The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce

by William Denison Lyman

Never did a geographical entity seem so to play the ignis fatuus with the world as did the River. Thirteen years elapsed from the discovery of the Rio San Roque by Heceta before any one of the dozens who had meanwhile passed up and down the coast, looked in again between the Cabo de Frondoso and the Cabo de San Roque. Then there came on one negative and two positive discoveries, and the elusive stream was really found never to be lost again.

The negative discovery was that of Captain John Meares in 1788. Since England afterwards endeavoured to make the voyages of Meares an important link in her chain of proof to the ownership of Oregon, it is worthy of some special attention. It happened on this wise. Meares came first to the coast of Oregon in 1786, in command of the Nootka to trade for furs for the East India Company. With the Nootka was the Sea-Otter, in command of Captain Walter Tipping. Both seem to have been brave and capable seamen. But disaster followed on their track. For having sailed far up the coast, they followed the Aleutian Archipelago eastward to Prince William’s Sound. Separated on the journey, the Nootka reached a safe haven, but her consort never arrived, nor was she ever heard of more. The Nootka, after an Arctic winter of distress and after losing a large part of the crew through the ravages of scurvy, abandoned the trade and returned to China. Discouraged by the outcome, the East India Company abandoned the American trade and confined themselves henceforth to India.

But Meares, finding that the Portuguese had special privileges in the fur-trade and in the harbour of Nootka, entered into an arrangement with some Portuguese traders whereby he went nominally as supercargo, but really as captain of the Felice, under the Portuguese flag. With her sailed the Iphigenia with William Douglas occupying a place similar to that of Meares. In estimating the subsequent pretensions of Great Britain, the student of history may well remember that these two mariners, though Englishmen, were sailing under the flag of Portugal.

Reaching again the coast of Oregon, Meares looked in, June 29, 1788, at the broad entrance of an extensive strait which he believed to be the mythical Strait of Juan de Fuca of two centuries earlier, but which he did not pause to explore. He had resolved to solve the riddle of the Rio San Roque or the Ensenada de Asuncion or de Heceta, and turned his prow southward. On July 5th, in latitude 46 degrees 10 minutes, he perceived a deep bay which he considered at once to be the object of his search. Essaying to enter, he found the water shoaling with dangerous rapidity and a prodigious easterly swell breaking on the shore. From the masthead it seemed that the breakers extended clear across the entrance. With rather curious timidity for a bold Briton right on the eve of a discovery for which all nations had been looking, Meares lost courage and hauled out, attaching the name Deception Bay to the inlet and Cape Disappointment to the northern promontory, the last a name still officially used.

Meares left as his final conclusion in the matter, the following memorandum: “We can now assert that there is no such river as that of St. Roc exists, as laid down in the Spanish charts.” In view of this statement of the case it would certainly seem that he could not be accepted as a witness for English discovery, even if the Portuguese flag had not been flying at his masthead.

After bestowing the name of Lookout upon the great headland christened Cape Falcon by Heceta and known to us as Tillamook Head, Meares squared away for Nootka, and there he spent a very profitable season in the fur-trade.

But into the harbour of Nootka that same year of 1788, there sailed the ship of destiny, the Columbia Rediviva, in command of John Kendrick. With the Columbia came the Lady Washington, commanded by Robert Gray. These were the advance guard of Yankee ships which the energies of our liberated forefathers were sending forth as an earnest of the coming conquest of Oregon by the universal Yankee nation.

Gray and Kendrick were engaged in the fur-trade, and their energy and intelligence made it speedily profitable. It took a long time and a long arm, sure enough, in that day, to complete the great circuit of the outfitting, the bartering, the transferring, the return trip, and the final sale;—three years in all. The ship would be fitted out in Boston or New York with trinkets, axes, hatchets, and tobacco, and proceed by the Horn to the coast of Oregon,—six months or sometimes eight. Then up and down the coast, as far as known, they would trade with natives for the precious furs, making a profit of a thousand per cent. on the investment. Gray on one occasion got for an axe a quantity of furs worth $8000. The fur-barter would take another six or eight months. Then with hold packed with bales of furs, the ship would square away for Macao or Canton, six or eight months more. In China, the cargo of furs would go out and a cargo of nankeens, teas, and silks go in, with a great margin of profit at both ends. Then away again to Boston, there to sell the proceeds of that three years’ “round-up” of the seas, for probably ten times the entire cost of outfitting and subsistence. The glory, fascination, and gain of the ocean were in it, and also its dangers. Of this sufficient witness is found in vanished ships, murdered crews, storm, scurvy, famine, and war. But it was a great age. Gray and Kendrick were as good specimens of their keen, facile, far-sighted countrymen, as Meares and Vancouver were of the self-opinionated, determined, yet withal manly and thorough Britons.

Among other pressing matters, such as looking out for good fur-trade in order to recoup the Boston merchants who had put their good money into the venture, and looking out for the health of their crew, steering clear of the uncharted reefs and avoiding the treacherous natives, Gray and Kendrick remembered that they were also good Americans. They must see that the new Stars and Stripes had their due upon the new coast.

The first voyage of the two Yankee skippers was ended and they set forth for another round in 1791, but with ships exchanged, Gray commanding the Columbia on this second voyage. The year 1792 was now come, and it was a great year in the annals of Oregon, three hundred years from Columbus, two hundred from Juan de Fuca. The struggle between England and Spain over conflicting rights at Nootka, which at one time threatened war, had been settled with a measure of amicability. As a commissioner to represent Great Britain, Captain George Vancouver was sent out, while Bodega y Quadra was empowered to act in like capacity for Spain. Spaniards and Britons alike realised that, whatever the Nootka treaty may have been, possession was nine points of the law, and both redoubled their efforts to push discovery, and especially to make the first complete exploration of the Straits of Fuca and the supposed Great River. There were great names among the Spaniards in that year, some of which still commemorate some of the most interesting geographical points, as Quimper, Malaspina, Fidalgo, Caamano, Elisa, Bustamente, Valdez, and Galiano. A list of British names now applied to many points, as Vancouver, Puget, Georgia, Baker, Hood, Rainier, St. Helens, Whidby, Vashon, Townsend, and others, attests the name-bestowing care of the British commander.