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

by William Denison Lyman

CHAPTER IX

The Times of Tomahawk and Fire-Brand

Extent of Indian Troubles in the Region of the Columbia—Destruction of the Tonquin—Conflicting Policies of the British and the Americans in Regard to the Fur-trade—Advances in Settlement by Americans, and Indian Opposition—The Whitman Mission and its Relations to the Indians, and to the Hudson’s Bay Company—The Pestilence of 1847—The Whitman Massacre—Mr. Osborne’s Reminiscences—Saving of the Lapwai and Tshimakain Missions—The Cayuse War—Great War of 1855-56—Kamiakin and Peupeumoxmox—Governor I. I. Stevens of Washington Territory and his Efforts to Make Treaties—The Walla Walla Council and the Division among the Indians—Pearson and his Ride—Outburst of Hostilities and the Destruction that Followed—Conflict between the Regulars and the Volunteers—Battles of Walla Walla, Cascades, and Grande Ronde—Second Walla Walla Council—An Unsatisfactory Peace—Continued Incoming of Prospectors and Land-seekers—Third Indian War—Disastrous Steptoe Campaign—Garnett’s Campaign in the Yakima—Wright’s Campaign to Spokane and Overthrow of Indian Power—Peace Proclaimed and the Country Thrown Open to Settlement—Nez Percé War of 1877—Hallakallakeen, or Joseph, the Indian Warchief—His Melancholy Fate—The Bannock War.

Columbia River history has had its full share of Indian wars. To narrate these in full would transcend the limits of this chapter. Even during the era of discovery desperate affrays with the natives were a common experience of explorers. Captain Gray of the Columbia lost a boat’s crew of seamen at Tillamook. The ship Boston was seized in 1803 by the wily old chief Maquinna at Nootka.

In 1812 the Tonquin, the first vessel of the Pacific Fur Company, in command of Captain Thorn, was captured at some point to the north of the Columbia River, variously known as Eyuck Whoola on Newcetu Bay, or Newity Bay, or Newcetee. She was, as a result of the capture, blown up by the explosion of her own powder magazine. Gabriel Franchère and Alexander Ross, of the Astoria party, are the original authorities for this dramatic story. Irving has made the event a leading feature of his charming Astoria. H. H. Bancroft has discussed it at length in his history of the Pacific Coast. In recent years Major H. M. Chittenden in his valuable book, History of the American Fur Trade, presents new testimony of much interest. But whatever discrepencies existed in the records, the general truth remains that the ship and all her crew, with the exception of one Indian, disappeared, and great was the loss to the traders at Astoria as a result.

For more than three decades after the destruction of the Tonquin there were no serious Indian conflicts. The Hudson’s Bay Company carried out consistently the general policy of harmony with the natives. Most of the employees were of French Canadian origin, and, with their general sociability, they were more popular with the Indians than the Americans usually have been. But with the incoming of American missionaries, trappers, explorers, and immigrants, the situation changed. Conflicts of interests, ambitions, and national aims led both Americans and British to be somewhat more ready to encourage the hostile and suspicious disposition of the natives. Chiefly, however, the cause of the changing attitude of the natives must be attributed to the perception by the more intelligent of the fact that the actual occupation of the country by white farmers, home builders, and land owners, meant their own destruction. Though this truth dawned on them only vaguely and gradually, they had begun to be somewhat familiar with it by the decade of the thirties.

The founding of American missions during that decade, as narrated earlier, at Chemeketa, Walla Walla, Lapwai, and Tshimakain, and, during the years following, the obvious intent of the Americans to draw immigration to the country, prepared the way for the first and perhaps the most ferocious, though by no means the greatest, of the four principal wars which we plan to consider. This first one was the war connected with the Whitman massacre.

We have already described the founding of the Whitman Mission at Waiilatpu, six miles from the present site of Walla Walla, and twenty-six miles from the Hudson’s Bay fort on the Columbia, known as Fort Walla Walla. We have also told of Whitman’s journey across the continent in the mid-winter of 1842-43, of his efforts to secure the attention of Congress and of the Executive to the importance of the Oregon country, and of his return to Walla Walla in 1843, with the first large immigration of American settlers.

After the incoming of this immigration, it became more than ever clear to the more intelligent Indians that this movement of settlers portended a change in their whole condition. Their wild life could not co-exist with farming, houses, and the fixed and narrowed limits of the white man’s life. Moreover, since they saw the antagonism between the Americans and the Hudson’s Bay Company, and since the latter was obviously more favourable to perpetuating the life of the wilderness, the natives were naturally drawn into sympathy with the latter. Still further, since the Americans were Protestants and naturally affiliated with the Whitman Mission and its associated missions, and since the Hudson’s Bay people were mainly Catholics and interested in maintaining the missionary methods adapted to the régime of the fur-traders, there became injected into the situation the dangerous element of religious jealousy.