replenished by purchases of groceries made in the Sandwich Islands, and that only the last cargo, that of the Henry in 1847, brought out any assortment of goods for women's wear,[1] it is strikingly apparent that the greatest want in Oregon was the want of clothes.
The children of some of the foremost men in the farming districts attended school with but a single garment, which was made of coarse cotton sheeting dyed with copperas a tawny yellow. During the Cayuse war some young house-keepers cut up their only pair of sheets to make shirts for their husbands. Some women, as well as men, dressed in buckskin, and instead of in ermine justice was forced to appear in blue shirts and with bare feet.[2] And this notwithstanding the annual ship-load of Hudson's Bay goods. In 1848 not a single vessel loaded with goods for Oregon entered the river, and to heighten the destitution the fur company's bark Vancouver was lost at the entrance to the river on the 8th of May, with a valuable cargo of the articles most in demand, which were agricultural implements and dry-goods, in addition to the usual stock in trade. Instead of the wives and daughters of the colonists being clad in garments becoming their sex and position, the natives of the lower Columbia decked in damaged English silks[3] picked up along the beach, gathered in great glee their summer crop of blackberries among the mountains. The wreck of the Vancouver was a great shock to the colony. A large amount of grain had been sown in anticipation of the
- ↑ The Henry brought 'silks, mousseline de laines, cashemeres, d'écosse, balzarines, muslins, lawns, brown and bleached cottons, cambrics, tartan and net-wool shawls, ladies and misses cotton hose, white and colored, cotton and silk handkerchiefs.' Id., April 1, 1847.
- ↑ These facts I have gathered from conversations with many of the pioneers. They have also been alluded to in print by Burnett, Adams, Moss, Nesmith, and Minto, and in most of the manuscript authorities. Moss tells an anecdote of Straight when he was elected to the legislature in 1845. He had no coat, and was distressed on account of the appearance he should make in a striped shirt. Moss having just been so fortunate as to have a coat made by a tailor sold it to him for $40 in scrip, which has never been redeemed. Pioneer Times, MS., 43–4.
- ↑ Crawford's Nar., MS., 147; S. F. Californian, May 24, 1848.
