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.

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.

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.