History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I, Part 13

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 13
USA > Washington > Kittitas County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 13
USA > Washington > Yakima County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 13

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Broughton ascended the river to a point near the modern town of Wash- ougal. He bestowed British names after the general fashion, as Mount Hood, Cape George, Vancouver Point, Puget's Island, Young's Bay, Menzies' Island and Whidby's River. With true British assurance, he felt that he had "every reason to believe that the subjects of no other civilized nation or state had ever entered this river before; in this opinion he was confirmed by Mr. Gray's sketch, in which it does not appear that Mr. Gray either saw or was ever within five leagues of its entrance." Therefore he "took possession of the river, and the country in its vicinity, in his Britannic Majesty's name."

In view of all the circumstances of Gray's discovery, and his impartation of it to the British, this language of Vancouver has a coolness, as John Fiske remarks, which would be very refreshing on a hot day.

On November 10th, the "Chatham" crossed the bar outward bound for Monterey to join the "Discovery."

Such, in rapid view, were the essential facts in the long and curiously com- plicated finding of our River. We see the foundation of the subsequent con- tention between Great Britain and the United States.

The important explorations of Puget Sound, the Gulf of Georgia, and the related waters upon the northwestern corner of the state of Washington were conducted by British, Americans and Spaniards. But though many navigators of those nations participated in that great task, the British may justly claim the greater credit for extensive and continuous discovery. By the close of the century it may be stated that the coast of Oregon was fully known, and the first era of discovery was ended.

CHAPTER IV

EXPLORATIONS BY LAND

EXPLORATIONS BY LAND-LOUISIANA PURCHASE-LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION INDIANS' VAPOR BATHS-MEASURING THE RIVERS-START ON RETURN JOURNEY -JEFFERSON'S TRIBUTE TO CAPTAIN LEWIS

The successive acquisitions of territory by which the United States came to embrace the whole breadth of the continent may almost be said to constitute our national history. Practically every great issue of American politics,- constitutional interpretation, slavery, tariff, money, interstate commerce, rail- road legislation, Civil War,-has been in some way connected with the poli- cies pertaining to the acquisition and subsequent government of new territory.

John Fiske has pointed out three great methods in history of controlling and governing territory :- first, conquest without incorporation, Oriental; sec- ond, conquest with incorporation and assimilation, Roman; third, acquisition with incorporation, assimilation, and representation, Teutonic. The last word is not a good one. If Fiske had written that now he would probably have writ- ten Anglo-Saxon. But we may venture to add a fourth to this list, i. e., acquisi- tion by discovery or honest purchase, with participation in government of new parts on equal terms with old, American. We have not absolutely adhered to that great principle at all times, but the exceptions, as in case of Hawaii, Porto Rico, Panama and the Philippine Islands, have been short-lived or will be, and the whole tendency and overwhelming policy and intention of the American people is to recognize and maintain peaceful additions of territory whose inhab- itants may, as soon as possible, become equal participants in the making and executing of laws and in acquiring their part of the national domain and in the other benefits and opportunities which may accrue from the democratic federal system of the Union.

In many respects the action of Maryland in 1777 upon the submission to the Thirteen States by the Continental Congress of the proposed Articles of Con- federation was the most important event of that stage of history, next to the Declaration of Independence. Maryland refused to ratify those articles unless the states holding western lands would cede them to the Federal union. In spite of bitter feeling in Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut, which held conflicting claims in the Ohio and Great Lakes regions, little Maryland gallantly stuck to her ultimatum with the result that those land- claiming states gradually accepted the situation, and the United States of America became the land owner of the continent. That event created the National Government. That became the strong bond of union. By reason of the nationalization of the land system, the immigrants to the new lands west of

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the Alleghenies, the state makers of the first era after Independence, became Americans, not Virginians, New Yorkers, New Englanders, or Carolinians,. By reason of that sentiment, planted deep in the minds of the builders of the- Lake states, of the Ohio, and the upper Mississippi, the Union withstood the. shock of civil war and still stands square to the world, battling now for the- principle of self-government for the world, and having demonstrated that a "nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are- created equal" can "long endure."

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE

Next to that first acquisition of territory by the newly created Union, came both in time and importance the Louisiana Purchase. The subsequent acquisi- tion of Texas, Oregon and California was the logical consummation of the earlier. With these vast regions extending to the Western Ocean the Ameri- cans outgrew their earlier habit of thinking in terms of European politics and began to think in terms of the American continent. We then became a real people. It became evident by the Louisiana Purchase that the same type of people were to march to the Pacific and build states along their road who had already demonstrated the proposition, that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The author of those words had seen more clearly perhaps than any other statesman of that era the world vision of a great American democracy, independent of Europe and yet by reason of geographical position as well as political ideals and social aspirations. the natural mediator among peoples and the ultimate teacher and enlightener of mankind. When, therefore, as a result of the political revolution of 1800 and the permanent establishment of the democratic conception in the leader- ship of American politics, Thomas Jefferson found himself invested with the enormous responsibility of framing policies and measures for the new era, one of his foremost aims was to turn the face of the nation westward. Having long entertained the idea that the true policy was to secure such posts of van- tage beyond the Alleghenies as would lead by natural stages to the acquisition of the country beyond the Mississippi even to the Pacific, lie was alert to seize- any opening for pursuing that truly American policy. He did not have long to wait. At the time of his inauguration the stupendous energy of the French Revolution had become concentrated in that overpowering personality, Napo- leon Bonaparte. Holding then the position of First Consul, but as truly the im- perial master as when he placed the Iron Crown of the Lombards upon his own head, "the man on horseback" perceived that a renewal of the great war was. inevitable and that Austria on land and England at sea were going to put metes to his Empire if human power could do it. Nothing was more hateful to- Napoleon than to let French America, or Louisiana, slip from his grasp. But he had not the maritime equipment to defend it. England was sure to take it and that soon. Monroe, the American envoy, was in Paris fully instructed by President Jefferson what to do. All things were ready. The men and the occasion met. The Louisiana Purchase was consummated. For less than three cents an acre a region now comprising thirteen states or parts of states,.

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estimated at over 565,000,000 acres, equal in extent to all Europe outside of Russia and Scandinavia, became part of the United States.

LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION

When that great event was consummated and one of the milestones in the world's progress upon the highway of universal democracy had been set for good, the next step in the mind of Jefferson was to provide for the exploration of the vast new land. The westward limits of Louisiana were not indeed de- fined by the treaty of purchase otherwise than as the boundaries by which the territory had been ceded by Spain to France, and those boundaries in turn were defined only as those by which France had in 1763 ceded to Spain. Hence the western boundary of Louisiana was indefinite, although subsequent agreements and usages determined the boundary to be the crest of the Rocky Mountains as far south as Texas. Jefferson seems to have thought that the entire continent to the Pacific ought to be included in the exploration, for he saw also that the destiny of his country required the ultimate union of Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as the great central valley. From these conceptions and aims of Jefferson sprang that most interesting and influential of all exploring expedi- tions in our history, the Lewis and Clark Expedition from St. Louis up the Missouri, across the Rocky Mountains, and down the Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean.

Jefferson had contemplated such an expedition a long time. Even as far back as December 4, 1783, in a letter to George Rogers Clark, he raised the question of an exploration from the Mississippi to California. In 1792 he took it up with the American Philosophical Society, and even then Meriwether Lewis was eager to head such an expedition. In a message to Congress of January 18, 1803, before the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson developed the im- portance of a thorough exploration of the continent even to the Western Ocean. With his characteristic secrecy, Jefferson was disposed to mask the great design of ultimate acquisition of the continent under the appearance of scientific re- search. In a letter to Lewis of April 27, 1803, he says :- "The idea that you are going to explore the Mississippi has been generally given out; it satisfies public curiosity and masks sufficiently the real destination." That real destina- tion was of course the Pacific Ocean, and the fundamental aim was the con- tinental expansion of the then crude and struggling Republic of the West. Considering the momentous nature of the undertaking and the possibilities to cover, it is curious and suggestive that Lewis had estimated the expense at $2,500, and Jefferson called upon Congress for that amount of appropriation. An explorer of the present would hardly expect to go outdoors on that scale of expense. Jeffersonian simplicity with a vengeance!

The scope of this book does not permit any detailed account of the prepara- tions or of the personnel of the party. Suffice it to say that the leader, Meri- wether Lewis, and his lieutenant, William Clark, were men of energy, discre- tion, courage, and the other necessary qualities for such an undertaking. While not men of education or general culture (Clark could not even spell or com- pose English correctly), they both had an abundance of common sense and in preparation for their mission gained a hurried preparation in the essentials of botany, zoology, and astronomy such as might enable them to observe and re-

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port intelligently upon the various objects of discovery and the distances and directions traversed.

Jefferson's instructions to Captain Lewis give one an added respect for the intelligence and broad humanity of the Great Democrat. Particularly did he enjoin upon the leader of the party the wisdom of amicable relations with the natives. The benevolent spirit of the President appears in his direction that kine-pox matter be taken and that its use for preventing small-pox be explained to the Indians. All readers of American history should read these instructions, both for an estimate of Jefferson personally and for light on the conditions and viewpoints of the times.

The number in the party leaving St. Louis was forty-five. But one death occurred upon the whole journey, which lasted from May 14, 1804, to Septem- ber 23, 1806. Never perhaps did another so extended and difficult expedition suffer so little. And this was the more remarkable from the fact that there was no physician nor scientific man with the party and that whatever was needed in the way of treating the occasional sicknesses or accidents must be done by the Captains. While to their natural force and intelligence the party owed a large share of its immunity from disaster, good fortune surely attended them. This seems the more noticeable when we reflect that this was the first journey across a wilderness afterwards accentuated with every species of suf- fering and calamity.

The members of the party were encouraged to preserve journals and records to the fullest degree, and from this resulted a fullness of detail by a number of the men as well as the leaders which has delighted generations of readers ever since. And in spite of the fact that none of the writers had any literary genius, these journals are truly fascinating, on account of the nature of the undertaking and a certain glow of enthusiasm which invested with a charm even the plain and homely details of the long journey.

The first stage of the expedition was from St. Louis, May 14, 1804, to a point 1,600 miles up the Missouri, reached November 2d. There the party win- tered in a structure which they called Fort Mandan. The location was on the west bank of the Missouri opposite the present city of Pierre, South Dakota. The journey had been made by boats at an average advance of ten miles a day. The river, though swift and with frequent shoals, offered no serious impedi- ments, even for a long distance above Fort Mandan.

After a long, cold winter in the country of the Mandans, the expedition resumed its journey up the Missouri on April 7, 1805. Of the interesting de- tails of this part of their course we cannot speak. Reaching the headwaters of the Missouri on August 12th, they crossed that most significant spot, the Great Divide. A quotation from the journal of Captain Lewis indicates the lively sentiments with which they passed from the Missouri waters to those of the Columbia :- "As they proceeded, their hope of seeing the waters of the Colum- bia rose to almost painful anxiety ; when at the distance of four miles from the last abrupt turn of the stream, they reached a small gap formed by the high mountains which recede on either side, leaving room for the Indian road. From the foot of one of the lowest of these mountains, which rises with a gentle ascent for about half a mile, issued the remotest water of the Missouri. They had now reached the hidden sources of that river which had never before

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been seen by civilized man; and as they quenched their thirst at the chaste and icy fountain,-as they sat down by the brink of the little rivulet which yielded its distant and modest tribute to the parent ocean-they felt themselves re- warded for all their labors and difficulties. * * *. They found the descent much steeper than on the eastern side, and at the distance of three-quarters of a mile, reached a handsome bold creek of cold, clear water running to the west- ward. They stopped to taste for the first time the waters of the Columbia."

After some very harassing and toilsome movements in that vast cordon of peaks in which lie the cradles of the Missouri, Yellowstone, Snake, Clear- water, and Bitter Root rivers-more nearly reaching the starvation point than at any time on the trip-the party emerged upon a lofty height from which their vision swept over a vast expanse of open prairie, in which it became evident there were many natives and, as they judged, the near vicinity of the great river, which, as they thought would carry them in short order to the Western Ocean of their quest. They little realized that they were yet more than six hundred miles from the edge of the continent. Descending upon the plain they made their way to the Kooskooskee, now known as the Clearwater River. As judged by Olin D. Wheeler in his invaluable book, "On the Trail of Lewis and Clark," the explorers crossed from what is now Montana into the present Idaho at the Lolo Pass, and proceeded thence down the broken country between the North and Middle forks of the Kooskooskee, reaching the junction on September 26th. The camp at that spot was called Canoe Camp. There they remained nearly two weeks, most of them sick through overeating after they had sustained so severe a fast in the savage defiles of the Bitter Roots, and from the effects of the very great change in temperature from the snowy heights to the hot valley below. At Canoe Camp they constructed boats for the further prosecution of their journey. They left their thirty-eight horses with three Indians of the Chopunnish or Pierced-nose tribe, or Nez Perce as we now know them.

With their canoes they entered upon a new stage of their journey, one easy and pleasant after the hardships of the mountains. Down the beautiful Kooskooskee, then low in its autumn stage, they swept gaily, finding frequent rapids, though none serious. The pleasant sounding name Kooskooskee, which ought to be preserved (though Clearwater is appropriate and sonorous) was supposed by the explorers to be the name of the river. This it appears was a misapprehension. The author has been told by a very intelligent Indian named Luke, living at Kamiah, that the Indians doubtless meant to tell the white men that the stream was Koos Koos, or water, water. Koos was, and still is, the Nez Perce word for water. Luke stated that the Indians did not regularly have names for streams, but only for localities, and referred to rivers as the water or koos belonging to some certain locality.

After a prosperous descent of the beautiful and impetuous stream, for a distance estimated by them at fifty-nine miles (considerably over-estimated) the party entered a much larger stream coming from the south. This they un- derstood the Indians to call the Kimooenim. They named it the Lewis in honor of Captain Lewis. It was the great Snake River of our present maps. The writer has been told by Mr. Thomas Beall of Lewiston, that the true Indian name is Twelka, meaning Snake. The party was now at the present location

THOMAS J. BEALL

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of Lewiston and Clarkston, one of the most notable regions in the northwest for beauty, fertility, and all the essentials of capacity for sustaining a high type ·civilized existence.

The party camped on the right bank just below the junction and that first camp of white men was nearly opposite both Lewiston and Clarkston of today. They say that the Indians flocked from all directions to see them. The scanti- ness of their fare had brought them to the stage of eating dog-meat which they say excited the ridicule of the natives. The Indians gave them to understand that the southern branch was navigable about sixty miles; that not far from the junction it received a branch from the south, and at two days' march up a larger branch called Pawnashte, on which a chief resided who had more horses than he could count. The first of these must be the Asotin unless indeed they referred to the Grande Ronde which is the first large stream, but is at a consid- erable distance from the junction. The Pawnashte must have been the Sal- mon, the largest tributary of the Snake. The Snake at the point of the camp of the explorers was discovered to be about three hundred yards wide. The party noticed the greenish blue color of the Snake, while the Kooskooskee was as clear as crystal

The Indians at this point are described as of the Chopunnish or Pierced- nose nation, the latter of those names translated by the French voyagers into the present Nez Perce. According to the observations of the party the men were in person stout, portly, well-looking; the women small, with good fea- tures and generally handsome. The chief article of dress of the men was a "buffalo or elk-skin robe decorated with beads, sea-shells, chiefly mother-of- pearl attached to an otter-skin collar and hung in the hair, which falls in front in two queues; feathers, paints of different kinds, principally white, green, and light blue, all of which they find in their own country. The dress of the women is more simple, consisting of a long skirt of argalia or ibex-skin, reach- ing down to the ankles without a girdle; to this are tied little pieces of brass and shells and other small articles." Further on the journal states again : "The Chopunnish have few amusements, for their life is painful and laborious; and all their exertions are necessary to earn even their precarious subsistence. During the Summer and Autumn they are busily occupied in fishing for salmon and collecting their Winter store of roots. In the Winter they hunt the deer on snow shoes over the plains, and towards Spring cross the mountains to the Missouri for the purpose of trafficking for buffalo robes." It may be remarked here parenthetically that there is every indication that buffalo formerly inhab- ited the Snake and Columbia plains. In fact buffalo bones have been found in recent years in street excavations at Spokane. What cataclysm may have led to their extermination is hiddden in obscurity. But at the first coming of the whites it was discovered that one of the regular occupations of the natives was crossing the Rocky Mountains to hunt or trade for buffalo.

INDIANS' VAPOR BATHS

Soon after resuming the journey on October 11th, the explorers note with curiosity one of the vapor baths common among those Indians, which they say differed from those on the frontiers of the United States or in the Rocky

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Mountains. The bath house was a hollow square six or eight feet deep formed in the river bank by damming up with mud the other three sides and covering the whole completely except an aperture about two feet wide at the top. The bathers descended through that hole, taking with them a jug of water and a number of hot rocks. They would throw the water on the rocks until it steamed and in that steam they would sit until they had perspired sufficiently, and then they would plunge into cold water. This species of entertainment seems to have been very sociable, for one seldom bathed alone. It was considered a great affront to decline an invitation to join a bathing party.

The explorers seem to have had a very calm and uneventful descent of Snake River. They describe the general lay of the country accurately, noting that beyond the steep ascent of two hundred feet (it is in reality a great deal more in all the upper part of this portion of Snake River) the country becomes an open, level, and fertile plain, entirely destitute of timber. They note all the rapids with sufficient particularity to enable any one thoroughly familiar with them to identify most of them. They make special observation of the long series of rapids commonly known now as the Riparia and Texas Rapids, and below these observe a large creek on the left which they denominate Kimooenim Creek, the present Tucannon. This is rather odd, for that had already been noted as the native name of the main river. A few miles farther down they pass through a bad rapid about twenty-five yards wide. Of course it must be remembered that the time was October and the river was about at its lowest. This was the narrow creek of the Palouse Rapids, which, however, is not so narrow as they estimated, even at low water. At the end of this rapid they discovered a large river on the right to which they give the name of Drewyer, one of their party, their mighty hunter in fact. This was a many-named stream, for it was later the Pavion, the Pavillion, and at last the present Palouse, the equivalent, we are told again by Thomas Beall, for gooseberry. The principal rapids below the entrance of the Palouse are known at present as Fish-hook, Long's Crossing, Pine Tree, the Potato Patch, and Five-mile. Five-mile looked so bad to them that they unloaded the canoes and made a portage of three- quarters of a mile. At a distance below this, which they estimated at seven miles, they reached that interesting place where the great northern and southern branches of the Big River unite. They were then at the location of the present village of Burbank. Many interesting events and observations are chronicled of their stay at that point. Soon after their arrival a regular procession of two hundred Indians from a camp a short distance up the Columbia came to visit them, timing their approach with the music of drums, accompanied with the voice. There seems to have followed a regular love-feast, both parties taking whiffs of the friendly pipe and expressing as best they could their common joy at the meeting. Then came a distribution of presents and a mutual pledging of good will.

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History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I, Part 13

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