USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. II > Part 7
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
Mr. Ingersoll also offered an amendment providing that if any citizen of the United States should commit a crime or misdemeanor in the territory west of the Rocky Mountains, lying between the parallels of forty-two and fifty-four degrees, or if any person should commit a crime or misdemeanor upon
80
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
the property or person of a citizen of the United States in said territory, that he should be tried in the district where he was apprehended, or into which he might first be brought, and if convicted should be punished as the federal or terri- torial laws in force at the place of trial should provide.
Mr. Ingersoll said he did not advocate exclusive occupa- tion of Oregon by the Americans, nor did his amendment, or that offered by Mr. Drayton contemplate such a thing. They only asked to occupy the country as the British were occupying it, not to exclude them. Our people could not find the country free and open to them, as it was to the sub- jects of Great Britain, unless forts and laws were provided for their protection, similar to those Great Britain had al- ready provided on its part. It was not proposed to send a garrison into the country to drive the British out, but merely to let our own citizens in. If an occupancy protected by a military post was inconsistent with the terms of our engage- ments, as had been urged, then it was the duty of Great Brit- ain, after signing the article in question, to dismount her guns and abandon her posts.
In closing the debate Mr. Richardson expressed far more radical opinions. "If," said he, "the territory be ours, it is better for the British that their posts should be at once excluded. Sir, I am opposed, in a case like this, when on all hands the right to the territory is admitted to be ours, to a course that by its indecision invites resistance."
Both amendments were adopted and the bill passed by a decisive vote. But it did not pass the Senate; it was doubt- less not expected that it would. But it had nevertheless served a useful purpose. The discussion of it in the House had informed its members and those of the Senate, and of the administration, as well as the public generally, more fully
81
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
than they had ever before been informed, in regard to the value of our possessions on the Pacific Coast, as well as to the dangers that then menaced them on account of their occupation by a foreign power. From that day forth it was better understood than it had been, both in and out of Con- gress, that a country which we owned by every right which should give us claim of title, was dominated by a foreign cor- poration, and that while our citizens were guaranteed equal privileges there by solemn treaty agreement, they were not accorded, nor could they obtain them on anything like equal terms.
Congress paid very little attention to the Columbia River country for nearly ten years after the close of John Quincy Adams' administration, nevertheless it secured and distri- buted among the people a considerable amount of valuable information about it. In 1831 President Jackson sent to the Senate, at its request, a report from the secretary of war on the state of the British establishments in the valley of the Columbia, and the state of the fur trade as carried on by the citizens of the United States and the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, and accompanying documents, which were letters from such prominent fur traders as Gen. W. H. Ashley, Joshua Pilcher, W. L. Sublette and his partners Smith and Jackson. These letters contained a vast amount of new and valuable information, including the story of the first wag- on trip up the Platte, Smith's account of his tour through California and Oregon to Vancouver, and Pilcher's three years' experience in the mountains of what is now Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington and British Columbia. This report was printed for the use of the Senate, and in addition fifteen hundred copies, an unusually large number for that time, were provided for general distribution.
82
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
Soon after Captain Bonneville returned to Washington, President Jackson determined to send a competent man by sea to the mouth of the Columbia to ascertain what condi- tions prevailed there, and elsewhere in the country claimed by the United States in that region, so far as they could be observed. Lieutenant William A. Slacum was chosen for the undertaking. He was carefully instructed as to what he was to do, by John Forsyth, then secretary of state. At the Sandwich Islands he chartered the brig Loriot, in which he visited the Columbia and Willamette rivers, and later sailed along the coast southward as far as the Bay of Bodega.
He examined the country with sufficient care to be able to make a report of very considerable value. In it he speaks with enthusiasm of the fertility of the soil, the salubrity of the climate, the abundance of timber, and of rivers teeming with fish and woods abounding with game. According to his estimate the river valleys above "contain at least fourteen million acres of land of the first quality, equal to the best in Missouri and Illinois." He was particularly urgent that Puget Sound should never be abandoned. "In a military point of view," he says, "it is of the highest importance to the United States. We should never give it up, nor per- mit the free navigation of the Columbia, unless a fair equival- ent is offered, such as the free navigation of the St. Lawrence."
This report was frequently quoted in subsequent debates in both the Senate and House. Less than a year after it was received by Congress Lieutenant Charles Wilkes was sent out in command of the largest exploring expedition that our government had ever, up to that time, undertaken. It con- sisted of six ships carrying nearly six hundred men, and was instructed to spend one whole summer, from April to October, in exploring the Columbia River and contiguous waters, and
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
83
the shore of California as far south as San Francisco Bay. How faithfully these instructions were carried out, how well the work was done and how important the results secured were, will be told in another chapter.
CHAPTER XXI. "COME OVER AND HELP US."
T HE first American settlers to arrive in the Oregon country, who were not hunters or trappers, or employees of the fur companies, were the mission- aries. Their attention, and that of the Christian world, was attracted to it by a most singular occurrence, that is well worth considering in some detail, not only because of its own peculiar and intense interest, but because much has been added to the original accounts of it, in recent years, that leaves an entirely erroneous impression in the public mind, as to the nature of the incident itself, and does grave injustice to the character and memory of a great figure in our earlier history, who deserves to be held in the highest estimation. The perversions of the story have already intruded them- selves into our literature, and even found a place in our school books, from which they cannot be too quickly eradicated.
In the fall of 1831 a small party of Indians, from the Flat- head and Nez Perce tribes, made the long journey overland from the homes of their people, in what is now northern and central Idaho, to St. Louis in search of religious instruc- tion. They traveled in company with a party of fur traders and trappers as far as Council Bluffs, or some other point on the Missouri, where some of them turned back, having seen their companions safely over the most dangerous and toil- some part of their journey, and the remaining four, two Flat- heads and two of the Nez Perces, continued on to their des- tination. At St. Louis they sought out General William Clark, who had visited their country a quarter of a century earlier, and to him made known the object of their visit. He received them kindly and provided for their support and com- fort during their stay of several months in the city.
The first published account in America, of this strange journey, and its stranger purpose, was in the New York
88
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
"Christian Advocate," then the leading journal of the Metho- dist church in the United States, in its issue for March I, 1833. It was in the form of a letter from G. P. Disoway, who was engaged in some way with the removal and settle- ment of the Wyandotte Indians on their new lands west of the Mississippi River, and who enclosed with his letter an- other from William Walker, one of his agents or interpreters, giving the story in the subjoined form. Walker's letter was dated at Upper Sandusky, O., Jan. 19, 1833, and after stating that, on his way to explore the regions west of the Missouri River, he had called on Gen. Clark to present letters of intro- duction to him, and get letters from him to the various Indian agents in the upper country, proceeded:
"I will here relate an anecdote, if I may so call it. Imme- diately after we landed in St. Louis, on our way to the west, I proceeded to General Clark's, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to present our letters of introduction from the Secre- tary of War, and to receive the same from him to the different agents of the upper country. While in his office and trans- acting business with him, he informed me that three chiefs from the Flathead nation were in his house, and were quite sick, and that one, the fourth, had died a few days ago. They were from the west of the Rocky Mountains. Curi- osity prompted me to step into the adjoining room to see them, having never seen any, but often heard of them. I was struck with their appearance. They differ in appear- ance from any tribe of Indians I have ever seen; small in. size, delicately formed, small limbs, and the most exact sym- metry throughout, except the head. I had always supposed from their being called 'Flatheads,' that the head was actu- ally flat on top. But this is not the case. . . . The distance they had traveled on foot, nearly three thousand miles, to
89
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
see General Clark, their Great Father, as they call him, he being the first American officer they ever became acquainted with, and having much confidence in him, as they said, upon very important matters. General Clark related to me their mission, and, my dear friend, it is impossible for me to de- scribe to you my feelings while listening to his narrative. I will here relate it as briefly as I can. It appeared that some white man had penetrated into their country, and had hap- pened to be a spectator at one of their religious meetings, which they scrupulously perform at stated periods. He in- formed them that their mode of worshiping the Supreme Being was radically wrong, and instead of being acceptable and pleasing was displeasing to Him. He also informed them that the white people, away toward the rising sun, had been put in possession of the true mode of worshiping the Great Spirit. They had a book containing directions how to conduct themselves to enjoy His favor and converse with Him, and with this guide no one need go astray. Upon receiving this information they held a national council to take this subject into consideration. . . They accord- ingly deputed four of their chiefs to proceed to St. Louis to see their Great Father, General Clark, to inquire of him, having no doubt but he would tell them the whole truth about it.
"They arrived at St. Louis and presented themselves to General Clark. The latter was somewhat puzzled, being sensible of the responsibility that rested upon him. He, however, proceeded, by informing them that what they had been told by the white men in their own country was true. He then went into a succinct history of man, from the crea- tion down to the advent of the Savior, explained to them all the moral precepts of the Bible, expounded to them the
90
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
decalogue, informed them of the advent of the Savior, His life, precepts, His death, resurrection and ascension, and the relation He stands to man as mediator, the judgment, that He will judge the world, etc.
" Poor fellows, they were not all permitted to return home to their people with the intelligence. Two died in St. Louis, and the remaining two, although somewhat indisposed, set out for their native land. Whether they reached home or not is not known. The change of diet and climate operated very severely upon their health. If they died on the way, peace to their manes! I was informed that the Flatheads as a nation have the fewest vices of any tribe of Indians on the Continent of America."
The story as thus published appealed strongly to the Chris- tian sentiment of the whole country. It was made the sub- ject of many sermons, and was discussed at many Christian firesides, from the Atlantic to the remotest borders of the Western settlements. The publications of other denomina- tions reprinted it, and the secular press did not neglect it. The Rev. Wilbur Fisk, president of Wesleyan University, then the most influential educational institution of the Metho- dist church, urged that immediate response should be made to this Macedonian cry. The "Illinois Patriot," in October 1833, announced that Walker's letter, strongly endorsed and urged upon public attention as it was by Disoway, had aroused so much interest in a recent meeting of the Presby- terian Synod, that a committee had been sent to St. Louis to investigate and report. A report subsequently made, con- tained a description of the Oregon country, which the paper added, "is at no distant day to be occupied by citizens from all parts of the United States." The committee found that it was a fact that the Indians had visited General Clark, and
91
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
that they had remained several months, during which they had visited all the places of worship in the city. During the winter two of them had died, and in the spring the others had returned to their homes, very favorably impressed, and highly gratified with the kind treatment they had received from General Clark.
Walker's letter gives the date of the visit of these Indians as 1832, but it was really in 1831, as all existing contemporary evidence clearly shows. On the last day of that year the Catholic bishop of St. Louis, Rt. Rev. Joseph Rosati, wrote an account of their arrival, and the object of their visit, which was first printed in Lyons, France, in a Catholic journal. A translation of this account is as follows :
"Some three months ago four Indians, who live at the other side of the Rocky Mountains, near the Columbia River, arrived in St. Louis. After visiting General Clark, who, in his celebrated travels, had seen the nation to which they belong, and had been well received by them, they came to see our church, and appeared to be exceedingly pleased with it. Unfortunately there was no one who understood their language. Sometime afterward two of them fell danger- ously ill. I was then absent from St. Louis. Two of our priests visited them, and the poor Indians seemed delighted with their visit. They made signs of the cross, and other signs which appeared to have some relation to baptism. This sacrament was administered to them; they gave expres- sion of their satisfaction. A little cross was presented to them; they took it with eagerness, kissed it repeatedly, and it could be taken from them only after their death. It was truly distressing that they could not be spoken to. Their remains were carried to the church for the funeral, which was conducted with all the Catholic ceremonies. The other
92
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
two attended and acted with great propriety. They have returned to their country.
"We have since learned from a Canadian, who has crossed the country which they inhabit, that they belong to the nation of Têtes-Plates (Flatheads) which, as with another called the Pieds-Noirs (Blackfeet), have received some notions of the Catholic religion from two Indians who had been to Canada, and who had related what they had seen, giving a striking description of the beautiful ceremonies of the Catho- lic worship, and telling them that it was also the religion of the Whites; they have retained what they could of it, and have learned to make the sign of the cross and to pray. These nations have not yet been corrupted by intercourse with the others; their manners and customs are simple, and they are very numerous. We have conceived the liveliest desire not to let pass such a good occasion. Mr. Condamine has offered himself to go to them next spring with another. In the meantime we shall obtain information on what we have been told, and on the means of travel. . . . "*
The Catholic account of the visit of these Indians, and the object of it, has not often been quoted heretofore by those who have written about the early missionaries in Oregon, probably for the reason that it has not been easily accessible. It is nevertheless undoubtedly authentic. That the date is correctly given is shown by the letters of George Catlin, the painter of Indian scenes and portraits, who spent eight years among the Indians of the Northwest, while engaged in the work that made him famous. He was a passenger on the
*The Bishop's letter was first published in "Annals de l'Association de la Propagation de la Foy," in Lyons. It is copied by Father L. B. Palladino in his "Indian and White in the Northwest." Father Palla- dino was a missionary among the Flatheads for twenty-five years.
93
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
steamboat by which the two survivors of the party left St. Louis, and traveled with them two thousand miles up the Missouri in the spring of 1832. The bishop's account is also confirmed by the register of burials of the Cathedral in St. Louis .*
That these, or any other Indians, should make a long journey in search of religious instruction was considered very surprising, and it was so, though it is now known that some of the Hudson's Bay agents and traders had for years previ- ously been doing missionary work among the natives in the neighborhood of their trading posts. Dr. Tolmie, and some of his predecessors, who were Episcopalians, and Presby- terians, were accustomed to hold services regularly at Fort Nisqually, for the benefit of all who would listen to them, and their testimony is that their listeners were attentive, and often asked to be instructed farther. Pierre Pambrun, who was a Catholic, much earlier began to hold some sort of Sunday service at Fort Walla Walla, which the natives regularly attended. The effect of this teaching Captain Bonneville noted with surprise on his first visit to the Nez Perces. They refused to hunt with him on Sunday, and when he inquired the reason, "they replied that it was a sacred day, and the Great Spirit would be angry if they devoted it to hunting." They were without food at the time and nearly starving. When he arrived at Walla Walla everything was explained. Mr. Pambrun informed him, as Mr. Irving says, that "he had been at some pains to introduce
*This register shows that one of these Indians-Narcisse-a name doubtless given him by the priests, in baptizing him before his death- was buried October 31, 1831, Rev. Edmond Saulnier officiating, and the second-Paul, another baptismal name-was buried November 17, 1831, Rev. Benedict Roux officiating. See Records American Catholic His- torical Society, Vol. II, p. 190.
94
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
the Christian religion, and in the Roman Catholic form, among them, where it had evidently taken root, but had be- come altered and modified to suit their peculiar habits of thought and motives of action; retaining, however, the prin- cipal points of the faith, and its entire precepts of morality. The same gentleman had given them a code of laws, to which they conformed with scrupulous fidelity. Polygamy, which once prevailed among them to a great extent, was now rarely indulged. All the crimes denounced by the Christian faith met with severe punishment among them. Even theft, so venial a crime among the Indians, had recently been pun- ished with hanging, by sentence of a chief."
From this it is certain enough, even if there were no other proof, that Pambrun had begun his teaching long before Bonneville's visit-which was in 1832-for it had made so much impression as to induce his pupils to give up polygamy and stealing. "Simply to call these people religious," says Bonneville, "would convey but a faint idea of the deep tone of piety which pervades their whole conduct. Their honesty is immaculate, and their purity of purpose and their obser- vance of the rites of their religion are most uniform and remarkable. They are certainly more like a nation of saints than a horde of savages." Finding at length that he could give them further instruction on their favorite subject, they asked the officer to teach them. He often did so, finding that he had quite a fund of Christian doctrine and ethics to impart. "Many a time," says he, "was my little lodge thronged, or rather piled, with hearers, for they lay on the ground one leaning over the other until there was no further room, all listening with greedy ears to the wonders which the Great Spirit had revealed to the white man. No other subject gave them half the satisfaction, or commanded half
95
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
the attention, and but few scenes in my life remain so freshly on my memory, or are so pleasurable recalled to my con- templation, as these hours of intercourse with a distant and benighted race in the midst of the desert."
The instructions given these people by Pambrun is there- fore quite sufficient to account for the visit of their repre- sentatives to St. Louis. But Father Palladino thinks the desire of the Flatheads for religious instruction was awakened by the visit of some Iroquois Indians from the Caughnawaga mission near Montreal, who wandered across the Rocky Mountains somewhere between 1812 and 1820, and made their home among the Flatheads. The leader of this band was Ignace La Mousse, better known among the Indians as "Big Ignace," or "Old Ignace." He became prominent among the Flatheads and, being a zealous Catholic, taught them what he could of that faith, and excited among them so strong a desire for "Black Robes" (i. e., priests) that in the spring of 1831, a deputation of two Flatheads and two Nez Perces started to St. Louis, to obtain priests, and arrived there in the autumn of 1831 .*
But whether this famous delegation was prompted to go east in search of religious light-as all other seekers for it have done-by the teachings of Pambrun, or by the visit of "Old Ignace," it is reasonably clear that it was by the teaching of some Catholic, or by suggestion of some one who was familiar with the Catholic forms of worship. They naturally sought for robed priests, and the ceremonials which had been described to them, and readily recognized them when they saw them. This accounts for the fact that two of them were buried from a Catholic church, and con- firms the statement of Bishop Rosati, that they had accepted
* Indian and White in the Northwest, p. 9.
96
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
baptism before their death, as without it they would not have been given such burial.
It was this visit of these Indians to St. Louis, and these two accounts of it, that first led to the establishment of Christian missions, both protestant and Catholic, west of the Rocky Mountains.
Thirty years or more after the publication of Walker's letter, and after many, if not most of those who really knew what the Indians had asked for and how they had been treated, had died, additions to and perversions of the story began to appear, and have been so widely published as to leave an entirely false impression as to what these simple- minded seekers for religious light really did or sought to do. It has been asserted that they made their long journey, of more than fifteen hundred miles, to ask specifically for the Bible; that they first sought out General Clark, whom the two older members of the party had met when he visited their country in company with Lewis in 1805, and whose visit was still well remembered and much talked about among their people; that Clark, being a Catholic, had cunningly prevented them from getting what they sought, and had taken them to churches where the form of worship was something they did not care to see, and to low resorts where they were shocked by exhibitions that were revolting even to savages; and finally that on parting from him one of them had made a speech bitterly reproaching him for having been the means of defeating the pious object of their visit. In support of these additions which so completely change the nature, pur- pose and result of this famous incident, the painter Catlin is quoted as confirming, upon the authority of Clark himself, the statement that these Indians could not get the Bible in St. Louis, and went home greatly saddened by the failure
97
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
of their visit. But Catlin says nothing whatever about their having asked for a book, nor does he say anything about Clark having defeated the object of their visit, or done any- thing to displease or disappoint them in any way. On the contrary what he does say leads exactly to the opposite impression .*
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.