John Jacob Astor may, perhaps, be justly regarded as the first of the great promoters or financial magnates who have made the United States the world"s El Dorado. Coming from Germany to this land of opportunity after the close of the Revolutionary War, he soon manifested that keen intuition in money matters, as well as intense devotion to acc.u.mulation, which has led to the colossal fortunes of his own descendants and of the other multimillionaires of this age. Having made quite a fortune by transporting furs to London, Mr. Astor turned to larger fields. With his broad and keen geographical and commercial insight, he could readily grasp the same fact which the North-westers of Montreal were also considering, that the Columbia River might well become the key to an international fur-trade, as well as a strategic point for American expansion westward. He made overtures to the North-westers for a partnership, but they declined. Then he determined to be the chief manager, and to a.s.sociate individual Americans and Canadians with himself. With the prompt.i.tude of the skilful general, he proceeded to form his company and make his plan of campaign in time to antic.i.p.ate the apparent designs of the active Canadians. They saw, as well as Astor did, the magnitude of the stake and at once made ready to play their part. For, as already noted, David Thompson crossed the Rockies by the Athabasca Pa.s.s in 1810, spent the winter at Lake Windermere on the Columbia River, and in the summer of 1811 reached Astoria, only to find the Astor Company already established there. It should be especially noted that the Thompson party was the first to descend the River from near its source to the ocean, although of course Lewis and Clark had antic.i.p.ated them on the portion below the junction of the Snake with the main River.
Mr. Astor"s plans provided for an expedition by sea and one by land. The first was to convey stores and equipment for founding and defending the proposed capital of the empire of the fur-traders. Of the expedition by land under Hunt we have already given a full account in the preceding chapter, since its events rather allied it to the era of exploration than that of the traders. The organisation of Mr. Astor"s company provided that there should be a capital stock of a hundred shares, of which he should hold half and his a.s.sociates half. Mr. Astor was to furnish the money, though not to exceed four hundred thousand dollars, and was to bear all losses for five years. The term of the a.s.sociation was fixed at twenty years, though with the privilege of dissolving it in five years if it proved unprofitable. The general plan and the details of the expedition had been decided upon by the master mind of the founder with statesmanlike ability. It comes, therefore, as a surprise to the reader that Mr. Astor should have made a capital mistake at the very beginning of his undertaking. This mistake was in the selection of his a.s.sociates and the captains of some of his ships. Of the partners, five were Americans and five were Canadians. Two only of the Americans remained with the company long enough to have any determining influence on its policies. Take the fact that the majority of the active partners and almost all the clerks, trappers, and other employees of the company were Canadians, and put it beside the other fact that war was imminent with Great Britain and did actually break out within two years, and the dangerous nature of the situation can be seen. Of the ship-captains, the first one, Captain Jonathan Thorn of the _Tonquin_, was a man of such overbearing and obstinate nature that disaster seemed to be fairly invited by placing him in such vitally responsible a position. The captain of the second ship, the _Beaver_, was Cornelius Sowles, and he seems to have been as timid and irresolute as Captain Thorn was bold and implacable. Both lacked judgment.
It was probably natural that Mr. Astor, having had his main prior experience as a fur-dealer in connection with the Canadians centring at Montreal, should have looked in that direction for a.s.sociates. But inasmuch as war between England and the United States seemed a practical certainty, it was a great error, in founding a vast enterprise in remote regions whose ownership was not yet definitely recognised, to share with citizens of Great Britain the determination of the important issues of the enterprise. It would have saved Mr. Astor great loss and chagrin if he had observed the maxim: "Put none but Americans on guard." As to the captains of the two vessels, that was an error that any one might have made. Yet for a man of Astor"s exceptional ability and shrewdness to err so conspicuously in judging the character of the men appointed to such important places seems indeed strange.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Astoria in 1845. From an Old Print.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Astoria. Looking up and across the Columbia River. Photo.
by Woodfield.]
To these facts in regard to the personnel of the partners, the captains, and the force, must be added two others; _i. e._, war and shipwreck. The combination of all these conditions made the history of the Astoria enterprise what it was. Yet, with all of its adversity, this was one of the best conceived, and, in most of its details, the best equipped and executed of all the great enterprises which have appeared in the commercial history of our country. As an element in the development of the land of the Oregon, it must be accorded the first place after the period of discovery.
The _Tonquin_ left New York on September 6, 1810. She carried a fine equipment of all things needed for founding the proposed emporium. She was manned by a crew of twenty-one and conveyed members of the fur-trading force to the number of thirty-three. Stopping at the Sandwich Islands, an added force of twenty-four natives was taken aboard. At various times on the journey the rigid ideas of naval discipline and the imperious temper of Captain Thorn came near producing mutiny among the partners and clerks.
When the _Tonquin_ hove to off the mouth of the Columbia on March 22, 1811, the eager voyagers saw little to attract. The wind was blowing in heavy squalls, and the sea ran high. Nevertheless the hard-hearted Captain issued orders to the first mate, Fox, with a boat"s crew of four men, to go into the foaming waves and sound the channel. The boat was insufficiently provided, and it seemed scarcely short of murder to despatch a crew under such circ.u.mstances. But the tyrannical captain would listen to no remonstrances, and the poor little boat went tossing over the billows on her forlorn hope. Such indeed it proved to be, for neither boat nor any one of the crew was ever heard of again. This was a wholly unnecessary sacrifice of life, for the _Tonquin_ was in no danger, and time could just as well have been taken for more propitious weather.
The next day, the wind and sea having abated, the _Tonquin_ drew near the dreaded bar, but, no entrance that satisfied the captain appearing, the ship again stood off to spend the night in deep water. On the next day, the 24th, the wind fell and a serene sky seemed to invite another attempt.
The pinnace in command of Mr. Aikin, with two white men and two Kanakas, was sent out to find the channel. Following the pinnace the ship moved in so rapidly under a freshening breeze that she pa.s.sed the pinnace, the unfortunate men on board finding it impossible to effect an entrance and being borne by the refluent current into the mad surge where ocean tide and outflowing river met in foamy strife. So the pinnace disappeared. But meanwhile the crew had all their energies engaged to save the _Tonquin_.
For the wind failed at the critical moment and the ship struck the sands with violence. Night came on. Had the men been cla.s.sically trained (as in fact Franchere was) they might have remembered Virgil, _Ponto nox incubat atra_. But they had no time for cla.s.sical or other quotations. Hastily dropping the anchors they lay to in the midst of the tumult of waters, in that worst of situations, on an unknown coast in the dark and in storm.
But as Franchere expresses it, Providence came to their succour, and the tide flooding and the wind rising, they weighed the anchors, and in spite of the obscurity of the night, they gained a safe harbour in a little cove inside of Cape Disappointment, apparently just about abreast of the present town of Ilwaco.
Thus the _Tonquin_ was saved, and with the light of morning it could be seen that she was fairly within the bar. Natives soon made their appearance, desirous of trading beaver-skins. But the crew were in no mood for commerce while any hope existed for finding the lost sailors. Taking a course toward the sh.o.r.e by what must have been nearly the present route from Ilwaco to Long Beach, the captain and a party with him, began a search and soon found Weeks, one of the crew of the pinnace. He was stark naked and suffering intensely from the cold. As soon as sufficiently revived he narrated the loss of the pinnace in the breakers, the death of three of the crew, and the casting of himself and one of the Kanakas upon the beach. The point where they were cast would seem to have been near the present location of the life-saving station.
The two survivors of the ill-fated pinnace having been revived, the party returned to the _Tonquin_, which was now riding safely at anchor in the bay on the north side of the river, named Baker"s Bay by Broughton nineteen years before. Joy for their own escape from such imminent perils was mingled with melancholy at the loss of their eight companions of the two boats, and with the melancholy there was a sense of bitterness toward the captain, who was to blame, at least for the loss of the small boat.
But now the new land was all before them where to choose, and since Captain Thorn was in great haste to depart and begin his trading cruise along the coast, the partners on the _Tonquin_, Messrs. McKay, McDougal, David Stuart, and Robert Stuart, decided somewhat hurriedly to locate at the point which had received from Lieutenant Broughton the name of Point George. Franchere gives a pleasant picture of the beauty of the trees and sky, and the surprise of the party to find that, though it was only the 12th of April when they set to work upon the great trees which covered the site of their chosen capital, yet spring was already far advanced. They did not then understand the effect of the j.a.pan current upon the Pacific Coast climate.
An incident of special interest soon after landing was the appearance on June 15th of two strange Indians, a man and a woman, bearing a letter addressed to _Mr. John Stuart, Fort Estekatadene, New Caledonia_. These two Indians wore long robes of dressed deerskins with leggings and moccasins more like the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. They could not understand the speech of the Astoria Indians nor of any of the mixture of dialects which the white men tried on them, until one of the Canadian clerks addressed them in the Knisteneaux language with which they seemed to be partially familiar. After several days of stay at the fort the two wandering Indians succeeded in making it clear to the traders that they had been sent out by a clerk named Finnan McDonald of the North-west Fur Company from a fort which that company had just established on the Spokane River. They said that they had lost their way and in consequence had descended the _Tacousah-Tessah_ (and this Franchere understood to be the Indian name for the Columbia, though the general impression among the Indians is that Tacousah-Tessah, or Tacoutche-Tesse, signified Frazer River). From the revelation gradually drawn from these two Indians (and the surprising discovery was made that they were both women) the very important conclusion was drawn that the North-west Fur Company was already prepared to contest with the Astor Company the possession of the River.
The peculiar feature of the situation was that the most of the Astorians, though American by the existing business tie, were Canadian and British by blood and sympathy, and hence were very likely to fraternise with the Montreal traders.
[Ill.u.s.tration: One of the Lagoons of the Upper Columbia River, near Golden, B. C. Photo. by C. F. Yates, Golden.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Saddle Mt., or Swallalochost, near Astoria, Famous in Indian Myth. Photo. by Woodfield.]
However the Astorians decided to send an expedition into the interior to verify the story given by the two Indian women, but, just as they were ready to go, a large canoe with the British flag floating from her stern appeared, from which, when it had reached the landing, there leaped ash.o.r.e an active, well-dressed man who introduced himself as David Thompson, of the North-west Company. This was the same man, the reader will remember, who had crossed the Rocky Mountains the year before, had wintered near the head of the River, and had then descended it, seeking a location for the Columbia River emporium of the Canadian company. But he was too late. It was quite strange by what narrow margins on several occasions the British failed to forestall the Yankees.
On July 23d the delayed expedition of the Astorians set forth far to the interior, and as a result of their investigations, David Stuart, in charge of the party, began the erection of a trading house at the mouth of the Okanogan, five hundred and forty miles above Astoria. It was on September 2, 1811, that this post was begun, and hence Fort Okanogan may be regarded as the first American establishment in the present State of Washington. It was antedated a few months by the post of the North-west Company at the entrance of the Little Spokane into the Spokane, near the present site of the City of Spokane.
During the fall of 1811 the Indians around Astoria became very threatening. Direful rumours, too, in regard to the destruction of the _Tonquin_ began to disquiet the Astorians. In the emergency the wary McDougall, then acting as the head of the Company, bethought himself of a very effective expedient. He had learned that dreadful loss of life among the Indians had resulted a few years before from smallpox and that the Indians were mortally afraid of it. Calling into his room several of the princ.i.p.al chiefs, he asked if they remembered the smallpox. Their serious faces were sufficient proof that they did. McDougall then held up a small vial and continued with awful solemnity: "Listen to me. I am the great smallpox chief. In this little bottle I keep the smallpox. If I uncork the bottle and let it out I will kill every man, woman, and child of the Indians. Now go in peace, but if you make war upon us I will open the bottle, and you will die." The chiefs filed out in terror, and peace was preserved.
McDougall still further cemented the bond of union with the natives by becoming united in wedlock with the daughter of Comcomly, the one-eyed chieftain of the Chinooks. After numerous and thorough ablutions had somewhat mitigated the oiliness and general fishiness of the Chinook princess, she was clad in the most brilliant style of the native beauty, a grand holiday was declared at Astoria, and white men and Indians joined in the wedding feast and made the welkin ring with their demonstrations.
Thus did the daughter of Comcomly become the first lady of the land, and thus did peace brood over the broad waters of the lower River.
During the winter of 1811-12 the two instalments of the Hunt party made their appearance, after their distressful journey from St. Louis as already narrated in Chapter IV. In May, 1812, the company"s ship _Beaver_ arrived from New York, loaded with stores and trading equipment, and bringing a considerable addition to the force of men. In the following month sixty men were despatched up-river, and by them a trading post was located at Spokane and another on the Snake River somewhere near the present site of Lewiston, while one section of the party went across the mountains and down the Missouri to convey dispatches to Mr. Astor.
At this stage of the history of the Astoria enterprise, every aspect was encouraging. The trade in furs on the Spokane, the Okanogan, the Snake, the Coeur d"Alene was excellent, a successful cruise along the coast by the _Beaver_ seemed sure, and the Indians about the mouth of the River were friendly and well disposed. Mr. Astor"s great undertaking seemed sure to be crowned with success. In the midst of all the signs of hope came tidings of dismay. It became known with certainty that the _Tonquin_ had been destroyed. This appalling disaster was related directly to the Astoria Company by the only survivor. This was an Indian of the Chehalis tribe whose name is given by Irving as Lamazee, by Ross as Lamazu, and by Bancroft as Lamanse. He had escaped from the Indians who had held him after the destruction of the _Tonquin_ and had finally found his way to Astoria, there to tell his tale, one of the most sanguinary in the long roll of struggles with the Indians. The next great disaster was the wrecking of the _Lark_, the third of the Company"s ships from New York.
During the same period Mr. Hunt, the partner next in rank to Mr. Astor and the one above all who could have acted wisely and patriotically in the forthcoming crisis, had gone in the _Beaver_ on a trading cruise among the Russians of Sitka, and by a most remarkable series of detentions he had been kept away from Astoria for over a year.
To cap the climax of misfortunes, the War of 1812 burst upon the knowledge of the fur-traders and seemed to force upon such of the partners as were of British nationality the question of their paramount duty. As a result of the crisis, McDougal and McKenzie, although against the wishes of the other partners present, sold out to the agent of the North-westers, who had repaired at once to Astoria upon knowledge of the declaration of war.
Thus the great Astoria enterprise was abandoned, and the Stars and Stripes went down and the Union Jack went up. Soon after the transfer, the British man-of-war _Racc.o.o.n_, Captain Black, arrived at Astoria, expecting to have seized the place as a rich prize of war. Imagine the disgust of the expectant British mariners to discover that the post had already been sold to British subjects, that their long journey was useless, and that their hopes of prize money had vanished.
With the close of the War of 1812 a series of negotiations between the ministers of the two countries took place in regard to the possession of the River, by which it was finally decided that Astoria should be restored to the United States. Accordingly, on the 6th of October, 1818, the British Commissioners, Captain F. Hickey, of His Majesty"s Ship _Blossom_, and J. Keith, representing the North-west Fur Company, signed an act of delivery restoring Fort George (Astoria) to the United States. Mr. J. B.
Prevost, Commissioner for the United States, signed the act of acceptance.
Astoria was once again American property.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Steamer _Beaver_, the First Steamer on the Pacific, 1836.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portland, Oregon, in 1851. From an Old Print.]
While the River was now nominally in possession of the United States, it was practically under the control of the British fur companies. The Pacific Fur Company ceased to operate, and the North-westers entered upon active work both by sea and land in exploring the vast and profitable domain which the misfortunes of their American rivals, supplemented in a most timely manner by the treachery of McDougall and McKenzie, had put within their power. The canny Scotchmen, McDougall, McTavish, McKenzie, McDonald, and the various other Macs who now guided the plans of the North-westers, signalled their entrance into power by despatching companies to the various pivotal points of the great Columbia Basin, the Walla Walla, Yakima, Okanogan, Spokane, and Snake rivers. Two incidents may be related to ill.u.s.trate the character of people and the conditions of that wilderness period.
A party of ninety men in ten canoes left Astoria for up-river points on April 4, 1814. While pa.s.sing the mouth of the Yakima, about three hundred and fifty miles up the River, the men were surprised to see three canoes putting out from sh.o.r.e and to hear a child"s voice calling out, "_Arretez donc! arretez donc!_" Stopping to investigate, the party found in one of the boats the Indian wife of Pierre Dorion, with her children. Dorion, with five other Canadians, had gone the previous summer with a party under command of John Reed of the Astor Company. While trapping and hunting, deep in the mountains of Snake River, the party had been ma.s.sacred by Indians. The woman and her two boys had alone escaped the ma.s.sacre. It was the dead of winter and the snows lay deep on the Blue Mountains. But the wife of Dorion found shelter in a remote fastness of the mountains, putting up a bark hut for a shelter and subsisting on the carca.s.ses of some of her horses. In the spring, the pitiful little company of mother and children descended to Walla Walla and found there more kindly disposed natives, who cared for them and turned them over to the protection of the whites. A more thrilling story of suffering and heroism than this of Madame Dorion and her children has never come up from the chronicles of the wild West.
Equally ill.u.s.trative of the life of the fur-traders is the account given by Alexander Ross of one of his many adventures in the Columbia country.
In 1814 Ross went from Okanogan to Yakima to secure horses. With him were four other whites and three Indian women. The Yakima Valley was then as now a paradise of the Indians. There the tribes gathered by the thousands in the spring to dig camas, to race horses, and to gamble, as well as to form alliances and make plans for war. When the little company of traders reached the encampment, they discovered to their astonishment that it was a veritable city. Six thousand men, women, and children, with ten thousand horses, and uncounted dogs and many shackled bears and wolves, were strewn across the plain. It was a dangerous situation for the traders, for it became plain to them that the Indians were unfriendly. But a.s.suming an air of careless bravado, Ross proceeded to display his store of trinkets for the purpose of starting a traffic in horses. a.s.suming a very hilarious manner the Indians would seize and drive away the animals as fast as the white men got them. Then the Indians began to deprive them of clothes and food. Finally they made ready to seize their three women as slaves. Ross managed to have the women escape temporarily, but then the savages were worse than ever. Matters reached a crisis when an obstreperous chief named Yaktana s.n.a.t.c.hed a knife from the hands of one of the Canadians. A desperate struggle was just at the point of breaking out, which would inevitably have resulted in the death of all the white men, when a sudden intuition flashed through the quick mind of Ross, and rushing between the combatants he handed his own knife, a much more elegant one, to Yaktana, saying in a friendly tone, "This is a chief"s knife. Take it and give back the other." There was an instant revulsion. Yaktana was so much flattered that he turned at once into a stanch supporter of the shrewd trader. Food was brought. The horses were restored. Equipment was provided. The three women were regained, and the company made their way without further trouble to Okanogan.
We have already mentioned the important fact that in 1821 the two great Canadian Companies, the North-western and the Hudson"s Bay, decided to unite. With the union, the great era of fur-trade in the Columbia Basin fairly began, to continue about twenty-five years, yielding then to the American immigrant. That twenty-five years of the dominance of the great Fur Company contained nearly all the poetry and romance as well as the profit and statesmanship of the business. The entire region of the River, as well as that of the Puget Sound country, was mapped out in a most systematic manner with one chief central fort, Vancouver on the Columbia.
A more magnificent location for the purpose cannot be conceived. It is now the site of a flourishing city and of the United States Fort Headquarters for the North-west, generally conceded to be the finest fort location in the United States. Fort Vancouver was established in 1825 upon a superb bench of land gently sloping back from the River for two miles. Great trees fringed the site, Mt. Hood lifted its pinnacled majesty sixty miles to the eastward, the sinuous mazes of the Willamette Valley stretched out far southward, while the lordly River was in full view a dozen miles up and down. Every natural advantage and delight which wild nature could offer was here in fullness. Ships could readily ascend the hundred miles from the ocean to unload their merchandise and take on their cargoes of precious furs, the furs collected at the outlay of so much toil and suffering over the area of hundreds of miles. Every species of game and fish abounded in the waters and along the banks of the River. Deer and elk tossed their antlers between the stately firs of the upland, and pheasant and grouse whirred among the branches. Geese, cranes, ducks, and swans, in countless numbers, darkened the lagoons amid the many islands enclosed by the mouths of the Willamette and the adjacent waters of the larger stream.
Fish of many varieties, the royal Chinook salmon, king of food fish, being at the head in beauty and edibility, though surpa.s.sed in size by the gigantic sturgeon, which sometimes weighed a thousand pounds, abounded in the River. No epicure of the world"s capitals could command such viands as nature brought to the doors of the denizens of Fort Vancouver.
The fort itself was laid out on a scale of amplitude suitable to the s.p.a.ciousness of the site. It was enclosed with a picket wall twenty feet high, with ma.s.sive b.u.t.tresses of timber inside. This enclosure was a parallelogram seven hundred and fifty by five hundred feet. Inside were about forty buildings, the governor"s residence of generous dimensions being in the centre. Two chapels provided for the spiritual needs of the company, while schoolhouse, stores, "bachelors" halls," and shops of various kinds attested the variety of the needs. Along the bank of the River, outside the enclosure, lay quite a village of cottages for the married employees, together with hospital, boathouses, granaries, warehouses, threshing mills, and dairy buildings.
Taken altogether Fort Vancouver was the model fort of the western slope.
Moreover, the fertile soil and genial, humid climate soon encouraged the factors of the Company to experiment with gardens and orchards, and, within a few years after founding, fifteen hundred acres of land were in the finest state of productivity, while three thousand head of cattle, twenty-five hundred sheep, three hundred brood mares, and over a hundred milch cows, added their bounteous contributions to the already plentiful resources of the fort.
With this rich larder, with the s.p.a.cious buildings, with the annual arrivals and departures of ships by sea and fleets of bateaux by river, with hunting trips and Indian policies, with the intercoast traffic with the Russians on the north and the Spaniards on the south,--there was as much to engage and delight the minds of these people as if they had lived in the heart of civilisation.
Any account of Fort Vancouver would be incomplete without some reference to Dr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Company in the Columbia district from 1824 to the time of his retirement from the Company in 1846 and settlement at Oregon City, Oregon, as an American citizen. Rarely has any one in the stormy history of the Columbia Basin received such unvarying and unqualified praise as has this truly great man. Physically, mentally, and morally, Dr. McLoughlin was altogether exceptional among the mixed population that gathered about the emporium of the traders. Six feet four inches in height, his n.o.ble and expressive face crowned with a great cascade of snowy hair, firm yet kindly, prompt and businesslike yet sympathetic and helpful, "Old Whitehead" or "White Eagle," as the Indians called him, was a true-born king of men.
We have said that Fort Vancouver was the great central fort. The others commanding the pivotal points upon the River and its tributaries were Fort Hall and Fort Boise on the Snake, Spokane House on the Spokane near the present metropolis of the Inland Empire, Fort Colville on the river of the same name near its junction with the Columbia, Fort Okanogan at the junction of the stream of that name with the great River, Fort Owen in the Coeur d"Alene region, Fort Simcoe in the Yakima country, Fort Walla Walla, first known as Fort Nez Perce, on the Columbia at the mouth of the Walla Walla, and Fort George on the former site of Astoria. These forts were all laid out in the same general fashion as Fort Vancouver, though no one was so large, elaborate, or comfortable. Besides the forts there were a number of small trading posts. The chief furs procured in the interior were beaver, and those on the coast were sea-otter. Many others, as the mink, sharp-toothed otter, fox, lynx, racc.o.o.n, were found in abundance.
The profits of the business were immense. Alexander Ross relates that he secured one morning before breakfast one hundred and ten beaver skins for a single yard of white cloth. Ross spent one hundred and eighty-eight days alone in the Yakima country. During that time he collected one thousand five hundred and fifty beavers, besides other peltries, worth in the Canton market two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds, which cost him in his objects of trade only thirty-five pounds. That was while Ross was connected with the Astor Company.
In completing this necessarily hurried chapter on the fascinating era of the fur-traders, we cannot omit a brief reference to the movements of the regular brigades of boats up and down the River, for these comprised a great part of both the business and the romance of the age. The course of these brigades was from the southern sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay, through Manitoba, to the crest of the Rockies at the head of the Columbia. Water was utilised to the greatest possible extent, while at the portages and across the mountains horse-power and man-power were employed. Once afloat upon the Columbia, the brigades braved most of the rapids, paying occasional toll of men and goods to the envious deities of the waters, yet with marvellous skill and general fortune making their way down the thousand or more miles from Boat Encampment to Fort Vancouver. The descent was easy compared with the ascent. The first journey of the east-bound brigade of the North-westers from Astoria to Montreal was in 1814, and it required the time from April 4th to May 11th to reach the mouth of Canoe River, the point at which they entered upon the mountain climb to the head of the Athabasca.
The boatmen were French-Canadians, a hardy, mercurial, light-hearted race, half French, with the natural grace and politeness of their race, and having the pleasant patois which has made them the theme of much popular present-day literature. They were half Indian, either in tastes and manners or in blood, with the atmosphere of forests and streams clinging to every word and gesture. They were perhaps the best boatmen in the world. Upon those matchless lakes into which the Columbia and its tributaries expand at intervals the fur-laden boats would glide at ease, while the wild songs of the _coureurs des bois_ would echo from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e in lazy sibilations, apparently betokening no thought of serious or earnest business. But once the rapids were reached, the gay and rollicking knight of the paddle became all attention. With keen eyes fixed on every swirl or rock, he guided the light craft with a ready skill which would be inconceivable to one less daring and experienced. The brigades would run almost all the rapids from Death Rapids to the sea, making portages at Kettle Falls, Tumwater or Celilo Falls, and the Cascades, though at some stages of the water they could run down even them. They always had to carry around those points in ascending the River. In spite of all the skill of the _voyageurs_ the Columbia and the Snake, the Pend Oreille and the Kootenai have exacted a heavy toll of life from those who have laid their compelling hands upon the white manes of chute and cataract. Many, even of the _voyageurs_, are the human skeletons that have whitened the volcanic beds of the great streams.
The boats used by the fur brigades were either log canoes obtained of the Indians or bateaux. The former were hollowed from the magnificent cedars which grew on the banks of the River, sometimes fifty or sixty feet long, with prow carved in fantastic, even beautiful fashion. They would hold from six to twenty persons with from half a ton to two or three tons of load, yet were so light that two men could carry one of the medium size while four could handle one of any size around a portage. But the _voyageurs_ never took quite so much to the canoes as did the Indians, whose skill in handling them in high waves is described by Ross and Franchere as something astonishing. And even the Indians of the present show much the same ability, though the splendid cedar canoes are no longer made, and only here and there can one of the picturesque survivors be seen.
The bateaux were boats of peculiar shape, being built very high and broad so that in an unloaded condition they seemed to rest on the water almost like a paper sh.e.l.l. Both ends were high and pointed as prows. They were propelled with oars and steered with paddles. One of the usual size was about thirty feet long and five feet wide. Being of light-draft, double-enders, capable of holding large loads and yet easily conveyed around portages, more steady and roomy than canoes, these bateaux were the typical Columbia River medium of commerce during the era of the fur-traders. They, too, have mainly vanished from the scenes of their former glory. Canoes, bateaux, cries and yells of Indians, songs of _voyageurs_, have gone into the engulfing limbo of the bygone, along with the keen-eyed Scotch factor and the sharp-featured Yankee skipper. Yet the swans and geese and ducks still darken the more placid expanses of the River and the salmon still start the widening circles in almost undiminished numbers, while the glaciated heights of Hood and Adams and St. Helens (we would rather say Wiyeast, Klickitat, and Loowit) still stand guard over the unchanging waters.
This part of our topic has mainly centred upon the British possession of the River. A full history of the fur era on the River would demand a chapter on the later attempts of three remarkable men to reestablish American interests in the disputed territory. These men were Jedediah Smith, Capt. E. L. Bonneville, and Nathaniel J. Wyeth. But though these men belong properly to this era, their efforts in the fur-trade were relatively unimportant in comparison with the influence of their lives in the direction of permanent American occupation. It seemed the appointment of destiny that the American should play second fiddle to his British rival in the fur-trade. But as tenfold, a thousandfold compensation, the American farmers, home-builders, and tradesmen were to acquire final possession of one of the goodliest lands on which the Stars and Stripes has ever floated. The bateaux and canoes must needs give way to the steamboat and the launch, the _coureur des bois_ to the lumberman and the miner and farmer, and the picturesque emporium of the British fur-trader on the River to the modern American city. We shall, therefore, more fittingly chronicle the later American fur-traders as a part of the march of their countrymen to permanent ownership of Oregon.
CHAPTER VI
The Coming of the Missionaries to the Tribes of the River
Journey of the Nez Perce Chiefs to Find the White Man"s Book of Life--Interest Excited among Christian People by this Event--Methodist Church Leads in Preparing for a Missionary Party--Jason Lee and his Mission near Chemeketa--The Reinforcement by the _Lausanne_--Importance of Jason Lee as a Force in Oregon History--The Missions of the American Board at Walla Walla, Lapwai, and Tshimakain--Preliminary Journey of Whitman and Parker in 1835--The Wedding Journey from Missouri to the Columbia in 1836--Dr. Whitman and his a.s.sociates and their Traits of Character--On the Summit of South Pa.s.s--Whitman"s Waggon--Arrival at Vancouver and Conference with McLoughlin--Locations of the Missionaries--Reinforcement in 1838--Friendship of the Nez Perces--First Printing Press--Whitman"s Ride in 1842-43--The Catholic Missions--Fathers Blanchet, Demers, and De Smet--Influence of the Missions.