president was approaching its limit, and he was naturally desirous that the new gov- ernment of Oregon shonld be fully installed before its expiration. He chose General Joseph Lane, of Indiana, governor of the Territory, and appointed Joseph L. Meek United States marshal, and delegated him to convey his com- mission to the newly appointed governor, who was at his home in Indiana. and who was en-

tirely unaware of the duty about to be imposed upon him. General Lane accepted the com- mission thus honorably tendered him, and, three days after he received it, had closed up his affairs in Indiana, and in company with Mr. Meek was on his way toward Oregon.

After the most strennons effort Governor Lane reached Oregon City, the then capital, on the second day of March, 1849. On the third day of March he issued a proclamation and assumed the duties of his office, thus anticipat- ing by but a single day the expiration of the term of Mr. Polk as President of the United States. Thus the ambition of the president to signalize his term in the office of President of the United States, into which he was undonbt- edly lifted by the position of his party and him- self on the Oregon question, by the organization of the Territorial government in Oregon, was gratified, and Oregon passed out of its form of self-imposed provisional government, and was fully under the protection of the Government of the United States.

Though Governor Lane and Marshal Meek were in Oregon, they were the only official rep- resentatives of the United States Government in the Territory for a number of months. The other Territorial officers, namely, Kintzing Pritchell, secretary; William C. Bryant, chief justice, and O. C. Pratt and Peter II. Burnett, associate justices, were in due time appointed and took the respective places assigned them, and the Oregon Territory was fully organized.

Immediately on assuming the duties of his office, Governor Lane appointed marshals to take the census, as provided in the organic act. The population was then ascertained to be 9,083, of whom all but 208 were Americans.

When the bill for the organization of the Territory of Oregon became a law, containing liberal promises for the donation of lands to actual settlers, it was anticipated that the conn- try would immediately be filled with those who were anxions to avail themselves of this pro- vision. The drift of emigration was almost entirely toward Oregon. California was little

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known, and few eared to venture among the Mexico-Spanish people of that region. Almost simultaneously with the passage of the bill, however, there oceurred an event in that Terri- tory that turned the tide of emigration from the Eastern States thitherward, and even drew very heavily on the population of Oregon itself. This was the discovery of gold at Coloma, on the south fork of the American river, by James W. Marshall, who was among the arrivals in Oregon in the autunm of 1844. but went to California in 1845, and entered the employ- ment of Captain John A. Sutter at that place. In a few months intelligence of this event had reached the Eastern States. It awakened a great excitement, and intending emigrants to Oregon by the thousand turned to California. The emigration on the plains in the summer of 1848 met the intelligence on the way and largely turned toward the fields of gold. In Angust, about seven months from the date of the discovery, the news reached Oregon by a vessel which entered the Columbia river for a cargo of supplies for the mines. The effeet upon the people of Oregon was even more marked than that on any other part of the country. Nearly the entire adult male popu- lation of the territory rushed to California. Farms were left untilled and harvests unreaped. It looked as though Oregon would be depopu- lated. For two or three years this exodus had a great effeet on the prosperity and improve- ment of the country. But the produetiveness of the lands of Oregon, and the average saln- brity of its elimate had become so well known that gradually most of those who had left re- turned, and again emigration resumed its old flow into the valley of the Willamette. Besides, the mines of California opened the first market for the abundant products of Oregon; priees rose to almost fabulous figures; and for a few years the gold-diggers of the plains of California poured a stream of the yellow dust into the pockets of the farmers and herdsmen of Oregon. Prospeetors pushed their discoveries northward of the Sacramento, until in 1851 rich mines

were discovered in Southern Oregon. So, while the first effect of the discovery of gold in Cali- fornia was detrimental to the prosperity of Oregon, its ultimate result was the opening of an era of unexampled advancement.

Up to this time there had been but little coin, or money of any kind, in the country. So straitened were the people for a circulating medium that the provisional Legislature made wheat a legal tender at one dollar per bushel. Orders on the Hudson's Bay Company, and on some mercantile establishments, and upon the Methodist mission, though not legal tend- ers, passed current among the people as the best medinm of exchange that could be had. But with the coming of gold dust into the country in the winter of 1848-'49, this was passed current as money, though at a great loss to those who were compelled to dispose of it as such, as an ounce of gold dust, in- trinsically worth from $16 to $18, eould be sold for only $11. To remedy this evil the provisional Legislature passed an act for the "assaying, melting and eoining of gold." Before anything was done under this aet, how- ever, the functions of the provisional govern- ment were terminated by the arrival of Gover- nor Lane and the organization of the Territorial government. Still private enterprise came for- ward and supplied the want by issuing what is known as "beaver money," in coins of five and ten dollars in value. These coins bore on the obverse side the figure of a beaver-whenee their name -- above which were the letters " K., M., T., A., W., R., C., S.," and beneath " O. T. 1849." On the reverse side was " Oregon Ex- change Company, 130 Grains Native Gold, 5 D" or "10 pwts. 20 grains, 10 D." The letters were the initials of the gentlemen composing the company, namely: Messrs. Kilbourne, Ma- gruder, Taylor, Abernethy, Willson, Rector, Campbell and Smith. The dies were made by Mr. Hamilton Campbell, and the press and rolling machine by W. H. Reetor. This was not claimed by the company as money, but simply that so much value in gold was put into

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this convenient form for use as a medium of cx- change. In a few years, however, the "coin of the realm" became plentiful, and these found their way to the United States mint for recoinage.

Though General Lane had assumed the duties of his office on the 3d day of March, 1849, there could scarcely be said to be any govern- ment in the country for some months subse- quently. There was an executive but no laws to execute, and no courts for processes and trials. The condition was anomalous, and far from satisfactory. The seat of government at Washington was so distant, and so innch time was required to communicate with it, and the appointed Territorial officers were so tardy in arriving and entering on their duties, that the people became anxious and discontented. So much time was required to complete the census and other needful preparations that Governor Lane could not call an election for delegate to Congress and members of the Territorial Legis- lature before the 6th of June, 1849. The total vote cast for delegate to Congress was about 943- a very small vote for the population of over 9,000 as ascertained by the census only just completed. This was owing to the absence of such a great number of the adult males in the California gold mines. Of this vote Samnel R. Thurston secured 470, Columbia Lancaster, 321, James W. Nesmith, 104. Joseph L. Meek, 40, and J. S. Griffin, 8.

Governor Lane, in his proclamation calling an election, had made an apportionment of members of the Legislature to the several counties or districts as they had been formed by the Provisional Legislature, and the following- named gentlemen were elected to the first Ter- ritorial Legislature:

Council: W. Blain, Tualatin; W. W. Buck, Clackamas; S. Parker, Clackamas and Cham- poeg; W. Shannon, Champoeg ; S. F. MeKeon, ('latsop, Lewis and Vancouver; J. B. Graves, Yam Hill; W. Maley, Linn; N. Ford, Polk; L. A. Humphrey, Benton.

Representatives: D. Hill and W. M. King, Tualatin ; A. L. Lovejoy, J. D. Holman and

Gabriel Walling, Clackamas; J. W. Green, W. W. Chapman and W. T. Matlock, Champoeg; A. J. Hembree, R. C. Kinney and J. B. Walling, Yam IIill; J. Dunlap and J. Conser, Linn; 11. N. V. Holmes and S. Burch, Polk; M. T. Simmons, Lewis, Vancouver and Clatsop; J. L. Mulkey and G. B. Smith, Benton.

The Legislature assembled at Oregon City, July 16, 1849, and held a brief session, in which they apportioned their future member- ship; changed the names of Champoeg, Tual- atin and Vancouver counties to Marion, Wash- ington and Clarke, respectively; decided what officers the various counties should have, and provided for their election the following Octo- ber, and divided the Territory into three judicial districts. In October the county elections were held, and the officers who were chosen qualified immediately, and the Territorial Government of Oregon thus completed its organization.

The condition of Oregon at this date was most promising. The doubt and hesitation and distrust of the period of the provisional govern- ment had passed away. The end of Indson's Bay domination had come. Henceforth that great corporation was here only for a limited time, and while here could exercise no power over public affairs, only as its individual mem- bers chose to become citizens of the United States and take their place in the body politie as such. No longer did the power of British ships of war in the Columbia and Willamette rivers alarm or their threats annoy. Courts were organized for the redress of wrong and the support of right. The stars and stripes truly emblemed the sovereignty of the land, and was the pledge of the protection of a great nation. And in a climate as genial as man could desire, on a soil as fruitful as an Eden, amidst scenery that was forever an inspiration of great thoughts and high ambitions, and a people whose energy and patriotism and intelligence had marked them as leaders and builders of society even before they had come into this sunset land, there seemed little before the infant commonwealth to inter-

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fere with or prevent its rapid growth into a great and prosperous State.

The time of General Lane as governor was short. James K. Polk was succeeded by General Taylor as president of the United States, March 4, 1849, one day after General Lane assumed the duties of his office. In April, 1850, he received notice that President Taylor had re- moved him from office and appointed Major John P. Gaines in his stead on the second day of the previous October.

An interesting incident connected with his appointment was that General Taylor first of- fered the governorship of the Territory to Abraham Lincoln, who was an applicant for the post of commissioner of the general land "office. That place being filled, President Taylor offered him the place of governor of Oregon. Mr. Lin- coln declined it, doubtless believing that better opportunities for his future advancement would exist in the East than in the narrower associa- tions of the Pacific coast. It is interesting to speculate on the changes and modifications in State and national history which would have oc- enrred had Mr. Lincoln become governor of this then most obscure Territory .

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 21

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