FUR TRADE IN COLUMBIA BASIN PRIOR TO 1811 249
selecting the site and erecting the first buildings at Spokane House, located on a beautiful and sheltered peninsula at the junction of the Spokane (then known as the Skeetshoo River) and the Little Spokane rivers, a spot where the Indians were accustomed to gather in large numbers to dry their fish. The location was nine or ten miles northwest of the present flour- ishing city of Spokane, which has succeeded it as a natural trade center and which today outranks Astoria in both popula- tion and commercial importance. Alex. Henry states in his journal that Spokane House was established in the summer of 1810. It was maintained as the principal distributing point in the interior by the North- West Company and later by the Hudson's Bay Company until the spring of 1826, but was then abandoned in favor of a new post at Kettle Falls (Fort Col- vile) on the direct route of travel up and down the Columbia. The cellar holes of the buildings at Spokane House can still be indistinctly seen by those who know where to look for them. In 1812, a very short distance from these buildings, the Pacific Fur Company built a rival establishment, which was maintained until the dissolution of that company in the fall of 1813.
There remain to be mentioned three other valid attempts to establish trade relations in the basin of the Columbia, the first of which may have antedated the building of Spokane House by a brief period. This was the enterprise of the Win- ships of Boston, who sailed into the river in the spring of 1810 and began to erect some buildings on the Oregon shore at Oak Point, about fifty miles from the sea. This attempt was abandoned almost immediately because of the sudden rise of the river with the melting of the snows inland; it was a mat- ter of weeks only and possibly of days. The second was the temporary residence of Andrew Henry, of the Missouri Fur Company, during the winter months of 1810-11 on the upper waters of the Snake River, near the present town of St. An- thony, Idaho (compare with Lyman's Hist, of the Columbia River, page 109). The overland party of Astorians found his abandoned cabins upon their arrival in the early fall of 1811, and it was many years afterward before Fort Hall was built
