“In addition to the above, it was asserted that three or four tribes of Indians in the middle regions had combined for the purpose of preventing our passage through their country. In case we escaped destruction at the hands of the savages, that a more fearful enemy—famine—would attend our march, as the distance was so great that winter would overtake us before making the Cascade Mountains. On the other hand, as an inducement to pursue the California route, we were informed of the shortness of the route when compared with that to Oregon, as also of the many other superior advantages it possessed.”
It is not our intention to go into the history of California, but give what strictly relates to Oregon and her people in those early times. In the paragraph we have quoted from General Palmer’s journal, the reader will see a fiendish, a damning policy; and if our language has any severer terms to express evil motives and intentions, let him use them, as belonging to the course pursued by that organization yclept Honorable Hudson’s Bay Company, in attempting to prevent the settlement of Oregon, and sending whole families to starve and perish, and become cannibals in the mountains of California, rather than tell the truth, and aid them in getting to Oregon; as will be seen by the following extract from the Gold Hill (Nevada) News, concerning the horrible sufferings of “The Donner Party:”—
“The world perhaps never produced a sadder and a truer story, nor one which will be so long remembered by many whose fortunes were cast on the Pacific slope in the early days of its settlement by the Americans. We personally knew one of the families that perished among the Donner party, and on reading the interesting letter in the Union it awakened in our memory a little incident in connection with this sad calamity, which happened in the State of Illinois twenty years ago last April. At that time we were publisher of a newspaper in Putnam County, Illinois. Oregon and California were beginning to attract the attention of the Western people; and in the spring of 1846 a party of about fifty persons, farmers with their families, and young men, was made up in that county destined for Oregon. When the day of departure arrived, the whole party assembled in a village called Magnolia to agree upon camp regulations, appointment of officers, etc. As a journalist, we attended that meeting and published a full account of its proceedings. Among the party was ‘Uncle Billy Graves’ and his family, consisting of father, mother, two daughters, and a son, the ages of the children ranging from fifteen to twenty years. Uncle Billy Graves was a well-to-do farmer, with every thing comfortable about him; and, having already reached the age of threescore, it was a matter of surprise to many that he should sell his farm and start off to make a new home in such a far-off and wild country as Oregon then was. But the country in Illinois was getting too thickly settled for the old man, and he longed for the wild adventures of the far west. He pleaded and persuaded us to go with him, and to bring our office along, as Oregon would some day be a great country, and we would have the credit of having been the first to publish a newspaper in it. But circumstances over which we had no control prevented us, although we certainly had the will and the wish just as Uncle Billy Graves advised. We remained in Illinois, and the Graves family joined with the overland party for Oregon. Letters written by the party during the summer were published in our paper. The last one written by any of the Graves family was dated at Fort Laramie, and this was the last heard of the old farmer. He joined the Donner party, which separated from the emigration to Oregon at Fort Hall, near the headwaters of the Columbia, and wending his way westward toward California, before its gold-fields were known in the world, he perished in the mountains, and his good old wife perished with him. The son and daughters of the Graves family were among the persons who were rescued by the relief party of sailors and others who were sent out by the benevolent Americans at Sutter’s Fort and San Francisco. A long letter written by one of the Graves girls was published in our paper in the year 1847, and which contained a full and sad account of the awful sufferings of the party. We shall never forget the manuscript of the letter. It was blotted all over with the tears which the poor girl shed while describing the sufferings of her famishing parents, their death, and the flesh of their dead bodies furnishing food for their starving children! Horrible! horrible! Let the bleached bones and skulls of the Donner party be gathered together and decently buried, for they once belonged to good Christian people.”
The Indians also have become deeply interested in their schemes to prevent the settlement of the country.
We are told by Mr. Hines, on page 143, that they sent one of their chiefs on snow-shoes, in the winter of 1842-3, to excite or induce the Buffalo Indians to join them to cut off the immigrants that were expected to come to the country with Dr. Whitman.
Mr. McKinley, a professedly warm friend of Dr. Whitman, was removed from having charge of Fort Nez Percés, and William McBean, who (Mr. Roberts, an old clerk of the Hudson’s Bay Company, says) “is one of the d——dest scoundrels that ever lived,” put in his place.
The reader will not forget that we are speaking of events and movements in a country where an Indian in a canoe or on horseback or snow-shoes was our swiftest messenger, and that its boundaries included what is now the State of Oregon, the Territories of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, besides Vancouver Island and British Columbia.
The Hudson’s Bay Company was a powerful and unscrupulous monopoly, and the only representative of a vast empire on this western part of our continent. To possess the whole, or a valuable part of it, was an object worth using the influence they had spent years of labor and thousands (not millions, as they claim) of dollars to secure.
The time has now arrived when all is at stake. The American missionary societies have accomplished what American commerce and fur traders have failed to do. The trouble is now between a “squawtocracy of British skin traders” and Italian and Belgian Jesuits on one side, and American missionaries and settlements on the other. The traders and Jesuits have nearly overcome the American missionary influence. The settlements are organized. The old policy to get rid of all opposition fur traders, destroy Indian influence, and break up missions, must be tried, to prevent and destroy the settlements.
The thoughts expressed in this chapter have carried us in advance of the date of culminating events; hence, we must return, in order that we may bring them in the order of their occurrence.