Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

She was a California Indian, probably of the Tulares, and migrated to Oregon with her family thirty years ago. She was then a young girl, and said to be the handsomest squaw ever seen in Oregon. In those days white men in wildernesses thought it small shame, if any, to take Indian women to live with them as wives, and Lucy was much sought and wooed. But she seems to have had uncommon virtue or coldness, for she resisted all such approaches for a long time.

Finally, a man named Pomeroy appeared; and, as Lucy said afterward, as soon as she looked at him, she knew he was her "tum tum man," and she must go with him. He had a small sloop, and Lucy became its mate. They two alone ran it for several years up and down the river. He established a little trading-post, and Lucy always took charge of that when he went to buy goods. When gold was discovered at Ringgold Bar, Lucy went there, worked with a rocker like a man, and washed out hundreds of dollars' worth of gold, all which she gave to Pomeroy. With it he built a fine schooner and enlarged his business, the faithful Lucy working always at his side and bidding. At last, after eight or ten years, he grew weary of her and of the country, and made up his mind to go to California. But he had not the heart to tell Lucy he meant to leave her. The pilot who told me this story was at that time captain of a schooner on the river. Pomeroy came to him one day, and asked him to move Lucy and her effects down to Columbus. He said he had told her that she must go and live there with her relatives, while he went to California and looked about, and then he would send for her. The poor creature, who had no idea of treachery, came on board cheerfully and willingly, and he set her off at Columbus. This was in the early spring. Week after week, month after month, whenever his schooner stopped there, Lucy was on the shore, asking if he had heard from Pomeroy. For a long time, he said, he couldn't bear to tell her. At last he did; but she would not believe him. Winter came on. She had got a few boards together and built herself a sort of hut, near a house where lived an eccentric old bachelor, who finally took compassion on her, and to save her from freezing let her come into his shanty to sleep. He was a mysterious old man, a recluse, with a morbid aversion to women; and at the outset it was a great struggle for him to let even an Indian woman cross his threshold. But little by little Lucy won her way: first she washed the dishes; then she would timidly help at the cooking. Faithful, patient, unpresuming, at last she grew to be really the old man's housekeeper as well as servant. He lost his health, and became blind. Lucy took care of him till he died, and followed him to the grave, his only mourner,—the only human being in the country with whom he had any tie. He left her his little house and a few hundred dollars,—all he had; and there she is still, alone, making out to live by doing whatever work she can find in the neighborhood. Everybody respects her; she is known as "Lucy" up and down the river. "I did my best to hire her to come and keep house for my wife, last year," said the pilot. "I'd rather have her for nurse or cook than any white woman in Oregon. But she wouldn't come. I don't know as she's done looking for Pomeroy to come back yet, and she's going to stay just where he left her. She never misses a time, waving to me, when she knows what boat I'm on; and there isn't much going on on the river she don't know."

It was dusk when the pilot finished telling Lucy's story. We were shooting along through wild passages of water called Hell Gate, just above the Dalles. In the dim light the basaltic columnar cliffs looked like grooved ebony. One of the pinnacles has a strange resemblance to the figure of an Indian. It is called the Chief, and the semblance is startling,—a colossal figure, with a plume-crowned head, turned as if gazing backward over the shoulder; the attitude stately, the drapery graceful, and the whole expression one of profound and dignified sorrow. It seemed a strangely fitting emphasis to the story of the faithful Indian woman.

It was near midnight when we passed the Dalles. Our train was late, and dashed on at its swiftest. Fitful light came from a wisp of a new moon and one star; they seemed tossing in a tumultuous sea of dark clouds. In this glimmering darkness the lava walls and ridges stood up, inky black; the foaming water looked like molten steel, the whole region more ghastly and terrible than before.

There is a village of three thousand inhabitants at the Dalles. The houses are set among lava hillocks and ridges. The fields seemed bubbled with lava, their blackened surfaces stippled in with yellow and brown. High up above are wheat-fields in clearings, reaching to the sky-line of the hills. Great slopes of crumbling and disintegrating lava rock spread superb purple and slate colors between the greens of forests and wheat-fields. It is one of the memorable pictures on the Columbia.

To go both up and down a river is a good deal like spending a summer and a winter in a place, so great difference does it make when right hand and left shift sides, and everything is seen from a new stand-point.

The Columbia River scenery is taken at its best going up, especially the gradual crescendo of the Cascade Mountain region, which is far tamer entered from above. But we had a compensation in the clearer sky and lifted clouds, which gave us the more distant snow-peaks in all their glory; and our run down from the Dalles to Portland was the best day of our three on the river. Our steamer was steered by hydraulic pressure; and it was a wonderful thing to sit in the pilot-house and see the slight touch of a finger on the shining lever sway the great boat in a second. A baby's hand is strong enough to steer the largest steamboat by this instrument. It could turn the boat, the captain said, in a maelstrom, where four men together could not budge the rudder-wheel.

The history of the Columbia River navigation would make by itself an interesting chapter. It dates back to 1792, when a Boston ship and a Boston captain first sailed up the river. A curious bit of history in regard to that ship is to be found in the archives of the old Spanish government in California. Whenever a royal decree was issued in Madrid in regard to the Indies or New Spain, a copy of it was sent to every viceroy in the Spanish Dominions; he communicated it to his next subordinate, who in turn sent it to all the governors, and so on, till the decree reached every corner of the king's provinces. In 1789 there was sent from Madrid, by ship to Mexico, and thence by courier to California, and by Fages, the California governor, to every port in California, the following order:—

"Whenever there may arrive at the port of San Francisco a ship named the 'Columbia,' said to belong to General Washington of the American States, commanded by John Kendrick, which sailed from Boston in 1787, bound on a voyage of discovery to the Russian settlements on the northern coast of the peninsula, you will cause said vessel to be examined with caution and delicacy, using for this purpose a small boat which you have in your possession."

Two months after this order was promulgated in the Santa Barbara presidio, Captain Gray, of the ship "Washington," and Captain Kendrick of the ship "Columbia," changed ships in Wickmanish harbor. Captain Gray took the "Columbia" to China, and did not sail into San Francisco harbor at all, whereby he escaped being "examined with caution and delicacy" by the small boat in possession of the San Francisco garrison. Not till the 11th of May, 1792, did he return and sail up the Columbia River, then called the Oregon. He renamed it, for his ship, "Columbia's River;" but the possessive was soon dropped.