Early Traders.
Very early in the last century the trading ships of various nations were visiting the coast and bartering their cargoes of firearms, rum and useless trinkets—beads, bits of iron and brass—for the valuable furs of the natives.
The first depôt on Vancouver Island was established at Nootka, on the West Coast, and, a little later, a second, on the mainland near the mouth of the Columbia. Thus early the Indians were debauched by the whiskey and vices of the white man, and from that time to the present have been wretched sufferers.
The great fur companies, the North-west, the Hudson’s Bay and the Astor, were soon in active competition for the trade of the Pacific slope. In 1818 the first fort was built on the Columbia at the mouth of the Walla Walla, and about six years later, in 1824-5, Fort Vancouver was built, where the waters of the Willamette join the great Columbia.
In 1804-6 the intrepid explorers, Clark and Lewis, made their then difficult and dangerous journey from the trading post at St. Louis across the mountains and down the Columbia River to the land of the Cayuse and Chinooks. Clark seems to have left a deep and favorable impression upon the mind of the Indians, as will later be seen.
Among these early traders were men of sterling character, who, while they might not be termed religious, had, nevertheless, a deep reverence for God and for His wondrous law, some little knowledge of which they imparted to the native peoples with whom they were engaged in traffic.
We cannot but wonder at the slowness of the Church in not seeing and seizing her opportunity. She should have been first on the ground, but was not. The trader preceded her. And finally it was the eager longing of the heathen themselves, awakened by the Spirit of God, which aroused the slumbering Church.