USA > Washington > History of Washington the evergreen state : from early dawn to daylight with portraits and biographies Vol. I > Part 10
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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64
The next expedition was destined, unfortunately, to be less successful. We narrate it as an outgrowth of that just recorded. Evans credits it to an extract from an interesting letter. He says :
" When Captains Lewis and Clarke returned from their ex- pedition they were accompanied by one of the head chiefs of the Mandans. The next spring (1807) a detachment of soldiers was ordered to escort him back to his people. They started up the river in a barge, and about thirty Americans, among whom was Wier (William Wier, one of the earliest trappers who visited the Columbia, and the grandfather of Allen Wier, Esq., editor of the Port Townsend Argus), prepared themselves with traps and a keel boat, and started in company.
" Before reaching the Mandan village they were attacked by a band of hostile Indians. The soldiers took to their oars, and with the current went swiftly down the river. The hunters crossed to the other side of the river and continued to give the Indians a fight. The savages gathered up their skin boats ; one which could seat four men could be carried on the head of an Indian. The hostiles descended the river some distance, crossed over, and came down in such numbers that the party was over- powered. In a few minutes seven of the trappers were killed and about as many more severely wounded. The party gathered up the dead, fled to their boat, and followed after the soldiers. The whole party returned to St. Louis and waited until next spring. In the mean time, the Missouri Fur Company had been formed. In the spring of 1808 that company employed about three hundred men, principally French, from St. Louis,
Eng Aby F. G Herman MY
George Turn
153
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
and sent them up the river. A party of some forty Americans, among whom was Wier, started also on their own account. In 1809 Wier, with nine others, crossed the Rocky Mountains and struck the headwaters of the Columbia and trapped down the river, wintering just above the Cascade or Coast Range. An- other company of Missouri trappers wintered at the mouth of the river. All found the Indians friendly. Wier often spoke of the large fir timber, the mildness of the climate, the beautiful appearance of the land and soil, and gave it as his opinion that some day it would be one of the finest countries in the world."
He quaintly added, " At that time it was a long ways from home." About this time, too, one Harmon, a Vermonter, wintered on Fraser's Lake, and returned to New England in 1819 to write a history of his travels, published at Andover. A settlement of Americans was also planted at Oak Point, on the south side of the Columbia, but was speedily rooted up by a freshet in the river. In the mean while, the trade by American vessels was active on the coast.
It is impossible within the limits of a chapter to follow the many private explorers, whose pathfinding, after all, added lit- tle to and only verified the truthfulness of the government sur- veys by Lewis and Clarke. We will pass them over nearly a quarter of a century to the year 1831, when Captain Bonne- ville, of the United States Army, applied to the War Department for two years' leave of absence.
"To explore the country of the Rocky Mountains and be- yond, with the view of ascertaining the nature and character of the several tribes of Indians inhabiting those regions, the trade which might profitably be carried on in them ; quality of soil, productions, minerals, natural history, climate, geography, topography, as well as geology of the various parts of the country within the limits of the territories of the United States between our frontier and the Pacific."
A pretty comprehensive plan, and, considering the territory to be examined, brief space for its accomplishment.
On the 3d day of August following, Major-General Macomb, then commanding the army, granted Captain Bonneville's re- quest, giving him the leave desired until October of 1833. At the same time he takes care to instruct the would-be explorer that the Government will be at no expense, " but that he must
154
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
provide suitable instruments and the best maps, especially of the interior, and that he must note particularly the number of war- riors that may be in each tribe of natives that may be met with, their alliances with other tribes, and their relative position as to state of peace or war, and whether friendly or warlike positions toward each other are recent or of long standing ; their manner of making war, mode of subsisting themselves during a state of war and a state of peace; the arms and the effect of them, whether they act on foot or on horseback-in short, every in- formation useful to the Government."
Nor does this leave much to be desired in the way of instruc- tions either, being even more minute than those given to Lewis and Clarke, who were provided with all means at the Govern- ment's command, both of men and material. But here we have the singular spectacle of an officer given a leave of absence to make explorations, the duties of which are dictated to him, and the appliances to be of the best ; yet he is distinctly informed, by way of preamble, that "he goeth a warfare at his own charge ;" that the Government will be at no expense-in other words, he is virtually directed to "make bricks," like the Egyptians of old, " without straw." All of which, considering the great advantages obtained from the results of Lewis and Clarke's expedition, seems niggardly in the extreme. Captain Bonneville, however, appears to have had friends who felt cor- fidence in his scheme, for we find that during the ensuing winter an association was formed in New York from whence he re- ceived the necessary financial aid. On May 1st we see him tak- ing the field with a party numbering 110 men, with twenty wagons, with which he started from Fort Osage, carrying a large quantity of trading goods destined for the regions watered by the Colorado and Columbia. He remained west of the Rocky Mountains for over two years, though his expedition resulted in but little of geographical value, and in a pecuniary point of view, thanks to the competition of the Hudson's Bay Company and the bitter rivalry of fur traders more experienced than him- self, was a complete failure. He was, nevertheless, eminently fortunate in his historian, his adventures being written up by the graceful and elaborate pen of the great American author, Washington Irving, who has thrown about the incidents of Bonneville's journeyings the charm which he alone could give
155
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
of most realistic and fascinating description. In this connection Evans writes as follows :
" In that narrative Irving, in his own inimitable style, has chronicled the vicissitudes and novelties of life in the Rocky Mountains as experienced by trappers and adventurers. In lan- guage more thrilling and varied than romance, he has pictured the trapper's life, its dangers, its exciting pleasures, the bitter rivalry of competing traders, the hostility of savages-in short, a pen picture has been produced by a master hand from which latest posterity can learn what constituted the fur trade and how it was prosecuted in the heart of the American continent and Oregon within the first half of the nineteenth century. Bonne- ville went as far west as Fort Walla Walla. His parties pene- trated the valleys of the Humboldt, Sacramento, and Colorado."
A certain Captain Wyeth, of Massachusetts, about this time conceived the idea of establishing salmon fisheries on the Colum- bia River in connection with an inland trade with the Indians for furs. With this intention he sent out a vessel laden with trading goods ; the ship was never heard of from the day she sailed. Wyeth and his party coming, fortunately for them, overland, reached Fort Vancouver October 29th. Being thus disappointed, with true Yankee readiness two of the party turned to the readiest bread-winner of a New Englander in distress-school-teaching, and school-teaching under difficulties withal. John Ball, the first to make an attempt in this new direction, accepted from the chief factor, Dr. McLoughlin, an engagement to teach school for six months, and failed. It was possibly rather more difficult to teach the idea of the young Indian how to shoot than his hand. The next to try this doubt- ful experiment was Solomon H. Smith, whose name at least in- dicates wisdom equal to the task. The school was opened, and the teacher soon almost in a condition of despair ; discouraged was too mild a term to express his embarrassment. He tells us that the scholars, all Indians, came in talking their native lan- guages. The confusion of Babel was as nothing to it. Cree, Nez Percé, Chinook, Kliketat, and a few others produced a mingling of tongues which, as the poor pedagogue came only prepared to teach English, simply deafened him. He says, "I could not understand them, and when I called them to order there was just one who could understand me. As I came from
1.6
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
a land where discipline was expected in school management, I could not persuade myself that I could accomplish anything without order. I gave directions, and, to my surprise, the only one who understood them immediately joined issue with me upon my mode of government in school. While endeavoring to impress upon him the necessity of order, and through him his fellows, Dr. McLoughlin, the chief factor, entered ; to him I ex- plained my difficulty. He investigated my complaint, found my statements correct, and at once proceeded to produce an im- pression [probably a striking one] on the refractory pupil which prevented any further trouble in governing. I continued in the school over eighteen months, during which the scholars learned to speak English. Several could repeat Murray's grammar ver- batim ; some had gone through arithmetic, and upon review copied it entire. These copies were afterward used as school- books, there having been only one printed copy at Fort Vancou- ver." (The reader may fancy in what condition the " only orig- inal" must have been by the time that twenty-five young savages -- the number of pupils-had finished their English education. Surely the lines of Washington's more modern instructors have fallen to them, by comparison at least, in pleasant places. )
Evans tells us that " Captain Wyeth returned overland to Boston in 1833, most of his party remaining in the country, mak- ing settlements in the Willamette Valley. Not disheartened by his first failure, the captain renews his efforts to establish a direct trade between Boston and the Columbia River, dispatch- ing the brig May Dacre, Captain Lambert, laden with trading goods and supplies to the Columbia via Cape Horn. Mean- while, he himself crossed the continent with two hundred men. In that overland train were Dr. Nuttall and John K. Townsend, of Philadelphia, both well known to science, the latter being the author of a pleasing narrative of their journey. The pioneer party of the Oregon Methodist Mission consisted of Revs. Jason and Daniel Lee, and Messrs. P. L. Edwards and Cyrus Shep- herd, lay members ; Courtney M. Walker, employed by the mis- sion for one year, also accompanied the party. They left Inde- pendence, Mo., April 24th, 1834, and reached the junction of Snake and Point Neuf rivers early in July. Here Wyeth built a trading post to store his trading goods, which he called Fort Hall. Having fitted out trapping parties, he proceeded to Fort
J .W. Lux
159
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
Vancouver, reaching that place about the same time that his brig arrived via Cape Horn. At the lower end of Wapato (now Saurie's) Island he established a salmon fishery and trading house which he named Fort William." His fishing failed, his trade with the Indians proved unsuccessful ; it was the old story of competition with that Northwestern octopus, the Hudson's Bay Company-they destroyed him. To this was added constant trouble with the Indians, who killed several of his men, and the loss of others by drowning. Unable to bear up under this com- bination of difficulties, he finally became discouraged, and gave up the effort. We are told "that the island was thickly inhabited by Indians until 1830, when they were nearly ex- terminated by congestive chills and fever. There were at the time three villages on the island. So fatal were the effects of the disease that Dr. McLoughlin sent a party to rescue and bring away the few that were left, and to burn the village. The Indians attributed the introduction of the fever and ague to an American vessel that had visited the river a year or two previously. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise to any one who understands Indian character and their views as to death resulting from such diseases, that Wyeth's attempted es- tablishment on Wapato Island was subject to their continued hostility. He was of the race to whom they attributed the cause of the destruction of their people, and his reverses were but the lawful compensation, according to their code, for the. affliction they had suffered."
His brig sailed with a half cargo of fish in 1835, and never returned to Fort William ; he himself broke up his establish- ment disheartened, and returned home. Surely such enterprise and perseverance as his deserved a better fate. He endeavord to sell the remnants of his property in Oregon to the Hudson's Bay Company, whose chilling influence upon his trade may be said, without any attempt at pleasantry, to have literally " frozen him out." On application to their board of management in London, he was referred to their officers in charge at Fort Van- couver. In 1837 Dr. McLoughlin purchased Fort Hall from Wyeth's agents. His men generally remained in the territory. This ended the American fur trade west of the Rocky Moun- tains. The octopus had crushed out the last attempt at Yankee competition.
8
160
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
It appears, however, that every cloud of failure has its com- pensation more or less remote. To this rule Wyeth's disastrous speculation was no exception. It proved in the highest degree valuable to the territory he was obliged to abandon and to the country at large. His memoir, printed by " order of Congress," attracted the attention of the American people to Oregon, its value and claims to colonization. The statements as to its re- sources, climate, soil, etc., stimulated emigration, excited curi- osity, and advertised its advantages to the world. "Oregon henceforth," says Evans, "is to be settled and Americanized." So for once we see the narrowness of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company's policy overreaching itself, and their wily engineer- ing "hoist by its own petard." Had Wyeth remained and succeeded he would naturally have kept the secret of his good fortune to himself ; disappointed and ruined, he sought the sympathy of his countrymen by publishing it abroad.
In our account of Wyeth's last overland expedition we have alluded to the fact that he was accompanied by the pioneer party of the Oregon Methodist Mission. We cannot let the op- portunity pass without paying a fit and well-deserved tribute not only to these, but to all other religious pioneer teachers by whatever name they may be called (among whom it cannot be denied that the Methodists stand pre-eminent), who not only in Oregon and Washington, but throughout our whole Western land, when it was comparatively a wilderness, brought the good news of salvation to many a wanderer upon the plains or dweller in his cabin beneath the shade of the primeval forest. They toiled not for gain, but solely for the advancement of the king- dom of their Lord. They had neither house nor land, were oft- times stinted for bread or suffered for water beneath the burn- ing prairie suns ; not unfrequently too, like the Master they served, they "knew not where to lay their heads." Their equipment was of the simplest-a horse too old and poor to make it worth while to deprive him of life, ill-fed and journey- worn like his rider ; a steed which scarcely knew a shelter, but de- pended upon the wayside grass for his scanty provender, fur- nished their sole means of transportation as they travelled the thinly populated districts of their choice, going from house to house. Ever welcome to the isolated settler were these un- solicited and almost always unexpected ministerial visits. They
161
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
were met at the door with a cheery word and a warm grasp of some toil-hardened hand ; the old saddle-bags, weather-worn and dilapidated, containing for the most part a single change of underclothing, for he " who had two coats" in those days would have doubted his call to the ministry, and the universal travel- ling companions of a preacher-a Bible and hymn-book-were taken carefully in. His horse was cared for ; the good wife put forth the best that her humble larder afforded ; the husband refrained, for the time being at least, from rude speech or pro- fane execration ; there was a blessing, if never before, over the settlers' frugal meal, a sound of praise and a voice of prayer, and when the scatterer of Gospel seed by the wayside departed on the morrow, he left behind him with his entertainers, the women most of all, something of better hope, of purer and more unselfish ambition, and a renewal of far-away home memories of Christian lives which brought unbidden tears to eyes but little used to weep. It is not to be denied that these men were oft- times almost as uncultured as those whom they attempted to teach -- rude shepherds of flocks little used to be tenderly folded, yet perhaps for that very reason far better fitted for the work they were called to do. Their homely similes, their incisive, unshrinking manner of implanting the truth, never sugar-coat- ing the Gospel medicine or fearing to administer it, however unpalatable ; but most of all, perhaps, the example of their own self-sacrificing daily lives made them a power in the land. Their work is done ; the lips, ofttimes strangely though rudely elo- quent, are now forever sealed ; the eyes that shot forth magnetic glances as they pleaded the cause of a crucified Saviour are glazed in death ; they sleep where they fell, many of them in unmarked graves, fallen by the wayside. Having finished their labors, they have gone up higher to meet their reward. The descendants of those whom they warned or comforted worship in far more pretentious temples than those in which they preached and prayed, yet kneel at no purer altars. They rest from their labors, but their works follow them, and their influ- ence lingers still.
In bringing to a close the present chapter we feel that the ground to be covered under its heading demanded more space than our limits permit. As it is, we have but endeavored to bind together, though with widely separated and differing
162
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
links, a chain of journeys and explorations of which that of Lewis and Clarke stands pre-eminent. The work of the explorer by land, like that of the discoverer by sea, is finished ; he has accomplished his task. The initial path he so doubtingly and timidly followed has become a well beaten road, a highway for future travellers. The occult ceases to be hidden, the myste- rious becomes the well known. As repeated voyages showed the way to the shores of western Washington, rendering its coasts, with all their sounds and inlets, a well-mapped chart patent to every intelligent mariner, so each trapper, voyageur and explorer added something to our knowledge of the interior, and finally opened up the land to the settler and the prospector. Looking over the field from the higher and clearer standpoint of to-day, were we to seek for a simile we should liken this myriad of gradual approaches to our eastern frontiers through such a multiplicity of tangled paths to the network of wires, slight and frail in themselves as the tiny string that connected the philoso- pher Franklin with the lightning of the summer skies, yet when bound and braided together like the mighty cables linking two great cities of the Atlantic coast and upholding the bridge that carries the traffic of a metropolis. It is even so with the paths of that old day, then so wearily and painfully traversed, yet in the fulness of time to become the great highways of the present, over which the locomotive thunders, wedding our coasts and practically annihilating time and space as it reduces to hours the journey of a thousand leagues.
How little do the men who traverse with the rapid rush of steam those once silent mountains and desolate prairies realize the sufferings, privations, and fearful conflicts with savage foes of those who were its first pathfinders ! There is no stream that has not reflected its camp fire ; no lake that has not borne upon its bosom some hostile canoe ; no spring or water-hole in the desert which has not been the lurking-place of an enemy. Stern strife, tortures too fearful to be narrated, massacres of the helpless and the innocent by those who spared neither age nor sex have been the common incidents of their adventurous journeyings. True it is that they planned, labored, and suffered for themselves, but in so doing unwittingly laid a foundation for the future both broad and deep, building far better than they knew.
Eng ªvy F GKernanNY
Meghan
CHAPTER XII.
HOW WASHINGTON WAS WON FOR THE UNION -THE STORY OF DR. WHITMAN'S FAMOUS TRANSCONTINENTAL RIDE.
" His fingers were frosted, his mantle of fur, Ere he finished that fateful ride,
When with purpose too fixed and determined to err, He breasted each bleak mountain side, Or traversed the prairie unbroken and white, Spread with glittering garment of snow ; But little he recked, as he rode for the right, How bitter its north winds might blow !"
-BREWERTON,
THE citizen of the United States, or, as they prefer to call us abroad, the Yankee, is too often represented as being a mere money-getter, unscrupulous, keeping, in his selfish greed of gain, only the main chance in view, and ruthlessly trampling under foot every flower of sentiment, every purer and more patriotic consideration as he makes his way to some selected goal of for- tune. There are such men, less in number, I fancy, in propor- tion to the great bulk of our native population than will be found in the Old World beyond the sea ; but they are by no means a majority. Taken as a mass, no people are more thor- oughly devoted to the advancement of the best interests of the land that gave them birth than Americans ; more ready to de- fend her rights, and, if need be, pledge, as did their fathers of old, their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in defence of their integrity. Let those who doubt remember the uprising in 1861, and the cry, "Fifty-four-forty or fight," that rang through the land when at an earlier day our own Northwest boundaries were threatened. It is an equal mistake to imagine because a man leaves his home to become a dweller in the wilderness, that in so doing he forgets its teachings or relinquishes his patriotism : on the contrary, they grow stronger ; the enforced isolations of the forest and the prairie turn his mind in upon itself, and serve to strengthen and renew them. This was especially true of our Washington pioneers. The flame might be hidden and appar-
166
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
ently dormant, but let an unfriendly word be spoken or a rude hand laid upon our national rights or honor and it straightway became a consuming fire to wither and destroy the opposer. The attempts of Great Britain to make Oregon, and consequently the present State of Washington, English in reality if not in name-a province in sentiment, which the chances of time might, if thus prepared, turn into an actual holding, must be patent to all who have perused the history of their policy and its manipulations as exercised through its willing agent, the Hudson's Bay Fur Company. This action on their part, in- sidious though it might be, was not so cunningly managed as to hide itself from some of the comparatively few Americans then abiding on the Northwest coast. To them the trail of the ser- pent was visible ; but cut off .as they seemed to be from the watch, care and defence of the Federal Government and their fellow-citizens beyond the mountains, to whom the wilds of Ore- gon and the Northwest seemed but a land unknown, with little to tempt its occupancy, it was no easy matter to say by what means the people of the East should be aroused from their apathy and made aware of these English plans for usurpation. Such was the condition of things when the need of the hour pro- duced a man who saw, comprehended, and promptly grappled with an emergency which had already reached a point where opposition seemed hopeless and the success of the enemy as- sured.
And that man was Dr. Marcus Whitman, a fearless patriot, a far-seeing, tireless, enthusiastic Christian man, destined, his good work nobly done, to fall, in after years, at his post of duty, a victim to the superstition, cruelty, and treachery of the savages whom he endeavored to save.
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.