USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. IV > Part 4
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By the middle of July a trail had been cut by the gold- hunters themselves, for a distance of nearly a hundred miles, so the report was, from Bellingham Bay toward the mines. Many supposed it was completed, and started out with their camp and mining outfits, while others duly
40
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
celebrated the occasion as if it had been completed, and so encouraged others to set forth.
Whatcom and Sehome were now so prosperous, and their future seemed so thoroughly assured, that speculation in real estate became active. The holders of donation claims had as yet secured no title which they could convey. Their claims were not even surveyed, but many were willing to buy under such promise of title as they could offer, and so the claim-owners began to sell, measuring off for each purchaser as much as he wished to buy, describing it with reference to the stumps, stones and trees, which still covered the town- site. Edward Eldridge sold to Ezra Meeker a lot described as follows: "Beginning at a stump in the bank of the Squalecum Creek, about 20 feet above the bridge, near the mouth of said creek; thence running due west 240 feet, thence due south 60 feet; thence due east 240 feet, thence due north 60 feet to place of beginning." The tide flats in front of the town, which nobody owned or claimed, or could claim at that time, were staked, down to the very edge of the water at low tide, and some sent to Olympia and Steilacoom for piledrivers, in the hope of making the mark- ing of their boundaries more permanent, and possibly also of making their title more secure by its aid.
During these exciting days a newspaper was started at Whatcom, and named the "Northern Light." Could its proprietors have guessed how appropriately they had named it, they would never have started it, for,
"Like the Borealis Race
That flit ere you can point their place,"
it shone with varying brilliancy for a few issues, and then flickered out forever.
EDWARD ELDRIDGE.
This early pioneer of Whatcom County was born at St. Andrews, Scotland, in 182S. He came to San Francisco in 1849 as a common sailor. After working for a time in the mines in California, and subsequently on the Pacific Mail Steamer Tennessee, he came to the Sound in 1853 with Captain Roeder, and located a claim on Bellingham Bay. At that time the only resi- dents on the harbor were the twelve men who were building Captain Roeder's mill. During the Indian war he served in Captain Peabody's company. He was frequently a member of the territorial legislature, and in 1866-67 was speaker of the House of Representa- tives. He was a member of the constitutional con- vention which met at Walla Walla in 1878, as well as of that which met at Olympia in 1889, and made the Constitution under which the State was admitted to the Union.
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41
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
Victoria had one decided advantage over Whatcom, from the first, in this excitement; it was the seat of the colonial government, and the gold hunters soon found themselves obliged to go there to get their licenses.
Even those who were induced to go there first, by the rep- resentations of the agents for various ships and steamboats, that they could walk from there to Whatcom in six hours, over a well-beaten trail, were not so very greatly wronged thereby. Governor Douglass had long anticipated that gold would be found along or beyond the boundary. Traces of it had been noticed on the upper waters of the Columbia, long before the prospectors were attracted to the Colvile region in 1858. It had been talked of in Whitman's time, and Governor Stevens's surveying parties had found "indications" along their route at various points west of the mountains in 1853.
As early as 1856, Governor Douglass had reported these discoveries to the British foreign office, and had suggested a tax on miners, with a military force to collect it, but the foreign office had not thought well of it, and had done nothing. In the year following, he had written again, and again had received no encouragement. But he did not for that reason cease to keep the government advised of what was going on. In December 1857 he wrote that "The auriferous character of the country is becoming more extensively developed, through the exertions of the native Indian tribes, who have tasted the sweets of goldfinding, and are devoting much of their time and attention to that pursuit. The reported wealth of the mines is causing much excitement among the popula- tion of the United States territories of Washington and Oregon, and I have no doubt that a great number of people from those territories will be attracted thither, with the return of fine weather in the spring."
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
There was not at that time any excitement among the people of Washington or Oregon, about the mines to which the governor referred. Probably not one of them had heard of them, for it was not until the day after this dispatch was written, that the governor issued the proclamation which he caused to be published in the "Pioneer and Demo- crat," as a paid advertisement, for several successive weeks. But the advertisement, and the finding of gold, after its publication or before, caused the stampede for which the governor had been so long preparing. But he had not gained the authority to tax the miners and control the trade which their coming was bringing with them, as he had expected, and he accordingly acted without it.
On May 8th, when the rush of goldhunters was just beginning, he issued a second proclamation, forbidding all boats and vessels, except those of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, to trade into Fraser River, without permission first obtained at the customhouse in Victoria. Such permission could only be obtained by agreeing to procure goods only from the Hudson's Bay Company, and that no arms, ammu- nition or utensils of war should be carried up the river except from the United Kingdom. No passengers were to be carried, except those who had licenses from the govern- ment of Vancouver Island, and everybody was forbidden to trench on the right of the Hudson's Bay Company to the exclusive trade with the Indians. Duties on American goods, carried in by the miners themselves, by way of What- com, were made prohibitory. After fourteen days from the date of the proclamation, any boats violating or disre- garding it were to be confiscated, and the warship Satellite was sent to cruise near the mouth of the Fraser to enforce it. "I am striving to legalize the entrance of goldminers
43
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
into the Fraser River country," the governor wrote to his superiors in London, "on certain conditions, which at once assert the rights of the crown, protect the interests of the Hudson's Bay Company, and are intended to draw the whole trade of the gold district through Fraser River to this colony, which will procure its supplies directly from the mother country." To carry out these purposes he proposed to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company that it place the neces- sary steamers on the river, to run from its mouth to the falls : that these should carry the Hudson's Bay Company's freight, and such other freight as it permitted to be shipped into the country, and no other, and that it pay the Hudson's Bay Company $2 for each passenger carried.
But the British government was not disposed to look with favor on the governor's plans for enriching the ancient monopoly he had so long and so well served. His proclama- tion was disapproved, and he was quietly reminded that his authority as governor was strictly confined to Vancouver Island, although the steps he had taken to prevent the land- ing at Fraser River, of goods prohibited by the English custom's laws, was approved. He was instructed as to the terms on which foreigners would be permitted to navigate the river and land passengers and goods, and was also emphatically warned against using his power as governor, to enlarge the pretentions of the Hudson's Bay Company, to rights upon which it had no claim. That company was doing business in the country under a license, "under which it is entitled to the exclusive trade with the Indians, and possesses no other rights or privileges whatever."
The license of the Company referred to was about to terminate, but the government, under its authority, revoked it at once. It had been willing enough to protect and
44
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
encourage its pretensions while operating under license in the disputed territory along the Columbia River, where the rights of American settlers only were interfered with, but, now that they interfered with the rights of people who were going into territory in which its own sovereignty was supreme and undisputed, it was quite another matter. It had stood also for its claim to compensation for loss of trade, and for improvements made, and even for lands claimed in what became American territory under the treaty of 1846, but it recognized no claim of this sort in territory north of the forty-ninth parallel. "The Company's private property," said the minister, "will be protected, in common with that of her Majesty's other subjects, but they have no claim whatever for the loss of their exclusive trade, which they only possessed subject to the right of revocation."
A new province known as British Columbia was now created, and the governorship was tendered to Douglass, on condition that he sever his connection with the Company, and this he accepted.
But before the governor learned that his plans for securing so great a share of the advantages from this rush of gold hunters in British territory, had been disapproved by his superior, the excitement began to wane. By the last of July miners began to return along the trails, with most discouraging news. The gold-bearing bars of the Fraser were not of large extent. The beds of tributary and neigh- boring streams yielded no cheering signs for the prospector. The claims that were worth working were soon taken up. There was nothing, therefore, for many of the gold- seekers to do but to return whence they came, or turn their attention to some other employment, and this many of them did.
45
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
But the tide had set so strongly toward the Fraser that it was not possible to stop it at once. People had started for it, not alone from Washington, California and Oregon, but from the Eastern States, from Europe, from Australia, from China, in fact from all parts of the world. It was estimated that from seventy-five thousand to one hundred thousand people came into Washington and British Colum- bia during the summer of 1858 alone. Many of these returned home again, but some remained. Some found, to their surprise perhaps, that even Mr. Benton, so well informed and so accurate as he usually was in regard to all matters pertaining to the West, was mistaken in regard to the value of the Fraser River Valley and Vancouver's Island. Instead of being barren and worthless regions, they were among the most fertile portions of the globe, and accepting what Nature everywhere so generously offered, they gave up the search for gold in the shifting sands of the river bottoms, and sought it in the fertile soil that lay everywhere around them, on both sides of the boundary. And so it was that both British Columbia and Washington received large accessions to their permanent population from this brief gold-hunting frenzy.
It was in the year following this mining excitement, that the killing of a pig on San Juan Island came so near involving two great countries in war. This island, and all the others which now compose San Juan County, had always been claimed by the United States, under the treaty of 1846, in which the boundary had been defined as the forty-ninth parallel "to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island; thence southerly through the middle of said channel, and of Fuca's Strait to the Pacific Ocean." But as Great Britain had found means
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
to set up a claim to all of Oregon at one time, and had finally yielded until it claimed only that part of it lying north of the Columbia, it had now retreated to this archipelago in the Gulf of Georgia, and here made another stand. To such small compass had its pretentions shrunken.
The claim was not boldly put forth at first. It was scarcely more than hinted at. The Hudson's Bay Company, of which James Douglass was still chief factor and supreme head on the coast, as well as governor of Vancouver, had sent some flocks of sheep over to the island in 1853, under the care of herders, and so assumed possession without asserting it. In the following May, Colonel Ebey, then collector of customs for the district of Puget Sound, was making a tour through the islands, in pursuance of his official duties, and incidently making some inquiry into the cause of Indian troubles which were threatening from that direction, and found these sheep. As their arrival on the island had not been reported to his office, and no duty had been paid on them, they seemed to require his official atten- tion, if he was right in supposing that they were on American soil.
At this point he was met by Charles James Griffin, who informed him that he was a justice of the peace, and had come in the name of Governor Douglass to ask the nature of his visit. The colonel declined to answer questions, and on the following day the Hudson's Bay Company's steamer Otter arrived, bringing Captain Sangster, the old-time com- mander of the Cadborough, but now the British collector of customs at Victoria, who, on coming ashore, demanded, rather more authoritatively than Griffin had done, to know the reason for Ebey's visit. Ebey replied that he was on official business, as collector of the district of Puget Sound.
----
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
To this Sangster responded that he should seize all vessels, and arrest all persons found navigating the waters west of Rosario Strait, and north of the middle line of the Strait of Fuca, without proper authority from his government, and Ebey retorted that a revenue officer would be established on the island to enforce the laws of the United States, and expressed the hope that in the performance of his duties, the officer so left would not meet with any persons so rash as to interfere with him, under the pretense that he was an officer of the British, or colonial, government. He accord- ingly appointed Captain Henry Webber as inspector on the island, and gave him his instructions in the presence of Sangster, who threatened to arrest him, in case he made any effort to exercise the functions of his office, but he never did so.
Here the incident, so far as any contention among the revenue officers was concerned, appears to have ended, but in the following year, 1855, the assessor of Whatcom County found the sheep, and assessed them, and as payment of taxes was refused, on the ground that the sheep were in British and not American territory, some of them were seized and sold, and so an international issue was raised, though it did not immediately assume an aspect of import- ance.
Soon after the boundary treaty was signed in 1846, George Bancroft, the historian, who was secretary of the navy in President Polk's cabinet, appears to have suspected that trouble might arise out of the indefinite description of that part of the boundary line lying along "the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island," and accordingly he had a copy of Wilkes' chart of the Haro Channel made for the use of the navy depart- ment. Shortly afterwards he became minister to England,
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
which position he held from 1846 to 1849. In order that he might be prepared to meet any question that might arise, he asked the secretary of state to give him such instructions as he would require, in case this boundary should call for his attention, and also to provide him with a copy of the map he had had made while secretary of the navy. These were furnished, but, no opportunity arising to make use of them, he took occasion to speak to Lord Palmerston about the matter, and to leave him a copy of the map, with others, and a note in which he was careful to say, "by combining two of the maps, your Lordship will readily trace the whole course of the Channel of Haro, through the waters of which the boundary line passes." This was the first formal asser- tion, on our part, of the Haro Channel as the boundary, and it was fortunate for us that it was asserted thus early, and before any attempt had been made on either side to claim actual possession.
In 1848, Mr. Crompton, the British minister in Washington under instructions from his government, made a proposition to our state department, to appoint commissioners to deter- mine the boundary line through the archipelago, but the instructions he proposed to give them were such as to leave them nothing to do but run the line through a channel which would give the islands to Great Britain. His proposition, therefore, was not accepted.
Four years later, and before the territory of Washington was organized, the Oregon legislature included San Juan Island in one of its northern counties, and it was subsequent to this that the Hudson's Bay Company began to establish itself on San Juan.
The seizure and sale of the Hudson's Bay Company's sheep led to a correspondence between Governor Douglass
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
and Governor Stevens, in which the former declared that he had instructions from her Majesty's government, to claim the islands as British territory, and in time this correspon- dence was referred to London and Washington, and the British minister presented a claim of the Hudson's Bay Company for damages on account of the seizure of its prop- erty. At the same time he renewed his suggestions that a commission be created to determine definitely the location of the boundary line. The commission was authorized, by act of Congress approved August 11, 1856, and in due time two commissioners were appointed, one representing each nation, for this duty. But the instructions to the British commissioner, like those given to Lord Ashburton in 1842, made it impossible for him to consent to fix the line in the Haro Channel, even if investigation should show that it really belonged there. He was to insist that it lay in Rosario Strait, and if he could not induce the American commissioner to consent to this, he might propose an intermediate channel, but that was the limit of his discretion in the matter. The commission, therefore, accomplished nothing so far as this part of the boundary was concerned.
The inhabitants of the island, both British and American, and the two sets of revenue and other officials appear to have got along together peaceably enough, after the seizure and sale of the sheep in 1855, until June 1859. Mr. Marcy, secretary of state in President Pierce's cabinet, had written Governor Stevens, in regard to the sheep incident, that "the officers of the territory should abstain from all acts on the disputed grounds which are calculated to provoke any con- flicts, so far as it can be done without implying the concession to the authority of Great Britain of any exclusive right over the premises. The title ought to be settled before either
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
party should exclude the other by force, or exercise complete and sovereign rights within the fairly disputed limits." This advice appears to have been accepted by the settlers, as well as the officials, until the 15th of June, 1859, when the pig was killed. It was a worthless creature, apparently belong- ing to Justice Griffin himself, and it sometimes invaded the garden of one Lyman A. Cutler, who had recently taken a claim on the island, under the preemption law. He shot it, and immediately reported what he had done to the owner, offering to pay twice its value at the same time. This was refused by Griffin, who showed a good deal of temper, and demanded $100. This Cutler declared was ten times the value of the hog, and would not pay it. That afternoon he was called upon by Mr. Dallas, who was Governor Douglass's son-in-law, and a high official of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had just arrived on the island in her Majesty's ship Satellite, and Dr. Tolmie and Mr. Fraser, who happened to be on the island at the time, when Mr. Dallas lectured him severely for destroying the property of a British subject, on British ground, and threatened to arrest him and take him to Victoria to be tried for his offense. Cutler, doubtless thinking himself menaced by a functionary who had the British navy at his back, told him if he attempted this he would shoot him, and would have other Americans to help defend him, and at the same time he reached for his rifle as if he meant to carry his threat into effect imme- diately. Mr. Dallas and his party then left and Cutler was not further molested.
The matter, however, was soon after reported to General Harney, who had now taken command of the new military district of Oregon, with headquarters at Vancouver. About the same time he also received a petition, signed by twenty-
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
two Americans residing on the island, informing him that the house of the inspector of customs on the island had recently been fired into by a party of Indians; that the bodies of two white men, apparently Americans, who had been murdered by Indians, had recently been found on the beach; that another settler had been shot in broad daylight, and still more recently the body of a white man was found on the beach, who had evidently been the victim of foul play. These crimes had been committed by the Clallams, living on the islands, or by the warlike northern Indians, from whose incursions the settlers were in constant danger, and they therefore asked that a military force, sufficient for their protection, might be stationed on the island.
While there is no doubt that these inhabitants were con- stantly exposed to the depredations of Indians, particularly those from the north, there is not much doubt that they were now far more anxious to have troops sent to assert American authority on the island, than to protect them against savages.
Before receiving this petition, General Harney had made a visit to Governor Douglass at Victoria, and had also stopped at the island, where he had doubtless conferred with the settlers, and learned from them directly of the annoyances and embarrassments to which they were subjected. On his way back to Vancouver, he had dined with Governor Stevens, who had only recently returned to the territory to seek reelection as delegate in Congress. What conference they had together about this matter, which was now so fully occupying the attention of the general, there is no record to show, but as both were military men by education, and one had now for more than six years been intimately con- nected with civil affairs, was now a delegate in Congress,
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
and had long held clearly defined and rather radical views in regard to the Hudson's Bay Company, and its relations to American settlers and their interests, it may well be believed that the policy which ought to be pursued in the matter now occupying General Harney's attention, was fully and earnestly considered, and that Stevens advised a bold and aggressive one. At any rate, soon after reaching his head- quarters, Harney ordered Captain George E. Pickett, then stationed with Company D, 9th infantry, in the blockhouse which had been built during the Indian war at Bellingham Bay, to remove to and establish his company on San Juan Island, "in some suitable position near its southern extrem- ity," which would be near Friday Harbor. The object of this removal was "to protect the inhabitants of the island from the incursions of the northern Indians." But he was also to have a "more serious and important duty," and that was "to afford adequate protection to the American citizens in their rights as such, and to resist all attempts at inter- ference by the British authorities residing on Vancouver Island, by intimidation or force," in the controversies arising out of the conflict of the settlers' interests with those of the Hudson's Bay Company. In case a second threat were made, to seize an American citizen and carry him to Victoria for trial, on any pretense, he was "to meet the authorities from Victoria at once, and inform them they cannot be per- mitted to interfere with our citizens in any way. Any grievance they may allege as requiring redress can only be examined under our own laws, to which they must submit their claims in proper form."
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