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LYMAN'S HISTORY

of

Old Walla Walla County

Embracing

Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield
and Asotin Counties

By W. D. LYMAN, M. A., Lit. D.

ILLUSTRATED

VOLUME I

CHICAGO
THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1918

CONTENTS

PART I

THE COUNTY AND ITS EARLIEST STAGES

PART II

SETTLEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

PART III

PERIOD OF COUNTY DIVISIONS

PART I

THE COUNTY AND ITS EARLIEST STAGES

Old Walla Walla County

(Embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin Counties.)

CHAPTER I

PHYSICAL AND GEOLOGICAL FEATURES, SOIL, CLIMATE, WATER-COURSES, AND MOUNTAINS

A land of scenic charm, of physical interest, of fertile soil and ample resources, of climate in which living is a delight, of two great rivers and many impetuous tributaries, of mountain chains with rich and varied hues and contours of stately majesty,—such is the imperial domain included in that portion of the State of Washington lying east of the Columbia River and south of the Snake. While this region has distinctive physical features, it yet has a sufficient family resemblance to the other parts of Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington to indicate a common origin. We may therefore properly take first a general view of this larger area. The greater part of the vast Inland Empire of Northeastern Oregon and Eastern Washington consists of rolling prairies, sometimes fairly hilly, with extensive "flats" in various parts, and low-lying, level valleys bordering the numerous streams. These valleys are usually quite narrow, the three marked exceptions being the broad valleys of the Walla Walla, Umatilla, and Yakima, the two latter being outside of the scope of our story. The Inland Empire varies in elevation above sea-level from about three hundred and fifty feet on the Columbia River to about nine thousand at the highest summits of the Blue Mountains. The larger part of the cultivated portions ranges from eight hundred to two thousand feet. The variations in elevation have a remarkable effect on temperature and rainfall, the former decreasing and the latter increasing very rapidly from the lower to the higher levels. The atmosphere throughout this region is ordinarily very clear, and the majestic sweep of the Blue Mountains and the wide expanses of hills and dales and flats lie revealed in all their imposing grandeur with vivid distinctness.

As there is a general physical similarity in the different parts of this entire Columbia Basin, so has there been a common geological history. Broadly speaking, the upper Columbia Basin from near Spokane on the north to Wallowa on the south is volcanic in origin. The scope of this work does not permit any detailed discussion of the geology of the region, but it is of interest to refer to the fascinating little book of Prof. Thomas Condon, formerly of the Oregon State University, on the "Two Islands." Professor Condon was the first systematic student of the geology of the Northwest, and during his active career, extending from about 1855 to 1890, he accumulated a large and valuable collection of fossil remains as data from which to infer the stages in the geological history of the Northwest. One of his working hypotheses was that there were two islands as the first lands in what is now the Northwest. These were the Blue Mountain Island and the Siskiyou Mountain Island. Later geologists have not entirely accepted all the details of Professor Condon's hypothesis, though they regard his general reasoning as sound. It is generally believed now that there was a very early uplift, possibly a third island, in what is now the Okanogan, Methow, and Chelan highlands and mountains. At any rate, there is a general concurrence in the opinion that the oldest land in this part of the continent was those very regions where the two or perhaps three islands are supposed to have risen. The Chelan region and thence a vast sweep northeast and then southeast toward Spokane is of granite, andesite, and porphyry, the primeval crust of the earth. Again on the south, the core of the Blue Mountains, especially in the vicinity of Wallowa, is limestone and granite. All these formations are very ancient. On the other hand, the volcanic regions are comparatively recent, and those compose practically all the central parts. This area between those two ancient formations, the part covering the four counties of our present story being in the very heart of it, seems to have undergone almost every possible dynamic influence, fire, frost, and flood. Apparently it was a deep basin between the earlier elevations and was the scene of stupendous volcanic and seismic energy. Then it was covered with water and for ages a great lake extended over much of what is now the Walla Walla Valley and the valleys of its tributaries and the lower courses of the other streams, as the Touchet and Tucanon. When the water had drained off, there succeeded an age of ice and frost, with disintegration by cold and even some glaciation. Probably there were several alternating eras of fire and frost and flood. The Yakima Indians have a fantastic tale of the formation of these lakes and from them the Columbia River, which may have some basis of scientific fact. They say that in the times of the Watetash (animal people, before the Indians) a monstrous beaver, Wishpoosh, inhabited Lake Kachees, now one of the sources of the Yakima. Wishpoosh had the evil habit of chewing up and cutting to pieces all the trees as well as other animals in his reach. Speelyi, the chief God of the Mid-Columbia Indians, endeavored to make way with this destructive monster, but succeeded only in wounding him severely and making him so angry that he laid around him with furious energy and soon burst the rocky barriers of the lake. The water flowing out streamed over the country and formed the Upper Yakima. The deluge was checked by the mountain ramparts of the Kittitas Valley, as we know it, and thus was formed a great lake over all that valley. But the raging beaver finally tore out that barrier also and the flood passed on into the Yakima Valley, making another lake over the whole region where Yakima now is, but it was stayed for a time by the ridge just below the Atahnum of the present. In like manner that barrier was torn out and the accumulation of waters swept on to the vast level region where the Snake and Columbia, with the lesser streams of the Yakima and Walla Walla, unite. Thus, a large part of the region which we shall describe in this history was a lake. But the infuriated Wishpoosh was not yet content, and by successive burstings of barriers the Walla Walla lake was emptied through the Umatilla highlands, then the Cascade Mountains themselves were parted, and the chain of lakes was opened to the ocean, the Columbia River itself being the connecting stream. Wishpoosh having reached the ocean making havoc among the whales and all other objects of creation, when Speelyi at last pierced him to the heart and his monstrous carcass was cast up on Clatsop Beach. There Speelyi cut him into fragments and of him made the various Indian tribes.

Whatever may be the facts in regard to Wishpoosh, it is quite obvious that considerable areas of the lower level parts of the Columbia basin and the tributary valleys are lake beds. While the soil has all the indications of having been washed from the hills and mountains and then settled in the lakes, it is plain also that it was originally the product of fire. For the soil of this region is essentially volcanic. In the parts which have the larger rainfall, the decaying vegetation of ages upon ages has covered the volcanic ash with a deep, rich loam. In other places the action of glaciers grinding and dumping the triturated marls and clays of the mountains has resulted in the deposit of heavy white and blue clays. In yet other parts erosion of the volcanic rocks by wind and rain and frost, together with the wash of the streams at flood stage, has left great beds of gravel. Through successive strata of these varying materials there have burst at intervals new volcanic eruptions. These in turn, worn away by sun and wind and frost and stream, have been blown and washed over the earlier strata and have formed a new blanket of the richest soil. This process of successive stages of volcanic outflow, disintegration, wash deposit, glacial dumping, dust drift, growth and decay of vegetation, has gone on through the ages. The result has been that the greater part of the Inland Empire has a soil of extraordinary depth and fertility. Analysis has shown that it possesses the ingredients for plant food to an unusual degree. It is said to have an almost identical composition with the soil of Sicily. That fair and fertile island was made by the volcanic matter blown out of Mount Etna, covered by decayed vegetation and worked over by frost and sun and rain until it became almost an ideal region for grain production. Two thousand years ago Sicilian wheat-fields fed the hungry multitudes of Rome, and the same fields still produce a generous quota of food products. Soil experts expect a similar history in this country.

In no part of the Columbia basin have the processes of soil creation been more active than in the parts of the Old Walla Walla County of this history. Beginning with the Columbia River on the west we find as soon as we have passed the margin of river sand, which in a few places has encroached upon the customary volcanic covering, that the soil, though dry, is susceptible of the highest cultivation and with water is capable of producing the finest products in the greatest profusion. Almost every mile from the river eastward towards the mountains seems to increase the blanket of loam upon the underlying volcanic dust, until upon the foothills of the Blue Mountains there is a soil hard to match anywhere in the world, a mingling of volcanic dust, loam, and clay, a strong and heavy soil, not difficult to work, and retaining and utilizing moisture with remarkable natural economy. Throughout this region the soil is of extraordinary depth and there seems to be no limit to its productiveness. There is a cut forty feet deep through a hill near Walla Walla, in which the same fertile soil goes down to the very bottom. It is of lighter color when first opened to the light, but with exposure turns darker and after a year or two of cultivation possesses the same friability and productiveness as the top soil. Wells have been bored in the Eureka Flat region where over a hundred feet of soil have been pierced without the drills even touching rock. In such soils the process of sub-soiling can go on almost indefinitely with continuous preservation and renewal of productiveness.

The climate of the region covered in this work has the general character of that of the Inland Empire as a whole. As compared with the portions of Oregon and Washington west of the Cascade Mountains, the climate of our section is drier and has the seasons more distinctly marked, hotter in summer and colder in winter. The average yearly temperature is, however, higher than that of the sea-coast, and much higher than that of the Atlantic states of the same latitude. The average of Walla Walla is about that of Virginia, though in the latitude of Wisconsin and Maine. On account of lower altitude the climate of the greater part of this section, especially the portions on the large rivers, all the way from Asotin to Wallula, is warmer than that of the parts of the state north of Snake River. The weather reports of Walla Walla ordinarily run from four to eight degrees higher than those of Spokane. The spring season opens from two to four weeks earlier than at Spokane or Colfax and the difference is even greater compared with Pullman.

Perhaps no part of the Inland Empire, unless it be the Horse Heaven and Rattlesnake Mountain section of Benton County, is so peculiarly the native home of that most dramatic atmospheric phenomenon, the Chinook wind. Scarcely can anything more interesting be imagined than that warm winter wind. No wonder that the native red man, with his superstitious awe of Nature's tokens of love or wrath, idealized this heavenly visitant, opening the gates of summer in midwinter chill and gloom and wooing the flowers from their dark abodes even while the heavy snows still crown the mountain peaks and pile the timbered flanks of the hills with their frozen burdens. A long wintry period, two or three or four weeks in January or February, may have sent the great blocks of ice down the big rivers, there may be a foot of snow upon the plains and much more in the mountains and the breath of the north may wrap all Nature in chill and gloom, when suddenly some afternoon the frozen fog will lift, a blue-black band will be visible along the southern horizon, the white tops of the mountains will begin to be streaked with dark lines, there seems to thrill through the atmosphere a certain rustle of expectancy, night drops with a rising temperature, during the night the snow begins to slip from the trees and slide off the roofs, and with the morning, rushing and roaring, here comes the blessed Chinook, fragrant with the bloom of the south, turning the snow and ice into singing streams, calling the robins from their winter retreats, and bidding the buttercups push from their heads the crust of winter and open their golden petals to greet the sun. The Klickitat myth is to the effect that there were originally two sets of brothers, one of the Walla Wallas from the north, the other the Chinooks from the south. The fathers of the two lived with their respective sons upon the shore of the Columbia near the present Umatilla. The Walla Walla were the cold wind brothers, coming down the river from the north, freezing the streams and whirling the dust in vast clouds. At one time they challenged the Chinook brothers to a wrestling match and threw them all and killed them. The chilly brothers had it all their own way for a long time after that, and they made the lives of the poor old father and mother of the vanquished Chinooks a burden. No sooner would the old man go out in his canoe to fish than the implacable Walla Walla brothers would blow with their icy breath, crusting the water with ice and compelling the old man to hurry half frozen to the shore. But a deliverer was at hand, for one of the fallen Chinooks had left a son. His mother had taken him to the lower river, and there he had grown up with only the one thought of avenging his father and uncles. When he had become grown and so strong that he could pull up huge fir trees and toss them around like straws, he felt that his time had come. Going up the river he slept one night near the stream now called the Satus, and a curious depression in the hills can be seen there now which the Indians say was his sleeping place. After his night's rest he went on to the home of his grandparents. He found them in a most deplorable state, half-starved and half-frozen. Young Chinook washed the grime and filth from the old folks and from it came all the trout now found in this region. Then transforming himself into a little creature he crawled into the stern of his grandfather's boat and bade the old man put forth for fish. At once the hateful Walla Wallas swept down from the north to blow on the old man, but for some mysterious reason could never reach him. Striving desperately in vain they saw the explanation when suddenly Chinook rose to giant size and challenged them to wrestle. The God Speelyi now appeared to judge the combat. One after another the cold wind brothers were thrown. Chinook, more merciful than they had been, did not kill them. But Speelyi declared that they should henceforth lose their power and could blow only at very rare intervals and that Chinook should be the lord of the land. However, Speelyi decreed that he should blow on the mountain peaks first as a token that he was coming.

The meteorologists tell us that the Chinook wind is not, properly speaking, an ocean wind, though when there is a Chinook in the interior there is a warm wind with rain on the coast. They say that the Chinook is due to dynamic heating or atmospheric friction. When there is a low barometer on the coast and a high over Nevada and Utah, as is very common in winter, the high pressure will descend upon the low and raise the temperature at a regular rate of about seven degrees to a thousand feet of descent. This accounts for the fact that the Chinook strikes the mountains sooner than the valleys. During the prevalence of a Chinook, as shown by the weather reports, the thermometer will usually be higher at Walla Walla than at Portland or Astoria. It has been as high as seventy degrees in January during a big Chinook. As can be imagined, snow will vanish like a dream under a wind of such temperature, or even one at fifty degrees or fifty-five degrees, which is more common.

A few general statistics as to the average records at Walla Walla may be of interest. The average annual temperature as shown by official records during thirty-one years is fifty-three degrees. The average for January is thirty-three degrees; for July and August, seventy-four degrees. The lowest ever recorded was seventeen degrees below zero, and the highest was 113 degrees. The average rainfall is 17.4 inches. The average date of the last killing frost of spring is March 30th, and the first of autumn is November 7th. The average number of clear or mainly clear days is 262, of cloudy is 103. The prevailing wind is always from the south, and the highest velocity ever recorded was sixty-five miles per hour. There is an average of eight thunder showers in a year. The other parts of the four counties included in this history have essentially the same climate as Walla Walla. There is, however, a regular decrease of temperature and an increase of rainfall from the west to east. Recent records of the Weather Observer at Walla Walla, giving a comparison of various stations, show extraordinary differences in rainfall according to elevation and proximity to the mountains. Thus, the average precipitation, including melted snow, for some years past, has been at Kennewick, 6.46 inches; at Lowden, 11.18; at Eureka, 14.35; at Walla Walla, 17.37; at Milton, 19.50; at Dayton, 22.14; and at the "intake," only fourteen miles from Walla Walla, but at an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet (Walla Walla being nine hundred and twenty), and at the entrance to the mountains, it was, in 1916, 47.93. The natural rainfall is sufficient for all the staple grains and fruits in all parts except the areas in the west and north bordering the Columbia and Snake rivers. In those semi-arid tracts irrigation is necessary, and the same means of artificial moisture is practiced for a succession of vegetables and small fruits and alfalfa in considerable parts of the other valley lands. One of the interesting and important features of Walla Walla is the fine system of spouting artesian wells. There are now over thirty of these wells in the Walla Walla Valley, the largest having a flow of twenty-five hundred gallons per minute, sufficient to irrigate a half section of land. Owing to the immense snowfall on the Blue Mountains, ranging from ten to fifty or sixty feet during the season, a large part of the slopes and valleys below seems to be sub-irrigated and also to be underlaid by a great sheet of water. Hence it seems reasonable to expect that artesian water will be found in other places. In general it may be said that the climate of the sections considered in this work is eminently conducive to health, wealth, and comfort. It is a happy medium between the extreme dryness of the Great Plateau and the extreme humidity of Western Washington; as also between the rather muggy and enervating climate of the South and the biting cold of winter and prostrating heat of summer of the belt of northern states east of the Rocky Mountains. If we may judge by a comparison of the native races, as well as by the "bunch-grass" horses and cattle, the "bunch-grass" boys and girls will be on the road to becoming superior specimens of humanity. Thus far there is too much of a mixture of the human stock to make scientific comparisons.

Old Walla Walla County shares with other parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia, the distinction of joint ownership of one of the sublimest systems of waterways on the globe. This system consists of the Columbia and its tributaries. The Columbia itself washes the western verge of Walla Walla County for a distance of only about sixteen miles. Yet, in this short distance the great stream sustains its reputation as belonging in the front rank of scenic rivers. Although the region around the junction of the blue, majestic Columbia and the turbid and impetuous Snake is regarded as a desert in its native condition, yet on one of the bright, still days of spring or autumn views of such grandeur looking either up or down can be obtained that no appreciative observer would ever say "desert." The azure and gold and russet and purple that play upon the mountains and islands looking up river, or upon the Wallula Gateway looking down, with the mile-wide majesty of the river in the midst, must be seen to be understood. No words of description can do justice to those scenes.

HUDSON BAY POST AT WALLULA. ERECTED IN 1818

An inspection of the map will show that Snake River touches a much larger rim than the greater stream. For it borders each one of the four counties, for a total distance of about a hundred and fifty miles. For this entire space Snake River is swift and turbid, having an average fall of about three feet to the mile. Nevertheless, it is navigable the whole distance during six or eight months in the year. The immense volume of these two big rivers is not generally understood by strangers. The Columbia is less than half as long as the Mississippi, yet it is but slightly inferior in volume to the "Father of Waters," and far surpasses any other river in the United States. Its maximum flood stage at Celilo in the flood of 1894, the greatest on record, was estimated at one million six hundred thousand second feet, while the maximum of the Snake, just above its mouth, was about four hundred thousand. We shall have occasion later to speak of the steamer traffic upon these rivers and the improvements, past and prospective, by the Federal Government. Suffice it to say here that as that phase of early history was among the most important, so it is plain that the future will bring on a new era of water-borne traffic, and that with it will come a new era of production. Nearly all the tributaries of the two big rivers flow from the snow banks and the canons of the Blue Mountains. Though conveying in the aggregate during the flood season an immense volume, the tributaries are too swift for navigation. They supply abundant water for irrigation where needed, and each is a superb trout stream. The largest, the Grande Ronde, is in truth an Oregon river, for its main supplies come from the Grande Ronde and Wallowa valleys, but it crosses the corner of Asotin County and enters Snake River within that scenic country. The Grande Ronde is a powerful stream and for varied scenes of wild grandeur and gentle beauty, it is not easily matched. The Wallowa Basin (the "Far Wayleway" of Longfellow's Evangeline) is sometimes called the Switzerland of the Inland Empire. Of the historic interest of that region which thus finds its exit through one of the counties of Old Walla Walla, we shall speak again. The next affluent of the Snake River below the Grande Ronde is Asotin Creek, a small stream and yet one of the busiest and most useful for it is the source of the water supply of that fair and productive region around Clarkston and extending thence to Asotin City. Some distance below Clarkston is the Alpowa, also a historic stream. Yet another stage and about half way between the Grande Ronde and the mouth of Snake River we find one of the most charming in appearance as well as most attractive to the fishermen of all the Blue Mountain streams, the Tucanon. This also is invested with historic interest, as we shall see later. Below the mouth of the Tucanon the previously lofty, almost mountainous, shores of Snake River rapidly drop away and the vast expanse of arid plain stretches away toward the crests of the Blue Mountains. No more tributaries of the Snake River enter, and with another stage that most interesting point in the history of this turbulent and historic river is reached—its mouth, and its individuality is lost in the mighty sweep of the Columbia. A few miles below the junction the most historic and in some respects most beautiful of the small tributaries of the Columbia streams in through the verdant meadow and overhanging willows, the Walla Walla. The events which have made the place of entrance, as well as many other places on the course of this stream famous in the history of the Northwest, will become manifest as our story proceeds.

In the great semicircle of one hundred and fifty miles in which Snake River borders our four counties, there are frequent profound canons through which the snow-crested mountains from which the streams issue can be seen. The observer who has made that long journey and reaches the open prairie at the mouth of the Snake will behold with wonder and delight the distant chain, all in one splendid picture, of which he had before seen broken glimpses through the rifted canon walls or up the sources of the foaming creeks. But whether in broken glimpses or in their grand unity, the Blue Mountains possess a unique charm and individuality. While not so bold and aiguillated as the Cascades, and while there are no peaks standing in lonely sublimity to compel the vision of the traveller, like Mount "Takhoma" or Mount Adams or Mount Hood, the Blue Mountains are not inferior in many of the features of mountain charm to their greater brothers. The marvelous coloring is perhaps the most distinctive of these features. While most mountains are blue, these are blue blue. They are all shades of blue, according to the hour and the month and the season—blue, indigo, ultramarine, violet, purple, amethyst, lapis lazuli, everything that one can think of to denote variations of blueness. "Blue Mountain" is a real name. The French voyageurs of the fur-traders were the first to note the characteristic blue, and according to Ross Cox, began at once to say, "Les Montagnes Bleues." Another characteristic feature of these mountains is the fact that they do not so much constitute a range or chain, like the long, narrow, regular Cascade Range, as a huge mass with prongs radiating from something like a central axis which might be considered the great granite and limestone knot of peaks about Wallowa Lake, of which Eagle Cap is the loftiest, over nine thousand feet in elevation. On account of this ganglionic structure there are many radiating canons from the long ridges and plateaus to the lower levels. The views from the open ridges and rounded summits down these canons constitute a scenic gallery of contours and colorings which may challenge comparison with even the views of the loftier and bolder Cascades.

The value of the Blue Mountains in condensing the moisture of the atmosphere and dropping it upon the plains below in rain and snow can hardly be conceived unless we reflect that without this vast reservoir of salvation to all growing things the Inland Empire would be a desert. Nor could it even be irrigated, for in the absence of the Blue Mountains there would be no available streams for distribution. Wonderful indeed is it to consider how the ardent sun of the Pacific lifts the inconceivable masses of invisible vapor from the ocean and the west wind carries them inland. The coast mountains constitute the first condenser of that vapor, and almost constant rain during half the year with a predominance of clouds and fogs at all times prevails along the ocean margin of Oregon and Washington. The Cascade Range lifts its stupendous domes and sentinel-like cliffs to catch the vapor that still sweeps inland and to feed the greedy rootlets of their interminable forests and to clothe the heights with perpetual snow and ice. But those vast demands fail to exhaust the limitless resources of the sky, and there are yet remaining infinite treasures of moisture floating eastward. And so the next great suppliant for the vital nourishment of all life stands with uplifted, appealing hands, our wide-extended and clustered uplift of the Blues. Nor do they appeal in vain, as the fertile prairies and benches with their millions of bushels of grain and their far-reaching cattle ranges and their orchard valleys and their countless springs can testify.

Whether from the standpoint of the forester or the farmer or the stockman or the gardener or the orchardist or the fisherman or the artist or the poet, the Blue Mountains constitute one of the great vital working facts, the very framework of the life of Old Walla Walla County. We shall discover that they are not simply a picture gallery, but that the history of this region is fairly set within this stately frame.

With these necessarily hurried and fragmentary glances at the physical scene of the story, we shall be prepared to bring the human characters upon the stage.

CHAPTER II

THE NATIVE RACES OF OLD WALLA WALLA COUNTY

Any history of any part of America would be incomplete without some view of the aborigines. Such a view is due to them, as well as to the accuracy of statement and the philosophical perspectives of history. Such a view is required also by justice to the natives themselves. The ever westward movement of American settlement has been marked by trails of blood and fire. Warfare has set its red stains upon nearly every region wrested from barbarism to civilization. This has been in many cases due to flagrant wrong, greed, and lust by the civilized man. It has been due also to savage cruelty by the barbarian. Perhaps more than to wrong by either party, it has been due to that great, unexplained and unexplainable tragedy of human history, the inability of either party to comprehend the viewpoint of the other. And yet, most of all, it has been due to that inevitable and remorseless evolution of all life by which one race of plants, animals, and human beings progresses by the extermination of others. Perhaps the philosophical mind, while viewing with pity the sufferings and with reprobation the crimes and irrational treatment forced upon the natives by the civilized race, and while viewing with equal horror the atrocities by which the losers in the inevitable struggle sought to maintain themselves—if to such a philosophical mind comes the question who was to blame for all this seemingly needless woe—must answer that the universe is mainly to blame, and we have not yet reached the point to explain the universe.

We have found in the preceding chapter and shall find in succeeding chapters frequent occasion to refer to events in connection with Indians. Our aim in this chapter is rather to give an outline of locations of different tribes, to sketch briefly some of their traits as illustrated in their myths and customs, and to state the chief published sources of our knowledge in regard to these myths and customs. The history of Indian wars, which also includes other incidental matter about them, will be found in the last chapter of Part One of this volume.

The literature of Indian life is voluminous. Practically all the early explorers from Lewis and Clark down devoted large space to the natives. The pioneer settlers knew them individually and some of them derived much matter of general value which has been preserved in brief newspaper articles or handed down in story and tradition. Out of this vast mass a few writers have formed groups of topics which serve well for those generalizations which a bird's-eye view like this must be content to take. Foremost among the writers dealing with the subject in a large way is Hubert Howe Bancroft. Although his great work on the history of the Pacific Coast has been severely and sometimes justly censured, yet it must be granted that, as a vast compendium of matter dealing with the subject, it is monumental and can be turned to with confidence in the authenticity of its sources and in the general accuracy of its statements of fact, even if not always in the breadth of its opinions or the reliability of its judgments.

HUMISHUMA, OR MORNING DOVE, A WOMAN OF THE OKANOGAN TRIBE
Her deerskin robe, decorated with beads, elk teeth and grizzly-bear claws, is worth over one thousand dollars

In Volume One, Chapter Three, of Bancroft's "Native Races," there is generalized grouping of the Columbian native tribes which may well be accepted as a study of ethnology, derived from many observations and records by those early explorers most worthy of credence. These general outlines by the author are supported by numerous citations from those authorities. The Colombians occupied, according to Bancroft, all the vast region west of the Rocky Mountains lying between the Hyperboreans on the north and the Californians on the south. They are divided into certain families and these families into nations, and the nations into tribes. There is naturally much inter-tribal mingling, and yet the national and even tribal peculiarities are preserved with remarkable distinctness. Beginning on the northern coast region around Queen Charlotte Island are the Haidahs. South of them on the coast comes the family of the Nootkas, centered on Vancouver Island. Then comes the family of the Sound Indians, and still farther south that of the Chinooks. Turning to the east side of the Cascades, which more especially interests us, we find on the north the Shushwap family, embracing all the inland tribes of British Columbia south of lat. 52°, 30´. This group includes the Okanogans, Kootenais, and others of the border between British Columbia and Northeastern Washington and Northern Idaho and Northwestern Montana. Then comes the Salish family, in which we find the Spokanes, Flatheads, Pend Oreilles, Kalispels, and others as far south as the Palouse region. There we begin with the family of Sahaptins, the one which particularly concerns us in Old Walla Walla County. Numerous citations in Bancroft's volume indicate that the early explorers and ethnologists did not altogether agree on the subdivisions of this family. It would seem that the groups have been somewhat arbitrarily made, yet there was evidently considerable effort to employ scientific methods by study of affiliations in language, customs, treaty relations, range, and other peculiarities. In general terms it may be said that the different writers pretty nearly agree in finding some six or eight nations, each divided into several tribes. These are the Nez Perces or Chopunnish, the Yakimas, the Palouses, the Walla Wallas, the Cayuses, the Umatillas, the Wascos, and the Klickitats. The tribes are variously grouped. The modern spelling appears in the above list, but there is a bewildering variety in the early books. This is especially true of Palouse and Walla Walla. The former appears under the following forms: Palouse, Paloose, Palus, Peloose, Pelouse, Pavilion, Pavion and Peluse. The word means "Gooseberry," according to Thomas Beall of Lewiston. Our familiar Walla Walla, meaning, according to "Old Bones," the Cayuse chief, the place where the four creeks meet, the Walla Walla, Touchet, Mill Creek, and Dry Creek, appears as Oualla-Oualla (French), Walla Wallapum, Wollow Wollah, Wollaolla, Wolla-walla, Wallawaltz, Walla Walle, Wallah Wallah, Wallahwallah, Wala-Wala, and Wollahwollah. For Umatilla we find Umatallow, Utalla, Utilla, and Emmatilly. Cayuse has as variants, Cailloux, Kayuse, Kayouse, Skyuse, Cajouse, Caagua, Kyoose, and Kyoots. Doctor Whitman's station, now known as Waiilatpu, appears in sundry forms, as Wyeilat, Willetpu, Wailatpui, and Wieletpoo. Some odd names are found in Hunt, "Nouvelles Annales des Voyages," where it is stated that the Sciatogas and Toustchipas live on Canoe River (apparently the Tucanon) and the Euotalla (perhaps the Touchet), and the Akaitchis "sur le Big-River," i. e., the Columbia. The tribe at the junction of the Columbia and Snake was the Sokulks, apparently a branch of the Walla Wallas. It would seem that the Cayuses occupied mainly the middle Walla Walla region including Mill Creek, the Umatilla, the upper Walla Walla, and across the high lands to the Umatilla River, while the Walla Wallas were from the vicinity of the junction of Dry Creek, the Touchet, and the Walla Walla River to its mouth. It appears that the most of the region now composing Columbia, Garfield, and Asotin counties was occupied by Nez Perces. All the tribes were more or less on the move all the time, to mountains, plains, and rivers, according to the season and variations in the food supply. The Sahaptin family seem to have been in general of the best grade of Indians. Lewis and Clark found the Nez Perces a noble, dignified and honest race, though they say that they were close and reserved in bargaining. Generally speaking, the inland Indians were far superior in physique and in mental capacity to those of the Sound or the lower Columbia. Townsend in his "Narrative" goes so far as to say that the Nez Perces and Cayuses were almost universally fine-looking, robust men. He compares one of the latter with the Apollo Belvedere. Gairdner says that the Walla Wallas were generally powerful men, at least six feet high, and the Cayuses were still stouter and more athletic. Others remarked that very handsome young girls were often seen among the Walla Wallas. With them doubtless, as with other Indians, the drudgery of their lives and their early child-bearing made them prematurely old and they soon lost their beauty.

There seems to have been much variation among these natives as to personal habits and morality. The Nez Perces and Cayuses are almost always described as clean, both of body and character. Palmer in his "Journal," says that the Nez Perces were better clad than any others, the Cayuses well clothed, Walla Wallas naked and half-starved. The last statement seems not to correspond with the observations of Lewis and Clark. Wilkes says that "at the Dalles women go nearly naked, for they wear little else than what may be termed a breech-cloth, of buckskin, which is black and filthy with dirt." About the same seems to have been true of the Sokulks. But among the Tushepaws and Nez Perces and Cayuses the men and women often wore long robes of buffalo or elk-skin decorated with beads and sea-shells. Farnham speaks of the Cayuses as the "Imperial tribe of Oregon, claiming jurisdiction over the whole Columbia region."

The chief wealth of the tribes of Old Walla Walla County was in horses. Doctor Tolmie expressed the supposition that horses had come from the southward at no very long time prior to white discovery. It is well known that a prehistoric horse, the hipparion, not larger than a deer, existed in Oregon. Remains of that creature have been found in the John Day Basin. But there is no evidence that there was a native horse among the Indians of Oregon. Their "Cayuse horses," to all indications, came from the horses of California, and they, in turn were the offspring of the horses brought to Mexico and Southern California by the Spanish conquerors. At the time of the advent of the whites, horses existed in immense numbers all through the Columbia Valley. It was not uncommon for a Walla Walla, Umatilla, Cayuse, or Nez Percé chief to have bands of hundreds, even thousands. Canoes were a highly esteemed possession of the Indians on the navigable rivers, and they had acquired marvelous skill in handling them. The lower Columbia Indians spent so much time curled up in canoes that they were distorted and inferior in physique to the "bunch-grass Indians."

Like all barbarian people the Indians of the Columbia Valley were next door to starvation a good part of the time. They gorged themselves when food was plentiful, and thus were in distress when the bounty of Nature failed, for there was no accumulated store as under civilized conditions. Their food consisted of deer, elk, and other game, in which the whole Blue Mountain country with the adjoining plains abounded, and of salmon and sturgeon which they obtained in the Columbia and Snake rivers by spearing and by ingenious weirs. They also obtained an abundance of vegetable food from the camas and couse which were common, and in fact still are in this region. Rather curiously, considering the fertility of this Walla Walla County, there are very few wild berries, nuts, or fruits. The huckleberry is practically the only berry in large quantities and wild cherries the only kind of wild fruit.

Such were the physical conditions, hastily sketched, of the natives of Old Walla Walla County. Their mental and moral characteristics may be derived in a degree from the events narrated in the pages which follow. In their best estate they were faithful, patient, hospitable, and generous. In their worst estate, in which the whites more usually found them, they seemed vindictive, suspicious, cruel, and remorseless. Too many cases of the former type occurred to justify any sweeping condemnation. One of the finest examples of Indian character in its better light is shown by an event in this region narrated by Ross Cox in his "Adventures on the Columbia River." The party of trappers of the Northwestern Fur Company, of which Cox was one, was on its way from Astoria to "Oakinagan," as he calls it—a company of sixty-four in eight canoes. When at a point in the Columbia about equidistant between the mouth of the "Wallah Wallah" and that of the Lewis (Snake), a number of canoes filled with natives bore down upon their squadron, apparently without hostile design. But within a few minutes the Indians evinced the purpose of seizing the canoes of the whites and plundering them by violence. It was soon give and take, and arrows began to fly. Pretty soon one of the company, McDonald, seeing an Indian just at the point of letting fly an arrow at him, fired and killed the Indian. A struggle ensued, but the whites broke loose and defended themselves sufficiently to reach an island, which must have been the one nearly opposite the present Two Rivers. It was a gloomy prospect. Cox says that they had pretty nearly given up hope of escaping, and had written farewell notes which they hoped might reach their friends. It was a dark, gloomy night in November, with a drizzling rain. During the night the party saw signal fires on the shore to the northwest, followed by others to east and west. Soon after a large band of ravens passed over, the fluttering of whose wings they could hear. This had a most depressing effect on the superstitious Canadians, and one of them declared that the appearance of ravens at night was an infallible sign of approaching death. Mr. Keith, one of the Scotchmen, seeing the gloomy state of their minds and wishing to forestall the effect, instantly joined the conversation, declaring that while there was such a general fear of a night flight of ravens, yet it never worked disaster unless the flight was accompanied by croaking. But when ravens passed over without croaking, they were a harbinger of good news. Much relieved, the Canadians regained their nerve and shouted out, "you are right, you are right! Courage! There is no danger!" The beleaguered band on their dismal retreat waited for the dawn, making all preparations for resistance to the death. Early in the morning the party crossed to the north bank of the river, and there waited developments. A large force of Indians soon appeared, well armed, and yet ready for a parley. The whites sent forward their interpreter, Michel, to indicate their willingness to parley. A group of thirty or forty of the relatives of the dead Indians advanced chanting a death song, which, as they afterwards learned, was about as follows: "Rest, brothers, rest! You will be avenged. The tears of your widows shall cease to flow, when they behold the blood of your murderers; and your young children shall leap and sing with joy, on seeing their scalps. Rest, brothers, in peace; we shall have blood."

The events which followed this lugubrious song cannot be better told than by following the vivid narrative of Cox:

"They took up their position in the center; and the whole party then formed themselves into an extended crescent. Among them were natives of the Chimnapum, Yackaman, Sokulk, and Wallah Wallah tribes. Their language is nearly the same; but they are under separate chiefs, and in time of war always unite against the Shoshone or Snake Indians, a powerful nation, who inhabit the plains to the southward.

"From Chili to Athabasca, and from Nootka to the Labrador, there is an indescribable coldness about an American savage that checks familiarity. He is a stranger to our hopes, our fears, our joys, or our sorrows; his eyes are seldom moistened by a tear, or his features relaxed by a smile; and whether he basks beneath a vertical sun on the burning plains of the Amazonia, or freezes in eternal winter on the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean, the same piercing black eyes, and stern immobility of countenance, equally set at naught the skill of the physiognomist.

"On the present occasion, their painted skin, cut hair, and naked bodies, imparted to their appearance a degree of ferocity from which we boded no good result. They remained stationary for some time and preserved a profound silence.

"Messrs. Keith, Stewart, LaRocque, and the interpreter, at length advanced about midway between both parties unarmed, and demanded to speak with them; upon which two chiefs, accompanied by six of the mourners, proceeded to join them. Mr. Keith offered them the calumet of peace, which they refused to accept, in a manner at once cold and repulsive.

"Michel was thereupon ordered to tell them that, as we had always been on good terms with them, we regretted much that the late unfortunate circumstance had occurred to disturb our friendly intercourse; but that as we were anxious to restore harmony, and to forget what had passed, we were now willing to compensate the relations of the deceased for the loss they had sustained.

"They inquired what kind of compensation was intended; and on being informed that it consisted of two suits of chief's clothes, with blankets, tobacco, and ornaments for the women, etc., it was indignantly refused; and their spokesman stated that no discussion could be entered into until two white men (one of whom should be the big red-headed chief) were delivered to them to be sacrificed, according to their law, to the spirits of the departed warriors.

"Every eye turned on McDonald, who on hearing the demand, 'grinned horribly a ghastly smile'; and who, but for our interposition, would on the spot have chastised the insolence of the speaker. The men were horrified, and 'fear and trembling' became visible in their countenances, until Mr. Keith, who had observed these symptoms of terror, promptly restored their confidence, by telling them that such an ignominious demand should never be complied with.

"He then addressed the Indians in a calm, firm voice, and told them that no consideration whatever should induce him to deliver a white man to their vengeance; that they had been the original aggressors, and in their unjustifiable attempt to seize by force our property, the deceased had lost their lives; that he was willing to believe the attack was unpremeditated, and under that impression he had made the offer of compensation. He assured them that he preferred their friendship to their enmity; but that, if unfortunately they were not actuated by the same feelings, the white men would not, however deeply they might lament it, shrink from the contest. At the same time he reminded them of our superiority in arms and ammunition; and that for every man belonging to our party who might fall, ten of their friends at least would suffer; and concluded by requesting them calmly to weigh and consider all these matters, and to bear in recollection that upon the result of their deliberation would in a great measure depend whether white men would remain in their country or quit it forever.

"The interpreter having repeated the above, a violent debate took place among the principal natives. One party advised the demand for the two white men to be withdrawn, and to ask in their place a greater quantity of goods and ammunition; while the other, which was by far the most numerous, and to which all the relatives of the deceased belonged, opposed all compromise, unaccompanied by the delivery of the victims.

"The arguments and threats of the latter gradually thinned the ranks of the more moderate; and Michel told Mr. Keith that he was afraid an accommodation was impossible. Orders were thereupon issued to prepare for action, and the men were told, when they received from Mr. Keith the signal, to be certain that each shot should tell.

"In the meantime a number of the natives had withdrawn some distance from the scene of deliberation, and from their fierce and threatening looks, joined to occasional whispers, we momentarily expected they would commence an attack.

"A few of their speakers still lingered, anxious for peace; but their feeble efforts were unavailing when opposed to the more powerful influence of the hostile party, who repeatedly called on them to retire, and allow the white men to proceed on their journey as well as they could. All but two chiefs and an elderly man, who had taken an active part in the debate, obeyed the call, and they remained for some time apparently undecided what course to adopt.

"From this group our eyes glanced to an extended line of the enemy who were forming behind them; and from their motions it became evident that their intention was to outflank us. We therefore changed our position, and formed our men into single files, each man about three feet from his comrade. The friendly natives began to fall back slowly towards their companions, most of whom had already concealed themselves behind large stones, tufts of wormwood, and furze bushes, from which they could have taken a more deadly aim; and Messrs. Keith and Stewart, who had now abandoned all hopes of an amicable termination, called for their arms.

"An awful pause ensued, when our attention was arrested by the loud tramping of horses, and immediately after twelve mounted warriors dashed into the space between the two parties, where they halted and dismounted. They were headed by a young chief, of fine figure, who instantly ran up to Mr. Keith, to whom he presented his hand in the most friendly manner, which example was followed by his companions. He then commanded our enemies to quit their places of concealment, and to appear before him. His orders were promptly obeyed; and having made himself acquainted with the circumstances that led to the deaths of the two Indians, and our efforts towards effecting a reconciliation, he addressed them in a speech of considerable length, of which the following is a brief sketch:

"'Friends and relations! Three snows only have passed over our heads since we were a poor miserable people. Our enemies, the Shoshones, during the summer stole our horses, by which we were prevented from hunting, and drove us from the banks of the river, so that we could not get fish. In winter they burned our lodges by night; they killed our relations; they treated our wives and daughters like dogs, and left us either to die from cold or starvation, or become their slaves.'

"'They were numerous and powerful; we were few, and weak. Our hearts were as the hearts of little children; we could not fight like warriors, and were driven like deer about the plains. When the thunders rolled and the rains poured, we had no spot in which we could seek a shelter; no place, save the rocks, whereon we could lay our heads. Is such the case today? No, my relations! it is not. We have driven the Shoshones from our hunting-grounds, on which they dare not now appear, and have regained possession of the lands of our fathers, in which they and their fathers' fathers lie buried. We have horses and provisions in abundance, and can sleep unmolested with our wives and our children, without dreading the midnight attacks of our enemies. Our hearts are great within us, and we are now a nation!'

"'Who then, my friends, have produced this change? The white men. In exchange for our horses and for our furs, they gave us guns and ammunition; then we became strong; we killed many of our enemies, and forced them to fly from our lands. And are we to treat those who have been the cause of this happy change with ingratitude? Never! Never! The white people have never robbed us; and, I ask, why should we attempt to rob them? It was bad, very bad!—and they were right in killing the robbers.' Here symptoms of impatience and dissatisfaction became manifest among a group consisting chiefly of the relations of the deceased; on observing which, he continued in a louder tone: 'Yes! I say they acted right in killing the robbers; and who among you will dare to contradict me?'

Hotel Dacres

Grand Hotel

LEADING HOTELS OF WALLA WALLA

"'You all know well my father was killed by the enemy, when you all deserted him like cowards; and, while the Great Master of Life spares me, no hostile foot shall again be set on our lands. I know you all; and I know that those who are afraid of their bodies in battle are thieves when they are out of it: but the warrior of the strong arm and the great heart will never rob a friend.' After a short pause, he resumed: 'My friends, the white men are brave and belong to a great nation. They are many moons crossing the great lake in coming from their own country to serve us. If you were foolish enough to attack them, they would kill a great many of you; but suppose you should succeed in destroying all that are now present, what would be the consequence? A greater number would come next year to revenge the death of their relations, and they would annihilate our tribe; or should not that happen, their friends at home, on hearing of their deaths, would say we were a bad and wicked people, and white men would never more come among us. We should then be reduced to our former state of misery and persecution; our ammunition would be quickly expended; our guns would become useless, and we should again be driven from our lands, and the lands of our fathers, to wander like deer and wolves in the midst of the woods and plains. I therefore say the white men must not be injured! They have offered you compensation for the loss of your friends: take it; but, if you should refuse, I tell you to your faces that I will join them with my own band of warriors; and should one white man fall by the arrow of an Indian, that Indian, if he were my brother, with all his family, shall become victims to my vengeance.' Then, raising his voice, he called out, 'Let the Wallah Wallahs, and all who love me, and are fond of the white men, come forth and smoke the pipe of peace!' Upwards of one hundred of our late adversaries obeyed the call, and separated themselves from their allies. The harangue of the youthful chieftain silenced all opposition. The above is but a faint outline of the arguments he made use of, for he spoke upwards of two hours; and Michel confessed himself unable to translate a great portion of his language, particularly when he soared into the wild flights of metaphor, so common among Indians. His delivery was generally bold, graceful, and energetic. Our admiration at the time knew no bounds; and the orators of Greece or Rome when compared with him, dwindled in our estimation into insignificance.

"Through this chief's mediation, the various claimants were in a short time fully satisfied, without the flaming scalp of our Highland hero; after which a circle was formed by our people and the Indians indiscriminately: the white and red chiefs occupied the center, and our return to friendship was ratified by each individual in rotation taking an amicable whiff from the peace-cementing calumet.

"The chieftain whose timely arrival had rescued us from impending destruction was called 'Morning Star.' His age did not exceed twenty-five years. His father had been a chief of great bravery and influence, and had been killed in battle by the Shoshones a few years before. He was succeeded by Morning Star, who, notwithstanding his youth, had performed prodigies of valor. Nineteen scalps decorated the neck of his war horse, the owners of which had been all killed in battle by himself to appease the spirit of his deceased father. He wished to increase the number of his victims to twenty; but the terror inspired by his name, joined to the superiority which his tribe derived by the use of firearms, prevented him from making up the desired complement by banishing the enemy from the banks of the Columbia.[1]

"His handsome features, eagle glance, noble bearing, and majestic person, stamped him one of Nature's own aristocracy; while his bravery in the field, joined to his wisdom in their councils, commanded alike the involuntary homage of the young, and the respect of the old.

"We gave the man who had been wounded in the shoulder a chief's coat; and to the relations of the men who were killed we gave two coats, two blankets, two fathoms of cloth, two spears, forty bullets and powder, with a quantity of trinkets, and two small kettles for their widows. We also distributed nearly half a bale of tobacco among all present, and our youthful deliverer was presented by Mr. Keith with a handsome fowling-piece, and some other valuable articles.

"Four men were then ordered to each canoe, and they proceeded on with the poles; while the remainder, with the passengers, followed by land. We were mixed pell-mell with the natives for several miles: the ground was covered with large stones, small willows, and prickly-pears; and had they been inclined to break the solemn compact into which they had entered, they could have destroyed us with the utmost facility.

"At dusk we bade farewell to the friendly chieftain and his companions, and crossed to the south side, where we encamped, a few miles above Lewis River, and spent the night in tranquillity.

"It may be imagined by some that the part we acted in the foregoing transaction betrayed too great an anxiety for self-preservation; but when it is recollected that we were several hundred miles from any assistance, with a deep and rapid river to ascend by the tedious and laborious process of poling, and that the desultory Cossack mode of fighting in use among the Indians, particularly the horsemen, would have cut us off in piecemeal ere we had advanced three days, it will be seen that, under the circumstances, we could not have acted otherwise."

And now we most turn to another phase of Indian life and character which is most worthy of record, and one in which more than anywhere else they show some of those "touches of nature which make the whole world kin." This is that phase exhibited in myths and superstitions. Here we shall find, as almost nowhere else, that Indians are, after all, very much like other people. In this portion of this chapter the author is incorporating portions of articles written by himself for the American Antiquarian.

Like all primitive men, the Oregon Indians have an extensive mythology. With childlike interest in the stars and moon and sun and fire and water and forests, as well as plants and animal life and their own natures, they have sought out and passed on a wealth of legend and fancy which in its best features is worthy of a place with the exquisite creations of Norse and Hellenic fancy, even with much of the crude and grotesque. Yet it is not easy to secure these legends just as the Indians tell them. In the first place few of the early explorers knew how or cared to draw out the ideas of the first uncontaminated Indians. The early settlers generally had a stupid intolerance in dealing with Indians that made them shut right up like clams and withhold their stock of ideas. Later the missionaries generally inclined to give them the impression that their "heathen" legends and ideas were obstacles to their "salvation," and should be extirpated from their minds. Still further the few that did really get upon a sympathetic footing with them and draw out some of their myths, were likely to get them in fragments and piece them out with Bible stories or other civilized conceptions, and thus the native stories have become adulterated. It is difficult to get the Indians to talk freely, even with those whom they like and trust. Educated Indians seem to be ashamed of their native lore, and will generally avoid talking about it with whites at all, unless under exceptional conditions. Christianized Indians seem to consider the repetition of their old myths a relapse into heathenism, and hence will parry efforts to draw them out. In general, even when civilized, Indians are proud, reserved, suspicious, and on their guard. And with the primal Indians few can make much headway. The investigator must start in indirectly, not manifesting any eagerness, and simply suggest as if by accident some peculiar appearance or incident in sky or trees or water, and let the Indian move on in his own way to empty his own mind, never suspecting any effort by his listener to gather up and tell again his story. And even under the most favoring conditions, one may think he is getting along famously, when suddenly the Indian will pause, glance furtively at the listener, give a moody chuckle, relapse into stony and apathetic silence—that is the end of the tale.

Our stories have been derived mainly from the reports of those who have lived much among the Indians, and who have been able to embrace the rare occasions when, without self-consciousness or even much thought of outsiders, the natives could speak out freely. There is usually no very close way of judging of the accuracy of observation or correctness of report of these investigators, except as their statements are corroborated by others. These stories sometimes conflict, different tribes having quite different versions of certain stories. Then again the Indians have a peculiar habit of "continued stories," by which at the teepee fire one will take up some well known tale and add to it and so make a new story of it, or at least a new conclusion. As with the minstrels and minnesingers of feudal Europe at the tournaments, the best fellow is the one who tells the most thrilling tale.

One confusing condition that often arises with Indian names and stories is that some Indians use a word generically and others use the same word specifically. For instance the native name for Mount Adams, commonly given as "Pahtou," and Mount Rainier or Tacoma, better spelled "Takhoma," as sounded by the Indians, really means any high mountain. A Wasco Indian once told the author that his tribe called Mount Hood, "Pahtou," meaning the big mountain, but that the Indians on the other side of the Columbia River applied the same name to Adams. A very intelligent Puyallup Indian says that the name of the "Great White Mountain" was "Takhoma," with accent and prolonged sound on the second syllable, but that any snow peak was the same, with the second syllable not so prolonged according to height or distance of the peak. Mount St. Helens was also "Takhoma," but with the "ho" not so prolonged. But among some other Indians we find Mount St. Helens known as "Lawailaclough," and with some Mount Hood is known as "Yetsl." Still other names are "Loowit" for St. Helens and "Wiyeast" for Hood. Adams seems to be known to some as "Klickitat." "Koolshan" for Baker, meaning the "Great White Watcher," is one of the most attractive of Indian names and should be preserved. There is "Shuksan" or "The place of the Storm Wind," the only one of the northwestern peaks which has preserved its Indian name. In reference to "Takhoma," a Puyallup woman told the writer that among her people the name meant the "Breast that Feeds," or "The Breast of the Milk White Waters," referring to the glaciers or the white streams that issue from them. On the other hand, Winthrop in "Canoe and Saddle," states that the Indians applied the name "Takhoma" to any high snow peak. Mr. Edwin Eells of Tacoma has written that he derived from Rev. Father Hylebos of the same city the statement that the name "Takhoma" was compounded of "Tah" and "Koma," and that among certain Indians the word "Koma" meant any snow peak, while "Tah" is a superlative. Hence, "Tahkoma" means simply the great peak.

We find something of the same inconsistencies in regard to the Indian names of rivers. Our maps abound with supposed Indian names of rivers and yet an educated Nez Percé Indian named Luke, living at Kamiah, Idaho, says that the Indians, at least of that region, had no names of rivers, but only of localities. He told the author that "Kooskooskie," which Lewis and Clark understood to be the name of what we now call the Clearwater, was in reality a repetition of "Koos," their word for water, and they meant merely to say that it was a strong water. On the other hand we find many students of Indian languages who have understood that there were names for the large rivers, even for the Columbia. In the beautiful little book by B. H. Barrows, published and distributed by the Union Pacific Railroad Company, we find the name "Shocatilicum" or "Friendly Water" given as the Chinook name for the Columbia. It is interesting to notice that this same word for "friendly water" appears in Vol. II, of the Lewis and Clark Journal, but with different spelling, in one place being "Shocatilcum" and in another place "Chockalilum." Reverend Father Blanchet is authority for the statement in "Historical Magazine," II, 335, that the Chinook Indians used the name "Yakaitl Wimakl" for the Lower Columbia. A Yakima Indian called William Charley gives "Chewanna" as still another Indian name for the Columbia.

We have many supposed Indian names for God, as "Nekahni," or "Sahale," but Miss Kate McBeth, long a missionary among the Nez Perces, records in her book about them that those Indians had no native name for the deity. Of these Indian myths many deal with the chief God, as "Nekahni," "Sahale," "Dokidatl," "Snoqualm," or "Skomalt," while others have to do with the lesser grade of the supernatural beings, as the Coyote god, variously named "Tallapus," "Speelyi," or "Sinchaleep." Others may treat of "Skallalatoots" (Fairies), "Toomuck," (Devils), or the various forms of "Tomanowas" (magic). A large number of these myths describe the supposed origin of strange features of the natural world, rocks, lakes, whirlpools, winds and waterfalls. Some describe the "animal people," "Watetash," as the Klickitats call them. Some of the best are fire-myths. These myths seem to have been common among all Indians of the Columbia Valley.

In the preceding chapter we have given two of the best Indian myths, that of Wishpoosh and that of the Chinook Wind. We insert here two stories of a very different nature, derived from the same investigator as the two preceding, Dr. G. B. Kuykendall of Pomeroy, Washington.

There is a legend among the Yakima Indians which seems to have the same root in human nature as the beautiful Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, showing the instinctive desire of people on earth to bring back the spirits of the dead, and the impossibility of doing so. This myth sets forth how Speelyi and Whyama the eagle became at one time so grieved at the loss of their loved ones that they determined to go to the land of the spirits and bring them back. The two adventurers journeyed for a long distance over an unbroken plain, and came at last to a great lake, on the farther side of which they saw many houses. They called long and vainly for someone to come with a boat and ferry them over. But there was no sign of life and at last Whyama said that there could be no one there. Speelyi insisted, however, that the people were simply sleeping the sleep of the day and would come forth at night. Accordingly, when the sun went down and darkness began to come on, Speelyi started to sing. In a few minutes they saw four spirit men come to the bank, enter a boat and cross the lake to meet them. It seemed not necessary for them to row the boat, for apparently it skimmed over the water of its own accord. The spirit men, having landed, took Whyama and Speelyi with them in the boat and began their return to the island of the dead. The island seemed to be a very sacred place. There was a house of mats upon the shore, where music and dancing were in progress. Speelyi and Whyama begged leave to enter, and feeling hungry, they asked for food. The spirit land was so much less gross than the earth that they were satisfied by what was dipped with a feather out of a bottle. The spirit people now came to meet them dressed in most beautiful costumes, and so filled with joy that Speelyi and Whyama felt a great desire to share their happiness. By the time of the morning light, however, the festivities ceased and all the spirit people became wrapped in slumber for the day. Speelyi, observing that the moon was hung up inside the great banquet hall and seemed to be essential to the ongoings of the evening, stationed himself in such a place that he could seize it during the next night's meeting. As soon as night came on the spirits gathered again for the music and dance. While their festivities were in progress as usual, Speelyi suddenly swallowed the moon, leaving the entire place in darkness. Then he and Whyama brought in a box, which they had previously provided, and Whyama, flying swiftly about the room caught a number of the spirits and enclosed them in the box. Then the two proceeded to start for the earth, Speelyi carrying the box upon his back.

As the two adventurers went upon their long journey toward the earth with the precious box, the spirits, which at first were entirely imponderable, began to be transformed into men and to have weight. Soon they began to cry out on account of their crowded and uncomfortable position. Then they became so heavy that Speelyi could no longer carry them. In spite of the remonstrances of Whyama, he opened the box. They were astonished and overwhelmed with grief to see the partially transformed spirits flit away like autumn leaves and disappear in the direction from which they had come. Whyama thought that perhaps even as the buds grow in the spring, so the dead would come back with the blooming of the next flowers. But Speelyi deemed it best after this that the dead should remain in the land of the dead. Had it not been for this, as the Indians think, the dead would indeed return every spring with the opening of the leaves.

The Klickitat Indians, living along the Dalles of the Columbia, have another legend of the land of spirits. There was a young chief and a girl who were devoted to each other and seemed to be the happiest people in the tribe, but suddenly he sickened and died. The girl mourned for him almost to the point of death, and he, having reached the land of spirits, could find no happiness there on account of thinking of her.

And so it came to pass that a vision began to appear to the girl by night, telling her that she must herself go into the land of the spirits in order to console her lover. Now there is near that place one of the most weird and funereal of all the various "memaloose" islands, or death islands, of the Columbia. The writer himself has been upon this island and its spectral and volcanic desolation makes it a fitting location for ghostly tales. It lies just below the "great chute," and even yet has many skeletons upon it. In accordance with the directions of the vision, the girl's father made ready a canoe, placed her in it, and rowed out into the great river by night to the memaloose island. As the father and his child rowed across the dark and forbidding waters, they began to hear the sound of singing and dancing and great joy. Upon the shore of the island they were met by four spirit people, who took the girl but bade the father return, as it was not for him to see into the spirit country. Accordingly the girl was conducted to the great dance house of the spirits, and there she met her lover, far stronger and more beautiful than when upon earth. That night they spent in unspeakable bliss, but when the light began to break in the east and the song of the robins began to be heard from the willows on the shore, the singers and the dancers began to fall asleep.

The girl, too, had gone to sleep, but not soundly like the spirits. When the sun had reached the meridian, she woke, and now, to her horror, she saw that instead of being in the midst of beautiful spirits, she was surrounded by hideous skeletons and loathsome, decaying bodies. Around her waist were the bony arms and skeleton fingers of her lover, and his grinning teeth and gaping eye-sockets seemed to be turned in mockery upon her. Screaming with horror she leaped up and ran to the edge of the island, where, after hunting a long time, she found a boat, in which she paddled across to the Indian village. Having presented herself to her astonished parents, they became fearful that some great calamity would visit the tribe on account of her return, and accordingly her father took her the next night back to the memaloose island as before. There she met again the happy spirits of the blessed and there again her lover and she spent another night in ecstatic bliss.

In the course of time a child was born to the girl, beautiful beyond description, being half spirit and half human. The spirit bridegroom, being anxious that his mother should see the child, sent a spirit messenger to the village, desiring his mother to come by night to the memaloose island to visit them. She was told, however, that she must not look at the child until ten days had passed. But after the old woman had reached the island her desire to see the wonderful child was so intense that she took advantage of a moment's inattention on the part of the guard, and, lifting the cloth from the baby board, she stole a look at the sleeping infant. And then, dreadful to relate, the baby died in consequence of this premature human look. Grieved and displeased by this foolish act, the spirit people decreed that the dead should never again return nor hold any communication with the living.

As showing still another phase of Indian imagination, the stories of the "Tomanowas Bridge" of the Cascades may well find a place here.

This myth not only treats of fire, but it also endeavors to account for the peculiar formation of the river and for the great snow peaks in the near vicinity. This myth has various forms, and in order that it may be the better understood, we shall say a word with respect to the peculiar physical features in that part of the Columbia. This mighty river, after having traversed over a thousand miles from its source in the heart of the Rocky Mountains of Canada, has cleft the Cascade range asunder with the cañon 3,000 feet in depth. While generally very swift, that portion of the river between The Dalles and the Cascades, of about fifty miles, is very deep and sluggish. There are moreover sunken forests on both sides of the river, visible at low water, which seem plainly to indicate that at that point the river was dammed up by some great rock slide or volcanic convulsion. Some of the Indians affirm that their grandfathers have told them there was a time when the river at that point passed under an immense natural bridge and that there were no obstructions to the passage of boats under the bridge. At the present time there is a cascade of forty feet at that point. This is now overcome by Government locks. Among other evidences of some such actual occurrence as the Indians relate is the fact that the banks of the river at that point are gradually sliding into the river. The prodigious volume of the Columbia which here rises from fifty to seventy-five feet during the summer flood and which, as shown by Government engineers, carries as much water as the Mississippi at New Orleans, is here continually eating into the banks. The railroad has slid several inches a year at this point toward the river and requires frequent readjustment. It is obvious at a slight inspection that this weird and sublime point in the course of this majestic river has been the scene of terrific volcanic and probably seismic action. One Indian legend, probably the best known of all their stories, is to the effect that the downfall of the great bridge and consequent damming of the river was due to a great battle between Mount Hood and Mount Adams, in which Mount Hood hurled a great rock at his antagonist, but falling short of the mark the rock demolished the bridge instead. This event has been made use of by Frederick Balch in his beautiful story, "The Bridge of the Gods," the finest story yet produced in Oregon.

But the finer, though less known legend, which unites both the physical conformation of the Cascades and the three great snow mountains of Hood, Adams, and St. Helens, with the origin of fire, is to this effect. This story was secured by Mr. Fred Saylor of Portland.

According to the Klickitats there was once a father and two sons who came from the east down the Columbia to the vicinity of where Dalles City is now located, and there the two sons quarreled as to who should possess the land. The father, to settle the dispute, shot two arrows, one to the north and one to the west. He told one son to find the arrow to the north and the other the one at the west and there to settle and bring up their families. The first son, going northward, over what was then a beautiful plain, became the progenitor of the Klickitat tribe, while the other son was the founder of the great Multnomah nation of the Willamette Valley. To separate the two tribes more effectively Sahale reared the chain of the Cascades, though without any great peaks, and for a long time all things went in harmony. But for convenience' sake Sahale had created the great tomanowas bridge under which the waters of the Columbia flowed, and on this bridge he had stationed a witch woman called Loowit, who was to take charge of the fire. This was the only fire in the world. As time passed on Loowit observed the deplorable condition of the Indians, destitute of fire and the conveniences which it might bring. She therefore besought Sahale to allow her to bestow fire upon the Indians. Sahale, having been greatly pleased by the faithfulness and benevolence of Loowit, finally granted her request. The lot of the Indians was wonderfully improved by the acquisition of fire. They now began to make better lodges and clothes and had a variety of food and implements and, in short, were marvellously benefited by the bounteous gift.

But Sahale, in order to show his appreciation of the care with which Loowit had guarded the sacred fire, now determined to offer her any gift she might desire as a reward. Accordingly, in response to his offer, Loowit asked that she be transformed into a young and beautiful girl. This was effected and now, as might have been expected, all the Indian chiefs fell deeply in love with the beautiful guardian of the tomanowas bridge. Loowit paid little heed to any of them, until finally there came two magnificent chiefs, one from the north called Klickitat, and one from the south called Wiyeast. Loowit was uncertain which of these two she most desired, and as a result a bitter strife arose between the two, and this waxed hotter and hotter, until finally, with their respective warriors, they entered upon a desperate war. The land was ravaged, all the beautiful things which they had made were marred, and misery and wretchedness ensued. Sahale repented that he had allowed Loowit to bestow fire upon the Indians, and determined to undo all his work in so far as he could. Accordingly he broke down the tomanowas bridge, which dammed up the river with an impassable reef and put to death Loowit, Klickitat and Wiyeast. But, he said, inasmuch as they had been so grand and beautiful in life, he would give them a fitting commemoration after death. Therefore he reared over them as monuments the great snow peaks; over Loowit what we now call Mount St. Helens, over Wiyeast the modern Mount Hood, and above Klickitat the stupendous dome of what we now call Mount Adams.

And now it is a matter of much interest to learn something of the chief original sources and the most reliable investigators of these myths. This survey is necessarily incomplete. The endeavor is to name the students and writers of myths as far as possible. This search goes beyond Old Walla Walla and covers Old Oregon.

First in the natural order of the investigators and records of Indian myths come the early explorers and writers of Old Oregon. Most of these give us little on the special subject of myths, though they give much on the habits, customs, occupations, and implements of the natives. The earliest explorer in Oregon, so far as known to the author, to give any native legend, is Gabriel Franchere, who came to Astoria with the Astor Fur Company in 1811. In his narrative, upon which Irving's "Astoria" is largely based, we find a fine story of the creation of men by Etalapass, and their subsequent improvement by Ecannum. Franchere says that this legend was related to him by Ellewa, one of the sons of Concomly, the one-eyed Chinook chief, who figures conspicuously in Franchere's narrative. Of valuable books of the same period of Franchere, are Ross Cox's "Adventures on the Columbia River," and Alexander Ross' "Adventures on the Columbia," both of which contain valuable references to the customs and superstitious ideas of the natives, though not much in the way of myths. Ross gives an interesting myth of the Oakinackens (Okanogans as we now say) about the origin of the Indians or Skyloo on the white man's island, Samahtumawhoolah. The Indians were then very white and ruled by a female spirit, or Great Mother, named Skomalt, but their island got loose and drifted on the ocean for many suns, and as a result they became darkened to their present hue. Ross gives also an account of the belief of the Oakinackens in a good spirit, one of whose names is Skyappe, and a bad spirit, one of whose names was Chacha. The chief deity of those Indians seems to have been the great mother of life, Skomalt, whose name also has the addition of "Squisses." Ross says that those Indians change their names constantly and doubtless their deities did the same.

POSTOFFICE, WALLA WALLA

Of valuable books a few years later than those just named, one especially deserving of mention is Dr. Samuel Parker's "Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains," the result of observations made in 1835 and 1836. This, however, contains little in the way of mythology. Capt. Charles Wilkes, the American explorer of the early '40s, gives a very interesting account of a Palouse myth of a beaver which was cut up to make the tribes. This is evidently another version of the Klickitat story of the great beaver, Wishpoosh, of Lake Cleelum. One of the most important of the early histories of Oregon is Dunn's, the materials for which were gathered in the decade of the '40s. With other valuable matter it contains accounts of the religious conceptions of the Indians, and here we find the legend of the Thunder Bird of the Tinneh, a northern tribe. In this same general period, though a little later, we find the most brilliant of all writers dealing with Oregon; that is, the gifted scholar, poet and soldier, Theodore Winthrop. His book, "Canoe and Saddle," has no rival for literary excellence and graphic power, among all the books which have dealt with the Northwest. The book was first published in 1862, and republished fifty years later in beautiful form by John H. Williams of Tacoma. "Canoe and Saddle" commemorates a journey from Puget Sound across the mountains and through the Yakima and Klickitat countries in 1854. It contains several fine Indian stories, notably that of the Miser of Mount Tacoma, and that of the Devil of the Dalles. Winthrop does not state from whom directly he secured the second of these myths, but no doubt from the Indians themselves, though the peculiar rich imagination and picturesque language of Winthrop are in evidence throughout the narration. The tale of the Miser of Mount Tacoma is attributed by Winthrop to Hamitchou, an Indian of the Squallygamish tribe.

At about the some time as Winthrop's, occurred the visit and investigations of James G. Swan, whose book, "The Northwest Coast," was published in 1857. In this is found the creation myth of the Ogress of Saddle Mountain, relating the issuing forth of Indians from eggs cast down the mountain-side by the Ogress. Many years ago Rev. Myron Eells told the writer a variation of that story, which has appeared in sundry forms and publications, being the story of Toulux, the South Wind, Quootshoi the witch, and Skamson the Thunder Bird. In addition to the legend of the Thunder Bird, Swan gives many items of peculiar interest. Among these we find his idea that certain customs of the Indians ally them with the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. His final impression seems to be, however, that they are autocthonous in America. He refers to the observation of General George Gibbs of the similarity of Klickitat myths to those in Longfellow's Hiawatha. He also refers to the beeswax ship of the Nehalem. In connection with the thought of Indian resemblance to the Ten Lost Tribes, it is worth noticing that this has come forth from various directions. Miss Kate McBeth has expressed the same in connection with the Nez Perces. It was also a favorite idea with B. B. Bishop, one of the earliest builders of steamboats on the Columbia, who lived many years at Pendleton, Oregon. He told the writer that the Indians at the Cascades had a spring festival with the first run of salmon. They would boil whole the first large salmon caught, and have a ceremony in which the whole tribe would pass in procession around the fish, each taking a bit. They exercised the utmost care to leave the skeleton intact, so that at the end it had been picked clean but with not a bone broken. Mr. Bishop thought that this was a survival of the Jewish idea of the Paschal Lamb.

Among the great collectors of all kinds of historical data in what might be called the middle period of Northwest history and not exactly belonging to any one of the specific groups, is H. H. Bancroft, already referred to in the first part of this chapter. In his "Native Races," are found many myths, with references given, but these mainly deal with Mexican, Central American, and Californian Indians. He refers to Holmburg's ethnological studies in German as containing valuable matter in regard to our Northwestern Indians. Harmon's Journal, with its reference to the Tacullies of British Columbia and their legend of the Musk Rat, is also named. In the same connection we find reference to Yehl the Raven, an especial favorite of the Indians of British Columbia and the upper part of Puget Sound.

From what may be termed the first group of narrators of native tales, we may turn to those that may be called the scientific ethnologists. We are indebted to Dr. Franz Boas, himself the foremost of the group, for the list of these professional students of the subject. These men took up the matter in a more scientific and methodical way than the travellers and pioneers and have presented the results of their work in form that appeals to the scholar, the work of trained investigators, seeking the facts and giving them as exactly as possible, not affected by the distortions and exaggerations common to unscientific observers. They were all connected with the Smithsonian Institute, and their work was mainly under the Government.

The Bibliography as given by Doctor Boas, is as follows:

Edward Sapir, Wishram Texts (publications of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. II).

Leo J. Frachtenberg, Coos Texts (Columbia University contributions to Anthropology, Vol. I).

Leo J. Frachtenberg, Lower Umpqua Texts (Ibid., Vol. IV).

James Teit, Traditions of the Thompson Indians (Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, Vol. VI). (This is not Washington, but practically identical with material from the interior of Washington.)

James Teit, Mythology of the Thompson Indians (Jesup North Pacific Expedition Publications, Vol. VIII).

James Teit, The Shuswap (Ibid., Vol. II).

Franz Boas, Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas.

Franz Boas, Mythology of the Indians of Washington and Oregon (Globus, Vol. LXIII, pp. 154-157, 172-175, 190-193).

H. J. Spinden, Myths of the Nez Percé (Journal of American Folk Lore, Vol. XXI).

Louisa McDermott, Myths of the Flathead Indians (Ibid., Vol. XIV).

Franz Boas, Sagen der Kootenay (Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, etc., Vol. XXIII, pp. 161-172).

Livingston Farrand, Traditions of the Quinault Indians (Publications of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Vol. II).

Franz Boas, Chinook Texts (Bureau of Ethnology, Government Printing Office, 1894).

Franz Boas, Cathlamet Texts (Ibid.).

James Teit, Traditions of the Lilloost Indians (Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XXV).

Jeremiah Curtin, Myths of the Modocs (Little, Brown & Co.).

To these may be added, as of special value, the studies of Prof. Albert S. Gatchett among the Modocs, found under the title, "Oregonian Folk-Lore" in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. IV, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The other volumes of the Journal of American Folk-Lore from 1888 to 1913 contain valuable matter.

Doctor Boas found a treasury of information in an old Indian named Charlie Cultee, at Bay Center in Willapa Harbor, Wash., and from that source derived the material for the most scientific and uncolored study of Indian lore yet given to the public. These appear in the Chinook Texts of Doctor Boas. In this is a fine story of the first ship seen by the Clatsops. This is found also in H. S. Lyman's History of Oregon. In Professor Gatchett's book are found some of the finest fire myths and fish myths of the Northwest.

Following the groups of the explorers and the professional ethnologists, may come the larger body of miscellaneous collectors and writers, who, through local papers and magazines and published books, as well as personal narration, have rescued many quaint and curious gems of Indian mythology from oblivion and through various channels have imparted them to the slowly accumulating stock.

Those no longer living may properly appear first. Of comparatively recent students no longer living, Silas Smith of Astoria was of the best. His father was Solomon Smith of the Wyeth Expedition, while his mother was Celiast, daughter of the Clatsop chief Cobaiway. Through his Indian mother Mr. Smith obtained much interesting matter, much of which was preserved by H. S. Lyman in his history of Oregon, and in articles in the Oregonian, Historical Quarterly, and other publications. H. S. Lyman was also an original investigator, deriving his data mainly from Silas Smith and from a group of Indians who formerly lived at the mouth of the Nekanicum. These stories appear in his history of Oregon and in a group contained in the "Tallapus Stories," published in the Oregonian. Another intelligent and patient investigator was Rev. Myron Eells, who lived for many years on Hood's Canal. Many years ago the author heard from him legends from the Indians which he derived directly from the natives, such as the Thunder Bird, the Flood around Mount Tacoma (which he thought colored by the story of Noah in the Bible), and others. In the book by Mr. Eells, entitled "Ten Years' Missionary Work in Skokomish," he gives a valuable description of the "Tomanowas." In various numbers of the American Antiquarian Mr. Eells has valuable articles as follows: "The Religion of the Twana Indians," July, 1879; "Dokidatl, or the God of the Puget Sound Indians," November, 1884; "The Indians of Puget Sound," May, 1888, and March, 1890.

Prominent among the scholars and lecturers of Oregon is the great name of Thomas Condon, for a long time in the State University, and the earliest student in a large way of the geology of the Northwest. He was interested in Indian myths as in almost everything that had to do with man and nature. The legend of the "Bridge of the Gods," already given in this chapter, particularly appealed to him. One of the notable students of both the geology and anthropology of the Northwest was George Gibbs, who came to Oregon as a Government geologist in 1853. In his report on the Pacific Railroad in House of Representatives Documents of 1853-4, he gives the first published version, so far as we can discover, of the "Bridge of the Gods." He tells the story thus: "The Indians tell a characteristic tale of Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens to the effect that they were man and wife; that they finally quarreled and threw fire at one another, and that St. Helens was victor; since when Mount Hood has been afraid, while St. Helens, having a stout heart, still burned. In some versions this story is connected with the slide which formed the Cascades of the Columbia." Mr. Gibbs also gives some Yakima legends.

One of the most distinguished of all the literary pioneers of Old Oregon was Samuel A. Clark. In his "Pioneer Days in Oregon" are several interesting legends well told. In this we find the legend of the Nahalem, with Ona and Sandy and all their tribulations. We find here told also the story of the Bridge of the Gods, in which Hood and Adams are represented as the contending forces, having been originally the abutments of the Bridge of the Gods. But the most noted contribution of Mr. Clark to this legend was his poem called, "The Legend of the Mountains," referring to the fabled bridge, which appeared in Harper's Magazine of February, 1874. This represents Mount St. Helens as a goddess for whom Hood and Adams contended, hurling huge stones at each other and finally breaking down the bridge. The story of the bridge became the most noted of all native myths, being related to practically every traveller that made the steamboat trip down the Columbia.

Let us now turn to those discoverers and writers of Indian myths who are still living. The majority of these are from the nature of the case adaptors and transcribers, rather than original students. But some among them are entitled to the place of genuine investigators. Among these a foremost place must be accorded to Fred A. Saylor of Portland. He was for several years editor of the Oregon Native Son, and for it he wrote a number of stories which he derived directly from the Indians. A student of these stories from boyhood, he has accumulated the largest collection of matter both published and unpublished of anyone in the Northwest. This collection is preserved by him in fourteen large scrap books, and constitutes a treasury of valuable data which it is to be hoped may soon appear in a published form for the delight and profit of many readers. Among the legends of which Mr. Saylor is entitled to be regarded as the discoverer are these: "The Legend of Tahoma"; "Why the Indian Fears Golden Hair," or, "The Origin of Castle Rock;" "Speelyi, or the Origin of Latourelle Falls, and the Pillars of Hercules;" "Thorns on Rosebushes;" "The Noah of the Indians;" "The Strange Story of a Double Shadow;" "The Legend of Snake River Valley;" "A Wappato Account of the Flood;" "The Last Signal Fire of the Multnomah;" "The Legend of the Willamette;" "The Love of an Indian Maid;" "Enumpthla;" "Coyote's Tomb;" "Multnomah." The last named has been presented by students on the campus of the State University and also at the Agricultural College of Oregon.

Of investigators known to the author, none seems more worthy of extended and favorable mention than Dr. G. B. Kuykendall of Pomeroy, Wash. He was for a number of years the physician for the Yakima Reservation at Fort Simcoe. He began his work of collecting in 1875, deriving his knowledge directly from the Indians. His authorities were almost entirely old Indians, for from such only could he secure narrations of unadulterated character. His first published writings were in the "West Shore," of Portland, in 1887. His most mature contribution, which may indeed be considered the best yet given to the public, is found in Vol. II, of the "History of the Pacific Northwest," published by the North Pacific History Co., of Portland, in 1889. This is an admirable piece of work, and students of the subject will find here a treasure of native lore. The following is the list of stories given by Dr. Kuykendall in that work: "Wishpoosh, the Beaver God, and the Origin of the Tribes;" "Speelyi Fights Enumtla;" "Speelyi Outwits the Beaver Women;" "Rock Myths;" "Legend of the Tick;" "Mountain Lake Myths;" "The Origin of Fire;" "Water Nymphs;" "Wawa, the Mosquito God;" "Origin of the Loon;" "Castiltah, the Crayfish;" "Wakapoosh, the Rattle Snake;" "The Tumwater Luminous Stone God;" "The Wooden Fireman of the Cascades;" "Contest Between the Chinooks and Cold Wind Brothers;" "Speelyi's Ascent to Heaven;" "Coyote and Eagle Attempt to Bring the Dead Back from Spirit Land;" "The Isle of the Dead."

Another original investigator and the author of an unique and picturesque book devoted exclusively to Indian myths, is W. S. Phillips of Seattle, well known by his non-de-plume of "El Comancho." The book by Mr. Phillips is "Totem Tales." Mr. Phillips says that he gathered the matter for "Totem Tales" from the Puget Sound Indians and from Haida Indians who had come south. This work was mainly done about twenty-five years ago. He verified much of his matter by comparing with Judge Swan, and by the stories acquired by Doctor Shaw, who was at one time Indian agent at Port Madison, and whose wife was one of the daughters of old Chief Sealth (Seattle). He derived matter for comparison also from Rev. Myron Eells. The chief Indian authority of Mr. Phillips was old Chisiahka (Indian John to the Whites), and it was a big tree on the shore of Lake Union that suggested the idea of the "Talking Pine," which the author wove so picturesquely into the narrative. Mr. Phillips has also published the "Chinook Book," the most extensive study of the jargon language yet made. To the others he has added a most attractive book entitled, "Indian Tales for Little Folks."

Another present day investigator, whose work is especially worthy of mention is Rev. J. Neilson Barry, an enthusiastic and intelligent student of every phase of the history of the Northwest. In Chapter III of Volume I of Gaston's "Centennial History of Oregon," Mr. Barry gives a valuable contribution to Indian legends.

Yet another original student is Miss Kate McBeth of Lapwai, Idaho, who with her sister lived for years among the Nez Perces, performing a most beneficent missionary work for them. In her book, "The Nez Perces Since Lewis and Clark," may be found the Kamiah myth, and a few others derived directly from those Indians. Mention may well be made here also of a Nez Percé Indian named Luke, previously referred to, living at Kamiah, who has a very intelligent knowledge of all kinds of Indian matters. Miss McBeth says that the Nez Perces do not like to discuss generally their "heathen" stories and customs. In connection with the Nez Perces it may be stated that Yellow Wolf of Nespilem is an authority on the myth of the Kamiah Monster.

Still another enthusiastic student of Indian legends is Lucullus V. McWhorter of North Yakima. He is an adopted member of the Yakima tribe, and has been of incalculable benefit to the Indians in instructing them as to their rights, in presenting their cause to the Government, and in making known their needs as well as some of their wrongs to the general public through voice and pen. He has made a specialty in recent years of organizing the Indians and taking them to "Round-Ups" and "Frontier Days." A recent pamphlet by him on the treatment of the Yakimas in connection with their water rights is an "eye-opener," on some phases of Indian service and Indian problems. Mr. McWhorter has gathered a large amount of matter from the Indians, in which is material for three books: "Traditions of the Yakimas;" "Hero Stories of the Yakimas;" "Nez Percé Warriors in the War of 1877." Among the proteges of Mr. McWhorter from whom he tells me much of interest could be derived, are Chief Yellow Wolf of the Joseph Band of Nez Perces, and Mrs. Crystal McLeod, known to her people as Humishuma, or Morning Dove, an Okanogan woman of unusual beauty and intelligence and well instructed in the English language. Her picture appears in this work from photographs taken by Mr. John Langdon of Walla Walla.

Any reference to any phase of Oregon would be incomplete without mention of John Minto, one of the most honored of pioneers, one of the noblest of men, and one of the best examples of those ambitious, industrious, and high minded state builders who gave the Northwest its loftiest ideals. Mr. Minto was a student of the Indians and discovered and gave to the world various Clatsop and Nehalem legends. Hon. E. L. Smith of Hood River, Ore., well known as an official and legislator of both Oregon and Washington, and a man of such character that all who ever knew him have the highest honor for him in every relation of life, has made a lifelong study of the natives and has a great collection of myths both in mind and on paper. He is one of the most sympathetic, tolerant, and appreciative of investigators, one whom the Indians of the Mid-Columbia trust implicitly. He has written little for publication in comparison with what he knows, and it is to be hoped that his stores of material may be brought within reach before long. Worthy of mention as a general student of the geography and language of the Indians is Mr. John Gill of Portland. While he has not made a specialty of myths, he has studied the habits and language with special attention, and his dictionary of the Chinook jargon is one of the most valuable collections of the kind.

It is proper to mention here several who are well versed in native lore, yet who have not given their knowledge of legends or myths to the public in book or magazine form. The most conspicuous, indeed, of this group is no longer living. This was Dr. William C. McKay, a grandson of the McKay of the Astor Fur Company, who lost his life on the Tonquin. The mother of Doctor McKay was a Chinook "princess." He was a man of great ability and acquired a fine education. He lived for years, in Pendleton, Ore., where he died some time ago. In the possession of his children and grandchildren there is undoubtedly valuable material and if it could be reduced to written form it would furnish matter of great interest. Certain others of Indian blood may be properly added here who could give material for interesting narrations. Among these are Henry Sicade and William Wilton, living on the Puyallup Reservation near Tacoma, Samuel McCaw of Yakima, Wash., and Charlie Pitt of the Warm Springs Agency in Oregon.

This summary of Indian stories and their investigators is necessarily incomplete. One of the hopes in including it in this work is that it may lead to added contributions. As we contemplate the beauty and grandeur of Old Oregon, which includes Washington and Idaho and a part of Montana, and the pathos, heroism and nobility of its history, and as we see the pitiful remnant of the Indians, we cannot fail to be touched with the quaint, the pathetic, and the suggestive myths and legends that are passing with them into the twilight. In our proud days of possession and of progress we do well to pause and drop the tear of sympathy and place the chaplet of commemoration upon the resting place of the former lords of the land, and to recognize their contributions to the common stock of human thought.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST EXPLORERS AND THEIR ROUTES THROUGH THE REGION

Of all events in early American history influential in their bearing upon the territorial development of the United States, the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 must be accorded the foremost place. Until that event the United States, in spite of the fact that it had gained independence, was essentially European in its habit of thought and colonial in its aspirations and outlook. A few seers indeed recognized the possibilities of continental expansion. The doctrine of "manifest destiny" had held the glowing vision of the place in history which might be wrought by a continent, or at least the dominating parts of it, under the control of the same race of men who had redeemed the Atlantic seaboard from the wilderness and successfully maintained against the greatest empire of the world the proposition that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The author of those words had seen more clearly perhaps than any other the world vision of a great American democracy, independent of Europe and yet by reason of geographical position as well as political ideals and social aspirations, the natural mediator among peoples and the ultimate teacher and enlightener of mankind.

When, therefore, as a result of the political revolution of 1800 and the permanent establishment of the democratic conception in the leadership of American politics, Thomas Jefferson found himself invested with the enormous responsibility of framing policies and measures for the new era, one of his foremost aims was to turn the face of the nation westward. Having long entertained the idea that the true policy was to secure such posts of vantage beyond the Alleghenies as would lead by natural stages to the acquisition of the country beyond the Mississippi, even to the Pacific, he was alert to seize any opening for pursuing that truly American policy. He did not have long to wait. At the time of his inauguration the stupendous energies of the French Revolution had become concentrated in that overpowering personality, Napoleon Bonaparte. Holding then the position of first consul, but as truly the imperial master as when he placed the iron crown of the Lombards upon his own head, "the man on horseback" perceived that a renewal of the great war was inevitable and that Austria on land and England at sea were going to put metes to his empire if human power could do it. Nothing was more hateful to Napoleon than to let French America, or Louisiana, slip from his grasp. But he had not the maritime equipment to defend it. England was sure to take it and that soon. Monroe, the American envoy, was in Paris fully instructed by President Jefferson what to do. All things were ready. The man and the occasion met. The Louisiana Purchase was consummated. For less than three cents an acre, a region now comprising thirteen states or parts of states, estimated at over five hundred and sixty-five million acres, equal in extent to all Europe outside of Russia and Scandinavia, became part of the United States.

HIGH SCHOOL, WAITSBURG

When that great event was consummated and one of the milestones in the world's progress upon the highway of universal democracy had been set for good, the next step in the mind of Jefferson was to provide for the exploration of the vast new land. The westward limits of Louisiana were not indeed defined by the treaty of purchase otherwise than as the boundaries by which the territory had been ceded by Spain to France, and those boundaries in turn were defined only as those by which France had in 1763 ceded to Spain. Hence the western boundary of Louisiana was uncertain. Although subsequent agreements and usages determined the boundary to be the crest of the Rocky Mountains as far south as Texas, Jefferson seems to have thought that the entire continent to the Pacific ought to be included in the exploration, for he saw also that the destiny of his country required the ultimate union of Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as the great central valley. From these conceptions and aims of Jefferson sprang that most interesting and influential of all exploring expeditions in our history, the Lewis and Clark exploration from St. Louis up the Missouri, across the Rocky Mountains, and down the Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson had contemplated such an expedition a long time. Even as far back as December 4, 1783, in a letter to George Rogers Clark, he raised the question of an exploration from the Mississippi to California. In 1792 he took it up with the American Philosophical Society, and even then Meriwether Lewis was eager to head such an expedition. In a message to Congress of January 18, 1803, before the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson developed the importance of a thorough exploration of the continent even to the Western Ocean. With his characteristic secrecy, Jefferson was disposed to mask the great design of ultimate acquisition of the continent under the appearance of scientific research. In a letter to Lewis of April 27, 1803, he says: "The idea that you are going to explore the Mississippi has been generally given out; it satisfies public curiosity and masks sufficiently the real destination." That real destination was, of course, the Pacific Ocean, and the fundamental aim was the continental expansion of the then crude and straggling Republic of the West. Considering the momentous nature of the undertaking and the possibilities of the unknown wilderness which it was to cover, it is curious and suggestive that Lewis had estimated the expenses at $2,500, and Jefferson called upon Congress for that amount of appropriation. An explorer of the present would hardly expect to go out doors on that scale of expense. Jeffersonian simplicity with a vengeance!

The scope of our book does not permit any detailed account of the preparations or of the personnel of the party. Suffice it to say that the leader, Meriwether Lewis, and his lieutenant, William Clark, were men of energy, discretion, courage, and the other necessary qualities for such an undertaking. While not men of education or general culture (Clark could not even spell or compose English correctly) they both had an abundance of common sense and in preparation for their mission gained a hurried preparation in the essentials of botany, zoology, and astronomy such as might enable them to observe and report intelligently upon the various objects of discovery and the distances and directions traversed.

Jefferson's instructions to Captain Lewis give one an added respect for the intelligence and broad humanity of the great democrat. Particularly did he enjoin upon the leader of the party the wisdom of amicable relations with the natives. The benevolent spirit of the President appears in his direction that kine-pox matter be taken and that its use for preventing smallpox be explained to the Indians. All readers of American history should read these instructions, both for an estimate of Jefferson personally, and for light they throw on the conditions and viewpoints of the times.

The number in the party leaving St. Louis was forty-five. But one death occurred upon the whole journey, which lasted from May 14, 1804, to September 23, 1806. Never perhaps did so extended and difficult an expedition suffer no little. And this was the more remarkable from the fact that there was no physician nor scientific man with the party and that whatever was needed in the way of treating the occasional sicknesses or accidents must be done by the captains. While to their natural force and intelligence the party owed a large share of its immunity from disaster, good fortune surely attended them. This seems the more noticeable when we reflect that this was the first journey across a wilderness afterwards accentuated with every species of suffering and calamity.

The members of the party were encouraged to preserve journals and records to the fullest degree, and from this resulted a fullness of detail by a number of the men as well as the leaders which has delighted generations of readers ever since. And in spite of the fact that none of the writers had any literary genius, these journals are fascinating on account of the nature of the undertaking and a certain glow of enthusiasm which invested with a charm even the plain and homely details of the long journey.

The first stage of the expedition was from St. Louis, May 14, 1804, to a point 1,600 miles up the Missouri, reached November 2. There the party wintered in a structure which they called Fort Mandan. The location was on the west bank of the Missouri, opposite the present City of Pierre. The journey had been made by boats at an average advance of ten miles a day. The river, though swift and with frequent shoals, offered no serious impediments, even for a long distance above Fort Mandan.

After a long, cold winter in the country of the Mandans, the expedition resumed their journey up the Missouri on April 7, 1805. Of the interesting details of this part of their course we cannot speak. Reaching the headwaters of the Missouri on August 12, they crossed that most significant spot, the Great Divide. A quotation from the journal of Captain Lewis indicates the lively sentiments with which they passed from the Missouri waters to those of the Columbia: "As they proceeded, their hope of seeing the waters of the Columbia rose to almost painful anxiety; when at the distance of four miles from the last abrupt turn of the stream, they reached a small gap formed by the high mountains which recede on either side, leaving room for the Indian road. From the foot of one of the lowest of these mountains, which rises with a gentle ascent for about half a mile, issued the remotest water of the Missouri. They had now reached the hidden sources of that river which had never before been seen by civilized man; and as they quenched their thirst at the chaste and icy fountain—as they sat down by the brink of the little rivulet which yielded its distant and modest tribute to the parent ocean—they felt themselves rewarded for all their labors and difficulties. * * * They found the descent much steeper than on the eastern side, and at the distance of three-quarters of a mile, reached a handsome, bold creek of cold, clear water running to the westward. They stopped to taste for the first time the waters of the Columbia."

After some very harassing and toilsome movements in that vast cordon of peaks in which lie the cradles of the Missouri, Yellowstone, Snake, Clearwater, and Bitterroot rivers—more early reaching starvation point than at any time on the trip—the party emerged upon a lofty height from which their vision swept over a vast expanse of open prairie, in which it became evident that there were many natives and, as they judged, the near vicinity of the great river, which, as they thought, would carry them in short order to the Western Ocean of their quest. They little realized that they were yet more than six hundred miles from the edge of the continent. Descending upon the plain, they made their way to the Kooskooskie, now known as the Clearwater River. As judged by Olin D. Wheeler in his invaluable book, "On The Trail of Lewis and Clark," the explorers crossed from what is now Montana into the present Idaho at the Lolo Pass, and proceeded thence down the broken country between the north and middle forks of the Kooskooskie, reaching the junction on September 26. The camp at that spot was called Canoe Camp. There they remained nearly two weeks, most of them sick through overeating after they had sustained so severe a fast in the savage defiles of the Bitter Roots, and from the effects of the very great change in temperature from the snowy heights to the hot valley below. At Canoe Camp they constructed boats for the further prosecution of their journey. They left their thirty-eight horses with three Indians of the Chopunnish or Pierced-Nose tribe, or Nez Percé as we now know them.

With their canoes they entered upon a new stage of their journey, one easy and pleasant after the hardships of the mountains. Down the beautiful Kooskooskie, then low in its autumn stage, they swept gaily, finding frequent rapids, though none serious. The pleasant-sounding name Kooskooskie, which ought to be preserved (though Clearwater is appropriate and sonorous), was supposed by the explorers to be the name of the river. This it appears was a misapprehension. The author has been told by a very intelligent Indian named Luke, living at Kamiah, that the Indians doubtless meant to tell the white men that the stream was Koos, koos, or water, water. Koos was and still is the Nez Percé word for water. Luke stated that the Indians did not regularly have names for streams, but only for localities, and referred to rivers as the water or koos belonging to some certain locality.

After a prosperous descent of the beautiful and impetuous stream for a distance estimated by them at fifty-nine miles (considerably overestimated) the party entered a much larger stream coming from the south. This they understood the Indians to call the Kimooenim. They named it the Lewis in honor of Captain Lewis. It was the great Snake River of our present maps. The writer has been told by Mr. Thomas Beall of Lewiston that the true Indian name is Twelka. Still another native name is Shahaptin. The party was now at the present location of Lewiston and Clarkston, one of the most notable regions in the Northwest for beauty, fertility, and all the essentials of capacity for sustaining a high type of civilized existence. The land adjoining Snake River on the west is Asotin County, one of the components of our history. The party camped on the right bank just below the junction, and that first camp of white men was nearly opposite both Lewiston and Clarkston of today. They say that the Indians flocked from all directions to see them. The scantiness of their fare had brought them to the stage of eating dog-meat, which they say excited the ridicule of the natives. The Indians gave them to understand that the southern branch was navigable up about sixty miles; that not far from its mouth it received a branch from the south, and at two days' march up a larger branch called Pawnashte, on which a chief resided who had more horses than he could count.

The first of these must be the Asotin Creek, unless indeed they referred to the Grande Ronde, which is the first large stream, but is considerable distance from the junction. The Pawnashte must have been the Salmon, the largest tributary of the Snake. The Snake at the point of the camp of the explorers was discovered to be about three hundred yards wide. The party noticed the greenish blue color of the Snake, while the Kooskooskie was as clear as crystal. The Indians at this point are described as of the Chopunnish or Pierced-Nose nations, the latter of those names translated by the French voyageurs into the present Nez Percé. According to the observations of the party, the men were in person stout, portly, well-looking men; the women small, with good features and generally handsome. The chief article of dress of the men was a "buffalo or elk-skin robe decorated with beads, sea-shells, chiefly mother-of-pearl, attached to an otter-skin collar and hung in the hair, which falls in front in two queues; feathers, paints of different kinds, principally white, green, and light blue, all of which they find in their own country. The dress of the women is more simple, consisting of a long skirt of argalia or ibex-skin, reaching down to the ankles without a girdle; to this are tied little pieces of brass and shells and other small articles." Further on the journal states again: "The Chopunnish have few amusements, for their life is painful and laborious; and all their exertions are necessary to earn even their precarious subsistence. During the summer and autumn they are busily occupied in fishing for salmon and collecting their winter store of roots. In the winter they hunt the deer on snow-shoes over the plains, and towards spring cross the mountains to the Missouri for the purpose of trafficking for buffalo robes." It may be remarked here parenthetically that there is every indication that buffalo formerly inhabited the Snake and Columbia plains. In fact, buffalo bones have been found in recent years in street excavations at Spokane. What cataclysm may have led to their extermination is hidden in obscurity. But at the first coming of the whites it was discovered that one of the regular occupations of the natives was crossing the Rocky Mountains to hunt or trade for buffalo.

Soon after resuming the journey on October 11, the explorers noted with curiosity one of the vapor baths common among those Indians, which they say differed from those on the frontiers of the United States or in the Rocky Mountains. The bath-house was a hollow square six or eight feet deep, formed in the river bank by damming up with mud the other three sides and covering the whole completely except an aperture about two feet wide at the top. The bathers descended through that hole, taking with them a jug of water and a number of hot rocks. They would throw the water on the rocks until it steamed and in that steam they would sit until they had perspired sufficiently, and then they would plunge into cold water. This species of entertainment seems to have been very sociable, for one seldom bathed alone. It was considered a great affront to decline an invitation to join a bathing party.

The explorers seem to have had a very calm and uneventful descent of Snake River. They describe the general lay of the country accurately, noting that beyond the steep ascent of 200 feet (it is in reality a great deal more in all the upper part of this portion of Snake River) the country becomes an open, level, and fertile plain, entirely destitute of timber. They note all the rapids with sufficient particularity to enable anyone thoroughly familiar with the river to identify most of them. They make special observation of the long series of rapids commonly known now as the Riparia and Texas Rapids, and below these observe a large creek on the left which they denominate as Kimooenim Creek. This is rather odd, for that had already been noted as the native name of the main river. A few miles further down they pass through a bad rapid but twenty-five yards wide. Of course, it must be remembered that the time was October and the river was about at its lowest. This was the narrow crack of the Palouse Rapids, which, however, is not so narrow as they estimated, even at low water. At the end of this rapid they discovered a large river on the right, to which they gave the name of Drewyer, one of their party, their mighty hunter in fact. This was a many-named stream, for it was later the Pavion, the Pavillion, and at the last the present Palouse, the equivalent, we are told again by Thomas Beall, for gooseberry. The principal rapids below the entrance of the Palouse are known at present as Fishhook, Long's Crossing, Pine Tree, the Potato Patch, and Five Mile. Five Mile looked so bad to them that they unloaded the canoes and made a portage of three-quarters of a mile. At a distance below this, which they estimated as seven miles, they reached that interesting place where the great northern and southern branches of the Big River unite. They were then at the location of the present Village of Burbank. Many interesting events and observations are chronicled of their stay at that point. Soon after their arrival a regular procession of 200 Indians from a camp a short distance up the Columbia came to visit them, timing their approach with the music of drums, accompanied with the voice. There seems to have followed a regular love-feast, both parties taking whiffs of the friendly pipe and expressing as best they could their common joy at the meeting. Then came a distribution of presents and a mutual pledging of good will.

The captains measured the rivers, finding the Columbia 960 yards wide and the Snake 575. From their point of observation across the continued plain they noted how it rose into the heights on the farther side of the river. They had already taken into account the far distant mountains to the south, our own Blue Mountains, which they thought about sixty miles distant, just about the right estimate. It is to be hoped that it was one of the perfect days not infrequent in October and that the azure hues of those mountains which we love today were before them in all their rich, soft splendor. They noted in the clear water of the river the incredible number of salmon. The Indians gave them to understand that frequently in the absence of other fuel they burned the fish that, having been thrown upon the bank, became so dry as to make excellent fuel. These Indians were of a tribe known as Sokulks. According to the description they were hardly so good-looking a people as the Chopunnish, but were of mild and peaceable disposition and seemed to live in a state of comparative happiness. The men, like those on the Kimooenim, were said to content themselves with a single wife. The explorers noted that the men shared with their mates the labor of procuring subsistence more than is usual among savages. They were also very kind to the aged and infirm. Nor were they inclined to beggary. All things considered, these Sokulks at the junction of the big rivers were worthy of much esteem. Captain Clark made a journey up the Columbia, in the course of which he made sundry interesting observations on the Indian manner of preparing salmon for preservation, as well as for present use. At one point he entered one of the mat houses. He was immediately provided with a mat on which to sit and his hosts proceeded at once to cook a salmon for his repast. This they did by heating stones, and then, bringing in the fish in a bucket of water, they dropped in the hot stones in succession till the water boiled. After sufficiently boiling the salmon, they placed it before the captain. He found it excellent. He noticed that many of these Indians were blind in one or both eyes and had lost part of their teeth. The first of these unfortunate conditions he attributed to the glare of the water on their unshaded eyes, and the second to their habit of eating roots without cleansing them from the sandy soil in which they grew. It would appear from the topography of the journal that Captain Clark went a short distance above the present site of Kennewick, for he was near the mouth of a large stream flowing from the west, which the Indians called the Tapteal, but which later became known as the Yakima, also a native name. While on land during this trip, the party got grouse (or what we now call prairie chickens) and ducks, and also a "prairie cock, about the size of a small turkey." This was evidently a sage hen. It is recorded that they saw none of that bird except on the Columbia. While camped at the junction of the rivers, the men were busily engaged in mending their clothes and travelling outfits and arms, and otherwise preparing for the next stage of the journey. One very interesting feature of the stay here was the fact that one of the chiefs with one of the Chimnapum, a tribe further west, provided the party with a map of the Columbia and the nations on its banks. This was drawn on a robe with a piece of coal and afterwards transferred by some one of the explorers to a piece of paper. They preserved it as a valuable specimen of Indian delineation.

On October 18, the party packed up and pushing off into the majestic river, proceeded downward toward the highlands, evidently what we call the Wallula Gateway. In the general journal, called the Edition of 1814., in which the contributions of all the party are merged, there seems to be some confusion as to the mouth of the Walla Walla River. The record mentions an island near the right shore fourteen and one-half miles from the mouth of Lewis' River and a mile and a half beyond that of small brook under a high hill on the left, "seeming to run its whole course through the high country." This evidently must be the Walla Walla River, though it can hardly be called a "small brook," even in the low season, and it flows quite distinctly in a valley, though the highlands begin immediately below. They also say: "At this place, too, we observed a mountain to the southwest, the form of which is conical, and its top covered with snow." This is obviously incorrect, for Mount Hood, which is the only snow mountain to the southwest visible anywhere near that place, cannot be seen from near the mouth of the Walla Walla, except by climbing the highlands. On the next day, October 19, the party was visited by a chief of whom they saw more and tell more on their return. This was Yelleppit. They describe him as a "handsome, well-proportioned man, about five feet, eight inches high and about thirty-five years old, with a bold and dignified countenance." His name is preserved in a station on the S. P. & S. Railroad, located just about at the place where the party met the chieftain.

After the meeting with Yelleppit, the party once more committed themselves to the downward rushing current of the Columbia, and passed beyond the range of our story. Of the interesting details of their continued journey down the river and the final vision of the ocean, "that ocean, the object of all our labors, the reward of all our anxieties," we cannot speak.

Having spent the winter at Fort Clatsop, about ten miles from the present Astoria and nearly the same distance from the present Seaside, they left Fort Clatsop for their long return journey, on March 23, 1806. They saw many interesting and important features of the country on the return, which they failed to note in going down. Among these, strange to say, was the entrance of the Willamette, the largest river below the Snake. The return was made as far as the "Long Narrows" (The Dalles) with the canoes, but at that point they procured horses and proceeded thence by land. They passed the "Youmalolam" (Umatilla) and then entering the highlands, were again within the area of "Old Walla Walla County." Reaching the country of the "Wallawollahs," they again came in contact with their old friend, whose name appears in that portion of the journal as Yellept. They found him more of a gentleman than ever. He insisted on his people making generous provision for the needs of the party, and gave them the valuable information that by going up the Wallawollah River and directly east to the junction of the Snake and Kooskooskie they might have a route full of grass and water and game, and much shorter than to follow the banks of Snake River. Accordingly crossing from the north bank of the Columbia, which they had been following, they found themselves on the Wallawollah. They do not now describe it as before as a "small brook," but as a "handsome stream, about fifty yards wide and four and a half feet in depth." They got one curious misapprehension here which was held later by explorers in general in regard to the Multnomah or Willamette. They understood from the Indians that the Willamette ran south of the Blue Mountains and was as large as the Columbia at the mouth of the Wallawollah, which they say was about a mile wide. They infer from the whole appearance, as the Indians seem to explain it, that the sources of the Willamette must approach those of the Missouri and Del Norte. One quaint and curious circumstance is mentioned at this stage of the story, as it has been, in fact, at various times. And that is the extravagant delight which the Indians derived from the violin. They were so fascinated with the sound of the instrument and the dancing which accompanied it that they would come in throngs and sometimes remain up all night. In this particular instance, however, they were so considerate of the white men's need of sleep that they retired at ten o'clock.

On the last day of April, 1806, the party turned their horses' heads eastward up the Wallawollah River across sandy expanses, which, however, they soon discovered to improve in verdure and in groves of trees. Having followed the main stream fourteen miles, they reached "a bold, deep stream, about ten yards wide, which seems navigable for canoes." They found a profusion of trees along the course of this creek and were delighted to see all the evidences of increasing timber. This stream, which they now followed for a number of miles, was evidently the Touchet, and the point where they turned to follow it was at the present Town of Touchet. Their course was up the creek for about twelve miles to a point where the creek bottom widened into a pleasant country two or three miles in width. This presumably was the fertile region beginning a mile or so east of the present Lamar, and extending thence onward to Prescott and beyond. The party made a day's march of twenty-six miles and camped at a point, which according to the figures of the next day, would have been near the present Bolles Junction. One rather quaint incident appears at this point in the narration, to the effect that when encamped for the night, three young men of the Wollawollahs came up with a steel trap which had inadvertently been left behind. The Indians had come a whole day's journey to restore this. This exhibition of honesty was so gratifying that the narration affirms that: "Of all the Indians whom we have met since leaving the United States, the Wollawollahs were the most hospitable, honest, and sincere."

Resuming the march the next day the explorers noted at a distance of three miles a branch entering the creek from the "southeast mountains, which, though covered with snow, are about twenty-five miles distant, and do not appear high." That branch must have been our Coppei, which joins the main creek at our pleasant little City of Waitsburg. Having proceeded a total distance of fourteen miles from the previous night's camp, the travellers found themselves at a point where the main creek bore to the south toward the mountains from which it came, and where a branch entered it from the northeast. This spot was evidently the site of Dayton, and the branch from the northeast which they now followed was the Patit. The next day they crossed the Kimooenim, which is the same that they had designated the Kimooenim Creek on their descent of Snake River in the fall, being, curiously enough, as already noted, the same name that they had already understood to be the Indian name of Snake River. The stream was evidently the Tucannon. From the Tucannon the course led our adventurers over the high, fertile plains near to the "southwest mountains" to a ravine "where was the source of a small creek, down the hilly and rocky sides of which we proceeded for eight miles to its entrance into Lewis' River, about seven miles and a half above the mouth of the Kooskooskie." This creek was the Asotin and therefore the point where they again reached Snake River was that grand and picturesque place where the attractive town of Asotin is now located.

The explorers having crossed the river were beyond the jurisdiction of this volume, and even of the State of Washington, being within that of Idaho, and hence we cannot follow them further on their return journey. We must content ourselves, in this farewell glance at this first, and in many respects, the most interesting and important of all the early transcontinental expeditions, with saying that the effects were of momentous, even transcendent value to the development of our country. Without the incorporation of Old Oregon into the United States, we would in all probability not have got California, and without our Pacific Coast frontage, think what a crippled and curtailed Union this would be! We would surely have missed our destiny without the Pacific Coast. The Lewis and Clark expedition was one of the essential links in the chain of acquisition. The summary of distances by the party is a total of 3,555 miles on the most direct route from the Mississippi at the mouth of the Missouri, to the Pacific Ocean, and the total distance descending the Columbia waters is placed at 640 miles.

Y. M. C. A. BUILDING, WALLA WALLA

President Jefferson did not exaggerate the character of this expedition in the tribute which he paid to Captain Lewis in 1813, when he expressed himself thus: "Never did a similar event excite more joy throughout the United States; the humblest of its citizens have taken a lively interest in this journey, and looked with impatience for the information which it would furnish. Nothing short of the official journals of this extraordinary and interesting journey will exhibit the importance of the service, the courage, the devotion, zeal, and perseverance, under circumstances calculated to discourage, which animated this little band of heroes, throughout the long, dangerous, and tedious travel."

Though many additional valuable discoveries of this land where we live were made by later explorers, Lewis and Clark and their assistants may justly be regarded as the true first explorers. They were, moreover, the only party that came purely for exploration. Later parties, though making valuable explorations, did such work as incidental to fur trade. With the completion of this great expedition, therefore, we may regard the era of the explorers completed and that of the fur-hunters begun.

CHAPTER IV

THE FUR-TRADE AND FUR-TRADERS

With the great new land between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean opened to the world by the Lewis and Clark expedition, the question came at once to the active, pushing, ambitious spirits of America and England, what shall we do with it, and what can we make of it? The rights of the natives have usually had little concern to civilized man. His thought has been to secure as rapidly and easily as possible the available resources, to skim the cream from the wilderness ahead of all rivals. Two great quests have commonly followed discovery of a new land; that for the precious metals, and that for furs. Gold and silver and precious stones have always had a strange fascination, and the search for them and the wars of conflicting nations for possession of their sources of supply have constituted the avenues of approach to some of the greatest changes of history. The search for furs, while not making so brilliant and showy a chapter in history as that for gold and jewels, has had even profounder effects upon the march of exploration and conquest and the formation of states.

Now, it must be remembered that though the Lewis and Clark expedition was the first to cross our part of the continent and to give the world any conception of the interior and its resources within the area composing the western half of the United States, yet the coast line had been known for many years, and the region around Hudson Bay and thence northward to the Arctic Ocean and westward to the Pacific had also been traversed some years earlier. Oregon had long been a lure to the explorers and fur-hunters of all nations. There had taken shape before the discoverers of the age of Columbus the conception of a Northwest passage through the new continent to Asia. Strange to say, they did not realize at first the surpassing importance of a new world, but thought of it mainly as an impediment to the journey to the land of the "Great Cham" and other supposed magnates of the Orient. Hence the vital thing was to find a way through the intercepting land. Only eight years after Columbus landed on San Salvador, the Portuguese, Gaspar Cortereal, had announced that sailing westward from Labrador he had discovered the connecting strait between the Atlantic and the waters that bordered eastern Asia. Out of that supposed discovery the idea of the Strait of Anian grew and for two centuries persisted in the minds of mariners. It was while searching for Anian that Juan de Fuca, just a century after the first landing of Columbus, entered that strait which now bears his name. Along the western edge of California and Oregon during that same century, the English flag was borne by the Golden Hind of Francis Drake. Later Spanish explorers, Cabrillo and Ferrelo, and Vizcaino and Aguilar, had made their way up the Oregon coast and there is some reason to believe that the last-named had looked upon the mouth of the Columbia. Following that earlier era of discovery, there was a long interval. Spain, England, France, Holland, Austria, Germany, and Italy were absorbed in the gigantic wars growing out of the Reformation, and their ships almost entirely disappeared from the Pacific. But during the latter part of the seventeenth century there was initiated that vast movement in eastern Europe and northern Asia which shaped and will yet more shape the policies and destinies of the world. Peter the Great, one of the world figures, started to lead Russia out of barbarism. Then was began that glacier-like movement of the "Colossus of the North" toward the open waters of two continents which will no doubt never end until the political world comes to a condition of stable equilibrium. The successors of Peter pursued the same march for warm water and open ports. A series of explorers made their way across Siberia. In 1728 and 1741 Vitus Bering, one of the true "Vikings of the Pacific," made his daring and significant voyages with the aim of realizing Peter's great conception of the Russian acquisition of the shores of the Pacific by sailing eastward from Asia to America. In his last voyage, after having gone as far south as Oregon, and then turned north along the Alaskan coast, the heroic Bering was cast upon the desolate island which bears his name, and there in the cold and darkness of the Arctic winter he died. His men found during that winter that the sea-otters of the island had most beautiful furs, and they clothed themselves with the skins of those animals. Returning in the spring in rude boats constructed from the fragments of their wrecked ship to Avatscha Bay, these survivors of Bering's voyage made known to the world the possibilities of the use of these treasures of the animal world. That was the beginning of the Russian fur-trade. A new era in history was inaugurated. Within a few years an enterprising Pole, Maurice de Benyowski, conveyed a cargo of furs from Kamchatka to China. That country was then the great market for furs, and the success of Benyowski's venture suggested to others the enormous possibilities of the business. The great girdle of volcanic islands beginning a little east of Kamtschatka and extending northeast and then southeast, known now as the Aleutian Islands, and the Alaskan coast and thence southward to Oregon and California, were found by Russians, Spaniards, and English to abound in fur-bearing animals, of which the sea-otter was most available immediately upon the coast, though it was soon known that the beaver, the fox, and many others existed in great numbers further inland.

In connection with the eager search along the coast some of the most famous of all explorers steered their course. Among them was James Cook, one of the most manly and intrepid of all that long line of navigators who bore the Union Jack around the "Seven Seas." Cook's great series of voyages, beginning in 1776 and lasting several years, and extending through all parts of the Pacific, were designed primarily as voyages of discovery. But while in Alaskan waters his men secured many sea-otter furs. They did not fully realize their value until they reached China some time later and saw the huge profit on furs in that market. Now there was in Cook's service a certain very interesting American sailor, John Ledyard. Ledyard was a genuine Yankee, keen, inquisitive, and observing. He noted the possibilities of the fur-trade in Oregon and Aleutian waters, and determined that as soon as he could reach his own home country he would interest his countrymen in sending their own ships upon the quest. That was just when the Revolutionary war was in progress and several years elapsed before Ledyard was in America. When there he lost no time in getting into communication with leading Americans. Among others he greatly interested Thomas Jefferson. Here then we have a most important chain of sequences. Cook, Ledyard, Jefferson, English and American rivalries and counter aims and claims on the Pacific coast of America—a whole nexus of related events out of which the fabric of great history became woven. Within a few years the race for possession of Oregon by sea was on. Earlier than Cook, Heceta, the Spaniard, had sailed along the Oregon coast and looked into the mouth of the Columbia. But after Cook came a long line of Spanish explorers whose names appear upon our present day maps, Bodega, Camano, Fidalgo, Galiano, Valdez, and many more. Then came another group of Englishmen, Portlock, Dixon, Meares, Barclay, Douglas, Colnett, and, most prominent of all, Vancouver. But to us, more important than any other of the nations whose banners were carried along the western coast, was the new republic, the United States of America. The Stars and Stripes were flying on the Pacific. Robert Gray in the Lady Washington, and John Kendrick in the Columbia Rediviva had been placed in command of an expedition by certain enterprising merchants of Boston in the very same year of the construction of the American constitution. In 1788 they reached the coast of Oregon. That was the initiation of the American fur-trade. Those were the great days of that business. A ship would be fitted out with a cargo of trinkets and tobacco and tools and blankets, and sail from Boston or New Bedford or Marblehead or New York for its three years' round-up of the seas. The Indians had not yet learned the value of furs. On one occasion Gray secured for a chisel a quantity of furs worth $8,000. The cargo of trinkets and tools and blankets out and the cargo of furs in, the next stage of the voyage was from Oregon to Canton, in China, where the cargo of furs was displaced by one of tea and nankeen and silk, and then the ship would square away for her home port, a three-years' round-up. The glory, the fascination, and also the danger of the sea was in it. Fortunes were sometimes made in a single voyage—and also sometimes lost. For ships and crews were sometimes lost by wreck or savages or scurvy. Yet in spite of disasters the game was so fascinating that during the period from 1790 to 1818 there were 108 American vessels, twenty-two English and several French and Portuguese vessels regularly engaged in the business on the Oregon coast. Profits were sometimes immense. Dixon, an English trader, says that during the years 1786 and 1787 5,800 sea-otter skins were sold for $160,700. Sturgis states that he knew a capital of $50,000 to yield a return of $284,000.

The fur-trade on the coast was naturally first in the order of growth. But exploration of the interior would naturally follow when the great results of the sea-trade were known. Moreover, it most be remembered that the fur-trade had been pursued with great assiduity and success in Canada and even Louisiana long years before Gray and Vancouver were contesting for the discovery of the "River of the West," or the solution of the mystery of Juan de Fuca. As the Spaniards were the first to try to grasp the treasure of precious stones and metals in the New World, so the French were the pioneers in the attempted exploitation of the treasure of the furs. Monopoly by kingly favor was the chief method of driving out rivals and monopolizing advantages in those days. An American railway or iron master has a feeble grip on the bounty of a state or nation compared with the grip of a Seventeenth Century royal favorite. Way back in the early part of that century, Louis XIII and his minister, Richelieu, granted concessions to De Monts, Pontgrave, Champlain, Radisson, Crozat, and others. Later, La Salle, Joliet, Hennepin, D'Iberville, and still later the Verendryes and many more had similar monopolies from Louis XIV and Louis XV. The regions of the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi were the fields of these great concessionaires. But England was not inactive all that time. In the desperate rivalry of Gaul and Briton for supremacy in America, the Fleur-de-lis was lowered before the Cross of St. George and North America became British instead of French. The fur-trade, one of the chief prizes of contest, fell to English monopolists. Long before the final decision on the Plains of Abraham when Montcalm fell before Wolf, Charles II had granted to Prince Rupert a charter to the Hudson's Bay Company. That gigantic organization, which later had so intimate a relation to Oregon, was established in 1670 with a capital of 10,500 pounds. Besides the vast enterprises connected directly with the fur-trade, this company carried on many great geographical expeditions. But this great monopoly could not, even with all its privileges, entirely prevent rivalry. In 1783, the French and Indian wars and the American Revolution now being past, a new organization arose, destined to bear a vital part in northwest history. This was the Northwestern Fur Company. One of its leading partners, Alexander Mackenzie, discovered in 1789 the river which flows to the Polar Sea and which fittingly bears his name. Four years later he made even a more notable journey from the upper Athabasca waters across the mountains and down the Pacific slope to a point on what was later known as Cascade Inlet. There he proclaimed his journey by painting upon a rock the inscription: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three." That was only a year after Gray discovered the Columbia River and Vancouver circumnavigated the island which bears his name.

Thus we see that from both sea and land the fur-traders were converging upon Oregon. It was emerging from the mists of myth and romance into the light of modern conditions. The rivalry between the Hudson's Bay Company and the audacious Northwesters who had ventured to break into their monopoly became keen and indeed sanguinary. Pitched battles were fought and lives lost. The bold and aggressive Northwesters pushed to the western side of the Rockies and in 1807 David Thompson, one of the most admirable of all the early explorers of any of the rival nations or companies, began to establish posts at various strategic points upon Columbia waters. During several years beginning with 1807 he located trading stations on Lake Windermere near the head of the river, on the Spokane at the Junction with it of the Little Spokane, and on the Pend d'Oreille and Coeur d'Alene lakes.

While the Northwesters were thus posting themselves at some of the vantage points of Oregon, the Americans were not idle. The reader who desires an extended view of the fascinating theme of the American fur-trade should consult that foremost book on the subject by Gen. H. M. Chittenden of Seattle, to which we here make our acknowledgments. What was to become the American trade began indeed with Frenchmen and Spaniards before the independence of the United States. In 1764 Pierre Liguest and Auguste Chouteau founded St. Louis, which became the center of all trading operations for many years. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 had as a matter of fact already delivered all the country west of the Mississippi to Spain, but the Frenchmen did not yet know it. In 1800 the Louisiana Territory again became French, and three years later, by a happy juxtaposition of statesmanship and good fortune, it passed from French to American control. Then immediately followed, as already narrated, the Lewis and Clark expedition with its momentous results. After St. Louis became an American town the fur-trade was still largely in the hands of French and Spanish traders established there during the possession by their respective governments. Of these the most prominent were Pierre Chouteau, Jr., a Frenchman, and Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard. The first expedition to the Far West was that of Lisa in partnership with William Morrison, an American of Illinois, and Pierre Menard, a Frenchman, also living in Illinois. One interesting feature of this expedition is that it occurred in the same year with the first of David Thompson. Another is that on the way the party met John Colter who had been one of the Lewis and Clark party, but on the return had decided to stop in the wilderness to trap and explore. He was on his way to the settlements, but was induced to return to the Rocky Mountains with the party. In connection with Colter we may very properly digress a little, for he was one of the typical adventurers of that period and some of the events of his career in the wilderness cast a vivid light upon the conditions of those times. Lisa proceeded with his party to the mouth of the Bighorn River and there established a fort. Desiring to notify the Indians of the arrival of the party, Lisa sent Colter all alone on a journey of several hundred miles to the Crows on Wind River and to the Blackfeet at the Three Forks of the Missouri. On this journey Colter became an unwilling participant in a battle between those two contending tribes. He was on the side of the Crows, and after rendering efficient aid to his side in winning a victory, was severely wounded in the leg. Nevertheless, nothing daunted, he set forth across the ranges of towering, snowy peaks to reach Lisa's fort. He succeeded in the solitary and desperate undertaking, and in the course of it discovered Yellowstone Lake and the geyser region which now makes the Yellowstone Park one of the wonders of the world. Returning to the mountains, Colter was captured by the savage and cruel Blackfeet. Wishing to have a little sport with their hapless victim, the Indians stripped him and asked him if he was a fast runner. From his knowledge of their customs he understood that he was to be put up in a race for life against several hundred Indians. He gave them to understand that he was a poor runner, though as a matter of fact he was very fast. Accordingly they gave him several hundred yards start on the open prairie with the Jefferson fork of the Missouri six miles distant. Away he sped with the whole pack behind him like a band of wolves, with the war-whoop ringing over the plain. With his naked feet torn and bleeding from the cactus Colter soon outdistanced most of the pursuers, but half way across the plain, glancing over his shoulder, he saw that one swift Indian armed with a spear was gaining on him. With the violence of Colter's exertions the blood was streaming from his nostrils down the front of his body, and just as the Indian was almost within striking distance Colter suddenly stopped and turned, a ghastly spectacle, with extended arms. The Indian was so disconcerted with the unexpected move that in endeavoring to wield his spear he lost his footing and fell. Instantly picking up the spear Colter pinned his assailant to the ground and on he went again toward the river. The foremost of the pursuing Indians, finding their expiring comrade, paused long enough to set up a hideous howl and then rushed on. But Colter, though almost at the limit of his strength, drove himself on to the river ahead of the band, and breaking through the copse of cottonwoods which skirted the stream he plunged in. Just below was a small island against which drift had lodged. Diving beneath the drift Colter managed to find a crack between the trees where he might get his head in the air. There he remained undiscovered all night while the savages were shrieking around like so many devils. In the early morning he let loose from the drift and floated and swam a long ways down the stream, and when day fairly broke had got beyond the immediate vicinity of his enemies. But in what a horrid plight! Stark naked, with no food and no weapons for game, the soles of his feet pierced thick with the cruel spikes of the cactus! Yet such is the endurance of some men that in seven days during which his only subsistence was roots dug with his fingers, Colter made his way to Lisa's fort. "Such was life in the Far-West." The story was told by Colter to Bradbury, who narrated it in his book, "Travels in North America." Irving used it in his "Astoria," and it also appears in Chittenden's "American Fur-trade."

One of the partners of Lisa in the Missouri Fur Company, Andrew Henry, in 1810 built a fort on the west side of the Great Divide on a stream afterwards known as Henry's Fork, a branch of Snake River. It was near the present Egin, Idaho, and was the first structure built by white men upon Snake River or any of its tributaries.

We have given the extended narration thus far of fur-traders prior to any actual entrance by any of them into the region treated in this work, in order that the nature of the business and the manner in which all parts of Oregon were involved might become clear. We now bring upon the scene still another enterprise which came yet closer to our own region. This was the Pacific Fur Company of John Jacob Astor. This first of the great business promoters of our country was born in Germany, and coming to New York in 1784 began his great career as a fur merchant. Having made a fortune in the business almost entirely by operations in Canada, Astor conceived the project of a vast emporium upon the Columbia to which should converge the trade in furs from all the region west of the Rocky Mountains and south of the region definitely occupied by the Northwestern Fur Company. He contemplated also a lucrative business with the Russians centered around Sitka and Kodiak on the north, and the Spaniards on the south. It was a noble enterprise and worthy of all success. It would have had a most important bearing upon the progress of American enterprise and settlement in Oregon and might have materially changed certain chapters in history. That it failed of full accomplishment was due to various untoward circumstances, of which the chief were: first, Astor's own error of judgment in selecting the majority of his partners and employees from Canadians and also selecting captains for his first two ships who were not qualified for their important task; and second, the War of 1812. It will be remembered that the Northwesters of Canada were thoroughly located upon the Athabasca and had crossed the Divide and as early as 1807 had built posts on the upper Columbia and Spokane and on the lakes in what is now Northern Idaho. Astor no doubt anticipated a strenuous contest with those bold, ambitious Canadians, but his own highly successful enterprises thus far had been with Canadians and he knew them well qualified. He reasoned that he could make it well worth their while to be loyal to him and to the company to which he admitted them. It is probable that all would have worked as he calculated had not the war with Great Britain defeated all his well-laid plans.

The part of the great Astoria enterprise which more especially comes within the scope of our story is that of the journey of the land party across the Rocky Mountains and down the Snake and Columbia rivers, and the subsequent establishment of forts and trading posts. The land division was under Wilson Price Hunt of New Jersey, the partner second in command to Astor himself. He was one of the comparatively few Americans in the company and seems to have been a man of the highest type, brave, humane, enterprising, and wholesouled, worthy of a place at the head of those Jasons of the Nineteenth Century who sought the golden fleeces of the Far-West. Both divisions got under way in 1810, the land division from Montreal in July, and the sea division in September. The latter, however, reached the promised land of the Columbia first, for after a tragic entrance of the mouth of the river, the Tonquin with the party on board brought to in Baker's Bay on the north side of the river on March 25th. Astoria was founded on April 12, 1811. A few months later, owing to the criminal obstinacy and bad judgment of Captain Thorn, the Tonquin with all her crew but one (from whom the story is derived) was captured by Indians and then blown up at a place presumably Nootka Sound or near there on the west side of Vancouver Island.

Hunt, with three other partners, McKenzie, Crooks, and Miller, after having collected and fitted out a party of such miscellaneous material as they could find at various places between Montreal and St. Louis, left the latter place on October 21, 1810, and reaching a stream called the Nadowa, near the present site of St. Joseph, Mo., stopped for the winter. Resuming the long journey on April 21st of the next year, the party reached the abandoned Fort Henry on October 8th. They were now on the headwaters of Snake River. Down that wild stream they ran a losing race with oncoming winter. For before they reached the present vicinity of Huntington, Ore., the December snows fell thick upon them. McKenzie and McLellan with seven of the strongest men went ahead of the main party, and reaching the vicinity of the present Seven Devils country made their way after twenty-one days of struggle and peril through the great canyon of Snake River to its junction with the Clearwater, the site of the present Lewiston and Clarkston. They had a clear idea then of their location by a knowledge of the experiences of Lewis and Clark. They were then within the area of our four counties of this history and had no trouble in making their way, though in midwinter, down the Snake, then at its lowest stage and not difficult to navigate, to that most interesting spot, the junction of the Snake and Columbia. Thus the advance party on this historic journey, the first of the fur-traders, though later than the Lewis and Clark expedition, reached the Columbia. With their canoes floating upon its broad waters they had an easy and pleasant journey, after their former desperate straits, to the rude stockade of Astoria, which they reached on January 18, 1812. The main party had a more distressing time. After nearly starving and freezing they turned toward the mountains from the present Huntington and must have very nearly followed the course of the present railroad from that point to the Grande Ronde. They were at just about the limit of endurance when on December 30th, looking down from their snowy elevation they saw far below them a sunny valley, looking to the winter-wasted refugees like a vision of paradise. Thither hastening they found several lodges of Indians who took pity on their forlorn and destitute state and provided them with food and fuel. Irving gives with his graphic pen a brilliant narration of the celebration of New Year's day in this valley of salvation for this party. Rested and recuperated by these few days in the Grande Ronde, they essayed their last tussle with the mountains by scaling the snowy heights between their resting place and the Umatilla. Reaching that warm and beautiful valley they found that their deliverance was at hand, for there they took a two-weeks' rest. On January 21st, having started again, they beheld before them a blue flood nearly a mile wide hastening toward the sunset, evidently the "Great River." Their journey afoot down the river to the Cascades and thence in canoes to Astoria was a soft and gentle exercise after the arduous struggles though the mountains.

PUBLIC SCHOOL BUILDING, DIXIE

Such was the inauguration of the Pacific Fur Company in this country. While amid such suffering the Americans were endeavoring to launch their great enterprise, the Northwesters were employing great energy and skill in planting themselves upon the upper river. They, too, looked for new fields to conquer. In July, 1811, the redoubtable David Thompson appeared at Astoria expecting to file a claim on the lower river for his company. He was too late by three months, for Astoria had been founded in April. The Scotchmen of the Astoria Company fraternized with their countryman, but to David Stuart, one of the American partners, this was not pleasing. Hastening his preparations he hurried on his journey up the river. At the mouth of Snake River he found a British flag upon a pole and on it a paper claiming the country in the name of Great Britain. It was obvious to Stuart that there would be a contest between his company and the Northwesters. He wished to secure certain strategic points as far inland as possible and accordingly he pressed on up the Columbia to the mouth of the Okanogan, estimated to be five hundred and forty miles above Astoria. There on September 2nd, Stuart planted the American flag and started the construction of a post, the first American structure within the present State of Washington.

Of the interesting and varied events in the Okanogan and Spokane countries Alexander Ross and Ross Cox, clerks in the Astor Company, have given the most complete data. These events, important as they were, are outside the scope of our story. We will simply say that the rivalry between the Astorians and the Northwesters came to a sudden climax by the War of 1812. Misfortune dogged the course of the Astor Company. Hunt had gone from Astoria to Sitka in the second ship from New York, the Beaver, and had started a profitable business with the Russians, but on the return to the Columbia, the captain of the Beaver, finding his ship damaged by a storm, insisted on going to Honolulu, though Hunt's presence was sorely needed at Astoria. At Honolulu Hunt received the evil tidings of the wreck of the third ship, the Lark. With the cargo of the Beaver conveyed to Canton, while Hunt was wasting his vitally important time at Honolulu, the same timid captain, Sowles, lost all the best chances of the market, both for selling his furs and buying Canton goods. Thus the whole voyage was a failure. After an intolerable delay, Hunt chartered a vessel with which he left the Sandwich Islands and reached Astoria August 20, 1813. more than a year from the time of his departure. But his return was too late. The Scotch partners had sold the company out to the Northwesters.

Such was the untoward end of the vast undertaking of John Jacob Astor. The Americans were down and out. The Britishers were in possession of the fur territory of Oregon. By the Joint Occupation Treaty of 1818, both English and Americans were privileged to carry on business in Oregon, but the effect of the downfall of the Astor Company was to place the country in the hands of the Northwesters. That company had two great aims: first, to get rid of American rivalry; second, to prevent the entrance of the Hudson's Bay Company. Having accomplished the first purpose, they set about the second. The upshot of that was the final coalescence of the two companies in 1821 with the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, but with the members of the younger company on equal terms, and as far as Oregon was concerned, with the advantage of profit in the hands of the partners of that company. And now for twenty-five years the Hudson's Bay Company, thus reorganized, lorded it over Oregon.

During all the years from the time of the entrance of the Pacific Fur Company through the struggle between it and the Northwesters and then the united fortunes of the Northwesters and the Hudson's Bay Company down to American ownership in 1846, Walla Walla and the rest of the region which now composes the scene of our history were prominent in the affairs of the fur-traders. Perhaps the most valuable narrative by any of the Astor Company of entrance into the Walla Walla County, is that by Alexander Ross, one of the clerks, in a book of which the full title is, "Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River." In this narrative Ross tells of their first journey into the interior, beginning July 22, 1811. Describing the passage of the Cascades and the "Long Narrows" (The Dalles) and the Falls (Celilo) he mentions a river which he calls the Lowhum (Des Chutes), then the Day (John Day), then the Umatallow (Umatilla). He describes here a "large mound or hill of considerable height," which from its peculiar form they called Dumbarton Castle. This was doubtless the curious rock just east of Umatilla, noticeable to all travellers by steamer. Passing through the "colonnade rocks," the party soon found themselves at a bluff where there "issues the meandering Walla Walla, a beautiful little river, lined with weeping willows." Here they found a great concourse of Indians, "Walla-Wallas, Shaw Haptens, and Cajouses, altogether 1,500 souls." Some were armed with guns and some with bows and arrows. Their chiefs rejoiced in the names of Tummatapam, Quill-Quills-Tuck-a-Pesten, and Allowcatt. The plains were literally covered with horses, of which there could not have been less than four thousand in sight of the camp. Passing beyond the Walla Walla, the party reached the junction of the two big rivers, noting the difference in color of the two. Noting also the fine salmon fishing, where, however, Ross observed that not so many salmon can be captured in a day as on the Copper Mine River or in Kamtschatka. They soon reach the Eyakema (Yakima), and here they note that the landscape at the mouth of that river surpassed in picturesque beauty anything that they had yet seen. They are surprised at being overtaken at that point by three Walla Walla Indians on horseback who brought to them a bag of shot which they had accidentally left at the preceding camp,—an evidence of honesty similar to that experienced by Lewis and Clark among the Walla Wallas. From the "Eyakema" this party proceeded up the river to Okanogan, where, as already related, they built the first structure erected by white men in the present State of Washington.

It gives some conception of the hardihood of the traders of that time to note that Ross remained entirely alone at "Oakanacken," while the rest of the party went northward 350 miles to find a new fur region. During their absence of 188 days Ross secured from the Indians 1,550 beaver skins for 35 pounds, worth in Canton (China) market 2,250 pounds!

One of the most characteristic incidents of the life of that time is found in an account given in the narratives of Cox, Ross, and Franchére, about the Indian wife of Pierre Dorion, a hunter in one of the parties which had been located in the Blue Mountains south of Walla Walla. Following Franchére's account of this, it appears that while a party of Northwesters of which he was one were on their way in 1814 up the Columbia to cross the mountains into Canada, while they were in the river near the mouth of the Walla Walla, they heard a child's voice from a canoe call out: "Arretez donc, Arretez donc!" (Stop! Stop!) The woman with her two boys were in an canoe trying to overtake the party. Halting, they discovered that this pitiful little group were all that remained of the trappers that had been located among the Snake Indians. According to Madame Dorion's story, while they were engaged in trapping in January, the trappers had been attacked one by one by the Indians and all murdered. Securing two horses the brave woman mounted her boys upon them and started for the Walla Walla. In the bitter cold they could not proceed and having no other food, the woman killed the horses and after spending the rest of the winter in the mountains made her way with the children to the Walla Walla, where the Indians treated them with kindness and placed them where they might find the boats of the white men. Think of the endurance and faithfulness of the woman who could win such a fight for life for her children.

Ross Cox gives an interesting account of his journey from Astoria to Spokane in 1812. He too commends the "Wallah Wallah" Indians for their honesty and humanity. He describes the immense numbers of rattlesnakes around the mouth of the Wallah Wallah, and—a more pleasing theme the appearance of the mountains which he says the Canadians called from their color, "Les Montagnes Bleues." From what Cox says in this same connection, it appears that the name Nez Perces was a translation into French from the name Pierced-Nose, which had already been applied to the Indians up Snake River by Lewis and Clark.

The most important event in this stage of the history was the founding of Fort Walla Walla, at first called Fort Nez Perces. This was founded in 1818 by Donald McKenzie. This efficient and ambitious man will be remembered as one of Astor's partners, one who accompanied Hunt on his great journey and had been one of the most active and influential in the sale of Astoria to the Northwestern Company. Having been for ten years prior to his connection with Astor a member of the Northwestern Company, he felt more at home with it, and upon its establishment in practical possession of the fur trade of Oregon. McKenzie became one of its most faithful and useful managers. McKenzie seems to have been opposed by his associates in his desire to establish a post on the Walla Walla. But with a keen eye for strategic places and with a sagacity and pertinacity unequalled by any of them, he forced all to his views. Orders came from headquarters that he be allowed the needful men and equipment, and in July, 1818, with ninety-five men and our old friend Ross as his second in command, he set to work in the construction of the fort at the point half a mile above the mouth of the Walla Walla, long known in the annals of the Columbia during both British and American possession. At that spot the foundation of the fort may still be seen, and just abreast of it is the present landing of the Wallula ferry. The structure consisted of a palisade of timbers 30 inches wide, 6 inches thick, and 20 feet high. At the top were loop-holes and slip-doors. Two bastions and water tanks holding 200 gallons still further guarded against both attack from Indians and danger of fire. The enclosure was 100 feet square, and within it were houses built of drift logs, though there was one of stone. Subsequently adobe buildings were added, and some of those remained in some degree of preservation till the great flood of 1894.

From Fort Walla Walla, as it came to be known within a few years, McKenzie carried on a great and profitable trade to the Snake country and the Blue Mountains. At one of his encampments while having a force of only three men, and with a very valuable stock of furs and goods, a crowd of piratical Indians tried to rush the ramp and plunder the whole establishment. McKenzie with his usual nerve seized a match and holding it over a keg of powder declared that if they did not immediately clear out, he would blow them all up. They cleared out and left him in possession. It is said that Archibald McKinley performed a similar exploit at Walla Walla.

Many interesting things could be told of this historic fort. Gardens were started, cattle brought to feed on the meadow land of the Walla Walla, and by the time that the missionaries and immigrants began to come in the '30s and '40s the lower Walla Walla bore a homelike and civilized appearance. Other pasture and garden regions were added, one of the most extensive being that now known as Hudson's Bay, the location of the "Goodman Ranch," about fifteen miles southwest of the present City of Walla Walla.

Our limits forbid space for all the other fur enterprises and companies aside from the two important companies already described. There were, however, three Americans who come within the range of our story whose careers were so interesting and important that we cannot omit mention of them. These were Jedadiah Smith, Nathaniel Wyeth and B. L. E. Bonneville. The first named was a member of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, of which W. H. Ashley was founder. The main operations of the company were on the Upper Missouri, Green River, and around Great Salt Lake. Smith, however, made several remarkable journeys far beyond the earlier range. He was a very unique character, a devout Christian and yet one of the boldest of traders and discoverers. He might be said to have carried the Bible in one hand and his rifle in the other. He usually began the day with devotions and expected his men to be present. Yet he pushed his business and discoveries to the limit. His first great trip was in 1826. He proceeded from Great Salt Lake to the Colorado, thence across Arizona and Southern California, to San Diego, a route unknown to whites before. After going up and down California hundreds of miles he crossed the mountains and deserts eastward the next summer, following a more northern route abounding in perils and hardships. In 1827 the journey to California was repeated almost immediately upon his return from the first. In the spring and summer of 1828, he struck out on an entirely new course. This was up the Sacramento and northwesterly across the lofty ranges of Southern Oregon to the Umpqua on the Oregon Coast. There, with his nineteen men he did successful trapping, but a difficulty with the Indians resulted in the massacre of the whole party except himself and three others. Those three being separated from the leader, he made his way in utter destitution and with great suffering to the Hudson's Bay Fort at Vancouver. Dr. John McLoughlin, the chief factor, with his usual generosity supplied the survivors of this disaster with their vital necessities and sent a well-armed party to secure the valuable furs of which the Umpquas had robbed them. Most of the furs were brought to Vancouver and McLoughlin paid Smith $20,000 for them. Remaining in Vancouver till March, 1829, Smith made his way up the Columbia to the Flathead country and thence along the Rocky Mountains to the Teton range on the Upper Snake River. This vast series of routes by Jedadiah Smith through Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado, was the most extensive that had yet been taken and did more than any other to give a comprehensive view of what became the west third of the United States. In 1831, lamentable to relate, this truly heroic and enterprising master trapper was killed by Comanche Indians on the Cimarron desert.

Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth and Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville were practically contemporary, and in their adventurous careers crossed each other's trails. Wyeth was born at Cambridge, Mass., and from the traditions of the family should have been a graduate of Harvard College. He was, however, so eager to enter some active career that he did not complete a college course. He became quite fascinated with the utopian ideas about Oregon given to the world by Hall J. Kelley, and in 1832 he started upon a grand enterprise toward the setting sun. He had conceived a general plan of a vast emporium of American business in furs and salmon, similar to that of Astor. With an ardent imagination and yet great practical good sense, Wyeth had the material for an empire builder. That he failed to fulfil his grand design was due partly to sheer bad luck, but mainly to the invincible monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company. The work of Wyeth was, however, an essential link in the great chain which finally led to American ownership of Oregon. The first trip of Wyeth was in 1832. He crossed the mountains in company with Sublette, a noted trapper of the Rocky Mountain Company, and after some disasters with the Indians, he traversed the Blue Mountains and reached Fort Walla Walla (the present Wallula) in October. Pierre Pambrun was the Hudson's Bay Company's agent at Walla Walla and he received the destitute and nearly famished Americans with lavish hospitality. After recuperating a few days at Walla Walla, Wyeth descended the Columbia, with unabated enthusiasm, expecting to find the ship which had left Boston in the spring, well laden with stores already waiting his arrival. But alas for human hopes! When he reached Fort Vancouver he learned that his vessel had been wrecked. His men had already suffered much and lost faith in the lucky star of their employer and asked to be relieved from further service. He was compelled perforce to grant their request, for he had no money. Spending the winter in and around Vancouver, treated by McLoughlin with utmost kindness, and acquiring much knowledge and experience, but no money, the indomitable Yankee determined to return and raise another fund and challenge fate and his rivals again. February, 1833, found him again at Walla Walla. Thence he pursued a devious course to Spokane and Colville, across the Divide, down the mountains to the Tetons on the Upper Snake, where he fell in with Bonneville. First planning to go with Bonneville to California, Wyeth suddenly decided to return to Boston and make ready for an immediate new expedition to Oregon. He made an extraordinary voyage down the Bighorn and finally down the Missouri to St. Louis in a "bull-boat." Safely reaching Boston in November, he brought all his contagious enthusiasm to bear on certain moneyed men with the result that he organized a new company known as the Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company. A new vessel, the May Dacre, was outfitted for the voyage around Cape Horn to Oregon.

Again with new men and equipment and with such experience from his former journey as made success seem sure, Wyeth started on his new expedition from St. Louis on April 3, 1834. One interesting feature of this journey was that two conspicuous scientists, Thomas Nuttall and J. K. Townsend, and the advance guard of the missionaries, Jason Lee and party of the Methodist Church, accompanied the party. But even though better equipped than before and though seemingly having the sanction of both Science and the Church to bless his aims, the same old ill-fortune seemed to travel with him. He had brought, under a contract made on his return the year before, a valuable stock of goods for the Sublettes of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and now when on reaching their rendezvous he made ready to deliver the goods brought with on much toil and expense, the Sublettes refused to receive them. Their company was, in fact, at the point of dissolution. Though Wyeth had the forfeit money that they had put up with the contract, that was small recompense for his labor of transportation. But nothing daunted, the stout-hearted promoter declared to the Sublettes, "I will roll a stone into your garden which you will never be able to get out." In fulfillment of his threat he prepared to invade their territory by building a fort in which to store the rejected goods and from which to send his trappers to all parts of the upper Snake. The fort thus established was the famous Fort Hall, the most notable fort on the whole route, in the near vicinity of the present Pocatello. In spite of delays, the party seems to have travelled with unparalleled celerity, for leaving Fort Hall they reached the Grande Ronde on August 31st, a date at which previous parties had hardly reached the head of Snake River. In the Grande Ronde the party again encountered Bonneville. Three days more saw them at Walla Walla, and on September 2d, Wyeth was once more at Vancouver. Here came misfortune number two. He had expected to find the May Dacre already in the river with a good haul of salmon which they planned to salt and take east on the return trip. But the vessel reached Vancouver the next day after Wyeth's own arrival, too late for any effective fishing that year. She had been struck by lightning and had lost three months' time in repairs. With indefatigable energy, Wyeth inaugurated his plans. He sent a detail of men to Fort Hall with supplies. He conducted an extensive trapping expedition to Central Oregon up the Des Chutes River. He built Fort William on Sauvie's Island. If anyone ever deserved success, Wyeth did. But Doctor McLoughlin, though the kindest of men and though personally wishing every success to Wyeth, could not forget that he was responsible to the Hudson's Bay Company. He underbid Wyeth for the Indian trade and headed him off at every turn in opening new regions. Nothing but a purse as long as that of the Hudson's Bay Company's could have stood the pressure. Worst of all, a pestilence broke out among the Indians from which they died like flies and from which some of Wyeth's own men perished. The Indians attributed the scourge to the evil "Tomanowas" of the "Bostons" and absolutely boycotted them. The brave fight was lost. Bad luck and the Hudson's Bay Company were too much for this all-deserving Yankee. Wyeth threw up his hands, sold out to the Hudson's Bay Company for what they would give, yielding to them possession of his cherished Fort Hall, which became one of their most advantageous posts, and made his way, baffled but by no means disheartened, to his New England home. With his downfall it became clear that no ordinary force could dispossess the great British Company from its vantage ground in Oregon.

RESIDENCE OF MRS. AUGUSTA WARD REES, ON BIRCH STREET, WALLA WALLA

But meanwhile Bonneville was upholding the Stars and Stripes as valorously, but not more successfully than Wyeth. Bonneville was a Frenchman who came to New York in his youth, and who had most influential friends, and had also the extreme good fortune of attracting the favorable notice of Washington Irving and becoming the hero of one of the most fascinating books of that leading American writer, "Bonneville's Adventures." Through this introduction to the reading public, greedy in those days for tales of the romance and adventure of the Far-West, Bonneville acquired a fame and vogue and became invested with a certain glamour beyond that of any of the fur-traders of Old Oregon. By the favor and influence of Thomas Paine, Bonneville became a West Point appointee and graduated in 1819. When La Fayette came to America in 1825 Bonneville was detailed to accompany the "Hero of Two Continents" on his tour of the States. Greatly pleased with his young compatriot, La Fayette took him back to France on his return, and for several years the young French-American was a member of the household of that great man. Returning to the land of his adoption and resuming his army connections, Bonneville became absorbed with the idea that he might gratify both his love of adventure and of money by entering the fur trade in the Far West. Securing from the War Department an appointment as a special explorer of new lands, and investigator of the Indian tribes, he was also allowed to make a personal venture in the fur trade.

H. H. Bancroft in his "Pacific Coast History" viciously attacks Bonneville as well as Irving who immortalized him. General Chittenden in his "History of the American Fur Trade in the Far-West" defends both in a very spirited and successful manner.

The series of expeditions undertaken by Bonneville extended over the years 1832-5. Those years were replete with adventure, hardship, romance of a sort, but very little success in the quest of furs. In the course of those years the adventurous army officer traversed and retraversed the country covered by the water-sheds of the Snake River and its tributaries, Green River and the Colorado, the Great Salt Lake Basin, and down the Columbia. One of the most valuable journeys of his party was through the Humboldt Basin, across the Sierras and into California, a new route somewhat similar to the earlier one of Jedadiah Smith. That, however, was commanded not by Bonneville himself, but by I. R. Walker, Bonneville's most valued assistant. The most interesting part of Bonneville's expedition to the inhabitants of Old Walla Walla County was his winter trip from the Grande Ronde to the "Wayleway" (Wallowa), down the Snake to the present vicinity of Asotin, thence across the prairies of what is now Garfield and Columbia counties, to Walla Walla. He describes that region as one of rare beauty and apparent fertility and predicts that it will sometime be the scene of high cultivation and settlement. Reaching Fort Walla Walla, he was received by Pierre Pambrun with the same courtesy which that commandant had bestowed on Wyeth, but when he tried to secure supplies for his depleted equipment, Pambrun assured him that he would have to draw the line at anything which would foster the American fur-trade. Like Wyeth, Bonneville discovered to his sorrow and cost that he was "up against" an immovable wall of monopoly of the hugest and most inflexible aggregation of capital in the western hemisphere. He could not compete at Walla Walla. Descending the Columbia River he found the same iron barrier of monopoly. He too threw up his hands. The American fur-traders were at the end of their string. They retired and left the great monopoly in undisputed possession.

Thus ends, in American defeat, this first combat for possession of Oregon. Another combat and another champion for the Americans was due. Exit the trapper. Enter the missionary. Another chapter—and we shall see what the new actor could do and did do on the grand stage of Oregon history.

CHAPTER V

THE MISSIONARY PERIOD

In the preceding chapter we learned that the various attempts of American trappers and fur companies to control the fur trade of Oregon failed. The Hudson's Bay Company was too firmly entrenched in its vast domain to be loosened by any business of its own kind. Nor would there have been any special advantage to the United States or the world in dislodging the great British company and substituting an American enterprise of the same sort. The aims and policy of all fur companies were the same: i. e., to keep the country a wilderness, to trade with the natives and derive a fortune from the lavish bounty of wild animal life. The Hudson's Bay Company was as good as any enterprise of its type could be. The unfortunate fact was not so much that it was the British who were skimming the cream of the wilderness, as that the regime of any fur company was necessarily antagonistic to that incoming tide of settlers who would bring with them the home, the shop, the road, the church, the school, in short, civilization. Hence the necessary policy of the great fur company was to discourage immigration, or, in fact, any form of enterprise which would utilize the latent agricultural, pastoral, and manufacturing resources of Oregon. This policy existed, in spite of the fact (of which we shall see many illustrations later) that individual managers and officers of the company were often of broad and benevolent character and predisposed to extending a cordial welcome to the advance guard of American immigration. A few stray Americans had drifted to Oregon and California with the hope of inaugurating enterprises that would lead to American occupation. In general, however, the land beyond the Rockies was as dark a continent as Africa.

But in 1832 a strange and interesting event occurred which unlocked the gates of the western wilderness and led in a train of conditions which made American settlement and ownership a logical result. In 1832 a party of four Indians from the Far West appeared at St. Louis on a strange quest—seeking the "White Man's Book of Life." Efforts have been made by certain recent writers to belittle or discredit this event, for no very apparent reason unless it be that general disposition of some of the so-called critical school of investigators to spoil anything that appeals to the gentler or nobler emotions, and especially to appose the idea that men are susceptible to any motives of religion or human sympathy or any other spirit than the mercenary and materialistic. But there can be no question about the journey of these four Indians, nor can there be any reasonable doubt that their aim was to secure religious instruction for their people. The details of the journey and the nature of the expectations of the tribe and of the envoys might of course be variously understood and stated, but the general statements given by reliable contemporary authorities are not open to doubt.

To what tribe the Indians belonged seems uncertain. It has been stated by some that they were Flatheads and that tribe, though quite widely dispersed, had their principal habitat in what is now Northern Idaho and Northwestern Montana. Miss Kate McBeth, for many years a missionary to the Nez Percé Indians, and located at Kamiah and then at Lapwai, near Lewiston, thought that three of the Indians were Nez Perces and one a Flathead. Nor is it known how those Indians got the notion of a "Book of Life." Bonneville states in his journal that Pierre Pambrun, the agent at Fort Walla Walla, taught the Indians the rudiments of Catholic worship. Some have conjectured that the American trapper, Jedadiah Smith, a devout Christian, may have imparted religious instruction. Miss McBeth formed the impression that their chief hope was that they might find Lewis and Clark, whose journey in 1805-6 had produced a profound effect on the Nez Perces. It is interesting to note that Clark was at the very time of this visit of the Indians the superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis. He has left no statement as to the location of these Indians, though he referred to the fact of their visit to several passers who have recorded his statements. The first published account of this visit appeared in the New York Christian Advocate, of March 1, 1833. This was in the form of a letter from G. P. Disoway, who had charge of the removal of certain Indians to a reservation west of St. Louis. In his letter Disoway enclosed one from William Walker, an interpreter for the Wyandotte Indians. Walker had met the four Indians in General Clark's office in St. Louis. He was impressed with their appearance, and learned that General Clark had given them some account of the origin and history of man, of the coming of the Savior, and of his work for the salvation of men. According to Walker, two of the Indians died in St. Louis. As to whether the others reached their home he did not know.

Walker's account was confirmed in a most valuable way by George Catlin, the noted painter and student of Indian life. He was making a journey up the Missouri River on one of the first steamers to ascend that stream to Fort Benton. In the Smithsonian Report for 1885 can be found Catlin's account, as follows: "These two men, when I painted them, were in beautiful Sioux dresses which had been presented to them in a talk with the Sioux, who treated them very kindly, while passing through the Sioux country. These two men were part of a delegation that came across the mountains to St. Louis a few years since, to inquire for the truth of the representations which they said some white men had made among them, that our religion was better than theirs, and that they would all be lost if they did not embrace it. Two old and venerable men of this party died in St. Louis, and I travelled 2,000 miles, companion with these two fellows, toward their own country, and became much pleased with their manners and dispositions. When I first heard the objects of their extraordinary mission across the mountains, I could scarcely believe it; but on conversing with General Clark on a future occasion, I was fully convinced of the fact." Rather curiously Catlin speaks of these Indians as being Flatheads or Nez Perces, as though the two tribes were identical.

DR. MARCUS WHITMAN
From a statue on the Witherspoon Building, Philadelphia

The letter of Disoway in the Christian Advocate was discussed in the Illinois Patriot of October, 1833, together with the statement that the subject had excited so much interest that a committee of the Illinois Synod had been appointed to report on the duty of the churches. The committee went to St. Louis and conferred with General Clark, receiving from him a confirmation of the report. When this pathetic story, together with the stirring appeal of the committee, had reached the Christian people of the country, it produced a profound impression, although, quite curiously, the little book by Lee and Frost of the first Methodist Mission, which passed through St. Louis in 1834, and whose members conferred with Gen. Clark, refers rather slightingly to the event. The decades of the '20s and '30s were a time of deep religious sentiment. It was the beginning of the Missionary movements of the century. To the sensitive souls of the time this unheralded call from the Far West seemed a veritable Macedonian cry. From it sprang the Christian Missions of Oregon. And the missionaries were the advance guard of immigration. And the immigration decided that the American home-builder and farmer should own Oregon, rather than that the British fur-trader and the Indians should keep it as a game preserve and fur depot. It would indeed be too much to say that American ownership of Oregon would not have resulted, if it had not been for the missionaries. But it may safely be said that the acquisition would have been delayed and that there would have been many more chances of failure, if the missionaries had not fitted into the evolution of the drama just as and just when they did. The missionary period was an essential one, coming between that of the fur-traders and that of the immigrants.

While the scope of our undertaking requires us to confine our narration mainly to the area covered in this history, yet in order to preserve the historical continuity and to exhibit the forces which led to subsequent developments, we must enlarge the picture enough to include glimpses of the mission locations outside of Walla Walla.

The first of the Christian Crusaders to respond to the Macedonian call from Oregon was a party under Jason Lee of the Methodist Church. This party came to Oregon in 1834 in company with Nathaniel Wyeth, the American trader, of whose bold and worthy, and yet unsuccessful undertakings we have spoken in Chapter Four. Reaching Vancouver, the missionaries presented themselves to Doctor McLoughlin, the chief factor. He met them with every expression of generous goodwill and advised them to locate in the Willamette Valley rather than among the tribes from whom had proceeded the Macedonian call. As a result, Lee with his assistants, located at Chemawa, near the present Salem, Ore. From that mission sprang the first permanent American settlement, the native name of which was Chemeketa, place of Council, or peace-ground. The missionaries gave it the Bible equivalent, Salem, a proceeding of more piety than good judgment. The Willamette University of the present is the offspring of the school started by the missionaries for the Indian children, and within a few years modified so as to meet the needs of the white children. For that earliest mission, like the later, discovered that this great work, after all, must be for the white race, not for the Indians.

The next year after the coming of the Lee party, another movement was initiated which was destined to have a most intimate connection with Walla Walla. For in 1835, the man who became the first white man, aside from the fur trappers and traders, in the Walla Walla Valley, left his home in New York for Oregon. This was Dr. Marcus Whitman, who, more than any other one man, put Walla Walla on the map of the world. In 1835, Doctor Whitman, in company with Dr. Samuel Parker, set forth on a reconnaissance to determine the advisability of locating a mission among the Indians from whom had gone the Macedonian call. Reaching Green River, the outlook seemed so encouraging that it was decided to part company; Doctor Parker continuing westward with Indians who had met them at Green River, while Doctor Whitman, the younger and more active of the two, returned to his home in Rushville, N. Y., and there organized a missionary band.

As a result of Doctor Whitman's return, a party consisting of himself and his bride, Narcissa Prentiss, and Rev. H. H. Spalding and his newly wedded bride, Eliza Hart, set forth in 1836 for Oregon. With them was William H. Gray as secular agent and general manager. With the party also were two Indian boys who had accompanied Doctor Whitman the year before on his return from Green River. Of this bridal journey of 4,000 miles, most of it on horseback, our space permits only a few hurried views. Aside from the momentous results in the history of Oregon and the United States, the story is one of heroism and devotion which has few parallels, and the record closes with a martyr's crown for Marcus and Narcissa Whitman.

Among the precious relics in Whitman College, is Mrs. Whitman's diary of the journey, and also that of Mrs. Spalding. That of Mrs. Whitman was made by herself from notes on the way and was sent from Vancouver to her parents upon the completion of the journey. Its heading is as follows:

"Narcissa Whitman's Diary of a Missionary Tour West of the Rocky Mountains performed 1836. Being the first white female ever beyond the mountains on the continent. The journey was performed on horseback—a distance of 4,000 miles. She, in company with her husband, Marcus Whitman, M. D., and H. H. Spalding and wife, left the state of New York for this tour in February of 1836—travelled through a part of Pennsylvania, Ohio—and finally arrived at St. Louis in Missouri. Here they joined the Fur Company that crosses the mountains every year—and were also joined by Messrs. Suturly [Saturleé in Mrs. Spalding's diary] and Gray—missionaries to the West. Matters thus arranged they all left St. Louis in March—for the 'far West.' The further particulars of the journey may be learned from the following extracts from her journal taken on the way."

Following this heading is a letter addressed to her parents, dated Vancouver, October 20, 1836, in which she says that the journal covers the journey from the "Rendezvous," and that while at Vancouver she had been so situated that she could copy her notes taken on the way. The party had crossed the Great Divide on July 4th, and on that day celebrated the natal day of the country, and as they looked down the long vista westward, seem to have felt that they would claim possession of that western land in the name of the American Union and the Church of Jesus Christ. They had reached the "Rendezvous" on Green River July 6th. After several days there, refitting and resting and conferring with Indians, they resumed the next great stage of the march with a detachment of the Hudson's Bay Company, under Mr. McLeod, bound for Walla Walla.

It was July 18, 1836, when they set forth under these new auspices. A company of Flathead and Nez Percé Indians also travelled with them. It appears from the diary of Mrs. Spalding that the Nez Perces were very anxious that the party accompany them, but as they apparently wished to hunt on the way it was manifestly necessary that the party go with the traders. One chieftain, Mrs. Spalding says, concluded to go with them, though it would deprive him of the privilege of securing a supply of meat for the winter. Mrs. Whitman tells of the tedious time which Doctor Whitman had with his wagon. This was one of the notable features of his journey. Some have asserted that he was the first to drive a wagon from the Missouri to the Columbia. This is only partly true. Ashley, Smith, Sublette, Bonneville, and other trappers, had driven wagons to the Black Hills, and to other points, but none of them had gone so far west as Whitman, with a wagon. But when he reached "Snake Fort," near Boise, generally known as Fort Boise, he left his wagon. In 1840 Robert Newell went clear through the Blue Mountains and reached Walla Walla. However, Doctor Whitman deserves all praise for his energy and persistence in pushing his "Chick-chick-shaile-kikash," as the Indians called his wagon, even to Fort Boise, and he may be very justly called one of the first wheel-track-makers. It is interesting and pathetic to see how Mrs. Whitman craved some of her mother's bread. During part of their journey they had an exclusive diet of buffalo meat. Occasionally they would have berries and fish. They had several cows with them and from them had some milk, which was a great help. They had to shoe their cattle (presumably with hide, though it is not so stated) on account of sore feet. With the cows were two sucking calves, which, Mrs. Whitman says, seemed to be in excellent spirits, and made the journey with no suffering, except sore feet. Soon after passing a point on Snake River, where the Indians were taking salmon, Mrs. Whitman bade good-by to her little trunk which they had been able to carry thus far, but were now compelled to leave. It is truly pathetic to read the words in her journal.

"Dear H. (This was her sister Harriet, to whom she is especially addressing the words): The little trunk you gave me has come thus with me so far and now I must leave it here alone. Poor little trunk! I am sorry to leave thee. Thou must abide here alone and no more by thy presence remind me of my dear Harriet. Twenty miles below the falls on Snake River, this shall be thy place of rest. Farewell, little trunk. I thank thee for thy faithful services, and that I have been cheered by thy presence so long. Thus we scatter as we go along." A little later it appears that Mr. McKay rescued the trunk. Mrs. Whitman shows that she had quite a sense of humor by recording that when she found what Mr. McKay had done her "soliloquizing about it last night was for naught."

The journal contains quite a glowing account of the beauties of Grande Ronde Valley, then of the toilsome, zigzag trail out of it into the Blue Mountains westward. On August 29th, the party stood upon the open summit, from which they saw the Valley of the Columbia. "It was beautiful. Just as we gained the highest elevation and began to descend the sun was dipping his disk behind the western horizon. Beyond the valley we could see two distant mountains, Mount Hood, and Mount St. Helens." The latter of those mountains was Adams, not St. Helens. Our missionary band were now in sight of their goal. It was not, however, till September 1st, that they actually rode into Walla Walla. In fact, part of the company, including the Spaldings, did not reach the fort till September 3d. It was a thrilling moment to that devoted little band. It seemed to them almost equal to what it would to one of us moderns to enter Washington or Paris or London. Think of the journey of those two women, those brides, three thousand miles from St. Louis to Walla Walla, five months and mainly on horseback. As they drew near the fort, both horses and riders became so eager to reach the end of the journey that they broke into a gallop. They saw the first appearance of civilization in a garden about two miles from the fort. That garden must have been nearly upon the present location of Wallula. As they rode up to the fort, Mr. McLeod (who had gone ahead to prepare for their coming), Mr. Pambrun, the commandant, and others, came forth to meet so new and remarkable an addition to the population of Walla Walla. Mrs. Whitman has the enthusiasm of a child in describing the chickens, turkeys, pigeons, hogs, goats, and cattle, which latter were the fattest that she ever saw and then she goes into ecstasies over the breakfast of salmon, potatoes, tea, bread, and butter, and then the room in the fort with its comfort after all their hardships. The officers of the fur company treated them with the utmost courtesy and consideration. Such was that momentous entrance of the missionaries and of the first white women into Fort Walla Walla, September 1, 1836.

The next chapter in the story of the Whitman party was their journey to Vancouver, the emporium of the Hudson's Bay Company. Leaving Walla Walla by boat on the 7th of September, they reached the "New York of the Pacific," as Mrs. Whitman says they had been told to consider it, on the 14th. Mrs. Whitman in her journal the admiration of the party for the beauty of the river, more beautiful, she says, than the Ohio, though the rugged cliffs and shores of drifting sand below Walla Walla looked dismal and forbidding. They found much to delight them at Vancouver,—the courtesy and hospitality of Doctor McLoughlin and his assistants, the bounteous table, with feasts of salmon, roast duck, venison, grouse and quail, rich cream and delicious butter, a picture of toothsomeness which it makes one hungry to read; the ships from England moored to the river brink, and the well-kept farm with grain and vegetables, fruits of every sort, grapes and berries, a thousand head of cattle, and many sheep, hogs, and horses—a perfect oasis of civilized delights to the little company of missionaries, worn and homesick during their months on horseback across the barren plains and through wild mountains.

Doctor Whitman and Mr. Spalding, leaving their wives in the excellent keeping of the Hudson's Bay people at Vancouver, returned, in company with Mr. Gray, to the Walla Walla country to decide upon locations. They had expected, so Mrs. Whitman says, to locate in the Grande Ronde, the beauty and fertility of which had been portrayed in glowing colors by returning adventurers and fur-traders. But discovering as they passed through that it was so buried in the mountains and so difficult of access from the rivers and the regular routes of travel, they fixed upon Waiilatpu (Wielitpoo, Mrs. Whitman spells it) for one post and Lapwai for another. The Whitmans became established at Waiilatpu, "the place of rye grass," six miles west of the present Walla Walla; and the Spaldings at Lapwai, two miles up the Lapwai Creek, and about twelve from the mouth of the Clearwater, the present site of Lewiston. A few months after the location at Waiilatpu, on March 4, 1837, a beam of sunshine lighted in the home of the Whitmans, in the form of a daughter, Alice Clarissa, the first white child born west of the Rockies and north of California. The Indians were extraordinarily pleased with the "little white papoose," or "Cayuse temi" (Cayuse girl), and if she had lived, the tragedy of a little later might not have occurred. In a letter preserved at Whitman College, from Mrs. Whitman to her sister and husband, Rev. Lyman P. Judson of Angelica, N. Y., dated March 15, 1838, the mother says: "Our little daughter comes to her mother every now and then to be cheered with a smile and a kiss and to be taken up to rest for a few moments and then way she goes running about the room or out of doors, diverting herself with objects that attract her attention. A refreshing comfort she is to her parents in their solitary situation." With her parents so needing that child, fairly idolizing her and their very lives wrought up with hers, it is too sad to relate that on June 23, 1839, the bright, active little creature wandered out of the house while the mother was engaged in some household task, and took her way to the fatal river that then ran close to the mission house, though it now has a new channel a quarter mile away. Missing little Alice Clarissa, Mrs. Whitman hastened to the river, with a sinking dread, and there she saw the little cup where the child had dropped it. This mutely told the heart-breaking tale. An Indian, diving in the stream, found the body, but the gentle and lovable life, the life of the whole mission, was gone. The faithful and devoted father and mother had one less tie to life. The patient resignation with which the anguished parents endured this infinite sorrow shows vividly what strength may be imparted by the real Christian spirit.

Both Doctor Whitman and Mr. Spalding were indefatigable workers and quickly created civilized conditions upon the beautiful places where they had planted their missions. That of Mr. Spalding was outside of the territory covered by this history, and we therefore devote our larger attention to the mission at Waiilatpu. It should, however, be said that from the standpoint of results among the Indians, Mr. Spalding accomplished more than any of the missionaries. This may be accounted for in some part by the superior characters and minds of the Nez Perces, among whom he was so fortunate as to have cast his lot. They seem to have been of the best Indian type, while the Cayuses in the vicinity of Waiilatpu were turbulent, treacherous, and unreliable.

Doctor Whitman was of powerful physique and familiar from boyhood with the practical duties of farm and mill. He could turn his hand to almost anything in the way of construction. The same was true of Mr. Gray, who spent part of his time at Waiilatpu and part at Lapwai, though he returned in 1837 to the east in search of new helpers. But within a few months the Whitmans were comfortably housed, and every year saw some improvement about the buildings and land. Seed for grain, and fruit trees were secured at Vancouver, and stock was provided also. The Waiilatpu farm consisted of a fertile belt of bottom land of about three hundred acres between the Walla Walla River and Mill Creek, with an unlimited range of low hill and bench land covered with bunch-grass, which furnished the finest of stock feed almost the whole year round. Doctor Whitman was himself a practical millwright and soon had a small sawmill equipped about twenty miles up Mill Creek, while adjoining the mission house he laid out a mill dam, the lines of which can still be seen. The water for the mill pond was supplied from Mill Creek by a ditch which followed nearly the course of the ditch of the present time. The mill was a grist mill and located at the western side of the pond, and within a few steps of the mission house and the "mansion," as they called the large log building erected a few years after their arrival for the accommodation of the frequent visitors, especially after American immigrants began to come. Toiling incessantly, the missionary doctor and hero was rewarded by seeing his mission brought in a surprisingly brief time to a condition of profitable cultivation. T. J. Farnham who came with the so-called "Peoria party" in 1839, says of Whitman's place: "I found 250 acres enclosed and 200 acres in good cultivation. I found forty or fifty Indian children between the ages of seven and eighteen years in school, and Mrs. Whitman an indefatigable instructor. It appeared to me quite remarkable that the doctor could have made so many improvements since the year 1836; but the industry which crowded every hour of the day, his untiring energy of character, and the very efficient aid of his wife in relieving him in a great degree from the labors of the school, enabled him, without funds for such purposes, and without other aid than that of a fellow-missionary for short intervals, to fence, plow, build, plant an orchard, and do all the other laborious acts of opening a plantation on the face of that distant wilderness, learn an Indian language, and do the duties, meanwhile, of a physician to the associate stations on the Clearwater and Spokane." Joseph Drayton of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition of the United States Navy, visited Waiilatpu in 1841. He says of the mission: "All the premises looked comfortable, the garden especially fine, vegetables and melons in great variety. The wheat in the fields was seven feet high and nearly ripe, and the corn nine feet in the tassel." Had not Doctor Whitman possessed great physical strength, as well as determination and energy, he could not have endured the excessive toil which was the price of his rapid progress. Senator Nesmith, who came to Oregon in the immigration of 1843, said in the hearing of the author of this work: "Whitman had a constitution like a sawmill." Another old timer said of him that he had the energy of a Napoleon. Some old timer has said that Whitman used to ride in a day to the present site of Lewiston, from Waiilatpu, about ninety miles. He would do it by changing horses several times. He was hard on horses, and when someone remonstrated on the ground of cruelty, the doctor replied: "My time is worth more than the horse's comfort."

As has been stated, Mr. W. H. Gray went east in 1857 for reinforcements. The next year he came again to Oregon with a valuable addition. Besides the addition to his own life of a bride, Mary Dix (who was one of the choice spirits of Old Oregon, and during many years a center of life and light in the new country) there were three missionaries, each also with a newly-wed wife. These were Revs. Elkanah Walker, Cushing Eells, and A. B. Smith. Mr. Cornelius Rogers accompanied the party. Reaching Walla Walla, the new arrivals were assigned to new stations, Messrs. Eells and Walker to Tschimakain, near the present City of Spokane, while Mr. Smith went to Kamiah, about sixty miles east of the present site of Lewiston. Mr. Rogers and the Grays went to Lapwai. There seem never to have been more faithful and devoted missionaries than were these of the four missions of Waiilatpu, Lapwai, Tschimakain, and Kamiah. Yet, it could not be said that they were successful in turning any considerable number of natives to Christianity. The Nez Perces at Lapwai and other stations established by Mr. Spalding, notably the one at Alpowa, were most amenable to Christian influences, while the Cayuses in the Walla Walla Valley were least so. In contemplation of the apparently scanty progress, the Missionary Board at Boston decided to discontinue the missions at Waiilatpu and Lapwai, to discharge Messrs. Spalding, Gray, Smith, and Rogers, and to send Doctor Whitman to the Spokane country.

WHITMAN PARTY ON CREST OF ROCKY MOUNTAINS, JULY 4, 1836

While these difficulties were harassing the missionaries, very important events were taking place in national life. The slavery and the tariff questions had become firebrands in domestic politics. The questions of annexation of Texas, of the occupation of Oregon, of possible trouble with Mexico over the former, and with England over the latter, were threatening corresponding chaos in foreign affairs. Doctor Whitman, reticent and sagacious, saw clearly that his chosen aim of leading the natives to civilization and Christianity was rapidly sinking in importance in comparison with the question of the white race in the new land, and of the ownership of this great region. In 1842 the Ashburton treaty with England settled the Northeastern boundary and the supposition was that it would also settle the Oregon question. But when the treaty was signed on August 9th, it appeared that the question of Oregon was left unsettled. In a message of August 11th, President Tyler explained to the Senate that so little probability of agreement existed that it was thought not expedient to make that subject a matter of negotiation.

While the Ashburton treaty was pending, the first real immigration, though a small one of 112 persons, came to Oregon. In it, among several of the most notable of the old Oregonians, was A. L. Lovejoy, a young New England lawyer, a man of energy and ambition, destined to play a conspicuous part in Oregon history. When the party reached Whitman's Station on the Walla Walla, they delivered to him letters from the United States and discussed with him the pending treaty and the danger that it might draw the line so as to leave Oregon to Great Britain, or at least to make the Columbia River the boundary, placing the entire Puget Sound Basin and the mountains and plains eastward to the river in possession of Great Britain. Seeing the imminence of the danger, Whitman determined upon a supreme effort. He decided to make a mid-winter journey East with three aims in view: to present to the Government the situation and the vital need of preserving Oregon for the United States; to try to aid in forming and guiding an immigration to Oregon; and to settle affairs of the mission with the Board at Boston. He asked Lovejoy to go with him. It looked like a desperate undertaking, but Lovejoy, an athletic, ambitious young man, agreed to go.

At this point comes in the bitterly disputed "Whitman Controversy." It is not within the scope of this work to undertake an argumentative treatment of this question. The question at issue, if rationally considered, is rather the extent of the services of Doctor Whitman in "saving Oregon to the United States." Mrs. F. V. Victor, Elwood Evans, Prof. E. G. Bourne, and Principal W. I. Marshall have, more than others, presented arguments in favor of the contention that Doctor Whitman had no important part to play in the great political drama of Oregon, while the claim that he had large political aims and bore a conspicuous part in influencing the final result has been supported in books written by Dr. O. W. Nixon, Rev. William Barrows, Prof. William Mowry, and Rev. Myron Eells. The final book by the last named, the "Life of Marcus Whitman," is, in the judgment of the writer, the final and unanswered and indeed unanswerable word on the subject. The author of this history has given in the Washington Historical Quarterly of April, 1917, his reasons for thinking the statements of Professors Bourne and Marshall inaccurate and their arguments inconclusive. The fact acknowledged by all is that Whitman made a ride during the fall and winter of 1842 and succeeding months of 1843, which for daring, heroism, and fortitude has few parallels in history. The question of controversy is, what did he make such a journey for? His critics say that it was in consequence of the decision of the Missionary Board to discontinue his mission on the Walla Walla. Mrs. Victor and Principal Marshall are the only ones among these critics who have achieved the distinction of attributing base or selfish motives to Whitman. They have held forth the idea that he, foreseeing the incoming of immigrants, wanted to maintain the station at Waiilatpu in order to raise vegetables and other supplies to sell at a high price. Whether a motive of that sort would lead a man of Whitman's type to take that desperate ride in mid-winter through the Rocky Mountains, at peril of life a dozen times over from Indians, freezing, and starvation, is a question which different people would view differently, according to their way of estimating the motives which determine men's actions. Perhaps people whose estimate of human nature, based possibly on their own inner consciousness of motives, is that selfish gain is the leading motive, would agree that the hope of cornering the vegetable market at Waiilatpu was an adequate cause of Whitman's ride. To some people it would seem likely that the mainspring of his action was some great national and patriotic aim and that while he wished to maintain the mission, his great aim was to convince the Government of the value of Oregon and to help organize an immigration which would settle the ownership of Oregon in favor of his country. At any rate, he went. That much is undisputed.

Practically the only account of that memorable mid-winter ride from Waiilatpu to St. Louis is from A. L. Lovejoy, the sole white companion of Whitman. Whitman himself was, like most heroes, a man of few words. He told various friends something of his experiences in Washington and Boston, and told to associates and wrote a few letters to friends about the immigration of 1843, but he seems to have been very reticent about the "Ride." Mr. Lovejoy wrote two letters about that journey, one dated November 6, 1869, which is found in W. H. Gray's History of Oregon, and one addressed to Dr. G. H. Atkinson and used by him in an address on February 22, 1876. This letter so vividly portrays the character of this undertaking as it comes from the only witness besides Whitman himself, that we deem it suitable to incorporate it here.

"We left Waiilatpu October 3, 1842, traveled rapidly, reached Fort Hall in eleven days, remained two days to recruit and make a few purchases. The doctor engaged a guide, and we left the Fort Uinte. We changed from a direct route to more southern, through the Spanish country, via Salt Lake, Taos and Santa Fe. On our way from Fort Hall to Fort Uinte we had terribly severe weather. The snows retarded our progress and blinded the trail, so we lost much time. After arriving at Fort Uinte, and making some purchases for our trip, we took a new guide and started for Fort Uncumpagra, situated on the waters of Grand River, in the Spanish country. Here our stay was very short. We took a new guide and started for Taos. After being out some four or five days we encountered a terrific snowstorm, which forced us to seek shelter in a deep ravine, where we remained snowed in for four days, at which time the storm had somewhat abated, and we attempted to make our way out upon the highlands, but the snow was so deep and the winds so piercing and cold, we were compelled to return to camp and wait a few days for a change of weather. Our next effort to reach the highlands was more successful; but, after spending several days wandering around in the snow without making much headway, our guide told us that the deep snow had so changed the face of the country that he was completely lost and could take us no further. This was a terrible blow to the doctor, but he was determined not to give it up without another effort.

"We at once agreed that the doctor should take the guide and return to Fort Uncumpagra and get a new guide, and I remain in camp with the animals until he could return, which he did in seven days with our new guide, and we were now on our route again. Nothing of much import occurred but hard and slow traveling through deep snow until we reached Grand River, which was frozen on either side about one-third across. Although so intensely cold, the current was so very rapid that about one-third of the river in the center was not frozen. Our guide thought it would be dangerous to attempt to cross the river in its present condition, but the doctor, nothing daunted, was the first to take the water. He mounted his horse; the guide and myself shoved the doctor and his horse off the ice into the foaming stream. Away he went, completely under water, horse and all, but directly came up, and after buffeting the rapid foaming current, he reached the ice on the opposite shore a long way down the stream. He leaped from his horse upon the ice and soon had his noble animal by his side. The guide and myself forced in the pack animals, and followed the doctor's example, and soon were on the opposite shore, drying our frozen clothes by a comfortable fire. We reached Taos in about thirty days, having suffered greatly from cold and scarcity of provisions. We were compelled to use mule meat, dogs and such other animals as came in our reach. We remained at Taos a few days only, and started for Bent's and Savery's Fort, on the head waters of the Arkansas River. When we had been out some fifteen or twenty days we met George Bent, a brother of Governor Bent, on his way to Taos. He told us that a party of mountain men would leave Bent's Fort in a few days for St. Louis, but said we would not reach the fort with our pack animals in time to join the party. The doctor, being very anxious to join the party so he could push on as rapidly as possible to Washington, concluded to leave myself and guide with the animals, and he himself, taking the best animal, with some bedding and a small allowance of provision, started alone, hoping by rapid travel to reach the fort in time to join the St. Louis party, but to do so he would have to travel on the Sabbath, something we had not done before. Myself and guide traveled on slowly and reached the fort in four days, but imagine our astonishment when on making inquiry about the doctor we were told that he had not arrived nor had he been heard of. I learned that the party for St. Louis was camped at the Big Cottonwood, forty miles from the fort, and at my request Mr. Savery sent an express, telling the party not to proceed any farther until we learned something of Doctor Whitman's whereabouts, as he wished to accompany them to St Louis. Being furnished by the gentleman of the fort with a suitable guide, I started in search of the doctor, and traveled up the river about one hundred miles. I learned from the Indians that a man had been there who was lost and was trying to find Bent's Fort. They said they had directed him to go down the river and how to find the fort. I knew from their description it was the doctor. I returned to the fort as rapidly as possible, but the doctor had not arrived. We had all become very anxious about him.

"Late in the afternoon he came in very much fatigued and desponding; said that he knew that God had bewildered him to punish him for traveling on the Sabbath. During the whole trip he was very regular in his morning and evening devotions, and that was the only time I ever knew him to travel on the Sabbath.

"The doctor remained all night at the fort, starting only on the following morning to join the St. Louis party. Here we parted. The doctor proceeded to Washington. I remained at Bent's Fort until spring, and joined the doctor the following July near Fort Laramie, on his way to Oregon, in company with a train of emigrants."

In the life of Whitman by Myron Eells, there is a summary of the events which immediately followed, so well adapted to our purpose that we quote it here as resting upon the authority of Mr. Eells, whom we regard as a writer of undoubted candor and accuracy.

"When Doctor Whitman arrived at St. Louis he made his home at the house of Doctor Edward Hale, a dentist. In the same house was William Barrows, then a young school teacher, afterward a clergyman and author of Barrows' 'Oregon.'

"Reaching Cincinnati, he went to the house of Doctor Weed. Here, according to Professor Weed, he obtained a new suit of clothes, but whether he wore them all the time until he left the East or not is a question. Some writers speak of him as appearing in buckskins, or something akin to them, afterwards both at Washington and Boston. Some, as Dr. S. J. Parker, say he was not so dressed. It is just barely possible that both may be true—that he kept his buckskins and buffalo coat and occasionally wore them. It is quite certain that he did not throw them away, as according to accounts he wore his buckskins in returning to Oregon the next summer.

"The next visit on record was at Ithaca, New York, at the home of his old missionary friend and fellow traveler, Rev. Samuel Parker. Here, after the surprise of his arrival was over, he said to Mr. Parker: 'I have come on a very important errand. We must both go at once to Washington, or Oregon is lost, ceded to the English.' Mr. Parker, however, did not think the danger to be so great, and not for lack of interest in the subject, but because of other reasons, did not go. Doctor Whitman went alone, and reached Washington.

"The doctor, or his brother, had been a classmate of the Secretary of War, James M. Porter. Through him the doctor obtained an introduction to Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State, with whom he talked about Oregon and the saving of it to the United States, but Mr. Webster received him very coolly, and told him it was too late, as far as he was concerned, for he had considered it, decided it, and turned it over to the President, who could sign Oregon away or refuse to do so. Accordingly Doctor Whitman went to President Tyler, and for some time they talked about Oregon. Even the Cabinet were called together, it is said, and an evening was spent on the subject. The objection was made that wagons could never be taken to Oregon and that consequently the country could never be peopled overland by emigrants, while the distance around Cape Horn was altogether too great to think of taking settlers to the country that way. In reply to this, Doctor Whitman told of the great value of the country and of his plans to lead an emigration through with their wagons the next summer. He stated that he had taken a wagon into Oregon six years before to Fort Boise, that others had taken one from Fort Hall to Walla Walla, and that with his present knowledge, having been over the route twice, he was sure he could take the emigrant wagons through to the Columbia. The President then said that he would wait, before carrying the negotiations any further, until he could hear whether Doctor Whitman should succeed, and if he should there would be no more thought of trading off Oregon. This satisfied the doctor.

DR. WHITMAN LOST IN A SNOW STORM, 1842

"He then went to New York to see Mr. Horace Greeley, who was known to be a friend of Oregon. He went there dressed in his rough clothes, much the same that he wore across the continent. When he knocked at the door a lady came, Mrs. Greeley or a daughter, who, on seeing such a rough-looking person, said to his inquiries for Mr. Greeley, 'Not at home.' Doctor Whitman started away. She went and told Mr. Greeley about him and Mr. Greeley, who was of much the same style and cared but little for appearances, looked out of the window, and seeing him going away, said to call him in. It was done, and they had a long talk about this Northwest Coast and its political relations.

"From New York Doctor Whitman went to Boston, where the officers of the American Board at first received him coldly, because he had left his station for the East without permission from them, on business so foreign to that which he had been sent to Oregon to accomplish. Afterwards, however, they treated him more cordially.

"From Boston he went to New York State and visited relatives. Then taking with him his nephew, Perrin B. Whitman, bade them good-by and left for Missouri. While there he did all he could to induce people to join the emigration for Oregon, then went with the emigration, assisting the guide, Captain Gantt, until they reached Fort Hall, and aiding the emigrants very materially. Fort Hall was as far as Captain Gantt had agreed to guide them, and from that place Doctor Whitman guided them or furnished an Indian guide, so that the emigrants reached the Columbia River safely with their wagons."

The incoming of the immigration of 1843 was a determining factor in the settlement of the Oregon question. There can be no question that Doctor Whitman performed a conspicuous service in organizing and leading that immigration. It is true, however, that many influences combined to draw that company of frontiersmen to the border of civilization and to give them the common purpose of the great march across the wilderness. The leading motives perhaps were the desire first to acquire land in what they thought would prove a paradise and second to carry the American flag across the continent and secure ownership of the Pacific Coast for their country. Perhaps no one ever so well expressed the mingled motives of that advance guard of American possession as did James W. Nesmith, father of Mrs. Levi Ankeny of Walla Walla, who was himself a member of the immigration and later became one of the conspicuous builders of Oregon and of the nation. Senator Nesmith's account is as follows, given in an address at a meeting of the Oregon Pioneer Association:

"Without orders from any quarter, and without preconcert, promptly as the grass began to start, the emigrants began to assemble near Independence, at a place called Fitzhugh's Mill. On the 17th day of May, 1843, notices were circulated through the different encampments that on the succeeding day, those who contemplated emigrating to Oregon would meet at a designated point to organize. Promptly at the appointed hour the motley groups assembled. They consisted of people from all the States and Territories, and nearly all nationalities; the most, however, from Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, and all strangers to one another, but impressed with some crude idea that there existed an imperative necessity for some kind of an organization for mutual protection against the hostile Indians inhabiting the great unknown wilderness stretching away to the shores of the Pacific, and which they were about to traverse with their wives and children, household goods, and all their earthly possessions.

"Many of the emigrants were from the western tier of counties of Missouri, known as the Platte Purchase, and among them was Peter H. Burnett, a former merchant, who had abandoned the yardstick and become a lawyer of some celebrity for his ability as a smooth-tongued advocate. He subsequently emigrated to California, and was elected the first Governor of the Golden State, was afterward Chief Justice, and still an honored resident of that state. Mr. Burnett, or, as he was familiarly designated, 'Pete,' was called upon for a speech. Mounting a log, the glib-tongued orator delivered a glowing, florid address. He commenced by showing his audience that the then western tier of states and territories was overcrowded with a redundant population, who had not sufficient elbow room for the expansion of their enterprise and genius, and it was a duty they owed to themselves and posterity to strike out in search of a more expanded field and more genial climate, where the soil yielded the richest returns for the slightest amount of cultivation, where the trees were loaded with perennial fruit, and where a good substitute for bread, called 'La Camash.' grew in the ground, salmon and other fish crowded the streams, and where the principal labor of the settler would be confined to keeping their gardens free from the inroads of buffalo, elk, deer and wild turkeys. He appealed to our patriotism by picturing forth the glorious empire we would establish on the shores of the Pacific. How, with our trusty rifles, we would drive out the British usurpers who claimed the soil, and defend the country from the avarice and pretensions of the British lion, and how posterity would honor us for placing the fairest portion of our land under the dominion of the Stars and Stripes. He concluded with a slight allusion to the trials and hardships incident to the trip, and dangers to be encountered from hostile Indians on the route, and those inhabiting the country whither we were bound. He furthermore intimated a desire to look upon the tribe of noble 'red men' that the valiant and well-armed crowd around him could not vanquish in a single encounter.

"Other speeches were made, full of glowing descriptions of the fair land of promise, the far-away Oregon, which no one in the assemblage had ever seen, and of which not more than half a dozen had ever read any account. After the election of Mr. Burnett as captain, and other necessary officers, the meeting, as motley and primitive a one as ever assembled, adjourned, with 'three cheers' for Captain Burnett and Oregon. On the 20th of May, 1843, after a pretty thorough military organization, we took up our line of march, with Captain John Gantt, an old army officer, who combined the character of trapper and mountaineer, as our guide. Gantt had in his wanderings been as far as Green River, and assured us of the practicability of a wagon road thus far. Green River, the extent of our guide's knowledge in that direction, was not half-way to the Willamette Valley, then the only inhabited portion of Oregon. Beyond that we had not the slightest conjecture of the condition of the country. We went forth trusting to the future, and would doubtless have encountered more difficulties than we experienced had not Doctor Whitman overtaken us before we reached the terminus of our guide's knowledge. He was familiar with the whole route and was confident that wagons could pass through the cañons and gorges of Snake River and over the Blue Mountains, which the mountaineers in the vicinity of Fort Hall declared to be a physical impossibility.

"Captain Grant, then in charge of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Hall, endeavored to dissuade us from proceeding farther with our wagons, and showed us the wagons that the emigrants of the preceding year had abandoned, as an evidence of the impracticability of our determination. Doctor Whitman was persistent in his assertions that wagons could proceed as far as the Grand Dalles of the Columbia River, from which point he asserted they could be taken down by rafts or batteaux to the Willamette Valley, while our stock could be driven by an Indian trail over the Cascade Mountains, near Mount Hood. Happily Whitman's advice prevailed, and a large number of the wagons with a portion of the stock did reach Walla Walla and The Dalles, from which points they were taken to the Willamette the following year. Had we followed Grant's advice and abandoned the cattle and wagons at Fort Hall, much suffering must have ensued, as a sufficient number of horses to carry the women and children of the party could not have been obtained, besides wagons and cattle were indispensable to men expecting to live by farming in a country destitute of such articles.

"At Fort Hall we fell in with some Cayuse and Nez Percé Indians returning from the buffalo country, and as it was necessary for Doctor Whitman to precede us to Walla Walla, he recommended to us a guide in the person of an old Cayuse Indian called 'Sticcus.' He was a faithful old fellow, perfectly familiar with all the trails and topography of the country from Fort Hall to The Dalles, and, although not speaking a word of English, and no one in our party a word of Cayuse, he succeeded by pantomime in taking us over the roughest wagon route I ever saw."

In that immigration were nearly a thousand persons, among them several families whose members and descendants have borne honorable parts in building the region of Old Walla Walla County and the part of Umatilla County adjoining, in Oregon. In the belief that among the readers of this work may be many now living in the counties covered by this story, who can trace their ancestry to the blood royal of that great immigration and that a list of its names would have a permanent value in such a record as this, we incorporate here a list of the names of all the male members of the train over sixteen years of age, as secured by J. W. Nesmith at the time of the organization of the train. His list included some who turned back or went to California, or died on the way. We quote from the "History of the Willamette Valley," by H. B. Lang:

"The following list contains the names of every male member of that great train over the age of sixteen years. It was prepared by J. W. Nesmith when the train was organized, and was preserved among his papers for a third of a century before given for publication. All reached the Willamette Valley, except a few, the exceptions being designated by marks and foot-notes: