An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 7

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

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John C. Fremont was a member of the Corps of Topographical Engineers of the United States, appointed from civil life, and hence not enter- ing that service through the door of West Point. He was restlessly ambitious, in love with adven- ture and anxious to distinguish himself. For his fame he fell on anspicions times. Public attention was strongly directed toward Oregon. He solicited an appointment to the command of an expedition, which he had devised himself to explore and map out the country west of Mis- souri as far as the South Pass in the Rocky mountains. In accordance with his request Colonel J. J. Abert, chief of the Corps of the Topographical Engineers, ordered the expedition and gave its command to Captain Fremont. As

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this expedition of 1842 had little more to do with Oregon than to prepare the way for the one of the following year which was continued in force to the Dalles of the Columbia, and by Cap- tain Fremont himself to Fort Vancouver, we can dismiss it with this brief reference.

The second expedition, that of 1843, like that of the preceding year, was organized at Captain Fremont's own solicitation. He dictated its object, marked out its ronte and selected its personnel. Its object was to eonneet his own survey of the previous year, which reached as far west as the South Pass, with that of Commander Wilkes on the coast of the Pacific ocean. He selected a company of thirty-three men, princi- pally of Creole and Canadian French, with a few Americans, and, leaving Kansas landing on the Missouri river on the 29th of May, reached the termination of his former reconnoissance in the South Pass, by the way of the Kansas, Ar- kansas and upper Platte rivers, passing over the spot where Denver now is, on the 13th of Au- gust. Here he entered Oregon, making this frank record: that "the broad, smooth highway where the numerous heavy wagons of the emi- grants had entirely beaten and crushed the artemisia, was a happy exchange to our poor animals for the sharp rocks and tough shrubs among which they had been toiling so long." This, it will be remembered, was the great emi- gration of 1843, and Captain Fremont makes no claim in his reports to have had anything to do with pioneering its way or contributing to its safe conduct, as his was a purely scientific and topographical expedition, and, in pursuance of these purposes often led him far aside from the road of the emigrants. We speak of this in simple justice, as some writers have ridiculed him as claiming to be the " pathfinder" to Ore- gon,-a claim which he nowhere makes, but which was only a political catch-word of his friends when he was the first candidate of the Republi- can party for president of the United States It was like " Fifty-four forty or fight" of the can- didacy of Mr. Polk in 1844, although it did not serve so successfully its purpose as that.

From the South Pass Captain Fremont con- tinned his course along the well-beaten emigrant road to Green river and then to Bear river, making careful annotations of the topography and geology of the country over which he passed. His exhaustive description of the lo- cality and character of Soda or Beer Springs has been the authority of all writers on the topogra- phy and mineralogy of that region from that day to this. It is worth observing that his as- tronomical observations here place Soda Springs in latitude 42º 39' 57", or less than fifty miles north of what was then Mexico, and conse- quently the same distance in Oregon. These are the " Soda springs" now on the line of the Union Pacific railroad in eastern Idaho.

The intention of Captain Fremont being to explore the Great Salt Lake, which up to this time had been almost a myth so far as science was concerned, about five miles west of Soda Springs he turned to the left, while the emi- grant road bore away over the hills to the right, and, after ten days' travel, mainly down the Bear River valley, on the afternoon of September 5th encamped on the shore of a great salt marsh which he correctly concluded must be the margin of the lake. He reached the bed of the lake near the mouth of the Bear river, but skirted along it to the south until he reached the mouth of Weber river, near which the party encamped and made preparations for an exploration of some portions of the lake in an inflated india- rubber boat. Finally, on the morning of Sep- tember 9, the party launched out on the then calm surface of this ocean-like sea, and abont noon reached the shore of an island where they remained that and the following day.

The account given by Fremont of Salt Lake and its surroundings is exceedingly particular and interesting, but of too great length for these pages. He remained npon the lake until the 12th of September, when he resumed his jour- ney toward the Columbia, returning along the line of his previous travel. His company was entirely ont of food, making one supper out of sea-gulls, which Kit Carson had killed near the

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lake. Another evening Captain Fremont re- cords the fact that hunger made his people very quiet and peaceable, and there was rarely an oath to be heard in the camp. Certainly those ac- quainted with the habits of the men of the mountains and plains in those days will believe these must have been very hungry. He restored them to gayety, and probably profanity too, by permitting them "to kill a fat young horse" which he had purchased of the Snake Indians. Their course led northward, through the range of mountains that divide the Great Basin of Salt Lake from the waters that flow to the Pa- cific through the Snake and Columbia rivers. From these mountains they emerged into the valley of what he calls the Pannack river, other- wise known as the Ratt river, down which they followed until they emerged on the plains of Snake river in view of the " Three Buttes," the most prominent landmarks of these great plains, and reached Snake river on the evening of Sep- tember 22d, a few miles above the American Falls.

From this point the reconnaissance of Captain Fremont was down the valley of Snake river, along the course afterward so familiar to the emigrants, sweeping to the south along the foot of the Goose Creek mountains several miles distant from Snake river for all the distance in which it runs through the deeply ent basaltic gorge, in which are situated its greatest enriosi- ties, the Twin Falls and the great Shoshone Falls, the existence of both of which was un- known to white men until ten years later than Captain Fremont's explorations. He crossed the river, to the north side some miles below " Fishing" or Salmon Falls, thence to the Boise river, striking that stream near the present site of Boise City, and via old Fort Boise, where he recrossed the Snake river to the south, and so westward through Powder river valley and Grande Ronde valley to the Columbia river, which he reached at Walla Walla, now Wallala, on the 25th day of October. In this entire dis- tance many careful and frequent astronomical observations were taken, latitudes and longitudes

were fixed, and the country very accurately de- seribed topographically. The only part of this stage of his journey on which Captain Fremont did not follow the usual route of the emigrants, was from near where La Grande now stands in Grande Ronde valley, over the Blue mountains, to where Milton is now located on the Walla Walla river just below where it issues from the mountains. Here he sought a new route, pass- ing the head of the Umatilla river to the east and north; but, though he succeeded in forcing his way through the Blue range there, it has not been adopted as a feasible line of general travel.

Fremont continued his journey down the banks of the Columbia, and on the 4th of No- vember reached The Dalles. Leaving most of his party at this point, Captain Fremont himself continued his journey down the river, and in a few days reached Vancouver, where his westward journey terminated.

The reception Mr. Fremont met at the hands of Dr. MeLoughlin, at that time governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, was such as that eminently hospitable and courteous gentleman always extended to those who visited that place. The record made by Captain Fremont fully evinces this, and is like the common record of visitors there. He says: "I immediately waited on Dr. McLoughlin, the executive officer of the Hudson's Bay Company west of the Rocky mountains, who received me with the courtesy and hospitality for which he has been eminently distinguished, and which makes a forcible and delightful impression on a traveler from the long wilderness froin which we had issued. I was immediately supplied by him with the necessary stores and provisions to refit and sup- port my party in our contemplated winter jour- ney to the States." Dr. McLoughlin also tur- nished Captain Fremont with a letter of recom- mendation and credit for any officers of the Hudson's Bay Company into whose posts he might be driven by unexpected misfortune.

As an item of history recorded by Captain Fremont at this time the following is worth the

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quoting. as it reveals Dr. MeLoughlin's treat- ment of the emigrants in a somewhat different and more honorable light than that in which some writers have presented it. Mr. Fremont says: " I found many emigrants at the fort, others had already crossed over into their land of promise-the Willamette valley. Others were daily arriving, and all of them had been furnished with shelter so far as it could be af- forded by the buildings of the establishment. Necessary clothing and provisions (the latter to be afterward returned in kind from the produce of their labor) were also furnished. This . friendly assistance was of very great value to the emigrants, whose families were otherwise exposed to inch suffering in the winter rains which had now commenced, at the same time that they were in want of all the common neces- saries of life." This record is honorable both to the man who made it and the man of whom it was made, especially when we consider that the relations of the two governments of which they were severally representative citizens, and in some sense official representatives, were then in the stress of urgent and somewhat strained diplomatic controversy over the very country in which they had met.

Completing the outfit for his proposed winter journey toward the States, Captain Fremont re- turned up the Columbia to The Dalles, arriving at that place on the afternoon of the 18th of November. From this point he proposed to be- gin his return expedition. The route selected would lead him southward, east of the Cascade range, clear through the territory of the United States, and then, by a south and eastward wheel, through the Mexican territory, including a con- tinued survey of the valley of the Great Salt lake, back again to the frontiers of Missouri. Those acquainted with the region he expected to travel need not be told that few explorers ever ventured on a more perilous expedition than was this at the season of the year in which he undertook it. The country was unknown, except that it was a vast region of bleak and open deserts, of vast and rocky ranges of mount-

ains; that its inhabitants were among the low- est and most savage of human beings, and that there was in it little that could be used for the support of life. It was a bold, brave venture these men made.

It was the 25th day of November before they were ready to set out from The Dalles. Up to this point, besides a mountain howitzer, some wheeled vehicles had been brought with them, but the last, except the howitzer, were here abandoned, and in flurries of snow they took leave of the Columbia river and turned away into the great southern wilderness.

Their route lay high up on the eastern slope of the Cascade mountains, at times touching the points of timber that project eastward along the rocky eliffs, or in the gorges of the streams. Proceeding southward they passed between the Des Chutes river and the mountain range, across the Tigh river and over the Tigh prairie, finding that high and sandy plain covered with snow, with the thermometer on the 27th at two degrees five minutes below zero. On the 29th they passed the Hot Springs, near which are now the buildings of the Warm Springs Indian Agency. From the elevated plain to the south of Warm Springs river, Fremont records the view of six of the great snowy peaks of the mountains at one time. He makes the mistake that nearly all the travelers of that day made of recording St. Helen's as one of the peaks visible from the various points east of the main range, whereas there is no place on the eastern plains from which it can be seen. Doubtless the summit of Mount Adams, which can be seen from many points, was mistaken for the former. On the 5th of December their route led them somewhat down from the mountain slope to the main branch of the Des Chutes river, crossing it the next day; and after a day or two more crossed it and entered on the high plateau which separates the waters of the Columbia from those which flow westward and southward, and en- camped on Klamath lake, on the evening of December 12. They were now nearly on the line between the territory of the United States

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and that of Mexico, and consequently we shall not follow their explorations further. Yet it is proper that we remark that Captain Fremont continued on to the sonthward amid ever in- creasing difficuities of travel on account of the roughness of the mountains and the depth of accumulating snows, until he was forced to at- tempt the passage of the Sierra Nevada monnt- ains into the valley of the Sacramento. He began this effort on the 3d day of Febrnary, and after a chapter of hardships which have few parallels in the history of explorations, reached Sntter's Fort, in California, on the 8th day of March, 1844.

The publication of the journal of these ex- peditions of Captain Fremont, in 1845, awak- ened a much deeper interest in the Pacific coast than ever before existed, and his descriptions of the route from the Missouri river to Fort Vancouver, in the very heart of the Pacific northwest, was of great value to the emigrations that crossed the plains from 1843 onward. His descriptions were remarkably accurate, and his maps of the routes traveled most scientifically correct, and-these considerations entitle his ex- plorations to this brief reference in a history of the Northwest.

CHAPTER V.

RIVAL CLAIMS AND PRETENSIONS.

CLAIMS OF EUROPEAN NATIONS -- CLAIMS OF SPAIN-RUSSIAN ENTERPRISE -- EDICT OF POPE ALEX- ANDER-MAZY BOUNDARIES-EXTENT OF THE OLD SPANISH CLAIM-OF THE FRENCH CLAIM- PARTIES TO THE STRUGGLE CHANGED-FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN-RESULTS OF THE WAR OF 1759 TO FRANCE-STATE OF THE CASE-WHAT THE UNITED STATES PURCHASED-CLAIMS OF GREAT BRITAIN-TEDIOUS DIPLOMACY-TWO TREATIES AT ONCE-NEGOTIATIONS OF 1807- OF 1813-"JOINT OCCUPANCY" TREATY -BRITAIN THE ADVANTAGE-INFLUENCE OF SIR ALEXANDER MCKENZIE-SESSION OF CONGRESS IN 1820-'21-FIRST PROPOSITION FOR THE SETTLEMENT OF OREGON -- "OREGON QUESTION" -- SENATOR BENTON'S BILL -- PROPOSITIONS OF 1828-JOINT OCCUPANCY RENEWED-WEBSTER- ASHBURTON TREATY -- THE BOUNDARY QUESTION ADJOURNED -- TREATY RATIFIED AND PROCLAIMED -- TAKEN UP BY THE PEOPLE -- TWO VIEWS- VIEWS OF RUFUS CHOATE-SENATOR BENTON'S SPEECHI -- BENTON'S BILL PASSES THE SENATE.

"HE claims of the European nations to ownership of the lands and resources of America rested on a somewhat flimsy basis in right. Its morality was that of might. There was a quasi yielding to these elaims as against each other on grounds of dis- covery and formal occupancy. At the same time not one of these powers stopped for a moment to consider what rights of the people that were found there when they came would be violated by their assumptions. Barbaric nations never had any rights that nations call- ing themselves civilized have felt bound to respect. England, France and Spain were, as

relates to what were termed barbaric nations, the freebooters of the world. America was a field for civilized rapine worthy of the struggle of these racial giants. Under some forms of treaty, designed mostly by either party to limit the pretensions of the other, but as far as pos- sible leaving itself free to enlarge its own elaims as it might have power to enforce them, these powers moved forward, first in the agreed di- vision of the area of North America among themselves, and then in using the allotted areas as the small change that settled the balances of peace and war in Continental Europe. Pleni- potentiaries sat in European capitals, 5,000

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miles away from the regions most interested, and arbitrated American destinies. In this way America became the real, though passive, arbiter of the world's new era. It was what Providence liad thrown into the balances of history to poise ultimately its beam for the equities and liberties of humanity. Let us see how the question stood 200 years after the Spanish navigator had lifted the veil of the sea from the fair face of this new land.

When the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, gave some definition to the claims of France and Spain and Russia in the New World, Spain claimed as her share of North America all the Pacific coast from Panama to Nootka sound, or Vancouver island. Her pretentions cov- ered the coasts, bays, islands, fisheries, and ex- tended inland indefinitely. Part of this claim was alleged on the ground of discovery by the heroic De Soto and others; and all of them were based on discovery under the papal bull of Alexander VI, in 1493. The bull or decree gave to the discoverer all newly discovered lands and waters. In 1530 Balboa, the Span- iard, discovered the Pacific ocean as he came over the Isthmus of Panama, and so in har- mony with the pretentious decree of Alexander VI Spain assumed rights of proprietorship over it. France held advantageous positions in America for the mastery of the continent; but as they were outside of the limits of what was afterward known as "Oregon" they need not be discussed. Russia at this time held no posses- sions in North America. But Peter the Great was her emperor, and his plans were already inatured for entering the list of contestants for empire in the New World. Before his plans could be fully consummated Peter the Great . had died, and his widow, Catherine, was on the throne of Muscovy. With an enterprise not less aggressive than his, she pushed forward his plans of commercial and territorial aggrandize- ment until northern Asia as well as northern Europe had been made commercially tributary to the designs of Russia. It was but a step from the Asiatic shores of the northern Pa-

cific to those of the American mainland of Alaska, and Russia was in a position to take that one step. The fur trade furnished the oc. casion. Prominent, if not indeed chief, among the agents of Russian aggression in this direc- tion was Behring the Dane, who made three voyages through the straits that now bear his name, and on the third gave up his life on a desolate little granite island whose name still monuments his memory. But he, and those as- sociated with him, had given, by visitation and trade, a color of title to Russia to this North- western America.

At this time England made absolutely no pretense to territorial or even commercial rights on the Pacific coast, and none on the American continent anywhere except on the Atlantic slope from Charlestown to Penobscot north- ward, and inland to the watershed of the Alle- ghanies.

Thus stood the pretended foreign ownership of the New World at the conclusion of the treaty of Ryswick in 1697. The intelligent reader cannot but have observed how shadowy were these pretensions, and how vague in terri- torial limits, but they were the basis of claims that afterward became more tangible and real, and in their ultimate settlement cost long con- tinned struggles of the ablest diplomats of the world, and were no mean elements in setting nations in array of arnis against each other.

Though it would be deeply interesting to trace the movements of the struggling forces that songht for mastery on this " Armageddon " of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, our limits preclude much more than the merest out- line, and this confined to what relates to the subject of our history. In doing this we must refer once more to the edict of Pope Alexander VI, who, on the 4th of May, 1493, immediately after the return of Columbus from his voyage of discovery, published a bull in which he drew an imaginary line from the north pole to the south, a hundred leagues west of the Azores, assigning to the Spanish all that lay west of that bound- ary, and confirming to Portugal all that lay

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east of it. One can scarcely fail to recall an incident that occurred on a mountain of Galilee abont fourteen centuries earlier, when a land- less pretender drew the vision of the Christ to all the kingdoms of the world, and all the glory of them, and said, "All these things will I give thee, if thou will fall down and worship me."

While the act of Alexander VI had as little authority as the other, it did have a greater in- fluence on those to whom it was made, and Spain and Portugal, in the glory of discovery and in the pompons " gift " of the Pope, ruled the splendid honr. In the strain of the spirit of that earlier hour when St. Augustine, Florida, was founded, and the bigoted Philip II was pro- claimed monarch of all North America, this edict was made. Snch, also, was the supersti- tions awe with which the pretensions of the Pope were then regarded in Europe that this edict did very much to control the actions of all the powers of that continent in regard to the New World. Of course very little was known of the geography of America at this time, and there could really have been no prescience of the great part it was to play in the future his- tory of the world. Something, therefore, of the indifference with which these pretences were viewed must be set down to this fact.

Through the maze of boundary lines, fixed on imaginary maps by the negotiations of contend- ing parties, rather than run by the compass on the solid earth, and which involved to a greater or less extent the ultimate title to this whole region, we shall not attempt to lead our read- ers. It is sufficient to say that France and En- gland began to crowd Spain southwardly and westwardly on the eastern slope of the conti- nent.

France had established some mythical right to "the western part of Louisiana," which she secretly conveyed to Spain in 1762. Thirty- eight years thereafter Spain reconveyed the same to France. In 1803 France sold the same terri- tory to the United States, and practically dis- appeared from the list of contestants for the possession of the empire on the western conti-

nent. Spain, however, still held Florida, but when in 1819 the United States purchased that, she also disappeared from the same list, the rights and claims of both having passed into the hands of the United States.

It is important that we now restate the fact that the old Spanish claim, which had been ac- corded some international authority, extended on the Pacific from Panama to Prince William sonnd, and this entirely covered, not only the Oregon of to-day, but Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia of to-day up to 54' 40". Presumptuous as it was, this claim became one of the most determining elements in the final settlement of what is historically known as the "Oregon question."

The claims of France to American territory were hardly less ambitions and pretentious than those of Spain. They covered more than the size of all Europe. The treaty of Ryswick con- ceded these claims. But the peace of Ryswick was brief. War soon followed, and the titles to empire were written again by the point of the sword.

Though the parties to the struggle for the possession of the country of the Pacific North- west had changed, yet the struggle went on. Little of it was in the territory in question. It was in the plots and counterplots of European capitals: in Paris and London and St. Peters- burg. It was about the tables of diplomats. Within sixteen years of Ryswick came Utrecht, when the issnes of war between France and Eng- land, waged chiefly in North America, brought Anne of England and Louis XIV of France face to face in the persons of their embassadors. The aged and humbled Louis XIV gave up to Great Britain the possessions of France on the Atlantic slope, and thins yielded the morale of position to the Saxon. Thus Great Britain became re- instated in place of France over the Hudson's Bay basin, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. But France still held the Canadas, though they were sandwiched between the northern and southern possessions of Great Britain. The grain be- tween the upper and nether millstones could re-

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 7

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