McLoughlin and Old Oregon/Chapter 1
McLoughlin and Old Oregon
I
AN AMERICAN ON THE COLUMBIA
1832
SIXTY years ago, on a green terrace sloping up from the north bank of the Columbia, not far from the mouth of the Willamette, lay old Fort Vancouver. It might be likened to the Dutch stockade at New Amsterdam, or to a rude stronghold of central Europe in the middle ages, with a little village clustered under its guns.
Fort Vancouver was fortified in primitive fashion. There was a stout palisade of fir posts, twenty feet high, sharpened at both ends and driven into the ground. There were thick double-ribbed and riveted gates in front and rear, ornamented with brass padlocks and ponderous keys. A grim old three-storied log tower formed a bastion at the northwest corner, bristling with portholes and cannon. Some rough-hewn stores, magazines, and workshops were ranged inside the enclosure, with an open court in the middle where the Indians brought their game and peltries. Directly opposite the main entrance stood the governor's residence, a somewhat pretentious two-story structure of heavy timber, mortised Canadian fashion, and painted white. Here Dr. John McLoughlin, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company west of the Rocky Mountains, and his chief aide Douglas, afterward knighted Sir James, first governor of British Columbia, dispensed hospitality after the fashion of Saxon thanes or lairds of a Highland castle.
One autumn evening in 1832 a salute was fired at the gates of Fort Vancouver. "Some belated trapper," said the traders in the hall. Guests were luxuries too rare to be anticipated in the far-away Oregon wild. At a word from Governor McLoughlin the porter unlocked the gate and eleven strangers entered, clad all in leather, dripping with rain, and garnished with as many weapons as Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. Dr. McLoughlin fixed a keen eye upon the wayfarers as Bruce ushered them into the hall.
"Wyeth is my name," said the tall, wiry leader. "Nathaniel J. Wyeth, from Boston: on a trading trip to the Columbia."
"Bless me!" cried the amazed McLoughlin, extending his hand. "Bless me, 't is a marvellous journey. Few could survive it. Welcome to Fort Vancouver."
Not since Astor's defeat in 1812 had any American tried to trap or trade in Oregon. Unmolested for twenty years, the British fur-traders had reared their palisades and filled their forts with furs. That the young republic on the Atlantic shore might stretch her fingers westward, that a highway might be found across the mountains these were vague contingencies!
Despite his travel-worn garb, Dr. McLoughlin recognized an honest man in the tall, blond trader from Yankee-land. He and his followers were assigned to quarters among the fur-trading knights at Fort Vancouver. All winter Captain Wyeth lived at the fort, studying methods and evolving plans for future action. All winter Captain Wyeth watched for a ship that never came. In March he started back on the long journey overland to Boston. The ship had been lost at sea. A second was despatched and the Yankee captain reappeared on the Columbia.
Within sound of the morning guns of Fort Vancouver Captain Wyeth set up a log fort, palisaded like that of his rival, on the beautiful island of Wapato, at the mouth of the Willamette River. Out of that ship, the "May Dacre," he brought goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, Hawaiians. The flitting forms of "the Bostons," as the Indians called them, in their leather pantaloons and white wool hats, was a constant menace to the occupants of the British fur fort. It brought a breath of that old battle when Hudson's Bay and Northwesters fought in the North. While they treated the frank and manly Bostonian with politeness, with kindness, and even generosity, they watched him like eagles and shadowed him like spirits. He built Fort Hall on the Snake; they set up Fort Boisé to draw away his trade. Did he send his men to trap or buy beaver? The Hudson's Bay men were there before him, behind him, around him. They put up the value of furs to a ruinous figure. They sold Indian goods at fifty per cent less than he could afford. Out of an annual fund put by for the purpose they harassed him on every hand. "Competition is war, war to the knife, fierce and deadly," but in this case as usual, it was "concealed under gentlemanly foils and masks and padded gloves."
Neighborly offices passed between the forts. Governor McLoughlin sent over presents of fresh vegetables. Wyeth paddled over on rainy nights to join the jolly boys in Bachelors' Hall. Many and many an hour he discussed history and government with Dr. McLoughlin. But underlying all their intercourse was the discovery of each other's plans friendship and strategy. Wyeth concealed his schemes. Nevertheless, whenever his men were hauling their boats down to the water the ever-present Hudson's Bay men were already launched and met the Indians first.
An unprecedentedly rainy winter came upon the Columbia. Heavy mists enveloped the hills; the clouds came down among the trees; drip, drip, drip went the rain, surpassing the deluge of forty days and forty nights. Soft Chinooks blew up from the sea, snow slid down from the Cascade tips, the very Columbia conspired, creeping at dead of night into Wyeth's fort and soaking his precious bales. In spite of calm and cool philosophy, Captain Wyeth saw his inevitable disadvantage against the hereditary power of the Hudson's Bay Company, with its hundreds of employes in practice for generations. Bankruptcy shook its finger in his face. His handsome fortune and the credit of Boston merchants were invested. Still the fish refused to tangle themselves in his nets. The Blackfeet killed his trappers, stole his furs. Out of two hundred men, one hundred and sixty had been killed or had deserted to the rival. Even the superstitious Indians refused to trade, because, they said, long ago a Boston ship brought the deadly fever that killed all the people on Wapato.
Once Wyeth referred to Dr. McLoughlin's hereditary influence with the Indians.
"My hereditary influence?" echoed the doctor. "Bless you, Mr. Wyeth, bless you, I had no hereditary influence! I made the Indians fear me. I compelled obedience. I studied justice. I cultivated confidence. It takes time, Mr. Wyeth, it takes time."
"True, Doctor, but you have a great corporation behind you with unlimited capital. Your servants have intermarried with the tribes to hold the trade. Our policies are diametrically opposed. Yours is to perpetuate savagism, to keep Oregon as a game preserve, a great English hunting park. Mine would be to fill it with a civilized people."
"How can they get here, Mr. Wyeth? Even India is not so far. Oregon is the very end of the world, a whole year's voyage around Cape Horn or Good Hope. Shut off by rock-ribbed mountains, deserts, savages, the ocean, how can they get here?"
"Overland from the United States," answered the Bostonian.
Dr. McLoughlin laughed incredulously. "When you have levelled the mountains, cultivated the desert, annihilated distance, then and not before. Besides, the United States is too young, too sparsely settled. Look at her miles of unoccupied Mississippi Valley. No, no, no, Mr. Wyeth, if Oregon is ever colonized it will be by sea, from England. We shall not live to see it, but our children may."
The doctor's ruddy face was thoughtful. He knew the secret of Wyeth's discontent. It pained him to feel that Captain Wyeth attributed in any way his failure to the company. The doctor fidgeted with his cane. He spoke his thought.
"What more can I do for you, Mr. Wyeth consistently with my duty to my company? Have I not treated you kindly? Have I not given your men work when your own plans failed? As for civilization, was I not glad to engage your lad, Solomon Smith, to teach our boys and girls? Did I not hail with joy your good missionary, Jason Lee, and help to establish him in the valley?"
Wyeth was silent. He could find no fault with Dr. McLoughlin; and yet Dr. McLoughlin had ruined him. The doctor walked up to him. He had a very affectionate, winning manner. McLoughlin, one of the most urbane gentlemen in the world, moreover really liked Captain Wyeth, and was sorry to see him driven to the wall. He took his hand as a father would.
"Business is business, Mr. Wyeth. I like your open, manly way. I find you fair in contracts. I believe you to be a gentleman and an honest man. You support morality and encourage industry. If you will come over to us Wyeth, yourself to the fort join us then I, myself, will forward your credentials to the house in London by the next express. What say you?"
The sturdy Bostonian reflected, then simply answered, "I cannot join you, Doctor."
"Then I regret that I can do nothing for you," answered the doctor, suddenly stiff and distant and yet with sadness in his eye. "You see my duty to my company forbids it."
Wyeth looked into the benevolent face. Slowly he added, "But I will sell."
So Nathaniel J. Wyeth sold to the Hudson's Bay Company for what it was willing to give, and left the country in defeat.
But though he left, an important man remained. That man was Jason Lee, the missionary.
Long ago, when Lewis and Clark entered the Flathead country, the high chief looked in their pale faces and said, "They are chilled. See how cold their cheeks are; build fires, bring robes."
Before the blazing fires, wrapped in soft buffalo-robes, the white men's cheeks grew red. Perspiration burst from every pore. The robes slipped off, but the solicitous Indians kept putting them back. General Clark then arose and spoke to the kind-hearted Flatheads of a great people toward the rising sun. "They worship the Great Spirit," he said. "He has made them strong and brave and rich."
"Does he give them wigwams and much buffalo?" asked the Flatheads.
"Yes," answered the general.
Lewis and Clark smoked the pipe of friendship and passed on. The Nez Percé Flatheads talked around their fires. A Hudson's Bay trader came.
"Do you know about the Great Spirit? "inquired the childlike Flatheads.
"Yes; you can learn about him at our school at Red River."
The chief sent three sons to the distant Red River. When they returned they taught their people a rudimentary form of worship.
A great religious movement passed among the Nez Perce Flatheads and on up into the Shushwap country on the Fraser. Old traders record it in their memoirs. By and by an American trapper came.
"Do you know about the Great Spirit?" still inquired the childlike Flatheads.
"Yes," answered the trapper, "there is a book that tells about him."
"Where can we find the book?" insisted the Flatheads.
"Oh, away off in a distant city where the traders go."
The Indians held a council and decided to send for the white man's wonderful book.
After a long and weary wandering two Indians entered the frontier city of St. Louis and asked for General Clark. There was much wa-wa (talk-talk) and inquiry for the book. The people gathered and curiously eyed these representatives of a tribe a thousand miles beyond the farthest that had ever appeared in the streets of St. Louis. Shawnees, Pawnees, Arapahoes, Sioux, had come, but never before a Flathead, never before anybody inquiring for a book of the Great Spirit.
General Clark was interested in Indians, in furs, in lands, in wars, and treaties. He banqueted these Indian ambassadors. He sent them with his servant to see the lions of the city. They visited cathedrals and shops and shows, but found no book. At last, tired and disappointed, they turned back and sought the way to their own country.
"Is it true that those Indians came all that distance for a book of the Great Spirit?" said Catlin, the Indian artist.
"They came for that and nothing else," said General Clark.
A young clerk in one of the St. Louis fur-rooms wrote to his friends in the East. It found its way into the papers. The Macedonian cry swept like a trumpet summons through the churches.
"Who will carry the book of the Great Spirit to the Flatheads?"
The chief luminary of the Methodist conference answered: "I know but one man—Jason Lee."
Like the voice of God, Jason Lee heard the Nez Percé" call—he thrilled. In a day he tore himself from the entreaty of friends to enter upon a journey that was not ended in a year. With his nephew, Daniel Lee, and two other assistants, he accompanied Wyeth on that second trip in 1834. So came the missionary to the realm of the king of the Columbia. And that tall, angular Puritan, born just over the Canadian border, was just the man Dr. McLoughlin wanted for his settlement at Champoeg. The doctor set his plate beside his own, and before them all discussed the question of location.
"You have no call to go up there among the Flatheads, Mr. Lee, where we cannot protect you. We have plenty of Indians right here. Above the Falls of the Willamette there lies a beautiful valley. Besides the Indians there is a settlement of French Canadians, with their Indian wives and half-breed children. Those Canadians are your own countrymen, Mr. Lee, far from the advantages of school and church. Then, too, I can assist you here with my boats and my influence. Up there in the Flathead country you will be far cut off from a base of supplies and from communication with the civilized world."
These arguments impressed the missionary. Of course Dr. McLoughlin wanted his people at Champoeg instructed. Still more he wanted the mission a dependency of the fort.
Lee went up the Willamette and found a valley fair as the happy land of Rasselas, set between the hills. "I will build here," he said. Out of Wyeth's ship, the "May Dacre," Lee unloaded his supplies, and for a trifle engaged Indian canoe-men to transport them to the site of the future mission.
"I warn you against these missionaries," said John Dunn, a clerk in the Indian shop at Fort Vancouver. "I warn you. Look out for them. They are very meek and humble now; but the time will come when they will rise up to question your authority, here, and even your right to Vancouver itself."
"Tut, tut, tut!" laughed the liberal doctor. "Do you grudge the poor Indian a chance? For my part, I think the missionaries show a very good spirit in coming to this neglected coast."