The Early Indian Wars of Oregon/Cayuse/Chapter 1
THE CAYUSE WAR
CHAPTER I.
Policy of the United States Regarding the Pacific Coast—Temper of the People—Congress Seeking Information—Early Fur-Trading Expeditions—Effect of Congressional Inquiry on the Public Mind—Floyd's Schemes for the Settlement of Oregon—Petitions to Congress to Pass a Bill to Occupy the Columbia Region—Troubles of Joint Occupation—Indian Call for Teachers—Mission Effort, and its Result in the Wallamet Valley—Hostility of the Mission Colony to the British Occupants—Secret Aid from the Government—Hudson's Bay Company Introduce Settlers—United States Naval Expedition—First Actual Settlers from the United States—Elijah White's Immigration—First Conflicts Between the Indians and Americans in Western Oregon—Jedediah Smith and John Turner—Black, Gay, Bailey—A Rogue River Indian Shot—Lee and Hines' Visit to the Umpquas—The Dalles Indians—The Clatsops—Puget Sound Tribes—Conclusions Drawn from the Foregoing.
For more than twenty years before the first immigrant party set out for Oregon, the government had been pointing out to the people of the United States the prize it was reaching after on the shores of the Pacific. As a nation America was still too young for conquest, even had it been a part of our policy to acquire territory by force, which it was not. By treaties, and by expending a few millions in money, we obtained the transfer of French and Spanish titles; and by force of defensive arms had compelled Great Britain to surrender to us the forts she held on our lake borders.
But before this was accomplished, far-seeing statesmen had set on foot that transcontinental expedition, never appreciatingly eulogized in. the past, nor adequately honored with remembrance in the present—the journey of Lewis and Clarke from the Missouri river to the Pacific, at the mouth of the Columbia, in 1804–5–6. It was a brave and a perilous undertaking, and forged one of the strongest links in the chain of evidence which prevailed in the controversy with Great Britain concerning our title to the Pacific Northwest. It stimulated the first commercial enterprise on the coast of Oregon the Pacific Fur Company of Astor the melancholy failure of which, through the cowardice and treachery of his Canadian partners, made room for the advent of a British company.
The ruin of the Pacific Fur Company was regarded as a humiliation to the country, but such was the situation of international politics that congress declined to interfere, or subsequently to extend aid to individual enterprise in Oregon, and the Hudson's Bay Company, successor to the Northwest Company, was left in actual possession, while diplomacy in London and Washington carried on the contest for mastery year after year, with varying prospects of success.
The war of the Revolution had found Americans a nation of politicians, and left them a nation of patriots, barring the Tory minority, of whom, after the Declaration of Independence, very little was heard: The doings of congress in the early part of the century were far more interesting to, and notwithstanding the lesser number of public prints, more studied by the people than are its acts in this age of daily newspapers. Each man who had in any way aided in the struggle for freedom felt a personal pride in enhancing the glory of the new republic, and a corresponding desire to punish its enemies or abase its rivals. Such was the spirit of Americanism for the first fifty years of the existence of the United States.
Well aware of the national temper, statesmen made use of it in the movement to establish the title to the territory in dispute on the Pacific coast. They took care to inform themselves of the private enterprises of the citizens in the Northwest, the most notable of which, as occurring so soon after Lewis and Clarke's expedition, was the adventure of Major Henry, who led a fur-hunting party to the head waters of Columbia in 1808. He confined his quent operations, however, to the headwaters of the Missouri, where his name is preserved in Henry's Fork of that river.
As early as 1820, Floyd, member of congress from Virginia, caused inquiry to be made "into the situation of the settlements on the Pacific ocean," having reference to Astoria, which had been restored to us after the war of 1812-15, and to the settlements of the British fur companies in this region.
Among the matter brought to light by this inquiry was an account in 1823 of the expedition of W. H. Ashley in the previous year. Encouraged by indications of government support, Ashley, in 1822, pushed a trading party as far west as the South Pass. In 1823 he took a wagon train to Green river, repeating his venture for several seasons, and reporting to the government all the information obtained in his several expeditions. Other companies succeeded him, and came, into conflict with the Hudson's Bay Company on the west side of the Rocky mountains; their explorations being watched with interest by those having the future of the United States under consideration.
Floyd, in 1821, presented a report to congress contain ing all the information gathered from the explorations of traders and adventurers, introducing a bill at the same time authorizing the president to occupy the Oregon territory, extinguish the Indian title, and provide a government,— occupation meaning defenses at the mouth of the Columbia, and military settlements at intervals along the route to the Columbia. This bill was discussed and amended from session to session, the military features being gradually eliminated as the temper of the nation changed, donations of land being offered to settlers as an inducement to emigration. Already, in 1822, petitions began to flow in from associations in different states, both north and south, memorializing congress to pass Floyd s bill, and books and pamphlets on the boundary question between Great Britain and the United States abounded, written not only, or not so much by statesmen, as by politicians among the people. Correspondence between the diplomats of both nations may have been, if not aided, at least rendered more cautious by the arguments put forth so freely on every hand. Congress, it must be conceded, by admitting bills promoting emigration to a territory in dispute while negotiations were still pending, violated the international code of fair dealing; but not more, it was argued, than Great Britain, who peopled it with traders, and despoiled it of its natural wealth of furs, giving us occasion to act upon the premise that "all is fair in love and war." The congressional conscience was satisfied by refraining from passing the bills under discussion, while the utterances put forth in speeches, often full of erroneous statements, served to keep the national spirit in a menacing attitude toward our British rival. Joint occupation, where each nation looked upon the other as an intruder, was a wholly unsatisfactory condition, and fostered in the people a feeling of defiance towards the rival power never quite appeased since the late war. In the meantime it occurred to religious societies to send missionaries to teach the Indians of Oregon, about whom very favorable statements were made by the fur companies dealing with them concerning their natural tendencies towards religion. The appearance in St. Louis of four Flatheads, proteges of one of the companies, in 1832, and their demand for teachers, was the alleged cause of the immediate action of the Methodist church, and the subsequent action of the Presbyterian and Catholic churches, in establishing missions in Oregon.
That these young chiefs should have traveled two thousand miles in search of spiritual teachers was deemed so much more remarkable than that the St. Louis company should have traveled the same distance in search of furs, that they were at once elevated into something, if not superhuman, at least greatly superbarbarian in character, and the country rang with the exploit. Those who gave the story its wonderful wings might have remembered that in the history of all invasions or explorations of new countries, the invaders have brought back with them some best specimens of the native people to show in evidence of something they wished to prove. But in this instance it was not unnatural that these Indians, perceiving that white men were possessed of knowledge and property above anything ever imagined among themselves, should have desired to obtain a clue to this superiority; nor, since all primitive people are superstitious, with a great awe of spiritual influences, that they should have inquired concerning the God of the white men, and desired to be taught his ways with his creatures. It was a day of great missionary enterprises, and the call of the Flatheads was quickly responded to by the organization of a mission party of five men—two preachers, Jason and Daniel Lee, from Stanstead, Canada, and later of Wilbrahoam seminary; and two laymen, Cyrus Shepard of Lynn, Massachusetts, and Philip L. Edwards of Richmond, Missouri; with, as a helper, Courtney M. Walker of the same place, engaged for one year. These, in the spring of 1834, joined a fur-hunting expedition under Nathaniel J. Wyeth bound for the Colum bia river. In addition, two naturalists—Townsend and Nuttall—were attached to Wyeth s party, and all these, although keeping up separate organizations, traveled together with the St. Louis Fur Company under William Sublette, the joint expedition numbering seventy men, with two hundred and fifty horses, and a small herd of cattle.
The missionaries did not, as had been expected, tarry among the Indians upon the upper Columbia. Perhaps the American fur companies who traded with them did not desire it; at all events they came with Wyeth to the lower Columbia, and were received in an unexpectedly friendly fashion by the British company whose head quarters were at Vancouver, and who also politely but determinedly made Oregon very uncomfortable for the Yankee trader, who soon sold out to them and retreated from the field.Not so the missionaries, who selected a site for their habitation in the fertile Wallamet valley, and began teaching as best they could a nomadic race, already infected with the poison of scrofula. The outcome was what might have been expected. They soon had, to use their own language, "more children in the graveyard than in the schoolroom"; for Indian youth, accustomed to freedom of movement, of air, and a certain diet, could not long withstand the influence of unaccustomed labor, confinement in a crowded house, and different forms of food. Besides, there was sickness among teachers as well as children, induced by the malaria arising from turning up the rich soil of the valley in opening the mission farm. In place of the Indians, however, a few white adventurers found their way to the valley.
Under these circumstances what should be done? Go back whence they came and abandon their undertaking? No; indeed no! Lee had sent home such a report in the beginning as caused the church to reënforce him in the third year with a fuller complement of teachers women a physician, and mechanics, who came by sea. Other reports were sent home of the beauty and fertility of the country, and the arbitrary demeanor of the British residents towards American citizens, which found their way to Washington. Then came a government agent in the character of a private citizen to confirm these rumors, who encouraged the missionaries to found a colony, and helped them to procure cattle from California to stock the grassy plains of the Wallamet. Following Slacum's report to the government was a petition gotten up among the missionaries, who had attached to their colony the few Americans led by adventure into the country, all of whom signed the petition for protection from the tyranny of the Hudson s Bay Company, which, it was contended, had no rights the United States was bound to respect on the south side of the Columbia, where its dependents had already seized upon a large tract of fertile prairie. So well did they present this argument to the Canadians themselves, that many of them in fear of losing their farms signed the petition to have the protection of the United States government ex tended over them.
So much did Jason Lee have at heart the colonial scheme that in the spring of 1838 he returned to the states overland, carrying this memorial; and so did he prevail both with the church and members of the cabinet that in 1840 a third reinforcement and a shipload of goods and farming implements arrived for the mission settlements, which were scattered from The Dalles to the mouth of the Columbia, but which as missions were soon after abandoned, the incumbents frankly owning the hopelessness of the missionary cause with the native population of western Oregon.
In 1840 the missionaries again petitioned congress to establish a territorial government in Oregon. The mission colony received this year a reinforcement of over fifty persons, swelling the whole number to seventy, and was assisted by the government—an open secret then, and admitted freely at a later period. Every one who could be induced to go to Oregon at that time was encouraged, if necessary, by financial aid from the contingent fund; both parties to the boundary controversy feeling that occupation was the argument which must ultimately settle the vexed question.
To offset the mission colony the Hudson's Bay Company introduced in 1841 about an equal number of Red-river people to the Puget Sound region, many of whom subsequently settled south of the Columbia. This year also Oregon was visited by the United States exploring expedition under Commodore Wilkes, who inspected the American settlements, and was consulted by the colonists with regard to organizing a provisional government; a scheme he disapproved as unnecessary. In the autumn there arrived overland a small company of actual settlers—the first low wash of the wave of immigration which touched the shore of the Pacific Northwest, which was neither of the missionary or adventurer classes, but men with families.[1]
To such straits were the friends of Oregon in Washington reduced about this time by the condition of our international affairs, that in the spring of 1842 John G. Spencer, the then secretary of war, found it necessary to invite Dr. Elijah White, the first physician of the Methodist mission, who had returned to his home in Ithica, New York, to come to Washington to answer certain questions; amongst others if he felt competent to pilot an emigration to Oregon that year. For notwithstanding the great amount of writing and public speaking on the Pacific territory claimed by us, and the prospect of the passage of a very favorable land bill in charge of Dr. Linn, senator from Missouri, who had taken up the work suspended by Floyd s retirement from congress, no important movement of the people in the direction of Oregon had yet been made. The people were waiting for the Linn bill to be come a law; and congress was waiting for an emigration movement to justify such a law; for to legislate for Oregon while our northern boundary was unsettled might complicate international affairs. Hence the appeal to White, and the offer of a commission from the government.
White was of that happy-go-lucky temperament that nothing ever dismayed—not even the reproaches of his own conscience and—although he had never crossed the continent, he knew those who had, and felt himself equal to the emergency. He therefore immediately set about the labor of drumming up a company, for it was January, and he must start by the middle of May. His pay as Indian agent was only seven hundred and fifty dollars a year, with the promise of double that amount when the land bill became a law, and permission to draw upon the government for funds to meet necessary expenses. Pocketing his commission, which really amounted to nothing except as a sop to the colonists to keep them loyal and hopeful, he proceeded westward to St. Louis, lecturing by the way, and writing such articles for the newspapers as was calculated to engage the attention of those persons already half minded to go to Oregon. In this way he drew together the several small parties which constituted the immigration of 1842, a movement more important than at first appeared, the fame of it in the states encouraging the ten times larger immigration which followed in 1843. The effect of it on the colony also, together with the news he brought directly from Washington of the probable early passage of Linn s land bill, and the treaty in contemplation by which they expected the boundary would be defined, was to raise in their breasts happy anticipations of a local government sanctioned and supported by the strong arm of their common country.
White's party consisted of one hundred and twelve persons, fifty-two of whom were able-bodied men, and ten of whom had families. To these were added, en route, several mountain men and adventurers, bringing the number up to one hundred and thirty-seven. They traveled with a train of eighteen Pennsylvania wagons, and a long procession of horses, pack mules and cattle, and were the first openly avowed immigration of settlers to Oregon. The wagons and cattle were left at Forts Laramie and Hall, the remainder of the journey being performed with only pack animals a mistake due to Dr. White's ignorance of the country, he having traveled the sea route to and from Oregon. Accredited to this country as United States sub-Indian agent and government spy, he professed to believe himself the authorized governor of Oregon, although his commission was merely a verbal one, and its powers undefined. The colony, however, ignored his pretensions, except in so far as related to the office of United States Indian agent.Thus far no greater trials had befallen the Oregon colony than those which are common to border life. Indeed, they had been spared the great calamity of most border communities—Indian warfare. For this immunity there were two principal reasons: the first, that the nations of the whole country west of the Rocky mountains were in a state of semi-vassalage to the Hudson's Bay Company, which required them to live in peace, and was generally able to control them; the second, that the Indians of the lower Columbia and Wallamet valleys were so weakened by disease as to have lost their warlike character. That there were strong and hostile tribes to the south, east, and north, among whom even the powerful British company was forced to live in forts, was true, but they usually con fined their hostilities to strangers passing through their country, and did not go abroad to attack others unless they had some injury, real or imagined, to avenge. Thus, although sometimes alarmed by insignificant quarrels amongst them, occasioned by theft or by indulgence in strong drink furnished by Americans—to their shame be it said—the Indians in the vicinity of the missions were, if worthless, at least peaceable.
To preserve this peace the fur company and the missionaries united in the purchase and destruction of a distillery and organized a temperance society, which was joined by a majority of the inhabitants irrespective of nationality, and to this influence without doubt was owing the immunity from Indian warfare enjoyed by the earliest settlers of the Wallamet valley. There were not lacking, however, examples of savage manners sufficiently brutal and explicit to cause occasional shudderings among the handful of white intruders in their midst. Hardly was the mission established in the Wallamet valley when the bachelor housekeepers were startled by the appearance of a large and powerful white man, ill-clad, and accompanied by an Indian woman, descending the river on a raft, who landed and solicited succor. It proved to be John Turner, a man afterwards famed among the settlers fur qualities not thought necessary to Christian endeavor, though he counted as an American, and no one esteemed his enormous strength as worthless in a young community surrounded by possible dangers.
Turner had a story to relate which engaged the sympathies of his entertainers. This was not his first appearance in Oregon. Five years previous he had been a member of a party under Jedediah Smith of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, who was approaching the Wallamet valley via the coast route from California, when at the crossing of the Umpqua near where Scottsburg now stands, while looking for a fording place for the pack animals, the party was attacked and nine men out of thirteen killed, Smith losing twenty thousand dollars worth of furs and all his horses and other property. Smith himself escaped with one man, being on a raft in the river when the attack on the camp was made, and reached Fort Vancouver in a suffering condition, where he wintered, being kindly cared for by the Hudson's Bay Company. A strong party was sent by the company to punish the Umpquas and retake the furs, which the company purchased, sending Smith back to the Rocky mountains after his associates had despaired of ever seeing him again.
Of two other men who escaped, Turner was one. He defended himself with a burning poplar stick snatched from the fire, his enormous strength enabling him to fell his assailants as he retreated, until finally he eluded them, fleeing to the mountains alone, and reaching Vancouver in a wretched state during the winter. The fourth man, named Black, also gained that asylum by the aid of some friendly Indians whom he met further north.
Turner s second adventure in entering Oregon was with the Indians at the crossing of Rogue river, and was similar to the first. The party consisted of eight men, four of whom were killed. Turner s arrival at the mission was the occasion of great excitement, and the appearance of others was anxiously looked for. After several days George Gay, and William J. Bailey, who became prominent among the first settlers of Oregon, were discovered on the bank of the Wallamet, opposite the mission, contemplating it with an earnest attention, as we may readily understand. Finally one of them, Bailey, plunged in and attempted to swim across, but being weak from wounds and famine, was about to perish in the strong current, when his companion sprang to his rescue, sustaining him until a canoe put out from the opposite shore to the relief of both.
Bailey was frightfully wounded. One cut extended through the upper lip just below the nose, and through the upper and lower jaws and chin, passing into the side of the neck, only narrowly missing the jugular vein. Unable from the terrible pain to properly adjust the parts, he had simply bound them together with a handkerchief, from which neglect in healing they left his face distorted to an unsightly degree. He was placed in the hospital at Vancouver, where his numerous other injuries were attended to, and afterwards, being bred a surgeon, he practiced medicine and surgery among the colonists. The fourth man missed the settlements, and reached Wyeth's fort on Sauve's island, more dead than alive, and was kindly cared for.
When the cattle company was sent to California to purchase stock for the mission and settlers in 1837, Ewing Young, a prominent American, was placed in command, and P. L. Edwards of the mission made treasurer. Turner, Gay, and Bailey were of the company, and as they approached the scene of their loss and suffering of two years before, with the precious herd, it became evident there would be trouble. The Indians would endeavor to secure some of the cattle; but even if they did not, Turner, Gay, and Bailey were longing for vengeance, and uttering threats against the Rogue river Indians. Four days before reaching Rogue river, Gay and Bailey shot an Indian who entered their camp, and threatened another one, a mere boy.
The only justification offered was that they had before suffered by allowing Indians to approach them in camp. But the act was none the less imprudent as it was immoral; for it invited retaliation, and compelled Young to double the guard and to use extreme caution in passing points where an ambush was possible. On reaching the locality made memorable by the attack on their party in 1835, they were assailed by a cloud of arrows discharged upon them with deafening yells. Young s horse was shot twice, and Gay was again wounded. The guns of the white men were, however, more than a match for Indian arrows; and after a skirmish the savages retired to trouble them no more. The truth of history requires that the brutal act, of the superior race shall be recorded as well as those of the inferior, as by them we are able to form our judgment of both.
In March, 1838, Jason Lee and Gustavus Hines made an excursion to the Umpqua valley in the vicinity of one of the forts of the Hudson s Bay Company in charge of one Gagnier, with a view to a mission in that quarter; but found the natives so wild and threatening in their disposition that despite the attractions of the country for colonization they gave an adverse report. Mr. Hines, in his History of Oregon, relates that Mr. Lee had brought a fowling-piece with him, and a patent shot pouch. This latter thing alarmed the chief, who happened to be at the fort, and he informed his people that Lee had brought medicine in a bag which he wore around his neck with which he intended to kill them all off. Gagnier sent his Umpqua wife with the missionaries to explain matters to the Indians, who with customary readiness avowed their intention to become Christians at once. Appearances were, however, so much against them that no efforts were made in that direction; and subsequent events justified this unfavorable judgment.
Trouble was sometimes had with the Indians at The Dalles, who were a roguish and impertinent set of rascals, playing thieving tricks upon persons having to pass their way, and exacting double pay for any services when they had made these services indispensable by their own acts; but so far they had been held in check by the influence of the resident fur company.
It was among these that Daniel Lee and H. K. W. Perkins attempted missionary work in 1838, which they con tinued with little success for four or five years. At one time they sent east glowing accounts of congregations of several hundred Indians and numerous conversions. But they had not made allowance for the shrewdness of the savage, nor for his cupidity and literalness. When Per kins was solicited by one of his neophytes for a coat, he said to him, "You must work and earn one"; whereupon the innocent replied, "You told me if I became converted and prayed for what I wanted I should get it. If it is work only that will bring a coat, I can get one any time of the Hudson s Bay Company." They often demanded pay for praying, or on receiving some great favor declared their hearts were full of pray." It did not take them long to discover that supplication was not always rewarded with their heart s desire in other matters. On the death of a chief, one of Lee and Perkins converts asked sorrowfully, "What is the good of prayer? Our chief prayed, and now he is dead?" Lee himself was forced to purchase immunity from theft by valuable gifts. Refusing to pay an indemnity for a boy who died after being in his service, the mission horses were stolen. They resented not being allowed to avenge the murder of their relatives, and put on airs of equality with their teachers, demanding a visit of ceremony from the superintendent, such as the missionaries received.
Such conduct would not be permitted by the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the Indians judged the missionaries accordingly. That there was danger in it the missionaries saw, but knew no way, as peace men, to avert it. W. W. Kone and J. H. Frost of the latest Methodist reenforcement were sent to the mouth of the Columbia, and settled on the Clatsop plains. Here the degradation of the natives was such that the spirits of the missionaries revolted. It was bad enough at The Dalles, where Mrs. Perkins had interfered to prevent an Indian boy slave from being bound to the corpse of his master, to die of horror, in order that he might accompany the chief to the spirit world memelose illahee. But at Clatsop the Indians were, in addition to the degradation of superstitions, utterly corrupted. Frost relates that the health of the people was destroyed by syphilis, and their number rapidly decreasing. In addition, infanticide was common. When Mrs. Frost asked the Indian women why they killed their children, they answered that they could not take care of them and perform besides all the labor exacted of them by their husbands, who beat them if they failed. Like the interior tribes, they were ready enough to be converted if there was anything to be gained by it, and their excitable natures found relief in the exercises of an animated prayer meeting, with singing, of which they were fond; as their ill-clad and ill-fed bodies found comfort in the forced hospitality of the mission house, the floor of which was often at night covered with the poor wretches.
These Indians were not much feared. It was true they sometimes committed a murder, but so do white men; and the crime was promptly punished in their case by the fur company. Had they not been held in dread of hanging, it might have been worse for their teachers.
In 1842 a mission site selected in the vicinity of Puget Sound and Fort Nisqualiy the previous year, was abandoned, and the missionary, J. P. Richmond, returned east. The Indians in the region were more warlike than those on the Columbia, but the reason given for leaving the country was that it was not fit for farming.
From all these facts, selected only to show the condition of Oregon west of the Cascades when the first immigration arrived, the following conclusions may be drawn:—First. That the United States, while refraining from openly violating treaty obligations, was encouraging the people of the older communities to possess themselves of the Oregon territory, and hold it for the government, or at least to maintain the balance of power between itself and the English government.
Second. That the reports sent at every opportunity by missionaries in western Oregon served to keep up that interest among the people first awakened in congress by discussions of the boundary question; that their presence in Oregon enabled agents of the government to aid colonization; and that the government did secretly aid the settlement of the country through the missions of western Oregon.
Third. That the position of the mission settlements but for the presence of the powerful British fur company would have been most dangerous, and have required the establishment of military stations in various parts of the country; and that in its own interest the Hudson s Bay Company must have protected the American settlers in order to keep the Indians under control.
Fourth. That the missionaries of western Oregon were not successful as religious teachers; but were not averse to becoming settlers, and were active in keeping alive the rivalry between the two governments by frequently memorializing congress upon what they named the aggressions of the Hudson s Bay Company; and by setting forth their own loyalty to the government of the United States, and their desire to have it extended over them.
Fifth. That the arrival of White s party marked the close of active missionary effort, and inaugurated that of open colonization by the people of the United States; hence, that to the Methodist missionaries and their friends in Washington and elsewhere was due the Americanization of the Wallamet valley, and the inaugural movement towards a provisional government in Oregon, with all that it implied.
- ↑ It should perhaps be explained that these immigrants started for California in Bidwell's company, but turned off at Fort Hall and came to Oregon. They finally went to California with Wilkes overland expedition, as did also Joel P. Walker and his family, who arrived in Oregon in 1840.