USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. II > Part 21
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It was such a government, thus formed and in operation, that the first settlers to arrive in that part of Oregon which is now Washington, found ready organized for their benefit when they came. They came with the immigration of 1844, and some of them soon began to have an active part in making its laws and administering them.
The officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, finding the way opened to them by the amended form of the oath required to be taken by the officers of the provisional government, now concluded to join it. Dr. McLoughlin says he suspected that the form had been changed to enable him and his associates to join the organization, "and I mentioned this to my colleague, Chief Factor Douglas, who thought as I did that in our present situation, and the state of the country it would be advisable to do so. And I was not surprised to find, a few days after, on my visit to Oregon City, that my surmises were correct; as the originator
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of the clause, who was a member of the Legislature then in session, called on me and proposed to me to enter the organization on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company. After conversing on the subject, and being aware that the organization could afford assistance to none but its own members, I told him I would proceed to Vancouver, consult my colleague, Chief Factor Douglas, and the other officers of the company at that place-which I did; and Chief Fac- tor Douglas coincided with me in the expediency of our doing so. I returned to Oregon City, and on the Legisla- ture writing me a letter inviting me to join the organization on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company, in a written reply I informed them that I did so."
Events had been hurrying on far more rapidly than the chief factor and his very capable assistant had anticipated, when they sent their reply to the courteous letter of the executive committee in 1843, saying that they needed no more protection than they could themselves provide. That had been true for a long time previous, when they had nothing but the Indians to defend against. But now that the settlers were coming by the hundreds and thousands every year, they were not so sure of their safety, for with the settlers were coming some people who did not promise to be very pleasant neighbors. Some of these were the camp-followers, who had given the emigrants as much trouble as it now seemed possible they might give the Company and com- munity. Some were simply irresponsible boasters, who remembered to have read or heard about what "thirty thou- sand settlers with their thirty thousand rifles" might do to help settle the boundary question. Some of these had come with the Burnett and Applegate party, and some with the other trains, and they talked as loudly and as freely
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about turning the Hudson's Bay people out of the country, now that they had arrived, as Farnham had talked while still on the Missouri. Then there were some aggressive people who would no longer stay on the south side of the Columbia, but insisted that the whole country was open to them. Two of these had already attempted to locate claims on the Company's farm at Vancouver, and the people at the fort had not found it easy to get rid of them.
The chief factor has left a written statement, in which he says that he early notified the officers of the Company in London that "it was necessary to get protection from the government for the Hudson's Bay Company's property," and in June 1845 he received an answer stating that "in the present condition of affairs, the company could not obtain protection from the government, and that I must protect it the best way I could." Later he wrote to the British consul at Hawaii calling on him for protection, but his letter was not even answered, although the consul could easily have given him some sort of reply by the ship which carried this request to him.
Thus left to their own resources for defense, McLoughlin and James Douglas, his chief assistant, who was then con- stantly with him at the fort, began to feel the danger of their situation. They had a large amount of property in their keeping, as well as the lives of more than a thousand of the Company's employees. So far as the fur business was concerned it was rapidly diminishing, as was natural, for it could not prosper in the presence of a rapidly advanc- ing civilization. But the Company had large farming and stock-raising interest, mills, trading houses, ships and a trade with the Russian settlements, the Hawaiian Islands and California, that was still prosperous, while its fur business
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in the far north, along the coast and in the interior, was undis- turbed and promised to remain so for many years. But all the people who were employed in it were wholly depend- ent on Fort Vancouver for their supplies, and for their very existence. The fort, its barns, and mills, and storehouses might be destroyed at any moment by some fanatic, or wholly irresponsible person, who had long fancied that the Com- pany was a common enemy, and who wholly ignored the great service it had rendered others. Such irresponsible persons would be more easily incited and encouraged to acts of vio- lence, if the Company openly opposed the provisional govern- ment; they might be in some degree mollified, and rendered less dangerous, if its managers gave in their adhesion to it, now that the way was open for them to do so. Anyway it was better to have harmony than discord. The boundary question must soon be taken up again, by the two powers; it could not much longer be put aside. Any clash of interests between the Company and the settlers would certainly delay its settlement. Should any such thing occur, especially if any violence should be done, it would be almost certain to be misreported and misunderstood. Owing to their remote situation, and the difficulty of communicating with the two capitals, it would require months to present the facts which would be necessary to a fair understanding of what had happened. Meantime much more might happen, and two nations would easily be involved in war-a war that would be most disastrous, both to the Company and the settlers.
In this view of the case it is not surprising that McLough- lin and Douglas determined to accept the offer made by the executive committee. It was the wise course, and it was fortunate for them, for their company, and for humanity
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that they did so when they did, though it soon involved them in no little embarrassment.
After having sent them word that it could afford them no protection, and that they must protect themselves as best they could, the British government soon found means to send the sloop of war Modeste to the river. She carried twenty guns, and remained for some weeks in the immediate neighborhood of the fort. Her presence created no little anxiety among the settlers, who learned soon after that another warship, the Fisgard, was in Puget Sound, while an armed steamer, the Cormorant, was cruising off Vancouver Island. Soon after her Majesty's ship America arrived at Nisqually, and sent Lieutenant Peel, son of Sir Robert, who was then prime minister, to Vancouver with a letter from Captain Gordon, saying that he had been sent by Admiral Seymour "to assure her Majesty's subjects in the country of firm protection." He also brought a letter from the admiral himself containing a like assurance. This was somewhat embarrassing to the two factors, who had so recently been notified that they must protect themselves, and were now overwhelmed with protection that they did not require. As British subjects who had so recently given in their allegiance to a provisional government that was much more than half American, this sudden abundance of British protection must have seemed in their eyes almost a menace. But there was nothing for them to do but make the best of the situation.
The settlers soon began to be very much disturbed by the presence of these ships. Reports also began to be current that the Company was strengthening the defenses of all its posts, though there was no evidence that anything of the kind was being done at Fort Vancouver. The officers of
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the Modeste extended their hospitalities alike both to Ameri- cans and the Hudson's Bay people, but were careful to say nothing about the meaning of their visit at that time. It is probable that they did not themselves know why they had been sent to the Columbia, and that they had been directed simply to remain there until further orders.
There would have been further cause for anxiety if it had been known that matters were transpiring in the East, which were seriously threatening to make immediate negotiation on the boundary question impossible. The Tyler adminis- tration was making an effort to distinguish its closing year by annexing Texas. The slavery question, discussion of which had been revived for the first time since the adoption of the Missouri compromise in 1820, by a series of resolutions proposed in the Senate by Mr. Calhoun in 1835, was begin- ning to divide the councils of the dominant party. The pro- posed "reannexation of Texas," as its advocates spoke of it, aggravated this discussion and intensified public feeling on the subject. The national convention which assembled in Baltimore in 1844, and nominated Mr. Polk for president, had coupled the Texan question with the Oregon question, and made this declaration in its platform: "Our title to the whole of the territory of Oregon is clear and unques- tionable; that no portion of the same ought to be ceded to England or any other power; and that the reoccupation of Oregon, and the reannexation of Texas, at the earliest prac- ticable period, are great American measures which this convention recommends to the cordial support of the dem- ocracy of the Union."
"The whole of Oregon," in the minds of many people at that time, meant the whole coast as far north as 54° 40', and "Fifty-four Forty or Fight" became the slogan of the
-
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Polk campaign. It was this, and the failure of a new attempt at negotiation for the settlement of the northwestern bound- ary, together with Mr. Polk's declaration in his inaugural address, that it would become his duty to "assert and main- tain, by all constitutional means, the right of the United States to that portion of our territory west of the Rocky Mountains," that had led to the sending of three British war ships to the coast, would later lead to the coming of an American war ship, and to the purchase, by the Hudson's Bay Company, by order of the British government, of an American settler's claim near Cape Disappointment, as a site for a British fort .*
In the following summer, and long before news of the signing of the boundary treaty had reached the coast, the American war schooner Shark arrived in the Columbia, and her presence added to the expectation and anxiety of both the American and British residents in Oregon. She had been sent north by Commodore Sloat, whose fleet was then cruising off the coast of California, "to make an exam- ination of the coast, harbors, rivers, soil, productions, climate and population of the territory of Oregon." But the settlers knew nothing about her instructions, and, as they
* This purchase was made by Peter Skeen Ogden, who subsequently entered the claim under the land laws of the provisional government, in his own name, in February 1846. The order directing him to secure the property was made in August 1845. The original claimant was an American named Wheeler, whose rights Ogden purchased. Elwood Evans is confident that this land was bought for a British military post, and for no other purpose. "It had no value," he says, "as a trading point. There were but few Indians in its vicinity; and the stations of Fort George (Astoria) and Chinook were both near at hand. Nor could it ever be claimed, even if the license of trade permitted such character of establishment, that it had any utility for agricultural purposes. Yet the Hudson's Bay Company, having seized this point for aggressive hostility to the United States, claimed the sum of $14,600 for an occu- pancy of little over four months, without improvements, except merely enough to indicate possession."
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had not yet learned that the boundary question had been settled by the treaty of June 15th, they suspected that trouble was impending. Her officers did what they could, as the British officers had been doing, to allay this anxiety, but without disclosing the real purpose of their visit. The Shark remained in the river until September, when she started to rejoin the fleet, but was wrecked at the mouth of the Columbia September 10th. Her commander, Lieu- tenant Howison, and his officers and crew were sent to San Francisco on the Hudson's Bay Company's ship Cadboro. Before leaving, the lieutenant presented the ship's colors, which had been saved from the wreck, to the provisional government, accompanied by the following very appro- priate letter :
"To display this national emblem, and cheer our citizens in this distant territory by its presence, was a principal object of the Shark's visit to the Columbia; and it appears to me, therefore, highly proper that it should henceforth remain with you, as a memento of parental regard from the general government. With the fullest confidence that it will be received and appreciated as such by our country- men here, I do myself the honor of transmitting the flags (an ensign and union jack) to your address; nor can I omit the occasion to express my gratification and pride that this relic of my late command, should be emphatically the first United States flag to wave over the undisputed, and purely American territory of Oregon."
The territory was then " undisputed and purely American," sure enough, although the lieutenant could have had no positive information that it was so, and the residents of Oregon did not receive the news until nearly two months later.
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE MASSACRE.
HE missionaries on the upper Columbia-at Waiilatpu, Lapwai and Tshimakain-had taken no part in forming the provisional government. Their situation was too remote, and their members too few. Since Whitman's return with the emigrants of 1843, their affairs had been going much as before. Sometimes their work seemed to prosper, and they took new courage and hope; again there would be reverses, and they would seem to lose more than they had gained. During the years 1845-6 and '47, their letters to the general secretary were particularly discouraging.
Spalding had contrived to get a printing press and some type from the Hawaiian Islands in 1839, and, with the help of Edwin O. Hall, a printer from the mission at Honolulu, did the first printing ever done in Oregon or on the coast. Several elementary books for use in the mission schools were printed, some of them in the Nez Perce and Flathead languages, and some in both the English and Indian lan- guages. A small collection of hymns and, finally, part or all of the Gospels were translated and printed. The print- ing press has always been a most helpful civilizing agent, and this particular one probably did as much in its way as any that has ever been made. The Nez Perces and their immediate neighbors were, for a time at least, more tractable than the Cayuses or Spokanes, or any of the tribes near the other missionary stations. Perhaps the work done by Spalding and his estimable wife and their associates was better calculated to impress their savage pupils. However this may be, the testimony of Wilkes, Dr. White and others is to the effect that more genuine progress was made by the Indians at this station than at any other. Eells and Walker and their wives were patient, observant, working in
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season and out of season for the improvement of the people among whom their lot had been cast; Whitman was ener- getic, resourceful, tireless. He not only steadily increased the area of cultivated land at Waiilatpu, built mills and dug irrigating ditches, employing and paying those who would work, but he advised and assisted his Indian neigh- bors about the management of the small tracts he could induce them to cultivate for themselves, held religious ser- vices when there was occasion, and as a physician he minis- tered to the sick and furnished them with medicines, going sometimes a hundred miles on horseback to do so. The work he did was prodigious. He was not only physician for the Cayuses, but for all the other tribes when they wished for his services, and sometimes when they did not, and for the other missions as well. When an epidemic appeared, as occasionally happened, he was traveling almost constantly and often to the neglect of his own affairs and family.
In all this he exposed himself to a danger, which he realized, and which he might have avoided if he would, but he did not, and it was one of the causes that led to his terrible and untimely death.
It was the custom among these Indians, and apparently among all the other tribes in Washington, to hold the slayer, or some member of his family or people, to account for the life of his victim. The medicine man was also held to be as accountable, if his patient died, no matter how desperate the case might be when his services were called for, as if he had actually killed him. This Whitman knew perfectly well, and yet during all the eleven years of his missionary life he never allowed it to move him from the path of his duty as a practitioner. He knew, too, that the Indians believed he had an unusual power to heal if he wished to,
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and therefore they were more likely to blame him when a patient died, than one of their own doctors. The members of the party who had met him and Dr. Parker at the rendez- vous on Green River, in 1835, had seen him cut an iron arrow head three inches long from Captain Brider's back, long after the wound had healed, and this they looked upon as a very remarkable performance. He had also performed a similar operation for another hunter at the same time. These exhibitions of his skill as a surgeon had been much talked about by the Indians after their return, and had spread his fame far and wide. If he could thus cut iron and flint out of a man's flesh, he could certainly cure disease that was caused only by the presence of an evil spirit, if he wished to. But he could not always cure the patients he was called to see, and the number of his enemies on this account steadily increased.
As the years went by the number of people employed at Waiilatpu, and of the orphans and other people who found refuge there, grew steadily. Joe Meek, the trapper, had left a half-breed daughter there in 1840, when he and Newell and Wilkins had brought the first wagons through from Fort Hall. Her name was Helen Mar, and she was then an infant. Mrs. Whitman undertook to raise and edu- cate her. Mary Ann Bridger, another half-breed girl, three years older, was also there, as was David M. Cortez, whose savage mother had thrown him in a hole by the roadside to perish, when he was an infant. The doctor's nephew Perrin, who had come out with him in 1843, was there, and there was always a number of white men and Indians employed about the place-on the farm or in the mills and workshops.
Waiilatpu was a resting place for all the emigrant trains after their long tedious journey. It was the first home the
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travelers saw after they left the Missouri. It was like an oasis in the desert, after the toilsome, dusty march through the barren alkali plains, along the upper Platte and Snake rivers, and the fresh vegetables, flour and bread obtained there furnished them a veritable feast, after the weeks and months in which they had lived on the game and fish they had procured from the Indians, or with their rifles, and the remnants of the supplies with which they had started. There were nearly always some sick people in these trains who re- mained at the station for a few days, or perhaps weeks, to recruit themselves under the doctor's treatment. So that there was not only a school, and mills and shops at Waiilatpu but a hospital also.
In the train which Colonel Gilliam commanded, with Cap- tain William Shaw and Colonel M. T. Simmons as his lieu- tenants, there was a family named Sager whose story was a most pathetic one. The father was a blacksmith and farmer, who had removed with his family from Ohio to Mis- souri in 1838. In the fall of 1843 he moved again to St. Joseph, Missouri, and in the spring of 1844 joined the Gilliam party for Oregon. There were six children in his family, and another was born during the summer-five girls and two boys, the oldest a boy of fourteen. At one of the crossings of the Platte one of the two wagons belonging to the family was overturned, and Mrs. Sager was badly injured, remaining unconscious for a long time. Near Fort Laramie the oldest girl, in attempting to climb out of the wagon while it was in motion, fell under the wheels and her leg was broken. She was unable to walk during the remainder of the long journey. At Green River the father died, leaving his sick wife and seven almost helpless children, one of them a cripple, to the care of a doctor, who had kindly given them
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so much of his attention, and the other members of the party. The widow, assisted by the doctor, struggled on through the desert for a few days, until her feeble health gave way, and she could no longer leave her bed in the jolting wagon. The women in the party nursed her as well as they could, but they could not save her life. In the delirium of her last hours, she called helplessly for her dead husband, and begged him and those about her to care for her motherless children. Faithfully did those emigrant women discharge the sacred trust thus committed to them, and their hus- bands and sons were not less thoughtful, considerate and helpful. The doctor, a German, with no family of his own to care for, stood stoutly by them, as he had promised their dying father and mother he would, while Mrs. Shaw cared for the baby. Other members of the party helped the doctor to yoke and unyoke the teams, and care for the cattle, as well as to look after the wants of the younger children and the disabled girl. But at Fort Bridger,* nearly all the members of the party had to abandon a large part of their property, and most of that belonging to these orphan children was also sacrificed. One of their wagons was made into a cart, and with this and a few of their indispensable effects, they reached Waiilatpu in October.
From Umatilla Captain Shaw went on to arrange with the Dr. and Mrs. Whitman to care for the orphan family, at least until the other members of the party could reach the Willamette and make arrangements for the winter. It seemed a great responsibiltiy, and both the doctor and his wife were in doubt as to whether they ought to undertake it. But while they were deliberating the cart and its occupants arrived. There was no resisting the appeal which those
* Some of the trains came by that route during the earlier years.
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six ragged, travel-stained orphans presented. "Here was a scene for an artist to portray," says Mrs. Catherine S. Pringle-who was the oldest girl in the orphan party-in describing it many years after. "Foremost stood the little cart, with the tired oxen that had been unyoked lying near it. Sitting in the front end of the cart was John, weeping bitterly; on the opposite side stood Francis, his arm on the wheel and his head resting on it, sobbing aloud. On the near side the little girls were huddled together, bareheaded and barefooted, looking at the boys and then at the house, dreading we knew not what. By the oxen stood the good German doctor, with his whip in hand, regarding the scene with suppressed emotion."
The baby member of the family was not present; Mrs. Shaw had cared for it so far, and had kept it with her at Umatilla. But it was soon missed. As the party were enter- ing the house, Captain Shaw asked Mrs. Whitman if she had ever had any children of her own. Stopping at the thresh- old she pointed to a little grave on the side of a small mound, easily seen from that point and said : "The only child I ever had sleeps yonder."
Little Alice Clarissa Whitman had been born on March 14, 1837, the first spring in the mission's history. She was the first white child born in Oregon. When she was a little more than two years old, while playing in the grounds of the mission, she fell into the river and was drowned. No one saw the accident. She was not missed immediately, and when she was finally sought for she was dead, with her play- things still clasped in her little hands. Her resolute mother mourned for her in silence during the years that had since elapsed, and now that another more helpless baby had come almost into the presence of that lonely grave, a motherly
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