USA > Washington > Asotin County > Lyman's history of old Walla Walla County, embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, Volume I > Part 6
USA > Washington > Columbia County > Lyman's history of old Walla Walla County, embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, Volume I > Part 6
USA > Washington > Garfield County > Lyman's history of old Walla Walla County, embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, Volume I > Part 6
USA > Washington > Walla Walla County > Lyman's history of old Walla Walla County, embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, Volume I > Part 6
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Sokulks at the junction of the big rivers were worthy of much esteem. Captain Clark made a journey up the Columbia, in the course of which he made sundry interesting observations on the Indian manner of preparing salmon for pre- servation, as well as for present use. At one point he entered one of the mat houses. He was immediately provided with a mat on which to sit and his hosts proceeded at once to cook a salmon for his repast. This they did by heating stones, and then, bringing in the fish in a bucket of water, they dropped in the hot stones in succession till the water boiled. After sufficiently boiling the salmon, they placed it before the captain. He found it excellent. Ile noticed that many of these Indians were blind in one or both eyes and had lost part of their teeth. The first of these unfortunate conditions he attributed to the glare of the water on their unshaded eyes, and the second to their habit of eating roots without cleansing them from the sandy soil in which they grew. It would appear from the topography of the journal that Captain Clark went a short distance above the present site of Kennewick, for he was near the mouth of a large stream flow- ing from the west, which the Indians called the Tapteal, but which later became known as the Yakima, also a native name. While on land during this trip, the party got grouse (or what we now call prairie chickens) and ducks, and also a "prairie cock, about the size of a small turkey." This was evidently a sage hen. It is recorded that they saw none of that bird except on the Columbia. While camped at the junction of the rivers, the men were busily engaged in mending their clothes and travelling outfits and arms, and otherwise preparing for the next stage of the journey. One very interesting feature of the stay here was the fact that one of the chiefs with one of the Chimnapum, a tribe further west, provided the party with a map of the Columbia and the nations on its banks. This was drawn on a robe with a piece of coal and afterwards transferred by some one of the explorers to a piece of paper. They preserved it as a valuable specimen of Indian delineation.
On October 18, the party packed up and pushing off into the majestic river, proceeded downward toward the highlands, evidently what we call the Wallula Gateway. In the general journal, called the Edition of 1814, in which the con- tributions of all the party are merged, there seems to be some confusion as to the mouth of the Walla Walla River. The record mentions an island near the right shore fourteen and one-half miles from the mouth of Lewis' River and a mile and a half beyond that of small brook under a high hill on the left, "seeming to run its whole course through the high country." This evidently must be the Walla Walla River, though it can hardly be called a "small brook," even in the low season, and it flows quite distinctly in a valley, though the highlands begin immediately below. They also say: "At this place, too, we observed a mountain to the southwest, the form of which is conical, and its top covered with snow." This is obviously incorrect, for Mount Hood, which is the only snow mountain to the southwest visible anywhere near that place, cannot be seen from near the mouth of the Walla Walla, except by climbing the highlands. On the next day, October 19, the party was visited by a chief of whom they saw more and tell more on their return. This was Yelleppit. They describe him as a "handsome, well-propor- tioned man, about five feet, eight inches high and about thirty-five years old, with a bold and dignified countenance." His name is preserved in a station on the
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S. P. & S. Railroad, located just about at the place where the party met the chieftain.
After the meeting with Yelleppit, the party once more committed themselves to the downward rushing current of the Columbia, and passed beyond the range of our story. Of the interesting details of their continued journey down the river and the final vision of the ocean, "that ocean, the object of all our labors, the reward of all our anxieties," we cannot speak.
Having spent the winter at Fort Clatsop, about ten miles from the present Astoria and nearly the same distance from the present Seaside, they left Fort Clatsop for their long return journey, on March 23, 1806. They saw many inter- esting and important features of the country on the return, which they failed to note in going down. Among these, strange to say, was the entrance of the Wil- lamette, the largest river below the Snake. The return was made as far as the "Long Narrows" (The Dalles) with the canoes, but at that point they procured horses and proceeded thence by land. They passed the "Youmalolam" ( Umatilla ) and then entering the highlands, were again within the area of "Old Walla Walla County." Reaching the country of the "Wallawollahs." they again came in con- tact with their old friend, whose name appears in that portion of the journal as Yellept. They found him more of a gentleman than ever. He insisted on his people making generous provision for the needs of the party, and gave them the valuable information that by going up the Wallawollah River and directly east to the junction of the Snake and Kooskooskie they might have a route full of grass and water and game, and much shorter than to follow the banks of Snake River. Accordingly crossing from the north bank of the Columbia, which they had been following, they found themselves on the Wallawollah. They do not now describe it as before as a "small brook," but as a "handsome stream, about fifty yards wide and four and a half feet in depth." They got one curious misappre- hension here which was held later by explorers in general in regard to the Mult- nomah or Willamette. They understood from the Indians that the Willamette ran south of the Blue Mountains and was as large as the Columbia at the mouth of the Wallawollah, which they say was about a mile wide. They infer from the whole appearance, as the Indians seem to explain it, that the sources of the Wil- lamette must approach those of the Missouri and Del Norte. One quaint and curious circumstance is mentioned at this stage of the story, as it has been, in fact, at various times. And that is the extravagant delight which the Indians derived from the violin. They were so fascinated with the sound of the instru- ment and the dancing which accompanied it that they would come in throngs and sometimes remain up all night. In this particular instance, however, they were so considerate of the white men's need of sleep that they retired at ten o'clock.
On the last day of April, 1806, the party turned their horses' heads eastward up the Wallawollah River across sandy expanses, which, however, they soon dis- covered to improve in verdure and in groves of trees. Having followed the main stream fourteen miles, they reached "a bold, deep stream, about ten yards wide, which seems navigable for canoes." They found a profusion of trees along the course of this creek and were delighted to see all the evidences of increasing tim- ber. This stream, which they now followed for a number of miles, was evidently the Touchet, and the point where they turned to follow it was at the present Town
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of Touchet. Their course was up the creek for about twelve miles to a point where the creek bottom widened into a pleasant country two or three miles in width. This presumably was the fertile region beginning a mile or so cast of the present Lamar, and extending thence onward to Prescott and beyond. The party made a day's march of twenty-six miles and camped at a point, which according to the figures of the next day, would have been near the present Bolles Junction. One rather quaint incident appears at this point in the narration, to the effect that when encamped for the night, three young men of the Wollawollahs came up with a steel trap which had inadvertently been left behind. The Indians had come a whole day's journey to restore this. This exhibition of honesty was so gratify- ing that the narration affirms that: "Of all the Indians whom we have met since leaving the United States, the Wollawollahs were the most hospitable, honest, and sincere."
Resuming the march the next day the explorers noted at a distance of three miles a branch entering the creek from the "southeast mountains, which, though covered with snow, are about twenty-five miles distant, and do not appear high." That branch must have been our Coppei, which joins the main creek at our pleasant little City of Waitsburg. Having proceeded a total distance of fourteen miles from the previous night's camp, the travellers found themselves at a point where the main creek bore to the south toward the mountains from which it came, and where a branch entered it from the northeast. This spot was evidently the site of Dayton, and the branch from the northeast which they now followed was the Patit. The next day they crossed the Kimooenim, which is the same that they had designated the Kimooenim Creek on their descent of Snake River in the fall, heing, curiously enough, as already noted, the same name that they had already understood to be the Indian name of Snake River. The stream was evi- dently the Tucannon. From the Tucannon the course led our adventurers over the high, fertile plains near to the "southwest mountains" to a ravine "where was the source of a small creek, down the hilly and rocky sides of which we proceeded for eight miles to its entrance into Lewis' River, about seven miles and a half above the mouth of the Kooskooskie." This creek was the Asotin and therefore the point where they again reached Snake River was that grand and picturesque place where the attractive town of Asotin is now located.
The explorers having crossed the river were beyond the jurisdiction of this volume, and even of the State of Washington, being within that of Idaho, and hence we cannot follow them further on their return journey. We must content ourselves, in this farewell glance at this first, and in many respects, the most interesting and important of all the early transcontinental expeditions, with saying that the effects were of momentous, even transcendent value to the development of our country. Without the incorporation of Old Oregon into the United States, we would in all probability not have got California, and without our Pacific Coast frontage, think what a crippled and curtailed Union this would be! We would surely have missed our destiny without the Pacific Coast. The Lewis and Clark expedition was one of the essential links in the chain of acquisition. The sum- mary of distances by the party is a total of 3,555 miles on the most direct route from the Mississippi at the mouth of the Missouri, to the Pacific Ocean, and the total distance descending the Columbia waters is placed at 640 miles.
President Jefferson did not exaggerate the character of this expedition in the
Y. M. C. A BUILDING, WALLA WALLA
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tribute which he paid to Captain Lewis in 1813, when he expressed himself thus: "Never did a similar event excite more joy throughout the United States; the humblest of its citizens have taken a lively interest in this journey, and looked with impatience for the information which it would furnish. Nothing short of the official journals of this extraordinary and interesting journey will exhibit the importance of the service, the courage, the devotion, zeal, and perseverance, under circumstances calculated to discourage, which animated this little band of heroes, throughout the long, dangerous, and tedious travel."
Though many additional valuable discoveries of this land where we live were made by later explorers, Lewis and Clark and their assistants may justly be re- garded as the true first explorers. They were, moreover, the only party that came purely for exploration. Later parties, though making valuable explorations, did such work as incidental to fur trade. With the completion of this great expedi- tion, therefore, we may regard the era of the explorers completed and that of the fur-hunters begun.
CHAPTER IN'
THE FUR-TRADE AND FUR-TRADERS
With the great new land between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean opened to the world by the Lewis and Clark expedition, the question came at once to the active, pushing, ambitious spirits of America and England, what shall we do with it, and what can we make of it? The rights of the natives have usually had little concern to civilized man. His thought has been to secure as rapidly and easily as possible the available resources, to skim the cream from the wilderness ahead of all rivals. Two great quests have commonly followed discovery of a new land ; that for the precious metals, and that for furs. Gold and silver and precious stones have always had a strange fascination, and the search for them and the wars of conflicting nations for possession of their sources of supply have con- stituted the avenues of approach to some of the greatest changes of history. The search for furs, while not making so brilliant and showy a chapter in history as that for gold and jewels, has had even profounder effects upon the march of exploration and conquest and the formation of states.
Now, it must be remembered that though the Lewis and Clark expedition was the first to cross our part of the continent and to give the world any conception of the interior and its resources within the area composing the western half of the United States, yet the coast line had been known for many years, and the region around Hudson Bay and thence northward to the Arctic Ocean and westward to the Pacific had also heen traversed some years earlier. Oregon had long been a lure to the explorers and fur-hunters of all nations. There had taken shape before the discoverers of the age of Columbus the conception of a Northwest passage through the new continent to Asia. Strange to say, they did not realize at first the surpassing importance of a new world, but thought of it mainly as an im- pediment to the journey to the land of the "Great Cham" and other supposed magnates of the Orient. Hence the vital thing was to find a way through the intercepting land. Only eight years after Columbus landed on San Salvador, the Portuguese, Gaspar Cortereal, had announced that sailing westward from Labra- dor he had discovered the connecting strait between the Atlantic and the waters that bordered eastern Asia. Out of that supposed discovery the idea of the Strait of Anian grew and for two centuries persisted in the minds of mariners. It was while searching for Anian that Juan de Fuca, just a century after the first landing of Columbus, entered that strait which now bears his name. Along the western edge of California and Oregon during that same century, the English flag was borne by the Golden Hind of Francis Drake. Later Spanish explorers, Cabrillo and Ferrelo, and Vizcaino and Aguilar, had made their way up the Oregon coast and there is some reason to believe that the last-named had looked upon the mouth of the Columbia. Following that earlier era of discovery, there was a long
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interval. Spain, England, France, Holland, Austria, Germany, and Italy were absorbed in the gigantic wars growing out of the Reformation, and their ships almost entirely disappeared from the Pacific. But during the latter part of the seventeenth century there was initiated that vast movement in eastern Europe and northern Asia which shaped and will yet more shape the policies and destinies of the world. Peter the Great, one of the world figures, started to lead Russia out of barbarism. Then was began that glacier-like movement of the "Colossus of the North" toward the open waters of two continents which will no doubt never end until the political world comes to a condition of stable equilibrium. The successors of Peter pursued the same march for warm water and open ports. A series of explorers made their way across Siberia. In 1728 and 1741 Vitus Bering, one of the true "Vikings of the Pacific," made his daring and significant voyages with the aim of realizing Peter's great conception of the Russian acquisition of the shores of the Pacific by sailing eastward from Asia to America. In his last voyage, after having gone as far south as Oregon, and then turned north along the Alaskan coast, the heroic Bering was cast upon the desolate island which bears his name, and there in the cold and darkness of the Arctic winter he died. His men found during that winter that the sea-otters of the island had most beautiful furs, and they clothed themselves with the skins of those animals. Re- turning in the spring in rude boats constructed from the fragments of their wrecked ship to Avatscha Bay, these survivors of Bering's voyage made known to the world the possibilities of the use of these treasures of the animal world. That was the beginning of the Russian fur-trade. A new era in history was inau- gurated. Within a few years an enterprising Pole, Maurice de Benyowski, con- veyed a cargo of furs from Kamchatka to China. That country was then the great market for furs, and the success of Benyowski's venture suggested to others the enormous possibilities of the business. The great girdle of volcanic islands beginning a little east of Kamtschatka and extending northeast and then south- east, known now as the Aleutian Islands, and the Alaskan coast and thence south- ward to Oregon and California, were found by Russians, Spaniards, and English to abound in fur-bearing animals, of which the sea-otter was most available immediately upon the coast, though it was soon known that the beaver, the fox, and many others existed in great numbers further inland.
In connection with the eager search along the coast some of the most famous of all explorers steered their course. Among them was James Cook, one of the most manly and interepid of all that long line of navigators who bore the Union Jack around the "Seven Seas." Cook's great series of voyages, beginning in 1776 and lasting several years, and extending through all parts of the Pacific, were designed primarily as voyages of discovery. But while in Alaskan waters his men secured many sea-otter furs. They did not fully realize their value until they reached China some time later and saw the huge profit on furs in that market. Now there was in Cook's service a certain very interesting American sailor, John Ledyard. Ledyard was a genuine Yankee, keen, inquisitive, and observing. He noted the possibilities of the fur-trade in Oregon and Aleutian waters, and deter- mined that as soon as he could reach his own home country he would interest his countrymen in sending their own ships upon the quest. That was just when the Revolutionary war was in progress and several years elapsed before Ledyard was in America. When there he lost no time in getting into communication with lead-
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Among others he gre th interested Horas Jetter it Here then we has a nost mi right chain of sequences Look, Lefard Jeffer n InI Want An rien rivaltie and you for all and clan on the Pacific coast ot America -a whole next of related events ont of which the fabric of great history became woven Within a few years the race for possession of Oregon ly ca was on Earlier than Cock, Heceta, the Spamard, had suled along the Gregen out and looked into the mouth of the & alumbra But after Cock camp a long line 01 Spamsh explorers whose names appeir upon our present day maps, Bodega. Cammano, Fidalgo, Gahano, Valdez, and many more Then came another group of Englishinen, Portlock, Dixon, Mares, Barclay. Douglas. Colnett, and, most prominent of all, Vancouver But to us, more important than any other of the nations whose banners were carried along the western coast, was the new republ the United States of America. The Stars and Stripes were flying on the l'acte Robert Gray in the Lady Washington, and John Kendrick m the Columnla Red siva had been placed in command of an expedition by certain enterprising mer chants of Boston in the very same year of the construction of the American constitution. In 1788 they reached the coast of Oregon. That was the mtiation of the American far-trade. Those were the great days of that business A\ ship would be fitted out with a cargo of trinkets and tobacco and tools and blankets and sail from Boston of New Bedford or Marblehead or New York for its three years' round-up of the seas. The Indians had not yet learned the value of fury On one occasion Gray secured for a chisel a quantity of furs worth $5,000. The cargo of trinkets and tools and blankets out and the cargo of furs in, the next stage of the voyage was from Oregon to Canton, in China, where the cargo of furs was displaced hy one of tea and nankeen and silk, and then the shop would square away for her home port, a three-years' round-up. The glory, the fasema tion, and also the danger of the sea was in it. Fortunes were sometimes made in a single voyage, and also sometimes lost. For ships and crews - were sometimes lost by wreck or savages of scurvy. Yet in spite of disasters the game was so fascinating that during the period from 1790 to 1818 there were for American ves sets, twenty two English and several French and Portuguese versch regularly engaged in the business on the Oregon coast. Profits were sometimes immense Inon an English trader, says that during the years 1780 and 1787 5,8% sea otter shins were sold for $160,700. Sturgis states that he knew a capital of $50,000) to field a return of $281.000.
The fur trade on the coast was naturally first in the order of growth But exploration of the interior would naturally follow when the great results of the ser trade were known Moreover, it must be remembered that the fur trade had been pursued with great assiduity and success in Canada and even Louisiana long years before Gray and Vancouver were contesting for the discovery of the "River of the West," or the solution of the mystery of Juan de Fuca. As the Spaniards were the first to try to grasp the treasure of precious stones and metals in the New World, so the French were the pioneers in the attempted exploitation of the treasure of the furs Monopoly by kingly favor was the chief method of driving out rivals and monopoliznig advantages in those days. An American railway or iron master has a feeble grip on the bounty of a state or nation compared with the grip of a Seventeenth Century royal favorite. Way back in the early part of that century. Louis XIII and his minister. Richelieu,
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granted concessions to De Monts, Pontgrave, Champlain, Radisson, Crozat, and others. Later, La Salle, Joliet, Hennepin, D'Iberville, and still later the Veren- dryes and many more had similar monopolies from Louis XIV and Louis XV. The regions of the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi were the fields of these great concessionaires. But England was not inactive all that time. In the desperate rivalry of Gaul and Briton for supremacy in America, the Fleur- de-lis was lowered before the Cross of St. George and North America became British instead of French. The fur-trade, one of the chief prizes of contest, fell to English monopolists. Long before the final decision on the Plains of Abraham when Montcalm fell before Wolf, Charles II had granted to Prince Rupert a charter to the Hudson's Bay Company. That gigantic organization, which later had so intimate a relation to Oregon, was established in 1670 with a capital of 10,500 pounds. Besides the vast enterprises connected directly with the fur- trade, this company carried on many great geographical expeditions. But this great monopoly could not, even with all its privileges, entirely prevent rivalry. In 1783, the French and Indian wars and the American Revolution now being past, a new organization arose, destined to bear a vital part in northwest history. This was the Northwestern Fur Company. One of its leading partners, Alexander Mackenzie, discovered in 1789 the river which flows to the Polar Sea and which fittingly bears his name. Four years later he made even a more notable journey from the upper Athabasca waters across the mountains and down the Pacific slope to a point on what was later known as Cascade Inlet. There he pro- claimed his journey by painting upon a rock the inscription: "Alexander Mac- kenzie, from Canada by land, the twenty second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three." That was only a year after Gray discovered the Columbia River and Vancouver circumnavigated the island which bears his name.
Thus we see that from both sea and land the fur-traders were converging upon Oregon. It was emerging from the mists of myth and romance into the light of modern conditions. The rivalry between the Hudson's Bay Company and the audacious Northwesters who had ventured to break into their monopoly became keen and indeed sanguinary. Pitched battles were fought and lives lost. The bold and aggressive Northwesters pushed to the western side of the Rockies and in 1807 David Thompson, one of the most admirable of all the early explorers of any of the rival nations or companies, began to establish posts at various strategic points upon Columbia waters. During several years beginning with 1807 he located trading stations on Lake Windermere near the head of the river, on the Spokane at the Junction with it of the Little Spokane, and on the Pend d' Oreille and Coeur d'Alene lakes.
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