Newhall, William—Died in New York, Dec. 19, aged 84 years. Deceased was a well-known Pacific Coast navigator, coming around the Horn first in 1847. The barkentine Amelia was one of his latest and longest commands. He was a Son of the American Revolution, a Pioneer and a Mason, all at Seattle. Two daughters and a son are left, in addition to relatives slightly more remote.
Parker, Gilmore Hays—Born at Sacramento, California, in 1859; died in Seattle, Dec. 29, aged 54 years. He was the son of Capt. John G. Parker, who came to Puget Sound more than sixty years ago, and was one of the first steamboat men and first merchants of these parts. The son followed the father into the steamboat business. He was master of several steamers, including the T. J. Potter, Bailey Gatzert, Greyhound, City of Everett and Telegraph. His ancestors on the mother's side were the well-known Hays family, than whom none were more prominent in Washington Territory from fifty to sixty years ago. Captain Parker left a mother, two sisters and two brothers.
Thomas W. Prosch.
[AMERICAN AND BRITISH TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST]
A series of large mining "rushes" during the decade following 1858 brought an energetic population into the interior of the old Oregon country. Prosperous communities sprang up in eastern Oregon and Washington. Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia came into being. But the populating of these regions produced acute problems with regard to the Indians, and the point of view of this article is that of attempting to compare the British and American methods of attacking these problems.
Let us turn our attention first to conditions and developments on the American side.
To the usual causes of antagonism between the native and the white man there was added in the interior of the Pacific northwest the impossibility of any retreat of the former; for the frontier was closing in from both directions. "An unprogressive being * * * *, quite well satisfied with the present, unstimulated by the past, non-apprehensive of the future" was here brought face to face with one "in all things the reverse, a restless mortal dissatisfied with the present, with a history pointing upwards, apprehensive of the future and always striving for individual and social betterment."[1] "Now that we propose to invade these mountain solitudes," wrote the builder of the Mullan Road, "to wrest from their hidden wealth, where under heavens can the Indian go?"[2]
The answer seemed patent enough to a good many thoughtful Westerners, who were not cruel men. "The experience of those who have seen most of the Indians," said the Oregonian, "has been neither flattering to the efforts of the Government, nor consoling to the hopes of the true Christian philanthropist; but the purposes of the red man's creation in the economy of nature are well nigh accomplished, and no human hand can avert his early extermination from the face of the North American Continent. Silently but irresistibly the purposes of Providence take their way through the ages, and across the line of their march treaties would seem but shreds, and the plans of men on the tide of history but waifs upon the sea."[3] A belief in such predestination, however exculpatory for white men, would scarcely help in the working out of any system looking toward the upraising of the Indians. Mullan's type of predestination was more blunt: "The Indian," he said, "is destined to disappear before the white man, and the only question is, how it may best be done, and his disappearance from our midst tempered with those elements calculated to produce to himself the least amount of suffering, and to us the least amount of cost."[4]