Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 8/Number 3
THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
Oregon Historical Society.
[The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors to its pages.
THE VANCOUVER RESERVATION CASE.
A LEGAL ROMANCE.
By Thomas M. Anderson.
As legal proceedings rarely interest the general public, it may seem presumptuous to assume that many will care to read of a law-suit long since decided. It is only from the fact that the Vancouver case brought to .light a singularly interesting episode in Oregon and Washington history, that I venture to give an account of that contest between church and state. Of course, with us the government only deals with a church locally as a legal corporation. The case I will attempt to review concerned property rights only. But the testimony of some of the old pioneer witnesses in the trial was so original and picturesque that it gave a color of romance to dry legal proceedings.
Twenty years ago the Catholic Bishop of the State of Washington brought a suit against the commanding General of the Department of the Columbia and the Commandant of Vancouver Barracks, which involved the title to 430 acres of land within the Post reservation and 210 acres in the city of Vancouver.
The Bishop, as a corporation sole, claimed this land under an act of Congress (the organic act of Oregon Territory), approved August 14, 1848, which provided: "That title to land not exceeding 640 acres now occupied as missionary stations among the Indian tribes in said Territory, together with improvements thereon, be confirmed and established in the several religious societies to which said missionary stations respectively belong." The Bishop made his claim for a mission which he designated "The Mission of St. James."
The contention between the government and mission took tangible shape in February, 1887, when the Post Commander directed the officer of the day to remove the representatives of the mission beyond the Post limits. That this was done, manu moliter imposuit, may be assumed, as it was carried out by one of the most courteous of officers, General, then Captain, Daniel Burke of the Fourteenth Infantry. This apparently harsh proceeding was a tactical move of the Commandant to compel the Bishop to bring suit, as that would throw the burden of proof upon him.
We must now hark back in history, to give an account of the events which led up to this opening of active hostilities.
When Major Hathaway came to the old Hudson Bay Post, with his two batteries of artillery, in 1849, he found in the rear of the stockade an unoccupied church and a little log hut. When he applied to Mr. Ogden, then Chief Factor, for a room in which to store some articles, he offered to rent him the church. Major Hathaway did not want the church, but his Quartermaster did rent and occupy for a time the little log house.
To understand this subject, it is necessary to recall in this connection certain historical facts, because the law of the case depended on points of international law, treaty stipulations, and on certain well authenticated, but often forgotten, incidents in the history of the Northwest.
We must keep in mind that our right of sovereignty over this coast is founded on our claims of discovery and occupancy, and not on the Louisiana Purchase. The Yankee skipper, Gray, was the first to sail into the river, which he named after his bark, the Columbia; Lewis and Clark were the first white men to navigate the river from the mountains to the sea; John Jacob Astor of Waldorf established the first trading post west of the Rocky Mountains at Astoria in 1811. During the War of 1812, the Astor Company was supplanted THE VANCOUVER RESERVATION CASE. 221 by the Canadian Northwest Company, which was absorbed by the Hudson Bay Company in 1821. This company estab- lished its headquarters post on the Columbia six miles above the mouth of the Willamette. It was the policy of those who represented this corporation to hold the territory in which they operated, as a great hunt- ing preserve. Their factors were therefore ordered to dis- courage agriculture and to encourage trapping, while immi- gration was avowedly antagonized. This policy was distaste- ful to Dr. McLoughlin, their Chief Factor in the Northwest. Nevertheless he had to execute his orders with such mitigation of their severity as he could afford to make. Pro pelle cutem was the motto of the company, and one of the jests of the time was that the Hudson Bay people thought more of the skin of a beaver than of the soul of a savage. This cannot be deemed a just reproach, as the Hudson Bay Company was a commercial corporation and not an altruistic association. But if there ever was a man who rose above mercenary considerations Dr. McLoughlin was that man. Upon the resignation of the Church of England Chaplain in 1838, Dr. McLoughlin applied to the Catholic Bishop of Quebec to send him priests to act in that capacity. In compli- ance with this request, Fathers Blanchet and Demers were sent to him and duly installed as chaplains of the Vancouver trading post of the company. One of the remote consequences of this proceeding was the law-suit to which your attention is now invited. As these priests were assigned quarters within the stockade of the pest and paid a stipend of 100 a year, the Hudson Bay Company claimed that they were servants of the company and not carrying on an independent mission. It is in evidence for them that the Archbishop of Quebec ordered them to attend to the spiritual wants of the servants of the Hudson Bay Company and to establish a mission on the Cowlitz, a river emptying into the Columbia forty miles below the fort. These priests, and others who followed them, did establish missions on the Cowlitz, at French Prairie on the Willamette, at Nesqually on Puget Sound, and many minor 222 THOMAS M. ANDERSON. migratory missions among the Indian tribes. They were brave, zealous, devout and self-denying men, who worked hard and did much good. On the other hand, there was ample testimony to prove that the priests were paid 100 a year by the company for their services ; that they ate at the company's table; slept in its houses; officiated among its dependents; and that finally the company, in 1846, built them a little chapel just outside the main fort. To get our historical bearing we must turn back to an. earlier date. After the close of our last war with Great Britain, both countries claimed the Pacific Coast, from the north line of California to 54 degrees 40 minutes north latitude. The English claim was based on the discoveries of Drake, Cook and Vancouver and the explorations of Mackenzie and Frazer. The basis of our claim has been stated. As early as 1834 American Protestant missionaries and a few settlers had entered the country south of the Columbia. North of the river the country was claimed by the Hudson Bay people. There were no Protestant missionaries among them. The Catholic missionaries were French priests from Canada. The Oblate Fathers, to which order Blanchet, De- mers and Brouillet belonged, took service under the fur company and became zealous partisans. When Mr. Polk became President, he was at first inclined to support our claim to the entire coast. The people -of the Middle West were enthusiastic and strenuous in their demands for the whole of the old "Oregon Country." Whitman's daring ride had impressed the imagination of all. "Fifty- four-forty or fight" was the war cry. Benton, Allen and Linn were the friends of the Northwest in the Senate. But the annexation of Texas induced the Polk administration to com- promise on the 49 degree parallel. Had it not been for this unfortunate concession, the Pacific Ocean would now be an American lake. In 1849 the Hudson Bay Company claimed control over a reservation of twenty-five miles by ten on the Columbia and exercised a kind of vague authority over all country north THE VANCOUVER RESERVATION CASE. 223 of the river. In 1838 the license of the Hudson Bay Company had been extended by the British government for twenty-one years; this would make its privileges terminate in 1859. So, when the military came, the Chief Factor claimed a right for the company to remain and carry on its business under a provision in the treaty of 1846, by which the United States agreed to respect the possessory rights of the company until the termination of its license. Our government claimed its right of sovereignty over this region, not from the treaty of 1846 but from antecedent discovery and occupancy. It fol- lowed, therefore, that its donation and pre-emption statutes were enacted for American citizens and not for the gentlemen and adventurers of the Hudson Bay Company. In the meantime, the priests had been acting as chaplains at Vancouver while missions had been established at the Cowlitz, Nesqually and on the Tualatin plains. Until Dr. McLoughlin .left the service of the Hudson Bay Company, the priests had held their services within the stockade ; but Sir James Douglas, who was a zealous Church of England man, moved the Catholic congregation outside the fort, and read church services to his Protestant followers in his own quarters. At the same time he built a chapel for the priests and continued to pay them their 100 a year. There were also a number of Kanakas working for the company, and they also had a preacher, Kanaka William, who held services for his dusky followers in a cabin near the Catholic chapel. When Clark County was organized in 1850, some citizens tried to locate their county seat within the limits of the post. They divided the lower grounds of the garrison into town lots and sold them at public auction for $1.60 each, and then applied to the first territorial court for an injunction to restrain the Post Commandant (Major Ruff) and the Post Quartermaster (Captain Ingalls) from constructing the post. The injunction, after due argument, was refused, and the city of Columbia was not built. Prior to the treaty of 1846, Catholic church administration was under the Bishop of Quebec, subsequently it was trans224 THOMAS M. ANDERSON. ferred to the diocese of St. Louis. In 1853, Bishop Blanchet was made Bishop of Nesqually, with a jurisdiction co-exten- sive with the new Territory of Washington. In the meantime, Lieutenant- Colonel Bonneville, Fourth Infantry, had assumed command, and one of his first acts was to invite Father Brouil- let to take quarters in the post. There is a tradition, which, however, cannot be verified by positive proof, that Colonel Bonneville himself suggested to the Catholics the idea of claiming title to the reservation. In May, 1853, Bishop Blanchet filed his claim, but no action was taken on it until the expiration of the Hudson Bay license in 1859, when the Commissioner of the Land Office acknowledged the claim and ordered the land surveyed and set off to it. Against this Governor Stevens protested in behalf of the military, the town of Vancouver and the heirs of Amos Short. Then followed a number of reports and an extended correspondence, until finally Attorney- General Smith decided that the Mission of St. James was only entitled to the ground upon which the church stood. Acting on this opinion, the Secretary of the Interior tendered the church a patent for forty-four one-hundredth parts of an acre, in August, 1883. This was declined. A languid and intermittent correspondence was kept up, as the claim had gotten into the circumlocution office of the Tite Barnacles. All that could be learned was that the case was suspended on questions of courtesy between the Interior Department and the War De- partment. The mission could well afford to wait. Witnesses die, the heads of departments change, but the church lives on in secula saeculorum. Then, too, the padres were getting along much better with the military than they had with the Hudson Bay barons. Colonel Bonneville had brought them back and al- lowed them to enclose five acres for their own use in the reservation. With his consent a house was built for the Bishop and gardens and orchards were planted. Indeed, Bonneville and Brouillet got along as pleasantly and convivially together as Robin Hood and Friar Tuck. Then, under the administraTHE VANCOUVER RESERVATION CASE. 225 tion of Major A. J. Dallas, another Catholic building a two- story frame was erected for the College of the Holy Angels. If some of the early Post Commanders seemed to be indif- ferent as to the rights of the government, it is only fair to say that no one back in the fifties could realize that in fifty years lots would be selling in the city of Vancouver. After the lapse of thirty-nine years, the spell was at last broken by the Post Commander ejecting the teachers and pupils of the so-called Holy Angels College, tearing down the fences around its enclosure, and taking possession of Heaven's half -acre itself. This trespass on the mission grounds left its representatives no alternative but to ask for an injunction from the courts. To secure this they had to bring suit, and in so doing had to set forth in detail their title to the property. The suit was brought under the title of: "The corporation of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Nesqually vs. John Gibbon, Thomas M. Anderson and Richard Zeatman." These de- fendants, representing the government, were the Department Commander and the Commandant and Quartermaster of the Post of Vancouver Barracks. First came an order restraining the military authorities from exercising control over that part of the reservation in dispute and giving twenty days in which to show cause why this injunction should not be made perpetual. Accordingly the Department and Post Commander went to Olympia to show cause why. There they met the United States District Attorney, who had been instructed to intervene in behalf of the United States. Then the church filed a complaint, or bill in equity. The complaint recited at length the decisions and counter- decisions of the Surveyors- General, the Attorney-General, the commissioners and secretaries, and finally set forth that they had to bring suit in equity because the Secretary of the In- terior had made a mistake in law; that he was right in his decisions as to questions of fact which induced him to offer them a patent for a half -acre, but wrong in not extending his ruling to the whole 640 acres. Therefore, they claimed that 226 THOMAS M. ANDERSON. the court was bound by the decision of the Secretary as to facts and also bound to correct his erroneous decision as to the law. Here was a brilliant piece of legal leger-de-main, worthy of the talents of lawyers and churchmen. At the preliminary hearing, the Post Commander made the point that the Catholic Church was a foreign corporation, therefore could not claim the benefit of the mission clause in the law of 1848. The lawyers received the proposition as a jest and the court "smiled and passed the question by," but the point was destined to receive more serious attention. At this hearing in chambers, February, 1887, the court dissolved the injunction as to all except the five acres actually enclosed. At the spring session of the court, held at Vancouver in April, 1887, the answer of the respondents was filed and the law points argued in demurrer before Judge Allyn. At this hearing all the points of the complainant's demurrers were overruled, the injunction dissolved as to all except the ground upon which the church stood. Testimony was ordered to be taken before a commissioner and then submitted for consider- ation at the next session of the court. It now became evident that the crucial question was this : Were the priests at the Hudson Bay post of Vancouver acting as missionaries to the Indians on August 14, 1848? To meet this question, the writer hunted up dozens of old settlers and wrote scores of letters. Out of the whole number there were comparatively few who had personal knowledge of facts transpiring prior to August, 1848 ; nevertheless, when the time came, both the church and the military had mustered quite a number of witnesses. The leading witnesses for the church were a Father Joseph Joset, an old Jesuit priest who succeeded Father DeSmet in his mission in the Coeur d'Alene country; Joseph St. Germain and Marcel Bernier, old Canadian-French trappers and couriers-du-bois ; August Rochon, a servant of the priests Blanchet and Demers when they came here in 1838; Mary Petrain, a wife of one of the old Hudson Bay Company's ser- vants ; Mary Proulx, the first woman married in the church ; THE VANCOUVER RESERVATION CASE. 227 and, finally, one Francis A. Chamberlain, an employee of the Hudson Bay Company, the only one who testified in favor of the mission. They were a queer-looking lot, antiquated and awkward, soiled, snuffy and redolent with a rather too pungent ordor of sanctity. Their talk and manners recalled the traditions of a buried past. If they had all floated down the Columbia in a canoe, with red blankets around them, it would have seemed natural and proper. The leading witnesses for the defense were John Stensgair and Napoleon McGillvray, old Hudson Bay Company ser- vants; William HJ. Gray, the historian of Oregon and an early pioneer; William H. Dillon, Peter W. Crawford and Silas D. Maxon, Charles J. Bird and John J. Smith, county officials and surveyors; Louisa Carter and Sarah J. Ander- son, women who came out as early as the Whitman massacre; and, finally, General Rufus Ingalls and Mr. Lloyd Brooke, who represented the Quartermaster's Department. These wit- nesses were also advanced in years, but they looked like people who had "kept up with the procession. " The first set of witnesses swore that the mission people were entirely independent of the Hudson Bay Company and intent solely on the saving of souls. The government witnesses testified that the priests were paid and willing servants of the company, and that it was the trappers who converted the Indian women, &nd that the church here was not a mission but a congregation. The trial also brought to light the fact that the record of the first injunction suit against the post authorities had been cut out of the first record book of the county court and the book itself thrown in the river; but it was recovered, water-stained and mutilated. The testimony of the old witnesses was, apart from its legal value, very inter-, esting. It recalled the feudal ways of the old Hudson Bay barons; the contrasted savagery and gentleness of the In- dians ; the wild ways of the pioneers ; the zeal of the priests ; the earnestness of the Protestant missionaries. One of the questions at issue was: What was a mission? The answer revealed, by a strange sidelight, the difference in 228 THOMAS M. ANDERSON. the motives and methods of the Catholic and Protestant mis- sionaries. To the first a mission meant a cross raised in the shadow of the woods, the baptism of savages, the saving of souls. To the latter, mission work meant Christianizing by civilizing. A mission was to be an object lesson in industry, sobriety and prayer. Their purpose was really the same; they only differed in their methods. The case came up for trial before the district court at Van- couver at the spring term in 1888. It was argued by District Attorney W. H. White for the government representatives and by Whalley, Bronaugh & Northup, counsel for the church. It was decided by Judge Allyn in favor of the defendants. Ap- peal was then taken to the Supreme Court of the Territory of Washington, and it came up for hearing in January, 1889. After full argument the court decided that the plaintiff had legal remedies for all wrongs complained of and should not have brought suit in equity; that, properly speaking, it was only open to them to bring an action of ejectment; that the matter was a judicial question and not dependent on decisions of ministerial officers. As to the interpretation of the words of the statute, ' ' Oc- cupied by a religious society as a mission station among the In- dian tribes, ' ' the court held that ' * occupied ' ' meant possession, domain, absolute control. The court held that the Hudson Bay Company held such occupancy and domain, and not the church ; that the present claimant claimed as the representa- tive of the Bishop of Quebec and that the Bishop of Quebec was not the original grantee; that the American missionary societies were incorporated companies; that the Catholic church was not, as a church, a legally incorporated body under our laws at the time of the grant ; that the law was passed to reward American pioneers and not the subjects of another government, which, at the time the Mission of St. James was established, was maintaining an adverse claim of sovereignty. The court also noted the fact that the United States then, by purchase, extinguished the rights of the Hudson Bay Company THE VANCOUVER RESERVATION CASE. 229 and all other British subjects (for 1,200,000) and concluded bv giving the decree for the defendants. A motion for a rehearing was granted, but before the case was re-argued Washington was admitted as a State. The in- cluded territory became a judicial district, and in July, 1890, the case was presented and argued de novo before District Judge Hanford. He reserved his decision, but on the third of November gave it in favor of the defendants. His opinion was based on a clear and exhaustive analysis of the case. It is for the most part too technical for general interest. He noted the fact that the church took no measures to establish its claim until after the military reservation had been de- clared, and for that reason the claim of the defendants was superior in equity to that of the plaintiff. The case finally went up to the Supreme Court of the United States and was heard and decided in the October term of 1894. There was no dissenting opinion and Justice Brewer announced the decision of the court in affirming the decisions of the courts below. The court noted the fact that the Bishop of Quebec ordered the priests to establish the mission OH the Cowlitz and that they were directed to report to the Hudson Bay officials only for advice. It held that the decisions of the Commissioner of the Land Office were final as to facts but not as to laws. The fact was noted that when the military took possession of the land in dispute, they found there no representatives of the mission. It was decided that occupancy and possession were absolutely essential to make good the claim. The case of the Methodist Church Mission at The Dalles was cited, where the mission claim lapsed for lack of continued occupancy (U. S. 107.) The interest in this case is not in the legal decisions, which have no applications to present conditions. It appeals to us as a historic picture. In recalling the incidents of the long contest, the palisades of the old Hudson Bay fort seem to take shape again on the banks of the Columbia. The triangular pennon of the com- pany, with its rampant beaver and serrated edge, floats again 230 THOMAS M. ANDERSON. from the bastions. From the mission church bowered in the locusts we hear the sweet strains of the Salve Regina. But the vision vanishes "Like the baseless fabric of a dream." Where once stood the Indian tepee and a Kanaka village, we see a modern city. Beyond, behold a real fort and living soldiers, and floating over all, the flag, to which sixteen stars have been added since Major Hathaway raised it there, eight and fifty years ago. RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT III. By T. W. DAVENPORT. The teams used at the agency were oxen, several yokes of which were turned over to me by Agent Barnhart, as govern- ment property. These cattle lived upon the range all the year, and their habitual feeding ground, consisting of several sections of natural meadow, was upon the Too-too-willa, a small stream flowing from springs at the base of the Blue Mountains, some four miles from the agency buildings on the banks of the Umatilla River. Except for a short time in the winter season, when snow fell to the depth of several feet, which very rarely happened, forage for as many cattle as the agent desired to keep cost nothing. In the winter of '62- '63, although there was a foot of snow for nearly two weeks, our cattle kept in good order upon the rank growth of red-top and rushes along the Too-too-willa, This was also the favorite resort for stock belonging to white settlers living along the west bank of McKay Creek, which formed the western bound- ary of the reservation. The number of government oxen was in excess of ordinary needs, since the abandonment of Agent Abbott's visionary scheme of constructing an overshot mill, and some of them had been expended for beef, but the number turned over to me by Mr. Barnhart were equal to all of our demands for team work. Some time in December, Mr. Montgomery, the farmer, reported that two settlers of McKay Creek protested against his using their oxen in Uncle Sam's business. He was asked if they were the same that were placed in his care by me, before they were let out of the corral at the time of the "turn-over." He answered in the affirmative and also that he put his mark upon the horns of every one for which I had receipted. He had no knowledge, however, as to the ownership of the cattle, as he had been at the agency only a few months. He was instructed to say to the neighbor claimants, that I 232' T. W. DAVENPORT. would hold the oxen as government property until they were proved away from me. Soon after getting my answer they appeared at the agency, to formally present their claim. And in answer to my resolution to hold the cattle, they replied that they were poor men and unable to stand a suit to defend their claim, and they were not disposed to take the cattle from the range while I laid claim to them, as that would be a sure way of getting into law. I appreciated their condition and told them to bring satisfactory proof of their ownership and I would surrender the cattle. To this they gladly assented, and said they would prove by my employees that the oxen did not belong to the government, and also prove their affirmative claim of ownership by their disinterested white neighbors. They did both abundantly. Mr. John S. White, the superintendent of farming, was not present at the time the property came into my possession and could not say as to their identity. The interpreter was present and when asked if they were the same cattle turned over to me, answered, "Yes," but to the question, "Are they de- partment cattle?" answered "No." "Antoine, did you know at that time that they were not the property of the government?" He answered, "Yes." I then asked him why he stood by, knowing this fact, a silent accessory to the perpetration of such a fraud. His answer was no doubt premeditated. He was visibly agitated, when he responded: "Mr. Davenport, I am an Indian, and Mr. Barnhart shoots Indians." Even this abnegation of manhood did not save him from the bullet of an assassin, if circumstantial evidence is valuable in his case, for Antoine mysteriously disappeared from the agency, and Agent Barnhart conjectured that in attempting to walk the foot logs, while intoxicated, he had fallen into the Umatilla and been carried by the strong current into the Col- umbia. Several years afterwards I inquired of Antoine's sister as to his fate, and she told me that his body was found RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 233 at the cascades of the Columbia and that a well-defined bullet hole was observable in his head. No further inquiry was ever made as to the cause of his death. He was a half-breed In- dian, and as a rule inquiry as to the cause of death in the whole- or half-breed Indian stops at the bullet hole. From the foregoing facts, almost every person would infer that Agent Barnhart was the principal offender, but he may have been ignorant as to the identity of that kind of property carried upon his papers, as I was all the time. Such matters must be entrusted to the employees who have charge of them, the superintendent of farming and especially the farmer. The farmer under Agent Barnhart was his brother George, who was present when I accepted the cattle and vouched for the truthfulness of the agent's transaction and the validity of the government's claim. Evidently he knew what cattle be- longed to the Indian Department and how many must be turned over to balance his brother's papers. For awhile I assumed that Mr. George Barnhart had made a mistake and that three head of government oxen were still upon the range, to discover which I instructed the farmer to inquire of the white settlers round about, and also to hunt for them himself. Mr. Montgomery said that he could not obey such instruc- tions, for the reason that he did not want to have people think me "green," neither did he relish the task of hunting for cattle which had no existence except on paper. While he had no personal knowledge of Barnhart 's affairs, he said it seemed to be well understood by the employees and many of the In- dians that I had been tricked into signing a receipt for three more oxen than belonged to the agency. So I concluded and let the matter drop. Agent Abbott purchased cattle for the use of the agency, in Wasco County, and lost several head on the road. Hearing that four of them bearing the Indian De- partment brand were still roaming upon the Umatilla Meadows, some twenty miles distant, I secured them and thus made good my loss. 234 ' T. W. DAVENPOKT. . OREGON SUPERINTENDENTS. Of the several superintendents of Indian affairs for Oregon with whom I became acquainted and had some knowledge of their work, only two of them, Joel Palmer and Anson B. Meachem, claimed to have any faith in the Indian as a pro- gressive being. The others, Nesmith, Geary, Hector and Huntington, were competent to superintend the machinery of the several agencies in their department, but without any intent, begotten either of Christian duty, scientific curiosity or altruistic feeling, of trying the effect of civilizing stimulus upon him. They were content to perform their official duties satisfactorily to the Washington authorities, to their own fellow citizens, and keep the Indians off the war path. Al- though at times unsuccessful in all these objects, they did fairly well and received no severe censure from the Oregon people. In truth, the Oregonians were alike deficient in faith as to the progressive nature of the Indian ; at least, they were not inclined to waste time and money in trying experi- ments. Philosophers of a critical turn of mind might still adhere to the opinion that the Indian under proper tuitional conditions would respond as other races had done, but the ordinary observer might well be pardoned for skepticism in that respect. And looking at the humiliating results of mis- sionary work in the Willamette Valley by devoted men and women who preceded the pioneers and with no other purpose than that of civilizing and Christianizing its aboriginal in- habitants, we should not wonder at the incredulity of the Oregon people as to the practicability of any further attempts in that direction. They were simply faithless as the result of experience and there are no patent reasons for being otherwise. In the year 1851, nearly a score of years after the arrival of the first missionaries in the Willamette, which was the principal seat of their enterprise, only a few wandering, dis- eased and degenerate remnants were left of the once powerful tribes that reveled in that veritable Garden of Eden, contain- ing at least 6,000 square miles. What there was in such an outcome to inspire or retain confidence in the minds of the missionaries concerning religious forms and ceremonies, or even preaching, as an uplifting force to the Indian, I shall not try to conjecture, for, being an outsider, probably I do not place as high an estimate upon them as do the sectarians. Whatever they may think, or however they may try to console themselves that their labors were not in vain, though really impotent to ameliorate in any appreciable degree the Indians' social condition, the world's people will credit them with hastening the red brother towards the vanishing point. The belief is common that civilization is poison to the Indian, and Christianity is reckoned as part of civilization. Be that as it may, the subject is worthy of investigation by some one conversant with the missionary work in Oregon and Washington, to show how and why the observable results are so little in correspondence with the claim of the conservative influence of Christianity.
Likely, no more devoted servant of his Master ever lived and labored than the Rev. Cushing Eells, who spent his long life in traveling on horseback, preaching and teaching among the Nez Perces and neighboring tribes of Indians in Eastern Washington, and while it is irrational to suppose that his ministrations could be other than beneficial to the lowly people with whom he labored, the question is often asked, "Does it pay?" "Are the visible results commensurate with the outlay?" Enthusiastic Christians may answer in the affirmative and that the gathering of a few Indians into the fold of the faithful is sufficient reward. Others will say that the life service of such a man as Cushing Eells was worth more than that to the white race. Still, every one must decide for himself as to how his life shall be spent, whether in pursuit of knowledge or of wealth; whether in working to bring about adjustments in the environment to advance his own selfish satisfaction, or pursuing a broader and more liberal purpose of including with his own the general welfare; or still further away from selfishness and actuated by a sense of duty or altruistic impulse, seeking, like Livingston, Eells and others, to carry the gospel of the fatherhood of God and the 236 T. W. DAVENPORT. hood of man to the benighted of other lands, it is entirely a personal matter, or else individuality and personal responsi- bility go for naught. Neither can the results be all included in a mathematical expression of dollars and cents, or that of church membership. That was a kindly act of the Good Samaritan going to the relief of the wayfarer who fell among thieves, though in truth a very trifling manifestation of benevolence when compared with the life service of philan- thropists who endure toil, hunger, and innumerable bodily discomforts, in their efforts to rescue the victims of injustice, or the heathen from his thraldom of ignorance and sin. And yet that picture of the Samaritan, bending over the body of the prostrate traveler and pouring oil in his wounds, sheds a holy and undiminished light over the whole earth after the lapse of more than a thousand years. How jarring to human sensibilities would be the question, "Does it pay? Is there any money in it ? " I shall not hazard the assertion that the superintendents named as being contented with a perfunctory discharge of their official duties were unbelievers in the efficacy of moral precepts and good works, but it may not be amiss to say that they regarded them as wasted on the Indian. Western people as a rule had no faith in the governmental experiment as a civilizer, chiefly for the reason that the Indian is not wanted, and superintendents were not appointed for altruistic but for political reasons. Hence we should not expect to find those officers at variance with popular opinion, and when a de- parture did occur the incumbent's official tenure would be short. General Joel Palmer was the first Superintendent of In- dian Affairs for the Oregon Territory, with the title of Com- missioner, and he was especially fitted for the work of gath- ering up the marauding bands scattered over that vast country, then fast settling up by the yearly emigration from the States. Palmer was not at all a doctrinaire or idealist, full of fanciful notionvS as to the perfectibility of any race, or that all the Indian needed to make him an equal with the white man was RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 237 justice. On the other hand, he was a plain, unpretentious, practical and honest man, strong in the conviction that all people show their best traits when well treated and that the world is big enough to give all a fair chance for improvement. He was strong in body, delighted in adventure, and the rough and ready work of an Indian superintendent in early times was well suited to his nature. Those who crossed the plains with him in the year 1845 and 1847 considered him an ideal leader, and the Indians whom he conducted to their reserva- tions gave him the name of ' ' Skookum-tum-tum, ' ' the Chinook word for "strong heart." The task he performed in bringing the tribes of Southern Oregon to the Siletz reservation was a very trying one. Only those who know the obstacles presented by the Coast Mountains in the rainy season, can truly estimate the undertaking at its true value. Wagons loaded with the Indians' effects and children too young to walk, were hauled by oxen over mountains never before passed by teams and so thickly covered with brush and fallen timber that every rod of the way had to be hewed out before a wagon could pass. But though numerous mountain streams in flood had to be forded or bridged and every bush gave a shower of rain after the clouds had ceased to pour, Palmer was in his element and the principal source of energy. He never met with failure except when he ran for Governor. Then came an opportunity for those of his fellow citizens who thought him too kind to the Indian, to register their disapproval. They were short- sighted and failed to see that the work he performed was for the general good and especially to protect white people from the forays of lurking savages. Many of the citizens of the Willamette Valley, which con- tained at that time by far the larger portion of Oregon's white inhabitants, strenuously objected to establishing Indian reser- vations at the Siletz, Alsea and Grande Ronde, places almost in contact with their homes, but Palmer was unyielding, and time has abundantly vindicated the wisdom of his selections that is, if the Indian is to be tolerated in his desire for a temporal existence at all. Palmer was never arrogant, and 238 T. W. DAVENTORT. while he was firm of purpose he was too kindly disposed to enjoy antagonizing his fellow citizens. Hence he was pleased to explain the reasons for his actions, and he generally had the best of the argument in support of his views. With the Will- 'amette people it was more a matter of feeling than of reason ; the tomahawk and scalping knife were before their eyes, and they would not be persuaded that their immunity from those terrible instruments of warfare was more effectually secured when the wielders of them should be taken from their native haunts and placed under the immediate supervision of those whom they would destroy. The tribes at the Siletz were in- habitants of Southern Oregon, a country abounding in topo- graphical conditions most favorable for the Indians' style of warfare, and of ready escape when pursued a country closely interspersed with rocky hills, canyons, crags, little valleys and almost inaccessible fastnesses where a few secretive foes might successfully resist and decimate the many, however brave and resourceful. Palmer contended that those bands of Indians, though few of numbers, must be moved away from such advantages into a region unknown to them, and where spontaneous nature did not provide so much for their sub- sistence. General Joseph Lane was of the same opinion, and in truth, sagacious people everywhere, as well as the white people of Southern Oregon, the principal sufferers, were unanimous in sustaining Palmer's decision to move them. It required a fight, in which he and General Lane participated, before they were willing to go. The work of Palmer stands out in favorable contrast to the official doings of those who succeeded him, but his services, valuable as they were, did not save him from dismissal by the Federal authorities. Conspiring politicians, assisted by local clamor, no doubt effected it. A few jealous or fearful souls were heard to say that Palmer thought more of an Indian than he did of a white man. Probably he thought oftener of an Indian than of a white man, while engaged in solving the problems connected with the business in hand, but that an Jlndian stood nearer and dearer to him, as the quoted accusaRECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 239 tion implies, is an unjust because untruthful aspersion of the character of a man who was sagacious enough to see that jus- tice to the Indian meant safety to the whites, and who believed that God made of one blood all the nations of the earth. After Palmer's unsuccessful run for Governor in June, 1870, the nomination for which was imposed upon him by enthusiastic friends who wished thereby to emphasize their approval of the public services, which had stood the test of more than ten years' experience, he was appointed agent for the Siletz reservation. This was at the beginning of the new departure taken by the government under Grant's adminis- tration, of putting the Indian agencies under the immediate influence of the various religious denominations. The Siletz was awarded to the Methodists and the Umatilla to the Catho- lics. Though Joel Palmer was a Methodist and more of a practical Christian than any other Methodist I knew, he was not a preacher, exhorter, or loudly professing sectarian. Neither did he think that the way to civilization for the In- dian was by a religious revival of the camp-meeting order, but through industrial changes that must, to be successful, become habits. A young preacher by the name of Howard had a place there and was directed by his church to bring religious infuences to bear upon the unconverted and untaught wards of the government. Agent Palmer was not averse to the church methods of Howard and promoted them by his counsel and presence, when not otherwise engaged. This, however, did not satisfy the fervor of Howard, who insisted that the agent should enter more actively into the religious work, praying, singing, etc. To those who understand the exactions of re- ligious devotees, it is needless to say that the charge of luke warmness is a very serious one, and, if true, cannot be con- doned by the possession of the silent virtues. So Agent Palmer, while above suspicion as to moral character and prac- tical skill in the management of secular affairs, was reported by Evangelist Howard as lacking in religion and, therefore, not a fit man to prove, the efficacy of Methodism, in competi- tion with Catholicism, Presbyterianism, etc., in Christianizing 240 T. W. DAVENPORT. and civilizing the heatheji. Of course it would not sound well for the agencies under the supervision of the Methodist church to show inferior results. Such an outcome must not be haz- arded even if it required the dismissal of an otherwise fault- less officer. Howard lost no opportunity of impressing this view upon his influential brethren, and it gave Palmer about all the trouble he had while he remained at the head of the Siletz agency. The government at an Indian agency is sup- posed to be lodged in the person of the agent, and while it is so nominally, as a matter of fact he is subject to many lets and hindrances of an extra-legal nature, for the reason that his appointees are recommended by officers of the general gov- ernment, United States Senators, Representatives, and influ- ential politicians to whom he owes his own office, and are therefore not of his own choosing. Under such conditions, the accepted emploj^ees do not regard their nominal head as the source of their advancement arid are looking for still further favors from the power behind the throne, which under our political system is seldom harmonious. Any one can pre- dict, from such antecedents, the existence and growth of jeal- ousy and intrigue among agent's so-called appointees, from the beginning. Human beings love power and are in a con- tinual struggle to gain or keep places which afford it, and even when the agent is under no restraint in the appointment of his assistants, courtiers are still to be found. At the Siletz Agent Palmer had a mixed cabinet, viewed with reference to the sources of their appointment. While all were Republicans, part came from political considerations and part from religious or sectarian influences superadded. Whatever may be said of either, the combination was not a good one for the chief. The agent's son was superintendent of farming and quite competent to manage that department and protect his father's interests of a financial nature. Major Magone and Richard Duvall were liberals in religious matters and were there from personal and political reasons. Others were appointed from sectarian influence. I believe Howard was mustered as school teacher, but his most effective work RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 241 was visible in the turmoil he created by his persistent efforts to run the agency on a purely revival basis. The secularists or non-professionals above named and Mr. Baughman, who was a Methodist, attended to their business as doers and teachers of handicraft and gave the agent no trouble. As a defense against Howard's assaults, Mr. Palmer ex- plained to me that while he had been a conforming Methodist he had never been a shouter, was not gifted in prayer, and he did not see why he should be doubted because nature had denied him such gifts. I did not share his faith in the good intentions of Howard, whom I recognized as an unscrupulous meddler aspiring to the chief place, and I was bold enough to express my opinion publicly. I also advised the General to discharge him at once and ask the Methodists to send a man who would attend to his own affairs and be solicitous in some degree for the welfare of others. Joel Palmer at that time was well advanced on the down-hill side of life and was, there- fore, more inclined to avoid conflicts which, in his prime, he would have faced with admirable resolution. So Howard remained to vex his administration. In truth, Palmer, be- sides being kind and lovable, was brace, determined and re- sourceful when the occasion demanded, and there were many such occasions in his eventful career. But brave men do not always bear petty annoyances with composure and Palmer was one of that sort. He could fight Indians if necessary but he had no taste or pluck to oppose an arrogant pseudo Chris- tian. He could see no practical way out of the constantly increasing sectarian jangle but to resign his office. I advised; against such a course, on his account, and because I saw that the religious experiment, as it would be conducted, must proves injurious alike to the service and churches. I furthermore^ gave my opinion that the Methodist mutiny so disagreeable toj him was confined mainly to the Siletz reservation and thatj Methodists as a body did not know but that all was peace inj his dominions. A half dozen protesting letters solicited byj Howard could create quite a tempest in this small Siletz tea-j pot, but what is that to the great Methodist denomination ? 242 , T. W. DAVENPORT. As a result of my advice, Palmer wished me to confer with some of the leading church members during my visit to Salem the next week, which I did and reported to him their answer confirmatory of my opinion. I met several of them by ap- pointment at the residence of the Rev. J. L. Parrish, and while some of them had received letters from Howard, they had written nothing derogatory to Agent Palmer's well-known character, or expressing a want of confidence in his religious professions. It may be as well to state that Mr. Parrish had been an Indian agent in earlier times and knew something of the task Palmer had before him. He was also a shrewd man of long experience and knew that a mere profession of religion did not take all the selfishness out of human beings. At the close of the conference, Mr. Parrish, with the concurrence of all the participants, said, ' ' Tell Agent Palmer to exercise his own good discretion and be agent. That is what he is put there for. We have not lost confidence in him as a business manager or as a Methodist. ' ' This reply was very soothing to the General's feelings, and Howard, hearing by letter from the same source, mended his ways in fear of dismissal. I cannot pass these references to Palmer without expressing the opinion that of all the men having to do with Indian af- fairs in Oregon, he was best fitted by natural endowment and practical knowledge to make a success of the benevolent de- signs of the government to civilize the Indians. I had become acquainted with him the year of our arrival in the Willamette Valley, in the fall of 1851, and that acquaintance ripened into close companionship during the remainder of his life. In the summer of 1872 I had a contract of surveying a part of the Siletz reservation into twenty-acre tracts, preparatory to allot- ing them to the Indians there, and Palmer attended personally to the work nearly every day, wading with us the Siletz River whenever the occasion required. He saw before the sub- division was made that the lots should be the long way north and south, to give more of them a frontage on the river, and he so reported to the Indian Superintendent Meacham, who procured an order to that effect from Surveyor-General Odell, RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 243 thus changing the previous method of subdivision. The Siletz Indians, however, were at that time opposed to any system of allotment and secretly destroyed the land-marks of the survey, pulling up corner posts, cutting down or burning bearing trees and leveling mounds, so that a new survey was required and the allotment was not made until the Indians were favorably disposed, some twenty years after- wards. I was often amused during the survey to see Palmer, then an old man, roll up his trouser legs above the knees and wade to the depth of his waistband, and he seemed to be equally amused as the water rose above his calculations, an unexpected denoument which brought from him one of those hearty and contagious laughs mixed with a quotation from, Burns, The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley." Palmer was a very pleasant companion, whether in agree- ment or disagreement as to opinion, and I feel to write that he was truthful, honest, benevolent, resolute and sagacious, and these qualities so predominated and shone in his face that no further recommendations by words were necessary to gain and hold the confidence of those who came in contact with him. Indians are sharp-eyed observers and seldom miss a true estimate of character as shown by physiognomy and manner of expression. They are also adroit enough to keep their real opinions to themselves, concerning the powers that be, but after such reason for silence is past, we can learn who stood highest in their estimation and upon whose prom- ises they mostly relied. They were Governor Isaac I. Stevens and Joel Palmer. Tlhose good men no doubt thought that it is cheaper to feed than to fight Indians, but such an opinion did not interfere with the humane desire to afford them a fair opportunity to come up in the scale of civilization. They did not look upon the agency sytem as a ruse to defraud the government and cheat the Indian out of this, his only chance of holding an earthly heritage for his race. Eastern philanthropists were of the opinion that Superin- tendent A. B. Meacham was the sole representative of applied 244 , T. W. DAVENPORT. Christianity in the treatment of- the West Coast Indians, an opinion not shared by the white Christians of that region, who were, on that account, held to be but slightly advanced in the Christian scale. What Mr. Meacham ever did to earn his Eastern reputation, I have not heard. He was given to egotistical display and florid if not fanciful speech, but in works he was not ahead of others who made no pretentions to excellence in ideas or practice. I attended several of his meetings, at which he had gathered a goodly company of In- dians, mainly of the chiefs and headmen of the tribes in his district, but his purpose in holding such meetings was neither declared nor obvious. He did not propose anything new ; he did not exhort to a more thorough and faithful performance of the work expected to be performed by the agents, and the red brothers on exhibition had long before learned the utter folly of resistance to the white millions then reaching from sea to sea. The people of Oregon saw no rational object in Mr. Meacham 's movements or speeches and consequently they did not credit him with being a reformer. They did not think he was a misguided and honest enthusiast. I presume that Oregonians generally and people in the East, who were interested in the Indian problem, read in his "Wigwam and Warpath" how he refused the surgeon's pre- scription of brandy stimulus to revive him in his wounded condition, for the reason that he was opposed to the use of alcoholic liquors; that it was against his principles. His Eastern admirers, however, did not know that at that time and long before, at his Blue Mountain tavern, liquors were on sale to all comers. People unacquainted with such facts judged the Oregon people severely for their want of faith in Mr. Meacham, but really they were not to blame for there was nothing in his official career as Superintendent of Indian Af- fairs to warrant a different opinion. INDIAN LANGUAGES. Common people, even of the enlightened type, seldom feel the full significance of the language they employ to express RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 245 their feelings, thoughts and desires. They are so much in the habit of speech from infancy up that they are unconscious of its life and growth, and how sadly deficient they would be as social beings if it were not for that medium of communication. Although I had spent much time in and out of school, striving to become proficient in the use of my mother tongue, and had delved somewhat into the written language of the Latins, I never really waked up to the great sphere which language occupies in human .life, until I got to the West Coast and fre- quently found myself among human beings with whom I could hold no converse except by inarticulate grunts or visible signs. It is the lack of an absolutely essential thing which enables one to measure its value. Shortly after arriving in the Willamette Valley, I was traveling in a part sparsely settled by white people, and meeting a company of mounted Indians, desired to inquire the way to the point I wished to reach. As it was near night- fall and I had neither food, blankets, nor matches to light a fire, I felt quite anxious to know something of distances and direction in this new country, without guide boards and plainly traveled roads. I was ignorant of their language and they knew not mine. Fortunately they knew the names of the most noted white settlers among the older residents and when I mentioned one, they pointed in the direction and tracing by gesture the course of the sun from the meridian to the horizon gave me to understand that for a footman, as I was, it was a half day's travel. For the first time in my life I began to comprehend the value of articulate language. One Indian uttered along with his pantomime, the words, "wake siah, clatawa sitcum sun," the Chinook, as I afterwards learned, for "not far, half day's travel." This circumstance convinced me of the necessity of acquir- ing a use of the Chinook language, so that I could have the benefit of the knowledge gained by the natives to the soil. It was not, however, a difficult task to become acquainted with enough of it to meet practical demands, and there were numerous occasions when it was especially serviceable. I was 246 , T. W. DAVENPORT. lost once in the Cascade Mountains and so befuddled among its mists and clouds, which completely shut out the sun, that I could not determine which end of the Barlow road to take when I came to it. An Indian happened along soon after, and I, being a ' ' Chinooker ' ' as the early Oregonians termed those who had learned to speak the Indian, was soon traveling towards the valley. And to show what acute observers those unschooled children are, I must narrate the colloquy just as it occurred. Looking at me rather fixedly he saw at once, I suppose by the staring expression of my eyes, that I had been suffering from extreme mental anxiety, and ejaculated, "Micah hias quash" (You are very fearful) ; "Micah wake cumtux kah micah illahee (you know not which way is home.) Of course I could not hide from those reading eyes my true condition and "owned the corn" by saying "nowitka" (yes.) He gave me a smile that I was at a loss to interpret, and to this day I do not know whether it was expressive of sympathy with my suffering condition or of languid contempt for a white man, that with his superior attainments should be so barren of brain as to become a crazy wanderer in the woods where every tree and stone should furnish him a clue to his destination. Looking around he asked, "Cuppit icht micah?" (are you alone), to which I answered "Nowitka" (yes.) Pointing to the way he had come he told me that in about one hour's walk I would find a covered wagon and white family camped, with plenty of venison ; inspiring news to me as I had not tasted food in twenty-four hours. Clapping his moccasined heels against his pony's sides he started off, saying in English, "Good-bye, Boston man," and added in Indian, "Cloce nanitch oo-ee-hut" (Look sharp for the road.) There are only a few hundred words of Chinook, but after one has experienced inability to communicate by speech with human beings, he will prize highly even as poor and rudi- mentary language as the Chinook, which was the language of the tribe of that name that inhabited the lower Columbia Valley, and at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, in the years 1804 and 1805, was the most numerous and powRECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 247 erful of the Coast tribes. From the position near the mouth of the great river, they were in early communication with sea-faring men engaged in fur trade, and thus became the commercial middle men, and' their language the common medium for the tribes of the interior, living on the upper Columbia and its tributaries, a vast country extending clear to the Rocky Mountains and equal in area to the original thir- teen States. In the absence of special knowledge upon the subject, we may infer that Indian languages do not differ much as to copiousness, and that the Chinook people were fully up with other tribes in that respect. Commercial inter- course did for them what it does for all people, increased their knowledge and added to their stock of words. They came in contact with civilized men, saw and purchased many things which they did not make and for which, consequently, they had no names, and it was but natural that they should adopt the names in use among the vendors. Later, when the Hudson Bay Company occupied the country with its trading posts, their language was still further enriched by the addi- tion of names mainly of French derivation, contributed by the mountain men and trappers who were mostly French Canadians. When I arrived in the Oregon Territory in the year 1851, the Chinooks had become extinct, but their language was the vocal medium of communication between the whites and In- dians in the whole of Oregon, a survival not at all singular when we reflect as to the manner and need of its acquirement by the various tribes, and that its acquisition by the whites made it a common language for them all. The early Oregon immigrants spoke it, and some of them quite fluently. Some of its terms were so expressive and euphonious that they have been adopted as good enough to be considered English, though not included as yet in our dictionaries. Any one acquainted with the work of translating languages would know at once that the place of interpreter at an Indian agency is very im- portant, and one quite difficult to fill, so much depends upon a correct understanding between the two warring races thus 248 T. W. DAVENPORT. brought together in governmental relations. If the interpreter be ever so faithful in his designs to carry the meaning of one language over into another, he is essaying a very difficult task and one which is seldom successful. Look at the translations of Homer's Iliad into English by learned men skilled and critical in the use of their own language and the Greek, and observe how much they differ. And if such be the result in dealing with two highly complex languages, susceptible of expressing the nicest shades of thought, what would it be in operating with two, one of which is complex and the other merely a skeleton. It does not require a learned man to fore- cast the outcome, and yet how many persons of a collegiate education, entrusted with the duty of treating with Indians, have thoughtlessly prepared an elaborate speech with which to electrify their primitive auditors. , Governor Saloman of Washington Territory was one of them, and he did not wake up to the absurdity of such an at- tempt until he tried it and failed. Several of the Puget Sound tribes were brought together in council, and along with them many white residents of the Territory and some from Oregon, all of them speakers of Chinook. The Governor arose and surveyed his audience with all the gravity of a United States Senator. Stretching out his right hand in the direction of the copper-colored part of his hearers he began, "Children of the forest," the interpreter immediately fol- lowed with his translation into Indian (the Chinook), "Tenas tillicums copa stick." The anti-climax was so stunning to the whites that they broke into uproarious laughter that shook the woods. The Governor was amazed and indignant at such treatment coming so rudely at the very incipience of his in- spiration, and it was some time before he could go on with his address, which was commonplace in comparison with the one he had prepared. The Indians were as much nonplussed as the Governor, for they could not see the propriety of address- ing them as small people in the woods, and for that reason they regarded the laugh as being at their expense. And what was a little queer, but not new, the Governor was not fully RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 249 informed as to the cause of the boisterous merriment until an after-hint from his friends and an after-thought by him- self. Of course he saw that he essayed an impossibility. His Indian auditors were not poets and the Chinook is not a flux for poetical expression. Primitive people are more given to pantomime than those more advanced, for the reason that it is necessary to supply the defects in their spoken language. The same necessity exists with children. In fact the panto- mime is the genetic medium of communication, and gradually recedes as articulate language is developed. The gestures of an enlightened orator are not really pantomime, but an index of feeling, an assistant of emphasis rather than of thought. Colonel Edward Baker was, next to John B. Gough, the most in action while speaking of any one I ever heard, but there was slight intention of pantomime, at least no resort to it in default of abundant language to express all he desired. Naturally and undesignedly with him, graceful action accom- panied deep feeling and most eloquent speech. Ex-Senator George H. Williams is a forcible orator and much given to action, which seems to bear, however, no relation to his speech except as a visible representative of force ; his arms going up and down with a regular tilt-hammer motion which earned him the uneuphonious but significant soubriquet of "Old Flax Break." Howlish Wampo, though a marvelous success in the use of his rudimentary language, was, when the occasion required, an adept in pantomime. To express his contempt of a dis- sembler, he was not contented by flaying him with the figura- tive epithet, "forked tongued" but must convey the same thought to the eye. Raising his right hand, back up, first and second fingers separated like a "fork" in front of and on a level with his mouth, he thrust the hand forward, diverging to the left, and uttered the words "one good talk," then bringing the hand back to the mouth, he thrust it out towards the right saying, "one bad talk." This combination he re- peated several times, his countenance and tones growing in disgust with each repetition. It did not seem that language' could do more. 250 , T. W. DAVENPORT. The language of all cultivated races does not stop with primitive words, but fr*om them, by the aid of prefixes, suf- fixes and inflexions, time and mood and the niceties of thought are expressed with much accuracy. On the other hand, the Indian languages are mainly primitive words and the same word without alteration or addition must do service for noun, verb and adjective. One would infer from such straitened conditions that very little could be accomplished with them. Still this poverty of speech compels the imaginative faculties into active exercise and away from abstract thought. Such a condition is also favorable to the development of idiomatic speech when a combination of words means more than the words themselves taken separately. Cultivated languages have standards for determining their purity, viz., the usage of the best speakers and writers, and the same rule, leaving off the writing, is the standard of purity for the aboriginal tongues. No white man would suppose that an Indian cared anything about the purity of his speech, or that the almost indefinable something we call taste had anything to do with it. That, however, is putting the Indian too low in the scale of esthetic humanity. In every tribe there are purists, who are as much pained by degeneracy and vulgarism in speech as are their educated white brethren ; and no one better than the missionaries know of the fact. At the Umatilla reservation, Howlish Wampo was the standard in all that goes to make an orator pronunciation, inflection, accent, emphasis, natural elocution, etc., and I learned more from him as to the proper pronunciation of In- dian names of persons and places than from all other sources. His own name, pronounced by the whites, Howlish Wampo, with a harsh aspirate and a loud mouth vowel sound, was very different when spoken by him. He gave no aspirate or resounding vowel. It was "Owlish-wan-pun/' accent on the first and third syllables. He said the whites were addicted to harsh pronunciation and gave many instances. Another Cayuse, and the richest of the tribe, was called Tim-te-met-sy. By Wanpun's tongue it was Tin-tin-meet-suh. RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 251 The whites are much given to the alteration of Indian names, and generally for the worse, as respects euphonious pronunciation. The word Willamette is a degenerate of our making, for the tribes of that valley and east of the Cascades pronounced it Wa-la-met (the "a" sounded as in father) as though reluctant to shorten a word which stood for so much loveliness, so many beauties that appealed to the eye, so many natural opportunities for satisfying their animal appetites. The late Judge Matthew P. Deady, "a man of scholarly tastes, persistently refused to conform to the Americanizing of the word, and to the last spelt it so as to convey its aboriginal pronunciation. What a pity that the judge did not set himself the task of preserving the Indian names for all the natural objects, mountains, streams, valleys and other striking features of Oregon scenery. Many have been preserved, but we have waked up too late to rescue all the beautiful and musical words from oblivion. The early pioneers to the Northwest Coast had an opportun- ity to learn the pronunciation of Indian names directly from the Indians, but it is doubtful if, with this advantage, we can claim to pronounce them according to aboriginal authority. Our lingual habits are different; our enunciation of the con- sonant elements has a different quality, as is often remarked, we haven't the offensive clucks and gutturals, which we think characteristic of primitive peoples, and yet we have appro- priated thousands of their names and esteem them for theii- vocal richness and variety. In fact, we call them beautiful. But at best we have anglicized them, and occasionally intro- duced an element, the "r," which is foreign to the Indian tongue. No better evidence of this is needed than the vocabu- lary of the Chinook Jargon, compiled and printed here in early times when the Indians and whites were in daily com- munication by the use of it, and yet it is a poor representa- tion of the Indian's speech. Besides a want of critical appre- ciation of the true vocal elements, there is here, as elsewhere in the United States, a tendency to drift into easy pronunci- ation more in conformity with our lingual habits. There are 252 T. W. DAVENPORT. dozens of departures in. the vocabulary aforesaid, but I will mention only one, as it shows a want of discrimination which pervades the whole work. The Chinook word for water is given as "chuck," but the pure word is "tsuck," which is less harsh to any sensitive ear. I do not recall any English word beginning with those consonants though thousands of them end with that combination. The drifting or differentiating tendency is common to all peoples and all times, and can fully account for the diversity of aboriginal tongues in America, though the various tribes were derived from the same parent stock. This drifting tend- ency is well attested by one instance in the Willamette Valley, where a stream in Polk County, originally named by French trappers "La Creole," slid into "Rickreall" in less than ten years. I lived one year upon the Missouri border, in a part of the country formerly occupied by the Otoe Indians, and while there learned from an employee of the agency of the abortive attempt there made, to copy the Indian names given to the streams in that region. The Otoe name for water is "ne" and to this is added another name of a descriptive character. Their name for the great river flowing through their country, the Missouri, is Nee-sho-cho, meaning smoky water. The Nod-a-way was called " ne-od-a-wa, " signifying log across the water. Nishnabotny is short for "Nee-ish-ne- bot-na," crooked water; and Nebraska is changed from "Ne- blas-ka," or shallow water, descriptive of the Platte. The spelling for these names as given on the old maps of seventy years ago was enough to give a hog the lock jaw. This differentiating tendency, as viewed from the causes heretofore mentioned, was very much aggravated by changes which brought marked divergences in tribal character. Bees swarm and emigrate for want of room, and when an Indian tribe became too numerous to subsist upon the spontaneous productions near about them, a part drew off to an unoccupied region, thus relieving the congestion at home, but with this difference as to the bees. The retiring swarm is homogeneous with that remaining, and therefore no differentiation results RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 253 from such an exodus. But an excision in an Indian tribe is governed by selective affinities and repulsions of various sorts, amounting sometimes to as profound a division as is contem- plated by a separation of the sheep from the goats. This may account, in great part, for the difference in character of con- tiguous tribes of the same stock, as experienced by travellers ever since the settlement by Europeans began. Indeed, it is not a hard task for one given to the exercise of imagination, to fancy an exodus of two or three families distinguished for kindly dispositions and more than ordinary altruistic traits, tending continuously in that direction, and others of an op- posite character progressing in conformity with its predomi- nant traits. If it were not so, then we must suppose that the environment was corrective of the divergence, which is highly improbable. INDIAN CHARACTERISTICS. The differences observable in the various tribes and races of mankind are not, as many suppose, radical variations, that is, something of a different kind, but merely degrees of the same kind. The negro in his native state, hugging his fetish as a preventive of disease or other misfortune; the idolaters bowing down to blocks of wood or stone, to appease the wrath of their gods, as they read it in the earthquake, tornado, pestil- ence or famine, seem to strike us at first as indicative of an- other kind of creature, but upon more mature reflection we see in all such a different though a ruder manifestation of the same human faculties, veneration and fear, as modified by intelligence, or rather by ignorance. Perhaps the educated Christian, wearing his crucifix suspended by a golden neck- lace, would protest against being linked with the savage, whose desire for immunity from disease or other calamity causes him to wear a charm, and as respects the beautiful work of art worn by the former and the bag of stink worn by the latter, I would think the protest well taken, but the actuating and basic sentiment finding expression in one by enlightened and in the other by barbaric means, is evidently the same quality of human nature. 254 T. W. DAVENPORT. The Indians of the West Coast were given to amulets or charms and generally kept them secreted. They believed, too, in a multiplicity of spirits distributed among the objects of nature; such as the spirit of the mountain, the stream and smaller things. That is the mountain had a ' ' ta-man-a-was, ' ' that was the name given by many. They also believed in a great spirit, but whether that idea was obtained from the mis- sionaries, I cannot tell. When I arrived in Oregon in 1851, the Indians everywhere I met them talked about the Sohli Tyee or Gk>d, though they still spoke of the spirit of things. In either case he is not so far removed from civilized man and his religious habits as some suppose, and if logical percep- tion is not sufficient proof of this, the conversion of the savage to Christianity and the adoption by him of the Christian sym- bols, with entire satisfaction of his inherited traits, ought to be conclusive. Through such manifestations it is not hard to discover that the Indian is a religious being and given to worship. He and his white brother are alike in seeing God in the clouds and hearing him in the wind, the only difference is, the red man's soul was never taught to s^ay ar as the Solar walk or Milky Way. In some respects, however, I have been inclined to think him equally esthetic and more in practical conformity with Christian teaching than his more progressed white brother. In the eastern part of Marion County, Oregon, there stands an isolated and most strikingly regular and beautiful butte some three hundred feet in height and covering nearly a sec- tiontion of land. It was fringed about its base, at the time of which I write, with fir groves, but its side and well-rounded and spacious top were devoid of timber, except a few old and spreading oaks and perhaps a half dozen gigantic firs whose weighty .limbs were drooping with age. A meridian section line passes over the middle of this butte and four sections corner near its top. While running this line and establishing these corners in 1851, I observed many semicircular walls of stone enclosing space enough for a comfortable seat and as high as one's shoulders when in a sitting posture, upon cross RECOLLECTIONS OP AN INDIAN AGENT. 255 sticks as high as the knee. And what was the purpose of these stone chairs ? I was determined to know, and the older white residents said the Indians made them but for what purpose they could not say. I became a witness to the use, and was particularly impressed with the fitness for what I saw. Indians from the north and south traveling that way generally camped upon the banks of the Abiqua Creek, a rapid stream of pure, cold water, just issued from the mountains upon the plain. The butte was near, and fchis they ascended and, taking seats within the stone sanctuaries, communed in silence with the Great Spirit. Bowing the head upon the hands and resting them upon the knees for a few moments, then sitting erect and gazing to the west over the enchanting valley interspersed with meadow, grove and stream ; who can tell but they felt as sacred and elevated religious emotion as those who have succeeded them on the butte ? The Catholics have purchased it and erected upon its summit an awe-inspir- ing cathedral, and there upon Mt. Angel, as they have named it, the prayers of the religious ascend. The Indians' name for this grand mount, dedicated by them to the service of their God, was "Tap-a-lam-a-ho," signifying in our language, Mount of Communion ; the plain to the west, ' ' Chek-ta, ' ' sig- nifying beautiful or enchanting. Now, looking at and comparing the two modes of worship, could any unprejudiced person fail to give the preference to the so-called savage, that is, if we are to regard Christ's pre- cepts as worthy of note ? The savage did not climb to the top of Tap-a-lam-a-ho to show off his good clothes, to be heard of men, to proselyte, or to increase his worldly gear. What was his purpose? Evidently religious worship. What was the burden of his supplication? As to that, we can only infer that, like other human beings, he prayed for what he wanted. He was not, however, in want of food, for the Abiqua was swarming with trout, the valley was blue with the bloom of his edible root, the sweet camas, from every grove came the low notes of the grouse, and the mountains near at hand were populous with bigger game ; he did not want clothing, for the 256 T. W. DAVENPORT. fur that warmed the hear warmed him. In all that great valley of the Willamette he had not an enemy from whom he sought deliverance, and being no politician and not aspiring to place, I have been at my wit's end in trying to fix upon a rational subject of his prayer, except it be that unrest of spirit which seeks escape from the bonds of clay and longs to rest in sublimer spheres, a characteristic of all the tribes of man. If not so, why should he ascend the mountain top to pray? Why not pray on low ground? I put this latter question to the unostentatious Indian worshippers, and al- though they were untaught in history, had never heard of Moses' interviews with Jehovah upon Mt. Sinai, or of the earthly rendezvous of the Grecian Gods and Godesses upon Mt. Olympus, their answer proved that they are at one with the whole human race, viz., "Soh-li Tyee mit-lite wake siah copa sohli illaliee, " which translated into our language means that God is near to the mountain top, or God is near in the mountains. The majority of Americans, and very likely of all other nationalities, are in the habit of measuring success in terms of money. When they speak of a successful man or woman, and the question is put to them, "What did they do?" the answer will be, nine times out of ten, they accumulated a fortune. Taking this definition of success, some American Indians are successful under the most adverse circumstances. Traveling up Sprague River through the Klamath Indian reservation in company with Hon. 0. A. Stearns, I observed at one place numerous ricks of hay, probably hundreds of tons, and querying aloud to my companion as to whether such were the accumulations of the Indians, he answered that we were then passing through the ranch of a full-blood Indian named Henry Jackson, who was the owner of many cattle and all the hay in sight. He also gave me something of the history of Henry Jackson, but as that was seven years ago, and I took no notes of his recital, I addressed a letter to the present superin- tendent of the Klamath agency, and received the following answer : RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 257 KLAMATH AGENCY, Oregon, October 29, 1903. T. W. Davenport, Morris Plains, N. J. My Dear Sir : I am sure your recollections of your experi- ence as an agent at Umatilla and whatever else you write on the subject of the red men, will prove very interesting ; especi- ally to persons who, like myself, have spent so many years in the effort to prepare the original Americans for civilization and citizenship. The Indian to whom Mr. Stearns referred was Henry Jack- son, no doubt, as he is our wealthiest man. He was formerly a Pitt River slave and a number of Pitt Rivers were held as slaves by the Klamaths, but of course they were made free when the Indians treated with the United States and were adopted into the tribes. When a boy, Henry was called Ske- daddle and did not take his present name until he was enlisted by myself in my company during the Modoc War. After the war, he made 16,000 rails, which I used on my cattle ranches, and for which I paid him $25 a thousand, in young cattle, only allowing him a little money for his actual needs. This work promised him an independence and he mauled his way to the possession of a band of fine cattle, which he cared for with excellent judgment, and keeps on his fine ranch on the reservation. He now keeps about 1,000 head, selling off two to three hundred annually of as good cattle as are furnished for market in the Klamath Basin. Henry has always been temperate in his habits, though he smokes a little, and if he uses liquor it is done without publicity or apparent effect. 0. C. APPLEGATE, Supt. K. A. If we wish to study the inherent traits of human beings, we must eliminate, as far as possible, the additions which education and social surroundings have given, and this ex- clusion is more complete and effective by taking children for subjects. So early and unconsciously do we absorb the cus- toms, animus and ideas of those with whom our early years are passed that infancy is the time to begin. Possibly we should begin as early as a humorous educator fixed for be- ginning the education of children, viz., with the grand- parents. Human beings are never too old to learn and should never lie by in a superannuated list, but continue to press their mental faculties into use to the close of life here; still, that 258 , T. W. DAVENPORT. should not estrange us from the conviction that youth is the era of involuntary absorption, and that what we get then remains a part of us to the end. When I was seven years old, I committed to memory all the coarse print of Kirham's Grammar and Olney's Geography, and they are within call at the age of seventy-seven, while memory often refuses to yield up the burden committed to it in more mature years. A fine subject for study and experiment was a little Indian boy six or eight years of age that lived in my family during the years 1858 and 1859. He was a relic of the Rogue River Indian War of 1855 and 1856, having been wounded by a buckshot in the lag in "The Cabin Fight" and found in the cabin after the Indians had abandoned it. The Indians, being hotly pursued by the white settlers, took refuge in a log cabin from which they could command any approach and hold their assailants out of rifle range. To remedy this state of things, a mountain howitzer was being forwarded from the nearest fort, and the besieged Indians, guessing the cause of the apparent suspension of hostilities, awaited until dark, when they broke out, every fellow trusting to his heels, and escaped, it is said, without the loss of a man. A man by the name of Bozart claimed the boy as his prize, extracted the bullet, which had not done serious damage, named him Charley, and signified his intention of taking him to Missouri and selling him as a slave. Charley was a beautiful Indian boy with an admirable form and physical development, a good face and naturally shaped head, showing that he was not of the tribes addicted to the hideous custom of flattening their children's skulls while infants. My brother believed him to be a Modoc and was desirous of knowing what could be made of such a perfect specimen of the aborigine by education and rearing in a civilized community, and therefore got his release from Bozart. Being without a family, brother John took the boy to the Willamette and left him with mine for a season. At that time he could speak a little English, and young as he was, showed a very firm determination to hold fast the customs and habits of his tribe. His coal black hair was thick, matter! RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 259 with fir pitch and dirt, and reached well down upon his shoulders. He was lousy beyond anything known of white children, and although he knew by trial that combing his helmet of hair was entirely out of the category of practica- bilities, he was so passionately proud of his long hair that he resisted all attempts to shorten it. When John turned the boy over to me he said to him, "Charlie, you are to stay here with my brother for a while; he will take care of you and send you to school and you must do as he wishes you to do. Mind whatever he says and be a good boy." Charlie gave his assent and school began. The first thing on the program was to clear the boy of lice, which could be done in no other way than to cut his hair close to his head. To this he said "No" with a firmness of tone that had deterred his other teachers. "Charlie, you have come to stay in my family, but while the lice are on you, you cannot have clean clothes, sleep in a good bed, go anywhere or be anybody. In fact, you cannot stay in the house. Do you not see that your hair must come off?" Still that defiant negative which had caused others to respect his so-called rights. I took the shears and advanced toward him. A forbidding frown took possession of his face, his black eyes were fixed on me with a most obstinate expression, and backing to the wall he held up both arms in an attitude of defense. ' ' Charlie, you put me in mind of the sheep. Of a hot day, when they would feel better with the wool off, they try to get away, but we have to catch them, hold them down and shear off the wool, and I see that you have no more sense than a sheep." At this I took hold of him without any show of indignation on my part, laid him upon the floor, sat astride of him, holding his arms down with my legs, and began shearing him. "Hold your head still; you are acting again like sheep that flounce around and get pieces cut out of their hides. Whoa. ' ' 260, T. W. DAVENPORT. His hair was cut close to the skin, and his scalp found covered with a festering mass of dandruff, blood and matter, alive with lice, some of them of enormous size. An application of shaving soap and warm water cleansed it; my wife put a cap on him that she had constructed during the operation, and Charlie was helped from the floor, very different in his mood. His antagonism went with his hair seemingly. Con- trary to my expectation, he showed no sign of retaliation or revenge. "Cheer up, Charlie, we are going to make you over into a white boy. You can eat at the same table with us and be the same as my boy." I soon learned by observation that he had a great amount of pride of personal consequence. According to his infant ideas, the brave, the warrior stood at the head of creation, and this was borne out by his head, which was high in the center of the crown, showing to a phrenologist firmness and self- esteem; and lower down the development indicating large combativeness, secretiveness and destructiveness. He had also good intellectual faculties, was not wanting in affection, and while a little slow of temperament, was apt to learn. There was no use, therefore, of appealing to such an organization with the "beauties of holiness" to influence his conduct. If the truth and a proper regard for the welfare of others coulrl not be got into his mind as especially characteristic of the warrior, the brave, his advance in civilization must be hope- less. To make of right doing a chivalrous function, consonant with his rude ideas of personal worth, was my purpose. So, an untruthful person was denounced as a coward; a rude, unkind person, as an inferior sort of being, who did not belong to the true and the brave. A brave boy dared to do right, to shield the weak and helpless, to put them on their feet and help them to an equal chance in life. This was the kind of tuition, and while he stayed in my family it bore fruit. He could be relied upon to tell the truth though dam- aging to himself. He would care for our two little girls and obey me without hesitation and with seeming pleasure to RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 261 himself, but to obey my wife was a sore trial to his pride, which was ever on the point of revolt against what some white masculines call petticoat government. Her requests he exe- cuted grudgingly and once he positively refused and stood in battle array. When informed of it, I asked him to give a reason for such treatment of the person who was performing the duties of mother for him. "Does she not cook your victuals, wash your clothes, give you a soft, warm bed, teach you to read and treat you as her own boy? And is this the return you make for all her good- ness 1 Can't you see that your refusal to do what she requests is the act of a cowardly cur that should be kicked out of decent society ? Now, Charlie, if you are intending to be a man and hold your head up among men, never let that occur again. ' ' And he didn't, though he had lived too long among those who thought it humiliating for braves to obey a squaw. His education did not begin soon enough. We had a flock of sheep and it was Charlie's duty to bring them to the corral every evening before dark to secure them from wolves, a task which he performed punctually with one exception. Upon coming home one night at ten o'clock, I found him sitting before the fireplace in a moody state of mind, and upon inquiring the cause learned that the sheep were not penned as usual; that Charlie had been on a visit that day to one of the neighbors, did not get home until after dark, and that he had had an unsuccessful search for them. "Well," said I, "you do not propose to leave them out over night for the wolves to kill, do you 1 ' ' My wife interposed with the remark that Charlie was afraid, and being a little boy she could not ask him to go again. "Why, he has been big enough all along to drive sheep, and I guess he is big enough now. ' ' "Well, but he suffers from fear," my wife said, "and it is cruel to force him out at this time of night."
- ' Charlie, what are you afraid of? "
"The dark," he muttered. "Nonsense, the dark never hurts anybody." 262 T. W. DAVENPORT. "It is the boogaboo,." lie simpered. "There are no boogaboos. Did you ever see a boogaboo?" "No." "Well, nobody ever saw a boogaboo. There is nothing to hurt you and a cayote would run away from you. You are no coward and not afraid of anything. If you are afraid some- thing will catch you, stand still and say, * Come on, ' and you will stand there until you are gray-headed unharmed. Now, go for the sheep and don 't come back without them if it takes all night." He went and returned with them in an hour. After he had gone, my wife chided me for cruelty in forc- ing the little fellow to endure such punishment and put the question to me squarely how I would relish such treatment of my boy. "That is a very different case. Charlie is not imaginative and sensitive like most white children ; he will not be injured. ' ' When Charlie entered the house after his return, his dark eyes shone with a light never seen before; and he had tEe step and visage of a conqueror. "Charlie, you will sleep better than you would if you had gone to bed without securing the sheep. ' ' One day a peddler came to our home and unrolled his pack for trade. There were pocket knives, pistols that shone with fine mountings, watches of gold and silver, pins, needles, ribbons, etc. TJie children had never seen such a dazzling display. Especially was Charlie intent upon viewing the outfit. I said: "Charlie, look over this man's goods, and pick out one article, only one, and I will buy it for you." My wife whispered, "There is a gold watch for which he asks a hundred dollars, and we can't afford to buy that for him, and you must not deceive him." "Never fear, I know what I am saying," and I repeated the offer. "Charlie, look well to the goods, pistols, knives, watches, and pick out one article that you prefer and I will buy it for you. ' ' RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 263 My wife was on nettles and the peddler exhibited the gold watch conspicuously. ' ' Hpld on there, ' ' I said, ' ' let the boy have his choice. ' ' He did, and Charlie delightedly snatched up a bolt of very bright, deep-red ribbon an inch and a half in width, to the utter disgust of the peddler, who said: "I'll be damned if you don't know an Indian from the ground up." ' ' Charlie, this is your day. Ogle that ribbon until you are tired out." With my wife 's assistance there were festoons upon his arms and legs, a band with bows around his black head, and from his neck to his heels flowed streamers that fluttered in the breeze. Fashionable white people put on finery to please others, but Charlie had no thought of pleasing others ; it was purely self-satisfaction; enjoyment coming with the exercise of faculty, and I believe an innate love of bright colors. What philosopher will show how such ecstasy can come from the vibrations of red upon the Indian's optic nerve? Are white children so affected and is it a phenomenon peculiar to child- hood? If so, mature Indians are never more than children, for the preference for red never fades. There were various patterns and colors in the calicos of the annuity goods, but the squaws preferred the red. After my brother's marriage, Charlie was taken to live with him in the little town of Phoenix in Rogue River Valley, an unfortunate change for Charlie. There he was in company with white boys who loved his company and who rallied him for obeying my brother's wife. His early repugnance to feminine control was revived to such an extent as to threaten her safety, and Charlie was turned over to Captain Truax of the Oregon Volunteers. He was taken to Fort Walla Walla, and there, falling in with those of depraved habits, became diseased and died miserably while a mere youth. But others with white skins did the same. The American Army, I be- lieve, is not a moral reform institution. One company re2(>4 T. W. DAVENPORT. cruited in Marion County, mainly an agricultural district, was composed almost entirely of young men not addicted to the use of alcoholic liquors or tobacco, and I was informed by the Hon. W. R. Dunbar, one of them, that only one stuck to his temperance habits, the others soon taking to smoking and drinking, and some of them went even lower in the descending scale. THE HISTORIC SITES IN EUGENE AND THEIR MONUMENTS. 1 By JENNIE B. HARRIS. The eternal fitness of things is a law of the universe. Nothing can be found in nature that does not ultimately con- form to this law. The human race, consciously or unconsci- ously, has always lived in obedience to its demands. Follow- ing its dictates, the history of man consists of a collection of important facts which tell of the growth and decay of each people in its turn. These facts we find recorded in various ways. But no historical records impress us more forcibly than monuments of ancient nations. The data graven on stone with the edge of the chisel constitute the permanent record, the record that compels attention and assures remembrance. The chronicle of the early history of any people or of any community is apt to be neglected by the actors in the drama, especially when those actors were men and women who chose the wilderness, the haunts of the red man as the scene of their labors. And so we find that there are many links missing from the chain of Oregon's pioneer history. Our honored pioneers are fast passing from our midst, and with each one passes some personal experience which is or should be a part of our cherished early history. Surely, then, in the interest of future generations of Oregon youths, "it is altogether fitting and proper" that we, the native sons and daughters of this State, should do our part towards giving permanency to some leading facts in the history of our own city and county as our chapter in the Pioneer History of Oregon. But how many and what events shall be selected ? Follow- ing the law of fitness, these must be the most important hap- penings. The location of the first cabin truly that is a 1 NOTE. Read on the occasion of the dedication of three monuments erected on historic spots in Eugene, November 4, 1906. 266 JENNIE B. HARRIS. fitting spot to mark, for was it not the very beginning of local history? If we could go back half a century and appear at the door of this cabin, we should have a hearty welcome and genuine hospitality extended to us by Eugene F. Skinner and family, housed in their two-room or "double" log cabin, as it was called by the old settlers. It stood a little way up on the slope of the west end of Skinner's Butte and faced the north. Early in 1852, Mr. Huddleston had his small stock of goods at the Skinner cabin; later, he built his store at the east end of the butte. This little fact may account for the differences of opinion as to the location of these two cabins. The first home marked, naturally the next place of interest to designate will be the location of the first college. For, as soon as the pioneers were housed, provision was made for the schooling; of the children. The history of education in Eugene is interesting, and any one who cares to know it in its details may find the subject thoroughly discussed in an article by Professor Joseph Schafer appearing in the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society of March, 1901. From this dis- cussion, we find that almost from the first there were two rival ideas concerning education, first, the idea of the private school; second, the idea of the public school. The private school was more in favor with the settlers because many of them had come from States where public education was looked down upon as being cheap or too humble. For this reason, private schools offering collegiate or academic work were encouraged and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church accordingly erected, on a spot on College Hill, Colum- bia College, which opened on Monday, November 3, 1856, with E. P. Henderson as president. Everything pointed to success for this undertaking, but on the night of November 6, the building was burned to the ground. Nothing daunted, the friends of this educational movement erected a second building on the site of the first one. Almost a year of pros- perous work, with constantly increasing attendance, had passed when this second structure was burned. These fires are sup- posed to have been incendiary. A third building was planned, HISTORIC SITES IN EUGENE AND MONUMENTS. 267 but dissensions arose, the charter of the college was abandoned, ' * and Columbia College was no more. ' ' Now the public school idea began to grow in favor, but there was a constant demand for a high school department, this demand being traceable to the academic work of Columbia College. Just as some of the most ardent advocates of the high school were planning steps to secure such a school for Eugene, the, question of the location of the State University appeared on the educational horizon, and all efforts were bent towards securing that institution for Eugene. The story of this struggle is familiar to us all and the reward of these early champions of higher education is found on our campus. Here is an added reason why the site of Columbia College should be marked, for out of it grew, indirectly, the University of Oregon, which should be and is the foremost educational in- stitution in the State. Wherever settlements have been made within territory be- longing to the United States, Uncle Sam's strong arm has ex- tended its protection over his people and courts of justice have been organized. The beginning of judicial history, then, should be the third event to be commemorated. The spot to be marked is the one where the first trial by jury was held. On this point, the old settlers have many and different opinions. For this reason, we beg your kindly indulgence while we review briefly the first three sessions of district court held in Eugene. The following facts are copied from the official court records now on file in the county clerk's office : The first session of "District Court of the United States in and for the county of Lane in the Second Judicial District of the Territory of Oregon, begun at Eugene City in said county, on the 15th day of March 1852. 0. C. Pratt, presid- ing judge; E. F. Skinner, clerk; R. P. Boise, prosecuting attorney. ' ' It further appearing to the Court that no District Attor- ney on behalf of the United States was in attendance upon the Court, it was therefore ordered by the Court that R. P. 268 JENNIE B. HARRIS. Boise, Prosecuting Attorney on behalf of the Territory, be and hereby is appointed to act on behalf of the United States for the present term." For this term the following Grand Jury was called: 1. Hillyard Shaw 9. M. Scott 2. H. T. Hilt 10. B. Davis 3. Z. Sweet 11. I. Davis 4. C. Sweet 12. P. Blair 5. John Leasure 13. P. Bryan 6. F. McMurry 14. J. Peek 7. Wm. Smith 15. L. Howe 8. P. Comegys Hillyard Shaw was appointed foreman. Of these men, the only one known to be living is Mr. Comegys, a respected citizen of Eugene. Concerning this term of court, Judge R. P. Boise, of Salem, gave the following interview, October 31, 1906, to Carey F. Martin : "Yes, I remember that term of court, we had been holding court at different places in Oregon and went, if I remember correctly, from Albany to Eugene City, Oregon. We all put up at the home of the clerk, Mr. Skinner. In the party were Judge 0. C. Pratt, U. S. Marshal Sam Culver, M. P. Deady, then an attorney-at-law, and myself. Court was held, as I now remember it, in a log cabin, containing only one room. To whom the log cabin belonged I do not now remember. The cabin was located near the west end of Skinner's Butte, but its exact location with reference to the present town of Eu- gene, I cannot state. I remember that there was an unob- structed view to the Willamette River, looking north past the butte, and that there was an old sawmill nearby. The cir- cumstance of the log cabin having only one room is recalled to my mind in this way: The Court (Judge Pratt) had author- ized me to instruct the Grand Jury and there being no room available other than the one in which the Court was being held, I went with the Grand Jury, a short distance to where some logs or timbers were piled or lying, being timbers of the sawmill, and there instructed the Grand Jury. * * * I HISTORIC SITES IN EUGENE AND MONUMENTS. 269 remember that to the west of Skinner's Butte there was a swale or stretch of low ground and that this cabin was located on ground slightly higher than the swale and not far distant from it." From Mr. Comegys, I find that Judge Boise has described this first court room itself and its surroundings correctly, but that he has erred in its location. According to Mr. Comegys, and several other of our pioneers, this log-cabin court room was situated near the present site of Mr. Midgley's planing mill. This cabin belonged to Hillyard Shaw, foreman of the Grand Jury, and the sawmill near by was also his property. Now, Judge Boise, too, mentions this sawmill and the only such mill here then was Mr. Shaw's mill. Hence the log cabin near it- must be the one in which the first term of court was held. At this initial session of the District Court, D. M. Risdon was admitted to practice law in this State, being the first attorney admitted here. The end of the first day's session was marked by the report of the Grand Jury that "they had no business before them. It was ordered by the Court that the said Grand Jury be discharged for the term." The second term of District Court for Lane County con- vened on October 5, 1853, Judge Matthew P. Deady presiding. Other officers of the Court present were : Joseph W. Drew, deputy U. S. Marshal ; L. F. Grover, U. S. District Attorney pro tern; W. Stewart Brock, Prosecuting Attorney for the Territory pro tern; E. F. Walker, sheriff; E. F. Skinner, clerk. At this session, John Diamond was admitted to citizenship, he being the first foreigner admitted to citizenship in Lane County. On October 6, 1853, there was called a case entitled: "Jonathan Keeney vs. Wm. Masterson et al. Action of Trover. ' ' And thereupon came a jury, twelve good and lawful men of the county, to-wit : 270 JENNIE B. HARRIS. 1. Marion Scott . 7. Matthew Wallis 2. T. P. Holland 8. Josiah M. Lakin 3. A. W. Patterson 9. John Fergerson 4. James Breeding 10. Wm. Dodson 5. Wm. C. Spencer 11. Wm. Smith 6. Wm. McCabe 12. Hiram Richardson This jury returned a verdict for the defendants. This is the first civil case tried before a jury in Lane County. According to the best information secured, this term of court was held in a room about twelve by fourteen feet, lo- cated on Tenth and Oak streets, on what is now known as the Titus property. As in the case of the first term of court, the jury had to be sent into the open air to deliberate, and they accordingly withdrew to an oak tree near by. On May 1, 1854, the third term of District Court for Lane County convened, with George H. Williams presiding. This term was held in the same room where the second term con- vened, and on the second day of the session, May 2, 1854, the first criminal case in Lane County was called. It is the place where these two terms of court were held that has been marked, it being the place where the first case was tried before a jury. These three places have been chosen because of their im- portance ; the first question has been answered, and a second, "How shall these historic spots be marked?" demands solu- tion. Shall they be marked with costly shafts? Such monu- ments seem not in keeping with the events themselves nor the time. For were not the actors simple, sturdy, daring, deter- mined men and women of the frontier period? After much deliberation, the question is settled, and three basaltic monu- ments, from the hand of Nature, are taken from the butte bearing the family name of our first settler and placed within the city christened with his Christian name. What could be more fitting than these columns, characterized by simplicity, plainness, and strength, typical of the pioneer character ? Not only are these basaltic columns appropriate from a local standpoint, but as monuments of State history they are equally suitable. Basaltic rock forms the strong back-bone of our mountains and confines within precipitous walls our mad, rushing mountain torrents, and our placid, but mighty rivers, even from the McKenzie, down the Willamette and the Columbia to the sea. The law of fitness has indeed been fulfilled, and our chapter of Oregon's history has been recorded forever.
The only other historic monument in our State is the one at Champoeg, commemorating the saving of Oregon to the United States. The Willamette Valley has many other historic spots which should be marked. Washington has unveiled a monument to Marcus Whitman; why should Oregon not dedicate a shaft to the memory of John McLoughlin? The people of our State need to be awakened to the importance of the historical legacy which it is their privilege to give to the world in lasting form. Several books on Oregon history have been written, and many more may be woven from reminiscences gleaned from the passing pioneers. Such books are invaluable for reference; but how many of us read them in detail? What we need is history so recorded that it must be read. To quote from our pioneer editor:
"The noblest treasure of any State is the memory of its heroic dead. Recorded in books, their deeds soon fail from the common memory and are recollected only by students. But a monument erected in a great city which meets the eye and holds the attention of every passer-by is a perpetual reminder and an unfailing incentive to emulation. Such monuments manifest both civic patriotism and genuine appreciation of great deeds. They beautify the city where they stand and educate its citizens to love their country and value the renown of its heroes. * * * The time will come, undoubtedly, when the parks and squares of our cities will be peopled with the statues of heroes and dignified with their monuments. The cities themselves will become worthy both in architecture and civic spirit of the memories which they enshrine, and our entire public life will rise to a higher plane. On our dead selves and the memories of our dead heroes we must build the future of the human race."
THE MARKING OF HISTORIC SITES.[1]
By F. G. Young.
The marking with basaltic columns of spots with which important events in the life of a small community are associated is not so pretentious as building pyramids, or mediaeval cathedrals. It is not so soul-stirring as the putting up of a Bunker Hill monument or a shaft to the father of his country at the Capital City. And yet, the marking of the historic sites in Eugene may mean more to those interested in it and to the city at large than do those larger undertakings that are more impressive and have wider sweep. It's not the size of the undertaking but the spirit with which it is done and the character of the event commemorated that count.
Civilization and monument building go together. Uncivilized peoples don't build memorials. There must be some measure of civilization before monuments appear. But what is more important to note is the fact that civilizations are built up or dragged down by the memorials they erect. Monuments make or unmake civilizations because they body forth their ideals. The downfall of Egypt was no doubt accelerated by the pyramids built to gratify the vanity of despots. Put up by slaves under the lash of task-masters, the effect was blighting. While monuments to characters like Washington, Lincoln and Grant, or to commemorate events like the battle of Bunker Hill have just the opposite effect upon their builders. People that have done anything, or that have anything in them, or any future before them are bound to mark historic sites and build civic monuments.
In their memorials peoples capitalize their past civilization and make it effective for the new and higher. With these memorials they get together and stay their minds on their ideals. Our memorials, if we as a people are sound in thought and heart, have as their nucleus the best of our past selves and are filled out by our best civic aspirations. These are visualized and symbolized in the columns in our streets. They are our embodied ideals and serve as the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.
To evoke co-operation in our onward march as a community, to get concerted volition for the highest, we must have as did the Children of Israel of old some tangible symbol, or token, of God's spirit in us leading us on.
Now nothing soul-stirring or that affected the destiny of the State or the Nation at large ever happened with the environs of Eugene. The leading events in the history of Eugene were humble and undramatic occurrences. Yet the fact that they appealed to the Native Daughters bespeaks for these a higher order of patriotism than would a similar re- sponse if there had been something more dramatic and con- spicuous to commemorate.
The conditions are simply these a community that is going to move onward and upward in its civic life must honor what was best in its past. It must build on that best. To ignore it is to make a failure. To gain in community strength and character it must live a consecutive life. A city that does not utilize what is best in its past builds on the sand. It will forever grovel in the dirt and be wretchedly poor in all that pertains to the higher life and to all that makes life worth living. The community that sticks up its nose at its yesterdays will soon never have any todays nor any tomorrows in prospect that it can respect. Such a community is not unlike the man who on Saturday night has so .little regard for his week's earnings that he 1 1 blows them in ' ' for that which can do him no good.
The building of Skinner's cabin on the west end of the butte, the organization of the first court for trial procedure on what was later the Titus block, and the founding of Colum- bia College on what is now College Hill, all represent begin- nings of the elements of an order of life on this soil of the upper Willamette far higher than any it had ever known before. Those events represent the transplanting to this soil of a race, of institutions of justice and of means of enlightenment as good as the best that man through the struggle and effort of countless ages had succeeded in developing. The setting up here of an American home, of a court of common law, and of an institution of higher education where before there had been but the Indian tepee, the but slightly tempered
rule of might and the utter lack of educational activity—these are surely worth commemorating. THE MORMON SETTLEMENTS IN THE MISSOURI VALLEY.
By CLYDE B. AITCHISON.
In the spring of 1846, what is now Southeastern Nebraska and Southwestern Iowa, was almost devoid of white settlers. Stretching back to the Sacs and Foxes, the eastern slope of the Missouri Valley was occupied only by Pottawattamie In- dians, some two or three thousand in number. A dozen years before, the Pottawattamies, "The Makers of Fire," with some Ottawas and Chippewas, had surrendered their Illinois lands to the general government, and been removed to a reservation of five million acres in Southwest Iowa. Except a few sma.ll settlements of whites near the Missouri State line, the sub- agency opposite Bellevue, and scattering posts of the Ameri- can Fur Company, the Missouri Valley, east of the river, was in the sole use and occupation of the Pottawattamies and their Ottawa and Chippewa allies.
By another treaty made with the government, June 5, 1846, the Indians again disposed of their lands, but reserved the right of occupancy two years. That year, and 1847, most of the Pottawattamies withdrew from the Iowa reservation to their new home on the Kaw, a few returning to hunt each year.
Across the Missouri, west of the Pottawattamies, the agency at Bellevue cared for four tribes, the Omahas, Otoes, Poncas and Pawnees, beside attending to the Pottawattamies, Ottawas and Chippewas through the sub-agency on the east side of the river. The Omaha tribe was to the north of the Platte, and the Otoes south of it, with a strip between them still occasion- ally disputed the ridiculous warfare of poor remnants of once mightier tribes. The Omahas were particularly miser- able. Unprotected from their old foes, the Sioux, yet for- bidden to enter into a defensive alliance, they were reduced to a pitiable handful of scarcely more than a hundred families, MORMON SETTLEMENTS IN MISSOURI VALLEY. 277 the prey of disease, poverty stricken, too cowardly to venture out from the shadow of their tepees to gather their scanty crops, unlucky in the hunt, and too dispirited to be daring or successful thieves. Further north, between the Niobrara or L'eau qui Court and White Earth rivers, were five or six hundred almost equally abject Poncas. The Pawnees had their villages south of the Platte and west of the Otoes, and the country to the north was yet the scene of frequent conflicts with their hereditary enemies, the Sioux. All west of the river was Indian country. A white man not specially licensed was a trespasser. The country was un- organized, practically unexplored, and to the world little else but a name. Sarpy had a trading post or so ; the Presbyterians had established a mission ; and a few troops were stationed at old Fort Kearney, now in the limits of Nebraska City. With these exceptions, the prairie sod of the Indian country was still unbroken by the plow of the white settler. A religious sect calling themselves Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, was founded in New York, in 1830, some sixteen years before the time mentioned. Its members increased rapidly. Successive vain attempts were made to secure a home, isolated from mankind, in Jackson, Clay and Caldwell counties, Mis- souri; and when finally driven from Missouri, in 1840, the Mormons gathered on the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois. They were welcomed for their voting power, and easily ob- tained a charter for the town of Nauvoo, so favorable it prac- tically made them an independent state within a state. But soon the surrounding inhabitants combined to drive them out. Five years of constant riot culminated in the assassination of the founder of their religion, Joseph Smith, the revocation of the charter of Nauvoo, and the complete overthrow of the Saints by superior physical force. After the election of Brigham Young as president of the Twelve Apostles, the Mormons promised to leave Illinois "as soon as grass grew and water ran," in the spring of 1846, provided meantime, they were permitted to dispose of their 278 CLYDE B. AITCHISON. property and make preparations for departure without fur- ther molestation. September 9, 1845, the Mormon authorities determined to send an advance party of fifteen hundred to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. In January, 1846, a coun- cil of the church ordered this company to start at once, and announced in a circular to the Saints throughout the world the intention to secure a home beyond the Rockies, a safe haven from the annoyances of their enemies. Through all the winter of 1845-6, the Mormons made every effort to dispose of property they could not easily move and to secure equipment for the march. Houses and farms and all immovable chattels were sacrificed to the best terms avail- able, and the community for a hundred miles around was bartered out of wagons and cattle. The pioneers hastened their departure from motives of prudence. The first detachment, sixteen hundred men, women and children, including the high officials of the church, crossed the river early in February and pushed forward on the march. The main body of Mormons began crossing the day after, and followed the pioneers in large bodies, at frequent intervals, though some little distance behind the first party. By the middle of May or first of June, probably sixteen thousand persons with two thousand wagons had been ferried across the Mississippi, and were on their way to the West. The sufferings of the pioneers (though the hardiest of the whole Mormon host), and of the earlier bands following, is almost beyond description. Hastily and inadequately equipped, without sufficient shelter or fuel, weakened by rheumatism and catarrh, short of food for both man and beast, exposed to every blast of an unusually severe winter, they plodded westward and wished for spring. Spring came, and found them not half way to the Missouri. The excessive snows of the winter and the heavy spring rains turned the rich prairie soil into pasty mud, and raised the streams so that in many instances the emigrants had to wait patiently for the waters to go down. The pioneers laid out a road, and established huge farms in MORMON SETTLEMENTS IN MISSOURI VALLEY. ^79 the lands of the Sacs and Foxes. Two of these settlements, or farms, called Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, included upwards of two miles of fenced land, well tilled, with com- fortable log buildings ; intended as permanent camps for those to follow, and to accumulate reserve provisions for the coming winter. In addition more or less permanent camps were established at intervals along the trail from the Mississippi to the Missouri, at Sugar Creek, Richardson Point, on the Chari- ton, Lost Camp, Locust Creek, and at Indiantown, the "Little Miami" village of the Pottawattamies. Several thousand did not reach the Missouri in 1846. Many returned to eastern States ; others remained at Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, because of a lack of wagons to transport them further west, and in order to cultivate the huge farms to pro- vision the camps the following winter. The van of the main body of Mormons reached the Missouri, near the present city of Council Bluffs, June 14, 1846, and then moved back into the hills while a ferry boat was being built. The boat was launched the 29th, and the next day the pioneers began push- ing across the river. The next few weeks the companies of emigrants as they arrived temporarily camped on the bluffs and bottoms of the Missouri, at Mynster Springs, at Rush- ville, at Council Point and Traders' Point. The pioneers at the same time advanced into the Indian country, building bridges over the Papillion and Elkhorn, and constructing roads. In July, it was resolved to establish a fort on Grand Island, but the pioneers did not reach that far west that year. Some reached the Pawnee villages, and then finding the season too far advanced to continue westward, turned north and win- tered on the banks of the Missouri at the mouth of the Ni- obrara, among the Poncas. The Pottawattamies and Omahas received the refugees kindly. A solemn council was held by the Pottawattamies in the yard of one of Sarpy's trading houses, and the assembled chiefs welcomed the wanderers in aboriginal manner. Pied Riche, surnamed Le Clerc, the scholar, told them : 28Cf CLYDE B. AITCHISON. ' ' The Pottawattamie came sad and tired into this inhospita- ble Missouri bottom, not many years back, when he was taken from his beautiful country beyond the Mississippi, which had abundant game, and timber, and clear water everywhere. Now you are driven from your lodges and lands there, and the graves of your people. We must help one another, and the Great Spirit will help us both. You are now free to cut and use all the wood you may wish. You can make all your im- provements, and live on any part of our land not actually occupied by us. Because one suffers and does not deserve, is no reason he shall always suffer, I say. We may live to see all right yet. However, if we do not, our children will. Bon Jour." The Pottawattamies had within the month ceded their lands to the United States, reserving two years' right of occupation, and with becoming dignity signed articles of convention with the Mormons. A large number of emigrants remained among the Potta- wattamies during the winter of 1846-7, living in shacks of cottonwood, in caves in the bluffs, in log cabins in the groves and glens wherever there was shelter, fuel, and water. The greater number of Mormons, however, crossed into the Indian country at the ferry established opposite present site of Flor- ence, or else at Sarpy's Ferry below, making their first large camp at Cutler Park, a few miles northwest of the ferry, where they built a mill. Here the chiefs of the Omaha tribe held a grand council with the Mormon leaders, and Big Elk, the principal chief of the tribe, gave permission to remain two years, invited reciprocal trade, and promised warning of danger from other Indians. The Mexican War was now in progress. About the time the exodus began, the Mormons applied to Washington for some form of work, to assist them in getting further west. Their tender of military services was accepted, and under orders from General Kearney, Captain James Allen raised a battalion of five companies in the Missouri camps, in two veeks. himself assuming command. After a farewell ball, the recruits marched away, accompanied as far as Fort Leaven- worth by eighty women and children. There each man reMORMON SETTLEMENTS IN MISSOURI VALLEY. 281 ceived a bounty of $40.00, most of which was taken back to the families left behind at the Missouri River camps. While the withdrawal of five hundred able-bodied men left few but the sick in the camps, the bounty received was considerable and much needed, and the enlistment of the battalion induced Captain Allen to promise, for the government, to allow the Mormons to pass through the Pottawattamie and Omaha lands, and to remain while necessary. Subsequent letters from Washington showed that the Federal authorities ex- pected the Mormons to leave in the spring of 1847. Some six hundred fifty Saints had been left in Nauvoo after the emigration ceased in June, consisting of the sick, the poor, and those unable to sell their property. The Gentile Whigs renewed the old quarrel, fearing the vote of the Mormon element would control the August congressional elec- tion. The Saints finally agreed to not attempt to vote. But in fact, says Governor Ford, all voted the Democratic ticket, some three and four times, being induced by the considerations of the President allowing their settlement on the Indian res- ervations on the Missouri, and the enlistment of the Mormon battalion. Nauvoo fell, and the last of the Mormons fled from the city in extreme distress. By the close of the summer of 1846, some twelve or thirteen thousand Mormons were in camp in the Missouri Valley, at Rushville, Council Point, Traders' Point, Mynster Springs, Indiantown, in the groves along the creeks, and in the glens in the hills ; and on the west side of the river, at Cutler Park, on the Elkhorn and Papillion crossings, and as far as the Pawnee villages. During the summer and autumn of 1846, particularly in August and September, the various camps were siezed with a plague of scrofulous nature, which the Mormons called, the black canker. The Indians had lost one-ninth of their num- ber from this strange disease, the year before, and the mortal- ity among the whites was fully as great in 1846. In one camp 37 per cent were down with the fever at one time. The pes- tilence was attributed to the rank vegetation and the decaying 282 CLYDE B. AITCHISON. organic matter on the bottoms of the Missouri and of its sluggish tributaries ; to the foul slime left by the rapid subsid- ence of a flood ; and to the turning of the virgin soil by the settlers. There were often not enough well to attend to the sick or bury the dead. Six hundred deaths occurred on the site of the present town of Florence. The plague raged several successive years, and from 1848 to 1851, on the Iowa side of the river, hundreds of Mormons died of it. During the autumn months, preparations were made to winter on the site of the present town of Florence, until the spring of 1847. They enclosed several miles of land, and planted all obtainable seed, and erected farm cabins and cattle shelters. They built a town on a plateau overlooking the river, their "Winter Quarters," and thirty-five hundred Saints lived there during the hard winter of 1846-7. Winter Quarters was a town of some size, consisting, in December, of five hundred thirty-eight log houses and eighty- three sod houses. The numerous and skillful craftsmen of the emigrants had worked all the summer and fall, under the incessant and energtic direction of Brigham Young. The houses they built were comfortable enough, but not calculated to stand the first sudden thaw or drenching rain. "The buildings were generally of logs," says the manu- script history of Young, "from twelve to eighteen feet long; a few were split, and made from linn and cottonwood timber ; many roofs were made by splitting oak timber into boards, called shakes, about three feet long and six inches wide, and kept in place by weights and poles; others were made of willows, straw and earth, about a foot thick ; some of puncheon. Many cabins had no floors ; there were a few dug-outs on the side hills the fire place was cut out at the upper end. The ridge pole was supported by two uprights in the center and roofed with straw and earth, with chimneys of prairie sod. The doors were made of shakes with wooden hinges and a string latch; the inside of the log houses was daubed with clay; a few had stoves." In October, the camp at Cutler Park was moved to Winter MORMON SETTLEMENTS IN MISSOURI VALLEY. 283 Quarters. Schools were instituted, churches established, and the whole mechanism so rudely shattered at Nauvoo, was once more running as smoothly and powerfully as ever. Eight thousand dollars were spent for machinery and stones for the water flouring mill Young was constructing. Several loads of willow baskets were made by the women. The winter was passed in endeavoring to keep alive, and in preparation for resuming the march in the spring, by those who were strong and had provisions for a year and a half ; others made ready to plant and gather the crops of the coming summer. Thous- ands of cattle were driven across the Missouri and up into Harrison and Monona counties, in Iowa, to winter on the 1 * rush bottoms, ' ' where a now extinct species of rush formerly grew in profusion, and remained green all winter, though covered by snow and ice. Polygamy was practiced to a limited extent. Young, for instance, confesses to meeting, one afternoon, sixty-six of his family, including his adopted children. In the octagon council house, "resembling a New England potato heap in time of frost," and which called for a load of fuel a day, the scheme of organization and exploration was perfected, and Young published most minute directions as to the manner of march, pursuant to a revelation made January 14, 1847. In response to a call for volunteers, what was called the pioneer company, moved out from Winter Quarters April 14, 1847, to the rendezvous on the Elkhorn and organ- ized the 16th under Brigham Young, with a force of 143 persons, including three women. Seventy-three wagons were taken, loaded with provisions and farm machinery. About this time the camp on the Niobrara returned to the Missouri River settlements. The pioneers followed the north side of the Platte to Fort Laramie, crossing the Loup April 24th, in a leather boat, ' * The Revenue Cutter," made for this purpose. They reached the Ancient Bluff ruins May 22d, and Fort Laramie, June 1st, halting while the animals rested and ferry boats were built. Captain Grover was left behind to ferry other companies 284 CLYDE B. AITCHISON. arriving from Winter Quarters, but his services were not needed. After the pioneers had crossed to the south bank of the North Platte, they recrossed 124 miles further on, and subsequent immigration kept to the north bank of the river. The pioneers traveled more than a thousand miles, and laid out roads suitable for artillery, reaching the valley of Great Salt Lake the 23d and 24th of July. Having laid out the city of Great Salt Lake in a month, Young and his party started back to Winter Quarters, arriving at the Missouri Octo- ber 31st. After the pioneers left Winter Quarters in April, all others who were able to go organized another company, known as the first immigration, with Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor in command, consisting of 1,553 persons, in about 580 wagons, with cattle, horses, swine and poultry. It reached the Salt Lake Valley in sections, in the autumn of 1847. This, and the strong expeditions later on, were divided into companies of a hundred, subdivided into companies of fifty and of ten, each under a captain, and all under a member of the high council of the church. Videttes selected the next day's camp, and acted as skirmishers. The wagons traveled in a double column, where possible. Upon halting, they were arranged in the form of two convex parts, with openings at the points of intersection, the tongues of the wagons outward, one front wheel lapping the hind wheel of the wagon in front. The cattle corraled inside, were watched by guards stationed at the opening at the ends, and were safe from stampede or depredations. The tents were pitched outside. When practica- ble, the Mormons arranged the wagons in a single curve, with the river forming a natural defense on one side. Their wagons were widened to six feet by extensions on the sides. Each was loaded to the canvas top with farm implements, grains, machinery of all sorts, with a coop of chickens lashed on behind. But all the wagons were not of this size or de- scription. They ranged from the heavy prairie schooner drawn by six or eight oxen to the crazy vehicle described by Colonel Kane as loaded with a baby, and drawn by a dry, MORMON SETTLEMENTS IN MISSOURI VALLEY. 285 little heifer. Each man marched with a loaded, but uncapped musket, and so perfect was their discipline and organization that frequently hostile Indians passed by small bodies of Mormons to attack much stronger bands of other immigrants. During the year 1847, the Indians on the west side of the river complained that the Mormons were killing too much game and cutting too much timber, and the Saints were there- upon ordered to leave. They obtained permission to occupy the Pottawattamie lands for five years, and accordingly the main body moved to the east side of the Missouri. Bishop Miller had settled in the valley of Indian Creek in the center of the old part of the present city of Council Bluffs, a little earlier. After the complaint had been made by the Indians, the great part of the Mormons settled around the old govern- ment block house there. " Miller's Hollow" became Kanes- ville, in honor of the Gentile friend of the Mormons, Colonel Thomas L. Kane, who was a brother of Elisha Kent Kane, the explorer. The headquarters of the church were transferred to a huge log tabernacle on the flats. A postoffice was established in Kanesville that year, but mails were received very irreg- ularly until the great influx of Gentiles in 1852-3. Orson Hyde, the apostle and lawyer, became editor as well, and published "The Frontier Guardian" three years, commenc- ing in February, 1849. The population of Pottawattamie County at that time was about 4,000, mainly of the Mormon faith. The crops of 1847 were bountiful, and a series of strong immigrant trains were organized at the Elkhorn rendezvous. The three men composing the Quorum of the presidency of the church left for Salt Lake early in the summer, at the head of strong bands; Brigham Young in May, with 397 wagons and 1,229 persons, Heber C. Kimball in July, with 226 wagons and 662 persons, and Willard Richards soon after with 169 wagons and 526 persons, 2,417 immigrants in all, with 892 wagons. Richards' departure left Winter Quarters quite deserted. 286 CLYDE B. AITCHISON. These companies took what was called the North Platte route, ferrying the Elkhorn (whose bridge had disappeared), and Loup, and keeping on the north bank of the Platte the whole distance to the Sweet Water. All the later Mormon trains were governed by the same strict discipline as the pioneers and first immigration, and their travels present no features of special interest. The Salt Lake immigration continued with diminishing volume from 1848 to 1852, until scarcely distinguishable from the general rush to the West. The perpetual emigration fund was established in 1849, and the attention of the church was directed to gathering its communicants from Great Britain to Salt Lake Valley. The immigration was to New Orleans and St. Louis by steamboat, and then by boat to Independence, St. Joseph, Kanesville, or neighboring Missouri River settle- ments. The Independence and St. Joseph trails soon joined in the well-known government and stage road of later years, running to Fort Kearney. Bethlehem, opposite the mouth of the Platte, was a favorable crossing place for those landing at Council Point, near Kanesville, but preferring the South Platte route. Many started from Nebraska City, or Old Fort Kearney, and after 1856, from Wyoming, in Otoe County. The South Platte route followed the southerly bank of the river until it joined the Fort Kearney road. The trail offici- ally recognized and counseled was along the north bank of the Platte, leaving Kanesville by way of Crescent, making a rendezvous at Boyer Lake or Ferryville, crossing the river to the abandoned Winter Quarters, then to the Elkhorn rendez- vous, with ferries over the Elkhorn and Loup. All the sun- flower trails converged into one at Fort Laramie. For some reason the North Platte route was the most healthy, and was the one constantly urged and counselled by the church auth- orities at Kanesville. Orson Hyde counted 500 graves along the trail south of the Platte, and but three graves north of the river, from the Missouri to Fort Laramie. Many Mormons did not start for Salt Lake at once, and MORMON SETTLEMENTS IN MISSOURI VALLEY. 287 several thousand who were disaffected or too poor to go on, never left the valley of the Missouri. These scattered over all Southwestern Iowa. A year after the last company left Winter Quarters for Utah, the church had thirty-eight branches in Pottawattamie and Mills counties. The census from 1849 to 1853 gives Pottawattamie County a population varying from 5,758 to 7,828, reaching the maximum in 1850 and showing a loss of 2,500 from 1852 to 1854, the years of final Mormon exodus. Every governmental function was controlled by the Mormons up to 1853. They elected Mormon representatives to the General Assembly, and Mormon juries sat in the courts of Mormon judges. The Gentile vote and influence was small. Kanesville, of course, was the principal settlement. Its pop- ulation was as unstable as might be expected of a frontier outfitting camp. September, 1850, it contained 1,100; in November, 1851, 2,500 to 3,000 ; and the census of 1852 showed 5,057. It was at first hardly of the dignity of a village. Its inhabitants all looked forward to an early departure; the buildings they erected were temporary make-shifts, and their home-made furniture was rude and not intended for perma- nent use. With the rush of the gold-seekers following 1849, the resting place of the well-behaved Saints gradually changed to a roistering mining camp, too lively and wicked for the Mor- monsby the way, the original prohibitionists of Iowa. Little attention was paid to life or property in the crush and con- fusion of outfitting from the first of March to the first of July, while the westward immigration was in its height. After June the population dwindled to scarcely 500, and the village again became sedate and orderly. There were only two or three other settlements of any size. Council Point, three or four miles south of Kanesville, was a favorite steamboat landing. Traders or Trading Point, or St. Francis was made a postoffice in the summer of 1849, under the name "Nebraska." A year later this postoffice was given the vagrant name, "Council Bluffs," and was credited with a population of 125. California City was opposite the mouth 288 CLYDE B. AITCHISON. of the Platte, and a little south of it was Bethlehem Ferry. Carterville was three miles southwest of Kanesville, and was a thriving village of some hundreds. Indiantown, at the crossing of the Nishnabotna, on the Mt. Pisgah road, west of the present Lewis, in Cass County, was the center of quite a large trade. Coonvi.lle became Glenwood. We have the names of some forty or fifty other settlements in Southwestern Iowa. Little remains of these, but their names and memory, and a half-rotted squared log occasionally plowed up. Strictly, they were not villages, or even hamlets; merely the collection within easy distance of a handful of farm houses, in a grove on a creek, with a school or church, and perhaps a mill or trader 's stock. They resembled rather the ideal farm communities or settlements of some modern sociologists. The greater part of the Saints, who acknowledged the leadership of Young, left Iowa in 1852, and with the legisla- tive change of the name of Kanesville to Council Bluffs City, in January, 1853, the history of the early Mormon settlements in the Missouri Valley may be considered closed. Council Bluffs remained an outfitting station for Mormon, as well as other immigration, for years, but there was little to dis- tinguish Salt Lake travelers from any others preparing to cross the Rockies. Such immigration continued in consider- able number until the Civil War, as witness the ill-fated hand- cart and wheelbarrow expedition of 1856. Turning now to a few settlements made in Nebraska in later years, a hundred families from St. Louis, under the direction of H. J. Hudson, formed three communistic colonies at Genoa in 1857, called Alton, Florence, and St. Louis. An attempt had been made by them to settle in Platte County. They constructed dug-outs and cabins in the fall of 1857, and the next spring surveyed the lands on which they had located and partitioned each man his share. They enclosed two thousand acres with fences and ditches, and turned the sod of two square miles of prairie. The Genoa postoffice was established with Mr. Hudson, now of Columbus, as postmaster. MORMON SETTLEMENTS IN MISSOURI VALLEY. 289 The first years of their occupancy were marked by great privations, gradually changing to comfort and prosperity. After the colony had been maintained seven years, the Paw- nees arrived to take possession of their new reservation on the same ground. The settlers held their claim three years, but being in constant danger from the continually conflicting Sioux and Pawnees, abandoned further effort in 1863, and dispersed, some to Salt Lake, and others to Iowa, and some to Platte County. Quite a settlement or relay station was made at Wood River, in Buffalo County, in 1858, by Joseph E. Johnson. Johnson published a paper, "The Huntsman's Echo," for two years, and grew "The largest and finest flower garden " then west of the Mississippi. The settlement was broken up in 1863, by the removal of Johnson and his companions to Salt Lake Valley. D6CUMENTS. Occupation of the Columbia River II. REPORT Of the Select Committee, appointed on the 29th of December last, with instructions to inquire into the expediency of occupying the mouth of the Columbia Biver. April 15, 1824. Read: Ordered that it lie upon the table. The committee to which was referred the resolution, of the 29th day of December last, instructing them to inquire into the expediency of occupying the mouth of the Oregon, or Columbia River, have had the same under consideration, and ask leave further to REPORT : That they have considered the subject referred to them, and are persuaded, that, both in a military and commercial point of view, the occupation of that territory is of great importance to the Republic ; but, as much has been submitted to the House on these points, by former committees, they have now deemed it necessary, only to present a view of the difficulties which would probably present themselves in accomplishing that object, and the manner in which they can be overcome. To obtain information, a letter to this end was addressed to an officer of the army^ whose integrity in the public service, is well known to the House, and whose military knowledge is entitled to the highest respect ; that officer, Brigadier-General Thomas S. Jesup, answered so satisfactorily to the committee, that they have presented the answer, in its entire form, to the House, and adopt it as a part of this report. Quartermaster G'eneral's Office, Washington, April 6, 1824. Sir: In reply to your letter, dated the 30th ultimo, requesting me to communicate "any facts, views, or opinions, which may have preOCCUPATION OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER 291 sented themselves to me, relative to the probable difficulty of making an establishment at the mouth of Columbia River, and the military advantages of that establishment," I have the honor to remark, that ever since my attention was first directed to the subject, I have con- sidered the possession and military command of the Columbia necessary not only to the protection of the fur trade, but to the security of our Western frontier. That flank of our country, extending from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, is everywhere in contact with numerous, powerful, and warlike Indian nations; who, altogether, might be able to bring into the field, from twenty to thirty thousand warriors. Most of these nations communicate, either with the British to the north and west, or the Spaniards to the south. In the event of war, that force, with a few hundred foreign troops, or under the influence of foreign companies, might be made more formidable to us than any force which Europe combined could oppose to us. On the other hand, if such measures be adopted as to secure a proper influence over them, and, in the event of war, to command their co-operation, they, with the aid of a few small garrisons, would not only afford ample protection for that entire line, but would become the scourge of our enemies. The dangers to be apprehended, can only be averted by proper military 'establishments; and whether the post at the mouth of the Columbia be intended to secure our territory, protect our traders, or to cut off all communication between the Indians and foreigners, I should consider a line of posts extending from the Council Bluffs entirely across the continent necessary. Those posts should be situated, as well with a view to command the avenues through which the Indians pass from north to south, as to keep open the communication with the establishment at the mouth of the Columbia. A post should be established at the Mandan villages, because there the Missouri approaches within a short distance of the British terri- tory, and it would have the effect of holding in check the Hudson Bay and North West Companies, and of controlling the Bickarees, Man- dans, Minnatarees, Assiniboins, and other Indians, who either reside or range on the territory east, north, and west of that point. A post at, or near, the head of navigation on th'e Missouri, would control the Blackfoot Indians, protect our traders, enable us to remove those of the British companies from our territory, and serve as a depot, at which detachm'ents moving towards the Columbia might either be supplied, or leave such stores as they should find it difficult to carry with them through the mountains. It might also be made a depot of trade, and of the Indian Department. To keep open the communication through the mountains, there should be at least one small post at some convenient point between 292 DOCUMENTS. the Missouri and the Columbia, and on the latter river and its tribu- taries, there should be at le*ast thre'e posts. They would afford present protection to our traders, and, on the expiration of the privilege granted to British subjects to trade on the waters of the Columbia, would enable us to remove them from our territory, and to secure the whole trade to our own citizens. They would also 'enable us to pre- serve peace among the Indians, and, in the event of foreign war, to command their neutrality or their assistance, as we might think most advisable. The posts designated, might be established and maintained at an additional annual expense not exceeding forty thousand dollars. By extending to those posts the system of cultivation, now in oper- ation at the Council Bluffs, the expense of supplying them would, in a few years, be greatly diminished. Mills might be erected at all the posts at a trifling exp'ense, and the whole country abounding in grass, all the domestic animals necessary, either for labor or subsistence, might be supported. This would render the 'establishment more secure, and consequently more formidable to the Indian nations in their vicinity. As to the proposed posts on the Columbia, it is believed they might b'e supplied immediately at a low rate. Wheat may be obtained at New California, at about twenty-five cents per bushel, and beef cattle at three or four dollars each. Salt, in any quantity required, may be had at an island near the Peninsula of California. Should transporta- tion not be readily obtained for those articles, vessels might be con- structed by the troops. To obtain the desired advantages, it is important, not only that we occupy the posts designated, but that we commence our operations without delay. The British companies are wealthy and powerful; their establishments extend from Hudson's Bay, and Lake Superior, to the Pacific; many of them within our territory. It is not to be supposed they would surrender those advantages without a struggle, and though they should not engage in hostilities themselves, they might render all the Indians in that extensive region hostile. Th'e detachment intended to occupy the mouth of Columbia might leave the Council Bluffs in June, and one hundred and fifty men pro- ceed with boats and stores; and, as the country is open, and abounds with grass, the remaining fifty might proceed by land, with the horses intended for the transportation across the mountains, and might drive three or four hundred beeves to the Mandan villages, or to the falls of Missouri; at one of those places the parties should unite and spend the winter. The latter would be preferable, because, there they might be able to establish a friendly intercourse with the Black Foot Indians, or, at all events, by impressing them with an idea of the power of the nation, restrain their depredations upon the neighboring OCCUPATION OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER. 293 tribes, and deter them from acts of outrage upon our traders. They might, also, during the winter, reconnoitre the s'everal passes through the mountains, prepare provisions necessary to support them on the march, and down the Columbia; and, if authorized to do so, remove from our territories all British traders on the waters of the Missouri. They would necessarily remain at, or in the vicinity of, their winter- ing ground, until June, but might be occupied during th'e months of April and May in opening a road to the mountains and constructing bridges over the numerous streams on the route. This work performed, they might, in about twenty days, reach the navigable waters of Clark's Eiver, a branch of the Columbia, and, in ten days more, prepare transportation to descend to their destination, where, after every necessary allowance for accidents and delays, they would cer- tainly arrive by the month of August. The vess'els employed to transport the stores by sea, might leave the United States in the month of November, and would arrive at the mouth of the Columbia in April, at least four months before the detachment from the Council Bluffs could reach that point; and, unless the ships should be detained during that time, which could not be expected, the stores would be exposed to damage and depredation, and, perhaps, by the time the troops should arrive, would be entirely destroyed. It would, therefore, seem to me a measure of prudence that at least one company of artillery be transported with the stores. That description of force would be found necessary at the post, and the ships would afford them ample accommodation. That the route from the Council Bluffs to the mouth of Columbia is practicable, has been proved by the enterprise of more than one of our citizens. It, no doubt, presents difficulties; but, difficulties are not impossibilities. We have only to refer to the pages of our history to learn that many operations, infinitely more arduous, have been accom- plished by Americans. The march of Arnold to Quebec, or of General Clark to Vincennes, during the Kevolutionary War, exceeded greatly in fatigue, privation, difficulty, and danger, the proposed operation; and I believe I may say, without fear of contradiction, that the de- tachment might be supplied, during the whole route, with less difficulty than in the war of 1756 was experienced in supplying the forces' operating under Gen'eral Washington, and General Braddock, against the French and Indians on the Ohio. A post at the mouth of the Columbia is important, not only in relation to the interior trade, and the military defense of th'e western section of the Union, but also in relation to the naval power of the Nation. Naval power consists, not in ships, but in seamen; and, to be efficient, the force must always be available. The northwest coast of Ameiica is an admirable nursery for seamen many of our best sailors 294 , DOCUMENTS. are formed th'ere: without a naval station, however, on the Pacific, the force employed in the whale fishery, as well as in sealing, and the northwest trade, would, in the event of war, with a great maritinre power, be, in some measure, lost to the Nation. But, that establish- ment made, it would afford a secure retreat to all our ships, and seamen, in that section of the globe; and the force, thus concentrated, might be used with effect against the trade, if not the fleets, or pos- sessions, of the enemy, in place of being driven to the Atlantic, or perhaps captured on their way. The establishment might be considered as a great bastion, command- ing the whole line of coast to the north and south; and it would have the same influence on that line which the bastions of a work have on its curtains, for the principles of defense are the same, whether applied to a small fortress, or to a line of frontier, or even an entire section of the globe. In the one case, the missiles used are bullets and cannon shot; in the other, ships and fleets. I have the honor to be, Sir, very respectfully, Your obedient servant, To the Hon. John Floyd, TH. S. JESSUP. House of Eepresentatives. Letter of Dr. John McLoughlin to Oregon Statesman, June 8, 1852. A word of comment on the occasion of the production of the following remarkable document seems warranted. Though the author in his opening paragraph refers to the circumstances which impel him to write, he does not allow himself to disclose fully the conditions that called for an expression from him. Neither is it quite possible for the letter as a whole to disclose all that called for it. The occasion for this document grew out of what Dr. McLoughlin had done for Oregon and out of what at the peculiar juncture of affairs it would have been most meet for Oregon in 1852 to have done for Dr. McLough- lin. Though a private citizen and not a candidate for office, yet, and not of his own choosing, he was an issue. His spirit bears up sublimely under the crushing blows it had been receiving and his magnanimity charms. The docu- ment, as Mr. Himes remarks in submitting it, is a most appro- priate memorial paper, but as a comprehensive resume of his LETTER OF DR. JOHN McLouGHLiN. 295 relations to the making of Oregon by one who had been a cen- tral figure in Oregon history nearly to that date, it deserves a place in Oregon historical literature similar to that of Washington's farewell address in our national classics. That there was masterly opportuneness in the development of his plea (for such it was) is seen when studied in connec- tion with the measures to which he refers. It should have won redress. Alas ! for the honor of Oregon that it did not. PORTLAND, Oregon, September 3, 1907. On this, the fiftieth anniversay of the death of Dr. John McLoughlin, the friend of the early pioneers of Oregon, it is fitting that a letter, which he wrote in June, 1852, which was recently discovered in the Oregon Statesman of June 8th of that year, be reproduced. At that time this paper was pub- lished in Oregon City, and its editor was Mr. Asahel Bush, the present well known banker of Salem. GEORGE H. HIMES, Assistant Secretary Oregon Hist. Soe'y. The letter alluded to is as follows : Mr. Editor: Being frequently asked in the pres'ent excited state of the Territory [1852] my vi'ews and intended action at the polls as between the Whig and Democratic parties just now organizing, I beg to make a public reply. I do this to the end that no public act of mine touching the interests of the country may b'e made under cover, for i scorn deceit or duplicity in affairs concerning the welfare of others; and, I cannot, at this late day, depart from a rule alike dictated to my reason in 'early life, and which more than fifty years of experience has been commended to my riper judgment. I was born in Canada, and reared to manhood in the immediate vicinity of the United States, and from my earliest recollection I have found happy employment for many a leisure hour in studying the character of its people and the working of its institutions. Nor have I been indifferent to the two adverse systems of political thought and action dividing its inhabitants from the earliest formation of the government. The sympathies of my heart and the dictates of my understanding, more than thirty years ago, led me to look forward to a day when both my relations to others and the circumstances sur- rounding me would permit me to live under and enjoy the political blessings of a flag which, wherever it floats, whether over the land or the sea, is honored for the principles of justice lying at the founda- tion of the government it represents, and which shields from injury and dishonor all who claim its protection. 296 , DOCUMENTS. As is well known, my lot was cast, a long time ago, in the service of the Hudson Bay Company*. Twenty-eight years since, I found myself on the soil of Oregon, in a responsible capacity, under that company, and called upon, from my peculiar relations to them and my sympathies with the American government, to discharge many delicate duties. As a subject of Great Britain, up to 30th of May, A. D. 1849, the date of declaring my intention to become a citizen of the United States, I claim to have discharged all just obligations to the govern- ment of my birth; and, as an officer of the H. B. Co., up to the year 1846, the period of my disconnection with it, I know that I was faithful to its interests as far as I could be without compromitting my s'ense of justice to others or turning a deaf ear to the calls of humanity. I early foresaw that the march of civilization and progress of peopling the American Territories, was westward and onward, and that but a few years would pass away before the whole valuable country between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, then used only as hunting and trapping grounds, and as the resting place of native tribes, must become the abode of another race American. This could neither be successfully resisted, nor did I deem it politic or desirable to attempt it. In this spirit I prepared myself to encourage, hasten, and further what I thought would be not only attended with good, but inevitable. The absence of a cold and chilling policy calcu- lated to check and embarrass immigration to Oregon has subjected me in Europe to 'strictures as untrue as they have been unjust, but this I cannot wonder at or complain of, for it is the province of selfishness and conservatism to frown upon and discourage all liberal ideas and efforts from whatsoever source they may proc'eed. SucTa things do not, therefore, annoy me, and, if I can truly feel that in my day ar.d generation I have done something, however slight, to advance the cause of civilization, freedom and true progress, I am abundantlv repaid all the injury which the illiberal and unjust, in other lands, may have heretofore cast upon m'e, or may hereafter find it in their hearts with which to blacken my name and character. From 1824 to the present hour, I have spared neither time nor means, but liberally used both, to facilitate the settling of Oregon by whites; and, that it has been my good fortune to do much in year 3 gone by to relieve distress and promote the comfort and happiness of immigrants, I may fearlessly assert, and for proof need only to refer to the candid and just Americans who first came to the country. And I may add with equal confidence, that by the policy pursued by me and the earliest cultivators of the soil in Oregon, mostly foreigners, this country was more easily reclaimed from the Indians and settled by whites, and with less loss of life than any new territory of the United States. In this manner nearly a quarter of a century passed LETTER OF DR. JOHN McLouGHLiN. away. Congress at length sent us an organic law, and in its sens'e of justice permitted those foreigners then within its limits to have a voice or vote in the conduct of public affairs on declaring their inten- tions to become citizens. At 'the earliest moment possible after the United States laws were extended over us, I availed myself, in good faith, of this opportunity; but, mark the sequel! The first Legisla- tive Assembly, the very men we aided to elect, passed an act seeking to disfranchise those of us whose accident it was to have been born on foreign soil, although our manhood and strength had been spent and wasted during almost a whole generation in preparing Oregon as a home for civilized man. And, while it is true that, from another and juster source, this injury has been since partially repaired, it still marks the temper with which our 'early devotion to the country and its pioneer settlers has been treated. Not content with this, Congress was unnaturally induced, through false representations coming from men high in authority, to insert a clause in the land bill which deprives the children of such as happen to be born on foreign so'il of all rights to their land claims, while the half-breed offspring of native Americans get title to theirs, and in addition, my own claim and home, and the only one I have on earth, was reserved; and, as if to propitiate the intended outrage upon me individually, and to approve the good and the just, an appeal was made to their sense of the value of education by donating this home of mine, and last resting place, to the endow- ment and uses of a university! Need I refer to the foul means used to attain this end from the American Congress? One example only is sufficient to show the turpitude of the rest; it was unblushingly stated that I continued to be a British subject and refused to take steps to become naturalized, when it was notorious throughout the entire Ter- ritory that I had publicly declared and filed my intention to become a citizen of the United States in the court of Claskamas County on the 30th day of May, 1849, a year and a half before the passage of the land law! This is painful, and I cannot dwell upon it if I would. I turn to legislative acts more pleasing; and, with deference to the opin- ions of many others, to what I submit is generally conceded to have been more honorable and just. In the estimation of the Legislative Assembly of 1850-51, no purpose, however garnished with a praise- worthy profession, could justify wrong; and, in this tone of political morality, refused to accept of the donation, and sought to confirm, by the passage of an act, to the purchasers what had been bought of me in good faith, although in conflict with the rigorous law of 27th September, 1850, which, by its terms, would persecute and take from me, without consent, in my declining years, my home and private property for the ostensible public use of educating the rising genera- tion. As far as that body went in doing what was right, I feel deeply 298 f DOCUMENTS. gratified; but, with due respect, I would suggest that more than that was demanded at their hands. As the grand inquest for the Territory, and speaking for its people, did not the voic'e of public justice on behalf of the injured, demand that they should call Ifhe attention of Congress to the unequal operation of the donation law in its discrimi- nation against the children of m'en who would, if they could, have been born under the American flag, but were prevented by an inexorable destiny? And ought they not to have called the attention of Congress to the facts of my situation, and thus have sought to relieve me from a misfortune which I did not dream was pending over my head until when, uns'een and unheard, thousands of miles away from Washington, it was precipitated upon me and mine just as I was stepping into the grave and least prepared to meet and avert the consequences of such a stunning calamity? But I did not complain, and was thankful 'even for the little that the people of Oregon were willing to do for me through their chosen representatives. After this, and while my heart was full of gratitude for the past, the Legislative Assembly of 1851-52, in session at Salem, came, and that body, to my disappointment and mortification, passed an act accepting of the congressional donation of my claim and took steps towards driving me from its possession! Was this deserved, and did I merit it? And over and above all, was this called for by the honest, just and candid public opinion of Oregon's inhabitants? These are the questions I ask of the people; and as I do so, I commune with my own heart, and review my past career and history in the Territory, until, getting no other satisfactory answer than from my sense of rectitude, I find myself fast passing away to a seat of final judgment which can never fail to punish iniquity and reward well-doing. But I do not, nor will I despair. God is just; and I have ever cherished from my youth up, undoubted and undoubting confidence in the sober reflections and ultimate sense of justice of all His creatures. I trust to yet live and see in my case, as often during my day in that of others, ample justice achieved, and that cheers and consoles me in the midst of present affliction. At one time, bowed down with care, I had almost come to the con- clusion to take no further interest in the public affairs of the Terri- tory, but, as in every act of my life, the best interest of the country, founded on justice, has been the rule of my conduct, I feel, on further thought, to recall that determination. The Territory is deeply agitated with questions involving important governmental principles. The Democratic party is seeking through the zeal and activity of its most prominent members to attain an organization so as to act efficiently hereafter in the Territory in the maintenance and support of its principles. In such a struggle I cannot be an idle spectator. My sentiments, in politics, are, and have been for many years, democratic; and I heartily approve of an organization of the party, and shall cordially support, with my vote, the Democratic ticket for Clackamas County. I shall do this for the double reason of duty to a party whoso principles I cherish, and in the firm belief that the judges of the courts have rightfully nothing to do with the law locating the seat of government, and that the ballot box will be the earliest and safest umpire to dispose of that vexed question. In voting for the ticket of the Democratic county convention of Clackamas, I do not do so in all cases from a choice of the persons on it, but because it is a safe and salutary usage of that party to support the regularly appointed nominees.
In conclusion, I will say that the acts of individuals, nominally Democratic, in the attempt to prostrate my character and take away the accumulations of my long life of industry, I in no way hold the Democratic party responsible for, inasmuch as that party has heretofore never been organized in the Territory, and I am not mistaken in the fact that its noble and elevated doctrines lead to no such practices, but, on the contrary, tends to the promotion of equal and exact justice to all.
Yours, very truly,
JOHN McLOUGHLIN.
REVIEWS.
This is an informal narrative of personal experience and of family and neighborhood history. The reader is taken at once into this circle and is treated as if he were rightfully of it. Indeed, the design of the author seems at first to have been to write a book which should be read only by members of the family circle. The original design has determined the familiar style of the narrative, and doubtless in a measure the selection of many of the incidents. The book does not profess to be anything else than what it is. But it is here that its interest and its value lie. It is interesting, sometimes thrilling, to any one who has a feeling for the romance and the tragedy of the migrations of those early days across the plains and mountains and of the beginnings of society in the Oregon wilderness. Any one who loves the story of adventure will find it here. He will find, too, a record of patient 'endurance, high fortitude, and sometimes of real heroism, with a remarkable absence of much that mars most stories of adventure.
The book is valuable. It bears the mark of actual experience. We need to have such experiences told and written and put on the shelves of our home and public libraries, lest in the rapid advance of the Oregon Country in the comforts and luxuries of modern life we forget what it cost to rear the foundations of this noble State. Let us have them all, and have them told, as here, as if to the grand children at the fireside.
{{fine block|The purpose of this work "is to tell the story of the discoveries" of Puget Sound and its environs "and to explain the meaning of the geographic names in use." It is distinctively a work in historical geography in which the journal of the explorer is reproduced (occupying pages 61-334, with biographical foot-notes and photographs interspersed), and emphasis is placed on the portraits and biographies of men honored in the naming of geographic features. The author's, or probably we had better say, editor's, great achievement is found in the success with which he prosecuted his search for portraits and biographical details. Professor Meany's previous activity in erecting monuments on which the names of English and Spanish explorers are inscribed and his zeal in collecting library material from influential European dealers evidently stood him in fine stead. They secured for him large and efficient co-operation. The freedom of private archives and copyrights, as well as of "public records offices" and "national portrait galleries" was his.
The personal and local factors in historic achievements need to be celebrated to get the annals of any section into the hearts of a people developing a civilization there. Towards this end Professor Meany has labored with enthusiasm, with keen appreciation of his purpose and with ever-widening results. This book registers a large and consistent advance along the line of his former efforts.
To get an idea of the mine that Professor Meany worked for this book in his function of an illuminator of local history we need to note: How the Spanish navigators, Ferrelo, Perez and Quadra, sailed along this coast looking for a "northwest passage" through the continent and hoping they would find none, while the English explorers, Drake and Cook, sought the same here and would have hailed it with supreme delight. Cook's expedition, however, found in the wealth of fur available the material of a lucrative commerce with the Orient, though it failed in spying out a new highway thither directly across the American continent. Efficient English seamen were soon setting their stakes where the Spaniards, on grounds of priority and contiguity, had claimed sovereignty. The plot of international complication thickens around Nootka Sound, when a Spanish Admiral seizes a British crew and vessel in the act of establishing a post on what is now Vancouver Island. England resents this indignity, puts her fleet on a war-footing, when Spain backs down. Then it is that Vancouver is appointed to command some vessels to proceed to Nootka "to receive back in form a restitution of the territories on which the Spaniards had seized, and also to make an accurate survey of the coast, from the thirtieth degree of north latitude northwestward toward Cook's Inlet." There was a hitch in the proceedings of restitution, making it necessary to send home for further instructions; meanwhile there was ample time for a thorough survey of adjacent regions and the making of most serviceable charts. Leisure there was also for recalling the names of all their distinguished friends and compatriots at home whom it would be their delight to honor through applying these names to impressive natural features of the region they were exploring. Many of the faces and of the incidents that were brought before the "mind's eye" of the officers of the Chatham and Discovery while threading the passages between the many beautiful islands of this region during the spring, summer and autumn of 1792 are put before us in finest dress by this book.}}
- ↑ Note.—Read on the occasion of the dedication of monuments in Eugene, November 4, 1906.