Two Years in Oregon

by Wallis Nash

Soon begins the descent, much more gradual than the ascent, and not so prolonged, since all Eastern Oregon is a kind of plateau, elevated from one to two thousand feet above sea-level.

VALLEYS IN EASTERN OREGON.A stretch of lava-bed is soon reached, the acme of desolation, where the road has been painfully worked by crushing down the rugged blocks, or laboriously moving them with levers from the path. Two or three miles carry us across, and then the bunch-grass country begins. Great tussocks of succulent feed for spring and early summer, dried by the hot sun into natural hay for autumn and winter use, afford pasture for countless herds of cattle. Even here there are watercourses and springs a few miles apart. The valleys—namely, Des Chutes, Crooked River Valley, Ochoco, Beaver Creek, Grindstone Creek, Silver Creek, Harney Lake, and Malheur—stretch in a practically unbroken line across the whole of the remainder of Oregon to the eastern boundary of Snake River.

Take Crooked River Valley as a specimen. It varies from one to three miles in width, but is bounded, not by the steep and rugged hills we are used to in the Coast Range, but by gently swelling bluffs, covered with bunch-grass to and over their tops. The valley-land is rich and fertile, and wherever cultivated yields abundantly in potatoes, cereals, vegetables, and small fruits of all kinds. Sixty and eighty bushels of oats to the acre is not an unusual crop. And tame grasses take firm hold of the country wherever opportunity is given them. The bunch-grass slopes, with occasional sagebrush scattered among the grass, are not to be always set apart for such common use as at present.

Precisely the same character of land has been plowed up and put into wheat during the last few years round Walla Walla, just north of the northeast corner of Oregon, and produces forty bushels of wheat to the acre. Indeed, it is from country like this that the great crops of Northeastern Oregon and Washington Territory are produced; crops yielding a magnificent return, if not to the farmer whose enterprise and industry have served to raise them, yet to the recently formed transportation company called the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, by whose boats plying on the Columbia the wheat is carried to Portland to be shipped.

At present these vast stretches of rolling hill and dale are the home of the cattle-rancher—a strange and wild life. A suitable site is fixed on, commanding ample water privilege, with some valley-land near by to grow sufficient hay, and to raise the desired quantity of oats and vegetables; here the house is built, the lumber being hauled by wagons perhaps fifty or a hundred miles from the mill. The rancher's family consists of his wife and children, and possibly five or six herdsmen. While looking after cattle, these men almost live in the saddle. Horses abound, and form as good a source of revenue as cattle, in proportion to the capital engaged. The Eastern Oregon horse is taller and bigger-boned than the valley horse, but naturally his education is not so well attended to, and he is apt to be "mean" and to buck. Little recks his rider, and after a bout of bucking, in which the horse has not dislodged the man, but has shaken up every bone in his body till he is sore all over with the constant jar, as the horse comes to the ground all four feet at once after a mighty jump, then it is the man's turn. Driving in the heavy Mexican spurs, with their rowels two or three inches across, the rider starts wildly out, and mile after mile the open country is crossed at a hard-gallop. The herd is soon seen and ridden round, and a close lookout is kept to see if any stragglers have joined the band, and if the calves and yearlings are all right. Branding-time comes twice a year, in spring and autumn, when the cattle of a whole "stretch" of country are driven together, separated according to the various ownerships determined by marks and brands.

In spring come in the Eastern buyers, who travel through the country, collecting a huge drove of perhaps from ten to twenty thousand head. The three-year-old steers fetch about fifteen or seventeen dollars a head; no wonder the ranchers prosper, considering that the cost from calfhood was only that of herding.

Some of the provident ones collect one or two hundred tons of natural hay against the severities of winter. It may be that for two or three years the hay will stand unused; then comes the stress. Deep snow will cover the face of the country and lie for weeks, too deep for the cattle to live, as in ordinary winters, on the dry bunch-grass protruding from the snow, or easily reached by scratching a slight covering away. Even an abundant store will not save all, for many of the herd will have taken refuge in distant valleys, or perhaps have retreated far off the whole range in the face of the driving storm. And even those that are found will move very unwillingly from any poor shelter they may have secured toward the life-saving food.

THE MALHEUR RESERVATION.There is a large Indian reservation called the Malheur Reserve; the road crosses its southwest corner. These Indians are quiet enough now, but only three years ago there was an outbreak among them. One rancher had built a fine stone house, just outside the reservation bounds, and there lived in comfort, surrounded by all the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life. He had six or eight thousand head of cattle and some three hundred horses in his band. One morning a friendly Indian rode up in haste, telling him to get away, as the hostiles were coming to kill them all. Mounting their horses, the rancher and his wife took to flight; they looked back from the hill-top to see the flames and smoke rising from their comfortable home, telling how narrow had been their escape. A hurried ride of fifty miles took them to safe refuge; and the speedy repulse of the Indians, and their being driven once again within their own boundaries, enabled the rancher to rebuild his house, and restore once more his household goods.

This road was built by men who were sent out from Albany, and spent years in the work, rifles by their side; for the country fourteen years ago was not the safe domain it has now become. The first idea was to use the pass through the Cascades (which is the lowest and safest in Oregon, so far as I can learn), to build a road to open the plains of Eastern Oregon to the Willamette Valley. After a good deal of the work had been accomplished, a suggestion was made to the owners of the road that if they would undertake to extend it clear across the State to the Idaho boundary, a distance from Albany of some four hundred and fifty miles by the necessary deviations from a straight line, a land grant might probably be procured from Congress to aid the work. Whatever may be said of the general policy of granting the national lands to corporations to aid wagon-road and railroad enterprises, there may surely be cases where the effect is not only to secure the execution of the work, but also to encourage the settling up of a district, and the consequent increase of the population and wealth of a State.

Here was the state of affairs in Eastern Oregon prior to 1866: A vast country, adapted for the gradual settlement and ultimate habitation of a prosperous race, was lying at the mercy of a few roving bands of Indians, who made the lives and property of even casual travelers their speculation and sport. What was the value then of all that country? Could any purchaser for it have been then found, at even a few cents an acre?