USA > Washington > Spokane County > Spokane > History of the city of Spokane and Spokane County, Washington : from its earliest settlement to the present time, Volume I > Part 9
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"When, March 26, 1821, the Northwest company was absorbed by the Hudson's Bay company, Spokane House passed to the ownership of the latter. But the fur trade on the lower Columbia was now on the decline, and Spokane House was aban- doned in 1825, and a new Hudson's Bay post established on the Columbia river, a short distance above Kettle Falls, called Fort Colville."
W. P. Winans, who went to Colville in July, 1861, where he lived until 1873, says, in a manuscript relative to the earliest settlements in that valley: "When the war of 1812 foreed the Astor party to sell to the Northwest Fur company in 1813, they abandoned one of the posts at the mouth of the Little Spokane, and located it in the Colville valley, about 1816. When the Hudson's Bay company, in 1821, absorbed the Northwest Fur company, they built a stockaded fort at this trading post, on the south bank of the Columbia river, about a mile above Kettle Falls, and called it Fort Colville.
"When the writer visited, in 1870, the location of these posts on the Spokane and at the mouth of the Okanogan river, all that remained to indicate that onee there had been buildings and people living there were the mounds made by fallen elimneys and the graves of the dead, although Fort Okanogan was occupied and maintained as a trading post for about fifty years, the last man in charge being a half-breed named Franeis Desotel. who in 1862 abandoned it, moving the goods np to the Similkimeen river, about eighty miles north, and established a trading post there.
"Either William Frazier or Archibald MaeDonald built Fort Colville and named it after the then London governor of the Hudson's Bay company. It was next to Vaneouver in importanec. Here the accounts or statements from all the posts in the Pacific northwest were made up for transmission. via the Columbia river to Boat Eneampment, through Athabasca pass, via Jasper House and York factory on Hudson Bay, and thenee by ship to England. It was maintained until 1870, when the Hudson's Bay company moved into British territory.
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"The first time I visited Fort Colville was in August, 1861. Then there was a stockade enelosing it, about 250 feet square and twelve or fourteen feet high, in good repair, with square towers or bastions at opposite corners enclosing the houses. I saw it again in July, 1904. The stockade was gone, but some of the old storerooms and one of the bastions built in 1827. and the frame dwelling houses of the chief trader, built in 1863, were standing, the property being then owned by Donald MeDonald, son of Angus MeDonald, the chief trader, who elaimed it as a homestead in 1870. During the thirteen years I resided in Colville valley, many times I enjoyed the society of Mr. Angus MeDonald, the chief trader, who dispensed hos- pitality after the manner of the Scoteh lairds of his ancestral home.
"I have an illustration in mind. A party of about fifteen of us coneluded we would pay our respects to Mr. McDonald on New Year's day. 1864, and have a sleighride too. So we got a pair of bobsleds, with a big wagon box and four horses, and drove the fifteen miles to the Hudson's Bay company post. Mr. MeDon- ald received ns with courtly grace and abundant cheer. After the usual greetings, we spent a short time socially, and were about to return that afternoon, but he would have none of it. We must stay to dinner and spend the night with him. We consented, and the dinner was served, on what he called a 'field table.' in a large room twenty by thirty feet. Next to the walls on the floor were spread fur robes; the space left in the center was covered with white table cloths, and on this white field table, say ten by twenty feet, were placed the dishes with provisions. The thirty guests, which included our party and about as many more, being the princi- pal farmers of the valley, assembled around this festal board, and, reclining on the robes, we leisurely partook of the bountiful supply before us, and listened to our host relate incidents of ebase or exploration, or conflict and treaty with the natives of the Northwest. Thus we spent some hours, retiring about midnight to our beds.
"While he was entertaining us, at the same time there were assembled in other buildings of the fort, as their yearly custom was, the former employes of the eom- pany and their families, numbering over 100, who usually spent the holiday week with him, having the best time in their lives in feasting, social mirth. musie and dancing.
"Angus MeDonald came to this country in 1810, as a clerk for the Hudson's Bay company, was sent to Fort Hall, and was there with Captain Grant. Was married in 1843 to a daughter of a Nez Perce chief. Came to Colville and took charge of the post about 1850, and remained with the Hudson's Bay company as long as they maintained trading posts in United States territory. Some of his chil- dren having taken up their residence in the Flathead country, he moved to that section, living near them the last few years of life. He died February Ist. 1889, over 72 years of age."
There remain some odds and ends of ancedote and adventure, and a few frag- ments of historic ineident, to round out the section of this volume that deals with the picturesque period of the fur-trader. Those were brave and daring times, a hundred years ago, when the British fing floated over the Inland Empire, and our first citizens were a medley aggregation of canny Scots and volatile French Canadians, of Iroquois and Spokanes, of half breeds and Sandwich islanders, with now and then a "mountain man." free trapper and half savage American from the Kentucky frontier.
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French was the prevailing tongue, and traces of that language arc stamped forever on the nomenclature of our mountains, lakes and rivers. They are written on our waters in such names as Pend d'Oreille (ear-ring), Coeur d'Alene (sharp- hearted), Palouse, (a grassy region), Nez Perces (pierced noses), and many others.
Some of the Scotch clans were so numerously represented in the Spokane country that the voyageurs, in order to escape confusion of names, resorted to distinctive nieknames. There were, for example, Mr. Mackenzie le rouge (the red), Mr. Mac- kenzie le blane (the white), Mr. Mackenzie le borgne (the one-eyed), Mr. Mackenzie le picoté (the pock-marked ) ; Mr. MaeDonald le grand (the big), Mr. MacDonald le prètre (the priest), Mr. MaeDonald le bras eroche (the crooked arm). Ross Cox narrates an amusing incident growing out of this custom; and since the leading character was probably the ancestor of the Liberty family whose name we have perpetuated in Liberty lake, the anecdote has a fitting place in a history of Spo- kane.
Mr. Shaw, one of the agents, had passed many years in the interior, and was by the voyageurs called Monsieur Le Chat (the cat). On quitting the Indian country he married a Canadian lady, by whom he had several children. Some years after this event, one of his old foremen, Lonis La Liberté, went to Montreal to spend the winter. He had heard of his old bourgeois' marriage and was anxious to see him. Mr. Shaw was walking on the Champ de Mars with a couple of officers, when La Liberte spied him. He immediately ran up, and seizing him by both hands, exclaimed :
"Ah, mon cher Monsieur Le Chat, comment vous portez-vous?"
"Très bien, Louisson."
"Et comment se porte Madame La Chatte?"
"Bien, bien, Louisson, elle est très bien."
"Et tous les petits Chatons?"
("Ah, my dear Monsieur Cat, how do you do?" "Very well, Louison." "And how is Madame Cat?" "Well, well, Louisson. she is very well." "And all the little Kittens?")
By this time Mr. Shaw, a trifle embarrassed before his fine army friends, thought it advisable to check La Liberté's cffusiveness and with a rather brusque reply turned away, leaving Louisson astonished and indignant over his cool recep- tion.
La Liberté, adds Cox, was an extraordinary old man ; he had several fine daugh- ters by an Indian wife and became father-in-law to threc proprietors. He was there- fore proud of his connections, and feeling indignant at Mr. Shaw's supposed cavalier treatment, adopted an cecentrie method of manifesting his resentment.
He ordered a coat to be made of fine green eloth, with silver buttons; a vest of crimson velvet, with carnelian buttons, braided sky-blue pantaloons, Hessian boots with gold tassels and silver heels; a hat, feathers and silk sash. And thus accou- tered, with a long calumet in his right hand, and a splendidly ornamented smoking- bag in his left, he proceeded to the Champ de Mars during a regimental parade, and observing Mr. Shaw walking in company with some ladies and gentlemen, he vociferated :
"Ha, ha, Monsieur Le Chat, voyez ma veste! voilà les boutons! En avez-vous de même? Ha, ha, Monsieur Le Chat! regardez mes bottes ; je suis ferré d'argent!
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Je suis le beau-père de Monsieur MeDinnill! Monsieur Mackenzie est mon gendre; et je me sucre de tous les Chats, et de toutes les Chattes!"
(Ha, ha, Monsieur Cat, see my vest ! There are the buttons ; have you any like them? Ha, ha. Monsieur Cat, see my boots! I am shod with silver. I am the father-in-law of Monsieur MeDinnill: Monsieur Mackenzie is my son-in-law; and my curses on all the Cats, male and female!")
Some of his friends, who previous to his leaving home observed him drinking a quantity of rum, followed him to the parade ground, and with much difficulty at length succeeded in forcing him away, while the old man every now and then lifted up a leg, and challenged any Shaw or officer on the ground to show silver heels to his boots.
There is reason to believe, from the abundance of testimony which comes down to us from early days, that the bear, and particularly the grizzly, was far more formidable and ferocious a hundred years ago than at the present day. This be- lief is borne out by the journals of Lewis and Clark, always coldly scientific and judicial, as well as by the circumstantial narratives of hunters and trappers. The Indians looked upon the grizzly as a foe deeply to be dreaded. and no greater dis- tinetion could come to a warrior than that won by killing one of these monsters of the forests, a feat which entitled the hunter ever after to wear a necklace of the elaws of the vanquished bear. In making this statement the author is aware that the conclusion might seem to run counter to the careful and undoubtedly cor- rect opinions of Mr. W. 11. Wright, the well known naturalist and author of Spo- kane, whose many years of first-hand study of the grizzly of the Pacific coast have won for him a place as supreme anthority on the subject now under discussion. Reflection, however, makes it apparent that these seemingly contradictory state- ments of the nature of the grizzly bear are not necessarily incompatible. One may accept Mr. Wright's present day judgment and not have to reject the testimony of a hundred years ago.
Before the advent into this country of the whites, the Indians possessed no more formidable weapons than the bow, the spear and the club. Thus lightly armed, it is apparent that they would approach the grizzly with exceeding caution, and he in turn had learned by association that man was relatively a timid being, one easily overcome in a struggle at close quarters; and this gave him boldness and aggression. Naturally, when the first white men entered the country, the grizzly was ready to face them and to fight, and was slow to learn caution and fear of the inferior guns then in use. But with the country's settlement and the appearance of more deadly rifles, he has been taught a different lesson. He has learned that the white man can kill the bear, and kill at long range.
An adventure experienced in the spring of 1816 by a party of ten Canadians who had been sent from Spokane House on a trading excursion along the Pend d'Oreille river, was well attested by all the members at the time. The third even- ing after they had quitted the fort on the Spokane, while sitting around a camp- fire, dining on the choice bits of a deer. a half-famished bear sprang from behind a tree, clasped one of the startled voyageurs in his embrace, and ambled off with his terror-stricken burden a distance of some fifty yards. Here the Canadian was dropped, and a large bone of the deer from which he had been cating the meat was seized from his grip.
DR. JOHN MCLOUGHLIN Chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, at Vancouver, in the '40s
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TIL
NO
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As soon as the startled campers had partly recovered from the alarm occasioned by this audacious aet, Baptiste Le Blane, a half-breed hunter, seized his gun and was about to fire when his arm was arrested by some of his companions who feared that a shot would kill their companion. Louisson, the kidnaped voyageur, attempted to eseape, now that the bear had dropped him and was pieking at the bone, but the grizzly growled in anger and again seized him, this time in a more vise-like grip. Louisson screamed out in agony and exclaimed :
"Tire! Tire! mon cher frère, si tu m'aimes! Tire, pour l'amour du bon Dieu! A la tête! à la tête! (Shoot, shoot, my dear brother, if thou lovest me! Shoot, for the love of the good God ! At the head, at the head !")
Le Blane fired, and his well direeted ball wounded the bear, which, in its rage scratched the face of Louisson, leaving marks that permanently marred his visage. At this juneture the men rushed in on the wounded bear and dispatched it with their long hunting knives.
Seattered through the Spokane country and other regions west of the Rocky mountains were a number of free traders. These, as a rule, had served out their time with the fur companies, and preferred to continue in the country rather than be returned east under the terms of their contraet. They generally had Indian families, and some of them praetieed polygamy. They brought their produee to the company stores, to exchange for goods, or, in some eases for a money eredit at Montreal. "From their constant exposure to the sun," says one observer, "these men are as irretrievably bronzed as the native Indians, from whom, owing to their long separation from their countrymen, they differ but little, either in their habits or their mode of living."
Captain Bonneville, describing these vagrant wanderers of the wilderness, has said that "they come and go, when and where they 'please ; provide their own arms, horses and other equipments; trap and trade on their own account, and dispose of their skins and peltries to the highest hidder. Sometimes, in a dangerous hunting ground, they attach themselves to the eamp of some trader for protection. Here they come under some restrictions ; they have to conform to the ordinary rules for trapping, and to submit to sueh restraints and to take part in such general duties as are established for the good order and safety of the eamp. In return for this pro- teetion and their eamp-keeping, they are bound to dispose of all the beaver they take to the trader who commands the eamp, at a certain rate per skin; or, should they prefer seeking a market elsewhere, they are to make him an allowance of from thirty to forty dollars for the whole hunt."
Washington Irving, who gained access to the extended notes of Captain Bonne- ville, continues with the following free transcription :
"The wandering whites who mingle for any length of time with the savages have invariably a proneness to adopt savage habitudes; but none more so than the free trappers. It is a matter of vanity and ambition with them to diseard every- thing that may bear the stamp of civilized life, and to adopt the manners, habits, dress, gestures, and even walk of the Indian. You ean not pay a free trapper a greater compliment than to persuade him you have mistaken him for an Indian brave; and in truth, the counterfeit is complete. His hair, suffered to attain to a great length, is earefully combed out, and either left to fall carelessly over his shoulders, or plaited neatly and tied up in otterskins or parti-colored ribbons.
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A hunting-shirt of ruffled calico of bright dyes, or of ornamented leather falls to his knee; below which curiously fashioned leggings, ornamented with strings, fringes and a profusion of hawkbells, reach to a costly pair of moccasins of the finest In- dian fabrie, richly embroidered with beads. A blanket, of searlet or some other bright color, hangs from his shoulders, and is girt round his waist with a red sash, in which he bestows his pistols, knife, and the stem of his Indian pipe; prepara- tions either for peace or war. His gun is lavishly decorated with brass tacks and vermilion, and provided with a fringed cover, occasionally of buckskin, ornamented here and there with a feather.
"His horse, the noble minister to the pride, pleasure and profit of the moun- taineer is selected for his speed and spirit and praneing gait, and holds a place in his estimation second only to himself. He is caparisoned in the most dashing and fantastic style; the bridle and crupper are weightily embossed with heads and eoekades; and head, mane and tail are interwoven with an abundance of eagle plumes which flutter in the wind. To complete this grotesque equipment, the proud animal is bestreaked and bespotted with vermilion, or with white clay, whichever presents the most glaring contrast to his real color."
The Spokanes, like all other Indians of the interior, were inordinately fond of tobacco, and to gratify their appetite would resort to industry when all other mo- tives were powerless to lure them from their habits of indolenec. No business, how- ever trifling in importance. could be transacted until the negotiants had been indulged in an extended preliminary smoke.
A party would arrive at the fort with the produce of their traps, deposit it on the floor and gravely squat around the heap in a circle. Thereupon the trader would light his long peace pipe and go through a ceremonial performance, directing first his face to the east, giving a solemn puff in that quarter, and then repeating the performance with his face towards the other cardinal points of the compass. After a few short quick puffs, he would then pass the pipe to the chief, who would go through the same ritual, after which the cahimet would be handed to the Indian next on his right, who would give a few whiffs and then pass it along. In this way the pipe would pass from hand to hand until the tobacco burned out, when the trader would present the party with a quantity of tobacco for individual smoking, which they would generally finish before taking up the business of barter, remark- ing that they had been "a long time very hungry for a smoke."
The smoking over, each man divided his skins into different lots, and made it known to the trader that he was ready for business, indicating his wants and that he was ready to trade each little pile for some particular article or articles. The business transacted, another smoking match followed preliminary to their departure for their village or encampment. The traders at Spokane House found them "shrewd, hard dealers, not a whit inferior to any native of Yorkshire, Scotland or Connaught in driving a bargain."
At times, before the Astor posts had passed to the control of the Northwesters, competition was as keen between these rivals as nowadays between competing com- mercial travelers from Spokane, Portland and Seattle. An incident in the spring of 1813 will illustrate both the Indian love of tobacco and the keen rivalry then existing between the Astorians and the Northwesters.
One forenoon, at 11 o'clock, Mr. Clarke at Spokane House received a letter by
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courier from Mr. Farnham, who had been dispatched a few days previously with a party to trade with the Flatheads in the country to the east, informing him that he had fallen in with a large band of Flatheads who had a rich supply of furs, the produce of their winter's efforts; that his rival, Mr. McDonald, was also on the ground, but that both himself and McDonald were quite out of tobacco, and all business was at a standstill. Farnham added that the one who should get the first supply of tobacco would, by treating the Indians to a grand smoking feast, obtain their furs, and urged the utmost endeavor to expedite the sending of a supply. It was absolutely necessary, he said, that the tobacco be delivered to him that night, to prevent the Indians treating with McDonald, with whom they had had a longer acquaintance than with Farnham.
The rival traders were then at the falls of the Pend d'Oreille, near the present town of Newport, seventy-two miles distant from Spokane House, and Mr. Clarke at first despaired of victory, considering it impossible for any horse to cover that distance in the limited hours of daylight that remained. He was about giving up the contest as hopeless when one of his clerks volunteered to make the effort if Clarke would allow him to ride a noted horse of his own, called Le Bleu. The offer was accepted, the saddle thrown on Le Bleu, and at 12 o'clock the clerk galloped away from Spokane House to the encouragement of cheers from the men. His course lay, for much the greater part of the way, the length of the valley of the Spokane, and the trail being in excellent condition, no difficulty was encountered so long as there remained a glimmer of daylight, and the rider had open country before him. 'The last ten miles of the way lay in forest, and dusk descending, the rider was delayed by darkness and obstructions of underbrush and fallen trees ; but persistence triumphed, and as he came out of the woods his eye was gladdened by the glare of campfires along the portage.
The thick twist was soon in the hands of Farnham, word quickly ran through the encampment that tobacco had arrived, and in an incredibly brief time clouds of smoke were floating above the heads of white trader and Indian warrior. The Flatheads thanked Mr. Farnham for his extraordinary efforts to indulge them, and promised that he should have all their furs; but to clinch the compact he suggested that they deposit their packages overnight in his tent, enjoy themselves meanwhile in unlimited frec smoke, and take up the business of barter the following morning. This they readily accepted, and the Astorians got the last fur the day after, not- withstanding two of their rivals came in a few hours later with a quantity of tobac- co, dispatched also from Spokane Honse as soon as the Northwesters there had scented the meaning of the hurried departure of their competitors. The Canadians were deeply chagrined by the success of the Americans and upbraided the Flat- heads for having deserted them for strangers; but the latter philosophically replied that since the Astorians had been the first to gratify their hungry cravings for tobacco, it would have been ungrateful for them not to reciprocate; and as for such debts as were owing from them to the Canadians, they promised faithfully to cancel them in future dealings.
Le Bleu was described by an admirer at the time as "a noble animal, between fifteen and sixteen hands high, seven years of age, admirably built, and derived his name from his color, which was a dappled white and sky-blnc. He was also a prime racer. and had beaten all competitors on the turf."
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Cox credits the Spokanes as "an honest. friendly tribe." adding that "they are good hunters, but somewhat indolent. fond of gambling, despotie husbands, but indulgent fathers. Their women are great slaves, and most submissive to marital authority. They did not exhibit the same indifference to the superior comforts of a white man's wife as that displayed by the Flathead women, and some of 'them consequently became partners of the voyageurs. They made excellent wives, and in general conducted themselves with propriety. Although the Spokane men are extremely jealous, and punish with severity any infidelity on the part of their wives, they themselves are not overserupulous in their own eonduet."
In this connection the same authority narrates a tragic incident at Spokane House: "Slavish and submissive as the Spokane women are, they do not tamely submit to the occasional lapses of their husbands. an instance of which occurred in the summer of 1815, while I was at Spokane House. One of the tribe. named Singelsaascoghaght, (or the horse) from his great swiftness and dexterity in riding. was a tall and rather handsome Indian. He was remarkable for his gallantries. His wife had for some time suspected him of carrying on an intrigue, and being con- stantly on the watch, she soon discovered that her suspicions were not groundless. The very night of the discovery, while he was in a profound sleep, she inflicted on him a dreadful injury, of which he died before morning. On the intelligence becoming public, a erowd of his relations assembled around the lodge, to whom she openly avowed herself as the author of his death, stating at the same time her reasons for committing the dreadful act; but she had seareely finished when an arrow from her husband's brother quivered in her heart. Her relations instantly collected. Guns, arrows and tomahawks were in instant requisition, and before we could arrive to cheek the bloody conflict, two men and two women had fallen vie- tims. Our presenee restored tranquility, and as the sufferers on each side were equally divided, we experienced no great difficulty in bringing about a reconeilia- tion, and each party rested satisfied with its respective loss."
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