USA > Washington > Asotin County > Lyman's history of old Walla Walla County, embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, Volume I > Part 8
USA > Washington > Columbia County > Lyman's history of old Walla Walla County, embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, Volume I > Part 8
USA > Washington > Garfield County > Lyman's history of old Walla Walla County, embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, Volume I > Part 8
USA > Washington > Walla Walla County > Lyman's history of old Walla Walla County, embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, Volume I > Part 8
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Sacramento and northwesterly across the lofty ranges of Southern Oregon to the Umpqua on the Oregon Coast. There, with his nineteen men he did successful trapping, but a difficulty with the Indians resulted in the massacre of the whole party except himself and three others. Those three being separated from the leader, he made his way in utter destitution and with great suffering to the Hudson's Bay Fort at Vancouver. Dr. John McLoughlin, the chief factor, with his usual generosity supplied the survivors of this disaster with their vital neces- sities and sent a well-armed party to secure the valuable furs of which the Umpquas had robbed them. Most of the furs were brought to Vancouver and McLoughlin paid Smith $20,000 for them. Remaining in Vancouver till March, 1829, Smith made his way up the Columbia to the Flathead country and thence along the Rocky Mountains to the Teton range on the Upper Snake River. This vast series of routes by Jedadiah Smith through Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado, was the most extensive that had yet been taken and did more than any other to give a comprehensive view of what became the west third of the United States. In 1831, lamentable to relate, this truly heroic and enterprising master trapper was killed by Comanche Indians on the Cimarron desert.
Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth and Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville were practically contemporary, and in their adventurous careers crossed each other's trails. Wyeth was born at Cambridge, Mass., and from the traditions of the family should have been a graduate of Harvard College. He was, however, so eager to enter some active career that he did not complete a college course. He became quite fascinated with the utopian ideas about Oregon given to the world by Hall J. Kelley, and in 1832 he started upon a grand enterprise toward the setting sun. He had conceived a general plan of a vast emporium of Ameri- can business in furs and salmon, similar to that of Astor. With an ardent imagination and yet great practical good sense, Wyeth had the material for an empire builder. That he failed to fulfil his grand design was due partly to sheer bad luck, but mainly to the invincible monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company. The work of Wyeth was, however, an essential link in the great chain which finally led to American ownership of Oregon. The first trip of Wyeth was in 1832. He crossed the mountains in company with Sublette, a noted trapper of the Rocky Mountain Company, and after some disasters with the Indians, he traversed the Blue Mountains and reached Fort Walla Walla (the present Wallula) in October. Pierre Pambrun was the Hudson's Bay Company's agent at Walla Walla and he received the destitute and nearly famished Ameri- cans with lavish hospitality. After recuperating a few days at Walla Walla, Wyeth descended the Columbia, with unabated enthusiasm, expecting to find the ship which had left Boston. in the spring, well laden with stores already waiting his arrival. But alas for human hopes! When he reached Fort Vancouver he learned that his vessel had been wrecked. His men had already suffered much and lost faith in the lucky star of their employer and asked to be relieved from further service. He was compelled perforce to grant their request, for he had no money. Spending the winter in and around Vancouver, treated by McLough- lin with utmost kindness, and acquiring much knowledge and experience, but no money, the indomitable Yankee determined to return and raise another fund and challenge fate and his rivals again. February, 1833, found him again at
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Walla Walla. Thence he pursued a devious course to Spokane and Colville, across the Divide, down the mountains to the Tetons on the Upper Snake, where he fell in with Bonneville. First planning to go with Bonneville to California, Wyeth suddenly decided to return to Boston and make ready for an immediate new expedition to Oregon. Ile made an extraordinary voyage down the Bighorn and finally down the Missouri to St. Louis in a "bull-boat." Safely reaching Boston in November, he brought all his contagious enthusiasm to bear on certain moneyed men with the result that he organized a new company known as the Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company. A new vessel, the May Dacre, was outfitted for the voyage around Cape Horn to Oregon.
Again with new men and equipment and with such experience from his former journey as made success seem sure, Wyeth started on his new expedition from St. Louis on April 3, 1834. One interesting feature of this journey was that two conspicuous scientists, Thomas Nuttall and J. K. Townsend, and the advance guard of the missionaries, Jason Lee and party of the Methodist Church, accom- panied the party. But even though better equipped than before and though seemingly having the sanction of both Science and the Church to bless his aims, the same old ill-fortune seemed to travel with him. He had brought, under a contract made on his return the year before, a valuable stock of goods for the Sublettes of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and now when on reaching their rendezvous he made ready to deliver the goods brought with so much toil and expense, the Sublettes refused to receive them. Their company was. in fact, at the point of dissolution. Though Wyeth had the forfeit money that they had put up with the contract, that was small recompense for his labor of transportation. But nothing daunted, the stout-hearted promoter declared to . the Sublettes, "I will roll a stone into your garden which you will never be able to get out." In fulfillment of his threat he prepared to invade their territory by building a fort in which to store the rejected goods and from which to send his trappers to all parts of the upper Snake. The fort thus established was the famous Fort Hall, the most notable fort on the whole route, in the near vicinity of the present Pocatello. In spite of delays, the party seems to have travelled with unparalleled celerity, for leaving Fort Hall they reached the Grande Ronde on August 31st, a date at which previous parties had hardly reached the head of Snake River. In the Grande Ronde the party again encountered Bonneville. Three days more saw them at Walla Walla, and on September 2d, Wyeth was once more at Vancouver. Here came misfortune number two. He had expected to find the May Dacre already in the river with a good haul of salmon which they planned to salt and take east on the return trip. But the vessel reached Vancouver the next day after Wyeth's own arrival, too late for any effective fishing that year. She had been struck by lightning and had lost three months' time in repairs. With indefatigable energy, Wyeth inaugurated his plans. He sent a detail of men to Fort Ilall with supplies. Ile conducted an extensive trapping expedition to Central Oregon up the Des Chutes River. Ile built Fort William on Sauvie's Island. If anyone ever deserved success, Wyeth did But Doctor McLoughlin, though the kindest of men and though personally wishing every success to W'yeth, could not forget that he was responsible to the Hud- son's Bay Company. He underbid Wyeth for the Indian trade and headed hin off at every turn in opening new regions. Nothing but a purse as long as that
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RESIDENCE OF MRS. AUGUSTA WARD REES, ON BIRCH STREET, WALLA WALLA
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of the Hudson's Bay Company's could have stood the pressure. Worst of all. a pestilence broke out among the Indians from which they died like flies and from which some of Wyeth's own men perished. The Indians attributed the scourge to the evil "Tomanowas" of the "Bostons" and absolutely boycotted them. The brave fight was lost. Bad luck and the Hudson's Bay Company were too much for this all-deserving Yankee. Wyeth threw up his hands, sold out to the Hud- son's Bay Company for what they would give, yielding to them possession of his cherished Fort Hall, which became one of their most advantageous posts, and made his way, baffled but by no means disheartened, to his New England home. With his downfall it became clear that no ordinary force could dis- possess the great British Company from its vantage ground in Oregon.
But meanwhile Bonneville was upholding the Stars and Stripes as valorously, but not more successfully than Wyeth. Bonneville was a Frenchman who came to New York in his youth, and who had most influential friends, and had also the extreme good fortune of attracting the favorable notice of Washington Irving and becoming the hero of one of the most faseinating books of that lead- ing American writer, "Bonneville's Adventures." Through this introduction to the reading public, greedy in those days for tales of the romance and adventure of the Far-West, Bonneville acquired a fame and vogue and became invested with a certain glamour beyond that' of any- of .. the fur-traders of Old Oregon. By the favor and influence of Thomas Paine, Bonneville became a West Point appointee and graduated in 1819. When La Fayette came to America in 1825 Bonneville was detailed to accompany the "Hero of Two Continents" on his tour of the States. Greatly pleased with his youngsco ig scompatriot, La Fayette took him back to France on his return, and for several years the young French-American was a member of the household of that great man. Returning to the land of his adoption and resuming his army connections, Bonneville became absorbed with the idea that he might gratify both his love of adventure and of money by entering the fur trade in the Far-West. Securing from the War Department an appointment as a special explorer of new lands, and investigator of the Indian tribes, he was also allowed to make a personal venture in the fur trade.
H. H. Bancroft in his "Pacific Coast History" vieiously attacks Bonneville as well as Irving who immortalized him. General Chittenden in his "History of the American Fur Trade in the Far-West" defends both in a very spirited and successful manner.
The series of expeditions undertaken by Bonneville extended over the years 1832-5. Those years were replete with adventure, hardship, romance of a sort, but very little success in the quest of furs. In the course of those years the adventurous army officer traversed and retraversed the country covered by the water-sheds of the Snake River and its tributaries, Green River and the Colo- rado, the Great Salt Lake Basin, and down the Columbia. One of the most valuable journeys of his party was through the Humboldt Basin, across the Sierras and into California, a new route somewhat similar to the earlier one of Jedadiah Smith. That, however, was commanded not by Bonneville himself. but by I. R. Walker, Bonneville's most valued assistant. The most interesting part of Bonneville's expedition to the inhabitants of Old Walla Walla County was his winter trip from the Grande Ronde to the "Wayleway" (Wallowa), down the Snake to the present vicinity of Asotin, thenee across the prairies
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of what is now Garfield and Columbia counties, to Walla Walla. He describes that region as one of rare beauty and apparent fertility and predicts that it will sometime be the scene of high cultivation and settlement. Reaching Fort Walla Walla, he was received by Pierre Pambrun with the same courtesy which that commandant had bestowed on Wyeth, but when he tried to secure supplies for his depleted equipment, Pambrun assured him that he would have to draw the line at anything which would foster the American fur-trade. Like Wyeth, Bon- neville discovered to his sorrow and cost that he was "up against" an immovable wall of monopoly of the hugest and most inflexible aggregation of capital in the western hemisphere. He could not compete at Walla Walla. Descending the Columbia River he found the same iron barrier of monopoly. He too threw up his hands. The American fur-traders were at the end of their string. They retired and left the great monopoly in undisputed possession.
Thus ends, in American defeat, this first combat for possession of Oregon. Another combat and another champion for the Americans was due. Exit the trapper. Enter the missionary. Another chapter-and we shall see what the new actor could do and did do on the grand stage of Oregon history.
CHAPTER V
THE MISSIONARY PERIOD
In the preceding chapter we learned that the various attempts of American trappers and fur companies to control the fur trade of Oregon failed. The Hudson's Bay Company was too firmly entrenched in its vast domain to be loosened by any business of its own kind. Nor would there have been any special advantage to the United States or the world in dislodging the great British company and substituting an American enterprise of the same sort. The aims and policy of all fur companies were the same : i. e., to keep the country a wilder- ness, to trade with the natives and derive a fortune from the lavish bounty of wild animal life. The Hudson's Bay Company was as good as any enterprise of its type could be. The unfortunate fact was not so much that it was the British who were skimming the cream of the wilderness, as that the regime of any fur company was necessarily antagonistic to that incoming tide of settlers who would bring with them the home, the shop, the road, the church, the school, in short, civilization. Hence the necessary policy of the great fur company was to discourage immigration, or, in fact, any form of enterprise which would utilize the latent agricultural, pastoral, and manufacturing resources of Oregon. This policy existed, in spite of the fact (of which we shall see many illustrations later ) that individual managers and officers of the company were often of broad and benevolent character and predisposed to extending a cordial welcome to the advance guard of American immigration. A few stray Americans had drifted to Oregon and California with the hope of inaugurating enterprises that would lead to American occupation. In general, however, the land beyond the Rockies was as dark a continent as Africa.
But in 1832 a strange and interesting event occurred which unlocked the gates of the western wilderness and led in a train of conditions which made American settlement and ownership a logical result. In 1832 a party of four Indians from the Far-West appeared at St. Louis on a strange quest-seeking the "White Man's Book of Life." Efforts have been made by certain recent writers to belittle or discredit this event, for no very apparent reason unless it be that general disposition of some of the so-called critical school of investigators to spoil anything that appeals to the gentler or nobler emotions, and especially to oppose the idea that men are susceptible to any motives of religion or human sympathy or any other spirit than the mercenary and materialistic. But there can be no question about the journey of these four Indians, nor can there be any reasonable doubt that their aim was to secure religious instruction for their people. The details of the journey and the nature of the expectations of the tribe and of the envoys might of course be variously understood and stated, but the general statements given by reliable contemporary authorities are not open to doubt.
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To what tribe the Indians belonged seems uncertain. It has been stated by some that they were Flatheads and that tribe, though quite widely dispersed, had their principal habitat in what is now Northern Idaho and Northwestern Mont- tana. Miss Kate MeBeth, for many years a missionary to the Nez Perce Indians, and located at Kamiah and then at Lapwai, near Lewiston, thought that three of the Indians were Nez Perces and one a Flathead. Nor is it known how those Indians got the notion of a "Book of Life." Bonneville states in his journal that Pierre Pambrun, the agent at Fort Walla Walla, taught the Indians the rudiments of Catholic worship. Some have conjectured that the American trapper, Jedadiah Smith, a devout Christian, may have imparted religious instruc- tion. Miss McBeth formed the impression that their chief hope was that they might find Lewis and Clark, whose journey in 1805-6 had produced a profound effect on the Nez Perces. It is interesting to note that Clark was at the very time of this visit of the Indians the superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis. He has left no statement as to the location of these Indians, though he referred to the fact of their visit to several passers who have recorded his statements. The first published account of this visit appeared in the New York Christian Advocate, of March 1, 1833. This was in the form of a letter from G. P. Dis- oway, who had charge of the removal of certain Indians to a reservation west of St. Louis. In his letter Disoway enclosed one from William Walker, an interpreter for the Wyandotte Indians. Walker had met the four Indians in General Clark's office in St. Louis. He was impressed with their appearance, and learned that General Clark had given them some account of the origin and history of man, of the coming of the Savior, and of his work for the salvation of men. According to Walker, two of the Indians died in St. Louis. As to whether the others reached their home he did not know.
Walker's account was confirmed in a most valuable way by George Catlin, the noted painter and student of Indian life. He was making a journey up the Missouri River on one of the first steamers to ascend that stream to Fort Benton. In the Smithsonian Report for 1885 can be found Catlin's account, as follows: "These two men, when I painted them, were in beautiful Sioux dresses which had been presented to them in a talk with the Sioux, who treated them very kindly, while passing through the Sioux country. These two men were part of a delegation that came across the mountains to St. Louis a few years since, to inquire for the truth of the representations which they said some white men had made among them, that our religion was better than theirs, and that they would all be lost if they did not embrace it. Two old and venerable men of this party died in St. Louis, and I travelled 2,000 miles, companion with these two fellows, toward their own country, and became much pleased with their manners and dispositions. When I first heard the objects of their extraordi- nary mission across the mountains, I could scarcely believe it ; but on conversing with General Clark on a future occasion, I was fully convinced of the fact." Rather curiously Catlin speaks of these Indians as being Flatheads or Nez Perces, as though the two tribes were identical.
The letter of Disoway in the Christian Advocate was discussed in the Illinois Patriot of October, 1833, together with the statement that the subject had excited so much interest that a committee of the Illinois Synod had been appointed to report on the duty of the churches. The committee went to St. Louis and
DR. MARCUS WHITMAN From a statute on the Witherspoon Building, Philadelphia
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conferred with General Clark, receiving from him a confirmation of the report. When this pathetic story, together with the stirring appeal of the committee, had reached the Christian people of the country, it produced a profound impres- sion, although, quite curiously, the little book by Lee and Frost of the first Methodist Mission, which passed through St. Louis in 1834, and whose members conferred with Gen. Clark, refers rather slightingly to the event. The decades of the '20s and '30s were a time of deep religious sentiment. It was the begin- ning of the Missionary movements of the century. To the sensitive souls of the time this unheralded call from the Far-West seemed a veritable Macedonian cry. From it sprang the Christian Missions of Oregon. And the missionaries were the advance guard of immigration. And the immigration decided that the American home-builder and farmer should own Oregon, rather than that the British fur-trader and the Indians should keep it as a game preserve and fur depot. It would indeed be too much to say that American ownership of Oregon would not have resulted, if it had not been for the missionaries. But it may safely be said that the acquisition would have been delayed and that there would have been many more chances of failure, if the missionaries had not fitted into the evolution of the drama just as and just when they did. The missionary period was an essential one, coming between that of the fur-traders and that of the immigrants.
While the scope of our undertaking requires us to confine our narration mainly to the area covered in this history, yet in order to preserve the historical continuity and to exhibit the forces which led to subsequent developments, we must enlarge the picture enough to include glimpses of the mission locations outside of Walla Walla.
The first of the Christian Crusaders to respond to the Macedonian call from Oregon was a party under Jason Lee of the Methodist Church. This party came to Oregon in 1834 in company with Nathaniel Wyeth, the American trader, of whose bold and worthy, and yet unsuccessful undertakings we have spoken in Chapter Four. Reaching Vancouver, the missionaries presented themselves to Doctor McLoughlin, the chief factor. He met them with every expression of generous good-will and advised them to locate in the Willamette Valley rather than among the tribes from whom had proceeded the Macedonian call. As a result, Lee with his assistants, located at Chemawa, near the present Salem, Ore. From that mission sprang the first permanent American settlement, the native name of which was Chemeketa, place of Council, or peace-ground. The missionaries gave it the Bible equivalent, Salem, a proceeding of more piety than good judgment. The Willamette University of the present is the offspring of the school started by the missionaries for the Indian children, and within a few years modified so as to meet the needs of the white children. For that earliest mission, like the later, discovered that this great work, after all, must be for the white race, not for the Indians.
The next year after the coming of the Lee party, another movement was initiated which was destined to have a most intimate connection with Walla Walla. For in 1835, the man who became the first white man, aside from the fur trappers and traders. in the Walla Walla Valley, left his home in New York for Oregon. This was Dr. Marcus Whitman, who, more than any other one man, put Walla Walla on the map of the world. In 1835. Doctor Whitman, in
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company with Dr. Samuel Parker, set forth on a reconnaissance to determine the advisability of locating a mission among the Indians from whom had gone the Macedonian call. Reaching Green River, the outlook seemed so encouraging that it was decided to part company ; Doctor Parker continuing westward with Indians who had met them at Green River, while Doctor Whitman, the younger and more active of the two, returned to his home in Rushville, N. Y., and there organized a missionary band.
As a result of Doctor Whitman's return, a party consisting of himself and his bride, Narcissa Prentiss, and Rev. H. H. Spalding and his newly wedded bride, Eliza Hart, set forth in 1836 for Oregon. With them was William H. Gray as secular agent and general manager. With the party also were two Indian boys who had accompanied Doctor Whitman the year before on his return from Green River. Of this bridal journey of 4,000 miles, most of it on horse- back, our space permits only a few hurried views. Aside from the momentous results in the history of Oregon and the United States, the story is one of heroism and devotion which has few parallels, and the record closes with a martyr's crown for Marcus and Narcissa Whitman.
Among the precious relics in Whitman College, is Mrs. Whitman's diary of the journey, and also that of Mrs. Spalding. That of Mrs. Whitman was made by herself from notes on the way and was sent from Vancouver to her parents upon the completion of the journey. Its heading is as follows :
"Narcissa Whitman's Diary of a Missionary Tour West of the Rocky Moun- tains performed 1836. Being the first white female ever beyond the mountains on the continent. ' The journey was performed on horseback-a distance of 4,000 miles. She, in company with her husband, Marcus Whitman, M. D., and H. H. Spalding and wife, left the state of New York for this tour in February of 1836 -travelled through a part of Pennsylvania, Ohio-and finally arrived at St. Louis in Missouri. Here they joined the Fur Company that crosses the mountains every year-and were also joined by Messrs. Suturly [Saturlee in Mrs. Spald- ing's diary] and Gray-missionaries to the West. Matters thus arranged they all left St. Louis in March-for the 'far West.' The further particulars of the journey may be learned from the following extracts from her journal taken on the way."
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