The Washington Historical Quarterly, Volume V, 1914
Part 1, Vol. 12 of Pac. Ry. Reports.
[174] Mr. Kittson's first wife was from the Walla Walla tribe: their son Peter William, born at Fort Walla Walla in 1830, is still living (1914) about 25 miles from Portland, Oregon.
[175] See Gov. Simpson's instructions in entry of July 21st ante. The Pend d'Oreille river between Metaline Falls and its mouth is not navigable to this day and this route was never adopted.
[176] That is: from Fort Nez Perces or Walla Walla.
[177] From other sources we know that Dr. McLoughlin did not get further inland than Fort Walla Walla that season.
[178] Spokane or Coeur d'Alene prairie.
[179] A. R. McLeod, a chief trader who remained on the Columbia several years and commanded expedition against the Clallam Indians In 1828, for which he was criticised and perhaps censured: Mr. Samuel Black (who was afterwards murdered at Kamloops) was on the way to take charge of Fort Walla Walla to relieve Mr. Dease there; Francis Ermatinger remained in the Columbia District for twenty years, but the brother, Mr. Edward Ermatinger, retired to St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1828. Consult "Journal of Edward Ermatinger," published by Royal Society of Canada, Ottawa, 1912. This "Express" brought mail from Hudson's Bay and all Eastern points. The Forks means the mouth of the Spokane river.
[180] William Kittson and Francis Ermatinger, clerks of the Hudson's Bay Company, the latter on his way to take charge of Fort Oknaugan for the winter; Mr. Work and James Birnle, also a clerk, remain in charge at Spokane House. Mr. Birnie passed his last days at Cathlamet on the lower Columbia; his descendants reside there.
[181] The prairie pasture between the Spokane Falls and the Coeur d'Alene lake.
[182] The Kootenay river was originally named McGilllvray's river, by David Thompson.
[183] Kootenay Falls near Troy, Lincoln County, Montana; the "Old Fort" referred to stood opposite Jennings, Montana, about 25 miles further up the river. For mention of that Fort consult Ross Cox.
[184] See letter from Gov. Simpson in Part I of this Journal (p. 98 of this Quarterly for April 1914).
[185] That is, the house for building cedar batteaux, which were to be run down to the Columbia river at high water in the spring.
[186] Mr. J. W. Dease, who had been in charge of Fort Walla Walla, but was being transferred to Spokane House, but is delayed waiting for Peter Skene Ogden's arrival from the Snake Country of Southern Idaho.
[187] Mr. Work is assigned to spend the winter at the trading post among the Flathead Indians in Montana. The "portage" refers to the 76 miles over which they must carry the trading goods on pack animals between Spokane House and the Pend d'Oreille river.
[188] About where Hilyard now is, near city of Spokane.
[189] Rathdrum creek, probably.
[190] That is, at the Spokane Falls.
[191] Now called Hoodoo Lake, in Bonner County, Idaho. The Spokane-International By. passes by it.
[192] That is at Sina-acateen crossing of the Pend d'Oreille river, nearly opposite Laclede station of the Great Northern By.
[193] Meaning the Kullyspell House or trading post established in Sept., 180, by David Thompson, but long since abandoned; it stood not far from Hope, Idaho.
[194] Sand Point of the present day, very early and properly so named.
[195] Kootenay Falls of the oKotenay river.
[196] Meaning Mr. Finan McDonald, who had resided among the Spokane Indians for years, but who was absent now on exploring expedition into southern Oregon.
[197] Probably Cabinet rapids of the Clark Fork river.
[198] Probably Trout creek, of today.
[199] Meaning Thompson Falls, Montana.
[200] Thompson's Prairie or Plain, where David Thompson established his Saleesh House in Oct., 1809. The H. B. Co. removed the trading post further up the river. This camp was close to the mouth of Thompson river.
[201] Peter Skene Ogden. Consult Oregon Hist. Quarterly, Vol. 10, pp. 229-78.
[202] Flathead Fort or House, then located at or near the present R. R. station of Eddy, in Sanders county, Montana, on main line of No. Pac. Ry.
[203] The best Mr. Work could make or the Indian family name Saleesh or Salish.
[204] Probably about 8 miles away on the Horse Plains, of Plains, Montana, where was usual Indian camping ground.
[205] The portage across from Pend d'Oreille lake north to Bonners Ferry on the oKotenay river, known as the flat portage because of there being no high mountain range to cross, and the Kootenay Indians on that part of the river being designated by the same name.
[206] These Indians crossed by the "Kootenae Road," shown on David Thompson's famous map (See Henry-Thompson Journals) from near Jennings, Montana, south across the Caldnet Mountains to Thompson's Prairie, or to the Horse Plains.
[207] Both Nez Perces and Flatheads spent the summer and fall hunting buffalo on the prairie along the Missouri river.
[208] For a graphic description of this custom consult Oregon Hist. Quarterly for December, 1913; given in Journal of Alex. Ross, who had charge of this Fort in Dec., 1824.
[209] Mr. McKay was bringing furs from Mr. Ogden's party, which had been in southern Idaho, but the main party had returned direct to Fort Walla Walla.
[210] Parflesches or saddle bags.
[211] In 1811 two Indians in men's clothes appeared at Ft. Astoria, as related by Franchere, Ross and Irving. They returned to the interior with David Thompson's party that summer. He described them as Kootenays and one of them as a prophetess and this may be the same Indian.
THE COLUMBIA RIVER UNDER HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY RULE[212]
By his _Astoria_ Washington Irving drew the eyes of the world to the now far famed Columbia River and perpetuated the story of the late John Jacob Astor's ill fated enterprise on the Pacific Coast. The name "Astoria" recalls, not only the trading fort which gave the book its title, but the varied adventures by sea and land of those who went forth to plant the Stars and Stripes on the Columbia and to secure for Mr. Astor's company a share of the rich fur trade of the far West.
If Mr. Astor's great enterprise was, through no fault of his, doomed to failure, almost from its beginning, it enabled him to supply, from the correspondence and journals of his co-partners and employees, material with which Washington Irving was able to shed the halo of a romantic early history upon the Columbia and the Northern Pacific Coast. Captain Bonneville's adventures enabled the illustrious author to extend his chronicles to regions further east.
Among the cherished possessions of the present writer is an old volume, presented to his father by the author. It was published in Montreal in 1820. It is written in French by G. Franchere, _fils_, one of the clerks who sailed in the _Tonquin_ in 1810, on her memorable voyage round Cape Horn, to the Sandwich Islands and the Columbia, where he remained to assist in the founding of _Astoria_ and other trading posts. On the cession of the posts to the Canadian "Northwest Company" he remained a few months in the employ of the latter, and returned over the mountains and by way of the Red River settlement and Lake Superior to Montreal in 1814. His narrative agrees in the main with that of Irving. Indeed, it is probable that it was one of the sources from which the latter obtained his account of the _Tonquin's_ trip and subsequent events on the Columbia. On two points dwelt on by Irving it is, however, silent--the one, the marriage of Macdougall, one of the partners in the Astor company, to the dusky princess, the daughter of King Comcomly--the other, the chief part played by Macdougall in the transfer of Astoria to the British company. It is probable, however, that a marriage, after the Indian custom, may have taken place between these personages, M. Franchere not thinking it worth while to mention the matter, nor even the fact of the young woman's existence. That there was treachery toward Mr. Astor in McDougall's dealings with the North West Company is rather a matter of inference with Irving than a distinct charge. Franchere--who speaks of the bargain with the North West Company as participated in by all present at Astoria at the time--not being a partner, could scarcely know more than appeared on the surface.
The only sentence in English in Franchere's book is contained in a footnote. It is the now historic exclamation of Captain Black of His Majesty's ship _Raccoon_ when he landed at Astoria: "What! Is this the Fort I have heard so much of! Great God! I could batter it down with a four pounder in two hours." Franchere evidently thought his French rendering of these memorable words did not do the gallant captain complete justice, so he re-translated them, and Irving repeats them in all their nautical Anglo-Saxon vigour.
Washington Irving's chronicle of Astoria practically closed with the cession of that post to McTavish, representing the North West Company--with the running up of the British in place of the American flag at the Fort in 1813 and the change of name from Astoria to "Fort George." As the North West Company thus swallowed up the American Company in 1813, so in 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company practically swallowed the North West Company--though the settlement of the irregular warfare, waged for years between these rival British companies, was termed an association or coalition.
The industrious beaver and his less industrious neighbour, the Indian, saw little or no change. It will, however, be remembered by readers of _Astoria_ how disgusted was the worthy one-eyed monarch, King Comcomly, chief of the Chinooks, at the sudden change of flag at Astoria, brought about by his son-in-law, McDougall, whom he finally concluded to be a squaw rather than a warrior. Yet Comcomly lived on and, making a virtue of necessity, cultivated friendship and amity with the British as he had before with the Americans. His poor opinion of his whilom son-in-law may have subsequently been confused by the fact of the latter's leaving the princess, his wife, behind when he left the country--though, as a rule, both the wife and her family in such cases preferred her remaining among her own people to venturing into the haunts of civilization. The divorced princess in question, too, we reserved for higher honours; as we are told by Paul Kane, a Canadian artist and traveller, who visited the country in the forties, that she subsequently became the favourite wife of a powerful chief named Casanov, who could previously to 1829 lead into the field 1000 men--leaving at home, at the same time, ten wives, four children and eighteen slaves. Casanov is described as a man of more than ordinary talent for an Indian, and of great influence with the people whom he governed, in the vicinity of the British fort, Vancouver--Chinooks and Klickitats. He possessed, among other luxuries, a functionary, known as his "Scoocoone" or "evil genius"--a sort of Lord High Executioner--whose duty it was to remove persons obnoxious to his lord and master, by assassination. This functionary had the misfortune to fall in love with one of Casanov's wives, who eloped with him--with the result that, though they at first eluded his search, Casanov at length met and "removed" his errant wife on the Cowlitz river and procured also a like fate for her lover, the whilom executioner himself.
It was the belief of the chiefs that they and their sons were personages so important that their deaths could not occur in a natural way, but were always attributable to the malevolent influence of some one, whom they selected in an unaccountable manner and unhesitatingly sacrificed. One most near and dear to the deceased was as likely to be selected as another. The former wife of McDougall, now favourite wife of Casanov, was thus selected by him, to accompany her own son, who died of consumption, to the great beyond, but she escaped and sought and was accorded protection at Fort Vancouver. Mr. Black, an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company in charge of their Fort on Thompson's River, fell a victim to the same superstitious custom--shot in the back by the nephew of an old chief with whom Black had been on the most friendly terms, at the instigation of the dead chief's widow. Regard for Mr. Black, however, impelled the young man's tribe to ignore the sanction of the custom and hunt down and put him to death.
The company chartered by gay King Charles II--"the company of gentleman adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay," or "the Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company"--as it was and still is styled--was undoubtedly the dominant partner in the new coalition. Newspaper and pamphlet warfare occasionally broke out between partizans or admirers of the former rival corporations during the next half century--an occasional flow of ink of controversy instead of the flow of blood which sometimes characterized their collisions in former days--but the North West Company had ceased to exist, while the Hudson's Bay Company ruled almost half a continent.
On the Columbia their chief post was established ninety miles up the river from the sea and was called Fort Vancouver--which must not be confused with the flourishing young city at the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Fort George or Astoria became thereafter a subsidiary post, utilized as a place from which a watch could be kept on the movements of American traders. Though the territory now comprising Oregon and Washington was claimed by the United States ever since Captain Gray with his good ship _Columbia_ passed the dreaded bar and gave the river a name, the Hudson's Bay Company was, under a series of ten-year treaties between the two nations, leaving the question of ownership open--providing indeed for a joint occupation--in practical possession of the country and its trade, until the boundary question was finally settled in 1846--not long after which the company withdrew its headquarters to the north of the 49th parallel. The company gradually obtained control by lease of a number of the Russian posts as well, maintaining also vessels to trade along the seashore. The country tributary to the Columbia was rich in furs in those days. Even as late as 1840, one trader, for example, was able to bring out of the Snake country 3300 beaver and otter skins, the result of his season's work for the company.
Though Sir George Simpson was the governor in chief of the Hudson's Bay Company after the coalition, the dominant spirit west of the Rocky Mountains for some twenty-five years was Dr. John McLaughlin--the "Big Doctor," as he was familiarly termed. "He was the partner in charge of the whole Columbia department, to which is attached that of New Caledonia and Fraser River, for more than a quarter of a century," wrote an old Hudson's Bay clerk[213] who knew the doctor, "a more indefatigable and enterprising man it would have been difficult to find. With an energetic and indomitable spirit, his capacious mind conceived and pushed forward every kind of improvement for the advancement of commerce and the benefit of civilization. With only seven head of horned cattle and others which he imported from California, by good management and perseverance, he stocked the whole of the Oregon territory, until they had increased to thousands. He built saw mills and cultivated an extensive farm on the beautiful prairie of Fort Vancouver. Subsequently he laid the foundation of Oregon City, where he built a splendid grist mill. The machinery of the mill he imported from Scotland and from the same country a good, practical miller. * * * By every means in his power he promoted trade and commerce with other countries. To Sitka, the principal Russian establishment, the company exported produce--chiefly wheat--to the Sandwich Islands lumber and salmon, and to California, hides and tallow. In short, under Dr. McLaughlin's management, everything was done to develop the resources of the country." Two military officers, Warre and Vavaseur, who visited Oregon on the part of the British government, reported that the doctor favoured the Americans. While his correspondence shows a sympathy with the advanced political party in Canada, which at that time would have been there regarded as proof positive of "Americanism," the fact is that the doctor's mind was of that liberal cast which favoured everyone who could be useful to the country. Britisher or foreigner. This is borne out by his actions as well as his unpublished correspondence.
Not only was there an extensive farm established at Fort Vancouver, but others at Fort Colville and on the Cowlitz, while a large grazing company or association was formed, to raise sheep, near Puget's Sound. The doctor was, moreover, anxious to wean the red man from his savage life to agricultural pursuits, as well as to promote in every way the settlement of the country. He succeeded in making cattle plentiful by forbidding the killing of any for a considerable period. At last he wrote in 1837, "I killed forty head of cattle last summer, so, you see, the taboo is broken." He hailed with satisfaction the arrival of missionaries, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, and did much to inculcate temperate habits among the people, both whites and natives. Indeed, in 1843 he rejoiced in having for a number of years successfully enforced a prohibitory law for both Indians and the French settlers on the Willamette, at that time numbering 200, ninety per cent of whom were old voyageurs and American Rocky Mountain trappers, yet with few exceptions temperance men, "which," quaintly wrote the doctor, "I think may be said to be unique of its nature in such a number." The American traders seem to have been his chief foes in the region of the Columbia, in regard to the liquor traffic--as the Russians were in the regions farther North.
The doctor was a firm believer in exemplary punishment for crime, especially in territories where such punishment only would act as a deterrent on savages, who might at any time be tempted to outrage. One instance of his method of dealing with such cases may be referred to.
From an old manuscript report of one of the Company's traders, who took part in the proceedings detailed, the following particulars are gleaned. In January, 1828, Mr. Alexander McKenzie and four men under his charge were murdered on Puget's Sound, on their way from Fort Langley, and an Indian woman of the party carried off, by the tribe known as the Clallums. All the effective men at Fort Vancouver were mustered and told by Chief Factor McLaughlin of the affair and of the necessity for an expedition being sent off in search of the murderous tribe, to make a salutary example of them if possible. A call for volunteers brought a ready response and on the 17th June a force of upwards of sixty men under Chief Trader Alex. R. McLeod set forth, with a salute of cannon from the fort and cheers from the officers and crew of the _Eagle_--presumably an American vessel. The voyageurs having enjoyed their customary _regale_ and the Iroquois their war dance, on the previous evening, no delay for these ever necessary functions occurred and the expedition proceeded down the Columbia and up the Cowlitz to the _portage_, where their boats were _cached_, and horses obtained. Then the motley army, consisting of Canadians, half-breeds, Iroquois, Sandwich Islanders and Chinooks, with Scotch and English officers, mounted, set forth, looking, as the chronicler thought, more like a band of gypsies than a force collected for the purpose in view. At the end of the _portage_ the force again embarked in canoes and on 1st July, coming upon a couple of lodges, one, understood to be occupied by Clallums, was at once attacked and death immediately dealt out to its inmates, ruthlessly, regardless apparently as to whether they were concerned in the murder of McKenzie and his party or not, while in the semi-darkness of evening men, women and even children appear to have shared the same fate.
Off Cape Townsend the company's vessel _Cadboro'_, Captain Simpson, was sighted. Thereafter the land and naval forces co-operated--so far, at least, as the somewhat divergent views and orders of their respective commanders permitted. A day or two was spent off one of the Clallum villages, near New Dungeness, in apparently fruitless negotiations for the return of the Indian woman, whose father was a man of great influence in his own tribe. Not until a chief and eight others had been slain by shots from the vessel's guns and a bombardment of a village, where some articles of Mr. McKenzie's were found, had taken place, was the woman brought on board. A second village, from which the murderers of McKenzie's party were said to have set out, was burned. The force then parted from the _Cadboro'_ and returned to Fort Vancouver. The Indians stated that seven people had been killed at the lodge fired upon on the 1st, and that the friends of these had at once avenged their deaths, by putting to death two of the principal murderers of McKenzie. In all, they reported 25 people killed in these various affrays, to avenge the original crime, not to speak of a very considerable quantity of Indian property destroyed.
It would be unjust to charge Dr. McLaughlin with the responsibility for the entire proceedings of this merciless expedition. What his instructions to _Mr. McLeod_ were that gentleman kept pretty well to himself. Unfortunately the latter showed vacillation and timidity, at the moments when firmness and promptness were required, disputed and quarrelled with Captain Simpson on board his own vessel, assumed too much authority at one time, too little at another, with the result that indiscriminate slaughter and destruction of property seem to have taken the place of just and merited punishment. It is to be presumed, however, that the deterrent effect was produced, at any rate as to the Clallums.
The population, native and foreign, of the Columbia district, at this period, was of a wonderfully heterogeneous character. The number of small tribes into which the native population of the Pacific Coast and islands was divided is well known to have been large. Yet Indians from the plains and Iroquois from the far East had come in as servants of the company, while Sandwich Islanders--or Owhyhees (Hawaiians) as they were termed--were among almost all the company's crews and forces. French half-breeds and others of varying tints and gay costumes lent picturesqueness to the Hudson's Bay posts and campfires. Sir George Simpson gives a striking instance of the variety in colour and language afforded by a single boatload. "Our batteau carried as curious a muster of races and languages as perhaps had ever been congregated within the same compass in any part of the world. Our crew of ten men contained Iroquois, who spoke their own tongue; a Cree half-breed of French origin, who appeared to have borrowed his dialect from both his parents; a North Briton, who understood only the Gaelic of his native hills; Canadians who, of course, knew French; and Sandwich Islanders, who jabbered a medley of Chinook and their own vernacular jargon. Add to all this that the passengers were natives of England, Scotland, Russia, Canada and the Hudson's Bay Company's territories; and you have the prettiest congregation of nations, the nicest confusion of tongues, that has ever taken place since the days of the tower of Babel. At the native camp near which we halted for the night, we enriched our clans with one variety more, by hiring a canoe and its complement of Chinooks, to accompany us."
Sir George Simpson was at this time on his famous overland journey round the world, having the previous day, Sept. 1st, 1841, left Fort Vancouver, where, by the way, his party found two vessels of the United States exploring squadron under command of Lieutenant (afterward) Commodore Wilkes, which contributed much to the enjoyment of their week's stay there. The circumnavigators had parted on the beach at Fort Vancouver with Lieutenant Wilkes and party and had added to their number another Hudson's Bay officer, Mr. Douglas (afterwards Sir James Douglas, governor of Vancouver Island) and had visited the company's extensive dairy on the delta or island of Multnomah or Wapatoo. Thence down the Columbia and up the Cowlitz, across to Fort Nisqually and Puget's Sound, visiting the Cowlitz farm and the sheep ranch--a four days' journey from Fort Vancouver brought them to the company's steamer, the _Beaver_, on which they set out for the posts of the Pacific coast and Sitka--that coast trip now familiar to thousands of gold-seekers.
At the Stikine (or Stickeen) River--a place much in the world's eye during the past year or two--Sir George found young John McLaughlin, a son of the big doctor, in charge of the company's post, with a force of twenty-two men. The governor next proceeded to Sitka, and, after a somewhat protracted side trip to California and the Sandwich Islands, returned in the Spring of '42 to Stikine on board the company's ship, the _Cowlitz_, in tow of a Russian steamer loaned him by Governor Etholine of Sitka--to find that young McLaughlin had just been murdered by his own men, who were in a state of mingled mutiny and intoxication within the fort, while about 2000 Indians were gathered without, in readiness to take advantage of the insurrection within! The opportune arrival of Sir George, with two ships' crews at his disposal, enabled him to speedily quell the disturbance and disperse the Indians, after preparing their minds for a measure which the company was anxious here as elsewhere to enforce--the discontinuance of the liquor traffic. It may here be remarked that the one good result of this most unhappy tragedy at the Stikine was the agreement arrived at soon after with the Russian company--whose bad example had been held to necessitate the British company's fighting "firewater" with "firewater" at competitive trading posts--under which agreement both companies inaugurated a prohibitory liquor law on this coast.
Doubts as to his powers and the best policy to pursue led Sir George to take the man who fired the fatal shot with him to Sitka, whither he was returning _en route_ to Siberia and Europe. For a less comprehensible reason he sent another man--a supposed participant in the affair--to Fort Vancouver, accompanied by a letter to Dr. McLaughlin, apprising him of the tragedy and casting some blame upon the murdered son for the insurrection. The letter the big doctor had, of course, no alternate but to receive, but the man he would not see nor so much as suffer to set foot on shore at Fort Vancouver--but had him kept a prisoner on board the _Cadboro_. On a trip of that vessel to Vancouver Island, this man saw Mr. Douglas and at once made a confession to him, implicating all the people at Stikine in a plot to murder John the younger. He even stated that an agreement to that effect had been drawn up by the man who was acting as a temporary assistant or clerk to the murdered man. The confession absolved the young trader from the charge of drunkenness and contradicted the depositions taken by Sir George in every material point. Little wonder is it that the doctor, smarting under the blow received, was not satisfied with the apparently easy methods pursued by Sir George, with whom he had moreover recently exchanged some angry words in California on matters of business; nor that he sent an officer of the company to Mr. Manson, with a complete new complement of men, to the Stikine to re-open the investigation--with no known retributive result, though the evidence taken tends to justify the doctor's summing up--his vigorous penmanship adding strength to his words--"The short and the long of the affair is, these fellows wanted to impose on my son, to which he would not submit"--true chip of the old block it seemed!--"They, finding they could not make him bend, conspired and murdered him."
It is worthy of note that at the last the young man seems to have relied upon his Owhyhees (Hawaiians) to make a stand against the whites.
The doctor's subordinate officers at these various and remote posts eagerly scanned all news of the affair which reached them and sympathized with the afflicted father--but they could scarcely grasp the situation in all its details of doubt and difficulty as to criminal procedure, territorial jurisdiction, etc. "I fear we have got ourselves into a hobble and that it will turn out we are more _au fait_ in our humble occupation as Indian traders than as the dispensary of Her Majesty's criminal law," wrote one. But the big doctor's feelings were still aroused--he attributed, whether rightly or wrongly, his son's death to Sir George indirectly, as a result of the governor's having removed a trusted man, Mr. Finlayson, from the post of assistant to the young trader, substituting a labourer in his place--and he carried the matter before the heads of the company in England--"wrote a thundering epistle to their honours at home, concerning Sir George, ripping up old grievances," as another old trader, John Tod (1 Sept. 1842) put it. Yet Sir George remained at the head of the company, while the old doctor continued to mourn the unavenged death of the son he evidently loved much.
The witnesses who were examined by Mr. Manson at Stikine testified that the document referred to by their former comrade in his confession, as an agreement to murder the trader, was simply a formal complaint against him, which they intended presenting to Sir George Simpson, as head of the company, on his expected arrival--but that it was never presented, but destroyed, because it was too dirty to be presented to the governor. Not only was Sir George a man whose examples as to soiled documents had to be considered, but he seems to have had a prejudice in favour of clean linen as well--as the following less tragic incident would seem to indicate: Sir George at one time wrote Dr. McLaughlin to remove the officer in charge of Fort George (Astoria), with a seven years' pension. The doctor declared the governor "must do his dirty work himself," and took no decisive steps to interfere with the officer in question, who was described as youthful in appearance, though fat and indolent, but with "children enough far a colony." The officer nominated to succeed him enquired of the condemned, what he had done to offend the governor. He stated that Sir George had sent two cotton shirts ashore to be washed and while they were being taken, under the fat officer's charge, from the fort to the ship, one of them fell overboard, but he declared his intention of sending another to London and hoped his offense would be forgiven. His propitiatory offering, or Sir George's better feelings, it is presumed, prevented his becoming the victim of another "tale of a shirt," by an ignominious expulsion from office, for such a cause.
On December 8th, 1846, there arrived at Fort Vancouver a person whose errand was of a novel character to dwellers upon the Columbia--Mr. Paul Kane, to whom reference has already been made, was a native of Toronto, who had adopted painting as the profession of his choice and, after spending some four years in Europe qualifying himself in his art, conceived the idea of making an overland trip across the continent, making sketches, as he proceeded, of the representative Indians of the various tribes and of the scenery of the country through which he passed, then an almost unbroken wilderness. He spent nearly four years in these wanderings, to and from the Pacific, sketching portraits of chiefs, medicine men, warriors, their wives and daughters--also fishing, hunting and other scenes, illustrative of the customs, occupations and amusements of the red men and the physical features of the country. From these sketches he subsequently executed many paintings, some of which are on the walls of the embryo Canadian national gallery at Ottawa, but a much more extensive and elaborate series in oils--numbering about 100 canvasses--is among the valued possessions of a Toronto gentleman, the Hon. George W. Allen, Canadian senator.[214] The artist's Journal, published in London in 1859, with specimens of his work--now unfortunately out of print--gave an interesting narrative of his travels and adventures, with much of the history and folklore of the various people of the Northwestern regions.
Kane reached the height of land on November 12th. His voyage down the Columbia to Fort Vancouver he accomplished in little more than a fortnight--including stoppages at Forts Colville and Walla Walla _en route_--whereas it took him four months to cover the same distance on his return the following year.
It may well be imagined that the advent of such a character excited no little interest. At Fort Vancouver two chief factors, Messieurs Douglas and Ogden, now reigned, in place of Dr. McLaughlin, with eight or ten clerks and 200 voyageurs. Her Majesty's warship _Modeste_, with her complement of officers, lay in the broad river, opposite the fort. Outside the stockade was the village with its motley population of English, French, Iroquois, Sandwich Islanders, Crees and Chinooks, and its confusion of tongues. The artist enjoyed the hospitality of the officers at the fort for about a month and on 10 January, 1847, in company with Mr. MacKenzie, a chief trader, proceeded up the Willamette to Oregon City, passing "two cities that are to be," one of which contained but two houses and the other not much more advanced. Oregon City, located by Dr. McLaughlin, who owned the chief mills, contained then about ninety-four houses and two or three hundred inhabitants, a Methodist and a Roman Catholic church, two grist mills and as many hotels. A lawyer and "doctors ad libitum" were already on the ground. That it would be rivalled, if not eclipsed, by a city to be built where Portland now is, was even then predicted, owing to intervening impediments to navigation. A few weeks at Oregon City and a few days at the Roman Catholic missions further up the Willamette, and Kane returned to spend the balance of the winter pleasantly with the Hudson's Bay and naval officers at Fort Vancouver in riding, and in fishing and shooting the waterfowl and seal with which the neighbourhood abounded. In the Spring he made a trip to Vancouver Island and adjacent coasts and islands, returning to Fort Vancouver in June, and on July 1st began his homeward journey.
The artist was regarded as a great "medicine man" by the natives, who sometimes gathered in great numbers to watch him manipulate his supposed implements of magic--insomuch that at one village on the coast of De Fuca Straits, so great was the crowd gathered in the head chief's lodge that it was filled, and those outside climbed to the roof and, tearing the mats from their supports, to which they slung one upon another, peered down at him from above. He experienced much difficulty everywhere, however, in prevailing upon the natives to sit for their portraits, owing to their superstitious fear that the possessor of their likenesses would have some mysterious power or evil influence over them. In addition to entreaties and bribes, he had sometimes to resort to various strategies and arguments to attain his end--as, for instance, that the pictures were to be shown to their "great mother," the queen, who would no doubt be much disappointed on missing his proposed subject's portrait. On one occasion he allayed the fears of a repentant sitter, who continued to pursue him only by hastily preparing a duplicate sketch of him and destroying the duplicate in his presence--on another occasion he was in great peril owing to the unexpected death of one of his subjects--a woman--whose demise was attributed to his malign influence.
Kane, notwithstanding, had many interesting subjects. Among others he met at Fort Victoria the great Yellow-cum, head chief of the Macaws at Cape Flattery and the wealthiest man of his tribe in slaves and iaquas, the shell money then in circulation there. His father was the pilot of the _Tonquin_, who escaped destruction by the terrible explosion, which blew in pieces Mr. Astor's ship, with the man who fired the magazine and all the savage horde on her deck. On his way home he paid a four days' visit to Dr. Whitman, the well known missionary, and his family at their home on the banks of the Walla Walla. The doctor took him to see an Indian named To-ma-kus that he might take his likeness--his appearance being the most savage, Kane says, he ever beheld. The Indian, a prey to superstitious fears, endeavoured to burn the sketch made of him by Kane, who snatched it from him and fled, the man appearing to be greatly enraged. The circumstance is referred to, as it must have been peculiarly distressing to the artist to hear when at Colville of the massacre of Doctor and Mrs. Whitman and a dozen others and that the ferocious To-ma-kus was the man who had tomahawked his late host, while another Indian, whom he had sketched, was present when the deed was done. Kane had, however, done all he could to warn Dr. Whitman of his danger and endeavoured to persuade him to seek safety at Fort Walla Walla--having, indeed, taken a three hours' ride back from the fort, where he had heard and seen enough to arouse his fears for the missionary, to the missionary--but in vain. The devoted man said he had lived so long among these Indians that he had no apprehension of their injuring him--yet they attributed, it seems, to him various ills which Providence and their enemies visited upon them, with the lamentable result just mentioned. Rev. H. Spalding and family were made prisoners by another tribe, from whom, however, Mr. Ogden, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had at once repaired to the scene on hearing of the trouble, purchased their release.
The light of the gospel had first been brought to the natives of the Columbia some 14 years before this sad occurrence by a young Indian lad, christened Spaganbarry, by the English missionary at Red River, where he with some other sons of chiefs, had been sent in 1825, through the instrumentality of Governor Simpson. He returned in 1832 and subsequently spent some time in instructing his people, but afterwards himself lapsed into a profligate and savage life, according to the testimony of Governor Simpson himself. The Methodist Episcopal mission on the Willamette was begun by the Lees in 1834. In 1836 Dr. Whitman and Rev. H. Spalding with their wives--said to have been the first white women to cross the mountains--had begun their work among the Indians, as did also two Roman Catholic missionaries in 1838--while a chaplain, Rev. Mr. Beaver, and his wife, had come from England to supply the spiritual wants of Fort Vancouver. More than a decade of Christian teaching, it will be seen, had failed to eradicate superstition and savagery from the native character; yet the same spirit which has imbued those who have suffered similarly in Africa and China, in more recent years, has inspired the soldiers of the Cross on the Columbia and its tributaries to persist in their self-sacrificing labours, with what success the present residents of Oregon and Washington can best attest.
The difference in appearance and customs, as well as language, between the Indians of the plains east of the mountains and those of the coast was great. Washington Irving attributed--no doubt correctly--the bent legs, corpulent bodies and generally squat appearance of the latter, as compared with the tall, straight figures of many of the natives of the East, to their life as fishermen and mariners, constantly squatting in canoes, while the aborigines of the plains scoured the prairies in the chase. Their disposal of their dead also reflected the character of the coast Indian's life--their cemeteries being collections of elaborately decorated canoes, containing the corpses, and finished with all manner of paraphernalia and provision for the deceased in their future state, in happy _fishing_, rather than _hunting_, grounds.
Slavery was rife among the aborigines of the coast, the number of a man's wives and slaves being the two chief items in estimating his importance. The lives of these slaves were completely at the mercy of their owners, who killed them without compunction whenever the occasion seemed to them to call for such a sacrifice.
The custom of flattening the head in infancy was a characteristic of certain of the tribes in the region of the Columbia and Puget's Sound, especially of the Chinooks and Cowlitz Indians. The process, which is well depicted, as well as described by Paul Kane, commenced with the birth of the infant and continued for a period of from eight to twelve months, in which time the head had lost its natural shape and acquired that of a wedge, the front of the skull flat and higher at the crown, giving it a very unnatural appearance. The infants are said to have shown no signs of suffering while subjected to the treatment, but on the contrary to have cried when their bands were removed--nor was their health or acuteness of intellect apparently impaired by it. The Flatheads took their slaves from among the roundhead tribes, the former looking with contempt even upon the whites, whose heads had grown in the natural shape which served to distinguish slaves from their masters.
The fondness of the Indian for arraying himself in the white man's garments, especially if they be of a showy or striking appearance, has been often remarked, and the Indians of the Columbia were no exception to the rule. "I remember old King Comcomly," said the old Hudson's Bay clerk quoted in the earlier part of this article[215], "once marching into Vancouver, with all his naked aides and followers, rigged out in a British general's uniform. But His Majesty had thrown off the pantaloons before he marched out--considering that they impeded his progress"--a scene which reminds one somewhat of the visit of the founder of the late Hawaiian dynasty and his suite to the _Tonquin_, while she lay at the Sandwich Islands.
The lot of the officers and clerks at the more remote posts of the Hudson's Bay Company was, in most cases, by no means an enviable one. Their letters to their friends and to each other--usually long and neatly written documents--contained many a tale of dangers surmounted and hardships endured. One wrote from Colville, in 1835, "we had five or six hundred Blackfeet upon us and fought some hours"; another, speaking of Fort Simpson in the same year, said: "A winter voyage on that rugged stormy coast is both dangerous and unpleasant and, when arrived, the matter is not much mended. The natives are very numerous, treacherous, daring, savage and ferocious in the extreme." Separated from his family, whom he would not expose to the dangers of the voyage, he exclaims against the country of his exile. Such instances might be multiplied and it is little matter of wonder that the burden of the trader's letter was at all times an expression of longing for the time when he hoped to "go out" to the far away civilized world and that he invariably looked upon one already there as in a situation akin to Paradise. The hope of promotion--which could not begin until after many years of service--the heartburnings at sometimes being passed over, the long waits of twenty or even thirty years for their "parchments," as they termed their commissions as chief factors or chief traders--were the subject of ceaseless thought and some grumbling. Now and again the bullet, knife or tomahawk of some treacherous foe would put an end to the earthly solitude of the trader at a remote post. In spite of all their drawbacks, however, the Hudson's Bay factors, traders and clerks formed a brotherhood of men, who, for courage, loyalty to the service and good comradeship, were unexcelled perhaps anywhere. In Eastern Canada, the Red River settlement and Vancouver Island, which formed the chief havens of their retirement from service, the old Nor'westers and Hudson's Bay men formed a confraternity of large-hearted and often opulent veterans, full of affection for their families and old comrades and of thankfulness to God for mercies vouchsafed them. That not only the highest position in the company's service, but the highest imperial honours as well, were open to the Hudson's Bay clerk possessing the necessary ability, tact, vigour and perseverance is evidenced by the case of the Hon. Sir Donald A. Smith, who, entering company's service as a lad from Scotland, 18 years of age, has risen, step by step, to the highest position in that service, has amassed great wealth, held a seat for many years in the Canadian parliament, and occupies now the important position of High Commissioner for Canada at London, where he holds a seat in the House of Lords as Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal.
As already stated, the Hudson's Bay Company withdrew headquarters to the north of the present boundary after it became fixed in 1846. Meantime settlement, especially in the Willamette valley, was going on apace and cities and towns arose. Though the fur trade departed, the fisheries have remained and the city of Astoria has been reared chiefly on a diet of fish--for the salmon and sturgeon, as well as smaller fish, of the Columbia, were ever justly celebrated. Ships of all nations found their way in increasing numbers across that bar which has ever been the chief drawback to navigation to and from the Columbia. Across the broad river down which the express boat propelled by the light-hearted, gaily-singing voyageurs, made its way in former times, the swift express train now travels with passengers who mayhap have crossed the continent in less time than would, in the early days, have been consumed in a trip from Spokane to Fort Vancouver.
C. O. ERMATINGER.
FOOTNOTES:
[212] Mr. C. O. Ermatinger, of St. Thomas, Ontario, the writer of this paper, is the son of the E. (Edward) Ermatinger and a nephew or the F. (Francis) Ermatinger who are mentioned in the entry on Monday, October 31st, 1825, of the Journal of John Work, which is printed in this Quarterly. Judge Ermatinger is a prominent member of the Elgin (County) Historical and Scientific Institute of Ontario, Canada. This paper was prepared for use in the East some years since; its publication in this Quarterly has now been kindly permitted.--T. C. Elliott.
[213] The present writer's father.
[214] Now deceased. The paintings were purchased I believe by Mr. C. B. Estes, M. P., of Toronto.
[215] The writer's father.
THREE DIPLOMATS PROMINENT IN THE OREGON QUESTION[216]
English-speaking people throughout the world are preparing to celebrate the century of peace which was begun on Christmas Eve, 1814, by the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. It is especially appropriate that here, in the Pacific Northwestern part of America, we should join in such a celebration, for it was by the Treaty of Ghent that the Oregon Question first entered the realm of diplomacy. There remained thirty-one years of struggle for sovereignty, during which war seemed imminent on more than one occasion, and yet, at the end of that period, the case was settled by diplomacy.
Many men took part in that struggle, but it is the present purpose to call attention to three eminent American statesmen who were brought into contact with the diplomacy of the case at each important stage of its evolution. As a group, they deserve more credit than is usually accorded to them in Northwestern annals. Their names are John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin.
It is not necessary to trace their early careers, except to point out that they fairly represented the United States in the critical year of 1814. Adams of Massachusetts was a New Englander. Clay, though born in Virginia, removed to Kentucky, at the age of twenty, to begin the practice of law. He thus represented the West as well as the South. Gallatin, born in Geneva, Switzerland, came to America, a boy of nineteen years, and passed through remarkable experiences in Massachusetts, Maine, Pennsylvania and Virginia, settling finally in New York City, a man of fame and wealth.
During the War of 1812, these three men were in public service as follows: John Quincy Adams was United States Minister to Russia; Henry Clay was Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Albert Gallatin was rounding out his twelfth year as Secretary of the Treasury. When Czar Alexander offered to end the war by mediation, President Madison took the proposal very seriously. He appointed Clay and Gallatin as commissioners to join Minister Adams in the negotiations. The two resigned their important positions to accept the new duty. When they arrived at St. Petersburg, it was learned that Great Britain had declined the Czar's offer of mediation.
There followed months of weary waiting. The victories over Napoleon relieved the pressure on Great Britain, but she finally made the proposal for commissioners of the two powers to meet in a neutral port.
Ghent was chosen and the United States added James A. Bayard and Jonathan Russell to their commission.
The long and tedious record of the negotiation reveals many a discord between the two sides but, much more unfortunate, it also reveals many clashes between Adams and Clay within the American commission. Adams insisted on protecting the fishing rights off British American shores and Clay wanted to deprive England from the use of the Mississippi River. Clay even tried to stop negotiations at the last moment. Adams says: "Gallatin and Bayard, who appeared not to know where it was that Clay's shoe pinched him, were astonished at what they heard, and Gallatin showed some impatience at what he thought mere unseasonable trifling."[217] Yet Gallatin surely did know where the shoe pinched and he was determined that the larger interests should not be jeopardized. His biographer says: "Far more than contemporaries ever supposed, or than is now imagined, the Treaty of Ghent was the special work and the peculiar triumph of Mr. Gallatin."[218] The biographer of Clay also refers to Gallatin's resources as a peacemaker, adding: "At the very last, just before separating, Adams and Clay quarreled about the custody of the papers, in language bordering upon the unparliamentary. But for the consummate tact and the authority of Gallatin the commission would not seldom have been in danger of breaking up in heated controversy."[219]
These quarrels of the pinching shoes had little to do with the Oregon Question. They reveal, however, some of the qualities of the men destined to cling to the question for many years. Oregon is not mentioned in the completed treaty. In general terms it is included in the following language of Article 1: "All territory, places and possessions whatsoever, taken by either party from the other during the war, or which may be taken after the signing of this treaty, excepting only the islands hereinafter mentioned, shall be restored without delay, and without causing any destruction or carrying away any of the artillery or other public property originally captured in the said forts or places, and which shall remain therein upon the exchange of ratifications of this treaty, or any slaves or other private property."[220] The islands mentioned were those in Passamaquoddy Bay and Gallatin suspected that the British commissioners desired to pave the way for securing in the future a part of Maine "in order to connect New Brunswick and Quebec."[221]
That Oregon was included in the treaty's general terms is shown by the instructions from Secretary of State Monroe to the American commissioners under date of March 22, 1814: "Should a treaty be concluded with Great Britain, and a reciprocal restitution of territory be agreed on, you will have it in recollection that the United States had in their possession, at the commencement of the war, a post at the mouth of the river Columbia, which commanded the river, which ought to be comprised in the stipulation, should the possession have been wrested from us during the war. On no pretext can the British Government set up a claim to territory south of the northern boundary of the United States. It is not believed that they have any claim whatever to territory on the Pacific Ocean. You will, however, be careful, should a definition of boundary be attempted, not to countenance, in any manner, or in any quarter, a pretension in the British Government to territory south of that line."[222]
The American commissioners were therefore informed as to the determined attitude of the United States as to Oregon and Adams declares that the British understood that Oregon was included in the provisions of Article 1 of the Treaty of Ghent. He says that Anthony St. John Baker, Secretary of the British Commission, was to go to America with the ratification of the treaty and, later, he says that Baker showed in a letter to Secretary of State Monroe that the British understood that Astoria was included in he terms of Article 1 of the Treaty of Ghent.[223] Subsequently (21 February, 1822) it was revealed by the publication of the report of the American commissioners, dated at Ghent, 25 December, 1814, the day after the treaty was signed, that an attempt had been made to settle the boundary from the Lake of the Woods westward along the forty-ninth parallel of latitude. That would have settled the Oregon controversy then. It was rejected because it was involved with "a formal abandonment on our part, of our claim to the liberty as to the fisheries, recognized by the treaty of 1783."[224]
That Oregon was included in the provisions of the Treaty of Ghent was recognized in 1818 by the formal transfer of Astoria (Fort George of the British) to J. B. Prevost, representing the United States for the purpose of that transfer.
In the same year, 1818, was signed by Great Britain and the United States an agreement that has since been known in the Oregon country as the Treaty or Convention of Joint Occupancy. The official title is Convention Respecting Fisheries, Boundary and the Restoration of Slaves. Article III of this convention provided that "any country that may be claimed by either party on the northwest coast of America, westward of the Stony Mountains" should for the term of ten years be free and open to "the vessels, citizens and subjects of the two Powers."[225] There were no American settlers in Oregon then. The Northwest Company of Montreal had a number of trading posts. The convention was a mutual confession that the future would have to solve the question of actual sovereignty. When that convention was signed, John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State, Henry Clay was Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Albert Gallatin was United States Minister to France. But he was directed to go from Paris to London to join United States Minister Richard Rush in the negotiations and Gallatin's name is the first signature on the completed document.
On 22 February, 1819, John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State, signed with Luis de Onis, Spanish Minister to the United States, an agreement known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cession of the Floridas, and Boundaries. Just exactly two years elapsed before the treaty was ratified and proclaimed. The delay was caused by Spain's fear that the United States was about to recognize the independence of the revolted Spanish American colonies. Article III of this treaty affects the Oregon case in two ways. It fixes the southern boundary of the Oregon country along the forty-second parallel of latitude and it passes to the United States a quitclaim to any title that Spain may have in lands lying north of that boundary.[226] Adams surely sensed the importance of this item at the time. It was frequently cited and urged in subsequent negotiations.
In 1821, the Czar of Russia claimed the coast of America from the frozen seas in the North to the fifty-first parallel of latitude. On 17 July, 1823, Secretary of State Adams told Baron Tuyl, Russian Minister to the United States, that the time had passed for further colonization by European powers in the lands of America. On the first Monday of the following December, President Monroe gave to Congress the famous message that embodies the Monroe Doctrine. Russia's claim to part of Oregon provoked a part of that Doctrine. Henry Middleton, United States Minister to Russia, was directed to begin negotiations which resulted in the convention as to the Pacific Ocean and Northwest Coast of America, bearing the date of 17 April, 1824. Article III of this convention fixes the northern boundary of the Oregon country at fifty-four degrees and forty minutes of north latitude. At this juncture, Gallatin had returned to private life, but Clay was still Speaker of the House and Adams was Secretary of State.
When the ten-year limit of the joint occupancy feature of the Convention of 1818 was about to expire, our three diplomats were sharply confronted with the Oregon Question once more. John Quincy Adams had become President, Henry Clay was his Secretary of State, and Albert Gallatin, who had refused a cabinet position and a nomination for vice president, now consented to serve as United States Minister to Great Britain. In sending Minister Gallatin instructions under date of 19 June, 1826, Secretary of State Clay said: "You are then authorized to propose the annulment of the third article of the Convention of 1818, and the extension of the line on the parallel of 49, from the eastern side of the Stony Mountains, where it now terminates, to the Pacific Ocean, as the permanent boundary between the territories of the two powers in that quarter. This is our ultimatum, and you may so announce it."
There still were no American settlers in the region. The fixing of the boundary was apparently impossible, but Gallatin succeeded in concluding on 6 August, 1827, a convention to continue indefinitely the joint occupancy feature and providing that either side could terminate the agreement by giving the other side twelve months' notice. President Adams felt that it was a compromise, but a good one. Said he to Congress: "Our conventions with Great Britain are founded upon the principles of reciprocity."[227] In the course of the negotiations there was submitted a declaration prohibiting both sides from "exercising, or assuming to themselves the right to exercise, any exclusive sovereignty or jurisdiction over the said territory, during the continuance in force of the present convention."[228] That declaration was not made a formal part of the convention except so far as it is covered by Article III, which provides that nothing in the convention shall impair the claims of either party "to any part of the country westward of the Stony or Rocky Mountains."[229]
Oregon was projected into the struggles of joint occupancy. It remains to follow the interest of the three diplomats. Clay could not have forgotten Oregon wholly during his campaigns for the presidency or during his great fight for the Compromise of 1850, including the free constitution of California. He did not, however, come into definite contact with the Oregon case after his term as Secretary of State. Gallatin entered permanently upon private life in 1831. For about eight years he was a banker and then devoted himself to literature. There is abundant evidence that he remembered Oregon. He wrote in the field of ethnology about Indians of the west and, in 1846, when Oregon was reaching toward a final struggle in diplomacy, he wrote his well known pamphlet on The Oregon Question, beginning: "I had been a pioneer in collecting facts and stating the case."[230] When he wrote that pamphlet he was eighty-five years old and within three years of his death.
Adams continued longest in the public service; indeed, his wish to die in the harness was gratified. The ex-President entered Congress in 1831 and represented the same district in the House of Representatives until his death in 1848. He knew the Oregon Question from end to end. He knew how Doctor Floyd and others had tried, in 1821, to persuade Congress to establish a settlement on the Columbia. He knew about William A. Slacum's investigation and report, in 1837, as well as the report of the Wilkes Expedition, in 1841. On returning from church on 24 July, 1842, he called on Lord Ashburton and spent an hour with him learning about the negotiations with Secretary Webster for a treaty in which, as he found, the "Oregon Territory and Columbia River question remains open."[231] The Webster-Ashburton Treaty was concluded on 9 August, 1842, but there were further negotiations, for in March, 1843, after an illness of eight days, Adams got to the State Department and had a three hours' talk with Secretary of State Daniel Webster. He was displeased. Webster seemed frank enough with him about some points, but he admitted with apparent reluctance that Great Britain would not object to the United States extending southward from the Columbia River to San Francisco, at the expense of Mexico, if Great Britain was given a free hand north of the Columbia. Remembering the Puget Sound region as a part of such a sacrifice, Adams wrote in his diary: "What an abime of duplicity!"
On 16 February, 1843, as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, he reported unfavorably Senator Linn's bill for the occupation of Oregon Territory. For this he has been criticized, but no one knew so well as he what lay behind that Article III in the Convention of 1827.
After the election of 1844, with its successful battle-cry of "Fifty-four, Forty, or Fight!" Congressman Adams watched the Oregon Question closely. He got through the House a call on the President for papers in the case and his diary of 14 December, 1845, says: "My chief occupation was to read the discussion between the successive Secretaries of State, Daniel Webster, Abel P. Upshur, John C. Calhoun, and James Buchanan, with the British Ministers Henry S. Fox and Ricard Pakenham, concerning the contest of title between the United States and Great Britain to the Oregon Territory. The most remarkable reflection to which this correspondence gives rise in my mind is that, notwithstanding the positive declaration of Mr. Polk in his inaugural speech of the unquestionable title of the United States to the whole Oregon country to latitude 54.40, notwithstanding a repetition of the same declaration in his recent message to Congress, and notwithstanding the constant professed inflexibility of his official newspaper in support of this claim, he has actually repeated the offer heretofore made by Mr. Monroe, and repeated by me, of continuing the boundary-line between the British possessions and the United States in the latitude of 49 from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, and that it has again been rejected by Great Britain."[232] He was of opinion that the offer ought not to be repeated or accepted if made by Great Britain, but he felt that Mr. Polk "will finish by accepting it."
He was right, Mr. Polk did accept it. The treaty was concluded on 15 June, 1846, and it is a great blessing that the end came through diplomacy without an appeal to arms. Few realized at the time how close we had come to war. The cry of "Fifty-four, Forty, or Fight!" was looked upon as mainly bluster for campaign purposes. But what of the other side? Within the last five years were published for the first time the Warre and Vavasour papers,[233] by which it is revealed that the British Government had sent the two secret agents into the Oregon country and they had shown how feasible would have been a war of conquest in that region. Instead of war, Great Britain renewed the offer of the forty-ninth parallel as a compromise boundary and it was accepted.
Each of our three diplomats lived beyond the Biblical allotment of years. Adams died in 1848 at eighty-one years of age, Gallatin in 1849 at eighty-eight, and Clay in 1852 at seventy-five. Grand old men, all of them! The public annals of their day are shot through and through with the records of their thoughts and deeds. Inadequate collections of their works have been saved, the greatest of which is the monumental diary of John Quincy Adams. He, himself, has written of that diary; "There has perhaps not been another individual of the human race, of whose daily existence from early childhood to fourscore years has been noted down with his own hand so minutely as mine."[234]
It has not been possible to search every document for this occasion, but enough has been gleaned to show something of the debt of gratitude which the Oregon country owes to the diplomatic triumphs achieved by the brains and hands of these three great men.
When the century of peace shall be rounded out on next Christmas eve, it would be well to send to Quincy, Lexington, and Trinity churchyard in New York wreaths of evergreens from the Oregon hills,--memorial tributes to Adams, Clay and Gallatin.
EDMOND S. MEANY.
FOOTNOTES:
[216] Presidential address for the special meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, Seattle, 22 May, 1914.
[217] Charles Francis Adams: Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 111, 121, 22 Dec., 1814.
[218] Henry Adams: Life of Albert Gallatin, 516. Quoted by John Austin Stevens: Albert Gallatin, 335.
[219] Carl Schurz: Henry Clay, I., 113.
[220] William M. Malloy: Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776-1909, I., 613.
[221] American State Papers, Foreign Relations, IV., 811. (Mr. Gallatin to the Secretary of State, 25 December, 1815.)
[222] American State Papers, Foreign Relations, III., p. 731. The copy of this document was submitted to Congress in response to the Senate's request of 15 February, 1815. The statement was made that it was one of only two documents that had been withheld from Congress. In a former document under date of 21 March, 1814, there appears the line: "(Confidential paragraph omitted.)," which may be the same as that given above, though the date is one day later.
[223] John Quincy Adams: Memoirs, IV., 93-94; (15 May, 1818).
[224] American State Papers, Foreign Relations, IV., 808-811.
[225] Malloy: Treaties, I., 632.
[226] Malloy: Treaties, II., 1652-1653.
[227] James D. Richardson: Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ii., 380.
[228] Public Documents, Serial No. 173; 30 Congress. 1st session. House of Representatives. Documents 199, p. 77.
[229] Malloy: Treaties, I., 644.
[230] Albert Gallatin: The Oregon Question (New York. Bartlett & Welford, 1846); reprinted by Henry Adams: Writings of Gallatin, III., 489-553.
[231] John Quincy Adams: Memoirs. XI., 219.
[232] John Quincy Adams: Memoirs, XII., 220-221.
[233] The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society. X., 1-99 (March, 1909); also the Washington Historical Quarterly, III., 131-153 (April, 1912).
[234] John Quincy Adams: Memoirs, XII., 276-277. (31 October, 1846.)
DOCUMENTS
A New Vancouver Journal
Taking up the Journal from where it left off in the April Quarterly we find the party approaching Restoration Point, opposite the present city of Seattle. The record here given is much briefer than in Vancouver's own official Journal, but it should prove of interest in spite of that fact. It retells the discovery of this region in the style of a mariner. In years to come this brief record is sure to be preserved by the side of the larger official record.
EDMOND S. MEANY.
THE JOURNAL
(Continued from page 137, April Quarterly.)
We were detained by the Tides, which were rapid, from joining the Discovery before the 26th when we found her at anchor off a Point of a small opening called by Captn: Vancouver Restoration Point.[235] Here there was a small village, containing, I shou'd suppose, about 60 or 70 Inhabitants.[236] It was situated on a fine rising ground, and the Country round it was extremely pleasant to appearance and clear. The Natives had brought a good supply of Venison to the Discovery. Two of her boats with Lt: Paget & Mr Whidby were now absent on a surveying expedition up the continuation of this & the Arms round us, and the morning after our arrival Captn; Vancouver with Mr Johnstone set out with two Boats on another expedition. Though I have but just before mentioned that I conceived the Natives hereabouts had but little intercourse with Europeans, we had here a proof that they were not entirely unaccustomed to Trading Vessels for two very good Sea Otter Skins were brought off for sale, and the price was copper. However they took so reasonable a price, and their having no more than these two skins among them makes me think that the knowledge they have of Trading Ships is acquir'd by their own commerce with Tribes between them and the Sea.
On the 27th at night Mr Whidby & Lt. Paget return'd from their cruize having closed up the Arms.[237] In one place they met with a considerable tribe of Indians from whom he had nearly met with some trouble, but by early good management nothing material happened. After being very well treated by the Boats party the Natives seized the opportunity of their stopping at a Beach to Dinner, to attack them. They were observed to string their Bows & sling their Quivers and were making for the Wood behind the party at Dinner from whence it was no doubt their intention to fire on them but as this was observ'd Mr Menzies & Mr Manby catching up their Muskets ran up and drove them back to their Canoes. As there were some opening to look into the Northd. we weigh'd anchor and quitted this place the next day the 28th and as Mr Johnstone was still absent in our Cutter with Captn: Vancouver we took Mr Whidby and the Discovery's Launch with us to carry on the survey and when we came abreast of the opening she was dispatched along with our Launch in which went Ltd: Hanson with a week's provisions. In the meantime we anchored off a place called Rose Point from the numerous trees of that name that were on the low ground; besides this there were plenty of currant, Gooseberry, & Raspberry bushes, and large beds of Strawberries but very little if any of these Fruits were yet ripe.
June. On the 30th we were join'd by the Discovery and we proceeded with her on the further examination of this tedious Inland Navigation. Nothing remarkable occurred till the 2nd of June when sailing up a place called Port Gardner in Possession Sound, by the negligence of the man in the chains about one o'clock in the afternoon we run aground upon a Muddy Bank. We immediately gave the Discovery the alarm and at the same time made the Signal for assistance. She was astern of us and directly anchor'd and dispatched her Boats to our relief. On sounding astern of the Ship it was found that we had run a considerable distance over a Shoal and before we could carry an anchor out into water sufficiently deep we veer'd away four Hawsers on end. At Highwater we hove off without any damage whatever and brought up in 9 fam. water. As we found this place like all the others shut up, we weigh'd the next morning and sail'd out of the Port and the following day anchor'd in a Bay to wait the return of Lt Hanson & Mr Whidby and to celebrate His Majesty's Birthday. The Boats return'd on the 4th and on that day possession was taken on shore[238] by Captn: Vancouver in His Majesty's name of all the Land in the Streights, and the part in which we now were call'd Gulf of Georgia. On this occasion the Discovery fired 21 guns on the Flag of possession being hoisted and as the King's Birth Day the Ship's Companies were served double allowance of Grog to drink his health.
There was in this Bay a fine Sandy Beach where the Seine was haul'd with pretty good success. We saw no Village nor Inhabitants near this place but on the point of the beach there stood a remarkable high pole, strongly supported by props at the Bottom, and at the top of it was fixed a human skull. What the reason of so curious a thing could be no one could divine. Many such had been seen in different parts of the Inland Navigation and in Mr Hanson's late cruize. No less than three of these Poles with skulls on them were seen at one place contiguous to which was a very large burying Ground. Some bodies were wrapp'd up in Mats & Skins and laid in canoes, whilst some that appear'd but recently dead were thrown into a deep hole in the earth and not covered.
On the 5th we left this Bay and proceeded on our exploration, crossing over to the opening out of which we came the 23rd of May, having to that place carried the Continent. We found Tides here extremely rapid and on the 9th in endeavouring to get round a point to a Bay in which the Discovery had anchor'd, we were swept to Leeward of it with great impetuosity. We therefore let go the Stream anchor in 28 fathoms water but in bringing up, such was the force of the Tide that we parted the Cable. We immediately let go the Bower with which we brought up. On trying the Tide we found it running at the rate of 5-1/2 miles an hour. At slack water we swept for the anchor but could not get it, after several fruitless attempts to get it we were at last obliged to leave it and join the Discovery in Strawberry Bay. This Bay obtain'd its name from a tolerable quantity of Strawberries we found there. As the Discovery had only been waiting for us here we left it the following day and steered for a very extensive opening trending about N. and came to an anchor in a very pleasant Bay which was called Birch Bay.[239] From this place two Boat expeditions were undertaken one by Captain Vancouver and the other by Mr Whidby. In the meantime the Observatory was set up for the purpose of regulating the watches and Spruce Beer brew'd for the Ships Companies. Our operations on shore were carried on in a very convenient place there being a fine Grass plot of nearly a mile in length with a fine fresh water River at the back of it. Captn: Vancouver set out with his two Boats and 10 days provisions on the 12th to the Westward and Mr Whidby with two Boats and a weeks provisions towards an opening to the Eastward of us. The same Evening we were surprised to see Mr Whidby's Boats return but much more so when we learnt from them that they had seen two Vessels, a Brig and a Schooner coming down the Arm which lay round the point of the Bay. It was immediately conjectured from the improbability of trading vessels being in this inhospitable part of the Coast and the distance from the entrance of the Streights that they were foreign Vessels employed on the same service as ourselves and which conjecture we afterwards found to be right. A lookout for them was kept during the night and nothing been seen of them. In the morning a boat was dispatched to the Entrance of the arm but she returned without seeing them. It was thought they had pass'd during the night. Mr Broughton therefore got under weigh in the Chatham and the boats were re-dispatched on their examination. Whilst the Chatham was getting under way the Vessels were observed by the help of the Glasses a considerable way to the Westward of us so that they must have pass'd in the night.
We soon came up with them and they hoisted Spanish Colours. A Boat with an officer was sent on board the Brig where he was very politely received by the Commander. They proved to be His Catholic Majesty's Brig Soutile commanded by Don Dionisio Galiano and the Schooner Mexicana, Don Cayetano Valdez, Commander; both Captains of Frigates in the Royal Navy of Spain and employed in surveying these Streights to complete the parts left unfinished by Seigr. Malespini with whom these two gentlemen had been Lieutenants. They left Nootka late in May where there were at that time lying 3 Frigates and a Spanish Brig of War, Don Quadra, Commodore.
Don Galiano offered us every information & civility in his power and sent on board some milk & cabbages that he had brought from Nootka. The Vessels were very small, the Brig not being more than 45 tons Burthen. They had each a Lieutenant, a Pilot, and twenty men and carried two Brass Guns each. After receiving the necessary information we parted from them and made for our old anchorage, whilst they continued their route to the West. From this time to the 23rd we were employed in taking the necessary observations for determining the rates of the watches, and in other ways and Mr Whidby's party having returned after an absence of six days, closing the places up which he went to explore. We cut here some remarkably fine Plank, of the Pine tree, and there was a good deal of Alder & Birch here. We had had tolerable good luck with the Seine, the Bay affording plenty of Flat fish, some Salmon Trout and a small kind of Bream and we now and then shot some Ducks. Though there was no village near us and we were but very seldom visited by canoes, Mr Whidby in his last Cruise,[240] at no great distance from the Ships, met with a numerous Tribe of Indians, not less than 300, that were just shifting their Village. They had very little connexion with them as the Indians shew'd no desire for their landing near them. On the 23rd Captn:
Vancouver returned after an absence of twelve days; he had met with the two Spanish Vessels and been on board them and now was by agreement going to join them as our destination was much the same as theirs and as we shou'd be obliged to visit at the place to which Captn: Vancouver had carried the Continent during a further expedition of the Boats[241] we shou'd have an opportunity of being sociable.
On the 24th we quitted the Bay which is in the Lat: of 48.53.30 N and the Long: 237.32 Et. and stood to the Westward. About Noon we came up with the Spanish Vessels with whom we kept company till the 26th when we came to the situation from whence our next surveying cruize was to commence, and late at night the whole Squadron anchored, in a place which from its uninviting shore and the few refreshments beyond water which it produced was call'd by us Desolation Reach, its Lat: is 50.11 N and Longe: 235.27 Et.
In this dreary place (the first place that deserves that name that we had been since we entered De Fuca's Streights) we lay about three weeks in the course of which time no less than three Boat expeditions were undertaken from us and two by the Spaniards. In the last of ours by Mr Johnstone a passage to sea was discover'd by an extensive Arm that led into Queen Charlotte's Sound and to which the continent had been carried. Mr Johnstone's situation in this Arm of the Sound was once or twice rather critical, for coming into it unexpectedly he was surprised to find himself among several villages, populously inhabited and well arm'd with Musquets, and they had endeavoured to decoy him to a place where he observed, as he proceeded on, several large canoes well mann'd, he however did not go near them, and prevented them from following him.
July. On the 13th of July we took our leave of the Spaniards and made the best of our way to where Mr Johnstone left off, and on the 17th entered the Arm which is called in Captn: Vancouver's chart Johnstone's Arm. When we got near the Villages, which chiefly lye on the Southern Shore several canoes came off with Otter Skins to sell. Their demand was here as at Cape Classett-Copper or Blue Cloth, Musquets and Powder. Several of the Indians were habited in European Cloathes on most of which was a profusion of Metal Buttons, and of Musquets, there was scarce a canoe that we saw that had not two or 3 in it, and in excellent order. On the 18th by desire of Captn: Vancouver we parted from the Discovery to look into an Arm to the Northwd. This opening led us into many small arms & Branches among a cluster of Islands that ended all in Low Land. One of these Arms, and the most extensive, Mr Broughton called Knight's Canal, and the whole was named by Captn: Vancouver, Broughton's Archipelago.[242] In this business we were employed upwards of a week. We met with but few Indians (the populous part of this Sound being the So. side) they had all of them skins and for the first time we got from them plenty of excellent Salmon. On the 29th we again join'd the Discovery, she had since we left her, been at anchor off a very large Village call'd by the natives Whanneck, the chief's name was Cathlaginness, it was numerously inhabited but they were subject to Maquinna the chief of Nootka Sound; they as well as all the people we had seen since entering the Sound spoke the Nootka Language. Thus far and no further North does that Language extend and its limits to the Southwd. is about Cape Classett. At this Village were a great number of Sea Otter skins, and not less than two hundred was purchased on board the Discovery, chiefly for old Cloathes and some Copper.
As it is impossible to point out the boundaries of Defuca's Streights I have carried on that name till we came into a place to which we know there is a name and as all our examination continued Inland in Arms & Branches of the Sea I have now begun to entitle this "The Inland Navigation on the N. We. Coast of America."
August. We continued our survey of the Continent in the usual way without any material circumstance happening till the 7th of August, being still in the Sound, when the Discovery got aground on a ledge of sunken rocks, we immediately brought up as near to her as we could with safety, and sent the boats immediately to her assistance. The Tide unfortunately was ebbing so that nothing could be done till High Water, when she was hove off with out receiving any apparent damage, for while she lay on the rocks the water was very smooth and she did not thump. We continued our course to the Nd. The very next evening, having but little wind and a strong Ebb tide running we were hustled upon some Rocks and stuck fast. The Discovery was ahead of us and on our making the Signal of Distress sent her Boats to our assistance. At High water we hove off but we had every reason to suppose that her Copper (at least) must have been much rubb'd, from her striking on the Rocks, as there was a good deal of swell, and indeed when we came to lay her ashore at Nootka, we had we found been right in out conjecture for besides the Copper being much rubb'd her Gripe and part of her false keel were carried away.
On the 11th we came to an anchor in Port Safety in Calvert's Island and the following day dispatched two Boat expeditions, one to the S. & E. to some opening we had pass'd and the other to the Nd. Here we endeavoured to lay the Chatham ashore, for to look at her bottom, but after frequent trials we found the Tide did not rise sufficiently. The Seine was haul'd here with very great success, the First haul we took 120 large Salmon. The weather that we hitherto enjoyed since entering the Streights of Defuca was remarkably fine having had in all that time not a weeks bad weather but now the scene was changed and we had nothing in this port but heavy rain & gloomy weather. On the 17th a Brig entered the Harbour who shew'd English Colours. An officer was immediately dispatched on board her. On his return we learn'd the Vessel's name was the Venus, commanded by a Mr Shepherd from Bengal, on a trading voyage to this Coast for skins, after she came to an anchor the Master of her waited on Captn: Vancouver with his papers and brought the agreeable news of our Storeship's being at Nootka waiting for us. He delivered Captn: Vancouver a letter from the Master of her, which had been given him in case of his falling in with us. This letter merely said that they had been lying at Nootka ever since the beginning of July and had heard of our being on the Coast from Mr Grey Master of the Columbia whom we had spoke the day we entered Defuca Streights. The news of her arrival threw everybody in high spirits which however was soon damp'd and in no small degree by hearing the remaining part of the letter, which mention'd that the King's Agent of the Transport, Lieut. Hergest, and the Astronomer that was sent out in her to the Discovery had been unfortunately murdered by the Natives of Woahoo (one of the Sandwich Islands). The Spanish Commandant, Don Quadra, Mr Shepherd inform'd us was anxiously looking out for us as he had been sent there for the purpose of giving up the Port to us.
These circumstances, together with the unfavorable weather that still continued and which we imagin'd was the commencement of the bad season, induced Captn: Vancouver to alter his intentions and he now determined on giving up any further examination this year and to make the best of his way to Nootka. The 18th we all left the Port, the Venus standing to the S. E. whilst we proceeded to sea round the N. side of Calvert's Island: the Boats having joined us after their examination about Noon. They had carried the continent up an extensive arm to a place called by Captn. V. Cape Menzies, in the Lat: 52.19 N. & Long: 232.57 Et. they were obliged to return their provisions being out but the arm seemed to run a considerable distance beyond where they left off. Our Lat: at Noon was 51.57.
We had now spent three months and a half in exploring an Inland Navigation between the Lats: 48.23 N & 52.19 N. and the Long: 235.38 & 232.57 E. having kept the continental shore on board ever since our entering the Streights of Defuca. The most Southern situation that we were in, in the Streights was in the Lat: 47.3 N call'd Paget's Sound and our most Eastern situation 238.2 E. long.
The Land in the Southernmost parts of these Streights was in several places exceedingly pleasant, there were many extensive plains where the soil was extremely rich and the verdure luxurious. Gooseberrys, Currants, Raspberrys & Strawberries were to be found in many places, and at the most of them, the Raspberrys & Strawberries were well tasted. Onions were to be got almost everywhere, as was also Samphire and a plant call'd by the Sailors Fat-hen, both of which when boil'd eat remarkably well, the former being not unlike French Beans and the latter but little inferior to Spinach.
In the Northern parts two kinds of what is call'd Huckleberries, Red & Black, were found; these were excellent in Pies.
The Trees were of all kinds. Oak, Ash, Elm, Alder, Pine, Birch & Cedar. Of Oak & Cedar we did not see so much as of any of the other kinds, but as to the Pine Tree, the whole Coast is a Forest of it[243] and of it and the Oak we saw trees of an immense size and calculated for any uses.
For such an extent as we travers'd over in Defuca and in so grateful a part of America, from what we saw, it cannot be said to be very populous, & tho' there were few that had not some European ornaments, metals &c., about them, yet there were the most considerable number of them that I shou'd suppose never saw a Ship before. The European articles they possess being got I suppose by bartering with one another between them and the Sea Coast. They appeared in general very quiet people and the only weapons I ever saw among them were Bows & Arrows & some few knives (but I shall have occasion to mention some accounts of the Natives in general before I leave the Coast).
The Skins they had about them and what they brought to sell were all of Land animals, Moose, Deer, Bear, Fox, Raccoon, Wild Cat, Martin, Land Otter, Weasel, Rabbit &c. but no Sea Otters, these animals never being found so far inland.
After we got to Sea we were harrassed with a foul wind from the S. E. attended with Rain & Haze till the 25th (7 days) when at last we had the wind from the pleasant quarter N. W. and pass'd to the Westward of Scott's Islands, but what with calms and more foul winds it was not till the 28th that we came in sight of Nootka Sound.
_Transactions in Nootka Sound_
On the 28th about 11 o'clock in the forenoon we enter'd the Sound with a fair fresh Breeze, but so very foggy that we had lost sight of the Discovery, nor did we see her when the Fog cleared away which was about Noon.
As we approach'd the Cove we observed a Boat coming out to us with the Spanish Colours flying, she came on board us, and proved to be the Guard Boat. The Officer in her, on hearing who we were, and that we were come out in company with the Discovery to receive this place of them, discovered much satisfaction and the people in the Boat were ready to leap overboard for joy, for it seems we were so long expected that they had now given up all hopes of seeing us at all this season.
We found lying in Friendly Cove His Catholic Mjs. Brig. Activa of twelve guns wearing Seigr. Quadra's Broad Pendant, the Doedalus Transport, with Stores and Provisions for us; and the Three Bs, a Brig commanded by a Mr Alder, on the Fur Trade from New Castle. The Discovery was not here. Seigr. Quadra sent off an invitation to Captn. Broughton to dine ashore which was accepted, and after the usual ceremonies of demanding: gun for gun we saluted the Fort with 13 guns which were returned with an equal number from the Activa. The Master of the Storeship, Mr New, waited on Captn. B. and brought some Packets of Letters for us from our friends in England.
About 4 o'clock the Discovery hove in sight and shortly after enter'd the Cove and took her berth close to us. She likewise saluted the Fort with 13 Guns, which was returned and in the evening Captn. Vancouver waited on Seigr. Quadra ashore.
The next day (the 29th) Seigr. Quadra gave a grand dinner at his house on shore to the two Commanders and their officers. After the dinner was over (which by the bye was given in a style but little expected in such a place as Nootka) Seigr. Quadra gave the Healths of the Sovereigns of England & Spain accompanied by 21 guns fired from his Brig and also Captn. Vancouver's health with 13 guns.
In the evening the Governor sent a couple of fine sheep with a large stock of Cabbages &c. on board each of the vessels and also a cask of Rum to the Ship's Company. The live stock on shore belonging to the Governor consisted of about ten head of cattle, some sheep & goats, Pigs, and Poultry of all kinds. Their stock, we were informed, had been much larger, but expecting that we should have been much earlier with them they had been very liberal with it and as it was supposed that on receiving the Port one of our vessels would stay here the remainder of the stock was intended to be left with us. There were besides several large gardens well stocked with vegetables of all kinds. All the Vessels in the Cove were regularly supplied with Hot Rolls, Milk & Vegetables every morning--such was the Hospitable and friendly attention of Seigr. Quadra.
Except the Governor's House,[244] which is large, and built of wood and has a second floor, there are none other except some sheds for Artificers and two or three storehouses. In one of these was now living a Mr Magee, Master of the Margaret, merchant ship of Boston. She was now trading to the N. for Furs but had left Mr Magee here on account of ill health, his Surgeon and a gentleman of the name of Howell (a passenger) was residing on shore with him. But before we were here long we found that ill-health was not Mr Magee's only motive for remaining on shore here, for he was carrying on a most profitable trade with the Spaniards & Seamen in Spirituous Liquors, generously charging only four Dollars a gallon for Yankee Rum that cost him most probably about 2/--or half a crown per gallon. Indeed the ill effects of this shameful trade was soon too great to pass without taking notice of it, and endeavouring to put a stop to it. Our Seamen were continually drunk which from the badness of the liquor threw them into fits of sickness; and Captn. Vancouver was at last oblig'd to take measures that prevented any further trade of that nature with our people.
On the Fort which is at the S. pt: of entrance of Friendly Cove there were now but two guns mounted: there had been 18 but the Frigate which had sailed for San Blas about a month before had taken the remainder of the guns with her.
As we expected to remain here some time the Tents & observatory were taken ashore and set up in an advantageous spot behind the Governor's house in a garden fronting the entrance of the Sound. The new observatory with the circular instrument, Astronomical Clock, three Timekeepers & the other Astronomical Instruments that were sent out by the Board of Longitude with the unfortunate Astronomer Mr Gooch were also sent on shore here. We now heard the particulars of the two unfortunate gentlemen, Lieut. Hergest the Agent, and Mr Gooch and the poor seaman who were cut off by the Natives of Woahoo, one of the Sandwich Islands.
(Description of the massacre of these men is omitted as of no interest for the present purpose. A. H. T.)
(To be continued.)
FOOTNOTES:
[235] Opposite the present City of Seattle and near the entrance to Port Blakeley.
[236] Chief Seattle, then a boy of about six years, was undoubtedly with the natives mentioned.
[237] When Captain Vancouver rejoined the party he reviewed the work of his lieutenants and wrote upon his chart in honor of the quality of that work the well known name of "Puget's Sound." Puget had gone on one side and he, himself, had gone on another side of a large body of land which he called Vashon Island, in honor of Captain James Vashon of the British navy.
[238] On that shore there now stands the beautiful and prosperous City of Everett.
[239] Just south of Semiahmoo Bay on which stands the City of Blaine.
[240] During this cruise Whidby had found a narrow passage connecting with Port Gardner. Vancouver called it Deception Pass and he gave Whidby's name to the large island thus made known.
[241] Vancouver's boat expedition had traversed much of the waterway between Vancouver Island and the mainland. The Spaniards reported the probability of a large river. Vancouver declared it impossible. Later the Fraser River was discovered from the land side and traced to its mouth where the Spaniards had thought it to be.
[242] William Robert Broughton was associated with Vancouver as commander of the armed tender Chatham on which consort this journal written.
[243] Reference is here made to the red fir, which has been called by many names from the first time the trees were seen to the present time.
[244] From sketches published by Vancouver, the present editor was able to locate the site of this house or fort in 1803 and several fragments of Spanish tile-like bricks were found where the foundation corners had rested.
BOOK REVIEWS
THE INDIAN HISTORY OF THE MODOC WAR AND THE CAUSES THAT LED TO IT. By Jeff C. Riddle, the Son of Winema, the Heroine of the Modoc War. (Klamath Falls, Oregon, D. L. Moses, 1914. Pp. 295. $2.74.)
At the time of the advent of the white man, the Klamath Lake country, an elevated plateau in southeastern Oregon interspersed with numerous lakes and extending across the boundary into California, was occupied by a number of bands of Indians commonly regarded as being of a single stock, but having little intercourse with one another and that not always friendly. But one characteristic they had in common, the suspicion and dislike of the white man and the pertinacity and fierceness with which they resisted his attempts to occupy their country. When Ewing Young and his party, as early as 1837, brought the first herd of cattle from California to Oregon, he was attacked by Indians in this region, and from that time forward hardly a year passed without depredations on one side or the other, until the close of the Modoc war in 1873. The Indian who felt himself wronged by a white man revenged himself according to Indian custom upon the first white man that fell in his way. In like manner, if a white man was robbed or murdered, his associates or neighbors were but too apt to avenge him by attacking the first party of Indians they might encounter. It thus happened that oftener than otherwise the punishment for undoubted outrages fell upon those who were entirely guiltless, and in this way, too, every act of aggression became the source of an additional feud. The usual consequences followed, of constantly increasing bitterness between the races, and of reprisals that were simply ferocious in their cruelty. Nor were these by any means confined to the side of the Indians.
One of the smallest of the bands inhabiting the region mentioned was the Modocs, who dwelt along the shores of Rhett Lake, better known locally as Tule Lake, on both sides of the boundary between Oregon and California. There were different bands of these, under different chiefs, but we are here more particularly concerned with what is known as Capt. Jack's band. These were even more turbulent and warlike than the neighboring tribes, and from the earliest appearance of the whites in that region had been in frequent collision with them.
The government, in the beginning of 1870, succeeded in getting them to settle on a part of the reservation which was assigned to them with the consent of the Klamaths, but they got along no better with the Klamaths than with the whites, though it appears quite certain that the fault was altogether with the latter Indians.
Various attempts were made to compose their troubles without success, and the Modocs after a short time abandoned the reservation and returned to their former home. The authorities ignored this action until, about two years later, complaints began to be made by the white settlers that the Indians had become menacing and were committing frequent depredations. These complaints resulted in an order from the head of the Indian department in September, 1872, to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon, to return the Modocs to the reservation "peaceably if you can, forcibly if you must." The Indians, on being informed of the order, flatly refused compliance. Thereupon Mr. Odeneal, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, applied to the military authorities in command at Fort Klamath, to compel obedience. Maj. Jackson with a detachment of some thirty-five men marched to Captain Jack's camp and after a parley asked the Indians to lay down their arms. The Indians, on Capt. Jack's advice and following his example, were doing so when an affray arose between Lieut. Boutelle and the Indian known as Scar-face Charley, who each at the same moment fired at the other. A general fight ensued, in which some twenty whites, soldiers and citizens, were killed or wounded, but, as is claimed, no Indians except a squaw and her baby.
Lying around the southern end of Tule Lake is a region known as the "Lava Beds," a vast field of congealed lava intersected in every direction with a labyrinth of fissures and caves and abrupt walls of rock. The place is a natural fastness of such extraordinary defensive strength that a handful of resolute men could hold it against an army so long as provisions and ammunition held out. To this place the Indians fled, numbering, with those who afterwards joined them of fifty-three men with their families. And here took place during the next year the most remarkable defense of which the annals of Indian warfare afford any account, and the most unparalleled act of treachery, the murder of Gen. Canby and Dr. Thomas, and the attempted murder of Mr. Meacham and Mr. Dyer, who as commissioners had met the Indians under a flag of truce to negotiate a treaty of peace.
The volume before us is a narrative of the events of this war and a sketch of the history of the tribe during the preceding quarter of a century. The author is the son of a Modoc mother and a white father. His father and mother acted as interpreters in the negotiations between the Indians and the peace commissioners, and had and deserved the confidence of the best informed on both sides. The mother was a woman of remarkable character, and is in fact the most heroic Indian figure of the Modoc war. With such an ancestry it is not surprising that the author should exhibit strong sympathy for the Indians. In fact, he avows, as a reason for his book that "the Indian side has never been given to the public yet." To the credit of his fairness it must be said that his account of actual occurrences is hardly more favorable to the Indians than that of others who witnessed and have written of them. If fault can be found anywhere it is in an occasional lack of details where details would lend a darker color to the facts given.
The author modestly says of himself and his book:
"I have one drawback, I have no education, but I have tried to write as plain as I could. I use no fine language in my writing, for I lack education."
The book itself fully sustains this statement. But at times the very lack of art and skill betrayed lends a certain pathos to the story. The volume can hardly be called a valuable contribution to the history of the war. Its chief interest will be to the pioneer of the locality who will turn to it as he would to a newspaper of the time, or an old letter written from the midst of the scenes it describes, and thus live over again the scenes of this stirring period.
JULIUS A. STRATTON.
* * * * *
TEN THOUSAND MILES WITH A DOG SLED. By Hudson Stuck, D. D., F. R. G. S., Archdeacon of the Yukon. (N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914. $3.50.)
This is a most interesting narrative of winter journeys with dog team into many remote corners of the Yukon basin in Alaska from 1905 to 1913, connected primarily with the administration of the extensive mission work of the Episcopal church among the natives of interior Alaska.
It is the work of a man of trained mind who describes clearly and entertainingly his own experiences from day to day in traveling through drifting snow, over frozen rivers and lakes and across mountain ranges, in temperatures as low as 70 degrees below zero, making camps in the open plains, on mountain sides, in log huts, and with Eskimos in their igloos, and cooking his meals for himself and his helpers, and for his dogs as well, under all the trying conditions of a subarctic climate in mid-winter. Thousands of Alaskans go through similar experiences every winter, but few have the ability to tell their experiences so clearly and faithfully as Archdeacon Stuck has done.
The special value of this work, aside from its popular interest as a narrative of winter travels in the interior of a new territory about to be opened to development by the building of government railroads, is threefold:
First--He calls attention very forcefully to the bad effects on the natives of contact with a class of whites whom he calls "the low down whites." He compares the good results of the mission work in settlements remote from army posts and saloons, and the discouraging results of the same kind of work in settlements where the natives are preyed upon by immoral whites with bad whiskey as their principal agency. He does not overdraw the facts. His words burn, but they are true.
Second--He shows, from familiarity with the native languages, that the Indians of the upper Yukon valley, above the mouth of the Tanana, and of the entire Tanana valley, are Athabascans, speaking the same language and having the same traditions as the Indians of the Mackenzie river, while the Indians of the lower Yukon as far as Nulato, and of the upper Kuskokwim, are of a wholly different primal stock, speaking a language in no way related to that of the Athabascans. The Eskimos along the coast, in the interior, and in the lower Kuskokwim, he describes as all of one race with the Eskimos of the Arctic ocean clear to the east of Greenland. He speaks highly of the Eskimos, describing them as superior in character and in possibilities of mental development to any of the tribes of American Indians.
Third--The different breeds of dogs, so invaluable to Alaska as the universal friend and helper of prospectors and travelers in every part of the territory, are described in a manner that will help to clear up many of the long standing myths among Alaskans as to the origin of the "Malamute," the "Huskie," and the "Siwash." The "Malamute," he shows, is the typical Eskimo dog, the same in Alaska as in northern Labrador and in Greenland. The "Huskie" is not a cross with a wolf, he avers, contrary to the belief of many Alaskans, but was originally a cross between hardy dogs like the Scotch collie and others with the Malamute itself. The "Siwash" is simply one of the many kinds of native Indian dogs, pure or mixed with other stocks.
It would have been better for Archdeacon Stuck if he had stopped with telling what he knows from long experience among the natives, and had not devoted a chapter in opposition to the building of government railroads in Alaska. Here he prognosticates. He urges the building of a system of wagon roads instead, which, in this twentieth century, is strange advice from a man of his keen powers of observation in other respects. Of course, not ten men in all Alaska will agree with him on this point. His argument against railroads in Alaska is the same as that advanced for many years by the big trading companies, which desire above all things to prevent Alaskan development for their own good.
In dealing with the agricultural possibilities, which he minimizes, he omits mention altogether of the great Susitna valley, which all Alaskans know to be the best in Alaska from an agricultural standpoint.
It is very clear that Archdeacon Stuck is not an authority on agriculture in any of its branches, and that he never lived a day on a farm.
Aside from his opposition to government railroads in Alaska and his doubts as to agricultural possibilities there, on which subjects a minister of the gospel is not necessarily good authority, his book is one of the best of the many recent popular works on Alaska.
JOHN E. BALLAINE.
* * * * *
THE COMING HAWAII. By Joseph King Goodrich. (Chicago, McClurg, 1914. Pp. 329. $1.50.)
Like the author's earlier books on China, Mexico and Canada, The Coming Hawaii is based partly on the writer's own experience and partly on other authorities, which he cites in footnotes throughout the book. Like his earlier works, also, it is written in a popular style and is intended for the reader whose interest in Hawaii is a general one.
Mr. Goodrich made his first visit to Hawaii in 1866. A second and longer one was made after the government there had become republican. His residence in Japan as professor in the Imperial Government College at Kyoto has enabled him to speak authoritatively on the attitude of that country toward Hawaii.
In The Coming Hawaii, Mr. Goodrich sketches the history of the islands, surveys present conditions and considers the relation of Hawaii, in the future, to other countries.
The historical outline includes some notice of the myths and legends which are interwoven with the early history of the Hawaiians, the rule of native monarchs, the transition to American control, and the present administration of the islands by the United States.
The discussion of present conditions is sufficiently broad in its scope as to include almost everything of general interest. Among the subjects presented are the origin of the Hawaiian race, the Hawaiians as laborers, native arts, manners and customs, social life, natural resources, volcanoes, the missionary movement, literature, and immigration.
A most interesting chapter is the one on Agriculture in the Islands. Mr. Goodrich commends the government for the interest it has taken in this pursuit, as shown by valuable experiments with soils and crops, and by its efforts to induce a desirable farming class to settle in the islands. He believes that upon the development of its agriculture, more than upon anything else, depends the economic future of Hawaii. It is of special interest to us that Hawaii turns to the United States, particularly to the Pacific states, to find a market for her products.
In considering the future of the Islands, Mr. Goodrich does not overlook the opportunities they offer all for pleasure, to which the scenery, the equable climate and the fine beaches, especially, contribute.
The reader's enjoyment of the book is increased by the reproductions of attractive photographs. It contains also a good bibliography and an index.
MARY HUBBARD.
* * * * *
TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION, 1765-1865; TOGETHER WITH A LIST OF COUNTY HISTORIES, ATLASES, AND BIOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS AND A LIST OF TERRITORIAL AND STATE LAWS. By Solon J. Buck. (Springfield, Ill. Illinois State Historical Library, 1914. Pp. 514.)
This book, published as volume nine of the Illinois Historical Collections, is a product of the Historical Survey conducted by the University of Illinois. It forms the first part of a comprehensive bibliography of Illinois history, which is being prepared by Solon J. Buck. An attempt is here made to list all works of travel covering any part of the territory of Illinois during the period 1765-1865. Full items of imprint and collation are given, followed by annotations and references to notices and reviews. Such a thoroughgoing piece of bibliography covering description and travel in America becomes of general interest to all students of the Western Movement.
* * * * *
GUIDE TO THE MATERIALS IN LONDON ARCHIVES FOR THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1783. By Charles O. Paulin and Frederic L. Paxson. (Washington, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1914. Pp. 642.)
This is the third volume to be issued by the Department of Historical Research of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in the series of Guides relating to the London Archives. The two previous volumes relate to the History of the United States preceding 1783. The present volume covers the period from 1783 to 1860. It therefore becomes of great interest and value to students of Pacific Northwest History from the time of the Nootka Sound Embroglio to the Acquisition of the Oregon Territory. A glance at the index reveals more than sixty references to Oregon with nearly as many to the Hudson's Bay Company and a goodly number to Washington Territory.
* * * * *
ANNUAL PUBLICATION OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 1912-1913. (Los Angeles, J. B. Walters, 1914. Pp. 158.)
This volume marks the thirtieth anniversary of the organization of the Historical Society of Southern California. In addition to articles of direct bearing upon the local field are several papers of a more general interest. Among the latter may be noted: "Events leading to the Chinese exclusion act"; "Drake on the Pacific Coast"; and "Anti-Japanese legislation in California."
* * * * *
Other Books Received
CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Annual Report, 1913. (Chicago, The Society, 1914. Pp. 173.)
DOUGHTY, ARTHUR G., and MCARTHUR, DUNCAN A. Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1791-1818. (Ottawa, Government, 1914. Pp. 576.)
FAXON, FREDERICK W., _editor_. Annual magazine subject-index, 1913. (Boston, Boston Book Company, 1914. Pp. 278.)
MICHIGAN HISTORICAL COMMISSION. First Annual Report, 1913. (Lansing, Public Printer, 1914. Pp. 63.)
NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL COMMISSION. North Carolina Manual, 1913. (Raleigh, Public Printer, 1913. Pp. 1053.)
PENNSYLVANIA SOCIETY. Yearbook, 1914. (New York, The Pennsylvania Society, 1914. Pp. 256.)
TREXLER, HARRISON A. Slavery in Missouri, 1804-1865. (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1914. Pp. 259.)
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Professor Turner in the Northwest
All those in the Pacific Northwest who are interested in history have received inspiration and uplift by the presence and work of Professor Frederick Jackson Turner, formerly of the University of Wisconsin and now of the faculty of Harvard University. He gave the Commencement address at the University of Washington and continued at work there with two courses of lectures during the first half of the Eleventh Summer Session. He will later serve the University of Oregon in a like capacity at the Summer Session of that institution. Professor Turner has achieved an elevated and abiding position among the historical scholars of America by his work on the influence and meaning of the expanding West. His students are now scattered all over the country transmitting the impulse received in his classes.
Researcher in Northwestern History
Victor J. Farrar has arrived from the University of Wisconsin to take up his new work as Research Assistant in the University of Washington.
At Work on Russian Archives
Professor Frank A. Golder of the State College of Washington reports success at St. Petersburg, where he is at work on the Russian archives for the Historical Research Department of the Carnegie Institution.
Mountaineers' Lodge
The Mountaineers dedicated on June 21 a log-cabin lodge in the Cascade Range near the Snoqualmie Pass, probably the most historic pass through that range. The ceremonies were participated in by Professor Frederick J. Turner, Major E. S. Ingraham, A. H. Denman, Sidney V. Bryant, Sofie Hammer and Professor Edmond S. Meany.
History Convention
The Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association held a special meeting at the University of Washington on May 21-23, 1914, as a part of the Pacific Association of Scientific Societies. The history programmes were expanded to give representation to the Northwest Association of Teachers of History, Government and Economics and the proposed Pacific Coast Branch of the American Political Science Association.
The programmes were as follows:
Thursday Morning.--Literature of the Northwest, Professor J. B. Homer, Oregon Agricultural College; Spanish Voyages on the Pacific Coast, Professor F. J. Teggart, University of California; Fur Trading Posts of the Columbia River Basin, T. C. Elliott, Walla Walla.
Thursday Afternoon.--Schleiden's Diplomacy in Connection with the American Civil War, Dr. Ralph H. Lutz, University of Washington; Spanish-American War and the War of 1812, C. A. Sprague, Assistant State Superintendent of Washington; The Basis of Interest in History, Professor Joseph Schafer, University of Oregon; Natural Law and the American Homestead Act, Professor John P. O'Hara, University of Oregon.
Friday Morning.--History of the Oxford Press, Professor Alice E. Page, Willamette University; Holbach and the French Revolution, Professor M. P. Cushing, Reed College; The Fundamental Factor in the Renaissance, Professor Edward M. Hulme, University of Idaho.
Friday Afternoon.--Direct Government in Oregon, Professor W. F. Ogburn, Reed College; The Teaching of Latin-American History and Institutions in American Universities, Professor R. C. Clark, University of Oregon; Commonwealth Legislatures, Professor L. B. Shippee, State College of Washington; Law and Opportunity, Professor W. G. Beach, University of Washington.
Annual Dinner, Friday Evening.--Professor O. H. Richardson, University of Washington, Toastmaster; Presidential Address, Professor Edmond S. Meany, University of Washington, President of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association; Professor R. C. Clark; representing the proposed Pacific Coast Branch of the American Political Science Association.
Greetings were voiced by the following: Professor Alice E. Page of Willamette University, Professor W. F. Ogburn of Reed College, Librarian E. O. S. Scholefield of the Provincial Library of British Columbia, Assistant State Superintendent C. A. Sprague of Olympia, Professor William A. Morris of the University of California, T. C. Elliott of Walla Walla, Professor Young of the University of Utah, Professor Leroy F. Jackson of the State College of Washington, President C. J. Bushnell of Pacific University.
Saturday Morning.--Perspective in History, President C. J. Bushnell, Pacific University; Training for Citizenship--What to Do? How to Do It? Professor Leroy F. Jackson, State College of Washington; Discussion opened by Miss Adella M. Parker, Broadway High School, Seattle; What Shall Be the Treatment of Pacific Coast History in the American History Course? Principal H. N. Gridley, Daniel Bagley School, Seattle.
Political Science Section.--State Administration of Health, Professor U. G. Dubach, Oregon Agricultural College; Unemployment, Professor A. R. Wood, Reed College: Discussion: The Report of the Committee of the American Political Science Association on Instruction in Political Science in Colleges and Universities.
The Programme Committee consisted of Professor William A. Morris, University of California, Secretary-Treasurer of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association; Professor Edward McMahon, University of Washington; Miss Rose Glass, Franklin High School, Seattle; Ellis H. Rogers, Stadium High School, Tacoma; Leo Jones, University of Washington, representing the Proposed Political Science Branch.
In addition to the above programmes, the allied associations were represented on the one general programme of the Pacific Association of Scientific Societies in the person of J. Allen Smith, Dean of the Graduate School of the University of Washington. His theme was The Citizen and the State.
NORTHWESTERN HISTORY SYLLABUS
[The aim of this department is to furnish outlines that will aid those who wish to study the subject systematically. It is expected that its greatest use will be as a guide for members of women's clubs, literary societies, and classes in college or high schools. It will be a form of university extension without the theses and examinations necessary for the earning credits toward a degree.]
X. Review of Boundaries
1. Louisiana Purchase. a. France cedes to Spain, 1763. b. Spain cedes back to France, 1801. c. Lucien Bonaparte's Diary. d. Treaty of 30 April, 1803. e. Indefinite boundaries.
2. Treaty of Ghent, 1814. a. Instructions to American Commissioners. b. Ante-bellum conditions as to territory. c. Astoria included.
3. Joint Occupancy Treaty. a. Signed 20 October, 1818. b. Article III provides for joint occupancy. c. Limit of ten years.
4. Purchase of Florida, 1819. a. Fixes southern boundary of Oregon country. b. Spain gives United States quitclaim to Oregon.
5. Fifty-four, Forty. a. Ukase of Russian Czar, 1821. b. Europe too disturbed to notice. c. England and United States object. d. Part of Monroe Doctrine, 1823. e. Russian Treaty with United States, 1824. f. Russian Treaty with Great Britain, 1825. g. Boundary fixed at 54-40.
6. Joint Occupancy Renewed. a. Treaty with Great Britain, 1827. b. Term indefinite. c. May be terminated by twelve months' notice.
7. Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 1842. a. Northern boundary adjusted. b. Ended at Rocky Mountains. c. Oregon not included.
8. Treaty of 1846. a. Compromise boundary fixed at 49th parallel. b. Skirting Vancouver Island sowed seed of further trouble.
* * * * *
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Former citations will in many cases apply to this syllabus. The following works will, however, bear directly on the subjects and will also point to other works as needed.
BANCROFT, HUBERT HOWE. Works of. See the two volumes on the Northwest Coast, the two on Oregon and the one on Alaska. The indexes will guide.
HERMANN, BINGER. The Louisiana Purchase and Our Title West of the Rocky Mountains, with a Review of Annexation by the United States. Mr. Hermann was United States Commissioner of the General Land Office and his book was issued as a public document in 1898. It should be found in all libraries of the Northwest. He shows that Oregon was not included in the Louisiana Purchase, although his predecessor had issued a government map showing that it was so included.
HOSMER, JAMES KENDALL. History of the Louisiana Purchase. This work was issued in 1902 as a timely book on account of the approaching Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Here may be found an extract from Lucien Bonaparte's Diary.
JOHNSON, SIDONA V. A Short History of Oregon. This little book, cited heretofore, will touch upon most of the points covered in this syllabus. The table of contents and index will guide.
MALLOY, WILLIAM M. Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776-1909. This prime source book in two volumes is a government publication and ought to be in every public library. The treaties are arranged in alphabetical order as to countries and there is an adequate index as well as abundant explanatory notes. Every student of our boundaries should become familiar with this work.
MARSHALL, WILLIAM I. Acquisition of Oregon, Vol. I., Pp., 142-143. Here the author shows that Astoria was included in the antebellum conditions of the Treaty of Ghent. If the student has access to a large library he may go to the source quoted by Marshall: American State Papers, Foreign Relations, Vol. III., Documents 269 and 271.
MEANY, EDMOND S. History of the State of Washington. The table of contents and index will guide to the various topics and footnotes will point the way to original sources.
SCHAFER, JOSEPH. A History of the Pacific Northwest. This is another work which will help the student working on such a syllabus as the above by applying the index to each of the topics.
HISTORY TEACHERS' SECTION
The HISTORY TEACHERS' MAGAZINE for April, May and June contain several articles of general interest to all history teachers. The Teaching of Greek History series continues through all three numbers. In the April Number Professor Sill of Cornell writes on the Two Periods of Greek Expansion; in the May number Professor Fling of Nebraska has an article on the Use of Sources in Teaching Greek History; and in the June number Professor Botsford of Columbia writes on The Choice and Use of Books Relating to the History of Greece.
In each number also is the excellent announcement of the Recent Historical Literature.
The leading article in the May number is by Professor Hull of Swarthmore College on the International Interpretation of United States History. He makes a plea for a wider view of American history, wider even than that which has recently rebelled from the traditions of the New England interpretation. The great number of immigrants into this country, and the great acceptance of culture and civilization from the different European countries leads him to make a plea for an interpretation from the point of view of all of these countries. The substance of his article may be seen in the following paragraph: "The great founders of our Republic besought their fellow-countrymen to think _continentally_; to realize that their individual and their local welfare was wrapped up in the creation and preservation of the national Union. Today we teachers must appeal to our fellow-countrymen of our own and the growing generation to think _internationally_; to realize that our national history, in its origin and in every step of its growth, is the world's most striking object-lesson in the virtue of internationalism; to realize that as a cosmopolitan nation our history and the very substance of our being bind us to the duty of making our ideals of _American Internationalism_ prevail in the Family of Nations."
In the same number also is a survey of The Teaching of History in Maine, which does for that State what the same kind of a survey by Professor Sprage did for Washington--and which was published in the History Teachers' Magazine some time ago.
The most interesting article in the June number is an article by Professor Marshall of the Alameda (Cal.) High School on Present Tendencies in High School History Teaching. After discussing the question of pedagogy and the child-study for the high school he goes on to say regarding the tendencies of teaching that "the increased emphasis upon economic and social history is sound, for it broadens the view of the child, increases his understanding of the human kind, and gives him the substance for the forming of judgments. But when it comes to the shifting of emphasis, the pendulum begins to swing the other way. In ancient history I would push back the borders to the earliest dawn of civilization, broadening rather than contracting its limits. Greek history should not be curtailed to give more time to the Roman Empire. The Hellenic contribution to mankind is as vital as that of the Roman." For the European and English history he would also be conscious of the long past on which they rest, stating that all questions of the day thread their way far into the past. For American history he would push the colonial periods into their respective European settings and see them also as part of that great movement of Europe as a whole for colonial expansion. His view of the teaching of local history is interesting--and he is speaking for California conditions. Local contracts rather than broadens the vision of the child; too often the pupils can see no further than the boundary of his state, forgetting the general movement of which his state is only an incident. He also points out the scarcity of suitable and worthy texts on local history; and closes with the belief that "There are two places in the wide field of education where California history has its place; namely, in the grammar school, where a technical knowledge of the subject is unnecessary, and in the post-graduate work of the university, where the subject is a fruitful field for investigations."
In the same number is also a thoughtful article: Suggestions for Beginners in the Teaching of History.
* * * * *
The TEXAS HISTORY TEACHERS' MAGAZINE for May contains an article by Professor Riker of Texas on The Art of Studying the Text-Book. High school teachers of European history will very likely find many valuable suggestions in it.
Of special value is the article by Professor Kellar of Texas on Some Suggestions for Equipment in History Teaching in the High School. In the thirty-three pages he gives an excellent selection of books for high school purposes on Ancient, Medieval and Modern, English, American, History and Civics. The lists are arranged in separate lists, costing, respectively, $5, $10, $25, $50 and $100.
* * * * *
VERGANGENHEIT UND GEGENWART for May has its leading article on The Epic Principle in History Instruction. Another interesting article describes the attempts of Krupp and Zeiss at Essen and Jena to increase the educational advantages of their employees.
The usual excellent bibliographical notices, covering twenty-five pages in number, covers the field of ancient and art history. In the section given to the auxiliary sciences is an excellent review of the new edition of Aloys Meister's Principles of the Historical Science.
In the last number of the Quarterly reference was made to an article in the Vergangenheit und Gegenwart by Professor Show of Stanford--his presidential address before the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association in 1912. The translation elicited much comment in Germany and in this number of the magazine are printed three replies to Professor Show and his criticisms of the Lamprecht school of history at Leipzig. One is written by present and former students under Lamprecht at Leipzig: another is written by Lamprecht himself: and the third is from the editors of the magazine.
* * * * *
On June 2nd the Seattle History Teachers' Club held its second meeting at the Good Eats Cafe. Professor Fleming of the Franklin High School presided, while Professor Bowman of the University spoke on the history work of the high school as seen in the freshman class in the University. There was pointed out the usual laxness on the part of the students to read a sentence with care and understanding, also the inability to hold to a question and do only what the question calls for. Dr. Lutz of the University also spoke. The speakers urged that the high school teachers and the university instructors get together and see to what extent they could come to an understanding as to the elementary work in doing history so that the university could begin where the high schools leave off. Certain activities should be secured in the high schools so that when the student goes to the university these steps could be taken as the beginning of the work there. After a discussion of the talk a committee was authorized to work on the problem of the "power method" in the high schools and the point to which it could be carried in the schools.
This was the first of a general discussion of the relation of the several phases of the school system history teaching. The next meeting of the club will consider the history work of the university from the point of view of the high school; later the same relation will be noted between the high schools and the grades.
Professor O'Conner was elected chairman of the next meeting. A constitution was reported by Professor Fleming and was adopted. The name of the club is to be The Seattle History Teachers' Club. It will meet two or three times each year with a changing committee in charge of each meeting. It is also intended to urge the participation of the history teachers around the Sound.
The Washington Historical Quarterly
Board of Editors
CLARENCE B. BAGLEY, Seattle. J. N. BOWMAN, Seattle. T. C. ELLIOTT, Walla Walla. FRANK A. GOLDER, Pullman. CEYLON S. KINGSTON, Cheney. W. D. LYMAN, Walla Walla. EDWARD MCMAHON, Seattle. THOMAS W. PROSCH, Seattle. OLIVER H. RICHARDSON, Seattle. O. B. SPERLIN, Tacoma. E. O. S. SCHOLEFIELD, Victoria, B. C. ALLEN WEIR, _Olympia_.
Managing Editor
EDMOND S. MEANY
Business Manager
CHARLES W. SMITH
VOL. V. NO. 4 OCTOBER, 1914
_ISSUED QUARTERLY_
Contents
FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER The West and American Ideals 243
T. C. ELLIOTT Journal of John Work, December 15, 1825, to June 12, 1826 258
EDWIN EELLS Elisa and the Nez Perce Indians 288
DOCUMENTS--A New Vancouver Journal 300
BOOK REVIEWS 309
NEWS DEPARTMENT 320
NORTHWESTERN HISTORY SYLLABUS 322
HISTORY TEACHERS' SECTION 325
INDEX, VOLUME V. 327
THE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
UNIVERSITY STATION
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
Entered at the postoffice at Seattle as second-class mail matter.
The Washington University State Historical Society
* * * * *
Officers and Board of Trustees:
CLARENCE B. BAGLEY, _President_ JUDGE JOHN P. HOYT, Vice-President JUDGE ROGER S. GREENE, Treasurer PROFESSOR EDMOND S. MEANY, Secretary JUDGE CORNELIUS H. HANFORD JUDGE THOMAS BURKE SAMUEL HILL
SEATTLE
DEPARTMENT OF PRINTING, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
1914
_Vol. V., No. 4 October, 1914_
The Washington Historical Quarterly
THE WEST AND AMERICAN IDEALS[245]
True to American traditions that each succeeding generation ought to find in the Republic a better home, once in every year the colleges and universities summon the nation to lift its eyes from the routine of work, in order to take stock of the country's purposes and achievements, to examine its past and consider its future.
This attitude of self examination is hardly characteristic of the people as a whole. Particularly it is not characteristic of the historic American. He has been an opportunist rather than a dealer in general ideas. Destiny set him in a current which bore him swiftly along through such a wealth of opportunity that reflection and well-considered planning seemed wasted time. He knew not where he was going, but he was on his way, cheerful, optimistic, busy and buoyant.
Today we are reaching a changed condition, less apparent perhaps, in the newer regions than in the old, but sufficiently obvious to extend the commencement frame of mind from the college to the country as a whole. The swift and inevitable current of the upper reaches of the nation's history has borne it to the broader expanse and slower stretches which mark the nearness of the level sea. The vessel, no longer carried along by the rushing waters, finds it necessary to determine its own directions on this new ocean of its future, to give conscious consideration to its motive power and to its steering gear.
It matters not so much that those who address these college men and women upon life, and give conflicting answers to the questions of whence and whither. The pause for remembrance, for reflection and for aspiration is wholesome in itself.
Although the American people are becoming more self conscious, more responsive to the appeal to act by deliberate choices, we should be over-sanguine if we believed that even in this new day these commencement surveys were taken to heart by the general public, or that they were directly and immediately influential upon national thought and action.
But even while we check our enthusiasm by this realization of the common thought, we must take heart. The University's peculiar privilege and distinction lie in the fact that it is not the passive instrument of the State to voice its current ideas. Its problem is not that of expressing tendencies. Its mission is to create tendencies and to direct them. Its problem is that of leadership and of ideals. It is called, of course, to justify the support which the public gives it, by working in close and sympathetic touch with those it serves. More than that, it would lose important elements of strength if it failed to recognize the fact that improvement and creative movement often come from the masses themselves, instinctively moving toward a better order. The University's graduates must be fitted to take their places naturally and effectually in the common life of the time. But the University is called also to justify its existence by giving to its sons and daughters something which they could not well have gotten through the ordinary experiences of the life outside its walls. It is called to serve the time by independent research and by original thought. If it were a mere recording instrument of conventional opinion and average information, it is hard to see why the University should exist at all. To clasp hands with the common life in order that it may lift that life, to be a radiant center enkindling the society in which it has its being, these are primary duties of the University. Fortunate the state which gives free play to this spirit of inquiry. Let it "grubstake" its intellectual prospectors and send them forth where "the trails run out and stop." A famous scientist holds that the universal ether bears vital germs which impinging upon a dead world would bring life to it. So, at least it is, in the world of thought, where energized ideals put in the air and carried here and there by the waves and currents of the intellectual atmosphere, fertilize vast inert areas.
The University therefore, has a double duty. On the one hand it must aid in the improvement of the general economic and social environment. It must help on in the work of scientific discovery and of making such conditions of existence, economic, political and social, as will produce more fertile and responsive soil for a higher and better life. It must stimulate a wider demand on the part of the public for right leadership. It must extend its operations more widely among the people and sink deeper shafts through social strata to find new supplies of intellectual gold in popular levels yet untouched. And on the other hand, it must find and fit men and women for leadership. It must both awaken new demands and it must satisfy those demands by trained leaders with new motives, with new incentives to ambition, with higher and broader conception of what constitute the prizes in life, of what constitutes success. The University has to deal with both the soil and sifted seed in the agriculture of the human spirit.
Its efficiency is not the efficiency which the business engineer is fitted to appraise. If it is a training ship, it is a training ship bound on a voyage of discovery, seeking new horizons. The economy of the University's consumption can only be rightly measured by the later times which shall possess those new realms of the spirit which its voyage shall reveal. If the ships of Columbus had engaged in a profitable coastwise traffic between Palos and Cadiz they might have saved sail cloth, but their keels would never have grated on the shores of a New World.
The appeal of the undiscovered is strong in America. For three centuries the fundamental process in its history was the westward movement, the discovery and occupation of the vast free spaces of the continent. We are the first generation of Americans who can look back upon that era as a historic movement now coming to its end. Other generations have been so much a part of it that they could hardly comprehend its significance. To them it seemed inevitable. The free land and the natural resources seemed practically inexhaustible. Nor were they aware of the fact that their most fundamental traits, their institutions, even their ideals were shaped by this interaction between the wilderness and themselves.
American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came stark and strong and full of life out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier. Not the constitution, but free land and an abundance of natural resources open to a fit people, made the democratic type of society in America for three centuries while it occupied its great empire.
Today we are looking with a shock upon a changed world. The national problem is no longer how to cut and burn away the vast screen of the dense and daunting forest; it is how to save and wisely use the remaining timber. It is no longer how to get the great spaces of fertile prairie land in humid zones out of the hands of the government into the hands of the pioneer; these lands have already passed into private possession. No longer is it a question of how to avoid or cross the Great Plains and the arid desert. It is a question of how to conquer those rejected lands by new method of farming and by cultivating new crops from seed collected by the government and by scientists from the cold, dry steppes of Siberia to the burning sands of Egypt, and the remote interior of China. It is a problem of how to bring the precious rills of water on to the alkali and sage brush. Population is increasing faster than the food supply.
New farm lands no longer increase decade after decade in areas equal to those of European States. While the ratio of increase of improved land declines, the value of farm lands rise and the price of food leaps upward, reversing the old ratio between the two. The cry of scientific farming and the conservation of natural resources replaces the cry of rapid conquest of the wilderness. We have so far won our national home, wrested from it its first rich treasures, and drawn to it the unfortunate of other lands, that we are already obliged to compare ourselves with settled states of the Old World. In place of our attitude of contemptuous indifference to the legislation of such countries as Germany and England, even Western States like Wisconsin send commissions to study their systems of taxation, workingmen's insurance, old age pensions and a great variety of other remedies for social ills.
If we look about the periphery of the nation everywhere we see the indications that our world is changing. On the streets of Northeastern cities like New York and Boston, the faces which we meet are to a surprising extent those of Southeastern Europe. Puritan New England, which turned its capital into factories and mills and drew to its shores the vast army of cheap labor, governed these people for a time by a ruling class like an upper stratum between which and the lower strata there was no assimilation. There was no such evolution into an assimilated commonwealth as is seen in Middle Western agricultural states, where immigrant and old native stock came in together and built up a homogeneous society on the principle of give and take. But now the Northeastern Coast finds its destiny, politically and economically, passing away from the descendants of the Puritans. It is the little Polish or Jewish boy, the Greek or the Sicilian, who takes the traveller through historic streets, now the home of these newer people to the Old North Church or to Paul Revere's house, or to Tea Wharf, and tells you in his strange patois the story of revolution against oppression.
Along the Southern Atlantic and the Gulf Coast, in spite of the preservative influence of the negro, whose presence has always called out resistance to change on the part of the whites, the forces of social and industrial transformation are at work. The old tidewater aristocracy has surrendered to the up country democrats. Along the line of the Alleghanies like an advancing column, the forces of Northern capital, textile and steel mills, year after year extend their invasion into the lower South. New Orleans, once the mistress of the commerce of the Mississippi Valley, is awakening to new dreams of world commerce. On the southern border, similar invasions of American capital have been entering Mexico. At the same time, the opening of the Panama Canal has completed the dream of the ages of the Straits of Anian between Atlantic and Pacific. Four hundred years ago, Balboa raised the flag of Spain at the edge of the sea of the West and we are now preparing to celebrate both that anniversary, and the piercing of the continent. New relations have been created between Spanish America and the United States and the world is watching the mediation of Argentina, Brazil and Chili between the contending forces of Mexico and the Union. Once more alien national interests lie threatening at our borders, but we no longer appeal to the Monroe Doctrine and send our armies of frontier men to settle our concerns off hand. We take council with European nations and with the sisterhood of South America, and propose a remedy of social reorganization in place of imperious will and force. Whether the effort will succeed or not, it is a significant indication that an old order is passing away, when such a solution is undertaken by a President of Scotch-Irish stock, born in the fiery state of South Carolina.
If we turn to the Northern border, where we are about to celebrate a century of peace with England, we see in progress, like a belated procession of our own history the spread of pioneers, the opening of new wildernesses, the building of new cities, the growth of a new and mighty nation. That old American advance of the wheat farmer from the Connecticut to the Mohawk, and the Genesee, from the great valley of Pennsylvania to the Ohio Valley and the prairies of the Middle West, is now by its own momentum and under the stimulus of Canadian homesteads and the high price of wheat, carried across the national border to the once lone and vast plains where the Hudson Bay dog trains crossed the desolate snows of the wild North Land. In the Pacific Northwest the era of construction has not ended, but it is so rapidly in progress that we can already see the closing of the age of the pioneer. Already Alaska beckons on the North, and pointing to her wealth of natural resources asks the nation on what new terms the new age will deal with her. Across the Pacific looms Asia, no longer a remote vision and a symbol of the unchanging, but borne as by mirage close to our shores and raising grave questions of the common destiny of the people of this Ocean. The dreams of Benton and of Seward of a regenerated Orient, when the long march of Westward civilization should complete its circle, seem almost to be in process of realization. The age of the Pacific Ocean begins, mysterious and unfathomable in its meaning for our own future.
Turning to view the interior, we see the same picture of change. When the Superintendent of the Census in 1890 declared the frontier line no longer traceable, the beginning of the rush into Oklahoma had just occurred. Here where the broken fragments of Indian nations from the East had been gathered and where the wilder tribes of the Southwest were being settled, came the rush of the land hungry pioneer. Almost at a blow the old Indian territory passed away, populous cities came into being and it was not long before gushing oil wells made a new era of sudden wealth. The farm lands of the Middle West taken as free homesteads or bought for a mere pittance, have risen so in value that the original owners have in an increasing degree either sold them in order to reinvest in the newer cheap lands of the West, or have moved into the town and have left the tillage to tenant farmers. The growth of absentee ownership of the soil is producing a serious problem in the farmer centers of the granger and the populist. Along the Old Northwest the Great Lakes are becoming a new Mediterranean Sea joining the realms of wheat and iron ore, at one end with the coal and furnaces of the forks of the Ohio, where the most intense and wide-reaching center of industrial energy exists. City life like that of the East, manufactures and accumulated capital, seem to be reproducing in the center of the Republic the tendencies already so plain on the Atlantic Coast.
Across the Great Plains where buffalo and Indian held sway successive industrial waves are passing. The old free range gave place to the ranch, the ranch to the homestead and now in places in the arid lands the homestead is replaced by the ten or twenty acre irrigated fruit farm. The age of cheap land, cheap corn and wheat, and cheap cattle has gone forever. The federal government has undertaken vast paternal enterprises of reclamation of the desert.
In the Rocky Mountains where at the time of Civil War, the first important rushes to gold and silver mines carried the frontier backward on a march toward the East, the most amazing transformations have occurred. Here, where prospectors made new trails, and lived the wild free life of mountain men, here where the human spirit seemed likely to attain the largest measure of individual freedom, and where fortune beckoned to the common man, have come revolutions wrought by the demand for organized industry and capital. In the regions where the popular tribunal and the free competitive life flourished, we have seen law and order break down in the unmitigated collision of great aggregations of capital, with each other and with organized socialistic labor. The Cripple Creek strikes, the contests at Butte, the Gold-field mobs, the recent Colorado fighting, all tell a similar story,--the solid impact of contending forces in regions where civic power and loyalty to the state have never fully developed. Like the Grand Canon, where in the dazzling light in the huge geologic history is written so large that none may fail to read it, so in the Rocky Mountains the dangers of modern American industrial tendencies have been exposed.
As we crossed the Cascades on our way to Seattle, one of the passengers was moved to explain his feelings on the excellence of Puget Sound in contrast with the remaining visible Universe. He did it well in spite of irreverent interruptions from those fellow travellers who were unconverted children of the East, and at last he broke forth on the passionate challenge, "Why should I not love Seattle! It took me from the slums of the Atlantic Coast, a poor Swedish boy with hardly fifteen dollars in my pocket. It gave me a home by the bountiful sea; it spread before my eyes a vision of snow capped peaks and smiling fields; it brought abundance and a new life to me and my children and I love it, I love it! If I were a multi-millionaire I would charter freight cars and carry away from the crowded tenements and noisome alleys of the eastern cities and the Old World the toiling masses, and let them loose in our vast forests and ore-laden mountains to learn what life really is!" And my heart was stirred by his words and by the whirling spaces of woods and peaks through which we passed. But as I looked and listened to this passionate outcry, I remembered, the words of Tallyrand, the exiled Bishop of Autun, in Washington's administration. Looking down from an eminence not far from Philadelphia upon a wilderness which is now in the heart of that huge industrial society where population presses on the means of life, even the cold-blooded and cynical Tallyrand, gazing on those unpeopled hills and forests, kindled with the vision of coming clearings, the smiling farms and grazing herds that were to be, the populous towns that should be built, the newer and finer social organization that should there arise. And then I remembered the hall in Harvard's museum of social ethics through which I pass to my lecture room when I speak on the history of the Westward movement. That hall is covered with an exhibit of the work in Pittsburgh steel mills, and of the congested tenements. Its charts and diagrams tell of the long hours of work, the death rate, the relation of typhoid to the slums, the gathering of the poor of all Southeastern Europe to make a civilization at that center of American industrial energy and vast capital that is a social tragedy. As I enter my lecture room through that hall, I speak of the young Washington leading his Virginia frontiersmen to the magnificent forest at the forks of the Ohio. Where Braddock and his men, "carving a cross on the wilderness rim," were struck by the painted savages in the primeval woods, huge furnaces belch forth perpetual fires and Huns and Bulgars, Poles and Sicilians struggle for a chance to earn their daily bread, and live a brutal and degraded life. Irresistibly there rushed across my mind the memorable words of Huxley:
"Even the best of modern civilization appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express the opinion that, if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over Nature, which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of Want, with its concomitant physical and moral degradation, among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consummation."
But if there is disillusion and shock and apprehension as we come to realize these changes, to strong men and women there is challenge and inspiration in them too. In place of old frontiers of wilderness, there are new frontiers of unwon fields of science, fruitful for the needs of the race; there are frontiers of better social domains yet unexplored. Let us hold to our attitude of faith and courage, and creative zeal. Let us dream as our fathers dreamt and let us make our dreams come true.
"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic days, Bear diadems and fagots in their hands To each they offer gifts after his will Bread, kingdoms, stars and sky that hold them all. I, in my pleached garden watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, Hastily took a few herbs and apples, And the day turned and departed, I too late, Under her solemn fillet, saw the scorn!"
What were America's "morning wishes?" From the beginning of that long westward march of the American people America has never been the home of mere contented materialism. It has continuously sought new ways and dreamed of a perfected social type.
In the fifteenth century when men dealt with the New World which Columbus found, the ideal of discovery was dominant. Here was placed within the reach of men whose ideas had been bounded by the Atlantic, new realms to be explored. America became the land of European dreams, its Fortunate Islands were made real, where, in the imagination of old Europe, peace and happiness, as well as riches and eternal youth, were to be found. To Sir Edwin Sandys and his friends of the London Company, Virginia offered an opportunity to erect the Republic for which they had longed in vain in England. To the Puritans, New England was the new land of freedom, wherein they might establish the institutions of God, according to their own faith. As the vision died away in Virginia toward the close of the seventeenth century, it was taken up anew by the fiery Bacon with his revolution to establish a real democracy in place of the rule of the planter aristocracy, that formed along the Coast. Hardly had he been overthrown when in the eighteenth century, the democratic ideal was rejuvenated by the strong frontiersmen, who pressed beyond the New England Coast into the Berkshires and up the valleys of the Green Mountains of Vermont, and by the Scotch Irish and German pioneers who followed the Great Valley from Pennsylvania into the Upland South. In both the Yankee frontiersmen and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the South, the Calvinistic conception of the importance of the individual, bound by free covenant to his fellow men and to God, was a compelling influence, and all their wilderness experience combined to emphasize the ideals of opening new ways, of giving freer play to the individual, and of constructing democratic society.
When the backwoodsmen crossed the Alleghanies they put between themselves and the Atlantic Coast a barrier which seemed to separate them from a region already too much like the Europe they had left, and as they followed the courses of the rivers that flowed to the Mississippi, they called themselves "Men of the Western Waters," and their new home in the Mississippi Valley was the "Western World." Here, by the thirties, Jacksonian democracy flourished, strong in the faith of the intrinsic excellence of the common man, in his right to make his own place in the world, and in his capacity to share in government. But while Jacksonian democracy demanded these rights, it was also loyal to leadership as the very name implies. It was ready to follow to the uttermost the man in whom it placed its trust, whether the hero were frontier fighter or president, and it even rebuked and limited its own legislative representatives and recalled its senators when they ran counter to their chosen executive. Jacksonian Democracy was essentially rural. It was based on the good fellowship and genuine social feeling of the frontier, in which classes and inequalities of fortune played little part. But it did not demand equality of condition, for there was abundance of natural resources and the belief that the self made man had a right to his success in the free competition which western life afforded, was as prominent in their thought as was the love of democracy. On the other hand, they viewed governmental restraints with suspicion as a limitation on their right to work out their own individuality.
For the banking institutions and capitalists of the East they had an instinctive antipathy. Already they feared that the "money power" as Jackson called it, was planning to make hewers of wood and drawers of water of the common people.
In this view they found allies among the labor leaders of the East, who in the same period began their fight for better conditions of the wage earner. These Locofocos were the first Americans to demand fundamental social changes for the benefit of the workers in the cities. Like the Western pioneers they protested against monopolies and special privilege. But they also had a constructive policy, whereby society was to be kept democratic by free gifts of the public land, so that surplus labor might not bid against itself, but might find an outlet in the West. Thus to both the labor theorist and the practical pioneer, the existence of what seemed inexhaustible cheap land and unpossessed resources was the condition of democracy. In these years of the thirties and forties, Western democracy took on its distinctive form. Travellers like De Tocqueville and Harriet Martineau, came to study and to report it enthusiastically to Europe. Miss Martineau pictures the American "exulting that he has caught the true aspect of things past and the depth of futurity which lies before him, wherein to create something so magnificent as the world has scarcely begun to dream of." "There is the strongest hope of a nation that is capable of being possessed with an idea," she adds, and she adjures the American people to "give perpetual and earnest heed to one point, to cherish their high democratic hope, their faith in man. The older they grow the more must they reverence the dreams of their youth."
Side by side with this westward marching army of individualistic liberty-loving democratic back woodsmen, went a more northern stream of pioneers, who cherished similar ideas, but added to them the desire to create new industrial centers, to build up factories, to build railroads, and to develop the country by founding cities and extending prosperity. They were ready to call upon legislatures to aid in this, by subscriptions to stock, grants of franchises, promotion of banking and internal improvements. Government was not to them so much a necessary evil as it was a convenience for promoting their industrial aims. These were the Whig followers of that other Western leader, Henry Clay, and their early strength lay in the Ohio Valley, and particularly among the well-to-do. In the South their strength was found among the aristocracy of the Cotton Kingdom.
Both of these Western groups, Whigs and Democrats alike, had one common ideal: the desire to leave their children a better heritage than they themselves had received, and both were fired with devotion to the ideal of creating in this New World a home more worthy of mankind. Both were ready to break with the past, to boldly strike out new lines of social endeavor, and both believed in American expansion.
Before these tendencies had worked themselves out, three new forces entered. In the sudden extension of our boundaries to the Pacific Coast, which took place in the forties, the nation won so vast a domain that its resources seemed illimitable and its society seemed able to throw off all its maladies by the very presence of these vast new spaces. At the same period the great activity of railroad building to the Mississippi Valley occurred, making these lands available and diverting attention to the task of economic construction. The third influence was the slavery question which, becoming acute, shaped the American ideals and public discussion for nearly a generation. Viewed from one angle, this struggle involved the great question of national unity. From another it involved the question of the relations of labor and capital, democracy and aristocracy. It was not without significance that Abraham Lincoln became the very type of American pioneer democracy, the first adequate and elemental demonstration to the world that that democracy could produce a man who belonged to the ages.
After the war, new national energies were set loose, and new construction and development engaged the attention of the Westerners as they occupied prairies and Great Plains and mountains. Democracy and capitalistic development did not seem antagonistic.
Any survey of Western forces which have affected American ideals, would be sadly defective which failed to take account of the profound influence of immigration. Whether we consider the enthusiasts who came to find in the wilderness the freedom to institute their experiments in religion, or the masses who broke from their Old World habits and customs and turned to America as the land of promise, there is the same note of hope and aspiration. On the dullest faces of the steerage a new light falls as the American gateway is entered. We shall not comprehend the element that are shaping and are to shape our destiny, without due realization of the immigrant's dream.
With the passing of the frontier, Western social and political ideals took new form. Capital began to consolidate in even greater masses, and increasingly attempted to reduce to system and control the processes of industrial development, but of the age of free competition, there came the greatest private fortunes and the most stupendous combination of economic interests in few hands that the world has ever seen. Labor with equal step organized its forces to destroy the old competitive system, it is not strange that the Western pioneers took alarm for their ideals of democracy as the outcome of the free struggle for the national resources became apparent. Prophesied by the Granger movement, these new tendencies came fully into the light with the Populists and from them the new gospel passed to Bryan Democracy, Roosevelt Republicanism and the Progressives.
It was a new gospel, for the Western radical became convinced that he must sacrifice his ideal of individualism and free competition in order to maintain his ideal of democracy. Under this conviction the Populist revised the pioneer conception of government. He saw in government no longer something outside of him, but the people themselves shaping their own affairs. He demanded therefore an extension of the powers of governments in the interest of his historic ideal of democratic society. He demanded not only free silver, but the ownership of the agencies of communication and transportation, the income tax, the postal savings bank, the provision of means of credit for agriculture, the construction of more effective devices to express the will of the people, primary nominations, direct elections, initiative, referendum and recall. In a word, capital, labor, and the Western pioneer, all deserted the ideal of competitive individualism in order to organize their interests in more effective combinations. The disappearance of the frontier, the closing of the era which was marked by the influence of the West as a form of society, brings with it new problems of social adjustment, new demands for considering our past ideals and our present needs.
Let us recall the conditions of the foreign relations along our borders, the dangers that wait us if we fail to unite in the solution of our domestic problems. Let us recall those internal evidences of the destruction of our old social order. If we take to heart this warning, we shall do well also to recount our historic ideals, to take stock of those purposes, and fundamental assumptions that have gone to make the American spirit and the meaning of America in world history. First of all, there was the ideal of discovery, the courageous determination to break new paths, indifference to the dogma that because an institution or a condition exists, it must remain. All American experience has gone to the making of the spirit of innovation; it is in the blood and will not be repressed.
Then, there was the ideal of democracy, the ideal of a free self directing people, responsive to leadership in the forming of programmes, and their execution, but insistent that the procedure should be that of free choice, not of compulsion.
But there was also the ideal of individualism. This democratic society was not a disciplined army, where all must keep step and where the collective interests destroyed individual will and work. Rather it was a mobile mass of freely circulating atoms, each seeking its own place and finding play for its own powers and for its own original initiative. We cannot lay too much stress upon this point, for it was at the very heart of the whole American movement. The world was to be made a better world by the example of a democracy in which there was freedom of the individual in which there was the vitality and mobility productive of originality and variety.
Bearing in mind the far-reaching influence of the disappearance of unlimited resources open to all men for the taking, and considering the recoil of the common man when he saw the outcome of the completive struggle for these resources as the supply came to its end over most of the nation, we can understand the reaction against individualism and in favor of drastic assertion of the powers of government. Legislation is taking the place of the free lands as the means of preserving the ideal of democracy. But at the same time it is endangering the other pioneer ideal of creative and competitive individualism. Both were essential and constituted what was best in America's contribution to history and to progress. Both must be preserved if the nation would be true to its past, and would fulfill its highest destiny. It would be a grave misfortune if these people so rich in experience, in self confidence and aspiration, in creative genius, should turn to some Old World discipline of socialism or plutocracy, or despotic rule, whether by people or by dictator. Nor shall we be driven to these alternatives. Our ancient hopes, our courageous faith, our underlying good humor and love of fair play will triumph in the end. There will be give and take in all directions. There will be disinterested leadership, under loyalty to the best American ideals. Nowhere is this leadership more likely to arise than among the men trained in the Universities, aware of the promise of the past and the possibilities of the future. The times call for new ambitions and new motives.
In a most suggestive essay on the Problems of Modern Democracy, Mr. Godkin has said:
"M. de Tocqueville and all his followers take it for granted that the great incentive to excellence, in all countries in which excellence is found, is the patronage and encouragement of an aristocracy; that democracy is generally content with mediocrity. But where is the proof of this? The incentive to exertion which is widest, most constant, and most powerful in its operations in all civilized countries, is the desire of distinction; and this may be composed either of love of fame or love of wealth or of both. In literary and artistic and scientific pursuits, sometimes the strongest influence is exerted by a love of the subject. But it may safely be said that no man has ever labored in any of the higher colleges to whom the applause and appreciation of his fellows was not one of the sweetest rewards of his exertions.
"What is there we would ask, in the nature of democratic institutions, that should render this great spring of action powerless, that should deprive glory of all radiance, and put ambition to sleep. Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that one of the most marked peculiarities of democratic society, or of a society drifting toward democracy, is the fire of competition which rages in it, the fevered anxiety which possesses all its members to rise above the dead level to which the law is ever seeking to confine them, and by some brilliant stroke become something higher and more remarkable than their fellows? The secret of that great restlessness which is one of the most disagreeable accompaniments of life in democratic countries, is in fact due to the eagerness of everybody to grasp the prizes of which in aristocratic countries, only the few have much chance. And in no other society is success more worshipped, is distinction of any kind more widely flattered and caressed.
"In domestic societies, in fact excellence is the first title to distinction; in aristocratic ones there are two or three others which are far stronger and which must be stronger or aristocracy could not exist. The moment you acknowledge that the highest social position ought to be the reward of the man who has the most talent, you make aristocratic institutions impossible."
All that was buoyant and creative in American life would be lost if we gave up the respect for distinct personality, and variety in genius, and came to the dead level of common standards. To be "socialized into an average" and placed "under the tutelage of the mass of us," as a recent writer has put it, would be an irreparable loss. Nor is it necessary in a democracy, as these words of Godkin well disclosed. What is needed is the multiplication of motives for ambition and the opening of new lines of achievement for the strongest. As we turn from the task of the first rough conquest of the continent there lies before us a whole wealth of unexploited resources in the realm of the spirit. Arts and letters, science and better social creation, loyalty and political service to the commonweal,--these and a thousand other directions of activity are open to the men, who formerly under the incentive of attaining distinction by amassing extraordinary wealth, saw success only in material display. Newer and finer careers will open to the ambitious when once public opinion shall award the laurels to those who rise above their fellows in these new fields of labor. It has not been the gold, but the getting of the gold, that has caught the imaginations of our captains of industry. Their real enjoyment lay not in the luxuries which wealth brought, but in the work of construction and in the place which society awarded them. A new era will come if schools and universities can only widen the intellectual horizon of the people, help to lay the foundations of a better industrial life, show them new goals for endeavor, inspire them with more varied and higher ideals.
The Western spirit must be invoked for new and nobler achievements. Of that matured Western spirit, Tennyson's Ulysses is a symbol.
"I am become a name For always roaming with a hungry heart, Much have I seen and known-- I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch, where thro' Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end. To rest unburnished, not to shine in use! And this gray spirit yearning desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. * * * Come my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the Western stars until I die-- To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."
FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER.
FOOTNOTES:
[245] Commencement Address, University of Washington, June 17, 1914.
JOURNAL OF JOHN WORK, DEC. 15TH, 1825, TO JUNE 12TH, 1826
(Introduction and Annotations by T. C. Elliott.)
The publication of this journal was begun in Vol. 5, No. 2 (April, 1914) of this Quarterly and has been completed in three parts instead of two as first intended; the introductory statements in the previous numbers will be of assistance to readers. For the sake of those who may not see the earlier numbers some of the annotations are repeated. The journal ends rather abruptly just before the arrival of Mr. Work at Fort Vancouver in June, 1826, almost an even year after it began with his departure from that same Fort.
This third part of the journal begins with Mr. Work in charge of the winter trade, 1825-6, at Flathead Fort or House located near the present Eddy Station of the Northern Pacific Railway in Sanders County, Montana. He remains there until February and returns to Spokane House and is on duty there with Mr. Dease, the chief trader, during the dismantling of that establishment in the spring of 1826. He then proceeded to Fort Okanogan for a short time and joins the annual "brigade" going down the Columbia river to Fort Vancouver, in June, 1826.
I have been asked to explain the meaning of the term "gummed," which is used quite often in these traders' journals. It means the smearing of the seams of the canoes or boats with pitch or gum gathered from the forest trees.
Reference has been made (note 2, p. 85) to C. McKay, as a son of Alex. McKay of the Astor party, but there appears to be doubt as to that relationship; quite likely C. McKay belonged to another family. There is also a question as to when the furs from the New Caledonia district began to come down over the Okanogan trail for shipment to Fort Vancouver; that trade route was probably opened earlier. The Thompson river (Kamloops) furs had come that way from the very beginning, in 1812.
Research as to the identity of the actual builder of the trading post called Spokane House has progressed a little farther since the beginning of this publication; meaning the original Northwest Company post and not that of the Pacific Fur Company. There are reasons to believe that Mr. Jacques Finlay built it rather than Finan McDonald, as stated in notes No. 28 and 45.
This journal furnishes the source of our information for the beginning of occupation of the trading post on Marcus Flat, above Kettle Falls, and it is well to emphasize the correct spelling of the name of that post, namely Fort Colvile; not Colville as corrupted. It took the name from one of the directors of the Hudson's Bay Company, Mr. E. Colvile.
Doubtful words and expressions are enclosed in brackets.
JOURNAL
(Continued from Page 191, Vol. V., No. 3.)
December 1825. Thursday 15
Stormy with sharp frost in the night. Mild pleasant weather during the day.
Had the men employed with Mr. Kittson opening and examining the Snake[246] furs, they are generally in good order but of a very inferior quality, they also do not answer the description given of them as many small beaver have been called large, the sums are as follows; 744 Large & 298 Small beaver and 15 otters.--
Friday 16th
Mild soft weather.
The Kootenasy Chief paid us another visit and after trading a lodge and some Deer skins, got a small present and in the evening took his final departure for the winter. He is going with his people to hunt in their own lands not far from the fort[247] on their own river, where they intend to live on deer and endeavour to get a few beaver. On account of the snow they are apprehensive that they will not be able to go sufficiently far off to make a great hunt.--
In different conversations with the Kootanies since their arrival they express a particular wish to have a fort in their own country, and represent the communication by water much less difficult than the Indians whom Mr. Kittson saw stated it to be,[248] and say that the part which Mr. Kittson saw is the worst of it. They were told that they might depend on having an Establishment on their lands next season either by land or by water. Every means should be adopted to keep them on their own lands as they make much better hunt there than elsewhere. Their unprecedented trade this fall is to be mainly attributed to their hunting in the summer & fall on the upper waters of their own river and the Columbia. It is out of our power to send people & supplies with them at present for want of horses, the six we have here, some of them from the Snake Country are so lean that they are totally unfit for the journey.--
Old LaBuche the F. Head chief paid us another visit.--
Saturday 17th
Heavy rain in the night & the greater part of the day. The Flat Head Indians to the number of 60 to 70 arrived headed by three chiefs, they were all on horseback and came singing and firing guns with a flag flying.[249] We answered their fire with a volley of Muskets. The Chiefs & some of the principle men smoked in the gentlemens' house, & all the others in the Indian House: The weather is so very bad that we cannot well put them out and they will have to sleep through the houses the best way they can. It is too late to trade today.
After dark the men arrived from below bringing letters from Mr. Dease[250] dated on the 4th & 10th inst. and five guns & 4 doz. gun worms which we requested, but no Tobacco is sent which is unfortunate as it is an article which is in great demand and of which I am apprehensive we will be short.--Mr. Dease informs us that we will require to be down in time to meet the Express at the Forks about the 5th of April. Without injuring the trade we cannot reach Spokane so early as our Indians will not have arrived with their spring hunts.
Sunday 18
Sharp frost in the morning.
Commenced trading with the F. Heads and by noon had traded all the articles they had for sale when a present of 20 Ball & Powder & 2 feet of Tobacco was made to each of the Chiefs and a remuneration made two of them at the request of Mr. Ogden, per note, for services rendered the Snake Expedition & assisting in bringing home the Snake furs.--Some others of the principal men got also a present of a few balls & Powder and in the afternoon they all went off apparently well pleased. On account of the bad road and weakness of the horses the greater part of the Flat Heads are not going to (hunt) the Buffalo this winter but are going to pass the winter hunting beaver. This will probably occasion a small quantity of Provisions being procured in spring than usual, but I expect it will be the means of an increase in the more valuable articles of furs.
I have not yet been able to ascertain the amount of the Trade.
Monday 19th
Overcast mild weather.
Had the men busily employed packing the Snake furs and also those traded here, in order to send off two canoes to the Coeur de Alan Portage[251] as soon as possible, so that the men may get the canoes back before the ice takes.
Examined yesterdays trade and find it to amount to 222 Large and 107 small beaver, 1 Otter, 4 Robes, 72 Appichimons, 1 Elk Skin, 18 pack saddles, 113 fath. cords, 4 Hair Bridles, 52 Bales, 3122 lbs. dry meat, 119 fresh Tongues, 23 dry Tongues, 2 bosses & 10-1/2 lb. castorum, which is much less than we expected. The greater part of the summer was occupied in pursuit of Buffaloes, which prevented them from hunting beaver, and as they are not going back to the Buffalo at present, they kept a considerable part of their meat to subsist on during the winter.
Some freemen paid us a visit, they were told to come tomorrow with the furs and get some supplies.--
Tuesday 20th.
Soft mild weather.
The freemen A. Paget. C. (Loye), C. Gras Louis, J. Beauchamp & J. B. Gadwa delivered in their furs & received a little advance to enable them to pass the winter. These men would not accompany Mr. Ogden and were not to have received any supplies, but Mr. Dease directed them to get a little in case they delivered in the furs. Paget & Gadwa were unfortunate in losing a cache of 100 beaver which was stolen by the Indians.--Gadwa was ordered to be sent to Spokan. He denies that his engagement was only to be free[252] as long as the Company thought proper and seemed unwilling to go, but on being told that he must comply he submitted, but with reluctance. The Indians traded a few appichimans. The men employed finishing out the packs.
Wed.y. 21
Cloudy cold weather.
The men employed gumming & repairing the canoes. We had no gum till the Indians were employed to gather it, or the canoes would have been repaired yesterday.
The Kootany chief & 6 of his men visited us, and after smoking traded a horse & a few saddles and appichimans.
Thursd.y. 22nd
Some snow in the night, cloudy cold weather. Wind N. W.
Sent off 2 canoes 5 men each to the Schachoo[253] Portage laded with the following articles for Spokan viz 27 packages containing 762 Large and 376 Small beaver, 11 Martens. 10 Mink, 1385 Rats, 8 Elk Skins, 12 deer Skins, 70 Appichimans. 22 Saddles & 90 Salt tongues, of the F. Heads and Kootenay returns, and 21 Pieces containing 881 Large & 381 Small beaver, 16 Otters, 2 Rats & 7-1/2 lbs. Castrum, Snake Returns, besides 1 Bale private property, rivits and 5 bales meat 60 lbs. each for the peoples voyage down and back. The above part of the Snake returns is all that was brought here by C. McKay & delivered in by the Freeman.--I wrote to Mr. Dease informing him of the state of affairs of this place and requesting 1/2 Roll Tobacco and a few awls for the trade.--I wrote for the Tobacco the last time the Canoes went down but was refused it on the plea that it was more required below. I have now urged the necessity of its being sent here where it will be much required in the Spring.--The Men are directed to make all the expedition in their power so that they may get back before they are stopped by the ice, no danger is apprehended of ice stopping them before they reach the portage. Three Men Ignace, Martin & Gadwa are ordered to start for the Fort with the letters immediately on their arrival at the portage.
Friday 23rd
Cloudy cold weather.
The Indians are encamping about the Fort where there are now 21 Lodges. Some are going off to the Buffalo. The Pendent Oreilles are blamed for stealing some of the Kootany horses. It is reported likewise that the Piegans have stolen 7 of the best horses from the Pendent Oreilles that went first off to the Buffalo.
Two Beaver Skins, the carcass of 2 deer & a few appichimans[254] were traded.
One of the old Freemen, Paget, father-in-law to Gadwa who was sent to Spokan, has come & encamped at the Fort he is an old man & having only Gadwa to depend on, he did not go off with the others. he is a very old servant and always bore a good character. After what little provisions he has will be done, he will probably become a burden on the Fort.--
Saturday 24
Cloudy cold weather. Wind N. W.--Some ice along the edge of the River.
The Indians[255] traded a few Appichimans and Saddles, to obtain a little ammunition as some of them are going off.
Sunday 25th
Cloudy. Raw cold weather. Masses of ice running pretty thick down the River.
This being Christmas Day the two men here had a dram, and we served out extra each a ration of fresh meat, a tongue, & a quart of Flour. For the old freeman Bastang the same.
Five Kootany Indians of the Au platte tribe arrived and traded 14 Large and 4 Small beaver, 1 Otter, 17 dressed Deer Skins and 3 (parrefliches), principally for ammunition & Knives & a little Tobacco. Two Pendent Oreilles traded the carcasses of 2 sheep, females, the one weighed 62 & the other 60 lbs.
Monday 26
Overcast mild weather. the river clear of ice, except some patches along its edge.
The men employed cutting firewood.
Tuesday 27th
Overcast stormy weather. Wind Northerly.
The men employed assorting and bailing up meat.
The Indians are still trading a few appichimans, saddles &c but few furs.
Wed.y. 28th
Cloudy cold weather. Ice running pretty thick in the River.
The Men finished assorting and baling up the meat. We have now in store 67 Bales, 84 lbs. net each, viz 36 of lean, 19 Back Fat & 12 Inside Fat, or 3024 lbs. Lean Meat 1596 lbs. Back fats & 1008 lbs. Inside fats, in all 5628 lbs. Some of the Indians moving a little further down the River, but as some others are coming up in their place the number of lodges still keeps about 20. Those Indians that remain here employ the most of their time gambling.--
Thursday 29th
Overcast, Snowed thick the afterpart of the day. Ice running in the River.--
The River below will probably freeze over with this weather and prevent the Canoes from getting up.
Friday 30th
Overcast mild weather, some snow. Ice running in the river but not so much as yesterday. Nothing doing in the way of trade except a chance appichiman, (parrefliches) etc. The Indians occupy the greater part of their time gambling, even where it is snowing they are playing out of doors and a group sitting about the parties engaged watching the progress of the game.
Saturday 31st
Snowed thick in the night and the forepart of the day. The snow lies nearly 6 inches thick on the ground. Very little ice running in the River. The men who were sent off to Spokan on the 22nd arrived in the evening with letters from Mr. Dease and 1/2 Roll of Tobacco & 1/2 gross of awls. The men had to leave the canoes yesterday below the Chutes as the Navigation was stopped by ice. They have made a very expeditious voyage.--
Mr. Dease in one of his letters expresses a wish that Mr. Kittson or I would pay him a visit.--Nothing material has occurred at Spokan since we heard from it last.
Jan.y. 1826. Sunday 1st
Stormy with heavy rain the greater part of the day, the snow has nearly all disappeared.
This being the first day of the new year, according to custom, each of the men got an extra ration of 6 lb. fresh venison, 2 lbs. back fat, 1 Buffalo tongue, 1 pint of Flour and 1 pint of Rum.--At daylight they ushered in the new year with a volley of muskerty, when they were treated with 4 glasses each of Rum, cakes & a pipe of Tobacco. With this and the pint given to each of them, they soon contrived to get nearly all pretty drunk. They appeared to pass the day comfortably enjoying themselves without quarreling. An Indian brought us a female (Chiveaux), Round, Skin & all.--
Monday 2nd
Wind N. W. and stormy during the night and all day, but not cold, the snow has all disappeared except on the mountains. No ice driving in the River.
The men doing little today.
The Indians women were sent off to gather gum to repair one of the canoes to make another trip below if the weather continues favorable.--
Tuesday 3rd.
Blew a perfect storm in the night, but calm overcast mild soft weather during the day.
Had part of the men repairing and gumming a canoe & making paddles, the others packing up Appechimons, dressed leather, Robes, Saddles &c making in all 18 pieces or about 2/3 a canoe load, which is all in readiness to start tomorrow, for the Coeur de Alan portage. I intend going myself, with 6 men, to proceed to Spokan. I expect we will reach the portage before the River freezes but we will probably have to walk back.--I am induced to take this trip in consequence of Mr. Dease expressing a wish that either Mr. Kittson or I would visit him.--Mr. Kittson remains in charge of the place.
Wed.y. 4th
Some frost in the night. Cloudy fine weather during the day.
Left F. Head haven 20 Minutes before 8 oclock in a canoe with 8 Men. Iroquoys, reached the Chutes[256] 20 minutes past 10. Making the portage, which is 1380 yds. long, took more than 2 hours.--At 2 oclock we reached the canoes the men left a few days ago and encamped to change our canoe for a better one. The men were employed till it was dark gumming the canoes we are going to take. The canoe though not deep laden is a good deal lumbered, the saddles & appechimons take up a good deal of room.
There is not much snow. a little ice along the edge of the River & on the banks. The ice that stopped the men going up is all gone.
Two parrefliches & a little meat which the men left in cache is stolen by the Indians.--
Thursday 5th
Overcast soft weather.
Proceeded on our journey at 1/2 past 6 oclock, reached Stony island portage at 10 & 1/2 past 10 got across it, the canoe taken down by water, by one oclock we reached the Heron Rapid,[257] the portage here also occupied half an hour. the canoe & part of the baggage got down by water. At 1/2 past 3 encamped near the Lake. A good days work. The snow is deep at the portage we passed, and also where we are encamped but it is soft and thawing.--It is difficult making the portage as the track is through rough stones & the hollows being filled up with the snow, the men with the loads tumble into the holes before they are aware.
Friday 6th
Stormy weather with heavy rain, rained hard in the night. Embarked at day light and in an hour reached the Lake[258] where we encamped and had to remain all day it being it being too rough to attempt crossing it.
Saturday 7
Stormy with rain in the night.
Moderate mild weather with some rain during the day.
Embarked at 8 oclock and reached the portage[259] at 3 in the afternoon when the goods were laid up & covered, but it being too late deferred starting for the Fort till tomorrow.
Killed a small deer crossing the River.
Sunday 8
Soft weather with disagreeable sleet & snow showers.--
Set out an hour before day light with 4 men to cross the portage on foot for the Fort and encamped at sun setting at the little River[260] at the edge of the plains after a hard days walking. Two of the mens feet got sore and I sent them back from Rat Lake.[261] Part of the road in the middle of the woods the snow is deep &? with the thaw but not sufficiently hard to bear ones weight, and walking through it is very fatiguing on the other parts of the road there is little snow.--Met two Indians in the afternoon & got a horse from them but having no saddle & he being very poor it was a most fatiguing job to ride any distance. We rode turn about.
Monday 9th
Soft weather Snow showers. Resumed our journey before 3 oclock in the morning and reached Spokan[262] at 1 in the afternoon, and received a cordial reception from Mr. Dease who with his people were found well. There is little snow on the ground during this day's march.--
Tuesday 10th
Snowed thick the forepart of the day but soft weather & rain in the evening so that the most of the snow had disappeared by night.--
Wed.y. 11
Overcast mild weather some light snow.
Thursday 12th
Weather as yesterday, some light snow and rain showers.
Friday 13
Sharp frost in the night but cloudy mild weather during the day.
Have made preparation to return to F. Heads tomorrow.
Sad.y. 14th
Snowing and raining all day. Having every thing ready left Spokan at 10 o'oclock for the F. Heads accompanied by my own two men, & La Bonte & an Indian with 9 horses for the baggage that I left at the other end of the Portage. On account of the very bad weather and having to go round by the Chutes[263] where we were detained some time in the plains catching two of the Inds horses, we only reached the Fountain[264] in the plain where we encamped for the night. Every one of us completely drenched to the skin.--There is very little snow on the plains.
Sunday 15th
Overcast mild weather some light snow & rain showers.
Some of the horses strayed off in the night, & it was 8 oclock before they were all collected, when we proceeded on our journey and only reached the W. end of Rat Lake. The snow in the woods takes the horses up over their knees so that they were able to make very little way through it. Where we are encamped, the poor horses can eat but very little. Saw the tracks of several deer and some martens.
Monday 16
Overcast mild foggy weather.
Three of the horses strayed off in the night owing to the Indian having neglected to hobble them. I sent a man & the Indian after them, while I with the other men & horses proceeded to the portage[265] where we arrived before noon, the man and Indian with the other horses did not arrive till sun setting. Had all the pieces arranged & ready to send off the horses in the morning. & at the same time set out myself with the canoe. The snow is not so deep at this end of the portage as yesterday.
Tuesday 17
Except a short interval in the afternoon, rained without intermission all day and blowing fresh part of the day.
Had the horses collected at day light and the man and Indian commenced loading them. At the same time I embarked & we proceeded up the River, and encamped a little Above the lake, a good days march considering the very bad weather. Very little more wind would have prevented us from crossing the Lake. The snow has in several places disappeared but on the hills and along the shores it is still thick.
Wed.y. 18
Overcast fair mild weather.
Proceeded on our journey at daylight and encamped late above the Stony Island Portage.[266] The snow along the shore and particularly at the portages, was very deep.--
Thursday 19
Weather as yesterday but colder.--
Continued our rout at an early hour, and encamped below the Chutes in the evening. About noon we passed the Crooked rapid after which there was very little snow to be seen.
Found some Indians at the Barrier River[267] & traded some Venison from them which made us a good supper.
Friday 20
Snowing and raining all day, very disagreeable weather.
Embarked before sunrising and reached the F. Head House near dark. We were delayed some time at the Chutes gumming the canoes.--Found Mr. Kittson and the people all well.--Nothing material has occurred since I went off. Little done in the way of trade except of fresh provisions, some Inds. from above arrived with 14 deer which has served the people & saved dry provisions for some time back on account of the mild soft weather it is difficult to keep it from spoiling. The men have been employed, getting wood for a canoe, making troughs to (beat) meat & make pimmican, cutting cords, & putting an upper flooring in the house, etc.--
Satdy. 21
Cloudy fine pleasant weather, thawing.--
An Indian brought the carcass of a deer.
Sunday 22
Mild pleasant weather.
Monday 23
Cloudy cold weather sharp frost in the night.
Six men with some horses were sent off for canoe timber with which they returned in the evening. The road was very bad as they had to ascend the mountains.--It is difficult to procure wood for canoes here now.
Tuesday 24
Overcast soft weather. C. McKay and six men were sent up the river in a canoe to an Indian camp in expectation that they will be able to trade some fresh provisions. It is supposed they will be two days reaching the camp.[268] If we be able to procure some venison it will save the dry provisions.--
The Old freeman Paget and a man Pierre, were sent down to Thompson's Plain with the horses where the grass is better.
Wed.y. 25th
Overcast soft mild weather.
Two men employed dressing canoe wood, the others cutting wood &c.--
Thursday 26
Weather as yesterday, some light snow.
The men employed as yesterday. Two Kootany Indians arrived and traded Deer skins principally for ammunition.
Friday 27
Disagreeable cold weather blowing fresh from the Northward. The men bent the timbers for the canoe.
Sata.y. 28
Soft weather some snow.
Had the provisions examined, a little of it was mouldy. put 5 bales on the loft to dry, to beat for pimican.
Sunday 29
Raw cold overcast weather.
C. McKay and the men who went off on tuesday returned. The River is so shallow above that they could not get the canoe to the Indians camp but two men were sent. The Indians have had no provisions and the people were starving when they got a little. Only about two animals are brought home. They brought home the skin of a ram, horns and all, for stuffing.
Monday 30th
Snowed in the night and snowing thick the greater part of the day. Men differently employed.
Tuesday 31
Snowing part of the day, but soft weather & thawing. There is now nearly a foot deep of snow.
The men employed cutting and melting down talow.--
Wed.y. 1 Feby. 1826
Overcast soft weather. Some some sleet and rain showers.
Part of the men employed cutting and melting Tallow, & part, pounding meat to make pimican.
Thursday 2
Sharp frost in the night, and cloudy cold weather during the day. The men employed as yesterday.
Friday 3
Frost in the night. Overcast soft weather thawing during the day. Blowing strong in the evening.
The men employed as yesterday except those that were pounding the meat, who are making a trough as the one already made is broken. Some Indians arrived from above & traded the carcasses of 2 deer & the skin of a (byson). The meat is a seasonable supply as our stock of fresh meat was nearly out.--
Saturday 4
Some snow in the night but clear mild weather during the day.
Had the men employed melting down fat.
Yesterday evening. I gave one of the men Togonche, a boxing for making too free with my wife[269] but being in a passion he got out of my hands before he got enough & to avoid getting another which I promised him he ran off to the woods.
Sunday 5
Clear mild weather.
Monday 6th
Snowed hard in the night and snowing part of the day.
Part of the men employed pounding meat and part, dressing canoe timber.
Tuesday 7th
Stormy in the night with very heavy rain, rain & snow the greater part of the day.
Part of the men employed melting fat the others at the canoe timber.
T. Toganche came to the fort in the night and took away his things, and the other provisions, the others deny that they knew of his going off or where he is gone too. I bilieve they are telling lies.
Wed.y. 8
Rain in the night & rain & snow during the day.
The men employed as yesterday. Nothing doing in the way of trade except a little gum.--
Thursday 9th
Rain & very stormy in the night, mild weather during the day.--The snow is disappearing very fast, there is now very little on the ground.
The men employed at the canoe, the wood is all dressed.
Friday 10th
Fair mild weather.
Men employed at the canoe and other jobs about the Fort.
Late last night three Kootanies arrived from Flat Head Lake & traded 3 small beaver and few ribs of dried venison, they report that the Kootanies & Flat Heads at the Lake are employed hunting Beaver.--A little Tobacco was sent to the Kootany Chief & some of the principal men, word was also sent for them to be here about the middle or 20th of next month so that we may be ready to get off in good time.
Saturday 11th
Soft mild weather.
The canoe was put on the stocks & the head and stern formed.
Last night another Kootany arrived from the Kootany Fort, & traded 2 large Beaver & 9 deer skins. He reports that the Aue platts & Kootanies in that quarter are also employed hunting beaver.
The Pendent Oreilles arrived from up the River & brought the carcasses of 7 deer & an Otter Skin. The Venison is a timely supply as our stock of fresh meat was nearly done.
None of these Indians can give us any account of Toganche who deserted some days ago.
Sunday 12
Sharp frost in the night & bleak cold weather during the day.
The Indians who arrived yesterday with the venison went off.
Monday 13th
Sharp frost in the night. Cloudy cold weather during the day. Four men employed at the canoe & two pounding meat.
An Indian arrived from Spokan, with letters dated on the 3rd Inst. Mr. Dease sends me orders to proceed to Spokan to make out the a/c & leave Mr. Kittson in charge of this place. As I have a particular wish to see the years transactions of this Post finished so that I might be able to make some observations on it, that perhaps might have been useful, I certainly do not like the trip, and think Mr. Dease[270] might have made more judicious arrangements, especially when it is only to make out the Accounts.
Tuesday 14
Sharp frost in the night & very cold all day.
The men employed as yesterday, finished pounding the meat and we are now ready to make it into Pimican to take below to Spokan.
Wed.y. 15
Keen frost in the night, and cold freezing weather all day. The river driving full of ice, which is an unusual thing at this season of the year.
Two of the men employed repairing a canoe to to below to the Le (?) Portage if the River keeps open. Five more men making Pimican. They made 14 bags 80 ls. each.
Five of the Au platte Indians arrived late last night, & today traded 2 Otters, about 500 Rats, and some dressed leather and (Parrefliches).[271]
Thursday. 16
Cold frosty weather but milder than yesterday. A good deal of ice driving in the River.
Two men employed repairing a canoe to go below.--The others at the Pimican, Made 6 more bags & filled 2 bags of Tallow 90 lb. each.
A Flat Head Indian arrived for a little tobacco for his tribe who are now on their way coming in, but still far off.--several are daily arriving from different quarters principally from the Fd. H. Lake and encamping about the fort, they bring nothing except a little dry Venison.--
Friday 17
Overcast freezing weather. Some ice still driving in the River & ice fast along its edges. The water is rising considerably some days past.
Three men employed repairing the canoe.--The others tying up the Pimican & making packs of cords, to go below & doing other jobs about the fort.--
The Flat Head Indian that arrived yesterday went off, he got a little Tobacco for each of the principle men. He made us to understand that his tribe were still in pursuit of buffalo but would soon come off for the fort. They were likely to have a good deal of provisions but he could not say what success they had in the fur way.--
A band of 13 Kootanies principally Auplattes arrived in the evening with some furs.--It was too late to trade.
Saturday 18
Cloudy mild weather, frost in the night. Ice still driving in the River.
The Kootanies that arrived last night, traded 19 Beaver large & small, 1 Otter, 5 martens & 1 fish, 210 Rats, 4 Elkskins, 114 dressed & 5 parchment Deerskins and some (parrefliches), principally for ammunition.--
Part of the men employed at the new canoe, and three finishing repairing the one they were at these two days past, it is now ready and I intended to start tomorrow for Spokan with a load of provisions but the people arriving from the horse guard[272] informed me that part of the River there is frozen over and of course, impassable, a piece of the River above the fort has also been fast some days. In order to ascertain exactly the state of the River below so that we might be able to ascertain whether a passage is practicable or when it is likely to be so, C. McKay & Canotte, who is a good judge of the River, were dispatched to take a view of the water below at different places from which they will be able to judge of the state of the River farther down, they are to be back tomorrow, so that I must defer starting for another day. As Mr. Dease wants two men down also, by taking a canoe & cargo down at present is the only means by which they can be spared. The canoe is also the most expeditious mode of conveyance. We cannot attempt taking down the horses as Mr. Dease suggests, without running the risk of making a very tedious journey, and perhaps losing some of the horses, on account of the great depth of the snow along parts of the road. The journey on foot must also be tedious.--Performing the journey in the canoe is decidedly preferable, as it can be done much quicker, & the cargo can be taken down at once & probably not more than three canoes will require to be taken down in the Spring. So that the men wanted below can now be spared which they otherwise could not.
Sunday 19th
Cloudy mild weather.
Some ice still driving in the River.
C. McKay & Conotte returned & reported that the River is frozen in 4 places where, Portages will have to be made, not very long ones, & that only one place farther down is likely to be frozen at the Cobias. I therefore have determined on starting tomorrow, it will require longer time but it is the only means we now have of performing the journey. From all that we can learn there is too much snow for the horses to be sent down with safety.
Monday 20
Left the Flat Heads early, in a canoe with 7 men & an Indian and 22 pieces Pimican & fat, 1 box candles & my baggage, besides provisions for the voyage, in all about 27 pieces. A little below the Fort we were stopped by ice & had to make a portage at least 3/4 of a mile, after which we proceeded to the Chutes, made the Portage & a little farther down the River was again frozen over & we had to make another portage about the same length as the last, but over a much worse road. The ice is too weak to carry upon it & it is difficult to get ashore and a bad road along shore. If we find obstructions of this kind tomorrow the canoe will probably have to be sent back & I will have to proceed on foot, as it would occupy a long time to carry over some of the portages below.--Very disagreeable weather. Snow & sleet heavy in the evening so that it wets everything.
Tuesday 21
Cloudy overcast weather, drizzling rain, sleet & snow the greater part of the day.
Proceeded down the river at an early hour & again soon found our road barred with ice in two places of considerable length, it was, however, so soft that we got our way broken through it with a great deal of labour & damage to our canoe. We crossed the Stony island portage & encamped below it at a late hour. In the forepart of the day there (was) little snow along the River but towards evening it was very deep. At our camp it is not less than three feet. In the morning when I was away with the foreman examining the ice one of the men (Bonufont) deserted and ran off with my old gun and Powder horn. The others said they thought I had sent him for them. This man is almost out of his senses about our peril at the F. Heads which is probably the cause of his running off--I had no idea that he ran off entirely or I certainly would have pursued him with the people & caught him although it would be difficult to find him as there is little snow in the woods and we had no time to spare.--He will probably go no farther that the fort where Mr. Kittson will stop him.
Wed.y. 22
Snow & rain the most of the day. We were detained some time in the morning gumming the canoe, after which we continued our route & encamped in the evening near the lower end of Pendent Oreilles Lake. We just got across the lake in good time as it began to blow immediately afterwards. We met no more obstructions from the ice, but in several places it had very recently broke up.
Thursday 23rd
Very disagreeable cold weather, thick snow & sleet all day.
Embarked at an early hour & reached the portage at noon,--where we got the property all safely laid up & the canoe gummed for for me to return with her tomorrow morning while I start with one man & an Indian to the fort & leave one man to take care of the property, till people & horses come for it.--I am afraid the horses will have a bad job of it as the snow here is very deep. The ice in different parts of the river has not been long broke up.
Passed two Indian camps and lodges and loaded 3 pr. of small snow shoes from them.--The badness of the weather prevented me from setting out for the fort immediately.
Friday 24th
Overcast cloudy weather, snow showers.
At daylight set out for Spokan accompanied by an Iroquoy & an Indian, and encamped at 4 oclock in the afternoon between the big hill and the Lake. The snow on the portage is generally from 3 to 4 feet deep and very soft and on account of the smallness and badness of our snowshoes walking through it is very fatiguing, when we encamped we were very tired, & had no water, however, by melting snow on a piece of bark at the fire we soon obtained a sufficiency.--We stopped early having only a small axe to cut firewood.
I am afraid, there is so much snow, it will be a bad job getting the property across.
Saturday 25
Overcast, snow and sleet the greater part of the day.
Proceeded on our route at daylight and reached the plain at 11 oclock and encamped at sunsetting at Campment de Bindash, with J. Finlays[273] sons who were hunting fortunately we fell in with them or we would have had little fire during the night.
The snow continued the same deapth to near the edge of the woods where it was not so deep. There was not much snow on the plains and on the South end we walked without snowshoes.--
Sunday 26
Clear cold weather in the night and mild weather during the day.
Continued our journey at 3 oclock in the morning and arrived at Spokan at 11. Not much snow in the woods & it was so hard that we walked the most of the way without snowshoes. We were well tired. There were some horses on the opposite side of (Schuihoo)[274] plain but we thought it too far to go for them yesterday evening.
Found Mr. Dease & his people all well.
Monday 27
Snowed in the night and the greater part of the day.
It being deemed impracticable to get the property across the portage at present on account of the depth of the snow, without, the risk of losing some of the horses, Mr. Dease had determined to let it remain some time till the snow thaws.--But a man (Chilifaux) was sent off to give the man who was left behind instructions & leave an Indian with him--and at the same time to bring home some of my things, particularly the box containing the papers.--The Indians would not trust their horses to cross the portage.--
Tuesday 28
Cloudy mild weather, some snow. A good deal of the snow that fell yesterday thawed.
Wed.y. 1
Overcast mild weather. The snow thawing.
Mr. Birnie[275] & the men busy packing beaver these two days.--
Thursday 2
Overcast cold weather.
The people still employed packing furs.
Friday 3rd
Overcast cold weather, the snow thawing a little about the Fort but diminishing very little in the woods.
Saturday 4
Weather as yesterday. Keen frost in the night.--
Sunday 5
Cloudy mild weather in the middle of the day, but cold in the night morning & evening. Snow dimishing very slowly.--
The men finished packing the furs. I am employed arranging the accounts.
Monday 6th
(Monday, Sunday & Tuesday here given in exact order of original M. S.)
Keen frost in the night. Cloudy cold weather during the day.
The Chiefs we spoke to about horses to carry off part of the furs and property to the Forks,[276] they engaged to furnish 80 horses.
Sunday 7
Clear fine weather but cold & the snow wasting very little.
Tuesday 7th
Cloudy cold weather keen frost in the night.
The men busy tying up the pieces & preparing to go off tomorrow. The Indians collecting the horses.--
Mr. Birnie with 3 men, 13 Indians and 80 loaded horses set out for the forks the first trip. Mr. B. is to remain in charge of the furs & property. Only 4 or 6 pieces of this is private property.
Tuesday 7th
In the evening Cholefaux arrived with my trunk & blankets about 100 lb.--The other things he left.--The snow on the Portage is now very deep, more so than when I passed it is now not less than 4 feet. There is no knowing when horses may be able to pass through it.
The night before Cholefaux arrived at the other end of the Portage some Inds slept there with the man who was left in charge of the goods, & stole a small bag 25 lb. fine pimican.--
Wed.y. 8
Cloudy cold weather, sharp frost in the night.--
Chalifaux was sent off to the Forks to remain with Mr. Birnie.
Thursday 9th
Sharp frost in the night. Cold bleak weather during the day.--The snow wasting very little to be this season of the year.--
Friday 10
Keen frost in the night, Raw cold weather. Snow in the afterpart of the day.
The men[8] employed with two Indians pressing the fur packs, but had to give it up on account of the snow.
Saturday 11th
Froze keen in the night. Light clouds fine weather though cold during the day.
The people above mentioned employed pressing the furs which was finished in the evening having done 36 packs in the day.
In the evening an Indian with part of the horses that went off to the Forks on tuesday, arrived, the whole reached their destination safe, & the property all in good order, having had dry weather.
Sunday 12
Frost in the night, cloudy cold weather during day.
All the rest of the horses & Indians & men returned from the Forks.
Monday 13
Keen frost in the night.
The men employed tying up and arranging the pieces for the next trip.
Busy all day paying the Indians for their horses for their last trip.
Tuesday 14
Frost in the night, light, cloudy, cold weather during the day.
The Snow is disappearing about the Fort, but going off very slowly.
Wed.y. 15
Cloudy cold weather. The men employed cutting firewood.
Thursday 16
Heavy rain in the night some time in the morning, which has diminished the snow considerably, the valley round the fort is nearly all bare except patches here and there but in the woods and higher ground snow still lies pretty thick & is wasting very tardily.--Mild, soft foggy weather, & the first spring like day we have had this season.--
The men employed cutting firewood in the forepart of the day, afterwards arranging and separating the furs & property to be sent off to the forks on Saturday, in all 60 loads.--The Indians were engaged to furnish sixty horses on that day, for the trip.--
Pere de Jolie Fille was also engaged to cross the (Schuihoo) portage for the property that remains there, he is to go as soon as the road is passable through the snow, which he expects will be in two or three days.
Friday 17.
Raw cold weather in the morning, mild afterwards.--
Had provisions &c., tied up for the party going off tomorrow.--The Indians collecting their horses.
Saturday 18th
Cloudy, snow & sleet the forepart of the day, snowed in the night, the snow in the morning was nearly 2 inches deep, but it had nearly all disappeared during the day, on the low ground, but on the high ground that faces the north, the snow still remains.
On account of the bad weather the departure of the horses with the property was deferred until tomorrow.
The water in the river has risen considerably, these few days past.
Sunday 19.
Frost in the night & fine weather in the forepart of the day but disagreeable weather with rain and sleet afterwards.
Three men and ten Indians, with the Interpreter Rivit,[277] were sent off to the Forks with 62 horses loaded with Furs, Provisions & Sundries. The after part of the day turned out very unfavorable which was not expected in the morning as the weather was fine.--There is very little property of any kind now remaining.[144]--The women and children also went off today.--
Monday 20
Overcast fair weather in the morning some light showers during the day.--
Tuesday 21
Rain and sleet in the night, but fair weather during the day. The River continues much the same, the water is rising very little.
The Blacksmith & cook, the only two men we have now here, employed collecting all the iron about the place, stripping hinges off doors[278] &c. The Indians much regret our going off, and frequently complain that they will be pitiful when the whites leave them.[279]
The Indians are getting a few trout and suckers in their barrier, a part of which they give us.
Wed.y. 22
Light showers.--
The men employed as yesterday.
Thursday 23.
Sleet & rain showers, rained hard in the night.
The greater part of the Men and Indians that went to the Forks on Sunday last, returned. Notwithstanding the bad weather their property got down safe.--
Friday 24.
Showery weather and cold, notwithstanding the advanced season the snow still lies on the North side of the hills and banks.--
The rest of the people arrived from the Forks.
Late last night two Indians arrived from Coeur de Alan Portage with letters from Mr. Kittson dated F. Head 9th Inst.--The trade was then completed and preparations making to start. The provision trade has been excellent but the returns in furs less than was expected.--War has broken out between the F. Heads and (Piegans.) C McKay is at the other end of the Portage with the horses that were at the F. Heads, he had a bad journey down on account of the depth of the snow, the horses were five nights without eating. The snow on the portage is still near 3 feet deep.--Mr. Kittson was to have proceeded to the Pendent Oreilles Bay but as it is supposed from accounts that that portage is impassable with the depth of the snow, a man was sent off immediately with letters to Mr. Kittson to stop him at the Coeur de Alan portage.--
Some people were sent off to fetch home our horses from the Coeur de Alan plain to be ready to start for the F. Head property. Le Course caulking his boats.--Paid off part of the Indians for their trip to the Forks.--
Saturday 25
Raining the greater part of the day.
The horses were brought to (Birnie's)[280] plains. Paid some more of the Indians for their horses.
Sunday 26th
Rain in the night and the most of the day.
The water in the River rising considerably these few days.--Some snow still lies on the banks and hills that face the North.
Monday 27
Overcast weather.
Martin arrived from Coeur de Alan Portage, in place of Charles who went off on the 23rd who was so fatigued that he could not come back. Martin can also scarcely walk, though he came part of the way on horseback. Mr. Kittson had not arrived at the Portage 2 days ago.--By Indian report he had started from the F. Heads but was detained at Thompsons plains, seeking after one of his men (Benifont) who had deserted.
There is still a great deal of snow on the Portage. Some places it is said to be 3 feet deep.--
The horses were brought home, & the Indians engaged to furnish some more, to go off for the F. Head property tomorrow, as Mr. Kittson is expected to have arrived by the time they reach the Portage.
Tuesday 28
Overcast mild weather.
Rivit, 2 men & some Indians went off to meet Mr. Kittson with about 70 horses.
Wed.y. 29th.
Fine weather, sharp frost in the night.
Old Philip was sent off to the Forks to send home Chalifaux who is there.--
Thursday 30th
Fine weather, but keen frost in the night.
La Course busily employed caulking and gumming the boats.
Friday 31st.
Frost in the night, Overcast mild weather during the day.
Notwithstanding the weather is rather cold, Vegetation is making considerable progress, the ground about the fort is getting quite green, and the bushes are putting forth their leaves and some small plants flowering. The snow, nevertheless still keeps possession of the banks that Front the north.--The River has risen considerably for some days past. The Indians are hungry as they have little to depend upon but moss. They have for some time past got a good many trout from the Barrier but last night it was broken by the height of the water, & they will not be able to repair it.
April 1826 Satd.y. 1
Heavy rain the greater part of the day.
The men employed gumming the boats.
Sunday 2
Overcast mild, soft weather. Mr. Kittson arrived from the F. Heads. he left his people yesterday.--One of the men (Bonenfant) who deserted from me on the 21st. Feby. but was afterwards secured, ran off a second time, when Mr. Kittson sent two men in pursuit of him. One of these Ignace (Astaryan), also staid away & is supposed to have deserted also. Bonenfant made his escape from an Indian lodge before the men got up.
Three of the canoes were broke 2 two of the them sunk, & though none of the property was lost a great deal of it was wet, & though pains was taken to dry it, it is feared from the witness of the weather that a deal of the meat will be much damaged.--
Monday 3rd
Overcast fair weather.
C. McKay & Canotte arrived & left Rivit and the Men this morning, they are to stop the most of the day opening and airing the provisions.
Tuesday 4.
Overcast, weather drizzling rain.
The Men employed tying up some things that were loose in the Store.--
Wed.y. 5
Overcast fair weather.
The people with horses loaded with Flat head returns arrived. The men immediately employed opening and examining the Provisions. A good deal of it is wet & getting mouldy. Some of the Bales of leather were also wet, indeed scarcely anything in the canoes missed.--
Busy the after part of the day settling with the Indians for their horses.
Thursday 6th
Fine weather.
Busy settling with the Indians & paid them up for all their horse hire & services for so far.--
Mr. Kittson & the men drying and packing up the meat.--
Friday 7th
Fair weather.
Had the Indians & Companys horses collected and the property taken to below the Forks,[281] in the boat, the river being too high to cross it on the horses. At past noon I set out with 59 loaded horses and encamped late at the Kettle encampment.[282] Our loads are principally provisions, a few packs of furs & leather.--All Indians but one white man that are with the horses, they are very careful of the property.
Saturday 8th
Clear pleasant weather.
It was some time in the morning before the horses were all collected after which they were all loaded and proceeded on the rout. Mr. Dase and Mr. Kittson shortly come up with us. I accompanied them & we proceeded on ahead and arrived at the Forks in the evening. We had some difficulty crossing a small River[283] that was swelled by the snow melting in the mountains, the current was very strong & the water deep. My horse was carried a considerable distance down the stream. I was completely wet up to the middle it was with difficulty I kept his back as he was different times nearly upsetting by getting on branches or trees.
Sunday 9th
Clear fine weather.
The boats,[284] three in number, which left Spokan yesterday arrived at the Forks this evening, they loaded the cargoes above the little Dalles & the light boats were run down. La Courses boat struck a stone near the mouth of the Spokan river in a dangerous rapid and was broken. She very nearly upset, had she done so everyone on board would have perished. Yesterday the boats fell in with the horses & transported all the property past the little river.
Monday 10
Cloudy weather, sun shining occasionally.
The horses and property all arrived at the Forks safe in the morning where the loads were received.--The Bales of meat were opened to be aired, several of them were a little wet.--Busily employed in the afterpart of the day paying off the Indians for the lend of their horses and their own labour coming to the Forks.--
Tuesday 11
Cloudy weather.
The meat was again all opened & spread out to air.--
The Express arrived in the evening. Messrs. McLeod.[285] Ermatinger & Douglas.--They brought 3 pigs & 3 young cows for Fort. Colvile[286]
Wed.y. 12--
Mr. A. McDonald[287] arrived from Okanagan by land.
Thursd.y. 13.
Two boats sent off to Okanagan landed with furs.--And afterwards 20 of the Spokan horses for the same place to go on to Kamloops to meet the New Caledona people.--
F Rivit. Old Philip & old Paget & Pierre with a number of women and children & all the horses & the young cows, were sent off to Kettle falls. They have a quantity of seed potatoes with them & tools to commence farming immediately.[288]
Friday 14th
Nothing particular,--All busy finishing the account.
Saturd.y. 15th
do do.
Sunday. 16.
The Express for the Mountains. Mr. McLeod & Mr. Birnie, set off in the evening.--One boat 8 men.
Monday 17--
A Cargo was prepared for a boat to Okanagan.--
Tuesday 18
A boat loaded with Packs of furs, appichimons, leather &c. Messrs. McDonald, Ermatinger & myself passengers. Set out in the morning for Okanagan.--
Wed.y. 19th
Arrived at Okanagan in the morning with all safe.--
Met the man that left the forks on the 12th returning yesterday morning. They would reach the forks in the course of the day.--
Thursday 20
Overcast mild weather. Messrs. A McDonald, E. Ermatinger and Annance,[289] 12 Men and 2 Indians took their departure for Nezperces & thence to Fort Vancouver in a boat, with 12 Packs furs, 15 bales salmon, 4 Bales Appichimons, 1 bale Saddles, 1 Bale leather, 1 Bale Cords & 3 (caffetes). They are to proceed from Wallawalla by land with horses.
I remain in charge of Okanagan till the Brigade goes down. Five men remain with me, two of whom are shortly to go off to Kamloops with horses to meet the N. Caledonia people, and two of them are invalids.--
(No journal kept from Apr. 21 to May 31 inclusive, unless in separate book.)
June 1826 Thursd.y. 1st
Cloudy fair weather.
The men employed gumming the boats.--Yesterday I gave up the charge of the store &c. to Mr. F. Ermatinger[290] who is to remain at this place during summer.--
Friday 2nd
Fair weather.
Men employed as yesterday.--Mr. Connolly[291] arrived about 5 oclock in the evening.--He left his people this morning, they are expected to arrive with the horses tomorrow.
Satd.y. 3
Cloudy, Showery weather.
Mr. Connollys people under the charge of Messrs. Pambin[292] & Douglas[293] arrived late in the evening, 60 loaded horses 85 packs furs & 6 Kegs Castorum.--They have been 25 days from Alexander 10 of which were from Kamloops to Okanagan.--
Sunday 4th
Cloudy mild weather.--
An Indian traded a salmon.--
Monday 5th
Cloudy Showery weather
Tuesday 6th
Sultry warm weather, some Showers.
Mr. Connolly being very anxious for the arrival of Mr. Deases people, and apprehensive that letters which he sent some time ago had not reached their destination an Indian and a man were dispatched with letters to Fort Colville.--About 1 oclock 2 boats & 11 men with Mr. Douglas[294] & Kittson arrived from Ft. Colvile, with some appichimons, cords, Provisions, &c.--The sending off in the morning is unnecessary.--
Everything made ready to start tomorrow.
Wed.y. 7th
Cloudy Sultry weather.
Departed from Okanogan with 6 boats, Men loaded with pack furs & other baggage.[295] All under the charge of Mr. Conolly, Messrs. J. Douglas, Pambin, Kittson, D. Douglas, & myself passengers.--Started at 8 oclock & encamped to gum the boats at 6 a little above Priests Rapid.--Saw but few Indians on the River, traded some roasted salmon.--The Current is very strong & the water high.
Thursday 8th
Cloudy showery weather.
Continued our journey at 3 oclock and arrived at Nezperces[296] at 7 in the afternoon.--A few Indians along the river.--Traded 6 fresh salmon.--
Friday 9th
Cloudy weather, excessively warm in the middle of the day. In consequence of the rain yesterday evening, the boat and additional cargoes to be taken from Nezperces could not be arranged. Some time was, therefore, occupied doing that business this morning. Near noon the boats all started 8 in number with 45 packs furs in addition to those brought from Ok: and some other property.--Messrs. D. Douglas & Kittson remained.--Our party now consists of 8 boats, 51 men, & 1. C. F. & 3 clerks.--We got on well during the day.--Shortly after leaving Nezperces at Grand Rapid[297] we met an Indian with dispatches from Ft. Vancouver dated 3rd Inst., announcing the Arrival of the Ship. Encamped in the evening below J. Day's River. A good many Indians along the river.--Mr. Black gave the people a horse to eat.
Satd.y. 10
Cloudy fine weather, very warm though there was a little breeze of wind.--
Proceeded on our journey at daylight, Passed the Portage at the Chutes[298] and to near the lower end of the Dalles where we encamped to get the boats gummed.--The men had a hard days labour carrying across the two Portages.--There were about 100 Indians at the Chutes, & from 200 to 300 at the Dalles. They are very peaceable. Traded salmon from them to serve the people 2 days.--
Sunday 11
Cloudy, Blowing fresh part of the day.
All hands were in motion at daylight, and after proceeding down a small channel & making a portage at its lower end,[299] continued our rout, but it blew so fresh that we had to put ashore before noon and could not proceed during the day.--The Indians were very quiet during the night, but before they could be all sent off from the camp they made a hole in the sand under the edge of one of the boats & stole a capot from under one of the mens heads when he was sleeping.--There was some trouble getting through the rapids and whirlpools below the Dalles. Traded some more salmon.--
Monday 12
Continued blowing fresh all night and all day, storming in the afternoon. It being a little moderate we embarked at daylight, but had proceeded only a few hours when the wind reversed so that we had to put ashore & remain all day a little below Cape Heron.[300] Some Indians visited us from whom part of a sturgeon was purchased & some other little things.--
A canoe of Indians on their way from the fort below visited us.--
Two Indians who had solicited a passage from the Dalles to Fort Vancouver returned in the afternoon. One of them had the misfortune to lose his gun. It was lying in the oil cloth which being blown up by the wind tossed the gun overboard.
FOOTNOTES:
[246] That is, the furs sent from the Snake river country where Peter Skene Ogden's party had been trapping during winter and summer of 1825.
[247] The trading post known as Fort Kootenay had been located nearly opposite the present town of Jennings, Montana, but was not being maintained this year.
[248] This refers to attempt of Mr. Kittson to ascend the Kootenay river from the Columbia in a batteau, mentioned on pages 178-9 of this quarterly.
[249] See note 108 on page 189.
[250] Mr. John Warren Dease, Chief Trader, in charge at Spokane House during this winter.
[251] The portage mentioned in note 86, page 179, of this Quarterly.
[252] Free trappers nominally owned their horses, guns, traps and lodges, but usually were in debt to the Company for everything and obliged to turn in their furs to pay the indebtedness. The regularly employed servants were called the engages.
[253] The same as the Coeur d'Alene portage mentioned in note 117, this being Mr. Work's spelling or "Skeetshoo," the name given by David Thompson to the Coeur d'Alene lake and river and Indians.
[254] Saddle blankets, made of skins.
[255] The Indians residing along the lower Kootenay river; see note 104 on page 187.
[256] Thompson Falls, Clark's Fork river, Montana.
[257] The name still remains and is said to have its origin from numerous small fish resembling herring that were common there.
[258] Pend d'Oreille lake.
[259] North end of Skeetshoo Road and in later years called Sineacateen Crossing.
[260] Rathdrum creek, probably.
[261] Hoodoo lake, Kootenay County, Idaho.
[262] Spokane House, at forks of Little Spokane and Spokane rivers.
[263] Spokane Falls.
[264] Some large spring on Spokane prairie; perhaps where Antoine Plante afterward lived.
[265] Sineacateen again.
[266] Previously mentioned as Isle d'Pierre and impossible to locate with certainty; possibly Cabinet rapids, Clark Fork river.
[267] Possibly the Trout creek, Montana: on main line of No. Pac. Ry.
[268] The large camp of the Flatheads near the lake of that name.
[269] Mrs. Work was of Spokane blood and a very Intelligent woman.
[270] Mr. Dease was suffering from some chronic disease from which he died a few years after at Fort Colvile.
[271] Saddle bags.
[272] Herders at Thompson's Prairie, where the horses were pastured.
[273] Jacques Finlay, clerk of David Thompson, who was in charge of Spokane House in 1811, and after whom Jocko creek, Missoula county, Montana, is named.
[274] Another attempt to spell the name Skeetshoo.
[275] See note 79, page 176. Mr. Birnie came to the Columbia about 1820.
[276] The mouth of the Spokane river where the boats were loaded to proceed either up or down the Columbia.
[277] See note 68, page 167.
[278] Mr. Work and Mr. Dease remain until the arrival of Mr. Kittson with the furs and provisions from the Flathead trading post.
[279] This marks the end of Spokane House as a trading post. For glimpse of this place in July, 1826, consult David Douglas' account in Oregon Hist. Quarterly, Vol. 5.
[280] Evidently some prairie near the House, possibly the Five Mile Prairie of present day.
[281] Meaning the Forks of Spokane and Little Spokane rivers about three-fourths mile below the House, where the ford usually was. See map in Pac. Railway Reports, Vol. 12.
[282] Uncertain but probably where the main trail Walla Walla to Kettle Falls crosses the Spokane River.
[283] One of several creeks entering Spokane river from the south. The road from Spokane House to the Forks evidently followed the south side of Spokane River very closely.
[284] The boats that had been built at Spokane House during the winter; the Little Dalles are the gorge at Miles. Lincoln County, Wash.
[285] John McLeod. Chief Trader, on his way to cross the Rocky Mts., Francis Ermatinger, a clerk, and David Douglas, the botanist from England. For contemporaneous mention of this meeting consult pp. 334-5 of Vol. 5 of Oregon Hist. Quarterly, being Journal of David Douglas.
[286] This marks the beginning of the pork, beef and dairy business in Stevens county, Washington, in particular, and all the Inland Empire in general.
[287] Archibald McDonald, then a clerk; the father of Ranald McDonald.
[288] These people are to become the first residents at Fort Colvile, then being completed on Marcus Flat above Kettle Falls.
[289] Mr. Annance, Chief Trader, had been in charge of Fort Okanogan that winter and Mr. Edward Ermatinger had probably been at Thompson river.
[290] See note 78, page 176.
[291] Chief Factor William Connolly from Fort St. James in New Caledonia en route for Ft. Vancouver to exchange his furs for trading goods.
[292] Pierre Chrysologue Pambrun, a clerk under Mr. Connolly, afterward in charge of Fort Walla Walla; consult Irving "Capt. Bonneville."
[293] James Douglas, clerk under Mr. Connolly, whose daughter he married, and afterward Sir James Douglas, Chief Factor and Governor of British Columbia.
[294] David Douglas, the botanist, again.
[295] Constituting what was known as a fur brigade.
[296] Fort Nez Perce or Walla Walla; Mr. Samuel Black then in charge.
[297] Umatilla rapids.
[298] Ceillio Falls and the Upper and Lower Dalles, now charted as Ten and Five Mile Rapids.
[299] Three Mile Rapids.
[300] Upper Cape Horn. See note 6.
ELIZA AND THE NEZ PERCE INDIANS
Seventy-six years ago a little six-months old baby sat in her mother's lap in an humble home in the eastern part of what was then known as Oregon. (Oregon then comprised all that section of country lying west of the Rocky Mountains and north of the California line.) The baby was a dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl, and was the joy of her parents, who had peculiar reasons for being attached to her. She was not different from other children of like age, but had the distinction of being the second white American child born on this Northwest Coast, and the first who grew to years of maturity. She is still living, and has been for years a resident of this state, though now living in Idaho.
Her parentage and environment were unusual. On the banks of a swiftly running stream, called Lapwai, which empties into the Clearwater river a dozen miles or so east of the City of Lewiston, in the State of Idaho, was the place of her birth. Their home was a nondescript building, made of logs, eighteen feet wide and forty-eight feet long. A partition, also made of logs, divided it into two rooms, one eighteen feet square in which the family lived, and the other eighteen by thirty feet, which was used for a school and assembly room. It had been a great task to erect that house. There were no teams, and all the logs had to be carried four miles by the Indians. It took thirty men to carry one log. The parents were missionaries, and had lived there about eighteen months, with no white neighbors nearer than one hundred and twenty miles and the only means of communication between them was on horseback.
Now let us go back thirty years or more. In the spring of 1806, when Lewis and Clark were returning back across the continent in their most wonderful exploring expedition, they passed through this section of the country. On arriving at a place called Kamiah, sixty miles east of Lapwai, they found the snow too deep to allow of their crossing the mountains, and were obliged to remain there about a month. They found the Indians of this tribe very friendly and accommodating. They were really a superior race of people. Most of them had never seen any white people before, and none of them had ever seen a black man, like York of that party. Their curiosity was greatly aroused. They even tried to wash the black off from his face. The thirty days or more spent there was mutually very enjoyable, and the memory of it was treasured up in their minds for very many years. It is not known that there were any very religiously inclined men among them, but all knew of the existence of a God, and Mr. Clark at least is said to have been a church member. It is more than probable that some seeds of Divine truth were dropped into their darkened minds at the time, for twenty-five years later they sent a delegation of four men to St. Louis to get further knowledge of the white man's God, and the book or guide to Heaven. Two of these were elderly men, and two were younger. On arriving at St. Louis, then the emporium of the West, they were cordially received by General Clark who was then Superintendent of Indian Affairs, having charge of all Indians living in the far West. He remembered well the hospitality he and his company had received at the hands of their tribe a quarter of a century before, and took great pleasure in requiting it in a fitting manner. They arrived in the fall. During the following winter the two elderly men sickened and died. There is a tradition, that just before starting, one of the survivors made the following speech: "I came to you over the trail of many moons from the setting sun. I came with one eye partly open for more light for my people who dwell in darkness. I made my way to you through many enemies and strange lands that I might carry back much to them. I go back with both arms broken and empty. The two fathers, who came with us, the braves of many winters and wars,--we leave them here asleep by your great waters and wigwams. My people sent me to get the book of Heaven from the white men. You make my feet heavy with the burden of gifts, but the book is not among them. When I tell my poor blind people after one more snow that I did not get the book, no word will be spoken. One by one they will arise and go out in silence. My people will die in darkness. No book from the white men to make the way plain. That is all."
There has some doubt been expressed whether the Indian used this exact language. But Mr. Catlin, the Government painter of Indian portraits, and who traveled with them on the steamer going up the Missouri river, and who painted their portraits which are now in the museum at Washington City, is authority for the statement that this was their object. At any rate, their very unusual mission became known among the missionary societies in the east, then in their infancy, and awakened a deep interest in their call for help.
In 1834 the Methodist denomination sent out four single men, two ministers, the Reverends Lee, uncle and nephew, and two laymen, Messrs. Shepherd and Edwards. These men established a mission in the Willamette Valley nine or ten miles from where the City of Salem now stands. Two years later Messrs. Spalding and Whitman followed in their footsteps. They were accompanied by their brides, who, with indomitable pluck, heroism and devotion faced that long and terrible journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and accomplished it successfully. Of their privations and sufferings on that long and toilsome journey there is not now time to dwell. Week after week, and month after month, they traveled on horseback, sleeping on the ground at night, with no house but a tent, and no mattress but skins and blankets; fresh buffalo meat their principal diet, and through tribes of Indians who had never seen a white woman. After many delays and dangers, in November, 1836, Mr. and Mrs. Spalding located among the Nez Perce Indians, the tribe who had sent the messengers east. Doctor and Mrs. Whitman had settled in the Walla Walla Valley, among the Cayuse Indians.
For the first three weeks the Spaldings lived or rather camped in an Indian lodge, the poles of which were covered with buffalo skins with the hair taken off, called parfleches, until their cabin was prepared. The two missionary couples were one hundred and twenty miles from each other; and neither woman saw the other or any other white woman for a year after their separation.
The following year, 1837, witnessed the birth of two girls, the first white American children born in the Northwest. Alice Clarissa Whitman was born March 4th, and was the first, and Eliza Spalding, born November 15th, was the second. In November, 1837, Mrs. Whitman made her first visit to Mrs. Spalding, bringing her little girl with her, when each child beheld for the first time a white baby. On the 23rd of June, 1839, little Alice was accidentally drowned in the Walla Walla river, leaving Eliza as the first white American child who grew to years of maturity.
Mr. and Mrs. Spalding pursued their labors for the benefit of the Indians; she collecting the women and the girls in the assembly room, and teaching them the simple arts of domestic life. Being somewhat of an artist, she also drew pictures representing events recorded in the New Testament, and also the alphabet, which they readily learned. The room was often crowded to its utmost capacity. Men as well as women of mature age, as well as the young people, applied themselves with eagerness. Mr. Spalding would often collect a crowd about a campfire and tell them Bible stories, often somewhat embellished, and he held their attention until long into the night. The interest of the Indians was very encouraging.
The next year, 1838, brought them fresh cheer and assistance in the arrival of a reinforcement to the mission, of which they got Mr. W. H. Gray and his wife, and a Mr. Rodgers, besides which a Mr. Smith and his wife went to Kamiah to establish a mission there. For some reason, Mr. Smith did not succeed at Kamiah and soon left the country. But with the help of Mr. Gray and Rodgers, Mr. Spalding built a grist mill, bringing the stones forty miles down the Clearwater river. One of those stones is in the collection of curios of the Historical Society in Tacoma. This little mill was very much appreciated by the Indian women, who before that time had to pound their grain and roots in a mortar with a pestle. This was very laborious work for them. In later years a sawmill was also built there.
Messrs. Walker and Eells, who also came at that time, located among the Spokane Indians, where they remained about ten years.
In the year 1839, three years after they commenced teaching the Indians, their hearts were gladdened by the receipt of a printing press, a gift from the native Christians of the Sandwich Islands. With it came a printer by the name of E. O. Hall, who, with his wife, made things brighter for the Spaldings. They immediately went to work with fresh vigor to prepare books and pamphlets for the use of the Indians. A primer, an elementary spelling book, a book of songs, a translation of the book of Matthew, and some other books were prepared. These the Indians learned to use. In their lodges and around their campfires they studied them, and the air often resounded with their songs, they using the books that had been prepared for them. The printing press remained there seven years, when it was taken to The Dalles. It is now in the rooms of the Historical Society of Oregon at Portland. It is interesting to note in this connection the fact that the first printing press was brought to the Atlantic Coast in 1639, just exactly two hundred years prior to the arrival of this one which was brought to the Pacific Coast in 1839.
There were lights and shadows in their work. Sometimes the Indians got tired of their books. At other times they got cranky and lazy. Then there were outside influences that they had to contend with. Some of the missionaries got discouraged and left the mission; but Mr. and Mrs. Spalding labored on. The important results of their work were seen in later years, when a large proportion of the Indians were found to be nominally Christians.
Eleven years passed by when a tragedy occurred, which shocked the whole Northwest, and drove the missionaries from their work and their homes. Many immigrants had come across the plains with their teams, and most of them went on down to the Willamette Valley. In the fall of 1847, however, some fifty or sixty, who for various reasons had found it impracticable to go any further, were stopping temporarily at Walla Walla, at Dr. Whitman's place. There were in all about seventy-five stopping there, including the mission family and attaches. So many white children were among them that a school of English speaking children was established. It seemed an opportune time for Eliza Spalding, who was then ten years old, to be there, where she could associate with children of her own race, and her father took her down to spend the winter with the Whitmans. Arriving the latter part of the week, Mr. Spalding decided to remain a few days, and on Saturday he accompanied Dr. Whitman to the Umatilla, some forty miles to the south, where there were some sick Indians that the Doctor wished to visit. Dr. Whitman returned the next day, as the calls for him at home were urgent; while Mr. Spalding remained a few days to hold services with the Indians there and do missionary work among them.
On Monday, the 29th of November, 1647, shortly after noon, while Dr. Whitman was sitting in his house, two Indians came in and asked for some medicine, which was given them. While the Doctor was explaining to one of them something about the use of it, the other stealthily slipped up behind him, drew his tomahawk out from under his blanket, and struck him a blow on the top of the head which stunned him. A second blow and he fell to the floor insensible. This was the signal for a general attack. The screams of the women and children, the rapid discharge of firearms, and the yells of the savages made pandemonium let loose. During this affray little Eliza was almost the only one who understood the Indian language, and her terror was increased by knowing what they were saying. At one time, when she heard the order to shoot all the children, she turned her back so she could not see it done, and leaning over the sink, put her hands over her face and listened in terror. But better counsels prevailed and they were saved. During that and the few following days thirteen men and one woman, Mrs. Whitman, lost their lives, a few escaped, and more than fifty women and children were taken prisoners.
Two days later Mr. Spalding started back from the Umatilla, knowing nothing of what had occurred. The same day a party of three, a Catholic priest, a half-breed and an Indian, left Walla Walla to go to the Umatilla. The latter went for the purpose of killing Mr. Spalding. Eliza heard of this, and having learned in some way that the half-breed was friendly, managed to have a little private conversation with him, and implored him to do what he could to protect her father. This he promised to do. They met on the road; but a short time before meeting the Indian had discharged his gun at some game, and stopped to load, and was otherwise engaged, so that he did not see Mr. Spalding. When he overtook his companions nothing was said about having met Mr. Spalding for some time, so that he had quite a start to get away. In the meantime they had given Mr. Spalding the warning, and he had hid in the brush, and although the Indian and his party passed close to him, they did not discover that he was there. He hid there till it was dark, and then traveling by night, and hiding by day, made his way toward his home, but by a very circuitous route. He was near a week on the way. In the meantime he lost his horse, his shoes gave out, he had but little food, and crazed with grief for the fate of his comrades, tortured with fear for the fate of his daughter, and terribly anxious about what should befall his wife and three small children whom he had left at home, he staggered along until he reached an Indian village in his own neighborhood. Uncertain whether they were friends or foes he listened intently, when he heard them singing. Creeping slowly along, he discovered that they were singing the songs that he and his wife had taught them. A wave of relief swept over him. He was now among his friends. The next day, accompanied by a strong guard, he reached his home, which he found deserted.
It had been looted that very morning. But where were his wife and children? At length they were found secreted in an Indian lodge with some friendly Indians ten miles distant. When he finally found them, all were overcome with emotions too deep to be described. They then all returned to their home under a sufficient guard, where they remained for several weeks, protected by friendly Indians.
In the meantime an express had been sent to Vancouver, the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, apprising the chief factor of what had occurred. He immediately dispatched Factor Peter Skeen Ogden, one of the most tactful men, who made all possible haste to Walla Walla to rescue the prisoners. He was successful. For about four hundred dollars' worth of blankets, beads and other trinkets the Indians delivered to him all at the fort, which was located at what is now Wallula. Negotiations were also entered into for the delivery of Mr. Spalding and family. They, under a guard of forty Nez Perces, finally rode into the fort. There little Eliza fell into her mother's arms with transports of joy too deep for utterance. The last days of December witnessed the departure of all these people from the upper country, who arrived at Oregon City December 31, 1847.
Soon after this, the provisional governor of Oregon, George Abernethy, called for a regiment of volunteers, who went up and fought the Indians. That is what is known as the Cayuse Indian war, the first Indian war in the Northwest. After a campaign of six months, the Indians were driven out of their country and large numbers of their horses were captured. Eventually, through the kind offices of the Nez Perces Indians, five of the murderers were delivered up, and taken to Oregon City, where they were tried, convicted and executed by the authorities.
Mr. Spalding then settled in the Willamette Valley, where he lived for a number of years. Governor Abernethy had issued a proclamation warning all Americans not to settle east of the Cascade Mountains, and for nearly ten years that section of the country was closed to settlement.
Three years after they went to lower Oregon, Mrs. Spalding passed away. Never a strong woman, the excitement, fatigue, and exposure, incident to the breaking up of the mission, and moving to the Willamette Valley, had been too much for her. After a lingering illness, she closed her labors for the cause of her Master, whom she so much loved.
Eliza was now left at the age of thirteen at the head of the household with the care of the family. She had one brother and two sisters. The burden was a heavy one for her young shoulders to bear. In a few years, her father having married, she also married, and for a time disappears from our narrative.
Now let us return to the Nez Perce Indians. After the close of the Cayuse war, for years they were left to themselves. They did not, however, forget the worship of the true God. The books that had been distributed among them, and which they had learned to read, were used continually, and served to strengthen them in the belief and practice of the truths that had been taught them. Seven years passed away, during which time the Territory of Oregon, and later that of Washington, were organized. Governor Isaac I. Stevens had arrived. He was also Acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. With his accustomed impetuous energy, he had made treaties with most of the Indians west of the Cascade Mountains. In May, 1855, he assembled a large council of Indians in the Walla Walla Valley, to try to make treaties with them. He had with him less than one hundred men. The Nez Perces were the first to arrive, who came, twenty-five hundred strong. While waiting for the others to arrive, Sunday intervened. Governor Stevens relates that the tribe held religious services in their camp, conducted by one of their own number. He commends the good order, interest and devotion manifested by them.
When all had assembled, it was estimated that there were five thousand present. A large proportion were opposed to selling any of their land. There was much angry discussion, and it looked as though the effort would be a failure. Late one night, Lawyer, the head chief of the Nez Perces, came unattended into the tent of Governor Stevens and disclosed to him the fact that a conspiracy had been formed to kill him and his whole party. He proposed that he move his own family into the midst of Governor Stevens' camp; and although it was now past midnight it was immediately done, and word was circulated that he was there for their protection. The plot failed by this bit of strategy, and their lives were saved.
Matters then took a turn, and in a few days the terms of the treaties were agreed upon. Lawyer was the first to sign, and the others then followed. This result was largely due to the teachings of Mr. and Mrs. Spalding, whose instructions had made Lawyer, who was the head chief, a Christian, as well as so large a following that they controlled, for the time being, the other bands who were there.
However, a few months later the general Indian war broke out, in which a large proportion of all the Indians in Oregon and Washington took part, led by many of the very Indians who had signed the treaties above mentioned. During all of these hostilities, which lasted about two years, the Nez Perces Indians remained friendly to the whites and saved many valuable lives.
By the year 1859, peace had been declared, the Indians having been conquered, and the country east of the Cascade Mountains was opened up to settlement. The next year Mr. Spalding moved his family into the Walla Walla country, and attempted to renew his work among his former Indians. The Indian Service at that time was very corrupt, and he encountered such strong opposition on the part of the agent and employes that he had to desist and await further developments. The influences about these Indians during the next ten or twelve years was very bad. The White Salmon River and the Oro Fino mines had been discovered, and thousands of miners, many of whom were of the worst class, passed through their country.
In 1871, however, the Indian Service had been reconstructed, and what was commonly known as the peace policy was adopted by the government. In accordance with its principles, all religious work among the Indians of the United States was to be encouraged. The way was now open for Mr. Spalding to return to his former field of labor. Twenty-three years had passed since he was driven away, during which time no work had been done by white men to encourage the best, while much had been done to encourage the worst, in them. The Indians received him with open arms. They thronged about him, and a more joyous welcome could not have been given him. The old church organization was resuscitated and during the next three years, while he still lived, he baptized nearly seven hundred of this tribe, and more than two hundred and fifty among the Spokanes, a smaller tribe, where Messrs. Walker and Eells had been stationed. During his last days, not being able to travel about as he had done, he established a boys' school in Kamiah, in which he taught and trained young Indian men to be preachers. But he had not much longer to live. He was worn out. In August, 1874, he was brought down to Lapwai, where he laid down to die, at the ripe age of seventy-one. He was buried near the same spot where, thirty-eight years before, he had commenced his labors which had accomplished so much for the tribe and the country.
Another chapter in the good work done for the Nez Perces was the advent of the McBeth sisters. Nearly a year before Mr. Spalding's death, Miss Susan L. McBeth arrived at Lapwai under appointment as a teacher in the Indian school. As subsequent events will show, hers was a remarkable Christian character, in every way worthy to be the successor of Mrs. Spalding. The following year she went to Kamiah, and took up the work begun by Mr. Spalding, the training and education of young men to do missionary work among their own people. In addition to her work as a teacher, she was also a missionary, and held services among the Indians there. Although afflicted with partial paralysis, she performed her duties with a heroism and success that was remarkable. For three years she was there alone. When the breaking out of the Chief Joseph Indian war made it unsafe for her or any of the whites to remain there, she, in company with two other white families, fled hastily to Lapwai under guard of forty of the Christian Indians. The war closed in the fall of that year, 1877, but there were still stragglers about, and the agent felt it would be unsafe for her to remain there alone, and under his direction she remained in Lapwai for two years. Some of her students followed her down to Lapwai to receive the benefit of her instruction at that place.
She had now been on that reservation for six years, when in the fall of 1877 her sister, Miss Kate C. McBeth, arrived, and joined her in her work. Together they went back alone to Kamiah, where Miss S. L. McBeth resumed her work teaching the young Indian men, and her sister, Miss K. C. McBeth, opened a school especially for young women. It had been found that however well the young men were instructed and trained, when they wished to marry, they could not find young women fitted to be help-meets for them; and they deteriorated so much as greatly to impair their usefulness. This new school soon became popular, and was very useful and important. Those were happy days for the two sisters. The church work, the Sunday school services, the Women's Missionary Society, the hearty cooperation, and I had almost said the adoration of the Indians, was very enjoyable. For six years they continued there, supported by the Presbyterian Missionary Society. A part of the time a government school was kept near them, and the intercourse between the teachers of the different schools was mutually enjoyable. About this time the health of Miss S. L. McBeth gradually failed, and there were changes in the management of affairs on the reservation which did not help the McBeth sisters in their work. At first, during the hot weather, and later permanently, Miss S. L. McBeth removed to Mt. Idaho, fifteen miles distant and across the reservation line. She went there first in 1885. She bought a little home there, and lived in it until her death. Many of her pupils followed her and built little houses in which to live while attending her school. In addition to her other duties, during all these years, she prepared a dictionary of the Nez Perce Indian language, containing upwards of fifteen thousand words, which she left as her legacy. It was a most valuable one. For nearly twenty years she had lived among and for the benefit of the Nez Perces Indians, when her end came. In May, 1893, at the age of sixty years, she passed away. Born on the banks of the Doon, in Scotland, hers was a strong character, and a long and useful life. Loving hands bore her fifteen miles to the little church at Kamiah, near which, on the banks of the Clearwater, she was buried. Her influence, even after her death, was most potent. The young men she had taught and trained lived and labored for others for many years thereafter. Some of them went to preach to the Spokane Indians, some to the Umatillas, some to the Shoshones, and some even followed the prisoners taken in the Joseph Indian war to the Indian Territory, where so many of them died. They were of great comfort to the suffering ones, and finally returned with some of the prisoners to the home land. The high moral tone of the Nez Perces Indians, as well as those living in that vicinity, is largely due to her influence.
As has been said, six years after Miss S. L. McBeth came to the Nez Perces Indians, Miss Kate McBeth, her sister, followed her, and also took up a similar work, especially among the young Indian women. Upon her shoulders has fallen the mantle of her elder sister and now for a third of a century she has been among them. "Miss Kate," as she is familiarly called, is to them the little mother to whom they come for advice and counsel. She has written a book, covering the principal events of their history during the past century, which is valuable, and intensely interesting to any one who cares for information regarding the Indian tribes of the Northwest. From this book I learn that there are now six churches among the Nez Perces, two among the Spokanes, a smaller tribe, and where Messrs. Walker and Eells were for nearly ten years, one among the Umatillas, where was the remnant of the Cayuse tribe who remained friendly during the Cayuse war. Old Istychus, who had led the first wagons across the Blue Mountains, in 1843, when Dr. Whitman was called away to visit the Spauldings, when so many were sick there, who with his band of forty-five Christian Cayuses always remained true to the faith taught them by Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. There were two other real mission churches, one among the Shoshones, and one among the Shivwits in Utah, eleven in all. These are the results of the work of the early missionaries, among whom the Spaldings and the McBeths were the most fruitful. All of these churches are self supporting, and conduct their own affairs with so much wisdom that at present they do not need a superintendent to care for them. In the Christian Endeavor Convention, held in the Presbyterian church of Tacoma, in 1912, half a dozen well dressed Indian men were there as delegates sent by those churches.
The Nez Perce tribes originally numbered about three thousand, approximately. Their country is especially well adapted for their needs. Consequently they were always well supplied with the necessities of life, and were, compared with the other tribes, well off. They were an unusually high-minded, noble and intelligent tribe. About two-thirds are what are called the Treaty Indians. About half of these are nominally Christian Indians, and all are and always have been friendly to the whites. About one-third are called non-treaty or wild Indians. It was from these that Chief Joseph collected his band, and made war on the whites in 1877; and whom General Howard followed across the Rocky Mountains to near the British line, where they were surrounded, and taken prisoners. They were then taken to the Indian Territory and given land. Many of them died there. Most of the children could not endure the climate of the hot land, as they called it, and wilted away. After eight years of captivity, they were permitted to return. Those who were willing to come on the reservation were given lands and homes. The others were sent to the Colville Reservation. Among these was Chief Joseph, who steadily refused to return to his own tribe. He felt that those Indians had sold his country without his consent, and he could never forgive them. Perhaps two hundred stuck by him as long as he lived, and since then they have been gradually drifting back. Something like half of the non-treaty Indians joined Chief Joseph in the war. They have now dwindled, so that scarcely one hundred are left who have not come on the reservation. Joseph, himself, died in 1904.
And now let us come back to our Eliza, the first American white child born in the Northwest who grew to years of maturity. We left her married, and living in the Willamette Valley. About the year 1861, she was living with her young family on the Touchet in what was then Walk Walla county. There we met her, being neighbors, although living twenty miles apart, but I saw more of her younger sister, then unmarried, living a mile or so from her home, than I did of her. She soon after returned to the Willamette Valley and our paths diverged, so that we did not meet each other for a long time. Three years ago we again met at her beautiful home on Lake Chelan. Fifty years had elapsed since we last met. She was then a widow, but well preserved for one of her age. She had been active in religious work, having been superintendent of one or more Sunday schools; and "Grandma Warren," as she is familiarly called, is universally respected and esteemed. She has since sold her attractive home, and is at present living with one of her sons at Dudley, Idaho. She intends soon to return to Spokane and purchase a small home. She is an honor to her family, and to our state, where she has lived for many years, and where she expects to end her days.
EDWIN EELLS.
DOCUMENTS
A New Vancouver Journal
In this portion of the new Vancouver journal (continued from the July Quarterly) we find the party arriving at Nootha and participating in the diplomatic negotiations there with Bodega y Quadra.
It is gratifying to note that the publication is attracting attention. One who has manifested an especial interest is Judge F. W. Howay of New Westminster, British Columbia. He is well known as a student and writer in the field of Northwestern history. He has kindly sent the following notes applicable to the portion of the journal which appeared in the April Quarterly:
"The conventional spelling of the name of Lieutenant John Meares is 'Meares;' and it is thus spelled by all parties to the famous controversy between Meares and Portlock and Dixon (Meares' voyages, p. XXXIV _et seq._, Portlock's Voyage, p 218 _et seq._, and Dixon's Voyage, p. 154 _et seq._) This is also the form in Dixon's Remarks and in Vancouver's Voyage, Vol. 1, Pp. 208-9. Yet in the official copy of the Memorial ordered to be printed 13th May, 1790, Meares repeatedly spells it 'Mears' and so does Duffin; Douglas, on the other hand uses both forms. A comparison of this document with the copy appended to Meares' Voyages shows many alterations in the spelling, doubtless for the sake of uniformity.
"As regards Classet: this is shown on Duncan's chart as 'Cape Claaset.' Vancouver had this chart with him; on page 216 of Volume I, he speaks of it as an 'excellent sketch of the entrance into this inlet.' In the same volume, page 416, he states that he had been given to understand that this was the Indian name; 'but now finding that this name had originated only from that of an inferior chief residing in its neighborhood, I have therefore resumed Captain Cook's original appellation of Cape Flattery.'
"The name 'Green Island,' so far as I know, first appears in Duncan's sketch dated 13th August, 1788, above referred to. In the legend therein it is stated: 'Green Island or To Touch es is about 1/4 mile in length; covered over with green grass; on the West Side is a small Cove very narrow and only navigable for Boats; I saw some Canoes go in and out and many Indians on the Beach; on the East Side is a large village, and from the number of Canoes that come to us from thence, I suppose it to be well inhabited.'
"On that sketch Duncan says of the 'Spiral Rock': 'Pinnacle Rock appears to be about 34 fathoms high; its Base in front about 10 fathoms, the Top projects over the rest of it: The sides appear steep; it stands about half way between the Cape & Green Island; the distance between the Cape and the Island is 1/4 mile, not navigable to appearance.'"
The Journal will be continued in the subsequent issues and the present editor will welcome any additional information from Judge Howay or other readers. Especially welcome would be information that might help to determine the probable author of the Journal. Mr. A. H. Turnbull of Wellington, New Zealand, who owns the original manuscript has not learned the author of it. The text leaves no doubt that he was a member of the Chatham's crew. That seems all that is known of him so far.
EDMOND S. MEANY.
THE JOURNAL
(Continued from page 224, July Quarterly.)
August 30th. Seigr. Quadra, the Commandant, visited both ships this day when he gave a general invitation to all the officers to his table.
The agency of the Doedalus being vacant by the death of Lieut: Hergest, Captn. Vancouver appoint'd Mr. James Hanson, Lieut: of the Chatham to fill the vacancy, in consequence of which he promoted Mr Johnstone Master of the Chatham to Lieutenant of her in the room of Mr Hanson and a Mr Swaine (one of the mates of the Discovery) to be Master in the room of Mr Johnstone.
The Three Bs. Brig were now building a small vessel here which they had brought out from England in frame, Mr. Alder, the Commander of her, had two other vessels in this expedition under him, one of these was now to the Northward for Furs, the other he expected to meet at the end of this season at the Sandwich Islands. They belong'd to a company of merchants at New Castle.
There was now here a Mr Wetherell, Master of the Matilda, one of the Botany Bay Transports, who was unfortunately wrecked upon some Rocks in the Lat: ---- and Long: ----. The crew, except the Chief Mate, were all saved and got safe to Otaheite about a month after we left that place. They had not remained long there before the Jenny, Captn: Baker of Bristol stopped there on his way to this Coast whither he was bound for Furs. The very confined size of his vessel, and the large crew he had, together with his not being provided with a superfluity of Provisions, would not admit of his taking more on board than Wetherell, his nephew and 4 or five seamen all of whom he brought to Nootka. The rest of the shipwrecked crew remain'd at Otaheite except three who took their boat and proceeded for Botany Bay., Captn. Baker having fitted out their Boat with different necessaries and provided them Provisions &c.
The Matilda had been at Botany Bay from whence after leaving her cargo of convicts she was bound on the Southern Whale Fishery and in her way call'd at Otaheite to refresh her crew, when about a week after leaving the Island, in the dead of night, she struck upon the Rocks where she was unfortunately wrecked, the Rocks had never been seen before. Seigr. Quadra with all that Benevolence & humanity that those who know him, knows he possesses, on hearing poor Wetherell's lamentable tale immediately took him under his protection, he supplied with money, invit'd him to make use of his house and Table as his own and at the same time offered to take him, a passenger, when he went himself to San Blas and provide him with an ample sum of money &c. to carry him home to England. Surely there cannot be a greater proof of the goodness of this man's character. Mr Wetherell wisely accepted these offers.
Everything being now got ready for hauling our vessel on the Beach, to look at her bottom, as we conceived she must have received some damage when she was on the Rocks in Queen Charlotte's Sound, the Yards and Topmasts were struck and at high water she was hauled upon the Beach, at this she had everything in her, it being conceived that the Tide wou'd Ebb sufficiently for what we wanted to do to her without taking anything out of her. At low water she was left nearly dry when we found that part of her stern and false keel was knocked off and some copper torn off her bottom so that it was necessary to get her on blocks to repair her and that she must be lightened something in order to do this. Accordingly Blocks were prepared and laid down, the Guns and all the Lumber were sent on shore together with Hawsers & Cables, and some few casks of Provisions and part of the Water in the Forehold was started. The next day the 31st at high water we hove her head on shore but could not get her on the Blocks. More Provisions were now got out of her and the following days, September the first, at high water we hove her on the Blocks. At low water the carpenters repaired that part of the Stern that was knock'd off, which done, the Blocks were shifted forward to get at the False Keel but the next Tides not being high enough, could not get her upon the Blocks.
'Twas now found that it would be necessary to get everything out of the Vessel, in order to get her high enough on the Blocks to repair the False Keel, we therefore on Tuesday the 4th, at high water hove her off and moored at a short distance from the Beach to be ready to get on next Spring Tides.
It being supposed that the business between Captn. Vancouver and Seigr. Quadra, on the parts of the respective Courts as to the giving up and receiving this place, _was only a matter of course_, that could produce no difficulties nor differences on either side, and that everything would be settled in due form; the Storeship shifted her berth nearer the shore and the Spanish Storehouses being emptied, parties were sent from the two vessels to help to unload her and house the Cargo in these Storehouses and Captn. Vancouver appointed Mr Orchard his clerk,[301] _Naval and Ordinance Storekeeper_.
About this time a party was made, of which I was one, to pay a visit to Maquinna the King of the Sound at his Village at Tashees, about 15 miles up the sound.[302] Four boats well mann'd and arm'd in case of accident set out on this expedition. The party consisted of Seigr. Quadra and his officers, Captns. Vancouver and Broughton and some of their officers. The weather was fine and the expedition was productive of much variety and amusement. Maquinna received us with all the welcome and Hospitality of a Prince and seem'd much pleased with the honor done him. On entering his house we were conducted up to the end of it where there were seats placed in a long range covered with clean mats. His wives (for he had no less than four) & his children all clean dressed were seated near this end of the house ready to receive us and along the sides within the house were ranged crowds of his subjects. Maquinna had prepared an entertainment for us which was to be exhibited after Dinner, in the meantime the two Captains made the Royal family some handsome presents consisting of Copper, Blue Cloth. Blankets &c.
The frame of Maquinna's house was amazingly large but only the habitable part of it was roof'd, this part was thirty yards long and eighteen broad. The roof was about 10 or 12 feet distant from the ground, and composed of large planks of Fir the ends of which were laid on Beams and were moveable at pleasure. But the size of the Beams and their supporters was what raised in us more surprise and astonishment from the labour they must have cost in placing them in their present situation than any thing else we saw among them. In this house were three of these Beams that run along the whole house, one along each side and the other in the middle. They were of an equal length and thickness. We measur'd one of them, and the dimensions were, in length, sixteen fathoms (or 32 feet) and in circumference twelve feet. They were supported at each extremity by Trees of much the same size on which were carved figures resembling (from the formation of the features) human figures but so large, and so horribly preposterous that they were frightful to appearance. The Beams were solid Trees without a Knot in them and varied very little in thickness at either end. At one end of this house were piles of Boxes and Chests, containing their Property and about a foot from the ground was a kind of Platform raised for the purpose of sleeping on & sitting on. It ran along one side of the house and across the ends and was about a yard wide. In a corner of the house was the Royal Kitchen, where the Cooks were busily employed in boiling Oil of different kinds, preparing Stews and Fricassees of Porpoise, Whale, Seal, and such delicious Meats. But the Cooks' trouble & skill was thrown away upon us for we had a far better dinner to sit down to. It was agreed on setting out that Don Quadra shou'd furnish the Eatables and Captn. Vancouver the Drinkables but one would have imagined that Seigr. Quadra's whole Household had been there. A Table was soon raised which was one of the broad planks from the roof of Maquinna's House and we were served up two Courses, _on Plate_, in a style little inferior to what we met with at the Governor's own house. After dinner Maquinna's Entertainment began. It was performed by men and chiefly consisted of a display of Warlike Evolutions. They were most fantastically dressed and I suppose in their best and most showy apparel which was for the most part all of English manufacture, such as Woolens, Blankets, Helmets and a number of other different wearable articles; indeed Maquinna's Brother was habited in a complete suit of Stage Armour that very likely was often the property of Hamlet's Ghost. Their faces were ludicrously painted in all colours among which Red & Black were the predominant and their Hair was richly perfumed with Fish Oil, powdered with Red Ochre & profusely adorned with the down of Birds' feathers. About twenty men, one after the other, and each waiting till the one before him had finished his part, and retired, first appear'd, every one having a musket in his hand. They entered running furiously, making horrid gestures, hallooing & dancing. After these, came in the same manner an equal number of men having long spears in their hands. Each performer was summoned by a signal given by a number of men who sat near the door and who with small bits of sticks smartly struck a long plank of wood, this was the signal. After each man had made a circuit before the place where we were seated they retired to the opposite end of the house and being now all assembled there they joined in a song which they executed with great exactness in keeping time and beating the ground together with their different weapons. Some of their songs were not devoid of Harmony. They were all of the Fierce & Warlike style and subject and one or two of them ended with a frightful Yell that to a strangers ear was truly terrific. Maquinna, dancing, now entered, dressed in a very rich garment of Otter skins with a round Black Hat, and a Mask on, and with a fanciful petticoat or apron, around which was suspended hollow tubes of Copper and Brass and which as he danced, by striking against each other made a wonderful tingling noise. After dancing thus some time in the course of which he play'd some dextrous Pantomimical tricks with his Hat & Mask, he retired and two more songs were sung by the Performers, to which they danced. A man then came forward holding up a Sea Otter Skin and after most pompously and vociferously proclaiming that it was a present from the King Maquinna to Captn. Vancouver, laid it at his feet, then retiring and producing another skin went through the same forms[303] at the conclusion of which they all set up the Finale song and thus ended this Entertainment in which there was something grand & curious and well worth coming the distance from Nootka to see alone. As it was by this time late in the Evening, and it would not only have been imprudent but unpleasant to pass the night here we took our departure from Tashees and after pulling a few miles down the arm stopped to pass the night at a clear convenient spot on the Northern short where we erected the small Marquee and other Tents we had brought with us, and with an excellent supper, and much conviviality & pleasantry concluded the day. The following (day) after Breakfast we set out for the Cove, after stopping to dinner on a very pleasant point of an Island and drinking Tea at Mowinna, the Village of Clyquawkini, a chief of the Sound, we got to the Cove about dusk in the evening.
This trip was productive of much amusement, pleasure & variety, every person contributed what they could to render it pleasing, which with the good cheer provided by Seigr. Quadra and Captn. Vancouver made it to be regretted that it was not of longer continuance.
On our arrival at this place it was settled that we (the Chatham) were to winter here, and Mr. Quadra intended to leave the Houses, Gardens &c., in good order for us, but just about this time it was reported that some difference had arose between Captn. Vancouver & Mr. Quadra respecting the right of possession of the English to Nootka, but in so trifling a light was it considered and so very little was it thought 'twould effect the settlement of the business in the manner we conceived that scarcely any notice was taken of it and business still went on the same as ever. Mr. Quadra was making preparation for his departure with all dispatch, and considerable progress had been made in unloading the Doedalus. I had forgot to mention that Seigr. Quadra spoke no language but Spanish nor Captn. Vancouver any but English. All business was carried by an interpreter, a gentleman of the name of Dobson, one of the Mates of the Doedalus who fortunately spoke and wrote tolerable good Spanish. I say fortunately for there was not any other person in the Cove that understood both Spanish and English except a servant of Mr. Quadra's and he could only _speak_ them.
Maquinna came down from Tashees on the 7th and Captn. Vancouver according to his promise to him exhibited in the evening some Fireworks on shore, that astonished the natives though in a much less degree than I expected, for such is their frigid inanimate disposition that nothing will alter the Muscles of their Countenances, and the greater part of those that were present at this sight showed as much unconcern and were as little moved by it as if nothing of the kind was going on.
8th. This morning arrived here the Spanish Ship (or as they call them) Frigate, Aransasu, commanded by Seigr. Don Camaano,[304] a Lieut. in the Royal Navy, one of His Catholic Majesty's Ships belonging to the Establishment at San Blas, their only Arsenal on the N. Western Coast of America. She came last from the Charlotte's Islands, which, together with some part of the Streights of Defonte they had this last summer employed surveying.
This Vessel was like all the other vessels in the Service of the King on this Coast to the Southward. They are used for little else than carrying stores &c., from San Blas to their settlements up the River Colorado & on the Coast of California. They are from two to five hundred Tons Burthen, built of Cedar, large, clumsy & ugly, carrying from about 16 to twenty Guns & from 100 to 130 men. They were formerly commanded by Pilots in the Spanish Service _of New Spain_, but since the Nootka disturbance, when Martinez (who then was only one of these Pilots) captured the British vessels, the Spanish Government understanding that the English were surprised, and displeased that a business of so important a nature should have been put in the hands of an officer of such low rank made an alteration in the establishment of the officers of these vessels, they sent out Lieutenants of the Royal Navy to command these Vessels, and the Pilots that before were the commanders became then the second in command on board, there are besides in the establishment two more Pilots, a Padre (or Priest) and a Surgeon. The Aransasu being on an expedition something out of their usual track had a Botanist on board her.
11th. This day arrived an American Brig call'd the Hope, commanded by a Mr Ingram,[305] on the Fur Trade. She had been one summer on the Coast and was now going strait to China with about 450 Skins. Mr Magee own'd a considerable share of this vessel.
The return of the Spring Tides, now fast approached and we began again to prepare for hauling on shore, the remainder of our water, which was of Thames river was started, the Spirits, Provisions, and in short every thing was landed out of her, and the Blocks were again laid down. On the 14th we endeavoured to get her on the Blocks but we found the water would not flow high enough for some days so that we again haul'd off. The same day the English Sloop Jackal arrived, a Mr. Stewart, Master, she is one of a Squadron of three vessels belonging to a company of London Merchants, the principal of which is Alderman Curtis, employ'd on this Coast on the Fur Trade, and afterwards intended to go on the Southern Fishery. The Commander of this expedition, a Mr Brown in a large ship call'd the Butterworth, was now, together with the third Vessel the Prince Lee Boo (a small sloop) to the Northward collecting their cargo. This was their first season, but they had as yet not been very successful. The Jackal came last from the Queen Charlotte's Islands.
On the 15th a very melancholy business[306] was discover'd. A fine little Spanish Boy--one of Mr Quadra's servants, who had been missing about eight & forty hours, was found most barbarously murdered in a small bight within the Cove where the Ships lay. A bloody knife was found lying near him. It is supposed he was decoyed thither by some of the Indians, under the pretence of gratifying an illicit intercourse with one of their women, but no reason could be assigned whatever for the taking away his life. No quarrel was known of that had happened between the Indians and him or any of the Spaniards, on the contrary the Indians enjoyed a happier time since the arrival of Mr Quadra among them that they had ever done since the Spaniards had been first there. None of his Cloathes were to be found but he was left naked with his throat cut in a dreadful manner from ear to ear. He had several stabs and cuts in his arms and on the backs of his hands, and the calves of his legs, and the fleshy parts of his thighs were most Butcherly cut out and supposed to be eaten by the savage perpetrators of this act.
When he was carried to the house, and the Indians heard of his being found, those that were in the Cove took instantly to their Canoes, and made out of the Cove, and in a few minutes not a canoe was to be seen, except one, which with four Natives happened to be on board the Hope Brig, but hearing the alarm, and observing the Spanish Boats coming in haste towards them, three of them jump'd into the canoe and got off, the remaining poor fellow had jump'd overboard from the Brig, and was endeavouring to escape by swimming, but he was taken up and carried on shore where he was detained a very short time being supposed innocent of the affair. Maquinna was sent for and Mr Quadra questioned him as to the murder, but declaring his total innocence of the transaction and his ignorance of it at all till he was sent for, nothing more was done and the matter rested. It is surely to be regretted that Mr Quadra's mildness and lenity would not suffer him proceeding further, and with more rigour in this inhuman affair, as it was thought by many, and even by all his own officers he ought, and might have done. But though I myself have not the most distant idea that the murder was committed by any persons but of the Native Indians, and that those parts of the Flesh cut out of the Legs & Thighs were eaten by them, it seems some of the Spaniards had their doubts of this, and did not think it improbable but that it was committed by a Mexican Indian, that had formerly belonged to the Spanish Brig but had deserted some time back and had not been heard of a good while. But this was far from being the general opinion, for the accounts of all that saw the Boy last pretty generally agreed that he was walking along the Beach towards the corner of the Cove with two Indians, and some of these said they saw him embark in a canoe from that place with these Indians and a woman and paddle towards the little Cove where he was afterwards found. But these good qualities, mildness and Lenity, that I have observed Mr Quadra possessed so considerable a share of, are often too mistaken, and are as frequently carried to as great extremes by some as the opposite qualities are by others. Here we may say Mr Quadra was _too good_ a man, he even treated the Indians more like companions than people that should be taught subjection. His house was open to them all and a considerable number of them were fed there every day. But such goodness is thrown away on these wretches, they are possessed of no affection, nor gratitude and the man that would profess himself your warm friend today would cut your throat & dine off you tomorrow.
(To be continued.)
FOOTNOTES:
[301] This clerk had been honored by having Port Orchard named for him.
[302] The Indians moved from one village to another according to the season. At present they live mostly at the village in Friendly Cove where the transactions referred to took place. The present chief proudly wears the same name Maquinna.
[303] Evidently the writer here left out some such phrase as "for Seignor Quadra." It may be depended upon that the Indians knew the equal rank and different nationality of the two white leaders and would treat them the same on such an occasion.
[304] His name is perpetuated by that given to the island lying between Whidby Island and the mainland. American geographers conferred the honor transferring the name from the waters explored by the Spaniard to the land he never saw.
[305] Reference is here made to Captain Joseph Ingraham, who had been at Nootka in 1788 as a mate with Kendrick and Gray. With the latter he returned to Boston in the Columbia and then accepted command of the Hope, sailing from Boston September 16, 1790. He was successful in the fur-trade, wintered in China and returned to Nootka as stated in 1792.
[306] Vancouver's brief account of this strange murder is not much different in conclusion. Both accounts leave the case shrouded in mystery.
BOOK REVIEWS
THE MINING ADVANCE INTO THE INLAND EMPIRE. By William J. Trimble, Professor of History and Social Science in North Dakota Agricultural College. (Madison, Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin, 1914. Pp. 254.)
This monograph, which was written as a thesis for the doctor's degree while Mr. Trimble was a fellow at the University of Wisconsin, is an epic in spirit, though a work of historical and economic science and expressed in prose. It is the thrilling and romantic story of a movement which, because it eventuated in the creation of civilized society and political order, is of kin with the swarming of the Teutonic peoples into the Roman Empire.
Specifically, it is a study of the beginnings of mining for precious ores in the territories now known as the Inland Empire, and also in parts of the regions adjoining this territory. In addition, it studies laws and institutions originating from the mining industry. It is a significant symptom of appreciation of the Pacific Northwest and especially of this inland district by old institutions of learning east of the Rockies.
Investigation of the subject was rendered feasible through use of such libraries as those of the University of Wisconsin, the University of California, the Province of British Columbia, the Historical Society of Oregon, the Historical Society of Montana, the University of Idaho and the private collections of Mr. Bagley of Seattle, Mr. Howay of New Westminster, Mr. Justice Martin of Victoria and others; and through the generous cooperation of personal authorities on our northwestern history as Professor Frederick J. Turner of Harvard University, Judge Howay of New Westminster, Mr. Elliott of Walla Walla and others. It opens with the statement that the decade following 1858 brought the expansion of American mining on a large scale for gold and silver into many parts of our mountainous area.
Who first discovered gold here is not known. But the vicinity of Fort Colville, Washington, saw the occurrence of a movement in 1855 which ushered in the golden age of the Inland Empire. The miners labored under measureless disadvantages. Supplies were scant. From Puget Sound there were no suitable roads. Steamboating on the Columbia had only begun. The Indians frequently proved a baffling obstacle at first. But the friendship of the Nez Perces for the whites and the policy of peace pursued by this tribe became a determining factor in the wars with the natives and the development of this new country. In justice to the Indians it is due to admit that conditions for which they were not responsible made the situation ripe for desperate measures on their part.
On November 23rd, 1857, the miners in the neighborhood of Colville effected a rude governmental organization. In 1858 the stern measures of Colonel George Wright brought just and lasting peace to the Indian country and cleared the way for pushing forward the frontier of civilization. In 1861 the final fixation of the boundary between British Columbia and Washington drew clearly the artificial line of different governments where, as Professor Trimble exhaustively and conclusively demonstrates, nature had made one country. Consequently, the political differentiation contributed to making the construction of the famous old Mullan Road in every way an important matter. This noble highway of empire, not unworthy of comparison with Rome's Appian Way, was completed in 1862 at a cost of $230,000 for its 624 miles of length.
In a few years the carriers on the Columbia enjoyed an immense and profitable traffic in the transportation of miners and their supplies. Professor Trimble's description of steamboating on the rivers of the Inland Empire is intensely vivid and interesting. In 1861 came the great movement of miners into these new fields. Among the most important of the localities they entered were the Nez-Perce and Salmon-River districts in northern Idaho.
A swiftly accelerating stream of travel started in 1861 for the new mines. A new era of development began. The Portland Oregonian then predicted that there would follow "tremendous stampedes from California, a flood of overland immigration and vastly increased business on the Columbia." The shrewd forecast of the sagacious editor was fulfilled to the foot of the letter.
Of the total yield from the mining districts in northern Idaho it is impossible to secure exact figures. A conservative estimate would put the production from the time of discovery until 1900 at about $50,000,000, of which probably $35,000,000 were obtained before 1870. In this connection Dr. Trimble rightly directs attention to the fact that the mines of eastern Oregon have not yet received the study that their importance as builders of that part of the state would warrant.
The mines of the Boise basin in Idaho not only were rich and easily worked, but were so situated as to encourage homemaking and the up-building of a permanent community. Soon towns with stable interests and staple industries arose. The mining founders of Boise showed themselves to be exceptionally enterprising and farsighted men.
As the Caribou, British Columbia, mines had shown that in placer fields the individual, once a camp was established, could do little except labor for some one else or in lieu of this prospect for new fields, some form of organized or cooperative effort being essential to the development of mining, even in its simpler stages; so now the War-Eagle quartz-mines of Idaho, remote and newly born, called for outside capital and for science.
The mining advance gave occasion for the creation of British Columbia, Idaho and Montana as political units. In considering the societies that owe their origin to mining it is essential to remember that almost from the moment of discovery cooperation is indispensable in the development of gold-fields and also that the individualism of placer-mining frequently is greatly exaggerated. In the period now under review "the lone prospector" was much of a myth. This and similar seemingly small matters are among the many observed by Dr. Trimble's microscopic eye, which also is not wanting in telescopic range, that show how thoroughly he has surveyed his field and with what scrupulous science he has interpreted all his facts.
Prospecting generally was done by organized parties numbering anywhere from five to fifty men. These companies consisted of experienced miners, who usually had already mined in California. Careful preparation in advance was made. An expedition might travel for weeks or even for many months, studying the geology of the land as carefully as professors from great universities and prospecting wherever promising indications presented themselves. When diggings that seemed to afford reasonable likelihood of profit were found, claims were staked out. The plan of the miners' camp corresponded more closely to that of a town than to that of a country district. This feature is another of several which prove that combination, cooperation and organization formed basic features in the work of the miner. It is not the least of the merits of Dr. Trimble's monograph that it enables and in fact compels the lay reader unacquainted with the ways of miners to see that their social and governmental activities were a seed of the political commonwealth and rendered its existence and growth inevitable.
The discoverers of pay-dirt as a rule had to return for supplies to some commercial center. Here the news of a find invariably leaked out and generated a stampede to the new field. Merchants and packers pushed freight-caravans ahead with strenuous but reasoned energy. The man who rushed a well supplied set of teams into a new community was certain to reap great profits. Before much work was performed by the miners at their Eldorado they held a mass-meeting and organized the community. A judge, recorder and sheriff were elected, and laws for the camp enacted. The political instinct of the English and the Americans for government and ordered society was prompt to manifest itself.
Men who had been schooled in the Californian camps not only had learned to mine skillfully, but turned spontaneously to the form of political organization that the mines of that golden commonwealth had developed. This was the case no less in British than in American communities. Work on claims ceased and universally or almost universally in winter, but might stop at other times, such as seasons of drouth, when want of water handicapped operations. The arrangement gave the miners an opportunity to visit home or to pass the winter at such towns as Boise, Lewiston or Portland. Men seldom thought of making homes for themselves at the Mining camps. But a considerable number would usually remain there through cold weather, and in deep diggings actual mining could still be carried on.
The miner's lot was a most laborious life. It did not consist in picking large, loose nuggets from streams and in spending most of the time on fun or adventure. There were cabins to build--and the skill of American axmen, especially of the Missourians, was greatly admired by English observers--ditches to be dug, flumes and sluices to be constructed, and lumber to be obtained.
The skill of the pioneer Californians in every industry stood out preeminently. Everywhere their methods and judgment were held in high esteem. At Orofino they superciliously sneered that the Willamette farmers in the mines did not know how to sift gold from the dirt, but the Oregonians could have retorted that they were not Californian experts at losing their gold in gambling. But placer mining then, in spite of such skill as that of the Californians, was wasteful work. Men mined to make the maximum of money in the minimum of time. The enormous expensiveness of operation and transportation rendered it profitable to work only the richest gravel. In 1868 Ross Browne, who knew mining conditions better than any other American then living, declared that "since the discovery of our mines there has been an unnecessary loss of more than $300,000,000 of precious metals. The question arises whether it is not the duty of government to prevent, so far as may be consistent with individual rights, this waste of a common heritage in which not only ourselves but posterity are interested."
The early mining communities whose economic basis was placer mines were unstable, and this is a fact of social importance. For the purpose of overcoming this instability business men, the more substantial miners and governmental authorities everywhere turned their attention to quartz. Working quartz claims and building quartz mills required the use of capital and of corporate methods. The significant development of mining in the Inland Empire during 1860-70 consisted in the supersedure of the surface methods of the placer by quartz mining and in the working of deep placers by corporations. The individual working in informal organization had free play, but his day was passing. Individualism began to become submerged, capital to become foremost and corporate methods to enter.
What was the total of the product from the labor and capital invested in the mining advance? Until 1867 there was no governmental attempt in the Inland Empire, though there was in British Columbia, to gather statistics. Express companies, however, especially the Wells-Fargo, were a fairly trustworthy source of information. George M. Dawson's estimate for British Columbia and Ross Browne's for the Inland Empire are regarded by Dr. Trimble as falling well inside the truth. British Columbia during 1858-67 inclusive is believed to have produced $26,110,000 of the precious metals; Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington together from the beginning of mining to the close of 1867 to have yielded $140,000,000. Montana led with $65,000,000. Idaho followed with $45,000,000 and Oregon with $20,000,000. Washington brought up the rear with $10,000,000. After deducting the probable production in western Oregon, because this territory lies outside the regions considered by Professor Trimble, the grand total for British Columbia and these four American commonwealths during the decade of 1858-67 appears to have aggregated $156,110,000.
In order to value this stupendous yield aright, it must be borne in mind that nearly all of it was an economic surplus and also in such shape as to be transformed with ease into the commodities of civilization. Consequently civilization's material body sprang forth full panoplied from those early mining communities. This aspect of the mining advance--a phase too frequently forgotten these days--gave the first civilization in the Inland Empire a compelling power and a vitalness that were out of all proportion to the relatively small number of the miners who originated that civilization. This life and energy contributed greatly to the swift development of this Inland Empire after the railroads arrived. The production of so huge and mobile an economic surplus as $156,110,000 of the precious metals helps to explain the greatness of the immigration in the eighties into these mining commonwealths. The farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant and the banker of the Pacific Northwest during the past generation owe a great debt to the miner of the sixties of the last century.
Nor these only. The nation also is deeply indebted to the economic development wrought here by mining in those far days. The Inland Empire's production of gold during the terrible years of 1861-5, when the republic was pouring out blood and treasure like water to save its life, had great effect in supplying those financial sinews of war on which so largely depended the credit of the United States.
Thus Dr. Trimble threshes out to the last straw the bearings of mining upon government in the Inland Empire, upon agriculture, grazing, transportation and many other interests. What he has done is really to write a history of civilization in these states during their intermediate era.
Every page presents evidence of his competence and trustworthiness. He inspires confidence thro his candid confession that "the student of the history of a section may overrate its importance. * * * It may be that revaluation by comprehensive historians will be necessary." There speaks the historical conscience that rates loyalty to the fact as the supreme good in writing history. But this student has done his work so judicially and with such scholarship, that it will not require to be done again. It is an honor to him and his university and an invaluable service to the Pacific Northwest.
FREDERIC PERRY NOBLE, PH. D. Spokane, Wa., June, 1914.
* * * * *
MASTERS OF THE WILDERNESS. By Charles Bert Reed, M. D. (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1914. Pp. 144.)
This beautifully printed and illustrated little book should find many readers among those who care for the beginnings of American history. Its scope and purpose are well revealed by the brief table of contents as follows: The Masters of the Wilderness, a study of the Hudson's Bay Company from its origin to modern times; The Beaver Club, some social aspects of the fur trade; A Dream of Empire, the adventures of Tonty in old Louisiana.
Dr. Reed has assembled his material in very readable and entertaining fashion. For the benefit of those who wish to pursue the subjects further he appends a brief but serviceable bibliography. The book is one of the Chicago Historical Society's Fort Dearborn Series.
EDMOND S. MEANY.
THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL INTERNAL TAX HISTORY FROM 1861 TO 1871. By Harry Edwin Smith, Ph. D., Instructor in Economics, Cornell University. (Boston, and New York; Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914. Pp. XIX, 357.)
This useful and valuable volume is one in the series which owes its existence to the generosity of Hart, Schaffner and Marx, of Chicago, and the one which received the first prize of $1,000 for the year 1912. Dr. Smith came to the University of Washington this fall to take up work in connection with the newly established courses in commerce. His book is a carefully worked out and scholarly presentation of a difficult and involved subject. The treatment of the subject by Dr. Smith has made easy for the student to get access to the facts for they are all grouped about the separate and single phases of the subject. Following an introduction a chapter is devoted to each subject, as for example the "Direct Tax," "The Income Tax," "The Inheritance Tax," and "Stamp Taxes."
The closing chapters, XI and XII, present concretely "The Influence of Internal Taxes on the Import Duties," and the "Administration" of the whole system. Students interested in these subjects owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Smith for the masterly and painstaking way he has made available a world of badly scattered material. Nineteen statistical tables give in graphic way the statistical side of the study. An exhaustive bibliography and an adequate index complete the volume.
EDWARD MCMAHON.
* * * * *
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE GOVERNMENT IN CALIFORNIA, 1846-1850. By Cardinal Goodwin, M. A. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914. Pp. 359. $2.00.)
This book covers the period of California history from 1846 to 1850, dividing the period into three parts. It deals first with the period from the American acquisition of the territory to the meeting of the constitutional convention; then follows the history of the constitutional convention; and the last part deals with the organization of the State government.
Much new material has been used and consequently many accepted facts and interpretations have been proven fallacious. One of these errors was the great influence of New York on the constitution; but Goodwin finds that Iowa contributed about seventy of the hundred and thirty-six articles and New York only twenty. He also has found new material which explains the entrance of the slavery question into the State: a Texan using his slaves for mining claim registry.
The book is well written; it is, however, a bit broken and irregular in its story through following carefully the chronology of events. The conclusion is very disappointing as a resume of the whole book, of the valuation of the new material and of the events.
J. N. BOWMAN.
* * * * *
PROCEEDINGS OF THE WASHINGTON BANKERS' ASSOCIATION. NINETEENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION, 1914. (Spokane, Shaw & Borden, 1914., Pp. 232.)
This volume, compiled by W. H. Martin, the Secretary of the Association, gives the Proceedings of the 1914 Convention, held in Walla Walla. All similar records of the proceedings of Washington associations become a part of the institutional history of the state. Of special interest in the present volume is an article on the History of the Walla Walla Valley by Allen H. Reynolds.
THE SEATTLE MUNICIPAL WATER PLANT; HISTORICAL, DESCRIPTIVE, STATISTICAL. By John Lamb. (Seattle, Moulton Printing Company, 1914. Pp. 316.)
This report upon the Seattle Municipal Water Plant is a model for clearness and completeness. It is well printed and well bound and contains many excellent illustrations. It gives a surprisingly full account of the early water systems antedating municipal control.
THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. A PHILOSOPHICAL INTERPRETATION OF AMERICAN HISTORY. By Roland G. Usher, Ph. D.. author of "Pan-Germanism," Etc. (New York, The Century Co. 1914. Pp. 413.)
An attempt by a well known writer to present for the general reader a lucid account of the results of American History without over-burdening him with the details and processes by which these results were obtained.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. (Urbana, Illinois, 1913-1914.)
Three of these Studies have been received: The West in the Diplomacy of the American Revolution by Paul Chrisler Phillips, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of History in the University of Montana; The Development of Banking in Illinois, 1817-1863, by George William Dowrie, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of Economics in the University of Michigan; A History of the General Property Tax in Illinois by Robert Murray Haig, Ph. D., Instructor in Economics in Columbia University.
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By Matthew Page Andrews, M. A. (Philadelphia and London, J. B. Lippincott Company. Pp. XVII. 378, XLVIII.)
A text book for schools in which the subject matter is up to date but the arrangement, proportions and printing are decidedly behind the times.
WRITINGS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. Edited by Worthington C. Ford. (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1914. Vol. 3, 1801-1810. Pp. 555. $3.50 net.)