History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I, Part 11

Author: Lyman, William Denison, 1852-1920
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: [Chicago] S.J. Clarke
Number of Pages: 1134

USA > Washington > Benton County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 11
USA > Washington > Kittitas County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 11
USA > Washington > Yakima County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 11

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The story of Maldonado was given with the same appearance of candor and accuracy as that of Fonte. Maldonado presented to the Council of the Indies in 1609, a narrative of a voyage which he claimed to have made in 1588 from Lisbon through the islands north of America to the Pacific. The voyage is all blocked out and described with much particularity. The navigator outlines a course lying mainly along the parallel of 60º North latitude, a total distance of 1,810 leagues, at the west end of which course he discovers a strait which he calls the strait of Anian. That strait, according to Maldonado, "appears, according to ancient tradition, to be that named by geographers, in their maps, the Strait of Anian ; and if so, it must be a strait having Anian on one side and America on the other."

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Having emerged from the strait they sailed down the coast of America to latitude 55°, but were at such a distance from the shore as to be unable to mark any particular point. Yet they were sure that the land was inhabited by reason of the "smoke rising up in many places." Maldonado decided that the country must belong to Tartary or Cathaia, and "that at the distance of a few leagues from the coast must be the famed city of Cambolu, the metropolis of Tartary." He declares that they knew the water to be the South Sea, where are situated Japan, China, the Mollucas, India, New Guinea, and the land dis- covered by Captain Quiras, with all the coast of New Spain and Peru. The strait of Anian was, according to the description, fifteen leagues in length, and could easily be passed with a tide lasting six hours; "for those tides are very rapid." The entrance on the north side, which this party claimed to have passed through, was less than half a quarter of a league in width and on each side were ridges of steep rock, that on the Asiatic side being so steep, even over- hanging, that nothing falling from the summit could reach the base. Maldonado found the entrance so narrow that it could be easily defended by proper bas- tions. And that, it may be said in passing, was a great point with the Span- iards. For they determined by all means in their power to keep out other Euro- peans from the South Sea. Even as early as the time of Philip II about 1570, it was proposed, according to Alcedo, to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, but when the project was brought before the Council of the Indies, it was represented to the King that such an undertaking would be of great danger to the monarchy. The monarch therefore forbade any one, on pain of death, from ever even proposing such a project. But, of course, when the Dutch mariners, Lemaire and Van Shouten, in 1616, doubled Cape Horn and disclosed the vast expanses from the southern point of America into the Ant- arctic seas it became obvious that there was no use of fortifying either Panama or Strait of Anian.

Maldonado further declares that while his squadron lay at anchor in the southern end of that strait from the beginning of April to the middle of June, a large vessel entered from the South Sea for the purpose of passing the strait .. First putting his own forces in a position of defence he found that the new- comers were friendly and willing to trade. The greater part of their merchan- dise was discovered to consist of articles similar to those manufactured in China, such as brocades, silks, porcelains, feathers, precious stones, pearls and gold. Maldonado believed the crew of the new vessel to be Hanseatics. All' that we can say with certainty is that we have the narrative, but of whether to. give credence to all or to nothing, deponent sayeth not.

By far the most interesting as well as inherently most probable of the romantic voyages of that period is that of Juan de Fuca. This voyage is sup- posed to have occurred in 1592, just one hundred years after Columbus. The manner of its incorporation into the jetsam and flotsom of ocean literature was in this wise. In the historical and geographical work by Samuel Purchas published in 1625 and entitled "The Pilgrims," a collection of ocean discoveries, is included a contribution headed "A Note Made by Michael Lock the Elder, touching the Strait of Sea, commonly called Fretum Anian, in the South Sea, through the Northwest Passage of Meta Incognita." In this Michael Lock

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describes his meeting at Venice in 1596, an old man known as Juan de Fuca, but properly named Apostolos Valerianos, a Greek by nation and "an ancient pilot .of ships." This old man declared that he had been in the service of Spain forty years in the West Indies and that he was one of the victims of the capture in 1587 of the galleon Santa Anna by the English Cavendish, losing sixty thousand ducats of his own goods. Subsequently, according to his story, he was sent to explore the western coast of America with instructions to discover and fortify the Strait of Anian, that the English might not pass through it into the South .Sea.

His first quest proving unsuccessful, he went again in 1792, in a small .caravel. On that voyage he followed a course west and northwest along the coast of Mexico and California to latitude 47º. There the story continues :- "finding that the land trended north and northeast, with a broad inlet of sea, ·between 47° and 48° of latitude, he entered thereinto, sailing therein more than twenty days, and found that land trending still sometime northwest and north- .east and north and also east and southeastward, and very much broader sea than was at the said entrance, and he passed by divers islands in that sailing; and, at the entrance of this said strait, there is, on the northwest coast thereof, a great headland or island, with an exceedingly high pinnacle or spired rock, like a pillar, thereupon." Further on in the narration it is stated that "being entered thus far into the North Sea already; and finding the sea wide enough everywhere, and to be about thirty or forty leagues wide in the mouth of the straits, where he entered, he thought he had now well discharged his office ; and that, not being armed to resist the force of the savage people that might happen, he therefore set sail, and returned to Acapulco."

Although the location of the strait described by the old Greek pilot is given as between 47º and 48°, one degree too far south, and although it is not pos- sible to follow precisely the various turns in the course or to identify exactly the "high pinnacle or spired rock, like a pillar thereupon," nevertheless there is so much of a general resemblance to the location which Meares, the English navigator two hundred years later distinguished by the fine-sounding appellation of the Straits of Juan de Fuca upon the northwest corner of our good state of Washington, that we can only note the strangeness of the coincidence, if that is all that it is, and to cherish the hope that in reality more than three cen- turies ago Juan de Fuca himself did actually view that wondrous archipelago and thread the "Inland Passage" clear to the northern tip of what we know as Vancouver Island, where being in the illimitable expanses of the Pacific he really believed that he had entered the Atlantic and had found the long-sought "Strait of Anian." At any rate the story is such a fine one that, if not true, it ought to be.

Fascinating as is the story of the gradual movement of discovery from Mexico and Tehuantepec northward along the coast of the Californias, the scope of this volume does not permit us to moor our bark upon the shore of Montalvos's "Island of California on the right hand of the Indies very near the terrestrial Paradise." The inhabitants of our favored sister state to the south, rising out of the purple mists of historic romance and of the purple seas and ·enchanted airs of that belt of the Pacific, are already sufficiently assured that

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the Golden State is not only near the "terrestrial Paradise" but is the very sum and substance of all Paradises joined, to need none of our humble assistance in exalting their home land. We can pause in passing only to say that following the gorgeous age of Cortez and Balboa and Ulloa and Alarcon came that curious and even pathetic era which has done so much to provide material for the present age of a distinctive era of California literature, the Age of the Padres.

There were, in fact, two eras of missions-one that of Salvatierra and his associates, at Lareto, in Lower California, at the close of the Seventeenth Century, and the other that of seventy years later, in which Father Juni- pero Serra was the central figure and as a result of which missions and presidios and actual settlements took possession of those fair valleys where the glorious cities of American California, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose, Monterey and San Francisco link the lines of Padres with those of modern nation-makers. But while that unique era of Spanish California was in process of growth, explorers of the Spanish Main were turning their prows northward to solve the still baffling mystery of the Northwest Passage. Aside from those whom we have denominated as belonging to the "Age of Liars," there were many whose voyages hold an honored place in authentic annals. In fact, long before any Padre set forth with crucifix and rosary to save the souls of the native Californians, Cabrillo and Ferrelo had glided through the northern fogs to a point which they reported as latitude 44°, though the judgment of his- torians is that it was probably not north of Cape Mendocino. In 1602 and 1603 another pair of the great mariners made their way up the California coast. These were Vizcaino and Aguilar. The latter, separated by storm from his principal, reached, as he claimed, latitude 43º, and there he discovered a great river, January 19, 1603. Much discussion has arisen as to whether this could have been the Columbia. It is the only really great river on the coast of Oregon, but it is over three degrees too far north for the Rio de Aguilar, as that supposed river became named on Spanish maps. But observations were not very accurately made in those times, nor very correctly reported. So it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the great "River of the West" might be justly known as Aguilar.

RUSSIA WAKES UP

After the time of Aguilar a great lull in Spanish, English and French explorations ensued for a century and a half. This lull was due to the stupend- ous wars of the Seventeenth Century, involving all western Europe. But while western Europe was thus negligent of the Pacific shore of America, a new claimant entered the field from the north. The "Colossus of the North," Russia, under the bold genius of Peter the Great, had started on her great march to warm water and open ports. Part of the stupendous conception of that creator of modern Russia was to acquire North America by moving east- ward and southward. Siberia was the first fruit of the eastward expansion. This, too, like the acquirement of California by Spain, is another story and cannot be related here. Suffice it to say that with the entrance of this new champion into the lists, North America, and particularly Oregon, became the

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prize of contest between four great European powers, Spain, England, Russia and France, the last, however, not playing the same role as the others.

The name Oregon, like that of California and Idaho-all sonorous and appropriate names-has hidden and mysterious sources. First appearing in the work of Jonathan Carver soon after the Revolutionary War, and a few years later made familiar to the reading public in the sounding lines of Bryant's "Thanatopsis"-"or lose thyself in the continuous woods where there rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save his own dashings"-it had come to be a lure to the navigators of the four great nations named above. An impression of some great "River of the West" or "Rio de los Reyes," or "Rio de Aguilar" had become planted in the minds of the explorers of the Eighteenth Century. It is evident that there were many unrecorded voyages along our western coast. We have the romantic tale of the "beeswax ship" on the Oregon coast,. near Tillamook, as one example. The wax is actually there, and large amounts have been taken from it. Some believed for a time that it was sort of a natural wax or paraffine, but the discovery of a bee in a cake of it, and also. the existence in some cakes of the sacred letters I. H. S. make clear that it is real wax. It is probable that the wax was the cargo of some wrecked ship sent by the Padres of California to found a mission in the North, and that the wax was intended for candles. As another example of these unrecorded voyages we have the "treasure ship" at the foot of Nekahni Mountain, a regular Parnassus of Indian mythology. According to this story, a group of Indians, gathered on the grassy slopes of the sacred mountain, looking toward the ocean, saw approaching what at first they supposed to be an immense bird. While they watched in secret they saw that the bird was a big boat, and that it came to a halt in the ocean some distance from the land, and that from it was proceeding a small boat. In this were several men and with them a black, whom they supposed to be some sort of a goblin or spook. The men in the boat landed, dug a hole in the ground at the foot of the mountain, and there they killed the black man and threw him into the hole. Then they carried from their boat a big chest which they put in the same hole. Covering it all carefully they left the deposit and rowed away in their boat to the ship. Soon the sails were shaken out and the vessel soon disappeared from view. It is a fact that at the point which Indian tradition assigns for the location of the chest and the "spook," there are certain arrows and pointers graven in the rock. In recent years the whole place has been dug over by treasure hunters, some even invoking mediumistic guidance to the location, but no iron-bound and rusted chest, with its diamond necklaces and golden crucifixes and tar -- nished Spanish doubloons, has yet rewarded the search. Still another story comes to us from a little farther north, the most complete in its original sources of any. This was derived by Prof. Franz Boas of the Smithsonian Institution from Charlie Cultee, an old Indian of Bay Center, in Willapa Harbor. The substance of it comes also from other sources. According to this tale, one afternoon in strawberry time a group of Indians at a point about two miles south of the mouth of the Columbia River saw, far out in the ocean, a great object slowly drawing near the shore. In the morning an old woman went down toward the beach and saw this same big object in the surf

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at the edge of the shore. Now this old woman had been greatly bereaved some years before by the death of her son. According to Charlie Cultee, "she wailed a whole year and then she stopped." She hastened to the shore with the idea that she might hear something of her son. While she was gazing with awe and fear two creatures resembling bears but standing up, came out on the "thing." They looked like men except that they were covered with hair of a light color. They stretched out their hands to the woman and signified that they wished something to drink. The old woman, seeing that they indeed looked and moved like men, but thinking that they must be of those told of in the "Ecannum Tales," fled in great fear to the village. When her tale was told the inhabitants hastened to the shore and discovered that the "thing" was indeed a huge canoe with trees driven into it. Also, they found that the two creatures like bears had gone ashore, made a fire and were holding grains of corn (or they afterwards found them to be) in a kettle over the fire. The grains were popping around very rapidly. The Indians seem to have been greatly impressed with this popcorn, and, according to Professor Boas, that feature of the story is found in all the various versions. The Indians brought water for the two strangers, and by examining their hands and taking off their clothes and seeing their white skins, discovered that they were indeed men. But while the mystery was thus being solved the ship caught fire in some way, and after burning fiercely for a time was entirely consumed. Or, as Charlie Cultee expressed it, "it burned up just like fat." Mr. Silas Smith, who lived a long time at Astoria and whose mother was an Indian woman, stated in his narrative that the Indians used for these men a word, "Tlohonipts," meaning "Those who drift ashore," and that that name afterwards became applied to all Whites indiscriminately.

By the burning of the ship the Indians got a huge quantity of iron and copper. This was of the utmost value for knives and chisles and axes. Best of all, one of the men knew how to make those implements. He was in great demand, and strife arose between the Clatsops and Chinooks and Wahkiakums, and even the far-off Chehalees, as to which should have him. He finally was allowed to make a house of his own on the south side of the river. Some have undertaken to identify his location with Lake Culleby, on the edge of the high timber land, near the present Gearhart Park. This iron-worker's name was Konapee. According to the story, he and his companion, after living a long time there and having Indian women, tried to get away southward and were never heard of afterwards. A narration fitting curiously into this story is found in Franchère's narrative (by Gabriel Franchère, one of the Astor party of 1810), to the effect that Franchère saw in 1814, at the Cascades, an old man called Soto, who stated that his father was a white man, a Spaniard, who was wrecked on the Oregon coast at the mouth of the Columbia. Silas Smith stated that his mother knew, in 1830, an old woman who was a daughter of Konapee or Soto, whom Mr. Smith believed to be the same person. From this data it was conjectured by H. S. Lyman, in his history of Oregon, page 172, Volume I, that the date when Konapee was cast upon the shore was about 1725. One interesting collateral fact with the iron work of Konapee is that when authentic discoveries were made along the Oregon coast the Indians

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seemed to be entirely familiar with iron implements, though not having many, and hence very eager to get them. In the account of Cook's voyages it is stated that not even cannon seemed to surprise the Indians on the coast of Nootka.

Such may be looked on as the general view of the prehistoric or legendary age of Northwestern history. That age blends in a more or less vague manner with the early narratives like those of Aguilar and Vizcaino and the later authentic age of Heceta, Cook, Gray, and Vancouver, in the later Eighteenth Century. The author of this volume has written for an earlier work ("The. Columbia River") a narrative of that stage of history from which he derives the remainder of this chapter.

"This new movement of Pacific exploration, destined to continue with no cessation to our own day, was ushered in by Spain. There was even yet much vitality in the fallen mistress of the world. Impelled by both religious zeal and hope of material gain, the immigration of 1769 went forth from La Paz to San Diego and Monterey. That inaugurated the singular and poetic, in some aspects even beautiful, history of Spanish California, an era which has provided so much of romance and poetry for literature in the California of our own times. The march of events had made it plain to the Spanish government that, if it was to retain a hold on the Pacific Coast, it must bestir itself. Russia, England, and France, released in a measure from the pressure of European struggles, were fitting out expeditions to resume the arrested efforts of the Sixteenth Century. It seemed plain also that colonial America was going to be an active rival on the seas. And well may it have so. seemed, for, in the sign of the Yankee sailor, the conquest was to be made.

SPAIN'S OPPORTUNITY

But just at that important juncture a most favoring condition arose for Spain. The government of England precipitated the struggle of the Amer- ican Revolution. France soon joined to strike her island rival a deadly blow by assisting in the liberation of the colonies. For the time, Spain had nearly a clear field for Pacific discovery, so far as England and France were concerned. As for Russia, the danger was more imminent. Russia had, indeed, begun to. look in the direction of Pacific expansion a long time prior to the Spanish immigration to California. That vast monarchy, transformed by the genius of Peter the Great, had stretched its arms from the Baltic to the Aleutian. archipelago, and had looked from the frozen seas of Siberia to the open Pacific- as a fairer field for expansion. Many years elapsed, however, before Peter's great designs could be fulfilled. Not till 174I did Vitus Behring thread the thousand islands of Sitka and gaze upon the glaciated crest of Mount St. Elias. And it was not till thirty years later that it became understood that the Bay of Avatcha was connected by the open sea with China. In 1771 the first cargo of furs was shipped directly from Avatcha to Canton. Then the vastness of the Pacific Ocean was first comprehended. Then it was first under- stood that the same waters which lashed the frozen ramparts of Kamchatka encircled the coral islands of the South Sea and roared against the stormy barriers of Cape Horn.

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The Russians had not found the Great River, though it appears that. Behring, in 1771, had gone as far south as latitude 46°, just the parallel of the mouth of the Columbia. But he was so far off the coast as not to see it.

Three Spanish voyages followed in rapid succession; that of Perez in 1774, of Heceta in 1775, and of Bodega in 1779. The only notable things in connec- tion with the voyage of Perez were his discovery of Queen Charlotte's Island, with the sea-otter furs traded by the natives, the first sight of that superb group. of mountains which we now call the Olympic, but which the Spaniards named the Sierra de Santa Rosalia, and finally the fine harbor of Nootka on Vancouver Island, named by Perez Port San Lorenzo, for years the center of the fur trade and the general rendezvous of ships of all nations. But no river was found.

With another year a still completer expedition was fitted out, Bruno- Heceta being commander and Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, second in. command. This voyage was the most important and interesting thus far in- the history of the Columbia River exploration. For Heceta actually found the Great River, so long sought and so constantly eluding discovery. On June 10, 1775, Heceta passed Cape Mendocino and entered a small bay just north- ward. There he entered into friendly relations with the natives and took solemn possession of the country in the name of his Catholic Majesty of Spain. Sailing thence northward, he again touched land just south of the Straits of Fuca, but there he met disaster at the ill-omened point subsequently named Destruction Island. For there his boat, landing for exploration, was set upon by the savage inhabitants, and the entire boat-load murdered. Moving southward again, on August 15, in latitude 46° 10', Heceta found himself abreast of some great river. Deciding that this must be indeed the mysterious: Strait of Fuca, or the long concealed river of the other ancient navigators,. he made two efforts to enter, but the powerful current and uncertain depths- deterred him, and he at last gave up the effort and bore away for Monterey. Three additional names were bestowed upon the river at this time. Thinking the entrance a bay, Heceta named it, in honor of the day, Ensenada de Asun- cion. Later it was more commonly known as Ensenada de Heceta, while the Spanish charts designated the river as Rio de San Roque. The name of Cabo. de Frondoso (Leafy Cape) was bestowed upon the low promontory on the south, now known as Point Adams, while upon the picturesque headland on the north, which we now designate as Cape Hancock, the devout Spaniards conferred the name of Cabo de San Roque, August 16, being the day sacred to that saint.

HECETA'S ACCOUNT

The original account given by Heceta is so interesting that we insert. it here:

"On the 17th day of August I sailed along the coast to the forty-sixth degree, and observed that from the lat. 47º 4' to that of 46° 10', it runs in the angle of 18° of the second quadrant, and from that latitude to 46° 4', in the angle of 12 degrees of the same quadrant; the soundings, the shore, the- wooded character of the country, and the little islands, being the same as on: the preceding days.

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"On the evening of this day I discovered a large bay, to which I gave the name Assumption Bay and a plan of which will be found in this parallel. Its latitude and longitude are determined according to the most exact means afforded by theory and practice. The latitudes of the two most prominent capes of this bay are calculated from the observations of this day.

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History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I, Part 11

Author: Lyman, William Denison, 1852-1920 Publication date: 1919 Publisher: [Chicago] S.J. Clarke Number of Pages: 1134

Author: Lyman, William Denison, 1852-1920
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: [Chicago] S.J. Clarke
Number of Pages: 1134