The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. IV / March, 1903-December, 1903
Date: 2012-11-26T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Oregon -- History -- Periodicals

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Title: The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. IV

Author: Oregon Historical Society

Editor: Frederic G. Young

Release date: November 26, 2012 [eBook #41493]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUARTERLY OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY, VOL. IV ***

Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

On page 80, "mearly" may be a typo for "merely".

On page 98, "could't" may be a typo for "couldn't".

The text refers to both "The Dalles" and "the Dalles".

On page 160, "ever charge" may be a typo for "every charge".

On page 178 and 179, Rev. Waller's name is spelled as Alvan then Alvin.

On page 274, "Lahiana" may be a typo for "Lahaina".

THE
QUARTERLY
OF THE
OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

VOLUME IV
MARCH, 1903-DECEMBER, 1903

Edited by Frederic George Young

J. R. WHITNEY, STATE PRINTER
SALEM, OREGON

CONTENTS.

SUBJECT INDEX.

PAGE
Astoria, The Educational History of. Alfred A. Cleveland | 21-32
Astoria, Social and Economic History of. Alfred A. Cleveland | 130-149
Baker, Dorsey S.: A Pioneer Railroad Builder. Miles C. Moore | 195-201
Bancroft, The Origin and Authorship of the Pacific States Publications: A History of a History. William Alfred Morris | 287-364
Calapooia, The Upper. George O. Goodall | 70-77
Captain of Industry in Oregon, A Pioneer (Joseph Watt). James R. Robertson | 150-167
Centennial, The Lewis and Clark. F. G. Young | 1-20
Corrections, Some. F. G. Young and H. S. Lyman | 86-87, 286, 409
Civil War, Oregon and its Share in the. Robert Treat Platt | 89-109
Code of Oregon, History of the Preparation of the First. James K. Kelly | 185-194
Cone, Anson Sterling, Reminiscences of. H. S. Lyman | 251-258
Documents:—

First Installment—Two Whitman Sources: "Arrival from Oregon"—an editorial from the New York Daily Tribune of March 29, 1843, and "Cruising in the Sound"—communication to the New York Spectator, April 5, 1843; newspaper excerpts relating to the Oregon emigration movement 1842-1843

168-184

Second Installment—Oregon material taken from file of an Independence (Mo.) and Weston (Mo.) paper for 1844-1845 and from other papers in that vicinity

270-286

Third Installment—Letter of Jedediah S. Smith, David E. Jackson, and William L. Sublette (1830) giving an account of the taking of the first wagons to the Rocky Mountains and of the Hudson Bay Company post, Fort Vancouver, also operations of Company in Oregon Country & excerpts from St. Louis papers, 1832-1848, on the migration to and settlement of Oregon

394-409

Early Days in Oregon, Glimpses of. Charlotte Moffett Cartwright | 55-69
Easts, Two, The Great West and the. Henry E. Reed | 110-129
Economic History of Astoria, Social and. Alfred A. Cleveland | 130-149
Educational History of Astoria, The. Alfred A. Cleveland | 21-32
Holman, Joseph, Short Biography of. Dictated by himself | 392-394
Hopkins, Mrs. Rebeka, Reminiscences. H. S. Lyman | 259-261
Independence (Mo.), Excerpts from papers of | 270-286
Indian Tradition, Minto Pass; Its History and an. John Minto | 241-250
Indian Wars of Southern Oregon. William M. Colvig | 227-240
Industry, a Pioneer Captain of, in Oregon. (Joseph Watt) | 150-167
Jackson, David E., Letter of, with Jedediah S. Smith and William L. Sublette | 395-398
La Bonte's, Louis, Recollections of Men. H. S. Lyman | 264-266
Lane County, Early Schools in. Jos. H. Sharp | 267-268
Lewis and Clark, The, Centennial. F. G. Young | 1-20
Minto Pass: Its History and an Indian Tradition. John Minto | 241-250
Montures on French Prairie, The. S. A. Clarke | 268-269
Oregon and Its Share in the Civil War. Robert Treat Platt | 89-109
Oregon, History of the Preparation of the First Code of. James K. Kelly | 185-194
Oregon, Indian Wars of Southern. William M. Colvig | 227-240
Pacific States Publications, The Origin and Authorship of the Bancroft. William Alfred Morris | 287-364
Papers, Pioneer, of Puget Sound. Clarence B. Bagley | 365-385
Paternalism, An Object Lesson in. T. W. Davenport | 33-54
Puget Sound, Pioneer Papers of. Clarence B. Bagley | 365-385
Railroad Builder, A Pioneer: Dorsey S. Baker. Miles C. Moore | 195-201
Rees, Willard H., In Memoriam of. John Minto | 386-391
Reminiscences Anson Sterling Cone. Mrs. Rebeka Hopkins, Mrs. Anna Tremewan, and Louis La Bonte | 251-266
San Francisco. From Walla Walla to Captain John Mullan, U. S. A. | 202-226
Schools, Early, in Lane County. Jos. H. Sharp | 267-268
Social and Economic History of Astoria. Alfred A. Cleveland | 130-149
Smith, Jedediah S., Letter of, with David E. Jackson and William L. Sublette | 395-398
Southern Oregon, Indian Wars of. William M. Colvig | 227-240
Sublette, William L., Letter of, with David E. Jackson and Jedediah S. Smith | 395-398
Tremewan, Mrs. Anna, Reminiscences of. H. S. Lyman | 261-264
Walla Walla, From, to San Francisco. Captain John Mullan, U. S. A. | 202-226
West, The Great, and the Two Easts. Henry E. Reed | 110-129
Weston (Mo.), Excerpts from papers of | 270-286
Wood, Tallmadge B., Letters of | 80-85

AUTHORS' INDEX.

PAGE
Bagley, Clarence B.—Pioneer Papers of Puget Sound | 365-385
Cartwright, Charlotte Moffett—Glimpses of Early Days in Oregon | 55-69
Clarke, S. A.—The Montures on French Prairie | 268-269
Cleveland, Alfred A.—The Educational History of Astoria | 21-32
Cleveland, Alfred A.—Social and Economic History of Astoria | 130-143
Colvig, William M.—Indian Wars of Southern Oregon | 227-240
Davenport, T. W.—An Object Lesson in Paternalism | 33-54
Goodall, George O.—The Upper Calapooia | 70-77
Jackson, David E.—Letter of, with Smith and Sublette | 395-398
Kelly, James K.—History of the Preparation of the First Code of Oregon | 185-194
Lyman, Horace S.—Reminiscences of, Anson Sterling Cone; Mrs. Rebeka Hopkins; Mrs. Anna Tremewan; Louis La Bonte | 251-266
Lyman, Horace S.—Some Corrections | 86-87
Minto, John—Minto Pass: Its History and an Indian Tradition | 241-250
Minto, John—In Memoriam of Willard H. Rees | 386-391
Moore, Miles C.—A Pioneer Railroad Builder: Dorsey S. Baker | 195-201
Mullan, Captain John—From Walla Walla to San Francisco | 202-226
Platt, Robert Treat—Oregon and Its Share in the Civil War | 89-109
Reed, Henry E.—The Great West and the Two Easts | 110-129
Robertson, James Rood—A Pioneer Captain of Industry in Oregon (Joseph Watt) | 150-167
Sharp, Jos. H.—Early Schools in Lane County | 267-268
Smith, Jedediah S.—Letter of, with Jackson and Sublette | 395-398
Sublette, William L.—Letter of, with Jackson and Smith | 395-398
Wood, Tallmadge B.—Letters of | 80-86
Young, Frederic George—The Lewis and Clark Centennial | 1-20

THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
Oregon Historical Society.

Volume IV.]                    MARCH, 1903                    [Number 1

THE LEWIS AND CLARK CENTENNIAL.
THE OCCASION AND ITS OBSERVANCE.

Much that seems favorable, and not a little that is clearly unfavorable, has come to the Lewis and Clark Centennial because its date is just a year later than that of the Louisiana Purchase Centennial. A striking advantage in this close succession is, however, still to be used. It is the idea of a centennial at Portland in the Columbia Valley in the very next year following one at Saint Louis on the Mississippi that needs to be exploited. In this close succession of these two centennials of the access of the American nationality to regions of which one lies far beyond the other we have the key to the fullest interpretation of the national significance of the anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Nothing else could so tellingly exhibit the basis for a peculiar national interest in our anniversary as the fact that it is virtually contemporary with that to be observed at Saint Louis. The purchase of Louisiana bears practically the same natal relation to the western half of the Mississippi Valley that the Lewis and Clark expedition does to the Pacific Northwest. This the average American citizen no doubt finds it hard to realize. Oregon, however, can boast age over the other commonwealths west of the Mississippi, excepting only Missouri and Iowa and they are barely older.

The western half of the Mississippi Valley has far outstripped us in material development. Nevertheless, considering the conditions of isolation under which the people of Oregon have labored they can be justly proud of the progress that has been made here in all lines of endeavor. Saint Louis will be justified in vaunting in 1904 the achievements and results of a century of development in the region of which she is the metropolis; but Portland, as the metropolis of the Pacific Northwest, would have been culpably derelict if she had not undertaken an observance of the centennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition that shall emphasize to the nation and to the world the significance of the occupation of the Pacific coast by the American people, and to foster the aspirations of one of the most favored sections on the face of the earth. The basis of our claim to a national recognition of our anniversary is something more solid than the fact that we have added what we have to the material strength of the nation. The secret of the unparalleled effort that Oregon proposes to make for the observance of the Lewis and Clark centennial lies deeper than a mere feeling of exultation over material development and the hope of advertising our resources to the world.

The Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition has clearly two unique and complementary missions. It should bring fully into the national consciousness the historic services through which this nation attained an outlook upon the Pacific comparable with that on the Atlantic, and the significance of this to the future of the American people. It should address itself to the peculiar problems of progress on this coast and thus mark an epoch in the added impetus, the better organization, and the higher aims it gives us as a people; rightly planned it would be an exposition of patriotic national services and of the problems of largest social progress—an exposition of western history and western problems.

The Lewis and Clark expedition and the Oregon movement, or the American movement to the Pacific, which the Lewis and Clark expedition initiated, have not yet had anything like an adequate interpretation in American history. Oregon represents the greatest opportunity in our national life—an opportunity that the fathers of Oregon made as well as seized. A sequel to the Oregon opportunity, or rather a part of it, were the immense gains south of the forty-second parallel on the Pacific Slope. Through the Oregon opportunity realized this American democracy has a territorial basis for supremacy among the nations of the world, and this nation and all mankind will profit from it to the end of time. The Louisiana Purchase was not an opportunity made, but only one accepted when it was tossed into the nation's lap. The Oregon opportunity, as it stands in history and in promise for the future—in what is realized and in what is only potential—is in its import only second to the American opportunity. It had to do with the winning of a domain that made our nation four-square and continental, with a national territory commensurate with the spirit and possibilities of the American people.

The development of the situation on this coast, which the Lewis and Clark expedition converted into America's opportunity, was something like this: Four hundred years ago this continent lay unoccupied save by a race destined to melt away before the onslaughts of the sturdier European. The Spaniard, schooled by eight centuries of crusading against the Moor, whom he had finally driven from Spanish soil, was in the moment of victory, when his hands were free and spirit exultant, pointed by Columbus the supposed way to the Indies, long-famed for unparalleled riches. Spanish hopes were high and the cavaliers came on.

They passed by the West Indies in quest of gold. Cortes and Pizarro found something of their hearts' desire in Mexico and Peru. So on they pressed down the west coast of South America and up the west coast of North America and across the Pacific; but the vigor of the Spaniard was about wasted. He hung helplessly to his outposts on the flanks of the Pacific Northwest. At the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century he rallied and sent vessels up and down the coast of Oregon; but his explorations were not determinate, and they were not followed by occupation. Early in the eighteenth century the Muscovite, advancing eastward across Siberia, had reached the shores of the Pacific, and soon gained a foothold on our northern shores, with designs on all this coast. England, too, was ready to have a hand in the contest for this last great territorial prize on the North American continent. Elated by her decisive victories over her mortal enemy, France, and, by the treaty of Paris, 1763, the proud possessor of all of the eastern half of this continent, of India, mistress of the seas, conscious also of the great advantages that the invention of the steam engine, the power loom and other machinery gave her, she dispatched explorers to scan the different quarters of the globe for new possessions. Captain Cook outlined the shores of Australia and of many other lands of the south seas, and in 1778 was off the Oregon coast. At the same time enterprising Britons were pressing westward along the Great Lakes and overland toward this still available portion of the continent. Thus, the progressive nations of the world were closing in on this last choice imperial domain of the temperate zone awaiting a pre-emptor—the possessor of which would be the natural master of the Pacific. At this critical juncture the then young American nation was fortunate in the spirit of maritime enterprise among the merchants of Boston. Seeking the profits of trade in furs which the voyage of Cook had revealed, they sent Captains Gray and Kendrick to the North Pacific coast, and in 1792 Gray, in the ship Columbia, performed the feat that secured to this country priority of right to the basin of the Columbia. Still more fortunate was this country at this time in having the prescient mind of Thomas Jefferson devoted to its interests. While Gray's vessel was lying in the Columbia he was getting up a subscription for sending explorers overland to the Pacific. Even ten years before this he had proposed an expedition to the Pacific under the leadership of George Rogers Clark. He then had it in mind to head off an English enterprise of which he had heard; but it was not until 1803, twenty years after his first effort in this direction, that Jefferson succeeded in getting the means for the first and by far the most important of our national exploring expeditions—the Lewis and Clark.

But this was not simply an exploring expedition. It represents better than any other one event the expansion of this nation from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The expedition was great not merely even in what it symbolizes. It was grandly great in itself, in its inception, and in execution. It was the herald of the American democracy making its way across the continent to the Pacific, but it was more. There was the highest nobility of purpose in its inception, and matchless skill and fortitude in its execution. Not only in the train of its consequences, but in every aspect was it glorious and worthy of a national celebration. The burden of the special message of January 18, 1803, through which President Jefferson secured an appropriation for it, was the maintenance of the factory system, or the trading posts, among the Indian tribes of the west. Jefferson took keenest delight in a project to extend the bounds of knowledge and which he hoped would open a water route of commerce across the continent with Asia. Yet on the face of it the Lewis and Clark expedition had primarily its inception as a means for promoting the success of these government trading posts among the Indians. This governmental policy, connected with the administration of the factory system, was the one comprehensive, wise, and humane national effort to raise a lower race to the plane of civilization. The idea was to supply the Indian at cost, in exchange for his furs and other products, the implements of husbandry and the comforts of civilized life, at the same time to protect him from the demoralizing influences of the vicious among the white men. The Lewis and Clark expedition was thus in its origin associated with a work of the largest philanthropy, "a system," says Captain Chittenden, author of "The American Fur Trade in the Far West," "which, if followed out as it should have been, would have led the Indian to his new destiny by easy stages, and would have averted the long and bloody wars, corruption, and bad faith, which have gained for a hundred years of our dealings with the Indians the unenviable distinction of a 'Century of Dishonor.'"

In his instructions to the leaders of the expedition Jefferson showed the tenderest solicitude for the welfare of the red man. The expedition could not have been in better hands. Captain Chittenden says of it: "This celebrated performance stands as incomparably the most perfect achievement of its kind in the history of the world." Dr. Elliott Coues has this about it: "The story of this adventure stands easily first and alone. This is our national epic of exploration." To appreciate the unique skill of leadership in this expedition we need but compare its success with the wretched failure of the "Yellowstone Expedition" of 1820, which was to have gone over but a part of the route of Lewis and Clark. This had an outfit many times more expensive than that of Lewis and Clark and ten times as many men; but it went to pieces before it got beyond what is now Omaha.

Unique as the Lewis and Clark expedition was in its original purposes and in its execution, the Oregon people are sponsors for the celebration of its coming centennial anniversary mainly because of the consequences with which it was fraught. Theodore Roosevelt, in his "Winning of the West," speaks of it as opening "the door into the heart of the West." His book has the date mark "1896." It was written before the battle of Manila, and the treaty closing the Spanish-American war which placed the Philippines permanently under our care, before America's determining part in preserving the integrity of China after the quelling of the Boxer insurrection. It was written before President Roosevelt had set his eyes upon the Pacific Northwest. If, after the latter days of this month (May), he ever again has occasion to characterize the import of the Lewis and Clark expedition, his dictum will be more like this: "It led to the acquisition of the whole Pacific Coast, containing the fairest and richest regions under the American flag, and made inevitable the American mastery of the Pacific and American supremacy among the nations of the world." It is, surely, not preposterous to expect a revision of the verdict of history on the significance of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Henry Adams, than whom no scholar has done better work on the history of the United States, in volume IV of his history, with date mark, 1890, speaks of the Lewis and Clark expedition in this wise: "The crossing of the continent was a great feat, but it was nothing more. * * Great gains to civilization could be made only on the Atlantic coast under the protection of civilized life." Mr. Adams in this estimate seems wholly blind to the fact that nations like individuals have opportunities presented to them which seized may not give immediate results but which have an ever increasing influence upon their destiny. In the Lewis and Clark expedition this nation took the flood tide to world supremacy. Three years ago, when American arms and diplomacy were exercising such a determining influence on the problem of mankind in China, I heard Prof. F. J. Turner of the University of Wisconsin, the highest authority on western history, who writes so forcibly on the Louisiana Purchase in the current number of the Review of Reviews, say, that "the occupation of the Pacific Coast by the American people was not only the greatest event in American history, but a great event in all history."

That the American movement Oregonward and Pacificward followed strictly in the wake of the Lewis and Clark expedition has many proofs. Even before Lewis and Clark reached Saint Louis on their homeward journey they met parties of traders and trappers bound for the heart of the wilderness from which they were returning. These were acting on the information Lewis and Clark had sent back from their Mandan winter quarters. A few months after they reached Saint Louis the Missouri Fur Company was organized to conduct operations on the Upper Missouri, that is, on the trail of Lewis and Clark. Four years later John Jacob Astor organized the Pacific Fur Company, and devised plans including a great emporium at the mouth of the Columbia, trade with China on the west, with the Russian settlements on the north, and a line of trading posts overland on the Lewis and Clark route. Astor's scheme was a feasible one, but the war of 1812 came on and England dispatched a vessel to capture the American post on the Columbia. Before this reached Astoria the British sympathizers among Astor's partners sold him out. Astor was probably the first to have a vision not only of what the nation was to gain on this coast, but also of what more might have been gained had President Madison been as bold in regard to his enterprise as was Jefferson in the Louisiana purchase. Had this been so Captain Chittenden thinks "the political map of North America would not be what it is to-day," implying that there would have been an uninterrupted American Pacific coast line from the extreme north to the Mexican boundary.

So far our rights to the region were based on priority in discovery, in exploration, and in occupation; but now for a period of thirty years the British Hudson Bay Company was to have almost undisputed possession. However, the rights established by Gray, Lewis and Clark, and Astor did not lapse and could not be set aside through occupation by a mere trading company. During nearly all of this thirty-year period the Boston schoolmaster, Hall J. Kelley, was agitating the colonization of Oregon, and in 1832, and again in 1834, Nathaniel J. Wyeth, with herculean effort, indomitable perseverance, and incredible energy led expeditions to the Columbia only to meet with disaster when with his slender means he was pitted against the mighty corporation in possession here. With Wyeth came the first party of missionaries. The "Mountain Men"—retired trappers—soon followed, seeking homes here; and, beginning with 1842, annual migrations of thousands of Oregon pioneers were on the way. The Lewis and Clark exploration had thus led to a national movement—"the migration of a people," says Captain Chittenden, "seeking to avail itself of opportunities which have come but rarely in the history of the world, and which will never come again." The route traced by these Oregon pioneers will some day be restored as a national memorial highway, and will be celebrated in song and story, every mile of which has the tenderest associations of hardship and suffering, but also of high purpose and stern determination; and yet the Oregon trail was in the strictest sense a derivative of the Lewis and Clark trail. For nearly twenty years the Lewis and Clark route up the Missouri River had been the only one used to reach the Rocky-mountain wilderness, but in the fall of 1823 a party of trappers, pushing westward from the Yellowstone and desirous of avoiding the implacable Blackfeet on the Upper Missouri, turned to the south and discovered in South Pass, an easy crossing of the Rocky Mountains. The region beyond on the headwaters of the Green and Snake rivers, and in the basin of the Great Salt Lake, was found to be rich in furs. Henceforth to some point in this region the annual cavalcades of the fur companies would come and there meet their own trappers, the free trappers, and the Indians of all the interior country. This was the annual rendezvous for trading, for the delivery of the season's catch of furs, and for equipment for the next year's activity. In making this annual round trip from Saint Louis the original route into this transmontane country, the half-circle route along the Missouri, was naturally abandoned for a great cut-off from the western borders of Missouri to the South Pass. A direct route northwestward across the plains of present Kansas and Nebraska to the Platte, up the Platte and the North Fork and its tributary, the Sweetwater, was found to be the finest natural highway in the world. To reach Oregon the pioneers took this great cut off of the Lewis and Clark trail, and from its western terminus on the upper waters of the Snake they had but to follow the route of Hunt's Astor party until the original Lewis and Clark trail was struck again on the Columbia. The Lewis and Clark trail was thus the basis from which was developed the Oregon trail.

During the forties, when the national movement was setting strongly towards the Pacific, Oregon was an uppermost subject in the thought, and frequently in the plans, of a large portion of the people of this country. Oregon pioneers were clinching our hold upon the Pacific coast. The party slogan of "fifty-four forty or fight" in 1844 had response deep in the hearts of a great majority of the people of the northern part of the Mississippi Valley, and stirred the whole nation. American influences and activities in California from 1846 on radiated mainly from Oregon. Captain Fremont was sent out originally to explore the best route to Oregon, and went to California from Oregon. William Marshall, the discoverer of gold in California in 1848 was an Oregon pioneer of 1844. Peter H. Burnett, the first governor of California, was an Oregon pioneer of 1843. The exclusion of slave labor from the mines of California was largely due to the "Columbia-river men." But now at the close of the forties came the diversion of the national interest from Oregon amounting almost to an eclipse of Oregon for some fifty years. The annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, the gold discovery in California, the opening of the Kansas and Nebraska lands, the civil war, the development of the manufacturing industries, the occupation of the Dakotas, absorbed in turn the main attention and energies of the nation, leaving outlying Oregon in comparative obscurity, with resources developing but slowly.

Oregon's day, however, is dawning again. America's surplus energy is no longer absorbed in gold mining in California, in occupying the plains of Kansas, Nebraska, or the Dakotas. The overloaded passenger trains to the Pacific Northwest tell unmistakably the nation's need of this region. It needs our farm lands. It will more and more urgently need our lumber and our water power and our outlook upon the Pacific; and to whom do the American people owe the possession of these incomparable and growing boons but to Lewis and Clark and to the pioneers to whom Lewis and Clark pointed the way. Governor Chamberlain was right the other night when at Boise he spoke of the Lewis and Clark expedition as Jefferson's greatest act. Alongside the two inscriptions on Jefferson's monument selected by him, namely, that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence and that he was the founder of the University of Virginia, posterity will fain inscribe the fact that he was the promoter and organizer of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The observance of the Lewis and Clark Centennial, therefore, is an occasion in which the American people as a whole and through their government have the largest reasons for generous participation. For great was the Oregon opportunity to the nation and the Lewis and Clark expedition was the key that opened it. All honor from the nation at large is due to those who made this national opportunity and seized it. The possession of the Pacific coast was the corollary and sequel to the Oregon movement; but the Oregon movement itself was corollary to nothing less than the spirit and vigor of the American people and their foothold upon this continent.

We have, then, a national occasion second only to that of Philadelphia in 1876; and the first great mission of the centennial will be realized when its occasion has been so interpreted and enforced that a hearty and liberal participation in the celebration on the part of the nation has been secured so that our American national consciousness may fully realize what has been "the course of empire" with us as a nation and what it is almost certain to be in the future.

The accomplishment of the other mission of the exposition requires a true interpretation of the problem of largest progress for the Pacific Northwest. Expositions worthy of the name can not be "hit or miss" affairs. They are not mere congeries of remarkable products. An exposition should have an organic unity and a distinct aim. Its aim must bear directly on the highest interests of the supporting community. There are peculiar reasons for the exercise of the highest degree of care and insight in the organization of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. No people ever before invested so heavily in proportion to their means as Portland and Oregon propose to invest in the Lewis and Clark Centennial. No exposition was ever held in a community so plastic, so completely in the making as are Portland and Oregon. The current of common thought and effort is so strongly set toward the Lewis and Clark Centennial that the very cast of Oregon's civilization in the future will surely come from what is realized in that event. The exposition will leave an inspired, unified, and enlightened people, with ideals newly defined and elevated; or it will be followed by more or less of humiliation, factional strife, disgrace, blighting discouragement, with sordid ideals and disordered social relations.

Most auspicious was Oregon's response to the idea of a celebration. Stronger faith in the good that may come from unity in action toward higher things no other people has ever shown; and why should not Oregon have faith in greater things for herself and the Pacific Northwest? The Pacific Northwest bears almost exactly the same relation to the rest of the nation east of us geographically, historically, and economically that Greece bore to the Orient, and that England bore to the continental nations of Europe.

I take it, then, that the normal attitude towards the exposition project is one that regards it as a serious undertaking, having tremendous possibilities for making or marring much in the future of Oregon. The exposition comes when Oregon is just at the flood tide of new opportunities—opportunities that require twentieth century enlightenment on the part of the masses if these opportunities are to yield anything like unmixed good. Just as the Lewis and Clark expedition was the key that opened the Oregon opportunity to the nation so is the Lewis and Clark Centennial admirably adapted to become the key to open the way to the highest development of industrial democracy in the Pacific Northwest and to realize its leadership in social progress on this continent. We have, I think, a fine example given us by the authorities of Louisiana Purchase Exposition of how to plan definitely an exposition to accomplish a great purpose. The main idea with them is to make a world's fair for the first time represent the world in epitome as a "going concern." They thus express their main purpose: "As to the lesson for the world, the Directorate desire to make a leading point. It is to show life and movement. * * An attempt will be made to put the world before the eye of the visitor, each exhibit being so displayed as to make plain its story, its purpose, and its aim." And again: "The Department of Education is made the first department of the classification in accordance with the theory upon which the entire exposition is founded. * * * Through education man comes to a knowledge of his powers, and of the possibilities of life, and upon it are dependent the processes which extend throughout all the fields of industry. This correlation of the powers of the brain and of the hand of man, extending throughout the entire exhibit scheme of the exposition, will, for the first time in the history of expositions, afford a strictly scientific basis for the collection and classification of objects." And finally: "At Saint Louis, the prevailing characteristic, it is intended, shall be life and motion, and the installation of products and processes in juxtaposition. The classification is based upon this plan, and its effects upon the proportions of the buildings is noticeable in that Machinery Hall is relatively so small in area. The machines through whose operation raw material is converted into use and the processes employed in utilizing natural products will be exhibited, so that not only will the fund of human information be greatly increased, but suggestion will be made to students, scientists, and inventors that will give still greater development to genius in the following than in the preceding decade."

The World's Fair, in this carefully planned purpose, affords a fine model for the Lewis and Clark Exposition. But Portland is not simply to do for the Pacific Northwest and the other peoples in close economic and commercial relations with it what Saint Louis aspires to do for the world. Saint Louis undertakes what was distinctively the nineteenth century problem—that of mastery by man of the physical forces of the world and of more nearly perfect adjustment to his natural environment. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, with its World Congress of the Arts and Sciences, and all of its exhibits arranged to promote the development of invention and the application of scientific methods to industry, has a great mission; and yet the peculiar field which belongs to the Lewis and Clark Exposition gives it, if not a greater mission, at least one more advanced—if you please a twentieth century mission. Man in the Pacific Northwest has a peculiar problem. All the science and art of the past are his legacy. They fairly press in upon him in their appeal to him for utilization here. Man here has a physical environment so rich and so diversified as not only to invite the largest application of science and art, but also one that demands the highest organization of associated effort. In other words, the Pacific Northwest places man in such relation to history, to nature, and to his fellow-man, as to promise him here, if his inheritance is not sold for a mess of pottage, man's highest development. It rests with the Lewis and Clark Exposition to rise to the occasion. For it represents a first possible step in a grand cooperative effort to develop a social environment here commensurate with what nature has done for us. If for a ruthless, wasteful course of social evolution that would never reach any desirable goal we would realize one of steady, frictionless progress, with opportunities of fullest life open to all, we must make the Lewis and Clark Centennial fulfill its high mission. If the people of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest do not persist in their determination to make this concerted effort toward the inauguration of the highest policies of social progress here it is hard to see what occasion can bring them so near this mood again. It is the spell that the commemoration of a great event and a great movement casts over them that will hardly be repeated. The Lewis and Clark Centennial then is the flood tide of opportunity. If it is not seized and we lapse again into mere individualistic policies "all the voyage" of life in the future of the Pacific Northwest will be bound in comparative "shallows and in miseries."

An exposition planned to meet the twentieth century needs becomes the herald of an industrial democracy in which there is a completely harmonious cooperation for the realization of the highest social ideals. It is dawning upon us that publicity is the first condition of relief from the trust evil. We need yet, however, to realize that essential publicity or light is the talisman for developing a true democratic spirit to which are disclosed ever expanding vistas of possibilities. The first great duty of the exposition authorities is to bring to the people of the Pacific Northwest the largest enlightenment on the natural resources of this region. Taking our timber resources as an illustration, we are painfully aware that the timber holdings are not as widely and equably distributed among the masses as one could wish; but we have many rich natural monopolies which the whole people should share. They have common and incalculable permanent interests in the forests of Oregon, in the water power of our streams, in our facilities for irrigation, in the mines, and in the ensemble of natural beauty here. Shall the great natural forest areas in Oregon which may become the source of an ever increasing flow of wealth for all time for the whole people be allowed, without state forestry activity, to become mere waste places for weed trees? We are told by Mr. Elwood Mead, Chief of the Division of Irrigation, that he believes Oregon "has the largest area of unimproved land whereon irrigation is possible of any State in the Union." Here is a great interest in which most fortunately a policy of coöperation between the state and the nation has been instituted. What could be more propitious for the good fortune of the people than an active coöperation between the authorities of the exposition and the United States bureaus of forestry, irrigation, and the United States geological survey in preparing an exhibit of the data on the interests of the people of the State in these natural resources? With such definite, earnest, and laudable purposes in view, Congress and the Administration would respond to the claims of the Lewis and Clark Exposition in a very different spirit from that with which they have met recent expositions.

By means of models, relief maps, photographs, drawings, charts, and graphic representations generally, along with congresses and the discussions by the press, the people, and their legislators, would come to take an intelligent and far-sighted view of these great inheritances of theirs. A whole summer given to the exposition of the people's interests in their common heritage, with the use of the best art of illustration, representation, and elucidation, would awaken a living interest so that they would make sure of their rights, conserve an equality of opportunities and make our natural resources yield their highest social utility. Our experience with our state school lands shows that such a fortunate condition is absolutely impossible without the influence an exposition could exert toward an enlightenment on our public inheritances.

The Municipal Exposition at Dresden, Germany, during this summer, gives a suggestion for a municipal department for our exposition that would work a transformation in our civic spirit and enlightenment. How glorious it would be for Oregon if the Lewis and Clark Fair Clubs would in dead earnest determine to possess themselves of the philosophy of city making, and to do their best to control municipal activity in Oregon so as to make it conserve highest economic and æsthetic ends and bring about rational unity in all municipal development and foster an architectural spirit. Why not commission a delegate to Dresden? Why not begin to make wholesome, beautiful, and edifying the Oregon village and city, so that, as a whole, each may be a positive joy forever? The same strenuous idealism would find a rich field in the affairs of our counties and of our school districts. The Oregon farm must come in for as many meliorating influences as the Oregon town. All that good roads, graded schools, traveling libraries, neighborhood telephones, and model farm establishments can do to elevate the social conditions of farm life will be greatly furthered by the exposition; but the problem that is fundamental with the people, both of the town and of the country, pertains not merely to sharing the unearned increment of the natural and artificial monopolies, but also to participation in the gains of all capitalized industry. It is the problem of "peopleizing" the industries. Corporate organization and management should be a department of the exposition. By the elimination of all the unnecessary risk in investments in corporation securities through effective governmental regulation and supervision the people may gain control and reap the large profits of capitalized industry. The exposition will have its highest mission in securing to the people an interest in the gains and a share in the control of our industrial organizations.

The next generation of Oregonians will not be found wanting in their ardor for the welfare of the state as a whole, in patriotic zeal for the betterment of all the conditions of life here and in aspiration to give the Pacific Northwest leadership in social progress if the schools are furnished the story of the Oregon opportunity as it was made and realized. This, as told by the actors themselves, should be compiled and distributed to the districts. The highest pitch of emulation to the mastery of this story and interest in the aims of the exposition may advisedly be secured by a system of prize essays on important topics pertaining to Oregon's development.

This outline of the features that the exposition might include does not debar from it popular and recreative attractions. It does not slur the exhibition of the remarkable products of the farm, the orchard, the mine, the river, the forests, and the factory. The ideas emphasized will only give these products multiplied significance, bringing them into vital relations with life that is more than meat, drink, and wear. An exposition thus rationally planned will be the poor man's greatest hope. If he loses the aid it would give him toward the right solution of the social problem the odds are terribly against him in the race for an equitable distribution. Such an exposition would go far toward securing an open door to an equality of opportunity for all in Oregon. To block the organization of such an exposition would not be far from social suicide for the masses.

The dominance of economic forces in progress is becoming more and more exclusive. It devolves upon the people to comprehend fully the living forces, and, by comprehending them, put themselves in position to control them and mold them to the higher uses of conserving an equality of opportunity for all. The Lewis and Clark Exposition lends itself wholly to this great mission. It is hard to see how a means quite so propitious will be available again.

F. G. YOUNG.

THE EDUCATIONAL HISTORY OF ASTORIA, OREGON.

The study of the school history of Astoria is of interest to the student of education in that it reveals a condition different from that of some of the other cities of Oregon, particularly those of the Willamette Valley. In the latter, private and public schools struggled for the mastery, with the private school far in the lead for many years.[1] In Astoria, on the contrary, the public school idea had a firm hold from the beginning and asserted itself as soon as the establishment of a public school was possible. The history of Astoria's educational progress, covering a period of fifty-two years, is chiefly the story of the beginning and gradual development of a system of public schools. There is traceable, however, something of the conflict, so prominent elsewhere, between the public and the private school idea.

PRIVATE SCHOOLS.

Astoria's first school, started in 1851, was of necessity private, owing to the fact that the school law, passed in 1849, was practically inoperative, and, in consequence, no public money was available. In the summer of 1851 the Rev. C. O. Hosford, a Methodist minister, at the earnest solicitation of some dozen parents, opened a school near the corner of Eighth and Bond streets, in a small two-room building, erected for use as dwelling house for the teacher, and schoolhouse.[2] This little pioneer school had an enrollment of ten pupils, and was supported by private subscription. Public sentiment favored a public school, and its modifying influence is seen at this time. No tuition was charged the individual pupil, but the parents contributed toward the support of the school each according to his means rather than in proportion to the number of children he sent to the school. Mr. V. Boelling, in addition to furnishing the schoolhouse and residence for the teacher free of charge, contributed twenty of the forty dollars paid monthly to the teacher.[3] The school was in session during the months of June, July, August, and September.[4]

It is probable that between the closing of this school and the starting of the public school proper there were other semi-public schools.[5] Private schools were a necessity in Upper Astoria, owing to the small number of families there and the lack of means of communication between the two parts of the town. There were at least two private schools here prior to 1859, and they were patronized by the children of three families.[6] That this was done in at least one case from necessity, rather than choice, is shown by the fact that one of the patrons of these schools, T. P. Powers, a few years later, was the prime mover in the establishment of the Upper Astoria public school.[7] Miss Pope and Mrs. H. B. Morse were two of the teachers employed in these schools.

In 1864 the first school that was in any sense a rival of the public school was started. The Grace Church Parish School became the rallying point for the first opposition to public education. This support alone would perhaps not have been sufficient to maintain it; but it also filled a place in the educational field which the public school seemed unable to occupy. That there was a real need for the school is apparent from the class of pupils that attended it. Large pupils who, owing to lack of early advantages, were far behind in their classes and who would have preferred to remain away rather than be classed with children much younger than themselves, and pupils advanced beyond the studies offered at the time by the district school, made up a large part of the number in attendance.[8] Latin, algebra, natural philosophy, and other advanced subjects were taught, and pupils for these studies came from the public school which had just previous to this time decided to exclude all branches beyond those usually taught in a district school.[9]

This school was opened in the old "Methodist Church" situated on the corner of Fifteenth Street and Franklin Avenue, and was in charge of the rector of the Episcopal Church, Rev. T. H. Hyland. Mrs. Hyland, who had been a teacher in the East, taught most of the classes.[8] The school was supported entirely by tuition fees which were $7 per quarter of thirteen weeks. Three quarters were taught each year, and the attendance ranged between twenty and thirty pupils.[8]

Rev. Mr. Hyland was appointed to the Astoria parish while it was a missionary station and so received no salary from the home congregation. The parish school was started chiefly as a means of revenue to help pay for the maintenance of the church.[8] Former pupils testify to the excellence of the school and to the popularity of its founders and teachers.

In 1866 the school moved to the rear of the church on Commercial Street, between Eighth and Ninth, and continued regularly until the departure of Rev. Mr. Hyland and wife in 1878.[8]

During the fall and winter of 1876-77 a night school, at which bookkeeping, writing, and arithmetic were taught, was taught by Mr. Kincaid in the Gray building.[10]

In 1878 there were at least four private schools in Astoria. Mrs. Maxwell Young taught a school of twenty-five pupils in a building where St. Mary's Hospital stands.[11] Miss Cora VanDusen taught a summer session in the building near the southeast corner of Tenth and Duane streets, which was rented by the school board and furnished to Miss VanDusen free of charge during the vacation of the public school.[12] When the public school opened in the fall this school was moved to the room formerly occupied by the parish school. Professor Worthington, principal of the public school, taught a private school of six pupils. The fourth private school was taught by Miss Johnson.

The increase in the number of private schools was due to two causes: dissatisfaction in some quarters with some action of the principal of the "lower town school,"[11] and the great increase in the school population. The latter cause was no doubt the more potent. At this time there were over five hundred children of school age in Astoria.

In 1881-82 Miss Hewett conducted a private school at Grace Church, with an average attendance of twenty-six pupils and an enrollment of forty-six.

From 1886 to 1895 Miss Emma C. Warren conducted a private school on Exchange Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth. This was by far the largest and most pretentious private school ever opened in Astoria, and yet represented only to a very small degree the idea antagonistic to the public school. All the grammar grades were taught, and also classes in advanced subjects, including Latin and German.[13] This school occupied to a great extent the place that should have been filled by a public high school. With the establishment of the high school in 1890-91 its field of usefulness was greatly limited, and in 1895 it was merged into the high school by the employment of the principal, Miss Warren, as the head of the department of English and English Literature, and the entrance of most of the pupils of Miss Warren's school into the high school.[13]

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL.

The earliest schools of Astoria were supported by private funds, yet the payment of any fixed sum was not made a condition for entrance. They were supported by private subscription for the benefit of all the children of the town.

In 1854 District No. 1 was established, and included a large tract of land bounded by Young's River, from the falls to its juncture with Columbia, the Columbia River and a zigzag line starting near Thirty-eighth Street, and connecting the Columbia River with the Young's River Falls.[14] To this district, in October of the same year, was paid the sum of $20, all the school money then available.[14] The next year, under the revised law of 1853-54, the county fund yielded more, and District No. 1 received $104.77. A part of this amount was from tax, and the rest from fines.[14]

The first school taught after the district was organized, as near as can be ascertained (there are no records in existence), was taught in what was known as the "Old Methodist Church,"[15] a building erected in 1853-54,[16] on a piece of land donated for church and school purposes,[17] by James Welch, to the trustees of the Methodist Church. J. W. Wayne was probably the first teacher in the district. Nothing is known of the condition of the school, except that there were very few in attendance, and the school was in session only a very few months. Miss Liza Lincoln, Mrs. Hill, an English lady, and Mr. Moore, are names associated with the early schools, but the exact time of their service is not known, but all taught school some time before 1856.

In that year Judge A. A. Skinner took charge of the public school in a building near Bain's Mill, known as the "Holman House."[18] He was assisted by Mrs. Skinner, nee Miss Lincoln. The next year the public school was taught by Mr. Brown in the "old hospital" building, situated between Ninth and Tenth streets, on Duane. Mr. Brown is remembered for his skill in handling the large boys.[18] He was succeeded by Mr. Maxwell.

Up to this time the district had been without a schoolhouse, but in 1859 a building was erected on the corner of Ninth and Exchange streets. J. T. Maulsby taught the first term of school in it in 1860. The school was now too large for one teacher and the following year the board engaged the services of J. D. Deardorff and wife. He was a man of ability in his line of work and was well liked by both parents and pupils.[18] During the next term he was assisted by Mrs. Dr. Owens-Adair,[19] and the year following by Mr. Williamson,[18] a college bred man, who assisted much in building up the reputation of the school. Under Mr. Deardorff's management a nine or ten months' term was taught each year, and there were between ninety and one hundred pupils in attendance.[20] Astoria was maintaining an expensive school, and the money for its support was raised almost entirely by tax and private subscription,[20] as the money from the county school fund was inconsiderable at this time. This fund yielded to the district $132.50 in 1861, $149.80 in 1862, and $92.85 in 1863.[21] There is no record of tuition ever having been charged the pupils of the district. While Mr. Deardorff taught advanced classes were formed and pupils who had finished the ordinary grades of the school were enabled to continue their education.[22] Later opposition to these classes arose and finally the school board decided that only studies of the grammar grade should be taught. When this order was carried into effect, during Mr. R. K. Warren's term as teacher, a vigorous protest was made against it, and its enforcement caused much dissatisfaction.[22]

The Grace Church Parish School had just been organized, and, no doubt, profited by the dissension in the ranks of the friends of the public school. The increasing burden of maintaining the school and the presence of the parish school ready to receive the advanced pupils, gave strength to the position of those who were opposed to teaching branches above the grade of the ordinary district school.

In 1865 there was an average attendance of one hundred and ten pupils and a nine months' term.[23] This year the four districts of the county received $460.72 from the county fund and raised $2,308.49 by district tax.[##23]

In 1868-69 the average attendance in the public schools had dropped to eighty-four,[24] caused, in all probability, by the exclusion of the advanced classes and their transfer to the Grace Church Parish School.

Mr. Finlayson and wife and Professor Robb were the teachers between 1865 and 1869. From 1869 to 1873 very little change in the condition of the school is noted, except that there was a slight increase in attendance due to the return to the policy of providing instruction for all who had finished the grammar grades. In 1872 the state school fund became available and District No. 1 received $110.80 in coin and $111.95 in currency.[14]

In 1873 Prof. W. L. Worthington, a very able instructor, was elected principal, and remained several years. More than one hundred children were in attendance in 1873,[25] and the citizens of Astoria were justly proud of their school. The Astorian in its initial number[25] says: "We notice that the school is well supplied with maps, charts, dictionaries, gazetteers, atlases, etc. We doubt that any common school in Oregon is better supplied with such articles. * * The public school affords every opportunity for getting a good English education." The teachers were Professor Worthington, principal; Miss Watt and Miss Lawrence, assistants.[25]

The history from 1873 is concerned chiefly with the rapid increase in the school population, the division of the district into six separate districts, the subsequent consolidation of all these districts, the final readjustment of the boundaries, so as to include only the schools within the corporate limits of Astoria, and the establishment of the high school, as the completion of the city's educational system.

District No. 9, the "Upper Astoria" district, was established in 1868, but no school was taught here until 1874. Mrs. W. W. Parker, who taught the first term of school in the district, had a school of fifteen pupils, and received as compensation $75 per month and board.[26] T. P. Powers organized the district, and when over seventy years of age taught a term of three months in this district in order that the right to draw school money should not be forfeited.

The population of Astoria in the two years between 1874-76 nearly doubled, owing to the rapid growth of the fishing industry, and the schools were not able to keep pace with this growth.[27] In 1878 there were over two hundred pupils in actual attendance at the "lower schoolhouse." Professor Worthington, the principal, was assisted by Miss Brown, Miss McGregor, Miss Neale, and Miss Hewett.[28] In the first, or highest grade, algebra, physiology, and natural philosophy were taught.[28] The Astorian says of the school: "The public school of Astoria is divided into three grades, with three classes in each grade. There has been a written examination in three of the grades [probably classes]. In this examination great care has been taken to make it impossible for the pupils to derive any assistance from text-books or from friends."[28]

This crowded condition lasted until 1880 when a temporary relief was afforded by the establishment of District No. 9 and the building of two of the six rooms of the Shirely school. A ten-mill tax was levied for this purpose.

The sudden increase in the school population brought with it such a large proportion of the county and state school fund that the money from this source, amounting to $1,953.67,[29] paid the entire cost of the school during the year 1876, the six-mill tax not having been used. "The district is now out of debt, and has $250 cash on hand."[30]

The erection of a new school building was the main question before the taxpayers at the school meeting of 1882. That it was a necessity was admitted by all. The Astorian said editorially: "There are three things Astoria needs—and we place them in their relative importance—a new schoolhouse, a flouring mill, and a new theater."[31]

At the meeting held April 24, 1882, four mills for current expenses and five mills for building purposes were levied and a new schoolhouse ordered built.[32] The present McClure is the result of that meeting.

District No. 26, known locally as Alderbrook, was established in 1890.

By a legislative act of 1892 the four districts, now included in the city schools, together with the schools at John Days and Walluski, were consolidated into one district of the first class. This arrangement proved unsatisfactory, and in 1899 the boundaries were again changed so as to exclude the two districts lying outside the corporate limits of the city.

During the fifty years that the public school system has been in existence the school population has increased an hundredfold. The distance between "upper" and "lower" Astoria, the rapid growth of the town during the seventies, made the division of the district almost a necessity. The gradual growing together of the two parts of the town making the interchange of classes possible and the consequent improvement of the schools with a lessening of the expense of maintaining them led to the consolidation in 1893 and the readjustment of the boundaries in 1899.

THE HIGH SCHOOL.

The high school is the result of a slow growth and its continued existence is due perhaps as much to indifference as to any very active sentiment in its favor. It started as an advanced grade of the public school when for financial reasons it was desired to keep as many pupils as possible in attendance. The presence of the large pupils and the quality of the work done gave the school a standing in outside districts and created a feeling of pride in the citizens of the town. The higher classes were disbanded in 1863 or 1864. The Marine Gazette thus comments: "During the past week we have noticed considerable discussion in doors and out about the village district school. * * It was generally admitted that the school of eighteen months ago, I think it was—at any rate the one that contained all the larger boys and girls of the village with several others from Clatsop Plains, Oysterville, etc.,—was the best school we had had for three years or even a longer period. * * About the time named the teacher was restricted as to the amount or kind of instruction to be given in the school to the so-called advanced pupils. This restriction caused the disbanding or dismissal of several classes of the largest and oldest pupils. They quit the school, dispersed, went home, or to other schools distant to our town."[33] Advanced studies were restored later and became a recognized part of the course of study. The high school sentiment, stimulated no doubt by the record of the public for excellence in the past and to some extent by the desire to keep pace with the standard of scholarship set by the private schools, increased and resulted in the establishment of the present efficient high school in 1890 and 1891.

The grammar schools are loyally supported in spite of the high rate of taxation[34] necessary to maintain them; but there is still a well defined sentiment against the maintenance of the high school at public expense, though this sentiment seems to be decreasing.

WHAT THE SCHOOL HISTORY OF ASTORIA REVEALS.

The earliest schools were semi-public, though supported entirely by private subscription. Public sentiment clearly favored the public school and secured its establishment so soon as conditions, including the necessary school laws, made it possible. The reason for the predominance of this sentiment in favor of the public schools can be found in the fact that many of the leaders in the development of the city came from the northern and middle western states, where the idea of public education had a firm hold. V. Boelling, S. T. McKean, W. W. Parker, Col. James Taylor, and later Capt. George Flavel, Mrs. H. B. Parker, John Hobson and many others were earnest advocates and liberal supporters of public schools.

The public school has had an almost uninterrupted growth from the beginning, and to-day shows the result of half a century of effort.

ALFRED A. CLEVELAND.

AN OBJECT LESSON IN PATERNALISM

Even among those who have devoted their lives to the study of sociological problems, there is much difference of opinion as to the quantitative and qualitative influence of certain social conditions in producing the generally admitted bad or adverse phases of human society.

At one time we read that poverty degrades men morally, and we peruse carefully prepared and apparently veracious tables showing that in the older countries there is an unfailing correspondence between criminal statistics and the price of bread; the per cent of offenses against persons and property increasing with the cost of the necessaries of life and diminishing with the amount of human exertion required to obtain them. Such is the generally received opinion of the common people, and we hear from the political platform and see in the publications of reform parties the assertion that it is useless to preach morals to those whose minds are mainly occupied in devising means to keep the wolf from the door.

Those of our citizens who have given special attention to the debauching effects of the drink habit, call upon all to come to the rescue of American homes and American institutions, by banishing the American saloon, to which comes the response that poverty is the principal cause of intemperance and its incidents, and that the first duty of patriots is to remove poverty.

Equally certain and circumstantial, on the other hand, are those who affirm that there is no necessary connection between poverty and criminality, and that, as a general rule, debauchery and consequent decadence of moral faculty go hand in hand with material prosperity; and if mixed coincidence can establish casual connection, they are not at fault, for long before Goldsmith wrote of the time "When wealth accumulates and men decay," keen eyed observers had connected a general laxity of morals with the abundance and diffusion of wealth. The failure of intertropical countries to furnish high grade men of morals and intellect, Doctor Draper attributes, not more to the enervating influence of heat, than to the ease with which human beings supply themselves with the necessaries of life. Coming down to the present period, it is common knowledge—the expanding profligacy and criminality of the mining camps where men could obtain extravagant wages in gold for services which in other pursuits would yield them a scanty living.

Probably from such lump comparisons and crude observations, under complex conditions, have arisen two schools of social economists, one whose principal and primary aim is to abolish poverty as the chief obstacle in the way of human progress, and the other whose purpose is not definitely stated, but which conservatively clings to the laissez faire doctrine of letting every man's condition depend upon his individual exertion; and as so far, in the world's history, poverty has been the condition of the great mass of mankind, in spite of individual exertion, the anti-poverty school of necessity, must resort to collective or state control of the industries of men, and thus relieve them from want and the fear of want, which are thought to be so depressing upon their energies.

Just how or to what extent the state is to interfere with the individual's management of himself, or to what extent or in what manner he shall be relieved when he has failed to provide for his own wants and the wants of those depending upon him, are at present outside of any satisfactorily practical programme, and hence collectivism may be held to include all socialistic schemes from Bellamy up or down.

In fact, collectivism is entered upon the moment the state is organized, for in the rudest criminal code there is a manifest attempt to relieve the individual from the otherwise caution and care necessary to defend his person and property; and in truth, as government has advanced, so has collectivism advanced, until now in the United States of America the commonwealth is giving children primary education, supporting and caring for the deaf, blind, idiotic, insane, and criminal classes, beside stimulating certain industries with bounties upon production or relieving them from the disastrous effects of free competition, by levying taxes upon competing products. It does much more. Commerce and agriculture have been relieved of their old time dread of the elements, for government now keeps watch and ward over the wind and waves, and gives timely notice of approaching disaster by land and sea. In the endeavor to pass benefits around, hatcheries for fish, experiment stations, laboratories, and various commissions have been organized and conducted at public expense; likewise the mails are carried, the public lands distributed to actual settlers or given to railroad companies, patents issued to inventors, bounties paid for the destruction of wild animals, noxious weeds exterminated, public officers appointed to examine food products, to conduct experiments upon flocks and herds, and to destroy those infected with contagious diseases.

All this and much more are the results of collectivism, and there seems to be a constant tendency, as well as a constant demand, for more in the same direction. Individualism is alarmed and socialism hopeful; the former, at the encroachments upon personal liberty and the discouragement of personal exertion, and the latter, from the prospect of a complete disappearance of the competitive principle from social life.

Here are two violent antagonisms, while there is no line of demarcation between them, as well defined as the most tortuous isothermal crossing the American continent. There is no scientific boundary of government. As between the two disputants it is a blind push and pull, in which neither party is satisfied with the result. There are gradations upon either side, and long ago Herbert Spencer became alarmed at the coming slavery, and that good man Gerritt Smith thought government should have nothing to do with the education of children; that it is altogether a private function and can not be usurped by the state without serious injury to those most nearly interested.

While, however, doctrinaires have been groping for the scientific boundary, government has gone forward experimentally, with no chart but experience, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, no doubt, in its endeavors to follow the line of least resistance and do that which seemed likely to promote the general welfare.

Granting the evident natural law that development is the result of activity of faculty, and, as a consequence, that individual improvement must come from individual exertion, it may be safe to say that the scope of government should be such as to give or permit the greatest normal and harmonious activity to the units of population, in order to bring about the greatest amount of aggregate excellence and happiness; and still it appears to be a matter of experience and experiment, in which science and altruism play but a subordinate part. Nevertheless, there should be investigation of governmental experiments, and the great and ever recurring question is, What do these show?

Has government help promoted individual competence, and has it promoted the general welfare? In answering this question it will not do to look at it as a whole; each experiment must be taken by itself, and there must be an elimination, so far as may be, of complicating and conflicting elements. Of course there will be no attempt in this paper to do more than report upon a single phase of government help, and one, too, which to my knowledge has never been utilized for throwing light upon the great economic question. I refer to the settlement of Oregon and Washington under government auspices. It would seem as though there never existed more favorable conditions for a successful experiment in planting a model colony than were found here upon this Northwest coast. Certainly nature was lavish and the government munificent, and if these are chiefly instrumental in putting a community on its feet to stay, here should be found the living proof. Let us see; and first as to the country.

The Cascade range of mountains, a high ridge bearing north and south, nearly parallel to the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean and about one hundred miles therefrom, divides the states of Oregon and Washington into two unequal parts, popularly known as Eastern and Western Oregon and Washington. Bordering the coast of both states is another ridge, much lower, and between these two mountain ridges, are cross mountains connecting them, and forming valleys with independent river systems. These western valleys are but little above the sea level, have moist, equable climates, abundant timber, and rich soils; while the country east of the Cascades is an elevated table-land, sparsely wooded, quite arid, is subject to greater extremes of heat and cold and possessed of a strongly alkaline soil.

It is to the western valleys I wish to refer in this connection, as in these the donation land law chiefly operated until its expiration in the year 1855. Under that law every adult male citizen and his wife, immigrating to this coast before the year 1851, were entitled to six hundred and forty acres of land selected by the donees in such shape as they chose, and those coming after that time, were entitled to three hundred and twenty acres taken by legal subdivisions. Never before or since have such magnificent inducements been offered to settlers, and by the close of the year 1855 nearly all of the good lands in the Willamette, Umpqua, and Rogue River valleys were occupied by the donees who came from every State in the Union, but chiefly from the Mississippi Valley.

Saying that these lands were taken by families, in section and half-section tracts, gives but a faint idea of what was acquired. Doctor Johnson's description of the happy valley in Rasselas would be rather too poetical to adopt for this country, as this is too far north for people to depend upon the spontaneous productions of the earth, but in many respects there is much similarity. The great Doctor's fancy had not been expanded and enlightened by the vast accomplishments of modern science and invention, whereby the forces of nature have been utilized, and, as a consequence, his happy valley was constructed more to gratify an indolent and dreamy æstheticism than to promote economic industry.

In these western valleys, however, is everything that should stimulate men to the use of all their faculties, if steady and sure returns for exertion are better than unearned gratification of human wants and desires. Let the reader picture to himself an evergreen valley one hundred and fifty miles long and forty miles wide, a navigable river running the whole length, through its middle, with numerous branches on each side, the smaller rising in the foothills, the larger emerging from the forest covered mountains, the rich agricultural surface of the valley interspersed with timber and prairie in profitable proportions, and rising in gentle hills, among which are innumerable springs of pure, soft water, or subsiding into lowlands, here and there dotted by buttes, and he has the Willamette Valley, said by Saxe of Vermont to be the best poor man's country on the globe. This picture does not represent all its advantages by any means.

Probably no farming country known has water power so abundant and diffused as here. Niagara is unrivaled for power, but the principal question there is one of distribution. Here the problem of distribution is reduced to small proportions, for no village or city is far away from water power.

The Cascade Mountains, through their whole extent, are resonant with the clamorings of unused force, and likely, in their dark fir forests will first be realized Edison's dreams of the application of electric power,—trees felled, cut into saw logs and conveyed to the mill, with little of man's help except intelligent superintendence.

To be sure the first settlers of Oregon had no such anticipations as these, but they were not slow to perceive the advantages everywhere around them; sawmills were erected in advance of the great bulk of the immigration, so that immigrants were not required to go through the experience of the first settlers of Ohio and Indiana, housing one or two generations in log cabins.

No description of soil or surface or scenery can give an adequate presentation of this country, as upon the climate depends nearly everything which makes it, pre-eminently, a never failing supplier of man's wants. In this latitude, countries east of the Rocky Mountains have long cold winters and short hot summers, while west of the Cascades no such extremes are ever known.

The Kuro-shiwo of Japan, a broad, deep, and warm current of ocean water flows along our western shore, tempering the mountain air and covering the valleys with perpetual verdure. At this writing, the twenty-fifth of January, the fields have been once whitened with snow, cattle are pasturing upon unfrosted grass, and wild daisies are in bloom. Occasionally a cold wave from the north pushes seaward the tropical warmth, when for a few days the inhabitants get a mitigated sample of the arctic regions, but such incursions are few and far between,—say once in ten years, and not to be compared with the winter climate of Idaho, Montana, or the Eastern States. So seldom and short are the periods, when the ground is frozen, that agriculture is continuous through the whole year. In every winter month plowing is done and grain sown.

In what country, between the parallels forty-two and forty-nine north latitude, would cattle live through the winter upon grass, which was the dependence of those who crossed the great plains to this coast in the days of the pioneer? Arriving in these western valleys during the months of September and October, their teams worn and impoverished, were turned out upon the prairies and by midwinter were fat enough for beef.

Such was the country and the climate of the west coast to which the immigrants came, a land flowing with milk (no honey), beautiful and grand beyond description, rich beyond expectation, healthful beyond comparison; its streams abounding with fish, and its mountains with game; a country where there has been no failure of crops, and where blizzards, hurricanes, and cyclones are unknown.

Now a few words as to the character of the people who settled it, and in this examination I shall try to steer clear of the poetry and romance which are beginning to dehumanize them. It is not necessary for the purpose of this paper to show that the pioneers were more moral or more intelligent than those they left in the enjoyment of the peace and comforts of well regulated society, but it is important to know that they were a fair average in all respects as human beings, and as this question can not be determined by a personal examination, we must resort to the environment they voluntarily chose, or, in other words, to the objects and conditions which impelled them to the undertaking. The indolent and cowardly are not attracted by dangers, and hence we infer that volunteers make better soldiers than conscripts, and this inference is borne out by experience. Enterprises of great danger, forlorn hopes, are not chosen by those who love ease and quiet pleasure, but by the courageous and venturesome; those who take pleasure in overcoming resistance, surmounting obstacles, and braving dangers. The former are inclined to remain upon the old homestead, under the protection of law and the restraining influence of conservative public opinion; the latter push for the frontier, with apparent relish for the kind of life found only on the fretful edge of civilization. Some have assumed, therefore, that the borders are chiefly peopled by the reckless and immoral, those who would not be subject to proper restraint in the older communities; such an assumption, however, is wide of the mark. Under our flag there are no penal colonies; people go where they choose to go, and the currents of population are determined by self-selection. Places of trial and danger are taken by those who are not dismayed by such incidents, and unless we are willing to admit that there is a necessary connection between courage and criminality—that the enterprising and resolute are as a consequence tinctured with immoral tendencies—we shall believe what is more reasonable and in full accord with our experience, that the manly virtues are quite compatible with the moral attributes. I lived on the frontier, the Platte Purchase in Missouri, right among the people who contributed in men and money to the invasion of Kansas a few years afterwards, and I must say that I never lived in a more hospitable and law-abiding community. The forceful faculties were more prominent than in New England, but for personal honor, honesty, and brotherly feeling it would compare favorably with any portion of the United States. I had left that country when the Kansas troubles began, and was somewhat puzzled to reconcile the doings of the Border Ruffians with the character of the people as I knew them, but when I considered that a large majority of them were from the South, and, being born to the institution of slavery, were inheritors of all that such a state of society implies, I ceased to wonder.

Notwithstanding the great advance in biological science, the human being is very much of an enigma, and, however well disposed he may be from natural endowment, we can not guess what he may do until his previous environment has been examined. Suppose John Brown had been born and raised in the South, and had read his Bible through Southern spectacles, and had heard the Word expounded by devout defenders of the patriarchal institution, would he not have been found praying and fighting with Stonewall Jackson when the time came for war?

A large proportion of the pioneers were from Missouri, and at the time of the adoption of our constitution, which submitted the question of slavery to a popular vote, much solicitude was felt by anti-slavery men as to the result. Argument and inquiry were on the wing, and there was eminent opportunity, not only to learn the opinions and wishes of men but how those opinions and wishes came to be formed. Some of the ablest and best advocates of a free state were from the South and some of those who voted to fasten the relic of barbarism upon this free soil were from the North. One solid, earnest, but uneducated free state man, born and raised in Kentucky, and a resident of Missouri for several years just before coming to the Oregon Territory, was asked as to the evolution of his opinion and answered "that when living in his native State, a doubt as to the rightfulness of slavery had never crossed his mind; that he regarded abolitionists the same as horse thieves, and would have meted out to them the same punishment; that when he got to northern Missouri, where there were but few slaves, he was struck with the difference he felt and saw, as respects social conditions; people were more on an equality; that conservative deference paid to slaveholders was conspicuous by its absence, and when he got to Oregon, the spirit of abolitionism was in the air." He thought that if the good people of Kentucky could experience what he had they would clear slavery from that state in a year. I was intimately acquainted with that man for thirty years, and I am confident that I never saw one more honest and truthful, or one more ready to assist in reforms or more willing to be informed. Ignorance was his sin, as it was of the majority of those subject to the malign influence of slavery, and yet in his native State he was a possible border ruffian. What an honest, earnest man believes to be right he will defend, and for his convictions there is always a higher law to which he will appeal, notwithstanding the limitations of statutes and constitutions.

Though a Webster might lose himself in adoration of the Federal Union and an Everett offer up his mother a living sacrifice to preserve it, it is to the credit of human nature that human rights, human interests, human convictions and affections stand nearer and dearer to the people than any mere machinery of human government. The abolitionists believed the Constitution of the United States was a covenant with Death and a league with Hell, and they protested with all their soul and strength; to those Southerners reared to believe in the divinity of slavery, the Constitution was a worthless rag, for it did not protect them in their supposed rights. To the men of earnest convictions on both sides we owe our present disenthrallment.

The foregoing apparent digression has been indulged for the reason that the Oregon people were severely criticised and denounced in connection with our Indian wars, spoilation claims, and the votes cast in favor of slavery upon the adoption of our free constitution; and also for the reason that the aspect of character has a sociological bearing.

Advanced evolutionists include with their scientific shibboleth, "the survival of the fittest," an ethical element, when applied to civilized society. The early settlements here were singularly free from transgressors. There was no criminal code and no courts of law up to the time of the provisional government. Every man was a law unto himself, and it is said there was no offense against person or property of sufficient importance to require them. These were halcyon days, often referred to by old Oregonians, who say that crime and criminals were unknown until society was put under the tantalizing reign of law. I have heard not a few, in referring to the good old times, express the opinion that mankind are governed too much by statute and thereby released, in a great degree, from moral restraint.

There is occasionally an old settler so impressed with pioneer equality, fraternity, and purity, that he lays all subsequent social disturbance to the provoking interference of legal machinery with natural rights, and he longs "for a lodge in some vast wilderness" where he can end his days in peace, away from penalties and penal institutions and the temptations which civil government offers to the predatory instincts of men.

Such logical metonomy is not mentioned here except to show that the pioneers were lovers of peace and good order, and fully subject to enlightened moral restraint. As before mentioned, they were peculiar in one respect, that is, in the possession of a large share of the executive or heroic qualities.

The Great American Desert, with its sand stretches, waterless wastes, unbridged rivers, Rocky Mountains, and predatory savages, loomed up deterrently to the spiritless. A four to six months' journey in wagons, exposed to all the vicissitudes of travel and climate and the forays of more dreadful foes, ever on the alert to dispossess travelers of their only means of conveyance, was not to be considered a pleasure trip.

No doubt that to a certain but undefinable extent and in numerous ways, the circumstances and incidents to be expected on the overland journey were selective, and yet the Oregon Pioneer, as pictured by his eulogists, is rather a fanciful personage. Not that the incidents from which the picture is drawn are to any unusual degree false, but that there is too much of the commonplace left out, and so the typical pioneer, like the typical Yankee, is a caricature. The pioneers, as a body, were only a little different from those who were too affectionate or diffident to start, and among them were all sorts of people; but looking only to those who endured extraordinary privations, to those who developed an uncommon degree of strength, courage, and virtue, there have grown up the poetry and romance of the pioneers, and to none is this more evident than the pioneers themselves. At one of their annual gatherings, when an eloquent speaker was narrating the trying incidents of the overland journey, one of the earlier immigrants inquisitively remarked "I wonder if I ever crossed the plains?" I was querying the same; still we must not neglect to state that the speaker was dealing in facts. He was leaving out so much that those who had passed the ordeal wondered if they had ever been there. Indeed, the speakers and writers who have been called to the task of perpetuating pioneer history have had the usual inducements to false coloring, which has been the curse of all history in all times.

Striking incidents, battles, sieges, marches, insurrections, revolutions, and the leading actors in them, of such is the warp and woof of history, until man is understood to be a mere fighting animal, although the greater part of his life has been spent in peaceful avocations and the greater exertion of his force and faculties has been devoted to constructive industry.

Out of such partiality has inevitably grown the great man theory of human progression. The student of history passes along from point to point in the bloody trail of the historian, stopping at such characters as Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, etc., until these great destroyers are looked upon as the prime factors of the evolutionary state. Of course, these and such as these must not be ignored or left out, for history would cease to be history without them, but it is equally important to know that man, judged only by them, ceases to be man. Of late an improved philosophy of history assigns them their proper place and significance as an index of evolution, and gives us the hopeful sign that notwithstanding the occasional irruption of man's destructive faculties, his progress is principally due to the subordination of the militant spirit. And now, while the principal part of our early history, territorial and state, is devoted to our really insignificant Indian wars and the principal characters on both sides, it is well enough to think that the greater constructive works of peace have been going forward with hardly a halt, and the more sober tints are yet to be given the picture of early Oregon times.

With such coloring as we now have of pioneer life and the passage of the great plains, posterity will wonder, as did the pioneer before quoted, if the pioneers ever did cross, and also what kind of people they must have been to undertake, with such slender means, so perilous a journey. Samuel R. Thurston, Oregon's first delegate under the Territorial Government, advertised his constituents as "fellows who could whip their weight in wildcats," very good electioneering taffy, no doubt, but rather strong and really degrading language to apply to the earnest men and women who so patiently toiled to the Northwest coast.

Of a higher type and tone was the poetical exaggeration "only the brave started, only the strong got through." The facts are different. Some arrant cowards and many more physically weak persons, by some sufficient means, found their way here. The emigrant train was not a forlorn hope; no such test was made for membership. Neither was it a test of patriotism; albeit every citizen is a quixotic propagator of his republican faith. Various were the inducements in the minds of those who left the older states for the Pacific Slope. Many, like ex-Senator Nesmith, did not really know, as they had no well defined purpose, but might answer in his language, and with probable truth, that they were "impelled by a vague spirit of adventure." Restless spirits are always ready for any move, promising unusual scope for the exercise of their faculties. Many were along to enjoy the exhilaration of travel, in a new, strange, and truly wonderful country. Many, long wasted by the miasmatic fevers of the overrich and productive Mississippi Valley, sought immunity in the untainted mountain air of the Far West. A few of the Daniel Boone stripe were too much crowded where inhabitants exceeded one to the square mile, and took one more move with the hope that the hum drum of civilization would never overtake them. A few of a poetical turn of mind, tired of the monotony of the greater East, sought fresh inspiration and a home upon the picturesque shores of the sunset seas.

But while all of the foregoing and many other inducements might have been present in varying degree, the great incentive to immigration was free land. Not only land for the landless, but land for all, and in unstinted quantity. The scenes at Oklahoma divest the emigration to Oregon of all mystery, and while there was probably small difference in kind or degree of virtue between those who came and those who remained, of one fact pioneers are cognizant, namely, that the incidents and trials of the overland journey were a wonderful developer and equalizer. The fictitious gloss of so-called society was abraded, and the shams of character in which human beings had invested themselves, like weakly oxen, were left on the road. Everywhere this is observable, and it is often remarked that the true pioneer is never afterward subject to an undue self-inflation. It seems as though a few months' practice of sincere brotherhood is fatal to an offensive amount of arrogance and egotism.

Now let us inquire as to the use and the tenacity of hold the pioneers had for their unbought possessions. There was no sign of indolence on their part upon arriving. The same pushing qualities which enabled them to surmount all difficulties in getting here were not wanting when homes were to be made and farms to be cultivated. To all appearances the older community, with an infusion of vigor born of success and adventure, had been transplanted upon virgin soil. Of necessity population was sparse. In large districts, principally settled by immigrants before 1851, there was but one family to the square mile, and in other portions were those arriving afterwards and settling two to the square mile. In this way a few people cover, or rather appropriate, a large country, and their improvements, though considerable, appear very meager. Every thing, however, was at hand; rail timber ten cuts to the tree; cedar for shingles and shakes; poles straight enough for rafters without hewing, and fir trees, seemingly grown for the special purpose of house frames. The soil was favorable. Though producing a good growth of the most nutritious native grass, it was easily plowed, two good horses being sufficient to turn over two acres of sod in a day, and, unlike the sward in other countries, was mellow from the first harrowing. Many a family coming as late as October plowed and fenced forty acres and raised from twelve hundred to sixteen hundred bushels of wheat the next harvest, working their cattle that hauled them across the plains and feeding them nothing but the bunch grass upon which they pastured through the winter months.

After the discovery of gold in California, the market for all farm products was at almost every man's door and at marvelous prices. Butter from fifty cents to a dollar a pound; bacon from twenty-five to fifty cents a pound; chickens from $5 to $10 per dozen; eggs from twenty-five to fifty cents per dozen; sheep from $5 to $12 per head; cows, $50; horses, $200; oxen from $100 to $200 per yoke; wheat from $1 to $7 per bushel, and labor from $2 to $5 per day. Of course, such prices gradually wore down, but the opportunity for large profits in farming and stock raising continued for a quarter of a century. Our public disbursements, however, were not on the same scale. Up to the year 1859 Uncle Sam paid a good share of the governmental expenses, and at that time our state government was organized under a constitution that has often been called parsimonious.

The sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections of each township, or lands in lieu thereof, were devoted by Congress to common schools; land was also given to found a state university and agricultural college, and five hundred thousand acres along with five per cent of the sales of public lands were given to an internal improvement fund to be used by the state. Add to this the swamp lands, amounting to several hundred thousand acres of the most valuable, all given without cost, and one might well ask, "in the name of common sense what more should a paternal government do for a people?" And yet it has done more. Coast defenses and lighthouses have been built, the rivers dredged, harbors improved, something near a million dollars appropriated to cut a canal around the cascade falls, and military roads and posts established to protect our inhabitants from the aborigines.

In common with all the other inhabitants of the United States, we have been suffering for the last few years from an aggravating increase of our great American industry, politics, but until the discovery was made, that people can grow rich by taxing themselves, the people of Oregon were contented with small levies for public purposes. Indeed, we have done little in the way of public improvements to create expense. With the exception of county roads, which are mainly ungraded dirt ways, and the bridging of streams, nothing of importance has been attempted.

In view of all the foregoing comes the sharp contrast of the present condition of the pioneers and their immediate descendants. In the absence of any reliable census reports, I have been obliged to rely upon regional inspection, taking a township here and there and tracing up the career of the first white inhabitants. For this purpose I have selected, for an average, one hundred square miles on the east side of the Willamette Valley, in Marion County, which contains the state capital, and an examination shows that sixty-six per cent of the donation claims have passed out of the possession of the donees and their descendants, another fifteen per cent are mortgaged for all they are worth, and for practical purposes may be considered as lost to them. Not more than fifteen per cent of the whole have been ordinarily successful in holding and improving a part of their possessions and are now free from debt. Only five of all of them have increased their holdings and are thrifty. Eighty-seven per cent held section claims, and it may be mentioned that the half-section claimants were more successful in holding their own, and add very much to the favorableness of this report. In the better part of this county, a hundred square miles in a body might be selected where the per cent of loss would be greater, but this was settled chiefly by French, Scotch, and English Canadians, mountain men and trappers of nomadic habits, who married Indian women of the whole or half-breed, and of whose descendants less is expected, as they are passionately fond of ardent spirits. A teetotaler of mixed blood would be a rare sight. Neighborly, clever people, of lax business habits, and of necessity trustful, they were soon beat out of their landed possessions. Probably in no American community has the credit system been so much in vogue as on this Northwest coast, and likely for the reason that in no other place are crops so sure, and certainly in no other place was a broad basis of credit so much at the disposal of debtors. A family with a section of land that produces unfailing crops at small cost, can get credit anywhere; and what a harvest it has been for merchants and middlemen in these western valleys until recently. Ah, man! you are, indeed, a wanting animal, one whose wants are ever multiplying and exacting. Only a few of the race are securely provident by immediate self-denial, and this truth applies equally to the pioneers, those resolute men and women—

Who kept step with the patient ox,

And toiled by the rolling wheel,

Drew success from the sand and rocks,

As sparks from the flint and steel.

The heads of families did not so readily depart from their early habits of economy, but the children soon reveled in their magnificent possessions. Girls and boys alike became semi-nomads, or properly speaking, fell into the ways of the baronial English or the planter class of the South. As a consequence of their newly found competence and leisure "they took to horse," and strange, what a fascination comes over a human being when he takes to horse. In truth, that boy who did not admire the splendid aboriginal equestrians of the Great Plains and get filled with the spirit of the wild and free, as he saw them scurrying along the mountain side or sweeping down into the valley with the speed of the wind; that boy must have been an unchangeable clodhopper or a born philosopher.

Very few of them escaped the uncivilizing contamination, and many a youth, fresh from an unfinished course at school, had his book education cut sadly short by bestriding a cayuse and becoming a practical cowboy. The infatuation was not confined to the boys. The girls, too, had as much fondness for the noble brute, and were as expert and graceful in his management. Some of them have ridden seventy-five miles in a day. As a means of social communication at that time it had no equal; and for stock raising and the round-up in such a country, the horseman was unapproachable. Still, with all such advantages, and they were many, which could have been turned into permanent profit, the cowboy generation, though having a "heap of fun," and no doubt genuine pleasure, let the earth slip from under his feet. How could it be otherwise? Who could deny them? A party of boys and girls on their favorite steeds, the former in leggings, bell spurs, and the graceful sirrapa; the latter in the freshness of physical beauty and bedecked with flowing skirts and scarlet streaming sash—when such a cavalcade went galloping over the prairies with a speed that put to shame a Sheridan's ride, what parent could or would deny them.

Well, the parents did not deny them this and other diversions from gainful industry, and, little by little, the princely donations of land went into the till of the shopkeeper or the safe of the money changer. Landless and moneyless, they scattered over the country, and, as it were, dropped into all kinds of callings. Many of them have gone east of the Cascades and taken homesteads and pre-emptions in the arid regions, and there upon the bunch grass lands have gained a living and some a competence by stock raising and wool growing. Others followed up the streams into the mountains and in some narrow valley made a home away from the every day temptations of the lowlanders. Others went to the coast. Many of the young have found ample success in other avocations and do not regret the loss of the parental donations. They are found on the bench, at the bar, in the pulpit, in the governmental employ, in college faculties, and in all honorable pursuits. Only a few have ignobly failed, and those few do not invalidate the maxim that "where there is a will there is a way" for falling into the drink habit they lost their wills.

In conclusion, I am not willing to assert that the policy of the general government, in donating land as a reward for taking possession of this Northwest coast, was not a wise policy or that it was an injury to the donees, though in the main they failed to keep the gift, but the lesson is none the less valuable; and what is it but a confirmation of the general truth that "necessity is the mother of invention," the spur to exertion, and that success in this life is to be obtained only through the school of experience as the reward of continued and temperate effort. As there is no royal road to knowledge so there is no royal road to wealth or any other valuable acquisition; and it is not proper to confine this edict of fate to mere material things, although to be fed and clothed is the first and most imperious demand of nature. Man in all of his successful undertakings is an evolutionary being. Whether intellectually, morally, or physically considered, he keeps best what he has produced, what he has earned. As a hard and fast donee, he is not a success; as a beggar, he is disgusting even to himself. Sometimes he needs charity, but always justice.

T. W. DAVENPORT.

GLIMPSES OF EARLY DAYS IN OREGON.

It would be difficult, indeed, to find anything new to say of pioneering or pioneers, and useless to trace the pioneers along their journey across the Plains. We will pass over an interval of eight months and introduce our loved fathers and mothers on their arrival at where Portland now stands.

On the first of November, 1845, after a journey of eight months of inconceivable hardships, a small party of those pioneers first stepped on the banks of the grand Willamette River, near where Morrison Street is now located. The rays of the setting sun casting their light and shade o'er the beautiful landscape, impressed the beholders with a deep feeling of thankfulness that they were permitted to reach the new land, and stand on the shore of the wonderful river of the west. The wind murmuring through the branches of the stately fir bade them welcome, and the old trees served as shelter for the next two months. With the aid of flint, steel, and powder, a large camp fire was soon burning brightly, casting a rich glow o'er the magnificent wall of forest trees. It was a picturesque scene. The soft moonlight, the sparkle of the water, the lurid light from the resinous fire, formed a scene worthy of a painter's skill. They sat around the fire for hours reveling in the luxury of rest; and they arrived destitute in all save character, determination, and self-reliance. With such sterling qualities failure was impossible.

The little company did not retire early, as they were forming plans for their future work. At a late hour buffalo robes and blankets were spread on the ground, and soon all were lost in sleep. The only sound that broke the silence was the yelp of the prowling coyote.

With the first rosy blushes of the dawn the men began to rise, and before the sun was fairly over the horizon the sound and echoes of their axes brought cheer to our mothers' hearts, for they knew ere long homes would shelter them from the winter's storms. Weeks of hard labor were required to fell the trees, and clear away the brush, and prepare the site on which to build. Trees were cut the proper length, one side of the log hewed smooth with a broadax, and fitted so they would join at the corners and lie compact. It was no easy task, but our loved pioneers, with only a saw, auger and ax, broadaxe and adze would put to shame some of the more modern workmen. Logs for the puncheon floors were split and smoothed with an adze, and fitted close together, making a warm and solid floor. The structure raised to a proper height, poles were used for rafters; some of the logs were cut three feet in length, from which shakes were made and used in place of shingles. The fireplace and chimney was built with sticks and plastered inside and out with a thick coating of clay. Some had a stout iron bar securely fastened on one side of the large fireplace; on this bar, which was called a crane, iron hooks were placed, on which the teakettle and other cooking utensils were hung; all cooking and baking was done before the open fire and broad clay hearth. Windows were a sort of sliding door in the wall, without glass. The furniture was extremely simple, being split out of fir or cedar trees, and, if not elegant, was substantial; doors were also made of shakes, and hung on wooden hinges. Wooden pegs were used in place of nails. Rough bedsteads were placed in one corner of the large room, the trundle bed pushed under it during the day, and at night drawn out ready for the little ones. For one to see the number of sweet faces and bright eyes of the many children lying in their beds, the scene would put the old woman who lived in her shoe far in the minority. Large quantities of moss stripped from the trees made good mattresses; with buffalo robes and blankets they had comfortable beds. Their primitive cabins completed ready for occupancy, with heartfelt thankfulness they left the shelter of the trees for their first Oregon home.

The latchstring, like a welcome hand, bade them enter. A bright fire greeted them with her golden rays and warmth, and the sound of the teakettle, cheerily singing, they catch the glad refrain and quickly joined with—

"Home! Home! sweet, sweet home!

Be it ever so humble,

There's no place like home."

How well they realized the true meaning of home, as no roof had sheltered them for the past ten months. As the family gathered around the ruddy light of the cheerful fire, which was their only light, plans were made to visit Oregon City for supplies of food and clothing. Indians, with their canoes, conveyed them to their destination. Soon wheat, bolts of flannel, with other necessary articles, were purchased and shipped; fathers stepped on board, and the trusty Indian with a stroke of the paddle sent the frail craft swiftly gliding o'er limpid water. Ere long they were rushing over the Clackamas rapids, which in hurried haste, flows on and yet is never gone. As the sun was sinking behind the hills, they reached home, where the anxious mother, blinded by tears of gladness, thanked God for the much needed supply of clothing and wheat, which was their only bread. Deer and other game were plentiful, and easily brought down by their trusty rifle. Salmon was bought of the Indians. Ducks, geese, and swan were numerous. All winter mothers were kept busy cutting and making clothing for the entire household; also teaching their daughters how to sew, knit, and attend to general housework; and if mothers were sick they did the work with willing hands. The canoe and bateaux were their only means of transportation. Neighbors would surprise the family by bringing their violins, and spending the evening talking and dancing. The large room would be cleared of all furniture, which was placed in the loft where the small children were put to bed; soon the merry sound of tripping feet were keeping time to Money Musk, and other old time music, the old men talked over the possibilities of Oregon. One thought bridges would span the Willamette; others shook their heads, saying not while we live. Our children may live to see one. Others thought railroads would be built across the continent; all looked at the speaker and echoed "A railroad! Never, over those mountains. Why, man, no one in God's world will live to see that day. Steamers and ships will come, but no railroad."

Our pioneer mothers made their dresses with plain skirts; waists were sewed onto the skirt; sleeves were much like those worn by the women of to-day. Their hair was combed smooth by their forehead and wound in a coil high on their head, many wore side combs, a high back comb held their coil of glossy hair. Hairpins were an unknown luxury. White handkerchiefs were worn in place of collars, and they looked very pretty crossed or tied in a bow at the throat. All were deft with the needle, also weaving; those who have the rare blue and gray counterpanes, manufactured by their willing hands, possess an heirloom of great value.

In the spring of 1846 gardens were made by those living on farms, from which early vegetables were procured, and in the fall many bushels of potatoes, pease, and other vegetables were stored; of summer fruit there were wild strawberries, and later raspberries and blackberries, of which large quantities were picked and dried; also hazel bushes, producing nuts in abundance, which were gathered and stored for winter use. There was not much buying and selling, except of wheat, which was used as currency, as well as for food. Portland was founded in 1845 by pioneers who were quick to see the magnitude and resources of the country. J. B. Stephens, who was a cooper, saw the large revenue to be made by exporting salmon, and soon began making barrels and kegs, from which he netted a large profit. The first tannery built in Portland was erected near where the exposition building is located, by D. H. Lownesdale, who had the honor of introducing a new circulating medium, which was Oregon tanned leather.

In 1845 the first ferry from the east bank to the west shore was a canoe.

In 1845 Portland was named.

In 1846 the first blacksmith shop was erected on the northwest corner of First and Morrison streets.

In 1847 H. Luelling brought the first grafted fruit trees to the Northwest. His famous nursery was located near Milwaukie.

In 1847 Captain Crosby built the first frame house; others soon followed. Hotels, stores, and business houses were also erected. At that time the United States mail arrived yearly.

In 1848 the first Methodist Church was organized in Portland, and a church building was begun by J. H. Wilbur; doing good for others was his greatest pleasure. Blessed be his name!

In 1850 the first Congregational Church was erected on the northwest corner of Second and Jefferson streets. The oldest Congregational Church in Oregon was organized in 1842 at or near Hillsboro. The second was organized in 1844 at Oregon City by Harvey Clark, with three members; he also organized the first Congregational Church in Forest Grove; his many golden words and good examples are his living monument.

In 1849 Colonel William King built the first sawmill ever built in Portland, which was run by water power. Soon after it was finished it was destroyed by fire.

In 1850 W. P. Abrams and C. A. Reed erected the first steam sawmill in Oregon on the river bank near where Jefferson Street is located. This proved a profitable enterprise. Just south of the mill was an Indian encampment, occupied by different tribes. Their wigwams were constructed of bark and brush. Squaws sat on mats, weaving their water tight baskets, often very prettily decorated, while the Indian men lounged about in scarlet blankets, as if posing for a picture, and their children sat in their canoes gliding o'er the water with swanlike grace. Information had been circulated among them that the mill would be started up on a certain afternoon, and all were curious to see the working of this new evidence of the white man's superiority. At the stated time the Indians were in and around the mill; suddenly the steam whistle sounded its shrill shrieks in a continuous blood curdling blast, which sent every Indian man, woman and child fleeing for their lives into the dense woods. It was a long time before they could be induced to go near the mill.

In 1847, 1848, and 1849 many emigrants arrived who settled in Portland, adding thrift and push to our small colony. The discovery of gold in California on the twenty-fourth of January, 1848, caused Portland to look like a deserted hamlet, as all men and boys caught the gold fever and started for the golden shores of California, where many were killed by the Digger Indians; others died of various diseases, and some returned home broken in health, while others returned with their hard earned gold. Ships arrived yearly in Oregon with supplies for the Hudson Bay Company, by way of the Sandwich Islands.

In 1849 twenty vessels arrived, and quickly loaded with flour, salmon, pork, shingles, lumber, and other products, which they carried to the California market. From that time Portland began laying aside her swaddling clothes. The first mayor of Portland was Hugh D. O'Bryant, who was elected in 1851. When the city was incorporated it was in Washington County, and the people from Portland had to go to Hillsboro to hold court. In 1856 a meeting of the citizens of Portland was called to organize a volunteer company to protect the people and property, in case of an Indian outbreak; two hundred names were enrolled and H. W. Davis was appointed captain.

In 1850 the steamer Lot Whitcombe was built at Milwaukie, Oregon. In 1851 the steamers Eagle and Black Hawk were running between Portland and Oregon City, where those who wished to proceed farther south, would walk to Canemah and there board the steamer Beaver or Enterprise which would convey them to any of these points: Butteville, Champoeg, Mission Bottom, or Salem. Steamers Belle and Fashion were running between Portland and the Cascades.

In 1853 David Monnastes and H. W. Davis erected a foundry on First Street. Many other industries were established.

Among the pioneer doctors were Doctors Hawthorne and Lorrea, who erected the first hospital on Taylor, between First and Second streets. Soon after they selected a beautiful location in East Portland, surrounded by forest trees, and erected a home for the insane.

In 1853 W. S. Ladd built the first brick building in Portland. Others soon followed, and frame houses were now in evidence, and the log cabin in which so many happy hours were spent around the great fireside was fast disappearing, although built from necessity, not choice—happy memories of it still linger which time can not efface.

In 1850 several families left Portland to reside on their donation land claims. I will describe one of these homes: A frame house with large rooms, papered, and woodwork painted, glass windows, sitting room with a large brick fireplace, with a mantle of oak, easy chairs, a large mirror, table, and a corner cupboard filled with dishes. The kitchen was furnished with a cook stove and all other necessary articles. Feather beds were now in use. This house was erected near the bank of the ever beautiful Willamette. On the west a creek glided in sparkling beauty by the kitchen door, supplying the household with cold mountain water. Memory loves to recall those scenes. In a garden early vegetables and a variety of flower seeds were growing. A large frame barn stood on the hill, with pigpen and chicken house close by; a woodshed filled with wood stood near the back gate. In the fall, when it was time to garner the wheat, oats, or hay, neighbors, bringing their scythes and other instruments used to mow the harvest, would surprise the farmer at early dawn, saying, "Well, neighbor, I have come to help you with your harvesting;" and they never left until the bountiful crop had been garnered. The golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, was lived and practiced and represents to us that period in our social system when a neighborhood was as one great family.

In 1849 a mint was erected in Oregon City to coin five- and ten-dollar gold pieces, which were known as beaver money.

In the fall of 1849 a party of Oregonians, embarked on a sailing vessel, left California for Portland. The captain proved to be a most unkind and brutal master, not only to the sailors but to the passengers, who were compelled to eat the worst of food. After sailing for twenty-two days they encountered a violent gale, and were driven out of their course. As they were nearing the Columbia-river bar the vessel was drawn into the breakers at North Beach and was deserted by captain, crew, and passengers, who in their haste to save themselves forgot their gold. On reaching shore they were exhausted and were obliged to walk around the entire night to keep from freezing. In the early morning they saw smoke a short distance up the beach. Each man hurried to the scene. They found a comfortable house where they were made to feel at home in true pioneer style by the owner, a Mr. Johnson, who was, as all Scotchmen are, loyal and hospitable. As they were in a weakened condition the good man gave them a small quantity of food at first, which was fish cooked on the point of a stick held before the fire. All agreed that was the best food they had ever eaten. Now they related their hardships encountered on the voyage. Mr. Johnson sent out his Indians with instructions to reach the wreck and bring everything available ashore. This order seemed scarcely possible, but the brave Indians went through the breakers, reaching the vessel, and before night brought all the sacks of gold dust and many articles of wearing apparel ashore, where each man could claim his own. The party remained several days with their benefactor, who kindly conveyed them to Astoria.

In 1854 Thomas Fraser was the first to agitate the public school question. The following public spirited men were present: Thomas Fraser, W. S. Ladd, Josiah Failing, H. W. Corbett, P. Raleigh, A. D. Shelby, T. N. Larkin, A. L. Davis, C. Abrams, L. Limerick. All of these noble and unselfish men, except one, have passed on to their higher home—H. W. Corbett, the surviving one, a pioneer of 1851, loved, honored, and justly called the Father of Portland, is still the first to give his time and money for the betterment and upbuilding of the city and state. God grant that he may be spared many, many more years. No monument need be erected to their memory. The nobility of their lifework is woven and cemented deeply in the hearts of the people.

December, 1855, Multnomah County was organized. In January following L. Limerick was appointed county school superintendent. December 4, 1850, the first weekly Oregonian was published in Portland by T. J. Dryer. In 1851 the first regular monthly mail service began between Portland and San Francisco, per steamer Columbia.

Before Oregon was admitted to the Union in 1859 the log cabins had been cleared away, showing the pioneers were progressive.

In 1858 C. Stewart erected the first theatre building in Portland.

Wilcox School—The first day school of any kind was opened in Portland in the fall of 1847, by Dr. Ralph Wilcox. It was conducted in a house erected by Mr. McNemee at the foot of Taylor Street. It was properly a private school and continued one quarter. The names of some of the pupils are given: Frances McNemee (now Mrs. E. J. Northup), her brothers Moses, Adam, and William; Charlotte Terwilliger (now Mrs. C. M. Cartwright), Milton Doan's children—Sarah, Mary, Peter and John, Henry Hill, Helen Hill (now Mrs. Wm. Powell), J. Miller,—Murphy, Lucy and Charlotte Barnes, Emma and Sarah Ross, Lorenzo Terwilliger, and John Terwilliger. Doctor Wilcox came to Oregon in 1845.

Carter School—In February, 1848, Miss Julia Carter taught school in a log cabin on the corner of Second and Stark streets. She had thirty or more pupils. Those who attended Doctor Wilcox's school, also these additional: John Cullen, Carrie Polk, the Warren girls—one now Mrs. Richard White, the other Mrs. D. C. Coleman; Milton, John, Albert, Matilda, and Susan Apperson, were her pupils.

Hyde School—In the winter of 1848 and 1849, Aaron J. Hyde taught school in what was known as the Cooper shop, which was the only public hall in Portland. It was located on the west side of First Street, between Morrison and Yamhill streets.

Lyman School—Late in December, 1849, Rev. Horace Lyman opened a school in a frame building, which was built by Col. Wm. King for church and school purposes. It was located on First Street, second door north of Oak. On this building was placed a bell, which weighed about three hundred pounds. Stephen Coffin bought this bell at his own expense. Rev. Jas. H. Wilbur bought the bell of Mr. Coffin and placed it on the First Methodist Church. It now hangs in the steeple of the Taylor-street M. E. Church. He taught three months, had forty pupils. Among his pupils he recalls the Coffins, Chapmans, Parrishes, Kings, Hills, Terwilligers, Appersons, Watts, and McNemees.

Delos Jefferson School—In August, 1850, Delos Jefferson, now a farmer of Marion County, opened a school and taught three months.

Reed School—In April, 1850, Cyrus A. Reed taught school for three months. He had an average of sixty pupils. Among his pupils he recalls the names, Carters, Cullen, Coffin, Hill, Chapman, Terwilliger, Parrishes, Stephens, McNemee, and Watts. There was no other district organization.

Rev. Doane's School—Following Mr. Jefferson, came Rev. N. Doane, then and now a minister of the M. E. Church. He taught nine months, beginning December 1, 1850. To the former lists of pupils he adds Davises, Crosbys, Lownesdale, and Parrishes.

Central School—The Central School occupied the present site of the Portland Hotel. Monday, May 18, 1858, the first school in the Central Building was opened by L. L. Terwilliger, principal, with two assistants, Mrs. Mary J. Hensill and Owen Connelly. From the records I find that up to July 23, 1858, two hundred and eighty different pupils had been enrolled. The names of pupils, parents, and residences are on record. Of all the residences noted, but two were west of Seventh Street. Those two were F. M. Warren and Wm. H. King. Most of the residences were on First, Second, Third, and Fourth streets, with quite a number in Couch's Addition. Mr. Terwilliger was principal of the Central School for two and a quarter years.

Bishop Scott's Academy—Was opened in the spring of 1856, at Milwaukie.

Saint Mary's Academy—The oldest denominational school in Portland, was founded in 1859 by the Sisters of the Most Holy Name of Jesus and Mary. The first Catholic Church in Oregon was erected in 1839 at Saint Paul, Marion County.

In 1849 a Catholic Church was dedicated in Oregon City.

In 1851 the first Catholic Church was erected in Portland, and dedicated in 1852 by Archbishop Blanchet, who labored with zeal to better the condition of all. Peace to his memory.

In 1845 George Abernethy, who resided in Oregon City, was chosen to serve as governor of Oregon. He was a man of sterling qualities and well qualified for the office, and was a pioneer of 1840. In the fall of 1851 the academy on Seventh and Jefferson streets was opened with C. S. Kingsley, teacher. The school was surrounded by large trees and was a long distance from the village. No streets were improved near the school. One could follow the cow path that wound around, and the tinkling of the cow bell could be heard as late as 1861, when a law was passed prohibiting cattle from roaming on the streets.

GLIMPSE OF ONE OF MANY SIMILAR SCENES ENDURED OUR LOVED PIONEERS.

In 1850 Mr. S. M. Hamilton, with his wife and four children, after a long journey across the Plains arrived at the Cascades. They were impressed with the towering mountains and beautiful scenery. Here they decided to locate on a donation land claim, which is now known as Hamilton's Island. A comfortable house soon greeted them. Mrs. Hamilton, who is still with us, is a woman of culture and refinement, and many owe their success in life to her loving example and words of cheer; but dark days were hovering around their peaceful home. The terrible news that Indians were lurking to plunder and kill had filled their hearts with terror. Mr. Hamilton had arranged, if the outbreak did occur, that two men were to take charge of the boat, while others were to remain and defend their property. A bateaux lay in readiness. On the morning of the 26th of March, 1856, the dreaded signal sounded, striking terror to the stoutest hearts. Mr. Hamilton hurried to his home, where wife and children were terrified. His first word was "Mary, the Yakima Indians have attacked the men, who were working on the portage railroad, and will soon reach our home. Your only safety is to embark at once, with other families, who are hurrying to reach the boat, their only means of escape." All were now on board except one woman, who was carrying her babe, and running over the rocks as fast as her strength would permit. One of the men who had charge of the boat said "Push out and leave her." Mr. Hamilton placed his hand on the boat, saying, "No, no; never leave man, woman, or child who is in sight." By this time the woman and child were on board; quickly the boat was in the swift current, the occupants were lying on the bottom to escape the whizzing bullets and arrows of the savages, whose demoniacal and blood curdling yells added terror to the mothers' hearts. Picture the agony of those mothers as they were floating away from loved ones and home, listening to the frightful shrieks and rapid shooting of the Indians. For a moment the father watched the receding craft that held all that was dear—dearer than life—not knowing when, or if ever, they would meet again. With upturned face he exclaimed "Oh, God, have mercy and protect the dear ones." A bullet whistled past his head; he raised his trusty rifle, fired, one Indian fell; again and again his rifle was reloaded and fired, each time sure of its mark. That night his house was burned. The Indians were armed with guns and arrows. They killed one woman and her husband; several men were killed; after hours of suspense those in the boat sighted the steamer Fashion. She quickly halted, taking all on board, turned back, reaching Vancouver the following day, where the alarm was sounded, and the steamer hurried on to Portland; there the bells tolling forth called out the citizens, who, on hearing the terrible news began collecting guns and ammunition; the entire population was aroused. Nothing since the Whitman massacre had brought such sorrow to their hearts. Early in the morning the steamer, loaded with human freight, started for the sad scene. A steamer had left Fort Vancouver with our illustrious Sheridan, who, with forty men reached the Cascades first. On landing they received a volley from the Indians, who fought like demons. Now the steamer arrived with the Portland volunteers. At the same time Colonel Steptoe, from The Dalles, with infantry and volunteers, arrived, who surprised the Indians, many of whom were horse racing, others were watching Sheridan. As they saw the new arrival of blue coats, they fled to the hills. Nine of the ring leaders were captured and hung. To relate all the thrilling incidents encountered by the early pioneers would fill volumes, and in conclusion, I feel that the hallowed remembrances of all our loyal patriotic pioneer fathers and mothers will live to the end of time, as they braved dangers that tongue or pen fail to express, and by their life's work each one has erected their invincible monument.

CHARLOTTE MOFFETT CARTWRIGHT,
Pioneer of 1845.

THE UPPER CALAPOOIA.

By Geo. O. Goodall.

The early history of the white man in the Upper Calapooia was a quiet and uneventful one. The travelers coming in from their long trip across the Plains, pushed up the Willamette Valley, and, attracted by the beautiful and fertile Calapooia Valley, with its abundance of grass on its surrounding hills, and plentiful supply of water, settled there to live the peaceful life of farmers or stock raisers, with very little trouble of any kind to disturb them in their occupation of home-making. In those early days the hills, most of which are now heavily wooded, were free from timber and covered with beautiful grass. One old settler said: "You can not imagine the beauty of this country when we first came here." The Indians had kept the brush burned down, burning over the hills each year. The white man neglected to do this, and now in many places the grass has given way to moss and timber.

According to the best information I could get, the first settlers came to the Calapooia in 1846. T. A. Riggs, who came in 1847, and whose statement is appended below, says that when he came there were three or four settlers near where Brownsville now stands, and one, R. C. Finley, six miles up stream. This man Finley was the settler farthest up the stream till Riggs and his partner, Asa Moore, took up donation claims two or three miles above Finley on Brush Creek, a tributary of the Calapooia. From this time on more settlers came every year and settled all along the Calapooia Valley and on streams tributary. The settlement here preceded that in the upper Willamette to some extent, because out in the valley there was less timber, water was less plentiful, and the soil was not considered as good as in the Calapooia.

Most of the settlers who came were farmers. R. C. Finley, however, was a millwright, and in 1849[35] built a flouring mill, which still stands, six miles above Brownsville. In 1850 Templeton built a sawmill; in 1852 Finley built one, and in 1854 P. V. Crawford built one near the present site of Holley. The first settlers had gone to Oregon City for flour, and later to Salem. After Finley's mill was built people came from as far away as the Umpqua Valley to get flour there.

Schools were founded at an early date, the first being taught by Rev. H. H. Spalding in a log house one mile above where Brownsville now stands, in the summer of 1849. This was a subscription school. The first district was organized on the Calapooia in 1853, being the third district in Linn County. The first school after the district was organized was taught by Robert Moore in the summer of 1853. The churches commenced work very soon and several denominations were represented. Joab Powell, the celebrated Baptist evangelist, used to preach there, and gave it as his opinion that "Thar was some mighty big sinners on the head of the Calapooia." Dr. J. N. Perkins preached for the Christians, and Rev. H. H. Spalding for the Presbyterians.

P. V. Crawford, for whom Crawfordsville is named, was the first regularly appointed postmaster on the Calapooia. Previous to his appointment in 1870 there had been a supplied post office at William Heisler's store, where Crawfordsville now is. There was never any great number of manufacturing enterprises in the Calapooia country. A flouring mill, a sawmill or two, and the woolen mill at Brownsville, built about 1862, constitute the sum of such enterprises. The chief production is still from the farm—live stock and farm produce. The range is now greatly curtailed through growth of brush, close pasturage, and taking up of land.

There were in this region several men who were public spirited and prominent in Oregon affairs in early times. Foremost of all was Delazon Smith, who lived down toward Albany, on the Albany prairie, but was well known and claimed by all the Linn County section. Smith was a preacher when he first lived in Oregon. On one occasion he was heard to say, when preaching at Brownsville, that he had been urged to give up preaching and go into law, but that he would not give up what religion he had for all the wealth of the world. Strange to say, however, that was really the last sermon he ever preached. Soon after he is said to have been offered a fee of $1,000 to defend a man in a criminal case, and from that time on he followed law and politics. He was a member of the constitutional convention, was in the legislature, and stumped the state with Col. E. D. Baker in the race for United States senator. Hugh Brown, founder of Brownsville, was also prominent in politics and was a member of the constitutional convention. J. N. Rice and Robert Glass were in the legislature in early times, and R. C. Finley, though not so prominent politically, was a wealthy, liberal, public spirited man, who wielded considerable influence.

No serious Indian troubles ever came upon the settlers on the Calapooia. T. A. Riggs tells how the Indians used to steal from the whites, and describes a little difficulty he and a neighbor had with them over the stealing of an ox, but the Indians of this section never attempted to make war on the whites. At a later time, 1856, there was a fear that the Indians on the other side of the Cascades, who were then on the warpath, might come over and fall upon the settlers along the Calapooia. At Fern Ridge a fort was built in anticipation of such a contingency, but results proved their fears groundless, and that they had perhaps given the eastern Indians credit for more energy than they possessed.

During war times there was considerable feeling in this region. The people were many of them from Missouri, and many were Douglas democrats. When the war commenced a considerable number of Douglas democrats turned Republicans. A party composed of Union men and Douglas democrats put out a county ticket in 1862 in Linn County. It was called the Cayuse ticket. Both Union and non-Union men formed secret societies. The democrats organized a secret society known as the Knights of the Golden Circle, one of its objects being to prevent a draft. George Helm was the leading democrat at this time in this section, and was called the "Lion of Linn." The Union men formed the Union League, the chief object of which was to watch the democrats. It was thought at one time that the Knights of the Golden Circle would attempt to capture the fort at Vancouver, but no such attempt was ever made.

As I have before stated, the course of settlement and development in the Calapooia country was quiet and uneventful. The settlers were at first all poor, all subject to the hardships incident to living in a new country, shut off from many conveniences of an older community, and obliged to ascertain by experiment what crops paid best and how they were best handled. Currency was scarce in the settlement and wheat served to a large extent as a medium of exchange. When the men who had been drawn to the gold mines to seek their fortunes began to return with their gold dust there was a rapid advance in business and prosperity.

The first newspaper of this locality was printed by George Dyson; the name and date I can not now give. The second was the Informant, printed, like the first, at Brownsville, and by a man named Stein. This was in 1886. In 1887 the Express-Advance was started with the Informant's plant and continued two years. The Brownsville Times was started June 15, 1889, by McDonald & Cavendish. With several changes of editors this paper is still printed, the present proprietors being F. M. Brown and A. B. Cavender.

The question as to why the first settlers came to Oregon is difficult to determine. It seems, however, from the very limited amount of direct testimony I have been able to get, that there were two forces which at least had a powerful influence, and these were, first, curiosity to see this great western country; and, secondly, the desire to pick out a good piece of land from the thousands of acres open to settlement here.

Albany, Oregon, September 21, 1901.

Mr. Geo. O. Goodall, Eugene, Oregon—

Dear Sir: In compliance with your request I will write a short account of the early settlement of the upper Calapooia Valley and some of the annoyances with which the first settlers had to contend, and as I have to depend entirely on memory, I am aware that my account will be very imperfect and the more so as I am almost alone as one of the first settlers, and I believe the only one above Brownsville.

I crossed the plains in 1846, stopping near Oregon City till the next fall, when I settled in Brush Creek Valley, Brush Creek being the south fork of the Calapooia. When I came here I found Alexander Kirk, W. R. Kirk, James Blakely, Hugh L. Brown, and Jonathan Keeney, all living in the vicinity of where Brownsville now is, they all having crossed the plains in 1846 and come on up the valley to the Calapooia. I also found R. C. Finley some six miles farther up the stream, who also crossed the plains the same year, but settled on the Calapooia in the spring of 1847. Mrs. Agnes B. Courtnay, who came to Oregon in 1845, and whose husband had been killed near Oregon City by a falling tree, made up the settlers on the Calapooia at that time. I will state here that Mr. Finley had settled at the falls of the Calapooia where he contemplated building, and did in 1848 build a flouring mill, being the first mill south of Salem. In the fall of 1847, as before stated, I and Asa Moore settled in Brush Creek Valley above Mr. Finley, he being the upper settler up to that time, and at the same time James McHargue and Robert Montgomery, who crossed the plains that season, settled below Mr. Finley and Thomas Fields several miles farther up the stream. Wm. T. Templeton, William Robnett, William McCaw, John Findlay, John A. Dunlap, and Thomas S. Woodfin all crossed the plains in 1847 and subsequently settled on the Calapooia, but after the annoyance with the Indians had ceased.

The Indians in these early days were in the habit of stealing horses and cattle from the settlers and butchering them, and the settlers would trail them up and if able to catch them would flog them severely, but the Indians seemed to care about as much as a cur for such treatment and would laugh about it as if it was all a huge joke. Some time during the summer of 1847 Isaac B. Courtnay was hunting in Brush Creek Valley, being above the settlement at that time, when he met with a few Indians, who took his gun and ammunition and allowed him to go home. During the fall and winter of 1847 the Indians annoyed Mr. Fields so much that he finally moved down to my place on Brush Creek and stayed until the spring of 1848.

In the fall of 1847 when I and Mr. Moore came into Brush Creek Valley we were not aware that there were any Indians near there and selected a place to build a cabin in which to spend the winter, we being single men, were going to batch through the winter, when I intended to bring my mother to live with me, my father having died soon after starting for Oregon. When we commenced cutting logs for our cabin two or three Indians appeared on the scene and inquired what we were doing there, and on being told we were going to settle there they demanded pay for the land, and we finally made a bargain with them agreeing to pay them in wheat and pease after the next harvest, this being the way in which many of the early settlers bargained with them.

During the fall and early winter when an Indian happened to be present at mealtime we gave him something to eat, but it soon became apparent that if we kept this up we would run out of provisions before spring, as there were one or more Indians there nearly every meal, so we were obliged to quit feeding them, when they demanded pay for their land again we told them, however, that we would pay them according to contract. Soon after this they moved away, and we saw no more of them on Brush Creek.

As Mr. Finley was contemplating the building of a mill the next summer he traded for a fat ox which I had brought with me, intending to butcher him when he commenced work, but soon after the Indians left the ox disappeared also. When we missed him from the other cattle Mr. Finley and I took a circuit around the range of the cattle and struck his trail going toward the Santiam, and after tracking him a mile or two we came across the same Indians, where they were camped and were drying the beef, having killed the ox. When we turned toward the camp Mr. Finley said if that Indian runs I'll shoot him. When they saw us coming they broke for the brush and Mr. Finley fired at one of them, they in their hurry leaving everything in camp, including the only gun they had.

After selecting such things as we could carry that would be of any value we made a bonfire of the rest, burning everything they had. When we started away I saw an Indian head come up by the side of a log in the timber and took a shot at him, it was a long shot, and I think the ball struck the log, but the head disappeared very suddenly. Another Indian started to run from behind a tree when Mr. Finley fired, aiming, as he said, to break a leg, wounding the Indian above the knee, but not disabling him. This caused quite an excitement in the settlement, the Indians and many of the settlers fearing it would cause an outbreak among the Indians, arguing that we ought not have shot at them, but should have treated them as others had done. However, Mr. Finley and I told them that if they didn't want to be shot at they must not steal from us, as we would shoot every time and that to kill. This put a stop to their stealing in this part of the country and we were not annoyed after that by the natives, and they never called for the pay for their land.

The Rev. H. H. Spalding taught a neighborhood school in a log schoolhouse one mile above where Brownsville now stands in the summer of 1849, there being no public schools in the country at that time. The first school district on the Calapooia, being the third in Linn County, was organized, I think, in the spring of 1853; but many of the early records of the county were burned in the courthouse, and I am unable to give the precise date. The first school was taught in the district in the summer of 1853 by Robert Moore.

As to the motive for coming to the Willamette Valley at that early date I hardly know how to answer, unless it was love of adventure, as the question of sovereignty had not been settled between the United States and England when I came here. True, the United States senate had been discussing the matter of giving each settler in Oregon six hundred and forty acres of land, and we rather expected that would be done, but we had no real assurance that such would be the case.

Among the early county officers of Linn County, after its organization under the Territorial Government, quite a number were living on the Calapooia, Alexander Kirk being elected county judge, N. D. Jack assessor, John A. Dunlap representative, and William McCaw clerk in 1849, and in 1850 several men who were elected to county officers went to the mines and failed to qualify, among them the county treasurer, and at a special election I was elected to that office and received and disbursed the first taxes ever collected in Linn County.

In 1851 I was elected assessor and was the second man to assess the county. In 1856 I served as second lieutenant in the Rogue-river war. In 1862 was elected sheriff for two years.

Yours truly,

T. A. RIGGS.

DOCUMENTS.

A letter of M. M. McCarver to Hon. A. C. Dodge, Delegate to Congress from Iowa, written immediately on the arrival of the immigration of 1843.

[Explanation: This document was copied from the Ohio Statesman, which had taken it from the Iowa Gazette, where it was originally printed.]

(Reprinted from the Ohio Statesman of September 11, 1844.)

OREGON.

ARRIVAL OF EMIGRATION COMPANY NO. I.

On the first page of to-day's paper will be found a notice of the return of Lieutenant Fremont's exploring company. By this company we are put into possession of several interesting letters from different members of the emigrating company, and, among others, three from our former townsman, M. M. McCarver, one of which, directed to our delegate, together with a letter written by P. H. Burnett to the Saint Louis Reporter, we publish below.—Iowa Gazette [Burlington].

Twalatine Plains, Oregon Territory, November 6, 1843.

Dear Sir: I avail myself of an opportunity offered by one of the vessels belonging to the Hudson Bay Company to forward you a few lines.

The emigrants have not all arrived, though more than half are here, and the remainder may be looked for in a few days, all were at the Methodist Mission, about one hundred and fifty miles distant, near The Dalles. On last week several of the families arrived within a few days of Fort Vancouver and the Wallammatte Falls—some by water and others over the Cascade Mountains. The waggons will be brought from The Dalles by water, as the season is now too far advanced to open a road through the mountains. This expedition establishes the practicability beyond doubt of a waggon road across the continent by the way of the southern pass in the Rocky Mountains. We have had no difficulty with the natives, although we have had a tedious journey. We have had less obstacles in reaching here than we had a right to expect, as it was generally understood before leaving the States that one third of the distance, to wit, from Fort Hall to this place, was impassable with waggons. Great credit, however, is due to the energy, perseverance, and industry of this emigrating company, and particularly to Doctor Whitman, one of the missionaries at the Walla Walla Mission, who accompanied us out. His knowledge of the route was considerable, and his exertions for the interest of the company were untiring. Our journey may now be said to be at an end, and we are now in the Wallammatte Valley. I have been here near three weeks, having left my waggon in charge of the teamster and proceeded on horseback from Fort Hall in company with some thirty persons, principally young men. Your first question now will be, "how are you satisfied with the country? Is it worthy of the notice that Congress has given it?" I would answer these in the affirmative. Perhaps there is no country in the world of its size that offers more inducements to enterprise and industry than Oregon. The soil in this valley and in many other portions of the territory is equal to that of Iowa, or any other portion of the United States, in point of beauty and fertility, and its productions in many articles are far superior, particularly in regard to wheat, potatoes, beets, and turnips. The grain of the wheat is more than one third larger than any I have seen in the States. Potatoes are abundant and much better than those in the States. I measured a beet which grew in Doctor Whitman's garden which measured in circumference two inches short of three feet, and there is now growing in the field of Mr. James Johns, less than a mile from this place where I write you, a turnip measuring in circumference four and one half feet, and he thinks it will exceed five feet before pulling time. Indeed, everything here is in a flourishing condition—trade brisk and everybody doing well. The emigrants generally are all, as far as I know, satisfied. Wages for a common hand is from $1 to $1.50 per day, and mechanics from $2 to $4. Wheat is quite abundant and sold to ship or emigrants at $1 per bushel. Flour is from $9 to $10 per barrel; potatoes and turnips fifty cents per bushel; beef from six to eight cents per pound; American cows from $60 to $70; California, from $15 to $20. The prairie is coated with a rich green grass, perhaps the most nutritious in the world; and I am told that the winter is never so severe or the grass so scarce that a poor horse will not fatten in the space of one month. Nothing is wanted but industry to make this one of the richest little countries in the world. I say little, because the fertile part of it is small compared with the very extensive fertile countries in the valley of the Mississippi; yet we have a country sufficient in extent and resources to maintain in lucrative occupations millions of inhabitants. Its great hydraulic power immediately on the seashore, the advantages for stock grazing or wool growing, its fertile soil and indeed, its very isolated situation from competition with the rest of the civilized world, all combine with other circumstances to make it one of the most desirable countries under the sun for industry and enterprise.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

M. M. McCARVER.

Hon. C. A. Dodge.

Two letters by Tallmadge B. Word, written from Oregon Territory in 1846 and 1847. See "Documents" of preceding number of The Quarterly for an account of the author:

Clatsop, Clatsop Co., Oregon Territory,
February 19, 1846.

Dear Brother: It was with pleasure I received yours of March 8, 1845; also one from Cyrel at the same time (Nov. last, 1845), and was happy to hear of general health, and that I am blest with the same, and have been ever since I have been in this territory; and, in fact, I have not had an hour's sickness for five years past. You ask me to give a sketch of my travels since I first arrived in Missouri. It is not possible for me to do so, with any degree of accuracy at present. Although I have a Journal of much of my trampings, it is now 200 miles distant, and I will not be able to get it before our mail starts for the U. S. I have also a daily journal of our journey to this country, and one of the weather for the first year I was here, which I sent you by the return party of 1845, but we have ascertained, that our letters were all lost, so I am aware you did not receive mine of '45, but hope it may not keep you from writing in the spring.

The Ship by which I intended to send you letters, was sold at the Sandwich Islands, and consequently did not return to the U. S. Now of my tramp: I will mearly say that I have ranged over nearly the whole country west of the Missouri River and east of the Rocky Mountains, from the British line on the north to the center of New Mexico on the south. The country is nearly of a sameness, quite a barren, sandy desert, with the exception of borders of streams, valleys, mountains, &c. The whole country abounds in game and Indians—the latter generally hostile. I could tell you of some long hunting yarns, and Indian fights, but they are of too little interest to spend time with now; so I will wait until I take a walk down East, and then some long evening, over a mug of cider and dish of apples, you shall have them.

I was some of the time in employ of Fur & Trading Co., and some of my time a free trapper. A hunter's life is a dog's life, exposed to all kinds of danger and hardships, and but little gained at last, but men soon get so accustomed to it that in a short time they fear neither man, musket, or the D——, and there is so much nature, romance, and excitement in their way of living, that they soon become much attached to it, for it is much easier for a white man to become an Indian, than to reverse the thing. I have been compelled to [by] hunger to eat mules, horses, dogs, wolves, badgers, ground hogs, skunks, frogs, crickets, ants, and have been without food of any kind for six days and nights. Cats, dogs, or anything else, is right good eating meat at such times.

At another time we were four days, and three out of the four compelled to fight our way as we traveled, but hungry men are fond of fight and fear nothing, and so we walked through. You may think crickets and ants rather small game to shoot at, and so it is, but we have another way of taking them, which is by going in search, early in the morning, when the crickets (which are in some parts very numerous and as large as the end of your thumb,) by the coolness of the air and dew are very stupid, and climb to the top of weeds in great numbers that the sun may get a fair chance at them; they are at such times easily captured by jarring them off into a basket and then roasting them with hot stones,—feathers, guts, and all,—and make very good eating—when one gets used to it. The ants are taken by sticking a stick in the center of their hill, and making a fire around it, which compels them to ascend the stick, and from that to the basket or sack; in this way a meal is soon procured. But those times are all past with me.

I am now where we have plenty to eat and out of many dangers to which a man is exposed, and I know well how to prize it. As to how I got here I think I gave you some idea in my letter of 1844, and as I am not able to give the particulars, I will say nothing about it, but I will assure you I am here on Clatsop Plains, at the mouth of the Columbia River, within three quarters of a mile of the Pacific Ocean, in a country that when I arrived here was so thinly populated that I was able to become acquainted with every white person in the territory; but the two last years has so increased the population that two fifths are now strangers to me; 1844 gave by land an emigration of about 1,200; 1845 nearly twice that number; this year we expect them by the thousands. The people who come here are from all parts of the globe, but mostly from the western states of the U. S. A great portion are single men, roving characters, who are from every place but this, and this they can not well leave; and the prospects of our infant country are so flattering that we have no inclination to leave it; at present almost every man that arrives here, is at once filled with enterprise, and dives heels over head into something.

We have now a population of five or six thousand; there is now in operation six sawmills and five flouring mills, six stores, exclusive of the Hudson Bay Co., six blacksmith shops, and three gunsmiths, carpenter shops in any number, two tan yards, Lawyers, Doctors, and Preachers by the dozen. We have a legislature, and they have made scores of laws, the particulars of which you will get in the Oregon Spectator, a paper which is printed at Wellemette Falls, once in two weeks; the first number came out last week. I sent you one or two numbers of the first print of the Northwest Coast. I presume you would like to know something of the situation of our country, the climate, production, natural resources, &c., of which I will attempt to give you a slight idea. The general character of the country is broken and mountainous, but is interspersed with beautiful valleys. The first I shall introduce to you is the place of Clatsop; it is very small, but beautiful; it is bounded on the north by the Columbia, west by the ocean, and south and east by heavy timbered land; it is about twenty miles in length by two in breadth; from the sea beach to the big timber the soil is of the best quality, capable of producing any vegetation grown in any of the northern or western states in the U. S. As the wind is nine tenths of the time from the salt water, I believe it to be one of the most healthy places on the globe. It is now four years since the first whites settled here, and there has not been a case of sickness nor a death as yet, and but ten or fifteen births, for there is not a woman that has a husband, but what well fulfills the Commandment by about every year giving birth to a fine chub, and very often two at a time, and some instances of women, without husbands, lending a hand in populating our valuable country, and all owing to the climate and shellfish (?) which we have in abundance.

The number of families at this place is fourteen, counting in five bachelor halls. The tide flows from 9 to 12 feet perpendicular at the mouth of the Columbia. We will now proceed up the river. Thirteen miles from the bar is old Astoria, now occupied by the H. B. Co. This place is a beautiful situation for a town, and will probably be the New York of Oregon; it has a full view of the whole harbor, and a vessel can lay at any time in perfect safety. Now three miles and we come to Tongue Point; this is a narrow point of land running into the river; a fortification on it could have full command of the river, as the channel runs near the point. On we go; heavy timber and broken land on each side of the river, which is from three to ten miles wide; we now come to the mill which I told you I was erecting. I will tell you more of that by and by, but we will go ahead. The banks of the river heavy timbered and broken, but the soil rich; we now come to Coulitye [Cowlitz] River, which is about 200 yards wide at the mouth, comes in on the north side of the Columbia, about 50 miles from the mouth of the Columbia. We will ascend this river 15 miles, against a strong current. The country now opens out into a large plain, many miles in length and breadth, the soil of the best quality, beautifully watered, and interspersed with timber. At the time I first visited these parts there were but fourteen families of French and half-breeds, but since that time there has been a number of American families settled in this section. The valley is one or more hundred miles, in diameter, and situated on one of the noblest harbors on our coast, that, is the Puget Sound. Now we will return to the Columbia, and ascend 40 miles to the Willemette River, of which you will get an idea by the paper which I send. Six miles above the Willemette River is Vancouvers, the principal depot of the Hudson Bay Co.; all of their shipping ascends to this place, though not without some difficulty, particularly if the craft draws more than thirteen feet of water.

In the vicinity of Fort Vancouver there is much fine farming land. The company has fine farms, and many thousand head of cattle. Fifty or sixty miles above are the Cascades; it is where the river crosses the Cascade Mountains, a range running north and south. East of these mountains is a country extending many hundred miles in each direction, and most particularly adapted to grazing. Stock of all kinds can live here winter and summer without the least care. This is as far as I have seen the country, though it is said there is much fine country in the south of the territory, but no settlements in that section.

Our stock keeps fat through the winter without care; we had no snow last winter nor this. Buds are now swelling, and some flowers in bloom. You wished to know where we get saws to saw our big timber. I brought two, of the longest kind, with me, and we have since had two from the Hudson Bay Co., and three from the States. We have timber of all sizes, so we take our choice; we have some 16 feet in diameter and 300 feet in length; no mistake. I have measured such. We have shipped three cargoes of lumber to the Sandwich Islands, for which we received $20 per thousand feet, clear of freight. Lumber is, and will be, a great source of wealth to this country. The Columbia, and its tributaries, are alive with salmon during the summer months; the Indians take them in great numbers with spears, nets, and seines; there are many packed and sent to foreign markets annually.

I am now improving me a farm on Clatsop Plains. I have a splendid claim of six hundred and forty acres of land, about fifty acres timber, the rest prairie—laying immediately on the Pacific. We are all very anxious to hear the result of the treaty (if one is made) between the U. S. and John Bull. We are very much afraid Uncle will fool away the north of the Columbia; if he does we shall be Silux. We are very anxious the U. S. should extend her jurisdiction over our valuable country, and we are nearly out of patience with the delay. We are not all thieves and runaways, as represented by the Hon Mr. Mc——, nor our country a booty. Boy, if it is, it's inferior to none in point of beauty, pleasant climate, natural resources, and advantages of wealth; and if the settlers were ever thieves they have wholly reformed, for it is generally believed that no other colony has ever equaled this in point of bravery, enterprise, hospitality, honesty, and morality. There are men who arrived here in October last who have at this time one hundred acres fenced and sown to wheat. Now, all we want is a little of Uncle Sam's care, that capitalists may be safe in investing their money.

Merchandise is generally high here, owing to the scarcity and great demand. Salt $1 per bush.; sugar 12½ cts. per lb.; coffee 25 cts. per lb.; molasses 50 cts. per gal.: tea 50 cts. to $1.50; nails 18 cts.: window glass 10 to 12 cts. per light; dry goods in proportion; beef, pork, hides, tallow, and most kinds of produce taken in payment; beef $6 per h.; pork $10; hides $2 apiece by the lot; tallow 8 to 10; butter 20 to 25; wheat 75 cts. to $1; oats 75 cts.; potatoes 50 cts. per bu.; lumber from 15 to $25 per 1,000 feet; shingles 4 to $5 per 1,000; common laborers $1 per day, and mechanics $2. You see by the manner of my writing that I am in great haste, therefore you must allow me to close.

After you peruse this I want you to enclose it, and, with love and respect, send it to Cyrel, for I have not a moment's time to write to him, and I have nothing to say to him only to be sure he is right and then go ahead; and for you both, to send me letters every chance, for I value each letter at five hundred dollars—provided I could get them no cheaper. Give my love to father, sister, and all inquiring friends, and should like to see some of you in Oregon.

Yours, most affectionate,
T. B. WOOD.

(I. Nash.—My consent to publish this if you think it of any interest).

The above letter was written by Tallmadge B. Wood, from Clatsop, Clatsop County, Oregon Territory, February 19, 1846, to Isaac M. Nash, his brother-in-law, at Ballston Spa, Saratoga County, New York.—Florence E. Baker.

Copy of a letter written from Oregon City, formerly Willemette Falls, Oregon, December 23, 1847, by Tallmadge B. Wood to his brother-in-law, Isaac Nash, and sister.—Florence E. Baker.

Oregon City, December 23, '47.

Dear Brother: I avail myself of this opportunity of writing you a few lines that you may know that I am still in the land of the living. I received one letter from you by the arrival of Mr. Shively, being the second one that I have received from you since I have been in this brush. We, of course, got news of the fate of the "Oregon Bill" of last session, and as you may judge was very much disappointed, but we grin and bear it because there is no other way for us to do. We are at present in rather an awkward situation; there has of late been some serious difficulties with the upper country Indians in which Dr. Whitman, wife and nine others were murdered.

There were fifty men dispatched last week to protect the Mission at the Dals, [Dalles]; we have had no news from them since. There are orders for the raising of five hundred men to go up and give the scoundrels a wiping out. So you may say we have the loud cry of war in Oregon; but what is done here, is done by the voluntary acts of the people and without pay. And as there is such a diversity of opinions, as to the best way to proceed, I think there will not be as much done at present, as we have got so many people here that it is not so easy for them all to agree as it was in former times.

This year's emigration was very large. They all got through with less difficulties than that of last year. There has been considerable sickness with them. Their disease being the measles, the disorder is proving quite fatal with the natives; it was in consequence of this that Dr. Whitman was killed, as they held a malice against the whites for bringing the disorder unto the country.

Our legislature being in session, it has authorized Mr. Meek to go to the United States with dispatches to the government, informing it of our situation. He starts to-morrow morning, and it is by him that I send this letter. It is a general time of good health and spirits, in Oregon, with the exception of now and then a case of the measles. Our commerce has much improved within the last year. A large number of ships have left our port the last season well ladened.

The winter thus far is very fine, no freezing, and little rain. Wheat looks well, and great quantity sown. I have sold my interest in my mill, and also my farm. I am going to put up salmon next spring, and after the season is over, which will be in August, I am going to build a mill, as I now have one of the best sites on the Columbia, and lumbering the best business in Oregon.

I would write much more, had I time and room on my sheet—though I am sure it would not be very interesting. Be sure and send me a letter every time the Ship Whiton sailed for the U. S. as it will return to this country. Be sure and avail that chance though I missed it. Give Father my Respects; tell him I intend on coming to see him once more. I must scratch a few lines to sisters, so I bid you a Farewell.

Dear Sisters, I have only room to tell you that I am well. I Farmed it and did housework last summer, but I guess I don't do it again soon. There are lots of pretty girls here now, but I do not get time to get one of them just now, but will take a year or two, by and by, and attend to these matters.

Frances must write to Cyrel for me, for it is now late and I haven't time. Give my love to all cousins and inquiring friends. Write every chance.

Good by, your affectionate brother,
T. B. WOOD.

To I. Nash, S. C. Nash, J. A. Wood.

The above letter was folded, and sent without an envelope: It was sealed with a red seal; it cost ten cents postage; it was mailed at St. Joseph, Mo.; it was directed to Isaac Nash, Ballston Spa, Sarotogo County, N. Y.; it arrived at Sarotogo Springs June 5th. It was marked Missent. This letter was written on large sheets of pale blue paper with black ink, and is in good preservation now, 1908.—Florence E. Baker.

SOME CORRECTIONS.

"Seth Luelling," near the bottom of page 282 of volume III should be Henderson Luelling.

In the twelfth line of page 284 of the same volume the word "clearer" in brackets should be omitted, as the author intended by the word "lighter" to refer to the specific gravity of the water.

In the seventeenth line of page 289 of the same volume the words "blue" and "mountain" should not begin with capital letters.

Mr. H. S. Lyman requests the insertion of the following note referring to the recently published "Complete History of Oregon":

To the Editor—

As my attention has been called to some points deemed erroneous in the History of Oregon, I would ask space in the Oregon Historical Quarterly to say to subscribers or purchasers of the work that I would esteem it a favor that any matter deemed inaccurate or erroneous be communicated to me.

Errors in a publication are usually of the following character: Typographical, merely; slips of the proofreader; mistakes of transcription; misapprehension of the writer; or of differences in authorities. Besides this there is the wide field of differences in opinions, or conclusions—many being unable to distinguish between a fact and what is properly but their own personal inference from facts, or supposed facts. Still further, different persons will estimate differently the value of events, and give varying proportions to the elements constituting the whole.

Typographical errors, or mere blunders of haste, should not, certainly, be expected in a standard work; yet are almost invariably found, particularly in the first edition; and, indeed, seldom or never disappear entirely; almost every teacher, or student, including myself, having noticed, or reported such even in standard text-books. By reference to the preface of my history it will be seen that the work was undertaken with full understanding that a complete, or critical, history of Oregon could not yet be written; but it was thought worth while now to lay the basis of an investigation and ask the patronage of the public. I would, therefore, feel it a most friendly courtesy if any supposedly erroneous matter, whether mere slips, or differences of information or opinion—in the great number of details that it has been attempted to furnish—would be reported to me. I am confident that the work has been begun on a sufficiently broad basis to bear much further elaboration. Any mistakes reported, together with such as may be found by myself, will, if they seem sufficiently numerous and formidable, be collated and published as a page of errata, and the corrected list be furnished each subscriber or purchaser, so far as these may be known.

I hope that this may prove a useful line of inquiry, and place the readers somewhat on their own mettle, and thus furnish me matter for notice in a second edition, if this should be produced. Such investigation and criticism would also establish more firmly in public confidence such data as do not prove open to question.

H. S. LYMAN.

Astoria, Oregon, May 13, 1903.

THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
Oregon Historical Society.

Volume IV.]                      JUNE, 1903                      [Number 2

OREGON AND ITS SHARE IN THE CIVIL WAR.[36]

By the Convention of 1818, renewed in 1827, the Oregon Country, comprising a large part of what is now denominated in general terms, the Pacific Northwest, was under the joint occupancy of Great Britain and the United States.

The practical evidence of this joint sovereignty on the part of the British, was the sway of the Hudson Bay Company through its network of trading stations and outfitting points for its cohorts of frontiersmen and trappers. Until the advent of the missionary movement from the States, there was little practical evidence of the coordinate sovereignity of the United States.

When the missionary movement took important shape numerically it resulted in a vital need for some form of local government, and hence there arose the Provisional Government of Oregon, as it was called, fashioned on the lines of state or territorial governments on the other side of the intervening mountains and plains, "deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed," and empowered by that consent to maintain inviolate as far as possible "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

In 1846, abandoning the political war cry of "Fifty-four Forty or Fight," which had served its demagogic use as a partisan rallying call, a boundary treaty was finally concluded between England and the United States fixing the forty-ninth parallel of latitude as the northern most boundary of the Oregon Country and of the United States in the Northwest.

But still the provisional Government of the immigrants, incomplete in concept, rude in operation, imperfect in power, was the only form of government, the ten to fifteen thousand Americans in this vast domain had to insure domestic tranquillity or oppose resistance to the ever present savage foe.

In message after message President Polk called the attention of Congress to its inaction and the dangers to which that inaction exposed the settlers and how far short of its manifest duty the national legislators were in their neglect; but there were mighty reasons back of this neglect; mighty forces were battling in the halls of legislation—the titanic combat was on between Freedom and Slavery and the Missouri Compromise line was some leagues to the northward of where California began. The Provisional Legislature of 1845 had taken firm ground on the slavery question and the ordinance of 1787 prohibiting slavery was incorporated in its organic law.

The Douglas house bill of 1846, seeking to organize a territorial government for Oregon, followed in this regard the expressed desire of the colonists, and met a prompt and instant defeat at the hands of the Southern senators. Thereupon, Douglas sought to get around the question by a different bill (he was then in the Senate) containing a clause sanctioning the colonial laws of Oregon, which would, as a matter of fact, accomplish the same result. Joseph L. Meek, an accredited representative of the colonists had undergone a dangerous overland winter journey to enforce upon the President and Congress the necessity of immediate action and of Federal aid in the constant conflict with the surrounding Indian tribes.

Judge Thornton, the personal representative of Governor Abernethy of the provisional government, was also in Washington on the same errand, having come by ocean.

The senate bill of Douglas was finally passed, after being amended in the spirit of compromise ever dominant in those days, whereby the colonial laws on the subject of slavery were to be continued in force until such time as "the legislature could adopt some other law on the subject," but the House promptly laid this bill on the table and rejoined with a measure practically identical with the Douglas house bill of 1846, and after a long and bitter contest, in which Thomas H. Benton led the fight for Oregon, on the fourteenth of August, 1848, Oregon became a territory of the United States on her own terms, and free soil in name as well as in fact.

President Polk promptly appointed General Joseph Lane, of Indiana, a native of North Carolina, and a veteran commander of the Mexican war, as the first territorial governor of Oregon, and urged upon him the immediate organization of the government, in order that it might be inaugurated before March 4, 1849, when there would be a change in the presidency.

The long journey of Governor Lane, accompanied by ex-Delegate Meek, now United States Marshal, across the continent by the Santa Fé trail, and up the coast from San Francisco, is one of the stirring incidents of those stirring times, and on the third of March, 1849, but one day before the expiration of President Polk's term of office, General Lane issued a proclamation making known that he entered upon the discharge of the duties of his office, and proclaiming the Federal laws in force over the Oregon country. Thus was the consummation so longed for by the President brought to pass, and what he had striven for so long and so patriotically fulfilled in the closing hours of his administration. During the years of territorial government the slavery question that was tormenting the brain and conscience of the North and the heart and chivalry of the South, played but little part in the life of the far distant territory.

The political complexion of the territory was overwhelmingly Democratic, but it was democracy of the free soil order, which only asked of the negro to keep out of its sight and out of its mind. In line with this temper was the enforcement against two unfortunate blacks of the territorial enactment against free negroes, which being promptly held constitutional by the territorial supreme court, the two offenders were gently but firmly deported from the boundaries of the "white man's country." This same deep-lying sentiment found added expression in the forth coming State Constitution, wherein it was enacted "No free negro or mulatto not residing in this State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the State, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the State or employ or harbor them." Added expression was given to this point of view in the vote on the subject of admission of free negroes, submitted to the people in connection with the vote on the adoption of the proposed constitution—here the vote in favor of their admission was 1,081, contrarywise 8,640.

A potent influence at Washington towards Oregon's admission as a state was the well-known democracy of the State, and at home the indebtedness to the colonists of the National Government in connection with the Indian wars—it seemed plain that two senators and one congressman who could vote as well as talk could accomplish more than one delegate who could only talk; and so the vote for the adoption of the State Constitution was 7,195 for and only 3,215 against.

On the subject of slavery, submitted to the people at the same election, the vote was likewise significant and illuminating, 7,727 voted for freedom and but 2,645 for slavery. Coming as this overwhelming vote did when the agitation of the slavery question was at a white heat both in and out of Congress, it was startling in its clear and unequivocal verdict on this great question—and it is especially significant when we recall the great preponderance of Oregon voters born in slaveholding states and cradled in the doctrine of African bondage. Can the conclusion be other than that they realized the economic and moral blight of the slave system and resolved to have none of it in their fair State.

In this election the free soil democrats and the whigs under Thomas J. Dryer were found quietly but none the less actually fighting shoulder to shoulder.

It is a delicate task to attempt to chronicle history while yet the actual participants are some of them living and the children and grandchildren of many more constitute our friends and neighbors, and far be it from me to criticise the motives or sincerity of those who were wrong in the troublous days that followed except in so far as is necessary to set forth the facts of history.

On the fourteenth of February, 1859, Oregon became a State of the Union. From the loins of the old Whig party in Oregon, as well as elsewhere in the country, sprang forth that young giant the Republican party, and to the leadership of Dryer was added the silvery eloquence of Edward D. Baker, lately come from California. The uncompromising slavery wing of the Democratic party nominated John C. Breckinridge for President and Joseph Lane, Oregon's first territorial governor and present senator, for Vice President. Stephen A. Douglas headed the regular Democratic ticket and Abraham Lincoln was the Republican chieftain.

In Oregon there was a new alignment alike of leaders and of the rank and file—despite the wonderful personal popularity of Oregon's favorite son Joseph Lane, and the passionate oratory of Delazon Smith his chief campaigner, Oregon cast her vote for Abraham Lincoln for President of the United States. The combined Douglas and Lincoln vote was 9,480, while Breckinridge and Lane polled 5,074; and from this computation we see that a trifle more than one third of the voters of Oregon were apparently prepared to follow the programme of disunion and secession. Colonel Baker, by a coalition of republicans and Douglas democrats, was chosen United States Senator, and left almost immediately for Washington to take up his official duties; but he left behind him the courageous inspiration of his lofty patriotism—he had played upon and touched both the heart and conscience of the young Commonwealth, and while the months that followed were months of waiting and watching and of prayer, as elsewhere in the Union, there was never any real question, after the wonderful rousing of the public mind and the public heart of Oregon, largely wrought by his matchless eloquence and high ideals, that should war, that saddest of all conflicts, a civil war, ensue, the brave young State would stand by the flag of the Fathers and the cause of human liberty. At the city of San Francisco, en route for Washington, Colonel Baker, in fiery and impassioned rhetoric, nailed his banner and Oregon's to the Nation's masthead.

He said "As for me, I dare not, will not, be false to freedom. Where the feet of my youth were planted, there by freedom my feet shall ever stand. I will walk beneath her banner. I will glory in her strength. I have seen her in history struck down on a hundred fields of battle. I have seen her friends fly from her, her foes gather around her. I have seen her bound to a stake. I have seen them give her ashes to the winds; but when they turned to exult, I have seen her again meet them face to face, resplendent in complete steel, brandishing in her strong right hand a flaming sword, red with insufferable light. I take courage. The people gather round her. The genius of America will yet lead her sons to freedom."

How could such a spirit, such a faith fail to overcome the forces of disunion and slavery or fail to inspire his fellow-Oregonians with his own unalterable patriotism. Despite all the warnings, despite all the months and years of anticipation and alarm, here, as elsewhere, the fall of Sumpter came like an electric shock.

Douglas democrats and republicans alike became but Union men and the old flag waving in the breeze brought tears, tears of shame and tears of determination, even to the eyes of many who had voted for Breckinridge and Lane.

On the same steamer that brought the news of the fall of Sumpter, came Joseph Lane, the ex-senator, the defeated candidate for Vice President. It is known that he came prepared, if not officially, yet fully authorized to head a movement for capturing Oregon for disunion. Numerous boxes of guns and ammunition accompanied him to his destination for this purpose.

But scarcely had he put foot on the wharves of the Oregon metropolis, than he realized the vast misconception he had made of his home people. Douglas democrats and republicans, and many who had but lately voted for him for the vice presidency, declared without hesitation for the Union; and the idol of the Oregon democracy, tainted with secession and disunion, spurned even by his former friends, made his way unaccompanied and unheralded to his southern Oregon home by a devious trail, fearing the mob justice of the justly enraged citizens of the leading valley towns. And yet it was not all one way in Oregon in those troublous days. In certain quarters the disunion sentiment was powerful and dangerous.

In the Historical Society's rooms in Portland hangs a banner first flung to the breeze on July 4, 1861, not forty miles from that city. It is fashioned of long strips of red and white ribbon, and in the center of its starry field is an eagle, made by the deft fingers of a pioneer woman. The old immigrant who donated it to the Historical Society has related how, when he heard the news of the fall of Sumpter, he immediately determined to celebrate the Fourth of July by flinging the Stars and Stripes to the breeze from his own home and with that end in view had procured the ribbon and caused his liberty loving wife to fashion it into his country's flag. This coming to the ears of certain hot-heads among his neighbors, he was called upon by a committee and asked if it was true that he intended hoisting the Old Flag on the anniversary of the nation's birth. To his affirmative reply came the sharp retort that it would never be allowed to stay, but would forthwith be torn down.

"No man will haul down that flag except over my dead body," was the stern reply of the sturdy old pioneer. The days ran by and the self-formed committee thought that the old pioneer had heeded their warning, when one day the news spread that a flagstaff, tall and straight, and as unbending as the old man's determination, lay before the pioneer house. Then the elders of the hot-heads began to counsel moderation, to tell of the old neighbor's good deeds, of his unswerving sense of duty, of his faultless marksmanship that before that flag could be lowered not only the rough old patriot must lie cold in death but many of the attacking party would bite the dust.

Reflection cooled the disunion ardor; perhaps "a tinge of sadness, a blush of shame o'er the face of the leader came," howbeit on the Fourth of July, 1861, that beautiful silken banner floated on the wings of the whispering wind and in the eagle's beak a dead serpent hung, sounding a note of derision as well as of triumph from the old man's heart.

And while in a few days a more generous impulse came over him, and he himself took down the flag and had the serpent removed from the eagle's beak, yet with that single exception, until the final pæan of victory was sung at Appomattox, that silken emblem of his beloved country caressed by summer zephyrs and kissed by the soft mists of winter, floated undisturbed above his patriotic home.

Col. George Hunter, in his quaintly interesting narrative "Reminiscences of an Old Timer," tells of a somewhat similar incident down in the Rogue River country. He says: "One day there had assembled at a store, where the double-distilled extract of corn was chiefly dispensed, a considerable crowd of men, most of whom were violent secessionists, and they were soon filled up, as good democrats were supposed to be, with the exhilarating beverage. From some cause or other the grand old Stars and Stripes had on this day been raised on a pole or staff near by, and pretty soon these half-tipsy fellows took offense at the defiant colors, and swore they would tear it down. Two or more of them started to execute the threat. Some of the crowd remonstrated, but to no avail. I being a stranger and a democrat, supposed the republicans present would protect the flag, but seeing no movement in that direction, and that if the flag was kept floating something must be done and done quickly, I grabbed an old musket that chanced to be standing in the corner of the store, and with my best speed I made for that flagstaff. My great-grandfathers had both served with Washington at Brandywine and Valley Forge, and my grandfather with Jackson at New Orleans, and I could't stand by and see the grand old banner disgracefully lowered by a drunken rabble of rebel sympathizers. As I ran swiftly forward I called frequently to their leader to stop, but he paid no attention to me. Knowing that nearly all men carried pistols in those days, and that these men were made desperate by drink, I determined to have the first shot. I took a quick aim and drew the trigger. The cap burst clear, but no report followed. Then there was a race between me and their leader for the flagstaff (all the rest stopped when the cap burst). We met at the flagstaff, and just as he was about to cut the halyards to lower the flag, my gun went off in a different way (it didn't snap that time), and the barrel brought down on his head proved more effective than the bullet which refused to leave the barrel.

"Well, he laid down sudden like, and as I now had time to draw my revolver, I informed the mob that I would shoot the first man that attempted to haul down that flag before sundown. That settled it. Friends removed my man to the store, and many Union men gathered to my assistance, which had the effect of stopping any further demonstrations in that direction. At the going down of the sun, we lowered the flag, cheering as we did so, and laid it away with the honor we considered to be due the 'flag of the brave and the emblem of the free.'"

In 1861 there were only about seven hundred men and nineteen commissioned officers in the regular army in the whole of Oregon and Washington, the force having been reduced to its lowest possible limit by withdrawals to strengthen the forces in the East. These troops were distributed as follows: 111 men, under Capt. H. M. Black, at Vancouver; 116 men, under Major Lugenbeel, at Colville; 127 men, under Major Steen, at Walla Walla; 41 men, under Captain Van Voast, at the Cascades; 43 men, under Capt. F. T. Dent, at Hoskins; 110 men at the two posts of Steilacoom and Camp Pickett, and 54 men under Lieutenant-Colonel Buchanan, at The Dalles, all under the general command of Colonel Wright, with Brig.-Gen. E. V. Sumner commanding the military department of the Pacific.

Twofold dangers threatened the widely scattered settlements; from without, the ever hostile Indians who were further emboldened by the inevitable spirit of uncertainty and unrest that followed on the heels of civil war, and from within, disunion intrigue might at any time blaze into armed rebellion. It was a time that tried men's souls.

In June, 1861, Colonel Wright made a requisition upon Governor Whiteaker for a three-year cavalry company to be mustered into the service of the United States and A. P. Dennison, former Indian Agent at The Dalles, was appointed enrolling officer. Suspicion of the loyalty of both the Governor and of Dennison to the Union cause, retarded enlistment and finally led to the abandonment of the undertaking.

In November, 1861, the War Department made Thomas R. Cornelius colonel, and directed him to raise ten companies of cavalry for the service of the United States for three years, to be a part, as it was supposed, of the five hundred thousand volunteers called for by President Lincoln. Colonel Baker from Washington had taken an active interest in encouraging the raising of this famous regiment—it was the original regiment of Rough Riders of the West. There was an impression that nowhere in the East could there be gathered together cavalrymen to withstand the onslaughts of the dashing Southron on his black charger and the First Oregon Cavalry was recruited on the express promise that should the war continue they would be speedily transferred to the Army of the Potomac and given opportunity to cross swords with the flower of Southern chivalry.

From the lava beds of Jackson County to the plains of the Tualatin rang the bugle call to duty and the pick of the youth of this young State were soon in the saddle under the guidon of freedom. R. F. Maury was commissioned lieutenant-colonel, Benjamin F. Harding, quartermaster, C. S. Drew major, and J. S. Rinearson junior major. Each volunteer furnished his own horse and received for himself and mount $31 a month, $100 bounty and a land warrant for one hundred and sixty acres of land. Company "A" was raised in Jackson County, Capt. T. S. Harris; Company "B" in Marion County, Capt. E. J. Harding; "C" at Vancouver, Capt. Wm. Kelly; "D" in Jackson County by Capt. S. Truax; "E" by Capt. George B. Currey in Wasco County; "F" by Capt. William J. Matthews in Josephine County; and Capt. D. P. Thompson of Oregon City and Capt. R. Cowles of the Umpqua also had companies. Six complete companies rendezvoused at Vancouver in May, 1862, and were clothed in government uniforms and armed with old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifles, pistols, and sabres.

Colonel Baker was the warm personal friend of Lincoln; he had promised the boys of the First Oregon Cavalry before recruiting began that they should have a chance, if the war continued, of serving in the East; many of the present survivors have told me that they enlisted on this express promise, and had Colonel Baker lived there is every reason to believe that with his strong personal influence with the President, "Tom Cornelius' Rough Riders of Oregon" would have been the prototype in fame, as they were in fact, of "Roosevelt's Rough Riders" of the Spanish war. Colonel Baker was the colonel of the Fourth Illinois in the Mexican war, and it was hardly to be expected that a man of his ardent temperament could sit tamely in the halls of legislation while the rattle of musketry and the roll of drums were heard at the very gates of the national capital.

And thus it came to pass, for on June 28, 1861, he was mustered into service for three years as colonel of the First California Infantry, a regiment he recruited largely in Pennsylvania, and which was afterwards denominated the Seventy-first Pennsylvania. On August 6, 1861, he was commissioned Brigadier-General of Volunteers, to rank from May 17, which commission, although confirmed by the Senate, he declined, as he did also a later appointment as Major-General of Volunteers, as either appointment would have necessitated his resignation as senator from Oregon. It is stated that when General Scott had to give up general command of the army on account of his advancing years, President Lincoln tendered the succession to Colonel Baker, which was alike declined for the same reason.

With impetuous courage and passionate desire to serve his country upon the field of battle as well as on the floor of the Senate, Colonel Baker could not stay at the rear, but joined his regiment at the front, and was as active in the work of the camp as he had been upon the stump and rostrum. Occasionally he would revisit the Senate and participate in a day's debate and then hurry back to his military duties. It was at such a time, sitting in his seat in the Senate, clad in his colonel's uniform that John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, late pro slavery candidate for the presidency with Joseph Lane, delivered a speech which was but a reflection of the secession views of those braver Southerners who were already in armed rebellion. Colonel Baker grew restive under the words of Breckinridge, his face glowed with passionate excitement, and he sprang to the floor when the senator from Kentucky took his seat and then and there without previous preparation delivered that wonderful philippic, abounding in denunciation and invective which alone would make a niche for him in the world's temple of fame.

Passionately he asked "What would have been thought, if in another capitol, in a yet more martial age, a senator with the Roman purple flowing from his shoulders, had risen in his place, surrounded by all the illustrations of Roman glory, and declared that advancing Hannibal was just and that Carthage should be dealt with in terms of peace? What would have been thought, if after the battle of Cannæ, a senator had denounced every levy of the Roman people, every expenditure of its treasure, every appeal to the old recollections and the old glories?" Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, who sat near, responded in an undertone, "He would have been hurled from the Tarpeian rock;" and in tones of thunder Baker flashed forth the suggested fate and continued "Are not the speeches of the senator from Kentucky intended for disorganization? Are they not intended to destroy our zeal? Are they not intended to animate our enemies? Sir, are they not words of brilliant polished treason even in the very capitol of the Republic?" And then replying to a taunt of Breckinridge about the loyalty of the Pacific coast, he went on "When the senator from Kentucky speaks of the Pacific I see another distinguished friend from Illinois, now worthily representing the State of California, who will bear witness that I know that State, too, and well. I take the liberty, I know that I but utter his sentiments, to say that that State will be true to the Union to the last of her blood and treasure. There may be some disaffected men there and in Oregon, but the great portion of our population are loyal to the core and in every chord of their hearts. They are offering to add to the legions of the country, every day, by the hundred and the thousand. They are willing to come thousands of miles with their arms on their shoulders, at their own expense, to share, with the best offering of their heart's blood, in the great struggle of constitutional liberty."

Can there be any different conclusion than that in that strong passage, Colonel Baker referred among others to the First Oregon Cavalry, which, though largely recruited after his death, was the direct product of his inspiration and suggestion. On the twenty-first of October, 1861, while gallantly leading his regiment at the battle of Ball's Bluff, Colonel Baker was instantly killed, and with his death went the chance of the Oregon regiment to obtain service at the seat of war.

As the months rolled by and no fulfillment came of the promises that had been made for Eastern service, the regiment joined in a round robin to President Lincoln in which they recited the promises that had been made to them and asked for their fulfillment. The President's answer, filled with the lofty patriotism and spirit of unselfishness, that was his daily part, told them that the greatest and highest duty for all, was that which lay nearest at hand and with the regular troops almost all withdrawn from Oregon and Washington, and the tide of immigrants and scattered settlements open to Indian attack and the towns and villages liable to disunion, intrigue, and plot, their nearest as well as their highest duty was to guard the State from foes both savage and traitorous from without and from open treason within.

And to the gallant men of the First Oregon Cavalry the word of the great President was final. They accepted the task he set them to accomplish, and although to them the pomp and circumstance of war were missing, although no patriotic millions stood by to applaud their gallant feats, and the eye of Government was not upon them, yet for three long weary years they did their duty faithfully and well, and by that faithfulness preserved their beautiful State for the Union and the wonderful future that has come to it.

Some there were of Oregon blood and Oregon soil, however, who could not remain away from the greater theater of war, where the more dramatic destiny of the nation was being wrought out in havoc of blood and treasure. Col. Joseph Hooker, "Fighting Joe Hooker," living at Salem when the war broke out, went East, and became a brigadier-general, and Bancroft speaks of others as follows: "Volney Smith, son of Delazon Smith, was for a short time lieutenant in a New York regiment; James W. Lingenfelter, residing at Jacksonville, was made captain of a volunteer company, and killed at Fortress Monroe October 8, 1861; John L. Boon, son of the state treasurer, who had been a student of the Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, was at the battles of Shiloh and Corinth, in an Ohio regiment, in Gen. Lew Wallace's division; Major Snooks, of the Sixty-eighth Ohio, was formerly an Oregonian of the immigration of '44; George Williams, of Salem, was second lieutenant of the Fourth Infantry, and in the second battle of Bull Run, Antietam, Frederickburg, and Gettysburg, losing a foot at Gettysburg; Frank W. Thompson, of Linn County, was colonel of the Third Virginia Volunteers in 1863; Henry Butler, of Oakland, was a member of the eighty sixth Illinois Volunteers; Charles Harker was a lieutenant; Roswell C. Lampson, still living in Portland, was the first naval cadet from Oregon, and served with conspicuous gallantry and fidelity throughout the war; Capt. W. L. Dall, of the steamship Columbia, was appointed a lieutenant in the navy; and many of the regular army officers, whose northwestern service is indissolubly connected with its early history, rose to great eminence during the progress of the war.

"Notable among them was Rufus Ingalls, who became lieutenant colonel on McClellan's staff; Captain Hazen and Lieutenant Lorraine, who was wounded at Bull Run. Grant, Sheridan, Augur, Ord, Wright, Smith, Casey, Russell, Reynolds, and Alvord, all became generals, as well as Stevens, who had received a military education, but was not in the regular army."

It is not the purpose of this paper to follow the patriotic service of the First Oregon Cavalry during the long and wearisome months and years during which they labored in heat and cold, in storm and sunshine, under pioneer and frontier hardships, in chastising the hostile Indians, guarding the immigrant caravans, or holding in check the forces of disunion and secession. That there was need of them, for all these high and patriotic duties, there is no doubt.

As early as shortly after Lincoln's election in 1860, Senator Gwin, of California, with the undoubted knowledge and coöperation of Joseph Lane, of Oregon, formulated a plan for a slave-holding republic on the Pacific coast, with an aristocracy similar to the old Republic of Venice, vesting all power in a hereditary nobility, with an executive elected from themselves.

Should the Southern States succeed in withdrawing from the Union and setting up a Southern Confederacy without war, then with a continuous line of slave territory from Texas to the Pacific, the Pacific coast should combine with the South; but if war ensued between the North and South, then the coast should be captured, and the Venetian Republic be inaugurated separately, and slaves imported from the Isles of the Sea.

Bancroft, the historian, asserts that but for the strong restraining advice of Jesse Applegate and the overwhelming sentiment against him on his return, there is no doubt but what General Lane would have embarked in the enterprise, and that the boxes of arms and ammunition which accompanied his return were intended for that purpose. In 1862 it became known all through the Pacific coast that an oath bound secret organization of confederate sympathizers were holding almost nightly meetings at many places; and self-appointed Union detectives, from points of vantage could hear the tread of martial feet and the hoarse notes of command.

High authority has asserted that Gwin of California, Lane of Oregon, and a man named Tilden of Washington, were the instigators and advisors of this second movement to steal the Pacific coast from the Federal Union and hold it for the forces of disunion and secession. They chose for a title the quaint and striking name of "Knights of the Golden Circle."

One of the best posted historical authorities on the Pacific coast told me a few days ago that he had in his possession cipher documents of that strange disloyal order, which some day experts should decipher and give to the world, but as yet it was too early for history to record anything but the things that were notorious. The same authority told me of how one night in San Francisco, eight hundred Knights of the Golden Circle, armed to the teeth, had met to make the initial outbreak, capture the Benicia Arsenal and arm all rebel sympathizers of San Francisco therefrom and carry out the long cherished plan of seizing the Pacific coast for disunion.

At the last moment realizing the awful, momentous responsibility of their projected attack they clamored for a leader whom they could follow as one man. In a moment one name was on every lip, an old hero of the Vigilante days—in haste he was sent for (he was not a member of their order) and their plan revealed to one whom they thought disloyal like themselves, but they had reckoned without their man—he was as loyal as the sturdy patriots who fell at Bunker Hill, fighting the earlier battle of freedom with bare hands and clubbed muskets.

Knowing that by a brief delay only could he lull them to security, and at the same time save the day for the old flag, he asked until 9 o'clock the next morning to give his answer, they to remain where they were until his answer should be returned. Taking this as a practical assent, and that he only went to arrange his private affairs, the balance of the night wore on; but the old Vigilante was not idle; calling together as many of the old Vigilante Committee as were available and of known loyalty, he unfolded the treason that was lurking in the city's midst, and as they were swift to act in the days of '49, so were they now; the loyalty of the commandant at the Benicia Arsenal being questioned, he was promptly replaced by one of true and tried steel, and loyalists were armed and ready in more than one secret place in the city midst if needed and then at 9 o'clock as agreed the answer went to the waiting Knights of the Golden Circle that the old Vigilante could not be their leader.

Thus all up and down the Pacific coast there was work to be done by the troops at home in guarding against the spirit of disloyalty which fostered by the early reserves of the Union arms was dangerous and threatening.

The situation of Oregon at this time was one of peculiar danger. Both England and France were in open sympathy with the states in revolt. The French Government were setting up an empire in Mexico. England was causing trouble over the disputed boundary at the entrance to Puget Sound. Not a single fort or coast or river defense existed in either Oregon or Washington, and at any time these hostile foreign powers might combine with the Indians as they had done in earlier wars and with the disloyal and disaffected within. Separated by such vast reaches of country from the loyal states of the Union nothing of assistance could be expected from them in case of trouble, in time to be effective and hence it was that for upwards of three years, not merely the peace and security of Oregon but its permanency as a part of the Federal Union depended on the First Cavalry.

The War Governor, Addison C. Gibbs, a strong and patriotic man, organized a valuable addition to the military forces of the State in a state militia, whose chief duty was to hold in check the Knights of the Golden Circle, to which it was a direct antithesis.

At the second election of President Lincoln it was a known fact that the Knights had their arms cached in the neighborhood of the leading polling places, and intended to carry the election by force of arms. This was only prevented by the militia who were superior in numbers and who adopted similar tactics which proved effective.

One shudders at the fratricidal bloodshed and awful guerilla warfare that would have come to pass in this mountainous and thinly settled country had the first outbreak happened and the torch of rebellion been lighted. That it did not so come to pass was another evidence of the mysterious workings of Divine Providence.

In 1864 Governor Gibbs called for ten companies to be known as the First Oregon Infantry, each company to consist of eighty-two privates, maximum, or sixty-four minimum, besides officers. Eight companies were ultimately enlisted, and at first were chiefly employed in garrison duty throughout the Northwest, but later performed gallant service in the Indian wars that were ever in progress.

I wish that it were possible within the necessary limits of this article to write down some of the many deeds of matchless heroism wrought by the loyal men of the Northwest in the dark days of the war—deeds fit to rank with the gallantry of Sheridan's dashing troopers, with the glorious achievements of Sherman's March to the Sea, with the steadfastness of the iron phalanxes of the immortal Grant. But we can at least pay our tribute of praise to those rude frontiersmen of the Pacific, who loved their country, their country's flag, and the cause of freedom,—who fulfilled, without murmur, the self-sacrificing duty placed upon them by the martyr President, who wrought out in blood and fire the destiny of the Northwest, and whose only reward has been the sense of duty done. Of each of them the beautiful words of Tennyson are peculiarly appropriate:

"Not once or twice in our rough island story

The path of duty was the way to glory:

He that walks it, only thirsting

For the right, and learns to deaden

Love of self, before his journey closes,

He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting

Into glossy purples, which outredden

All voluptuous garden roses.

Not once or twice in our fair island's story

The path of duty was the way to glory:

He that ever following her commands,

On with toil of heart and knees and hands,

Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won

His path upward, and prevailed,

Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled

Are close upon the shining table-lands

To which our God himself is moon and sun.

Such was he, his work is done.

But while the races of mankind endure

Let his great example stand

Colossal, seen of every land,

And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure:

Till in all lands and thro' all human story

The path of duty be the way to glory."

ROBERT TREAT PLATT.

THE GREAT WEST AND THE TWO EASTS.

A resounding chorus of gratulations will herald to the world within the next two years the first centennial of two events upon which the history of the Great West is founded—the purchase of Louisiana and the expedition of Lewis and Clark to the mouth of the Columbia River. Whether the student of history at the Saint Louis World's Fair in 1904 pause in admiration of the political foresight of Jefferson, or join in the general acclaim of the heroism of our first explorers at Portland, in 1905, the fact that will most impress him is that geographical lines have been obliterated and there is no West. Migrations having their origin in the dim, remote past, and continuing down to the present, have brought the Aryan race face to face on the opposite shores of the great western ocean, and the world finds itself confronted with that condition which William H. Seward predicted, when, addressing himself to the commerce, politics, thought, and activities of Europe, he said they "will ultimately sink in importance, while the Pacific, its shores, its islands, and the vast regions beyond, will become the chief theater of events in the world's great hereafter." The East that Columbus sailed westward from Spain to discover will ever be the world's East; the West, "the remote shores that Drake had once called by the name of New Albion," will be the East of the World's Great East, and the West only in its geographical relation to the Atlantic seaboard of our own country.

The West has fulfilled every promise of its value to the Union made by its champions when its cause was before the people of the new Republic; it has refuted every prediction of dire effect made by the opponents of its acquisition. When the purchase of Louisiana was under consideration, the fear was expressed that people who would move to that region would scarcely ever feel the rays of the general government, their affections would be alienated by distance, and American interests would become extinct. The generous response of men and money made by Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa, when the Union was in the throes of a struggle for its preservation, attests the loyalty of the Louisiana region. A Southern senator asked, in 1843, what good was Oregon for agricultural purposes, and said he would not give a pinch of snuff for the whole territory. Yet the Oregon Country has given the Union three sovereign states, and part of its territory has been taken to form two other states; its occupation by Americans was a direct cause of the annexation of California; it has in the Columbia River and Puget Sound two important bases for military and naval operations; far from being inhospitable to the honest farmer of the Atlantic seaboard, or the Ohio Valley, it has one hundred thousand farms, valued at nearly $600,000,000. Alaska was denounced as a barren waste, that would never add one dollar to our wealth, or furnish homes to our people. Yet in less than forty years Alaska has supplied gold, fish, and furs worth $150,000,000, and has paid revenue to the government exceeding by $1,500,000 the price Russia got for it in 1867; and at no distant day Hawaii and the Philippines will justify American occupation by statistics as telling as those here presented of Louisiana, Oregon, and Alaska.

If a nonexpansive policy had prevailed in our national councils at the beginning of the nineteenth century; if the presidential chair had been occupied by another than the broad statesman who saw beyond the Mississippi, over the Rockies to the Pacific, and over the Pacific to the cradle of the world, we should now have an intolerable situation of affairs in North America. Had we refused Louisiana from Napoleon, what is now the United States would be partitioned, geographically, about as follows: East of the Mississippi would be the Republic of the United States of America of 1783, with England in Canada on the north, and Spain in Florida and fringing the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana would have fallen into England's hands as a result of the Napoleonic wars, and so, perhaps, Oregon, either by reason of a favorable interpretation of the Nootka convention, or Vancouver's discoveries. Mexico, as the successor of Spain, would own Texas and all the remainder of the west south of the forty-second parallel and not included in Louisiana. With a republic on one side, and European sovereignty on the other, the Mississippi would to-day be bristling with cannon. The purchase of Louisiana was political foresight, and the completion of our title to Oregon was a direct result of the Louisiana transaction. The war with Mexico was the logical sequence of both. From whatever point we may regard it, the acquisition of the trans-Mississippi region, viewed in the perspective of a century, was worth what it cost in money, actual war, and risk of war with what, in the early stages of our history was the most powerful nation on the globe.

The beginnings of the West date from 1850. Further back the census reports do not present statistics that can be compared for valuable purposes, with present standards, although as early as 1840 there were nine hundred thousand people along the western shore of the Mississippi in Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, and Missouri. These states were long on the firing line of American civilization, and their people subsisted by general farming, or by outfitting ox-train merchandise caravans for Santa Fé and Chihuahua, or by outfitting and trading with pioneer settlers en route to Oregon, or gold seekers flocking to California. Jim Bridger put up in southwestern Wyoming in 1843 the first post for the purpose of trading built west of the Mississippi River, and its establishment marked the beginning of the era of emigration to the Far West. Until a comparatively recent period a goodly portion of the public domain lying west of the Missouri River, and comprising perhaps five hundred thousand square miles, was mapped as the "Great American Desert" and they who penetrated its solitudes and returned unscathed to "civilization" were regarded with that curiosity that pertains to a traveler who has visited an unknown land. With the upbuilding of the country and the spread of knowledge of its capabilities, the title of "Great American Desert" has been swept away, and the colored maps that illustrate the books of the twelfth census, regard the white portion as "unsettled area." This includes a considerable area in every state and territory west of the ninety-ninth degree of longitude. East of that line the only white portion is in southeastern Florida. Progress in the half-century comprehended in this brief review has been remarkable and the present position of the West is strikingly shown in the appended statement, which represent its percentages of the total for the United States for the different items tabulated. In a few instances comparisons are made with 1890 and 1850:

| Per cent.
| 1900. | 1890. | 1860.
Gross area with Alaska | 75.4 | —— | ——
Gross area without Alaska | 59.1 | —— | ——
Population, gross | 27.5 | 26.6 | 8.6
Urban population | 17.6 | [37]13.1 | 14.1
Number of farms | 35.8 | 32.6 | 8.2
Acres improved | 48.8 | 44.4 | 6.3
Farms, total valuation | 44.1 | [37]36.7 | 6.9
Farm products, value | 43.2 | 37.4 | 20.3
Farm animals | 59.4 | —— | 11.9
Wool, yield | 69.8 | —— | 4.7
Hops, yield | 64.3 | —— | 7.1
Timber, area | 55.4 | —— | ——
Lumber product, value | 32.4 | 24.9 | 10.0
Gold, yield | 99.6 | —— | ——
Silver, commercial value | 99.8 | —— | ——
Coal | 15.1 | —— | ——
Railroad mileage | 45.2 | —— | .25
Manufactures, value of product | 16.1 | 14.5 | 3.9
Operatives in factories | 12.2 | 11.9 | 3.1
Imports and exports | 19.0 | —— | ——

POPULATION.

Aggregate population has increased 957. per cent in fifty years, and foreign population has grown faster than native:

1900.

1890.

1850.

Per cent
of increase
1859-1900.

Americans | 18,375,337 | 14,117,931 | 1,785,462 | 929.0
Foreigners | 2,659,317 | 2,556,478 | 213,942 | 1143.0
Total | 21,034,654 | 16,674,409 | 1,999,404 | 957.0
Per cent American | 87.3 | 84.6 | 89.2 |
Per cent foreign | 12.7 | 15.4 | 10.8 |

The proportion of native born, which suffered a sharp decline between 1850 and 1890, because of the influx of foreigners to the mines of California, Montana, and Nevada, and to the farm lands of Minnesota and the Dakotas, is again in the ascendant, the net gain for the decade just ended having been 2.7 per cent. The native population is largest in the group of southwestern states and territories, Arkansas leading with 98.9 per cent; Indian Territory, 98.8 per cent; Louisiana, 96.2 per cent; Oklahoma, 96.1 per cent. Along the Pacific coast it is highest in Oregon, with 84.1 per cent, and lowest in California, with 75.3 per cent, Washington coming in between with 78.5 per cent. North Dakota, with 64.6 per cent, makes the poorest showing. The proportion of natives in the West as a whole in 1900 was 1 per cent above the average for the Union, which was 86.3 per cent. The per cent of foreigners is highest in North Dakota, where it is 35.4, and lowest in Arkansas, where it is 1.1. Minnesota is the only State having to exceed 500,000 foreigners. California and Iowa have over 300,000 each.

The population of the West in 1850 consisted of 1,500,000 farmers and traders in the Louisiana country, that is, Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas, Minnesota; 200,000 odd who had swarmed into Texas after it had been wrested from Mexico, some 60,000 in New Mexico, a group of gold diggers in California, a few thousand Mormons in Utah, and a handful of hardy pioneers who had braved privations and hostile savages on the plains in following the footsteps of Lewis and Clark to the Oregon country. At that time there were not quite 2,000,000 people in all the boundless region west of the Mississippi River. The establishing of direct communication by the overland stage, followed by the building of the transcontinental railroad, stimulated growth, and by 1870 the West had attained considerable importance in population. In 1850 it reported 8.6 per cent of the total population of the Union; 26.6 per cent in 1890, and 27.5 per cent in 1900. In 1890 it had over four times the population of the new Republic in 1790 and not quite twice the population of the nation in 1820. In 1900 its population was somewhat under that of the whole country in 1850, the ratio being about 21 to 23. The appended table shows how the several states and territories of the West have progressed in the matter of population:

| 1850. | 1890. | 1900.
Arkansas | 209,897 | 1,128,179 | 1,311,564
California | 92,597 | 1,208,130 | 1,485,053
Colorado | —— | 412,198 | 539,700
Idaho | —— | 84,385 | 161,772
Iowa | 192,214 | 1,911,896 | 2,231,853
Kansas | —— | 1,427,096 | 1,470,495
Louisiana | 517,762 | 1,118,587 | 1,381,625
Minnesota | 6,077 | 1,301,826 | 1,751,394
Missouri | 682,044 | 2,679,184 | 3,106,665
Montana | —— | 132,159 | 343,329
Nebraska | —— | 1,058,910 | 1,066,300
Nevada | —— | 45,761 | 42,335
North Dakota | —— | 182,719 | 319,146
Oregon | 13,294 | 313,767 | 413,536
South Dakota | —— | 328,808 | 401,570
Texas | 212,592 | 2,235,523 | 3,048,710
Utah | 11,380 | 207,905 | 276,749
Washington | —— | 349,390 | 518,103
Wyoming | —— | 60,705 | 92,531
Alaska | —— | 32,052 | 63,592
Arizona | —— | 59,620 | 122,931
Indian Territory | —— | 180,182 | 392,060
New Mexico | 61,547 | 153,593 | 195,310
Oklahoma | —— | 61,834 | 398,331
Total | 1,999,404 | 16,674,409 | 21,034,654

Louisiana, with 11.4 inhabitants to the square mile, was the most thickly settled state in the West in 1850. Missouri followed with 9.9; Arkansas with 4, and Iowa with 3.5. The average for the Union was 7.9. That year the little State of Delaware, with 91,532 inhabitants, boasted of one two hundred and sixty-third part of the total population of the Union. Where was Oregon with about one seventh of Delaware's population and Minnesota with less than one half of Oregon's? In 1900 the density of the Union was 25.6 inhabitants per square mile. Three western states, Missouri, with 45.2, Iowa, with 40.2, and Louisiana, with 30.4, exceeded the general average. In the remainder of the states the density ranged from 0.4 in Nevada to 24.7 in Arkansas.

The colored population of the trans-Mississippi region is largely confined to the states in the southern belt, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. In the Pacific states the colored population is principally Chinese and Japanese.

Throughout the West, with the exception of Louisiana, the number of females to each 100,000 men is under the national average, which is 95,353. Louisiana reports 98,871, and Utah, for obvious reasons, follows with 95,324. Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Texas also have between 90,000 and 95,000 females to each 100,000 men, and in Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Indian Territory, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, the average is over 85,000 and under 90,000. The proportion of women to each 100,000 men is exceedingly low in the Pacific coast and mountain states, being 80,987 in California; 73,265 in Idaho; 62,390 in Montana; 65,352 in Nevada; 77,495 in Oregon; 70,329 in Washington; 59,032 in Wyoming. Alaska reports 38,629.

Here, as in other parts of the Union, urban population is growing faster than rural. Comparison for this discussion is with the census of 1870, as the returns for any previous year would make too meagre a showing. In 1870 the West had 56 of the 226 places that reported a population of 4,000 and over. In 1890 the number was 176 out of 899, and in 1900 it was 251 out of 1,158. Of the West's total population in 1900, 20.3 per cent was urban, against 37.3 percent for the Union. In 1900, 17.6 per cent of the total urban population of the country lived in the West, 13.1 per cent in 1890, and 14.1 per cent in 1870. California with 48.9 per cent and Colorado with 41.2 are above the average for the Union, while Washington, with 36.4 makes a close approach to the mark. For other states the average is: Iowa, 20.5; Kansas, 19.2; Louisiana, 25.1; Minnesota, 31; Missouri, 34.9; Montana and Wyoming, 28.6; Nebraska, 20.8; Oregon, 27.6; Utah, 29.4; Arkansas, 6.9; Idaho, 6.2; Nevada, 10.6; North Dakota, 5.4; South Dakota, 7.2; Texas, 14.9; Arizona, 10.6; Indian Territory, 2.5; New Mexico, 6.1; Oklahoma, 5. The following statement shows the drift of the population into the cities:

1900.

1890.

1870.

Increase
per cent,
1870-1900.

Urban population | 5,024,876 | 3,723,427 | 1,145,033 | 338
Rural population | 16,009,778 | 12,950,982 | 5,732,063 | 179
Total | 21,034,654 | 16,674,409 | 6,877,096 | 206

In 1870 Saint Louis, New Orleans, and San Francisco were the only cities that had over 100,000 population. In 1900 ten cities exceeded 100,000, while eight other cities, Portland leading the contingent, had between 50,000 and 100,000. Since 1880 Seattle has advanced from one hundred and fifty-first place to forty-eighth place in the rank of American cities; Los Angeles from one hundred and thirty-fifth to thirty-sixth; Duluth from one hundred and fifty-second to seventy-second; Kansas City, Kansas, from one hundred and fifty-fifth to seventy-sixth; Portland from one hundred and sixth to forty-second; Tacoma from one hundred and fifty-seventh to one hundred and fourth; Spokane from one hundred and fifty-eighth to one hundred and sixth, and Dallas, Texas, from one hundred and thirty-seventh to eighty-eighth. So rapid is the growth of Portland and Seattle that before many years they must take position among the country's twenty largest cities.

AGRICULTURE.

The area of improved land in farms has increased nearly thirty-fold in fifty years, but has not kept pace with population. This table shows the details:

| Acres improved. | Acres per inhabitant.
| 1900. | 1890. | 1850. | 1900. | 1890. | 1850.
Arkansas | 6,953,735 | 5,475,043 | 781,530 | 5.3 | 4.8 | 3.7
California | 11,958,837 | 12,222,839 | 32,454 | 8.0 | 10.1 | 0.35
Colorado | 2,273,968 | 1,823,520 | —— | 4.2 | 4.4 | ——
Idaho | 1,413,118 | 606,362 | —— | 8.7 | 7.0 | ——
Iowa | 29,897,552 | 25,428,899 | 824,682 | 13.3 | 13.3 | 4.2
Kansas | 25,040,550 | 22,303,301 | —— | 17.0 | 15.6 | ——
Louisiana | 4,666,532 | 3,774,668 | 1,590,025 | 3.3 | 3.3 | 3.0
Minnesota | 18,442,585 | 11,127,953 | 5,035 | 16.2 | 8.5 | 0.83
Missouri | 22,900,043 | 19,792,313 | 2,938,425 | 7.3 | 7.3 | 4.3
Montana | 1,736,701 | 915,517 | —— | 7.1 | 6.8 | ——
Nebraska | 18,432,595 | 15,247,705 | —— | 17.3 | 14.4 | ——
Nevada | 572,948 | 723,052 | —— | 13.2 | 15.8 | ——
North Dakota | 9,644,520 | 4,658,015 | —— | 30.2 | 26.0 | ——
Oregon | 3,328,308 | 3,516,000 | 132,857 | 8.0 | 11.2 | 9.0
South Dakota | 11,285,983 | 6,959,293 | —— | 28.1 | 21.1 | ——
Texas | 19,576,076 | 20,746,215 | 643,976 | 6.4 | 9.2 | 3.0
Utah | 1,032,117 | 548,223 | 16,333 | 3.7 | 2.1 | 1.4
Washington | 3,465,960 | 1,820,832 | —— | 6.6 | 5.2 | ——
Wyoming | 792,332 | 476,831 | —— | 8.5 | 7.8 | ——
Alaska | 159 | —— | —— | —— | —— | ——
Arizona | 227,739 | 104,128 | —— | 1.8 | 1.7 | ——
Indian Territory | 3,062,193 | —— | —— | 7.8 | —— | ——
New Mexico | 326,873 | 263,106 | 166,201 | 1.7 | 1.7 | ——
Oklahoma | 5,511,994 | 563,728 | —— | 13.8 | 9.0 | ——
Total | 202,543,416 | 159,097,543 | 7,131,518 | 9.6 | 9.5 | 3.56

The new farms opened since 1850 are nearly equal in the aggregate to the land area of the original thirteen states. The new farms opened between 1890 and 1900 are more than the combined land areas of the states of Tennessee and West Virginia. North Dakota, with a little over 300,000 population, has more land by 1,500,000 acres under farms than has all New England with 5,600,000 people. The average number of improved acres per inhabitant more than doubled in the West between 1850 and 1890 and showed in 1900 a slight increase over 1890. In the older agricultural states it is steadily decreasing. Thus, in New England it fell from 4 acres in 1850 to 1.4 acres in 1900; New York from 4 to 2.1 in the same interval. The Ohio valley states have held up steadier. Ohio has decreased from 4.9 to 4.6, and Illinois from 5.9 to 5.7. Indiana has increased from 5.1 to 6.6.

The West has 2,056,748 farms compared with 1,491,405 in 1890, and 119,510 in 1850. Texas, with 352,190, leads the Union, and Missouri, with 284,886, holds second place. Iowa has 37,000 more farms than all the New England states combined. While the West has not quite half the improved acreage of the country, it has 63 per cent of the unimproved acreage or 269,000,000 acres out of 426,400,000 acres. Farms average in size from 93.1 acres in Arkansas to 885.9 acres in Montana, 1,174.7 acres in Nevada, and 1,333 acres in Wyoming, where stock raising predominates and requires large ranges. The average for the West is 229.1 acres against 146.6 acres for the Union.

The proportion of the total land area in farms ranges from 3.7 per cent in Nevada to 97.4 per cent in Iowa. Kansas has 79.7, Missouri 77.3, Texas 74.9, Oklahoma 63, Nebraska 60.8, and Minnesota 51.8. No other State has 50 per cent. In the Rocky Mountains and Pacific states the average, considering the capabilities of the soil, is surprisingly low. California reports 28.9, Washington 19.9, Oregon 16.6, Wyoming 13, Montana 12.7, Utah 7.8, and Idaho 5.9. Iowa leads the Nation in this respect, followed by Indiana with 94.1, Ohio with 93.9, and Illinois with 91.5. It is from these four states, whose areas are so largely taken up and whose land values are high, that the extreme West is seeking by reason of its cheap lands and equable climate, to draw its new population. East of the Mississippi River the percentage ranges in New England from 32.9 in Maine to 80.8 in Vermont. Along the Atlantic coast the average is from 59 per cent in New Jersey to 85 per cent in Delaware. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois have already been shown in comparison with Iowa. Kentucky has 85.9, Tennessee 76.1, Wisconsin 57, and Michigan 47.8. Florida with 12.6 and the District of Columbia with 22.1 are the only percentages reported from east of the Mississippi River, that look like western figures. Values follow:

Total farm values.

The Union.

The West.

Per cent in
West.

1900 | $20,514,001,838 | $9,155,558,744 | 44.1
1890 | 15,982,267,689 | 5,872,085,782 | 36.7
1850 | 3,967,343,580 | 276,464,837 | 6.9
Value of farm products. | | |
1900 | 4,739,118,752 | 2,050,766,616 | 43.2
1890 | 2,460,197,454 | 920,823,920 | 37.4
1870[38] | 2,447,538,658 | 499,092,093 | 20.3

Productions in quantity of principal crops in the West in 1890 and 1850 and percentages of the total for those years are thus shown:

Product.

Yield, 1900.

Yield, 1850.

Per cent
of total,
1900.

Per cent
of total,
1850.

Wheat, bushels | 431,963,900 | 5,288,868 | 65.5 | 5.2
Corn, bushels | 1,363,983,943 | 70,467,713 | 51.1 | 11.9
Barley, bushels | 93,767,657 | 47,709 | 78.2 | .92
Buckwheat, bushels | 312,456 | 77,341 | 2.7 | .86
Oats, bushels | 454,460,412 | 7,849,962 | 48.1 | 5.3
Rye, bushels | 7,705,068 | 76,255 | 30.1 | .53
Total grain, bushels | 2,352,193,536 | 83,807,848 | 53.1 | 9.6
United States, bushels | 4,424,800,923 | 867,453,967 | —— | ——
Butter[39], pounds | 390,810,814 | 15,184,444 | 36.4 | 4.8
Cheese,[39] pounds | 7,609,331 | 614,732 | 46.4 | .58
Wool, pounds | 193,516,806 | 2,500,885 | 69.8 | 4.7
Flax seed, bushels | 19,791,647 | 16,010 | 99.0 | .28
Hay, tons | 44,799,194 | 253,297 | 53.3 | 1.8
Potatoes, bushels | 87,288,453 | 1,764,969 | 31.9 | 2.6
Hops, pounds | 31,673,821 | 12,719 | 64.3 | 7.1

The West leads the East in flocks and herds, viz:

| The Union— | The West—
| 1900. | 1850. | 1900. | 1850.
Dairy cows | 17,139,674 | 6,385,094 | 7,011,333 | 722,221
Other meat cattle | 50,682,662 | 11,393,813 | 35,585,356 | 1,756,059
Mules and asses | 3,366,724 | 559,331 | 1,655,654 | 122,371
Horses | 18,280,007 | 4,336,719 | 10,063,260 | 528,459
Sheep | 39,937,573 | 21,723,220 | 26,940,389 | 1,628,159
Lambs | 21,668,238 | —— | 13,632,117 | ——
Swine | 62,876,108 | 30,354,213 | 32,274,381 | 4,193,895
Total | 213,950,986 | 74,752,390 | 127,162,490 | 8,951,164
Per cent | | | 59.4 | 11.9

MANUFACTURING.

The center of area in the United States, excluding Alaska and recent acquisitions, is in northern Kansas, the center of population in Indiana, and the center of manufactures in Ohio. The center of area will always be in the West and the centers of population and manufactures are slowly moving that way. Manufacturing is of minor importance, though the aggregate of output exceeded the agricultural output in 1900 by over $50,000,000. Relatively its position is not so strong, being but 16.1 per cent of the total, against 27.5 per cent for population and 43.2 per cent for value of farm products. Manufacturing increased substantially in the 1890 and 1900 decade and materially in the past fifty years. Thus,

| 1900. | 1890. | 1860.
Value of products | $ 2,104,940,868 | $ 1,367,835,887 | $ 40,398,488
Number of operatives | 652,561 | 508,371 | 30,084
Dollars per operative | 2,991 | 2,690 | 1,342
Per cent of total: | | |
Product | 16.1 | 14.5 | 3.9
Operatives | 12.2 | 11.9 | 3.1

Missouri is the principal State for this branch of industry, California second, and Minnesota third. These states stand for nearly half the total output of Western factories. The output of California, Oregon, and Washington, in 1900, was $435,670,399, constituting 3.3 per cent of the value of products for the United States. Commenting on this, we find the census of Manufactures (part 1, page CLXXVIII) saying:

The industrial condition in this group of states in 1900, considering the value, but not the character of the products, was about the same as the New England states in 1860 and the Middle states in 1850. From this point of view, the growth of the Pacific states has been remarkable. The character of its industries is still determined largely by its natural resources of farm, forest, and mine, but the recent wars in the Orient, resulting in the opening of new markets, gave to the industries of this section a great stimulus which had only begun to be felt at the time the twelfth census was taken.

COMMERCE.

The combined imports and exports of the United States in the year ended June 30, 1901, were geographically distributed as follows: New York, 45.73 per cent; other ports east of the Mississippi River, 35.24 per cent; the West (Pacific and Gulf ports), 19.03. Of the seven great ports in the Union, three are in the West, New Orleans ranking the third, Galveston sixth, and San Francisco seventh. New Orleans has a foreign commerce of $173,000,000 a year; Galveston $102,000,000, and San Francisco $70,000,000. Puget Sound and the Columbia River, which before many years will be large ports, have between them $40,000,000. Of the total exports of the United States in 1901, the West reported $354,682,075, or 23.1 per cent. Imports were $86,275,443, or 10 per cent. Breadstuffs form a considerable item of the exports of Western ports. For the ten years ended June 30, 1901, shipments were 240,000,000 bushels of barley, corn, oats, rye, 450,000,000 bushels of wheat, and 26,000,000 barrels of wheat flour, of a total value of $521,000,000. San Francisco led in this business, with New Orleans second, and Portland, Oregon, third.

MINERAL PRODUCTIONS.

Ever since the discovery of gold in California in 1848 mining has been one of the most important industries of the West. Between 1848 and 1900 California yielded gold valued at $1,385,197,097, about one eighth the total gold production of the world from 1493 to 1900. The West in 1900 produced 99.6 per cent of the Nation's gold, 99.8 per cent of its silver (commercial value), and 15.1 per cent of its coal, viz:

| Gold. | Silver. | Total value.
California | $15,816,200 | $ 583,668 | $ 16,399,868
Colorado | 28,829,400 | 12,700,018 | 41,529,418
Idaho | 1,724,700 | 3,986,042 | 5,710,742
Montana | 4,698,000 | 8,801,148 | 13,499,148
Nevada | 2,006,200 | 842,394 | 2,848,594
Oregon | 1,694,700 | 71,548 | 1,766,248
South Dakota | 6,177,600 | 332,444 | 6,510,044
Utah | 3,972,200 | 5,745,912 | 9,718,112
Alaska | 8,171,000 | 45,446 | 8,216,446
Arizona | 4,193,400 | 1,857,210 | 6,050,610
Texas, etc. | 1,587,100 | 704,568 | 2,291,668
Total | $78,870,500 | $35,670,398 | $114,540,898

Other mineral productions are 30,000,000 tons of coal; 200,000 short tons of lead; 413,000,000 pounds of copper; 3,600,000 barrels of petroleum, and 30,000 flasks of quicksilver. The copper mines of Montana and Arizona have lessened the importance of the Lake Superior region as a source of supply, cutting its percentage of the total American output from 62.9 in 1862, to 25.9 in 1899.

One of the greatest gold mining regions of the world is located in eastern Oregon, covering a gross area of between 3,000 and 4,000 square miles. Prof. J. Waldemar Lindgren, of the United States Geological Survey, believes that the strong, well-defined veins upon which most of the important mines of this region are located will continue to the greatest depths yet attained in mining.

LUMBER INDUSTRY.

According to the census reports for 1900, lumber is excelled in value among American productions only by iron and steel, textiles and slaughtering and meat packing. The West, having 607,500 square miles, or 55.4 per cent of the total wooded area of the country, exclusive of Alaska, will surely be paramount in this important industry. Indeed, we, this early, find the Director of the Census making this important admission in one (203) of his bulletins:

The white pine area in the Northwest has passed its maximum of production and the attention of lumbermen is being diverted from this region to the Southern pine forests and to the enormously heavy forests of the Northwest coast, which will, in the course of a decade or two, become the chief source of lumber for the country.

Texas, with 64,000 square miles, leads the Union in wooded area. Oregon is second, with 54,300 square miles, and Minnesota third, with 52,200 square miles. Arkansas, California, Missouri, Montana, and Washington each have over 40,000 square miles of wooded area. Oregon, Washington, and California have at least one third of the standing timber of the country, but they cut less than ten per cent of the total lumber product. The redwood forest of California is, perhaps, the densest forest, measured by the amount of lumber per acre, in the world. In quantity of standing timber, Oregon leads the Union with 225 billion feet; California second with 200 billion feet, and Washington third with nearly 196 billion feet. Minnesota, with a product of $43,600,000 leads the West and Washington is second, with $30,300,000. The total value of the lumber product of the West in 1900 was $184,135,988, against $109,201,667 in 1890 and $6,075,896 in 1850. The lumber cut was 10,925,736 M feet, board measure, or a little less than one third of the output of the Union. Among Western states, Minnesota led with 2,342,388 M feet, Arkansas second with 1,623,987 M feet, and Washington third with 1,429,032 M feet. Oregon cut 734,528 M feet.

RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION.

The transcontinental railroads have brought the West up to its present state of development, for they have opened it to settlement, and provided reasonable rates for the transport of its products to the Eastern markets, even if at the same time they have exposed its infant manufacturing industries to the competition of the large capitalization of the Atlantic seaboard and the Ohio Valley. In 1850 the West had 79½ miles of railroad, all in Louisiana. All the rest of the westward stretch of the nation to the Pacific was without so much as a single rail. What Louisiana could so proudly boast of in 1850 was less than the mileage operated by the Boston and Maine and its branches in Massachusetts that same year. By 1900 the total had swelled to 87,406.13 miles out of the 193,345.78 miles in the United States and the percentage from .25 to 45.2. On the basis of miles of railroad per 100 square miles of territory Iowa leads with 16.56 and Nevada is lowest with .83. In miles of line per ten thousand inhabitants Nevada is first with 214.98, and Louisiana last with 20.44.

In view of the enormous railroad construction in the West in the past thirty years it is worth while to recall President Buchanan's telegram to John Butterfield, the pioneer of Western overland transportation, when the first direct overland mail arrived by stage at Saint Louis from San Francisco October 9, 1858:

I cordially congratulate you upon the result. It is a glorious triumph for civilization and the Union. Settlements will soon follow the course of the road, and the East and the West will be bound together by a chain of living Americans which can never be broken.

FINANCE.

In 1850 there were thirty-one banks west of the Mississippi; twenty-five in Louisiana and six in Missouri, with deposits aggregating $9,500,000. It is difficult to figure the condition of the people with regard to money as statements of private banks are obtainable in only a few states and the national banks are the only guide. On July 16, 1902, the individual deposits in these amounted to $639,180,306, and the loans and discounts to $615,116,949.

FUTURE OF THE WEST.

The future of the Great West must be considered from two view points: (1) In its relation to the Asiatic countries and their trade; and (2) in its ability to support a large population. These will be taken up in their order.

Asia and Oceanica comprise an area of 21,262,718 square miles, and have a population of 847,000,000, or more than half that of the globe. Of this number, 435,000,000 are in China and its dependencies, Japan, Asiatic Russia and Corea. Asia, and the islands of the Pacific, annually buy from the world goods valued at $1,446,000,000 and sell to it goods of a value of $1,436,000,000, representing a total trade of $2,882,000,000. The United States will in time have a tremendous trade across the Pacific, although at present our proportion of the business is inconsiderable. In the year ended June 30, 1901, only 9.25 per cent of our foreign commerce was with Asia and Oceanica, of which 2.17 per cent was with the British East Indies; 2.09 per cent with Japan; 1.67 per cent with Chinese ports, and .37 with the Philippines. The new theatre of the world's activities is a virgin field, as little understood on our Pacific seaboard as on our Atlantic seaboard, for the exporters of both sections make the same mistakes in packing, and in long range dealing with the Oriental customer, to whom the first essential in trade is what our consular officers persistently pour into unwilling ears as the "look see," or the privilege of inspecting the commodity offered for sale, before buying it. These, however, are details of commercial organization which our exporters can be depended upon to settle on a satisfactory basis. The fear expressed in some quarters that the opening of Siberia by the completion of the great Russian railroad, and the consequent development of a region that will become a competitor of the United States in the trans-Pacific country, would appear to be groundless so far as any detrimental effect upon our country is concerned. Our general development is based upon the attraction of our institutions, the freedom of industry, the cheapness and fertility of our lands, hospitable climate, and above all, to the long enjoyment of the guarantee of peace. No other country in the world can offer the same inducements to progress and no country in the world can compete with us on our own terms.

Viewing the future of the West from the point of its ability to support a large population, the measure must be the record of the half-century just past. It has done more than its most sanguine friend dared foretell of it a century ago and it is not half developed. Excluding Alaska, it has an area of 2,138,488 square miles and a population of 20,971,062, with a density of 9.8. The population density of the Union is 25.6 to the square mile. The West is capable of reaching this mark and on this basis its population would be, approximately 55,000,000, a little more than the states east of the Mississippi had in 1900. Every foot of the West is useful for some purpose, the purpose depending in some degree upon the success of irrigation. The high lands of Nevada are no more to be ignored in the general scheme of economy than the irregular and broken surface of Vermont, where intensive cultivation of the soil now obtains as a result of Western competition in agriculture. When one contemplates the rugged mountains of Idaho, eastern Montana, northern California, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, he should reflect that some where in this broad land cattle must have range if the price of meat is to be kept within bounds. Conditions for horticulture and agriculture in Louisiana are as favorable as in any other State in the Union. The Columbia-river basin in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho is an empire in itself, with a population less than Chicago, and eastern Oregon, under irrigation, could produce 100,000,000 bushels of grain. There are those who expect Alaska to take station as an agricultural community. Manufactures in the West will ultimately bear a close ratio to population. Commerce will depend largely upon the effort the Nation in general makes across the Pacific.

The West comes on the stage of the world's activity in an era of peace, prosperity, and advancement of American principles and institutions. Its loyalty to the Union never has been doubted and no cloud of discord appears to bring it into contest with the East, for its interests are identical with those of that section, and community of interest promotes community of purpose. The West, instead of proving the Nation destroyer, has proved its savior. What the future is in all its aspects, no man can say. The Briton would have been thought insane ten years ago who would have dared to predict the day that Canada, Australia, and New Zealand would be called upon to uphold the prestige of the empire at the Cape of Good Hope. No American, however pessimistic, contemplates with pleasure the possibility of war, still every American is pleased to see his country protected against the day of war. The generation that was contemporaneous with the statesman who said Oregon was not worth a pinch of snuff left sons and daughters to see an Oregon regiment sailing away from San Francisco to plant the Stars and Stripes at Manila and raise the United States to the dignity of a world power. In that city whose legislative halls echoed with dire warnings if Louisiana should be accepted from Napoleon, the citizens of some future day may be gladdened to the heart by the sight of a regiment from the Yukon River marching down the broad avenues to the defense of the national capital.

HENRY E. REED.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY OF ASTORIA.

On a peninsula flanked by Young's River and the Columbia, ten miles from the broad Pacific, is situated the historic city of Astoria. Its beginning dates back to April 15, 1811, when an expedition sent from New York by John Jacob Astor founded a fur-trading post on the present site of the city, and erected a stockade and buildings for the use of the traders. For a short time all went well with this little pioneer settlement, and a profitable trade was carried on, despite the murder of the crew of the Astor Company's vessel, Tonquin, and the destruction of the vessel off the coast of British Columbia. The Indians became enraged on account of the treatment accorded them by the captain, and set upon and murdered the crew, with the exception of Mr. Lewis, the ship's clerk, who, though mortally wounded, after inducing the Indians to come aboard again, set fire to the magazine and blew up the ship and its swarm of savages.

Soon after this, the second war with Great Britain started, and the members in charge at Fort Astor, thinking they would be captured by the British war vessels then on the coast, and that their goods would be confiscated, sold their interest and that of Mr. Astor to a rival company, known as the Northwest Fur Company, and controlled by British subjects. Soon after this transfer was made the British warship Raccoon appeared in the river, and on December 12, 1813, took formal possession of Astoria in the name of Great Britain, and named it Fort George.

In accordance with the terms of the treaty of Ghent there was to be a mutual restoration of all territory captured during the war. When the question of the restoration of Astoria or Fort George came up England contended that Astoria had been transferred in a commercial transaction between an American and a British company, but this contention was not pressed against the American claim that the settlement of Astoria by an American company confirmed that title already secured by the discovery of the Columbia River by Captain Gray in 1792, and by the exploration of Lewis and Clark in 1805. The United States again took possession of Astoria August 9, 1818, and the formal transfer was made October 6, 1818.

Astoria was now a very small settlement, consisting of a stockade and a few shacks, but bearing the high sounding titles of Astoria and Fort George, the latter being the property of the Northwest Fur Company.

In 1821 the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Fur Company were consolidated, and in 1824 Dr. John McLoughlin was placed in charge of Fort George. At this time the fur trade was carried on chiefly with the tribes of the interior, and it was the custom for the agents of the company to carry the goods to the Indians. Under the circumstances Doctor McLoughlin saw that the chief trading post should be farther inland, near the head of navigation, and moved to Vancouver, Washington, leaving a trader in charge of the company's property at Astoria, whose duty it was to watch for the company's vessels, and to send the pilot, Indian George, out to meet them and to pilot them to Vancouver.

With the departure of the fur company, Astoria became a lookout station and a trading post of very little importance. Mofras describes it in 1841 as "a miserable squatter's place, invested by the rival American and English factions, with the pompous name of Fort George and town of Astoria, the fort being represented by a bald spot, from which the vestige of buildings had long since disappeared, and the town by a cabin and a shed."

This condition was soon to be changed, for the trains of immigrants were beginning to arrive in the Willamette Valley, and some were to push on to the extreme western limit of the continent. In 1843 J. M. Shively came to Astoria and took up a claim in what is now the heart of the city, and known as Shively's Astoria. He was followed by Col. John McClure, who took the claim joining the Shively claim on the west, and now known as McClure's Astoria, and A. E. Wilson, who located on the claim to the east of Shively's claim, and now known as Adair's Astoria. These three men and James Birnie, the trader, in charge of the Hudson Bay Company's station, were the only white men in Astoria in 1844. Soon after this Robert Shortess located on the land now known as Alderbrook, and a Mr. Smith located at what is now known as Smith's Point. Mr. Birnie lived in the company's building, situated near the present site of Saint Mary's Hospital, Colonel McClure lived in a small cabin just to the south and east of where the Baptist Church now stands, and Mr. Shively, "who didn't believe in joint occupancy, which disturbed the social relations between Mr. Birnie and himself," lived at "Lime Kiln Hall," on the ridge near the eastern limit of his claim. Mr. Wilson lived in a cabin in Upper Astoria. There were several settlers on Clatsop Plains at this time, among the number being D. Summers, Mr. Hobson and family, Rev. J. L. Parrish, Messrs. Solomon Smith, Tibbets, Trask, and Perry. Ben Wood, N. Eberman, and other young men held claims on the plains, but lived elsewhere.

Astoria the fur-trading post now ceased to exist; Astoria, the town, was started. Astoria's real beginning, from which resulted a city, dates back, then, only to the early forties when the homeseekers first settled here. In 1846 James Welch and family and David Ingalls arrived. Mr. Welch took possession of the Shively claim during Mr. Shively's absence in the East and divided the claim into city lots as Mr. Shively had previously done. This led to a dispute over the ownership of the claim which was finally settled by an equal division of the claim between the two interested parties.

When J. M. Shively returned from the East in 1847 he brought with him his commission as postmaster and opened the first post office west of the Rocky Mountains in the Shively building, still standing on the east side of Fourteenth Street, between Exchange Street and Franklin Avenue. The next year S. T. McKean, wife, and six children arrived and took up their residence here. In this year also the news of the discovery of gold in California led to a stampede to the mines and while some of the inhabitants of Astoria went, their places were soon filled by people brought here by the great increase in the amount of shipping done from Columbia River. A great demand for lumber and provisions arose and mills were started to supply this demand. Hunt's mill, just below Westport, had commenced operations in 1846, and when the gold excitement started, had one hundred thousand feet of lumber on hand which was eagerly purchased at $100 per thousand. The Milwaukie mill and Abernethy's mill at Oak Point supplied the greater part of the lumber for the California trade. In 1849 Marland's mill, just above Tongue Point, was started. This mill was later destroyed by fire. In 1851-52 James Welch and others built the first mill in the city proper. It was located in the block bounded by Commercial, Bond, Ninth, and Tenth streets. It was afterward owned by W. W. Parker and known as the Parker mill.

The increase in the amount of shipping led to the establishment of the customhouse at Astoria in 1849. The same year Captains White and Hustler arrived and brought the first pilot boat to operate on the Columbia-river bar, the Mary Taylor. The pilots had their headquarters at Astoria, and this led to increased trade for Astoria and the establishment of boarding houses for the accommodation of the shipping men and the passengers of vessels that stopped here either to await favorable wind to proceed to up-river points or to cross the bar or to complete their cargoes of lumber or increase their cargoes of provisions with a few barrels of salt salmon.

When Col. John Adair, the first collector of customs, arrived at Astoria he occupied the McClure house and tried to secure land from the different owners of the town on which to build the customhouse. The owners refused to donate the land and fixed the price at a figure which Colonel Adair considered too high. The result of this disagreement was the establishing of the United States customhouse at Upper Astoria and the beginning of the rivalry between the upper and lower towns, which lasted for many years, and led to the building up of two towns mutually jealous of each other yet having every interest in common. Judge Strong, who passed through Astoria in 1850, says:

When Astoria was pointed out as we reached the point below, I confess to a feeling of disappointment. Astoria, the oldest and most famous town in Oregon, we had expected to find a larger place. We saw before us a straggling hamlet, consisting of a dozen or so of small houses irregularly planted along the river bank shut in by the dense forest. We became reconciled and indeed somewhat elated in our feelings when we visited the shore and by its enterprising proprietors were shown the beauties of the place. There were avenues and streets, squares and public parks, wharves and warehouses, churches and theaters and an immense population—all upon the map. Astoria at that time was a small place or rather two places—the upper and the lower town—between which there was great rivalry. The upper town was known to the people of lower Astoria as Adairville. The lower town was designated by its rival as "Old Fort George or McClure's Astoria." A road between the two places would have weakened the differences of both, isolation being the protection of either. In the upper town was the customhouse; in the lower town two companies of United States engineers, under command of Major J. S. Hathaway. There were not, excepting the military and those attached to them and the customhouse officials, to exceed twenty-five men in both towns. At the time of our arrival in the country there was considerable commerce carried on, principally in sailing vessels, between the Columbia River and San Francisco. The exports were chiefly lumber, the imports merchandise.

The United States census of 1850 gives Astoria a population of two hundred and fifty-two, which number included the two companies of United States engineers stationed here and probably a number of transients.

I have before me a photograph of a painting copied from a daguerreotype picture of Astoria taken in 1856. This picture was taken from a spot near where the Parker House now stands and shows a wharf and a dozen houses. The wharf was known as the Parker wharf and extended from the Parker mill in a northeasterly direction to a point just north of the Occident Hotel. This was the first wharf erected in Astoria and was built in the early fifties. The picture also shows the old Methodist Church which was built in 1853-54, a cooper shop, the Shively house, the present residence of Judge F. J. Taylor, and the buildings occupied by the United States troops during their stay here. A few houses were not shown in the picture, those in the then western part of the town and those in upper town.

Astoria was now assuming the proportions of a town and in 1856 was incorporated by the territorial legislature. The town included the Shively claim and a part of the McClure claim.

With the incorporation of the Astoria and Willamette Valley Railroad in 1858 by T. R. Cornelius, W. W. Parker, John Adair and others began Astoria's struggle for rail connections with other parts of the state and with the East which ended with the completion of the Astoria and Columbia River Railroad in 1898.

No census returns were handed in for Astoria in 1860, but the estimated population was about two hundred and fifty. The troops had been removed before this so that the town had had a substantial growth caused chiefly by the increase in the amount of shipping and the trade with the small growing settlements near Astoria. Astoria was becoming the trade center for all points on the lower Columbia. The fishing industry was confined still to the smoking and salting of salmon and a considerable quantity was shipped to the Sandwich Islands.

J. M. Shively, who had been appointed postmaster in 1847, left for the mines in 1849 leaving his deputy, David Ingalls, in charge of the office, who moved the office to his store on the southwest corner of Tenth and Duane streets. At this time Astoria was the distributing office for the entire Northwest, including the present states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. In 1853 San Francisco was made the distributing point for the coast. T. P. Powers, who resided in Upper Town and was a part owner in that place, succeeded Mr. Shively as postmaster and moved the post office to upper town near the customhouse. This left Astoria without a federal office and helped to build up its rival. With the change of the national administration in 1861, new officers who were friendly to the lower town were appointed and the post office and the customhouse were moved to the lower town. It was remarked at the time by a resident of lower town that "politics took them away and politics brought them back."

The erection of Fort Stevens and Fort Canby at this time made work plentiful around the mouth of the river and contributed to the growth of Astoria both in population and in wealth, as many of the supplies were drawn from the town.

The school census for the years 1859-70 shows a steady growth in population brought about by the establishment of new enterprises, the settlement of the country tributary to the town, and the increase in amount of shipping from the Columbia River, especially the establishment of a regular line of steamers from Portland and Astoria to San Francisco. In 1865 Christian Leinweber started the Upper Astoria tannery which gave employment to about thirty persons. In 1867 what was afterwards known as the Hume mill was built near Thirteenth and Commercial streets and was one of the city's most important resources until its destruction by fire in 1883.

In 1867 Judge Cyrus Olney, who had succeeded to the claim of John McClure, formulated a plan to dispose of a part of this property at a uniform price per lot. This plan was known, locally, as the Olney lottery. Tickets were sold for $50 each, entitling the holder to a lot in the city and a chance to draw the "grand prize," which consisted of two lots and a house, the property now owned and occupied by Louis Kirchoff and situated on Twelfth Street, between Exchange Street and Franklin Avenue. The other lots were situated in different parts of McClure's Astoria. The plan then amounted to this: each ticket entitled the holder to a lot, though the location was a matter of chance, and a chance to win two lots and a house. Many lots were disposed of by means of this lottery.

By 1870 the population of the town had increased to six hundred and thirty-nine, and the population of Clatsop County had increased from four hundred and sixty-two in 1850 to one thousand two hundred and fifty-five in 1870. Small sailing vessels and steamboats were running between Astoria and lower river points, and a regular steamer service was maintained between Portland and Astoria and between Portland and San Francisco. At this time it was customary for the ocean steamers to make the trip from Portland to Astoria during the day, and to tie up at Astoria for the night, and to cross the bar the next morning. Steamer day was the event of the week and was a source of considerable revenue to the merchants of the town.

The Pioneer and Historical Society was organized in this city in 1871, and, as the name implies, its membership is limited to the pioneers of Oregon, and its object is to prepare and keep a record of the events in which the pioneers figured during the founding and development of the State. Many records were collected by the society, but for the most part have been scattered and lost, as have the books of its once valuable library. For several years past the society has had merely a nominal existence, but recently a movement has been started to reorganize the society, and to carry out the purposes for which it was founded, especially in the way of collecting local history.

The Astorian, the successor to Astoria's first newspaper, The Marine Gazette, published during the sixties, was first published in 1873, and has been issued continuously since that time. Its influence in the upbuilding of the town can not be estimated. The early files of the paper are filled with articles encouraging new enterprises, setting forth the advantages of the town, and recording every new step in its advancement.

The question of title to the water frontage became a troublesome one when the town began to grow and buildings were being erected along the water front. The original settlers thought they had title to this land by virtue of their patent from the United States; but later it was learned that the State of Oregon had title to all land between high and low-water mark. By a legislative act passed in 1872 the State authorized the sale of its property in front of Astoria to the owners of the property immediately back of the tide land, or to those who had purchased their land from such owners and had made improvements thereon. The price asked was nominal. During the years 1873-76 most of this land was purchased from the State, and the city placed in a position to use the property best suited for cannery sites and wharves.

By the terms of the new city charter, passed in 1876, the limits of the city were extended so as to include Shively's claim, Hustler and Aiken's Addition, and all of McClure and Olney's Addition. In 1891 the boundaries were again changed so as to include Upper Astoria, Alderbrook, all the land between Alderbrook and John Day's River, and Smith's Point. The city was bounded at this time by the Columbia River, John Day's River, Young's Bay and River, and a line connecting John Day's River and Young's River. These boundaries remained until 1899, when all the land east of Van Dusen's Addition was cut off from the city.

In the fall of 1874 the first grain ships to take their entire cargo from Astoria were loaded by R. C. Kinney & Sons. This fleet consisted of the British ship Vermont and three other vessels. The same year the Astoria and Willamette Barge Company was formed for the purpose of carrying wheat in barges and steamers from the farms in the Willamette Valley to the vessels at Astoria. The company built the "Farmer's Wharf" on the site of the present dock and warehouse of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. This company lacked the capital to carry on this enterprise and after loading a few ships sold out to the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. The promoters of the barge company expected to transport a ship load of wheat to Astoria for less than the cost of towage and pilotage between Portland and Astoria. Since this time some of the larger grain vessels have completed their cargoes here, but this port has not been made a starting point for the grain fleet.

While the experiment with the wheat shipping was being tried another industry was rising into importance, the one that more than any other has contributed to the growth of the town. In 1866 four thousand cases of salmon had been packed. The following year eighteen thousand cases were packed on the Columbia River, and this important industry was established and by 1874 it had reached the proportions of an extensive commercial transaction. Astoria's share in the salmon packing business began with the erection of Badollet & Company's cannery in Upper Astoria in 1873. This cannery did not run the next season. A. Booth & Company built the second Astoria cannery. Devlin & Nygant's, R. D. Hume & Company's, and Kinney's were built in the order named and all were in operation in 1876. Trullinger's mill was built during this year and Astoria now boasted of two large mills, five canneries, and a tannery. During the two years, from 1874 to 1876, the population of the town nearly doubled and many new buildings, consisting of canneries, warehouses, and dwellings, were erected. There was much money in circulation as every one had money and the fishermen were prodigal with theirs. Small change was seldom used, the quarter being the smallest coin in general use. This was the period of Astoria's greatest growth. From a small shipping station in the sixties it had grown to be a town of about two thousand people, controlling the most important industry on the lower Columbia and holding a large trade. Improvements followed as a matter of course. In 1876 the Western Union Telegraph Company completed its line between Portland and Astoria, and Robert Mason & Company constructed a building and entered into the production of oil from salmon heads. During this year a new enterprise was started at the canneries of M. J. Kinney and Hanthorn & Company, that of canning beef and mutton. At Kinney's from September, 1876, to January, 1877, nineteen thousand five hundred cases of beef and five hundred cases of mutton were packed. This industry seems never to have gotten beyond the experimental stage in Astoria, owing largely to the difficulty of securing cattle at a fair price and to the lack of facilities for and experience in handling the meat. During the season of 1877 there were eleven canneries in operation in Astoria and more than a thousand fishing boats were in use on the river. Just before sundown, during the fishing season, the river would be covered with white sailed boats, all sailing briskly along on their way to their favorite drifts.

Houses during this year were in great demand, and many were built. The Astorian thus speaks of the building boom:

It may seem surprising, but nevertheless it is true, work is progressing in all stages upon one hundred and eighty-nine new buildings in the city of Astoria at this moment. * * Were we to attempt to enumerate the long list of structures erected in this city since last fall we should fail to do the subject justice. In building wharves and warehouses, canneries, and other packing establishments, ship yards, and machine shops, stores, and residences, many thousands of dollars have been spent.

And again:

Houses are being erected at an alarming rate. Last Saturday ten new structures were raised—one for every working hour of the day.

The river trade, a very important factor in the upbuilding of the city, had greatly increased during the past three years. Twenty or more steamers, large and small, were engaged during 1878 in making daily trips between Astoria and lower river points and upper river points as far as Portland. At this time seven steamers were making regular trips between Portland and San Francisco, but stopping at Astoria and bringing many passengers and much freight to the town. The Astorian of May 5, 1877, commenting on the number of people arriving at Astoria, says "last month two thousand six hundred and twenty-eight bona fide immigrants landed at Astoria by steamers. About one thousand seven hundred proceeded inland in search of homes." This was about the beginning of the fishing season, and no doubt most of those who remained at Astoria were fishermen and cannery workers. The people at that time remained in Astoria during the fishing season, and returned to California for the winter.

The effect of having such a large floating population was soon felt on the morals of the city, and it was during these early years of the salmon industry that Astoria acquired the reputation for vice and crime that remained long after the city had rid itself of its undesirable element. During the year 1877 there were forty saloons in the city, and all reaped a rich harvest during the fishing season. The Astorian was strong in its protests against the immorality of the town, and urged the closing of all the dives and gambling houses, but for a time without avail. Later we shall see how the city did rid itself of its lowest class of inhabitants.

In 1878 the roadway to Upper Astoria was completed, and the Upper Astoria post office abolished. The completion of the roadway was an event of great importance to the people of both towns, and had the effect of putting an end to the rivalry that had existed since the starting of Upper Astoria in 1849, when the customhouse was built. The towns were now in fact one, though considered locally as two separate towns. By the legislative act of 1891 the corporate limits of the town were extended so as to include upper town.

The intense rivalry between the companies operating steamers on the Portland-San Francisco route brought about the reduction of freight and passenger rates so that there was much travel between Oregon and California. As every steamer stopped several hours at Astoria the town received considerable patronage from the passengers. The Astorian speaks of the town being crowded during the stay of one of the ocean steamers. The Great Republic frequently carried a thousand passengers, and always took on a considerable part of its cargo at Astoria.

The population of Astoria in 1880 was two thousand eight hundred and three and the population of Clatsop County seven thousand two hundred and twenty-two. This increase in the number of people in the county meant much to Astoria, since the supplies for a large part of Clatsop County are taken from the city.

In 1883 the salmon industry reached its highest point. Not only were more fish canned than at any previous year but a better price than ever before was paid for the raw material, thus distributing a larger amount of money among the fishermen and cannery workers. During this season six hundred and twenty-nine thousand cases of salmon, valued at over $3,000,000, were packed on the Columbia River.

It was during this year that the fire, known locally as the "big fire," occurred. It started July 2, 1883, in the sawmill near the site now occupied by the Foard & Stokes Company and swept the entire water front from that point east to Seventeenth Street, including the large warehouse owned by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The volunteer fire department worked heroically and succeeded after several hours in gaining control of the fire, though not until it had destroyed several blocks of business houses, wharves, and dwellings. The wooden streets, built on piling over the water acted as a means for carrying the fire from building to building. The loss was very heavy but the fishing season was at its height and money plentiful, so that in a short time new buildings were erected in place of those destroyed by fire.

An interesting chapter in Astoria's history is connected with the fire of 1883. During its progress a large quantity of liquor was taken from the saloons in the path of the fire and carried to places of safety only to be stolen by the rougher class of onlookers. In a short time great disorder prevailed in the vicinity of the fire and the officers were powerless to prevent the wholesale stealing of the goods taken from the stores and houses. Drinking was kept up throughout the night but after the fire was checked the scene of disorder was transferred to the lower part of town, known as "Swilltown." Here the drunken fishermen were soon relieved of their money by the denizens of this section. Later some of the fishermen threatened to burn the rest of the town in retaliation. The business men of the city fearing that this threat would be carried out organized a committee to assist the officers in preserving the peace should their aid become necessary, the mayor at the same time issuing a proclamation calling upon all saloon keepers to close their saloons each night at 12 o'clock. One saloon, owned by Riley and Ginder, two ex-policemen, refused to obey and when the officers went to arrest the proprietors they were fired upon through the barricaded doors. During the conflict three taps were sounded on the fire bell, the signal for the citizens' committee to assemble. The committee responded quickly and arrived upon the scene fully armed and ready for action. The officers in the mean time had succeeded in entering the building and had arrested Riley and Ginder who were brought before the committee. After a short deliberation they were informed that they must leave the city at once under penalty of being hanged from the city hall. The threat was sufficient and they closed their saloon and left the city. To one who knows the condition of affairs that existed in the city after the fire, and the character of the men who led the citizens' movement, it is evident that Riley and Ginder used the best of judgment in obeying promptly. After disposing of this case the committee decided to drive out the crowd of disreputable characters that lived in "Swilltown," and accordingly served notice on all such to leave town within twenty-four hours. This order, backed by a resolute set of citizens, was generally obeyed, only one man openly defying the committee. This man, an Englishman by the name of Boyle, was known as a "bad man." Nevertheless he was captured, whipped, and sent out of town. Recognizing three members of the committee he brought suit against them in the United States court for damages and secured the verdict. The amount was quickly raised by general subscription, $20 being the usual individual contribution. The citizens' committee having accomplished the purpose for which it was organized now disbanded.

Notwithstanding the steady decline in the salmon pack on the Columbia River since 1883 and the closing of many of the canneries in the city, Astoria has had a steady growth, due in a great measure to the increase in trade with the growing towns and the farming and dairy districts tributary to the city, and to the growth of the sawmill industry, which though still in its infancy here, is growing rapidly. By the close of the summer four and possibly five large mills will be in operation.

In 1890 the city had a population of six thousand one hundred and eighty-four, a very great increase over the census returns of ten years before. Two years before this the Astoria and South Coast Railroad was started and the road built from Sea Side to the middle of Young's Bay, a distance of about fifteen miles. Though this road did not enter the city for several years its building had a marked effect on Astoria. Prices for city property increased very rapidly, and during the years 1889 and 1890 a real estate boom was in progress. While considerable property changed ownership very little building was done so that when the period of activity in real estate ended the city did not contain rows of empty houses as did so many of the boom towns of Washington.

Almost from the beginning of its history Astoria has dreamed of rail connections with the East. The coming of the railroad has been regarded as the one thing needed to make Astoria the seaport of the Northwest. The Astoria and South Coast road had stopped near the center of Young's Bay. About three years later a new road that was to run up Young's River, thence through the Nehalem Valley to Portland was started. This company, after building several miles of trestle around Smith's Point and up Young's River, suspended operations owing to its inability to secure sufficient financial backing to complete the road. The Astoria and Columbia River Railroad Company was given subsidy of a million and a half in money and property and in 1898 built the present road to connect with the Northern Pacific track at Goble. The city has been greatly benefited by this road, although the long expected period of rapid growth did not accompany it, owing to the fact that Astoria has not been made a common point with other cities of the Northwest.

The population of the city in 1900 had increased to eight thousand three hundred and eighty-one. A conservative estimate places the population now at a little over ten thousand.

This is substantially the story of Astoria's settlement and growth, both in wealth and population. It remains now to trace the influence of its main industry, salmon packing, in determining its social conditions. In Astoria foreigners and native born of foreign parentage form the great majority of inhabitants. Representatives from almost every part of the world live in Astoria, the principal nationalities, however, being Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and Finns. The Finns form a greater part of our population than any other nationality.

During the first thirty years after the real growth of the city began the population was almost exclusively American, but with the advent of the fishing industry came the hardy fishermen and sailors of northwestern Europe who found here an opportunity to carry on their customary avocations with the assurance of profitable returns for their labors. During the first few years of the salmon business a great number of fishermen came from other states, so that Astoria had a floating population of nearly two thousand during the summer months. They were a free and easy set who made money and spent it without reserve, the saloons getting a large share of their earnings. As a result saloons flourished, carrying with them their many kindred evils, and Astoria became a rough place. The foreigners who in more recent years have engaged in fishing are, as a class, sober and industrious, and home builders. Gradually these adopted citizens have displaced the transient fishermen, until now the term fisherman is no longer synonymous with rowdy, but rather indicate a hardy, industrious citizen of foreign birth. In Upper Astoria and Alderbrook the people are mostly Scandinavians, or descendants of this race. In Union or Finn town, as the name implies, the people are almost exclusively Finns. They are progressive and almost to a man own their own homes, not shacks or hovels, but well built, roomy houses. These people, as well as the Scandinavians, come from a country where the public school system is well established, and are zealous in the cause of the public schools of this city. A year ago the people of Union town attended the annual school meeting almost in a body, and succeeded in carrying through a measure and voting a tax for the construction of a school building in the west end of the city, at the same time offering to donate a considerable part of the necessary labor. The present Taylor school building is the result of these efforts.

In the last city election, out of a total of eleven hundred names registered, nearly six hundred were of foreign birth. Of this number one hundred and seventy were natives of Finland, eighty-seven of Sweden, seventy-two of Norway, sixty-four of Germany, and forty of Denmark. The Finns are very clannish, which accounts for their almost exclusive Finnish settlement in West Astoria. It is their custom to send for their relatives in their own country as soon as they have earned the necessary money. In this way the foreign born population is steadily increasing. They do not appear to be a speculative class, but seem content to work hard, secure a home and save something from their yearly earnings though a few cooperative companies have been formed for the purpose of packing salmon.

The struggle for material advancement in the way of developing resources, securing a railroad, and other enterprises has not been greatly aided by the foreign population. Since the coming of these foreign-born citizens the fishing element is no longer regarded as a rough class of people, but rather as the sober, working class of the city. During the winter months most of the fishermen are employed carpentering, street building, as workers in the mills and factories or engaged in knitting nets and preparing gear for the next season.

Astoria at the present day is a cosmopolitan city of about ten thousand inhabitants, composed largely of foreigners. As in earlier times fishing is the main industry, though the rapidly growing lumber industry bids fair soon to surpass it in importance. At the present time there are only seven canneries in operation in Astoria, but the cold storage business has assumed large proportions during the past two years. Astoria now possesses an excellent water system, a thorough school system, consisting of six grammar schools and a high school, all together accommodating about fifteen hundred children and employing thirty-one teachers. Trade with the surrounding country has increased very rapidly during the last few years, but Astoria has been but little benefited by the increased export trade from the Columbia as most of the cargoes are shipped direct from Portland. During the ninety-two years of its existence Astoria has grown from a small fur-trading station to the second city in size in the State. While its growth has been apparently slow, it has kept pace with the development of Oregon and the Northwest as a whole.

ALFRED A. CLEVELAND.

A PIONEER CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY IN OREGON.

Note.—The material from which this paper has been prepared was derived from the following sources: manuscript account of "Woolen Mill," the "Journey to Washington," and the "Cargo of Wheat to Liverpool," written by Mr. Watt and loaned to the author by Mr. S. A. Clark, of Washington, D. C., in whose possession it has been. A series of articles in the Oregonian in 1881, by Mr. S. A. Clark, describing the journeys across the country and other incidents, obtained from manuscript and from conversations with Mr. Watt, with whom Mr. Clark was on most intimate terms; a paper containing recollections of his brother's life and incidents by Ahio Watt, of Portland; conversations with the widow and daughter of Mr. Watt, who are now living at Forest Grove, Oregon.

A unique place in the industrial history of Oregon must be given to Joseph Watt, the first to undertake the manufacture of woolen goods on the Pacific coast and the first to send a cargo of wheat to the market at Liverpool, both of which acts mark the beginning of important industrial and commercial policies in the history of Oregon.

Joseph Watt, or "Joe," as he is more commonly called by those who mention him in connection with the history of Oregon, was born at Mount Vernon, Knox County, Ohio, on the 17th of December, 1817. His earliest ancestor in America was a silk weaver of Scotch-Irish descent who came to this country about 1760, settling in the vicinity of Philadelphia. His grandfather, Joseph Watt, crossed the Alleghany Mountains in 1802 and took up a donation claim in western Pennsylvania. His father, John Watt, who had taken part in the war of 1812 and served with Perry in his first cruise on the Great Lakes, migrated to Knox County, Ohio, in 1815. Here he married and reared a family of ten children, of whom Joseph was one.

As a boy Watt seems to have been always a dreamer, building castles in the air and planning great schemes of business and adventure. Because of these dreams of verdant fields and herds of cattle, he desired to join the movement for the settlement of Texas, then being effected under the leadership of Sam Houston, and was prevented only by the ill health of his father and the large family which needed his aid. As a sort of compromise his father agreed to migrate to Missouri in 1838. This move resulted only in hardship and privation, and soon young Watt was turning his thoughts again toward the prairies of Texas. In the winter of 1840 and 1841 he started south, stopping in the country of the Creeks and Cherokees to earn money at his trade of carpentering. It was at this time that the Oregon country was coming prominently before the people in Missouri. Watt became interested and returned to his home with the intention of migrating to Oregon. On his way through the southwestern part of the State in the spring of 1843 he came in contact with many who were planning to start that year. Senator Lewis F. Linn, of Missouri, had introduced a bill into the Senate in 1838 providing for the settlement of Oregon and offering six hundred and forty acres of land to each settler. Watt read all that he could find upon the subject, listened to everything which he could hear and talked much with his associates. By the spring of 1843 he was ready to start, but his father had become equally anxious to better his condition and proposed that the whole family prepare to go the following year. By the spring of 1844 it was clear that the expense of so long and difficult a journey could not be met, and Watt, unwilling to defer his hopes longer, started with two companions, expecting to earn his way across the plains by driving the teams or cattle of well-to-do emigrants. The assets all told with which he started on this long journey were $2.50 in cash and a stock in trade of a pair of new boots, some pins and fishhooks, to be used in trade with the Indians.

Watt had succeeded in securing employment as driver for a well-to-do emigrant, but fell out with his employer before they had gone far. With a job here and there, and a trade to his advantage, he managed to reach Burnt River with a cow and a rifle to his credit. As the journey neared the end however provisions grew scarcer, and those who possessed them were less able or willing to share with others. Finding that he was not welcome at the camps of the emigrants, and obedient to vigorous hints, he started ahead with a single companion and began the dangerous and difficult journey over the Blue Mountains. The snow lay from twelve to eighteen inches deep, and the trail could only be followed by scratches made on the trees by wagons that had passed over before. Watt's moccasins had given out and were mended with leather cut from his buckskin pants. For provisions they had but a loaf of bread between them. The rifle was useless because there was no game in the mountains. His cow had been left in the charge of a friend in a party behind. All difficulties were surmounted however and the valley of the Umatilla was reached. Here they were in the region of game. A number of prairie chickens were shot, powder was traded to the Indians for a few potatoes, a kettle was borrowed and the weary travelers gave themselves over to a feast, which, at intervals, was prolonged through the night. Their spirits rose when hunger was appeased, and they knew that soon they would be at the mission station at Waiilatpu. Ragged and disreputable in appearance they were not cordially received, and the independent nature of Watt ever cherished a dislike for missions and missionaries. Remaining at the station until the party having charge of his cow arrived he effected a trade by which he secured a supply of provisions for the last part of the journey to the Dalles, where he expected to take a boat down the river. Various experiences were yet to be met. Fate decided that he should partake of but a single meal from the supply of provisions which he had earned so dearly. He escaped death by the arrival of unexpected help when he was grappling with an Indian in which encounter the expectoration of tobacco juice figured as a peculiar weapon of defense. Finally, however, he reached the Dalles where boats belonging to the Hudson Bay Company were at anchor. Those who had money to pay their passage were packing their goods on board and going themselves, but the chances for a passage for a penniless and ragged traveler were small. It was Watt's purpose to work for his passage and he made application to the boatman. "You are like one of those worn out oxen," was the reply, "you haven't strength enough to hold yourself up, let alone work;" and the boatman went on with his loading. Sitting on a rock by the river Watt was a despondent figure. But the boatman, turning back with the exclamation that "it was too bad to leave the poor devil to starve" for he might have some "come out to him after all like a lousy yearling in the spring," asked if Watt could sing. On learning that he could he bade him find a place on the bow of the boat and earn his meals as best he could. Under the title of the "figurehead," therefore, he kept his allotted place on the bow, and by his skill in singing and telling yarns earned his meals as well as his passage down the river. One song, entitled "the bobtailed mare, or the man who went to heaven horseback," made a decided hit, and Watt fared sumptuously for the remainder of the journey down the Columbia.

Ever at the van across the continent Watt was the first of his party to reach his destination at Oregon City, in November of 1844. A curious spectacle he must have made as he appeared upon the streets with his walnut roundabout, buckskin pants reaching to the knees and patched with antelope skin, with a red blanket for an overcoat and woolen hat, so worn in the crown that it hung about the neck rather than rested on the head. Such was the young castle builder who had made his way across the plains with a capital of $2.50 in cash and a stock in trade of pins, fishhooks, and a pair of new boots. Such was the picturesque appearance made by one who was destined to play no unimportant part in the industrial development of Oregon.

For a time he slept in the shavings of a carpenter shop. He tried to trade his last possession, his beloved rifle for decent clothes but failed. One day in his wanderings along the street he chanced to meet the chief factor of the Hudson Bay Company, the hero of his life. After a few inquiries Doctor McLoughlin gave orders to a clerk to furnish Watt with clothing. "Tut, tut, tut," said the old man, "what people these Americans are, wandering vagabonds across a continent. What are they coming here for? Give him some clothes." After a bath behind the shade of a neighboring bank of the river Watt emerged clad in his suit of British corduroy and with all his preconceived and inherited antipathy toward the British and the Catholics removed. With the first money earned from the task of bricklaying, an employment given him by Doctor McLoughlin, he sought to pay for his clothes, and purchasing a bath tub, a cake of soap and some tobacco, which was his one luxury, he had begun his career as one of the pioneer captains of industry in Oregon.

It was not long before an opportunity for advancement presented itself. The Catholic Church on the French Prairie was then in process of construction and its builders were in need of a workman competent to complete the cornice. As Watt was something of an adept at the carpenter trade he was offered the work of constructing seven hundred feet of cornice at $3 a foot, when he was on the point of offering to do it for fifty cents. The return from this employment was sufficient to give him a financial start. Not only industrious but shrewd in the matter of trade, Watt made the most of the opportunity. About this time the brig Henry came up the river at a time of high water, with a cargo of goods, among which was a stock of Seth Thomas clocks, an article for which the demand was great in this remote region. With the savings from his carpenter work Watt purchased the lot, and found little trouble in disposing of them in exchange for wheat. The harvest for the year had been abundant, while the demand was small, and the clocks, which had cost but $4 apiece, were sold for sixty to eighty bushels of wheat. Shrewdness in anticipating the oversupply of the one year would be followed by the scarcity of the next was more than rewarded. Wet weather and other climatic conditions caused a small supply while a large emigration increased the demand and the bushels of wheat were in turn exchanged for the pieces of gold. Thus in the space of two years the capital of $2.50 had increased to over $1,000, and the way was open for larger plans.

Watt had never in the meantime ceased his dreaming. It was not now, however, the broad plains of Texas and the herds of cattle, but, rather, the luxuriant meadows and hills of the Willamette Valley, which his imagination covered with flocks of sheep. Pleased with the opportunities of a country which had profited him so much, and desiring his parents and family to come, he started back to Missouri in the spring of 1847. The return was also to be made the means of realizing his dreams. It was his intention to bring back a flock of sheep. Already he seemed to see the demand that would grow up in a damp country like Oregon for woolen garments, and perhaps, likewise, the need of suitable clothing for his eight sisters. There were but few sheep in the country at that time. Some were in the possession of the Hudson Bay Company; others had been driven over in the emigration of 1844, and possibly there were a few besides. The return journey was made by the southern route. Evidences were visible of the terrible sufferings of the party who, in 1847, had been induced to come that way. Along the Rogue River the Indians were hostile, and Watt was enabled at various times to kindle his fire for breakfast with the arrows which lay thick about the camp. On the broad plains he was frightened by a band of hostile Pawnees, but, escaping all danger, at length reached in safety his home in Missouri.

Before his return to Oregon Watt made a journey to the East, mainly on business. Boston, however, with its bleak weather, had few charms for him. "With all their steamboats, railroads, fine stores, fine cities, fine women and all, give me Oregon," is the reflection which appears in the reminiscences of his visit. While in the East and in the neighborhood of Washington he decided to visit the national capital and carry back to his fellow pioneers in the Far West whatever he could learn of the disposition of the administration toward his country. As this "self-appointed delegate" was walking about the streets of the capital city he was indulging in the reflection, typical of the western spirit, that "a great deal of money was being spent foolishly in that city." He took occasion to look up old friends upon whom the city life failed to exert a helpful influence. His purpose there, however, was not curiosity, but information that might be of value, and to gain this he sought admission to the Chief Executive. President Polk was at the time too busily engaged to give him audience, and the disappointment was great, for his reminiscences record the exclamation: "What right had he to be busy when I was there, all the way from Oregon?" Unable to see the Secretary of War, Mr. Davis, for similar reasons, he finally was advised by his friends to visit the little brick house, on a back street, which was occupied by Senator Benton of Missouri. There he felt he would surely receive a cordial welcome. "I must go and see Benton," he says: "Haven't I shouted for him in Missouri, and hasn't he made speeches in favor of Oregon? Yes, he can tell me what the government is going to do for Oregon." Admitted into the house by the colored servant, he stood in the presence of the Senator whom he thought well named "Burly Benton."

The interview was far from pleasant, if we may judge from Watt's account. Upon learning the residence of his visitor, the Senator immediately began a eulogy upon the services to Oregon of his son-in-law, Colonel Fremont, which aroused the ire of the westerner. "Ah, yes," said Benton, "we know all about Oregon. My son-in-law, Colonel Fremont, has traveled all over that country. The country is, or ought to be, under everlasting obligation to him for the information he has given at the greatest sacrifice a man ever made." To this his visitor warmly replied: "As to any information given you by Mr. Fremont regarding what the people are doing and their prospects, it is certainly guessed at, for I know he was never there. His map of the road is good, but when it comes to making roads, he never did. He followed the road to Oregon made by emigrants, men, women and children to the Dalles, took bateaux to Fort Vancouver, got supplies, returned to The Dalles and struck out for California on the east side of the mountains."

Watt says in his reminiscences that he shall never forget the look that Benton had on his face as he started across the room, rubbing his hands and storming, "Perhaps I don't know the movements of my own son-in-law." While the picture is completed by the clerk, to all intents writing at a desk near by, but whose sides were "prying out and in like a pair of bellows."

A tribute paid by Watt to the services actually rendered by Colonel Fremont mollified the old senator and the remainder of the interview was pleasant. The conversation turned to the object of the visit which Watt had expressed to Benton in the following words: "I was in the neighborhood of the city and was anxious to learn something about the intent of the government concerning Oregon so that I could have something to tell the settlers on my return, for we only get the news once a year." Watt told him of his plan of transferring his family across the plains and of driving sheep and introducing the manufacture of wool. To Benton it seemed "quite an undertaking," but Watt, with the true pioneer spirit, replied, "Yes, but the people out there do not mind hardships and dangers. Somebody has to do it if the country is ever settled." To the praises paid by Watt to Oregon and the need of an extension of government, Benton replied, "There are a great many things to contend with, I am afraid, before that can be done. England has to be treated with, for they have some claims out there; and we have many designing men here who will give us trouble. I am sure I do not know how it will be done, but I think something will be done that will satisfy you people. I have been frustrated in some attempts to relieve the country but am still in hopes we can do something." The conversation then drifted to mutual acquaintances in Missouri, and Watt left with some maps and reports of Fremont, presented by the Senator, under his arm.

The journey by boat down the Mississippi River was the occasion of another experience. A collision occurred just before daylight and many of the passengers, unable to get to land, were drowned. Watt narrowly escaped by reaching the hurricane deck and wading out of the cabin waist deep in the water. "I thought that worse than all the Indians in the world," is the remark with which he sums up this experience.

Upon reaching home the preparation was made for crossing the continent. A band of sheep had been gotten together during Watt's absence, much to the amusement of the neighbors, who could not believe the enterprise would succeed. The progress, indeed, was slow. When rain fell the mud was deep and in dry weather the dust was equally trying. "I have driven day after day, pushing the sheep along by my knees, and could not see them for the dust," says Watt.

The emigrants of 1848 had a comparatively easy time, and a comfortable journey. They were more numerous, were better provided with necessities and better organized than those of former years. How great the contrast between crossing the plains in 1848 and that which had been the occasion of so many difficulties four years before. The ample outfit consisted of two large freight wagons with five yoke of cattle to each. There was loose cattle and sheep and drivers and herders to help with the work. Watt's familiarity with the route, his knowledge of the best camping places and sources of water supply caused many to look naturally to him as a leader, although the dust that rose from the path of the flock of sheep was too much for a close following. Watt was a lover of a practical joke, and his knowledge of the country often gave him an opportunity to indulge this taste. By his advice a company of the emigrants had been induced to camp by the Dry Sandy with the promise that water would be abundant. When they reached the place there was none to be seen. The bed of the stream was as dry and dusty as a desert. To the surprised and indignant inquiries of the fellow travelers for water Watt only said, "I have struck the rock and water will soon be here." Doubt and despondency, however, were clearly seen on the faces of the emigrants, and many thought that they had trusted too far. Those who were fortunate enough to have kegs of water in possession for such an emergency now brought them out and began the preparation of supper. Those less fortunate gathered in groups where grumbling could be heard in undertones; but Watt was calm and unconcerned through all. Without warning, when darkness came on, a thread of ice cold water that the midday sun had released in the snow-capped mountains, came trickling down. It grew larger and larger and shouts on every side arose "Here's water! Water for all! Moses still lives." The thirsty cattle rushed in without questioning the source of supply, but the emigrants touched it reverently, half doubting the reality of their senses.

The usual vicissitudes of the long but somewhat monotonous journey across the plains were enlivened one night by the sudden arrival in camp of a messenger, on horseback, from the West. He had been riding hard and seemed anxious to proceed as fast as possible. It was Joseph Meek, messenger of the Oregon colonists, on his way to Washington to announce to the government the Whitman massacre and the Cayuse war. "The Cayuse Indians have broken out," he said, "and are murdering far and near, sparing neither man, woman, nor children. Men are all up from the valley fighting them hand to hand. Our boys charge and the Indians charge back, death and destruction at ever charge." The effect of the vivid account, that none could give better than Meek, was great. Women and children were frightened and crying. Even the men questioned the wisdom of proceeding. Watt, however, being well acquainted with Meek knew his proclivities for exaggeration when striving for effect. Gradually the facts were brought out and the situation, though still serious, was not sufficient to turn back the emigration. For the rest of the journey Watt was the most cautious of the party. No Indians appeared and the fear of the emigrants wore off; but, like the water from the mountains, the Indians might come unannounced into camp at any time, as the experienced traveler across the prairies well knew. Even the seriousness of this occasion furnished Watt material for his practical jokes. When the party had exceeded the usual limit of carelessness in sitting late and burning the camp fires in the enjoyment of social intercourse, Watt arranged with the guards of that night a plot. The alarm for Indians was to be sounded at early dawn. The plan worked to a charm. The emigrants, who had retired to rest with a feeling of security, now crept out in confusion or hid themselves away in ridiculous positions. The bully of the crowd who had boasted that he "would like to eat an Injin for breakfast every morning," was now pushed from the wagon by his delicate wife, with a rifle in one hand and his pantaloons in the other. The heroine of the hour was a young girl, Mary Greenwood, the daughter of one of the reliable men of the party. She was seen amidst all the confusion kindling a fire and beginning to mold bullets for the men to use.

The journey was made without mishap to the sheep until Snake River was reached. Here the current was strong and they were carried down the stream. The dreamer of Oregon's new industry stood on the bank, helpless, and awaited the issue. The enterprise might easily have terminated at that point; but fate decided otherwise. One fellow in the flock, with all the qualities of a leader, struck out for shore with a strong stroke and soon the larger part of the flock reached the land and the wool industry for Oregon was safe.

Without other incidents of importance the journey was finally ended and the family were all together in their new home in Oregon. The wool weaver had proved a worthy successor to the Scotch Irish silk weaver of colonial days. He had shown the stuff from which new countries are settled and new industries started. The sheep, after their long and dusty drive, were placed upon the rich pastures of the farm in Yamhill County, and to all appearances were well pleased with the new environment. The cards and reeds and castings for loom and spinning wheel were put in place and cloth was made, sufficient to meet the needs of the family and in particular of those eight sisters whose needs had played so important a part in the beginning of the wool industry for Oregon.

The wise dreamer, however, had been unable to see fully the future. He had not known that while his plan was under way the discovery of gold in California had attracted the notice of the world; that the population flocking there would cut off the demand for his woolen cloth, while abundance of goods would come in from the East by water to increase the supply. The enterprise was well conceived, but as a financial move it was doomed to temporary failure. The sheep, however, were here and could wait for more favorable conditions. "About six or seven years after the gold mining excitement wore off," says Watt, "and people began to sober down to the home business, a few began to think about the prosperity of the country. We were buying too much and had nothing to sell. Stock had run down; there was little inducement to go into wheat largely. We must do something to prevent so much of an outlay for merchandise from other countries. Wool was almost worthless and there was plenty to keep a small mill going if we could only get the mill." Being interested in sheep himself Watt was anxious to make that industry profitable. He believed that the time had come when woolen goods on a considerable scale could be manufactured at a profit; that the cheapness of raw material would overbalance the high price of labor.

Watt had no personal knowledge of woolen mills but there were in Oregon, at the time, two millwrights who understood the subject and were anxious to be employed in such an enterprise. As the subject was canvassed the interest grew. In 1855, therefore, articles of incorporation were drawn up for the erection of a woolen mill to be located somewhere in the Willamette Valley. Subscriptions to stock were sought and offers of bonuses solicited. The articles provided that the capital stock should be $25,000, and that when $9,000 was paid in a meeting should be held to decide upon the location of the mill. A committee of five was appointed to take charge of the matter. The meeting to decide upon location was held at Dallas when the requisite amount of stock was paid in. It was a meeting of considerable importance, as much rivalry had arisen regarding the location. One party wished it to be placed on the Luckiamute, west of the Polk County hills, and the other desired it to be located at Salem on the east side of the hills. Lively work had been done; the party favorable to the Salem location had secured a bonus worth about $7,000 and had control of the voting stock. Considerable scheming, preliminary to the vote occurred, and when it was taken "you could hear a pin drop," says Watt. The result was favorable to the Salem site, and plans were begun for the construction. Within a few weeks all the stock was paid in and the company had possession of a piece of land for the mill. A board of five directors was elected and orders were given to begin the work. The water power was to be brought from the Santiam River by means of a ditch. The task was not great as the bed of Mill Creek could be used and the water power was soon secured. An agent was sent East to purchase the machinery and by the time it arrived the building was ready for its occupation.

Before the machinery was placed the introduction of this new industry was the occasion of a splendid ball in the spacious building. It was one of the most brilliant social affairs ever held in Oregon up to this time. Among the list of those present from all over the territory were dignitaries of state, including the Governor; dignitaries from the army, including Lieut. Phil Sheridan, and as Watt himself says, "even dignitaries from the church were present." Watt was an inveterate lover of song and dance, and would go many miles at any time to engage in such festivities. He was therefore in the height of his glory, which was not even destroyed by the fact that his chosen lady, Miss Lyons, beautifully adorned in a gown of blue velvet, with golden stars, was led to the dance by the Governor. Indeed, he had no reason to be uneasy, for the understanding between them was good, and a few years later, 1860, he was married to her, dressed for the occasion in a suit of wool made in the mill which he had done so much to establish.

By the first of May the machinery was in place, and everything was in running order. Cloth bearing the name of "Hardtimes" was produced, and the first blankets ever made west of the Rocky Mountains were sold at auction. The first pair went to Mr. Watt for $110, and the others brought $75 to $25. At first all the product that could be turned out found a ready market; competition, however, soon set in and the managers of the mill were undecided what course to pursue. Unwilling to discontinue the enterprise Watt was consulted, and agreed to take the entire product of the mill for a period of three years at a fixed price. By an aggressive process of advertising, in which he personally carried the goods into all the important places along the line of the old Holladay stage route, both in Oregon and California, a market was created for the goods. In three months after the agreement had been made the managers of the mill were willing to give a large consideration in return for a relinquishment of his contract. The goods found such ready market that the building and machinery were doubled. Prices continued to rise; debts were paid off; the value of the stock rose; a gristmill was built by the company; the race through the town constructed, and salaries of officials were raised "as high as their consciences would allow them to take." A woolen fever began to spread through the country. Mills were built at Oregon City, Brownsville, and Ellendale. This was the period of greatest prosperity. Conditions changed, but Watt was not then connected with the business. Divisions had arisen among the stockholders of the company, and Watt had disposed of his stock in 1866, when it sold for a value of $800 per share. He continued to be interested in sheep to the close of his life, and large flocks of the finest breeds were kept on his farm under the care of a Scotch herder employed for the special purpose. He was ever interested in furthering the sheep industry in other parts of Oregon, and it was partly through his influence that sheep were first placed upon the ranges of eastern Oregon.

But the dreams of the dreamer broadened as time passed. In 1866, when divisions led to his withdrawal from the woolen mill, the crop of wheat in the valley was unusually large. The wheat industry had been increasing for years. Oregon was rapidly passing from the fur trading and pastoral stages of industrial life to that of agriculture. With an ever-increasing supply the market was restricted, and here was a problem to attract the mind of Watt. Shipments of wheat were made to California, but the markets beyond had tempted only the most daring. One line of steamers had been established between Portland and New York and four or five vessels had been drawn into the trade. The Sally Brown was the first to make the trial and Watt was the man who gathered up the cargo which she carried from the wheat fields of the Willamette. Ever in the van through life Watt conceived the idea that a cargo of wheat could be sent to Liverpool, the market of the world. With him to think was to act, and in 1868 he went through the valley gathering wheat for the first cargo to the greatest wheat market in existence. It was an adventure in magnitude exceeding anything that he had tried before. Failure would mean a heavy loss, and success would usher in a new day for the industrial life of Oregon. The cargo was gathered and the vessel set forth on the long voyage. The destination was reached and the grain inspected. It was unlike any that had ever been seen before on the docks of the great market. The inspectors had never seen kernels of wheat so large. The decision was pronounced that it could not be right, and the whole cargo was condemned as water soaked and unfit for the market. The loss fell heavily upon the consignor of the cargo, but a beginning had been made that was destined to grow until Oregon's industrial isolation should be ended.

In closing this paper it requires but a few words to sum up the chief characteristics of Joseph Watt. He is best seen in the narration of his life. Ever engaged in enterprises that were ahead of his time, he belonged to the vanguard of industrial development in Oregon. Ever a dreamer, he met with heavy reverses but yet retained a competence sufficient for a comfortable old age. Independent and genuine in his character, there was no cant in his make-up. One of the company of kindred spirits that includes the names of Nesmith, Matthieu, Clark, Boise, Minto, Crawford, and others, his company was always appreciated, for he was genial and sociable in disposition. By the Indians he was loved, and they gathered about him at his home in Yamhill as they would about no other. Deeply interested in all that pertained to Oregon, he was truly one of her benefactors. Always loyal to the early state builders, he conducted a party of them in an excursion to the East when the railroad connection was completed. Always deeply interested in the Pioneer Association, Watt was its president for a time and rarely was absent from its meetings. By gift from his widow the author of this paper has deposited in the vaults of the Oregon Historical Society the little book in which he kept the names of the members in their own handwriting. It is worn and soiled through frequent use, but it will ever be a valuable reminder of the earliest of our state builders, as well as a reminder of him whom the author has chosen to designate as a "pioneer captain of industry in Oregon."

JAMES R. ROBERTSON.

DOCUMENTS.

TWO WHITMAN SOURCES.

Correspondence to the New York Spectator which describes Doctor Whitman as a passenger on board the steamer Narraganset on Long Island Sound. Doctor Whitman is on his way from New York to Boston.

Editorial from the New York Daily Tribune of March 29, 1843.

ARRIVAL FROM OREGON.

We were most agreeably surprised yesterday by a call from Doctor Whitman from Oregon, a member of the American Presbyterian Mission in that territory. A slight glance at him when he entered our office would convince any one that he had seen all the hardships of a life in the wilderness. He was dressed in an old fur cap, that appeared to have seen some ten years' service, faded, and nearly destitute of fur; a vest whose natural color had long since faded, and a shirt—we could not see that he had any—an overcoat, every thread of which could be easily seen, buckskin pants, etc.—the roughest man we have seen this many a day—too poor, in fact, to get any better wardrobe. The doctor is one of those daring and good men who went to Oregon some ten years ago to teach the Indians religion, agriculture, letters, etc. A noble pioneer we judge him to be, a man fitted to be chief in rearing a moral empire among the wild men of the wilderness. We did not learn what success the worthy man had in leading the Indians to embrace the Christian faith, but he very modestly remarked that many of them had begun to cultivate the earth and raise cattle.

He brings information that the settlers on the Willamette are doing well; that the Americans are building a town at the Falls of the Willamette; that a Mr. Moore of Mr. Farnham's party, some sixty years of age, was occupying one side of the Falls, in the hope that [the] government would make him wealthy by the passage of a preëmption law; that the old man Blair, another member of the same party, was living comfortably a short distance above, as all who have read Mr. Farnham's travels will know that he deserves to do. Doctor Whitman left Oregon six months ago; ascended the banks of the Snake or Laptin River to Fort Hall, and was piloted thence to Santa Fé by the way of the Soda Springs, Brown's Hole, the Wina, and the waters of the del Norte. From Santa Fé he came through the Indians that have been removed from the States to Missouri. The doctor's track among the mountains lay along the western side of the Anahuac Range; and he remarks that there is considerable good land in that region.

We give the hardy and self-denying man a hearty welcome to his native land. We are sorry to say that his first reception, on arriving in our city, was but slightly calculated to give him a favorable impression of the morals of his kinsmen. He fell into the hands of one of our vampire cabmen, who, in connection with the keeper of a tavern house in West Street, three or four doors from the corner near the Battery, fleeced him out of two of the last few dollars which the poor man had.

[This editorial was quoted in full by the Boston Advertiser of March 31st.]

From the New York Spectator, Wednesday evening, April 5, 1843.

CRUISING IN THE SOUND.

Gentlemen: Respecting the goodly Bay State I can say but little, because since I saw you, I have been only an occupant of steamboat and railroad cars. I had long supposed that a three-day trip to Boston was only hereafter to be a notion and reminiscence of olden time, but alas! I have had the stern reality of things as they "used to was." I left New York on Monday, in the Narraganset, at the usual time. We had a rough trip into the Sound, and at 12 o'clock Captain Woolsey, with sound discretion, carried us into the New Haven Bay, where we anchored till Wednesday morning, when we proceeded to Stonington, and on going over [to?] the railroad and finding it in the vocative case, owing to the outbreak of the waters, we retraced our movements and again took boat, and made a passage around Point Judith.

It is due to Captain Woolsey and his very gentlemanly aid, Mr. Richmond, to say that everything was done to make a large body of disappointed passengers feel happy; good and plentiful meals were gratuitously provided, and it can hardly be possible that any wayfarer on this occasion left the Narraganset without a deep conviction that, under the severe and awkward circumstances of the passage, all had been done that was possible to obviate the inconveniences and disagreeables of the passage through the Sound. I would add that the boat worked well. We had a very pleasant set of passengers. Among others I may mention the Hon. Robert Rantoul of Boston. This gentleman is by far the ablest man of the Democratic party in Massachusetts, and unless I could see him embarked for Salt River, (which I think must be his final destination,) I would rather have him embark on the same boat in which I sail, than any other. He is a very interesting, affable man, of great research, and will, I doubt not, yet render good service to the country.

THE REV. DR. WHITMAN FROM OREGON.

We also had one who was the observed of all, Doctor Whitman, the missionary from Oregon. He is in the service of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. Rarely have I seen such a spectacle as he presented. His dress should be preserved as a curiosity; it was quite in the style of the old pictures of Philip Quarles and Robinson Crusoe. When he came on board and threw down his traps, one said "what a loafer!" I made up my mind at a glance that he was either a gentleman traveler, or a missionary; that he was every inch a man and no common one was clear. The Doctor has been eight years at the territory, has left his wife there, and started from home on the 1st of October. He has not been in bed since, having made his lodging on buffalo robe and blanket, even on board the boat. He is about thirty-six or seven years of age, I should judge, and has stamped on his brow a great deal of what David Crockett would call "God Almighty's common sense." Of course when he reached Boston he would cast his shell and again stand out a specimen of the "humans."

I greatly question whether such a figure ever passed through the Sound since the days of steam navigation. He is richly fraught with information relative to that most interesting piece of country, and I hope will shortly lay it before the good people of Boston and New York. Could he appear in New York Tabernacle—in his traveling costume—and lecture on the Northwest coast, I think there would be very few standing places. Much of his route was on foot and occasionally on horse or mule back, with a half-breed guide. To avoid the hostile Indians he had to go off to the Spanish country, and thence to Santa Fé. A rascally hackman took him in at New York, and carried him from place to place at his whim and finally put him down near the Battery, close to his starting point, charging him two dollars, and it being midnight he succeeded in the vile extortion.

CIVIS.

In connection with our friend's communication we subjoin an interesting account of Doctor Whitman's mission, as given by Mr. Farnham in his travels in 1839 over the Rocky Mountains. [Fills over one and a half columns.]

DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE OREGON EMIGRATION MOVEMENT, 1842-43.

OREGON—PITTSBURGH MEETING AND DOCTOR WHITE'S REPORT.

The following paragraphs we find in several of the eastern papers this morning:

"The Settlement of Oregon.—The meeting at Pittsburgh last week, reported that it was not expedient for American citizens to emigrate to Oregon until the United States Government had taken measures to secure and protect the emigrants in their rights.

We see, by a letter in the New York papers, that Elijah White, who went as United States agent to Oregon, and took with him a large party of emigrants, writes, under date of August 17th, that his party had increased to one hundred and twelve, although they had lost two, one by sickness and the other by accident. They started with nineteen wagons, and their journey had been slow and tedious; but they had passed two thirds of the way, and were in excellent health and good spirits. A favorable opportunity for emigration will occur in April, through the aid of Mr. Fitzpatrick, at Independence. Mr. White advises those who intend to go to prepare light strong wagons, and to take no loading except cooking utensils, and provisions for four months. Mules are preferable to horses. He says no doubt exists as to ultimate success of the colony."

From the Jeffersonian Republican, September 17, 1842.

THE SETTLING OF OREGON.

We learn with gratification that it is at least rumored that an expedition is about to be got up in Saint Louis, to colonize the rich and interesting Territory of Oregon. To such as have so laudable and advantageous an enterprise in view, we are prepared and feel warranted in saying, that it rests not upon "rumor" that many of our fellow-citizens of upper Missouri intend emigrating to that highly celebrated region next spring, and will no doubt be glad to be joined by as many of the enterprising citizens of Saint Louis as may think it their interests to join them.

We learn from the "Oregon Correspondence Committee" of this place, that already they are beginning to receive names of gentlemen desirous of joining the expeditions, and from present indications, there seems to be no doubt remaining that there will be quite a large company formed. Let not those who now [have it?] in contemplation, draw back, but steadily persevere, and they may confidently promise themselves success. The country which they seek is no doubt one of equal attraction and advantages as any on the globe, and we rest assured that so soon as the number of inhabitants will justify, the fostering hand of a territorial government will be extended to it. Up then every pioneer, and let your cry be "Onward!"—Western Missourian.

From the Ohio Statesman, March 7, 1843.

LETTER FROM AN OREGON EMIGRATION AGENT TO A FRIEND AT PITTSBURG.

Washington City, February 21, 1843.

Dear Sir: Nothing of importance has transpired in Congress since my last. I am informed by members of the House of Representatives that the bill for the occupation and settlement of Oregon Territory will come before the House this week. It will pass when acted upon. It was referred to the Committee of Foreign Affairs. John Quincy Adams, chairman of the committee, reported back the same without amendment, on the 13th, and, as might have been expected from him, recommended that the bill do not pass. It is evident, notwithstanding, that the bill will pass when acted upon. Captain Stine [Steen], commanding the Dragoons at Fort Leavenworth, has addressed several letters to Dr. L. F. Linn and others, wishing the Secretary of War to grant him permission to accompany us with the Dragoons. I have postponed an interview with the Secretary of War till I am ready to leave for the West. I have sent many documents to you and others. You will please send some of them to your friends in Ohio, Wheeling, and other places, if you have any to spare. I have given the names of the several committees in Pittsburgh, and west of it, to a number of the members, who promise that they will continue to send all the documents calculated to throw light on the subject of Oregon, etc.

I am happy to learn that the citizens of Pittsburgh take so warm an interest in the matter.

I am your most humble and obedient servant,

J. M. SHIVELY.

From the Ohio Statesman of March 3, 1843.

The War Department made the following responses to the inquiries of Prof. Joseph Schafer for information as to provision of military escort in 1843 for body of emigrants going to Oregon:

First indorsement.

War Department,
Adjutant General's Office,
Washington, September 5, 1902.

Respectfully submitted to the Chief of the Record and Pension Office, War Department.

No information touching the matter of escort for emigrants from Fort Leavenworth to Oregon in the year 1843 has been found in this office.

J. PARKER,
Major of Cavalry, Assistant Adjutant General.

Second indorsement.

Record and Pension Office,
War Department,
Washington, September 10, 1902.

Respectfully submitted to the Quartermaster General of the Army.

The records on file in this office show that J. M. Shively, of St. Louis, Missouri, stated under date of March 25, 1843, that his party would start for Oregon on April 20, 1843; and that he desired a company of troops. The records also show that the communication of Mr. Shively was charged to the Quartermaster General.

Nothing additional has been found bearing on this inquiry.

—— ——,
Chief, Record and Pension Office.

[Name signed not decipherable.]

Third indorsement.

War Department,
Quartermaster General's Office,
Washington, October 6, 1902.

Respectfully returned, by direction of the Quartermaster General, to Mr. Joseph Schafer, No. 311 Park Street, Madison, Wisconsin.

No record of any correspondence with Captain E. Steen, 1st Dragoons, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, during the year 1843, bearing on the matter of a military escort for emigrants is found, nor is there any record of the communication of J. M. Shively referred to in the second indorsement hereon.

S. F. LONG, (?)
Major and Quartermaster, United States Army.

From the Ohio Statesman February 24, 1843.

OREGON.

The Xenia Free Press says: A farmer in this county informed us a few days since that he could raise a company of fifty families who, if [supported?] by the Government, would march, on short notice, for Oregon.

Also on the same page: The State Register (Illinois) says that the largest meetings it ever witnessed were held in Springfield on Wednesday and Thursday evenings in the hall of the House of Representatives, a couple of whigs talking the British side of the question.

From the Ohio Statesman, February 17, 1843.

THE OREGON MEETING.

[The meeting was evidently held on Saturday, February 11th.]

The meeting on Saturday evening at the Council Chamber was much more fully attended than was expected, the proceedings of which will be found in our paper. After the organization and the appointment of a committee to report to the adjourned meeting to be held on Thursday evening next, William B. Hubbard, Esq., in answer to a call of the meeting, commenced a most interesting address, prefaced by offering a resolution complimentary of Doctor Linn of Missouri, and those senators who stood by him in the advocacy of the bill for the settlement of this territory. The cry of fire caused Mr. H. to close his remarks, with a request by the meeting that he would proceed with them at the next meeting. We hope Mr. H. will prepare a synopsis of his remarks for the press. Nothing would be read with greater interest at this time.

The Government should speedily establish military posts from the frontier settlements on the Missouri to the Pacific. Settlements would speedily take place around each post, and produce in abundance would soon be raised to supply the post and the flow of emigration.

An adjourned meeting of the citizens of Columbus and its vicinity was held in the United States courtroom on the evening of Thursday, the 10th instant, in pursuance of a resolution adopted at the last meeting.

[Colonel Medary (editor of the Statesman), from a committee appointed to collect facts, reported that the committee wanted more time. The subject growing more and more interesting, on motion the committee was allowed till next Thursday.]

The resolution offered at last meeting was then taken up, and on motion of Mr. Hubbard, was amended by adding, at the end thereof, the words "without the violation of any international law."

The resolution, as amended, read as follows:

Resolved, That this meeting duly appreciate the untiring labors and distinguished abilities of Senator Linn and others in Congress, in their successful advocacy of the just claim of the United States to the Oregon Country; and that, as a component part of the Great West, we hope for a speedy adjustment of our rights upon the borders of the Pacific Ocean, and a like speedy occupation and settlement of that country, without the violation of any international law.

[Copy ordered sent to Hon. Joseph Ridgway, member of Congress for the district.]

The Ohio Statesman of March 10, 1843, contains the report of the committee appointed as per the above accounts. The report seems to have been drawn up by Col. Samuel Medary, chairman, and is a strong and interesting document of considerable length. It discusses in full, with all the information available at the time, the economic advantages of the Oregon Country, as well as the question of title. The report is accompanied by a map.

From the Ohio Statesman, March 14, 1843.

OREGON.

The people are again in motion here in relation to the emigration to Oregon this spring. Peter H. Burnett, Esq., one of our most estimable citizens is among the foremost here in exciting a laudable spirit in relation to the settlement of that desirable country. On Tuesday evening Mr. Burnett delivered a very able lecture upon this subject, in which was embodied a vast fund of information calculated to impress all who had the pleasure of hearing him with the advantages attendant on an early settlement of our western demesne. The American eagle is flapping his wings, the precurser of the end of the British lion, on the shores of the Pacific. Destiny has willed it.—Platte (Missouri) Eagle.

From the Chillicothe Intelligencer, March 17, 1843.

[At a meeting on March 8th, held in the Courthouse, Amos Holton presented a series of resolutions, and addressed the meeting at length] showing the origin and justice of our claim, and the immense value of that territory to the United States, in a commercial point of view, and to the West in particular, when, on motion the preamble and resolutions were unanimously adopted.

JOHN A. FULTON, Chairman.

WM. E. GILMORE, Secretary.

From the Ohio Statesman, April 26, 1843, quoting the Iowa Gazette (Burlington).

OREGON.

(The article aims to give a plan of preparations for emigrating, including detailed advice as to outfit, route, etc. The suggestions are similar to those adopted by the Bloomington meeting, for which see The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Volume III, page 390-391, December number.)

[The writer thinks that there is a ferry at or near Council Bluffs.] I speak of Burlington as a very suitable point to start from, because we have an abundance of the necessary supplies, and an excellent and very commodious steam ferryboat for those who are east of us.

(Signed)
One Who Intends to Emigrate.

N. B.—Newspapers who are friendly to the enterprise are requested to give the above an insertion.

The same issue of the Statesman still further quotes from the Gazette as follows:

OREGON.

The Oregon fever is raging in almost every part of the Union. Companies are forming in the East, and in several parts of Ohio, which, added to those of Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, will make a pretty formidable army. The larger portion of those will probably join the companies of Fort Independence, Missouri, and proceed together across the mountains. It would be reasonable to suppose that there will be at least five thousand Americans west of the Rocky Mountains by next autumn. This, if nothing else, will compel Congress to act upon the matter. We have reason to suppose, however, that we shall have a congress which will assume the responsibility even without any inducement other than the protection of American honor and American rights.

From the National Intelligencer (Washington), June 7, 1843.

EMIGRANTS FOR OREGON.

The Liberty Banner, published in Clay County, Missouri, says: We are informed that the expedition to Oregon, now rendezvoused at Westport in Jackson County, will take up its line of march on the 20th of [May] this month. The company consists of some four or five hundred emigrants, some with their families. They will probably have out one hundred and fifty wagons, drawn by oxen, together with horses for nearly every individual, and some milch cows. They will, we suppose, take as much provision with them as they can conveniently carry, together with a few of the necessary implements of husbandry. There are in the expedition a number of citizens of inestimable value to any community, men of fine intelligence and intrepid character, admirably calculated to lay the firm foundations of a future empire.

From the Ohio Statesman, May 3, 1843.

We attach the suggestions in the report of General Worthington, adopted in this city on Saturday evening, in advance of the publication of the report:

"The committee, then, do most respectfully recommend that a convention of the western and southwestern states and territories be immediately called, to urge upon the General Government immediate occupation of the Oregon country by a military force, and to adopt such measures as may seem most conducive to its immediate and effectual occupation, whether the government acts or not in the matter.

"That it be declared to the world, that the Californias never should pass into the hands of England for any purpose whatever; and that if they go out of the possession of Mexico, they should at once be attached to the future North American Republic of the Pacific Ocean.

"That all rumored negotiations of the surrender of any part of the Pacific border for an equivalent in the Californias, should be denounced as fraught with danger to the peace and honor and liberty of the American continents, and as a repudiation of Mr. Monroe's triumphantly sustained declaration of 1823, that these continents are not to be considered subjects of colonization by any European power.

"That it be declared that Great Britain should be excluded from the whole of the Northwest coast, between our boundaries with Mexico and Russia; and, that, to give her any part, will be a virtual loss of the whole, as it will cripple, or entirely prevent any important commercial operations by American citizens on our Pacific coast.

"That we recommend the Oregon Convention to be held in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the third, fourth, and fifth days of July, 1843.

"That measures be immediately taken for the appointment of committees at the capitals of all the states and territories west and southwest of the Alleghanies, to urge such action upon their several legislatures as will induce Congress to immediate occupation of Oregon country by the arms, the laws, and the citizens of the United States.

"That an address be published to the people of the West, and the Union generally, setting forth, and urging the adoption of the principles and opinions above proclaimed."

[The meeting to appoint the delegates to this Oregon Convention was called to meet in Columbus on the last Saturday in June.]

EXPERIENCES OF THE EMIGRATION OF 1843.

From the New York Tribune (weekly), August 5, 1843.

We find the following letter from the Oregon Emigration in the Iowa Gazette of the 8th instant (July):

OREGON EMIGRATING COMPANY.

Kansas River, June 3, 1843.

* * There are over 3,000 and perhaps 5,000 head of cattle, mules, and horses attached to the company. Captain Applegate has over 200 head, and others over 100 head. This has been a bone of contention with some of the emigrants and very nearly divided the company. Indeed, I am not certain but it will be the means of a split yet, as there are a number without cattle who refuse to assist in guarding them. The dissatisfaction is not quite so violent now, as the cattle owners have agreed to furnish the company with beef, (in case of scarcity of buffalo meat,) work cattle and milch cows, the former at a price to be fixed by the committee, and the cows and oxen without charge. The company have agreed to this proposition, and the former law, limiting each individual to three head of loose cattle, is thereby repealed. The number of cattle is quite too large. It is impossible to guard them at night, and the Indians at this place have already commenced stealing horses and killing cattle. The company which leaves next spring for Oregon should keep strict guard on their cattle and horses at the crossing of this river, as some eight or ten horses and mules have been stolen in one night from our company. Doctor Whitman from Walla Walla, who is in our company, advises that the company divide into three or four parties, for speed and convenience, as there will be no danger from the Indians.

[The name of the writer of the above letter is not given. The letter, however, indicates that he came to the emigration from Burlington, Iowa, and evidently lived there, as his letter was printed first in a Burlington paper. He was chosen a member of the "cabinet advisers" of the captain—nine persons. Probably these points will serve to identify him. Was he M. M. McCarver?]

LETTERS DESCRIPTIVE OF OREGON COUNTRY AND ITS EARLIER CONDITIONS.

A letter by the Rev. Alvan F. Waller to his brother at Elba, New York. It was first published in the Christian Advocate and Journal.

Taken from the Ohio Statesman, March 10, 1843.

Wallamette Falls, April 6, 1842.

Dear Brother: Your last came duly to hand and very much refreshed our spirits. Write every opportunity, being assured that intelligence from our friends is to us in this land like cold water to thirsty souls. You will see by my letter where I am stationed. This is in some respects a pleasant though laborious field of labor. This is and is destined to be, the great emporium of the interior of this country. Its water power for manufacturing purposes is probably not rivaled in the States; at least, few and far between are the privileges which equal or excel it; besides here is an excellent salmon fishery. As to the country, taking it all and all, it is a good farming and grazing country. The winters are so mild that the cattle and horses do well without feeding. The country is well watered, and the inhabitants are, in general, healthy. The ague and fever is the most prevalent disease, although other diseases occur. On the sea coast I believe it is more healthy than back in the country. So far as I and my family are concerned, we have been as healthy as we ever were in the States. Our little ones are quite as hearty and as lively as the fawns that skip over the plains.

Produce of all kinds, except corn, does well here, so far as it has been fairly tried. Some corn has been raised. Wheat, peas, and oats, I believe, so far as quality is concerned, can not excel in any country. Potatoes are tolerable, and in some parts excellent. Indeed, it is my candid conviction, that an industrious and economical man can live as well (fruit excepted) and make property as fast as in almost any country, and far easier than in any part of the State of New York where I have lived. Let him bring with him a few hundred dollars in cash or property, his farming utensils, etc., and settle on one of these delightful plains and the first year he can support his family from the soil, as he has nothing to do but fence, plow, and sow, and prepare a shelter or house for his family; yet he will have to encounter some difficulties incident to all new countries. Our mills are few and far between, and not all of the first order, but rather multiplying and improving; though a good millwright is very much wanted, as well as apparatus for building mills and a great many wholesome settlers, embracing some capitalists who will open trade with the Islands and China, which can be done from this coast with great facility. But first of all, our government ought to extend its jurisdiction and protection over this country. The state of the country in this respect (especially for Americans), as well in respect to a currency, is unpleasant. The Hudson Bay Company seem determined to monopolize as long as possible; yet in many respects they are quite accommodating, at least, so far as it is to their interest. They profess to claim many of the best and most valuable parts of the country by putting up a little hut without habitation and forbidding any one settling in those places. They made a claim at the Falls, on the side where I now am, about twelve years since, hewing a quantity of timber, etc., and a few years since they put up a small hut and covered it with bark.

Last fall an American took possession of a small island in the falls, but no sooner was it known at Fort Vancouver than a company of men was sent off with boards to put up a hut, and soon the governor of the fort came up, greatly incensed, called the man a pilferer, and anything but good; he, however, went on! A cooper wished to build a shop near me, but was informed, by orders from the fort, that if he built his shop would be torn down. He, however, went on and built; his shop still stands. These are naked facts; and others of the same kind, if necessary, can be forthcoming. By this you will have some clue to the state of things in this country in this respect.

I have written in great haste, as this is to be off early to-morrow morning. Besides, I have plenty of company, a number of men being here to buy salmon, of which I have the care. Others are on their way down the river. Indeed, my house is at times, as to travelers, more like a public house than a Methodist preacher's.

Your affectionate brother,
ALVIN F. WALLER.

A letter by Titian R. Peale to Thomas Morgan, Esq., of Washington, Pennsylvania:

Washington, D. C., February 6, 1843.

Dear Sir: Observing the interest you have taken in the "Oregon Bill," now before Congress, I conclude that a few notes, coming from one who has recently traveled through a portion of the Oregon territory, will be acceptable to you, and probably be of use to some of your neighbors, who may feel disposed to profit by the inducements offered, should the bill pass and become a law.

Being a member of the Scientific Corps of the United States Expedition, in 1841, I had the misfortune to be wrecked, in the ship Peacock, at the mouth of the Columbia River, and subsequently traveled that portion of the country south of the Columbia River, known as the Wallamette Valley, and thence across the mountains to California.

The soil, we observed, generally on that route, although not as rich as that of the Mississippi Valley, was still sufficiently so, when cultivated, to produce from twenty to forty bushels of wheat to the acre, of as good quality as any I have ever seen in my native State (Pennsylvania), which, added to the facilities for settlers in finding the land ready for the plough, without the labor of clearing, while sufficiency of the finest timber is found on the banks of the numerous streams, is alone sufficient to invite to the further settlement of the country when known. But this is not all. The winters are so mild that it has never yet been found necessary to house cattle, or provide winter food for them. They thrive and multiply beyond expectation.

Salmon are procured in great profusion in almost all the streams, and ready markets are found for them, as well as all the other products of the territory, in the markets of Mexico, South America, and the numerous islands of the Pacific Ocean. Thus, from its position in the Pacific, it has all the advantages which we possess in the Atlantic Ocean; gaining in the China what might be considered as partly lost from the European trade.

The tract of country to which I have more particularly alluded is about two hundred and fifty miles long, including the mouth of the Columbia River, and reaching to about one hundred and fifty miles from the coast. This tract of country I considered quite equal, if not superior to Pennsylvania, both in commercial position and capability in agricultural product, and much superior in its advantages for raising cattle, etc., being generally interspersed with prairie and woodland.

Would the above hasty notes prove satisfactory to you or any of your friends, or if they only serve to awaken a spirit of inquiry, it will always be a source of pleasure to me in having communicated them.

With great respect, I have the honor to remain, yours truly,

TITIAN R. PEALE.

To Thomas Morgan, Esq., Washington, Pennsylvania.

Letter by Peter H. Burnett to the St. Louis Reporter:

Taken from the Ohio Statesman of September 11, 1844.

Fort Vancouver, November 10, 1843.

Friend Penn: I reached here on yesterday, and the grass is now as luxuriant as a wheat field. Provisions are abundant here, and Doctor McLoughlin (who is the most liberal and hospitable man in the world,) furnishes the emigrants with wheat to be paid for in cash or in wheat next year. At the Cascades we met provisions sent us by the Doctor, and all purchased who applied, even without money. Two boats have been sent us with provisions, and the Doctor has lent two boats to the emigrants free of charge. We find him doing everything to aid the emigrants; and those who are here in the Wallamette Valley, are as hospitable as they could possibly afford to be. Business is very brisk, and labor finds ready employment and prompt payment at high prices. Necessaries of all kinds can be procured at Vancouver.

Most of the emigrants have reached here with their cattle and baggage, and will soon have their wagons here also. We find that cattle bear a fine price here and will sell readily. Cows at from $50 to $75, oxen at from $50 to $100 per yoke; labor $1 per day; beef from 5 to 6 cents; salt salmon $9 to $10 per barrel of about 300 pounds; wheat $1; flour $4 per 100 pounds. Anything can be sold here. Butter from 25 to 37½ cents; sugar, tea, coffee, and dry goods—plenty. American horses bear better prices than they do in the States.

The country exceeds my expectations, and certainly if man can not supply all his wants here he can not anywhere. Lieutenant Fremont, who bears this, can give you further information. I must close as he leaves immediately.

PETER H. BURNETT.

Letter of Peter H. Burnett's, taken from the Ohio Statesman of October 23, 1844, which quotes it from the Globe, Washington:

Linnton, Oregon, July 25, 1844.

I am here in our new town, which we have named as above, in respect for Doctor Linn's services for this territory. Gen. M. McCalla [M. M. McCarver] and myself have laid out the town together. He is a gentleman from Iowa Territory, and laid out Burlington, the seat of government. He is an enterprising man. Our place is ten miles from Vancouver, on the west bank of the Wallamette River, at the head of navigation, and three or four miles above the mouth of the Wallamette, and twenty-five miles below the Wallamette Falls. I have no doubt but that this place will be the great commercial town in the territory. We are selling lots at $50 each, and sell them fast at that. At the falls there is quite a town already. I own two lots in Oregon City (the town at the falls). They are said to be worth $200 each. I got them of Doctor McLoughlin for two lots here in Linnton. I was six weeks at Vancouver, where myself and family were most hospitably entertained by Doctor McLoughlin, free of charge. He has been a great friend to me, and has done much for this emigration generally. I find provisions high—pork 10 cents, potatoes 40 cents, flour $4 per hundred.

But I find it costs me a little, even less to live here than at Weston. I paid for wood the last year I lived at Weston $75, for corn and fodder $50, all of which is saved here. We use much less pork here than in Missouri. The salmon are running now and will continue to run until October next. They generally commence running the last of February and end in October. I have had several messes of fresh salmon. At this point we purchase of the Indians ducks, geese, swans, salmon, potatoes, feathers, and venison, for little or nothing. Ducks, four loads; geese, eight loads; swans, ten loads; salmon, four loads of powder and shot each. Feathers cost about twelve and a half cents a pound. There are more ducks, etc., here than you ever saw; also pheasants in great numbers. They remain here all the winter. I have hunted very little, being too busy. We find it very profitable to get of the Indians, to whom we trade old shirts, pantaloons, vests, and all sorts of clothing. They are more anxious to purchase clothes than any people you ever saw. You can sell anything here that was ever sold. Stocking Cary ploughs $5 each. We have an excellent blacksmith living in our place who makes first rate Cary ploughs at thirty-one and a quarter cents a pound, he finding it. [Omitting an elaborate description of the Willamette Valley.] American cows are worth here from $50 to $75; American horses from $50 to $75; oxen from $75 to $125 per yoke. This is the finest country for grazing cattle you ever saw. They keep fat all winter. Butter sells at 20 to 25 cents. And, what I did not expect to find, this is a good country for hogs. At all events you have here plenty of grass, a root they call wappato, and also plenty of white oak mast. A first rate market can be had for any and everything, and you have never seen business more brisk. Times are first rate and everybody is busy. The manufacturing power is unsurpassed in the world. There are more fine sites than you ever saw. Such water power as that at the falls of Platte can be found everywhere. * *

[Omitting a portion of the letter describing the timber of Oregon.] I will not persuade you, nor will I any of my friends, to come to this country; but were I in the States again, I should come myself. For $300 you could purchase one hundred young heifers; and in driving them here you might lose from five to ten. When you reached here they would be worth $4,000, and in ten years, without labor or expense, would make you a splendid fortune. You can move here with less expense than you could to Tennessee or Kentucky. Your provisions, teams, etc., you have; your oxen and horses, especially your fine American mares, would be worth double as much as they would cost you there. There are very few good American horses here. The Indian horses are not so gentle as the American, nor so fine blooded. The American cattle are greatly superior to the Spanish for milk, as they give more milk and are more gentle; but the Spanish cattle are larger. Cows have calves here from fifteen to twenty months old, and sheep have lambs twice a year in some parts of territory. The reason is they are always fat and get their growth much sooner. It is my deliberate opinion that no country in the world affords so fair an opportunity to acquire a living as this. I can see no objection to it, except it be by a man who loves liquor, for he can get none here.

PETER H. BURNETT.

From the Ohio Statesman, October 23, 1844. Quoted by the Statesman from the St. Louis Reporter.

We make the following extracts from two letters which were published in the Western Pioneer of the 6th instant, written by William L. Smith and John Holman, two emigrants to Oregon. The information from that territory, received this year, is of the most interesting character:

The prospect is quite good for a young man to make a fortune in this country, as all kinds of produce are high, and likely to remain so from the extensive demand. The Russian settlements in Asia; the Sandwich Islands; a great portion of California, and the whaling vessels of the Northwest coast, procure their supplies from this place.

There is as yet but little money in the country, and the whole trade is carried on by orders on an agent or factor. For instance, when I sell my crop of wheat, the purchaser asks me where I wish to receive the pay. Vancouver is as yet the principal point, and an order on that point enables the seller to procure goods, or cattle, or anything else for it.

The population of this country consists of French, sailors, mountain traders, missionaries, and emigrants from the States. The French population consists of old worn-out servants of the Hudson Bay Company; they universally have Indian wives, and many children, some of whom are very handsome; this part of the population are Catholics. The sailors are those who deserted from vessels while lying on the coast, and have also intermarried with the Indians, and but few of them have embraced any religion—they are, however, generally good citizens. The mountain traders are similar to the sailors, except that they have nearly all embraced the Methodist or Catholic religion.

The citizens held a meeting some time since and unanimously adopted the statutes of Iowa Territory for their code of laws until the government of the United States should make laws for them. There is little or no crime in Oregon as yet, which is attributed to the absence of spirituous liquors—and so sensible are the citizens of this fact that they are unanimous in favor of excluding it. In fact, Doctor McLoughlin has several cargoes in his warehouse now, which he bought in preference to allowing it to be sold in the country. I can not speak too highly of this excellent man for his kindness to us all. He sent several boats loaded with provisions to meet the emigrants last fall, and continued to distribute little luxuries among us as long as we remained in reach of him—he is always on the lookout for an opportunity to bestow his charity, and bestows with no sparing hand. His intention is to quit the Hudson Bay Company and become an American citizen.

Our prairies are beautiful, soil good, and the best stock range I ever saw. I have located and recorded six sections of land, which I can hold for one year by making certain improvements thereon, which I intend doing. I can stand in my door and see over all of them. Everything is plenty, but sells high. The prospects for industrious young men are truly flattering. I do think the six sections we have now in possession are intrinsically worth $20,000; that would be $5 per acre, and that is not near the value, taking everything into consideration. The situation for trade and commerce is certainly better than any other country. The climate, soil, timber, water, health, products of the country, and the prospects for good society combine to make it delightful. It would astonish you to see the state of society here—more hospitality and friendship, more morality, industry, and I do believe religion, than you will see anywhere. There are a good many scattering Indians, but nothing to be feared from them.

From the National Intelligencer, October 28, 1843.

EMIGRATION—THE FAR WEST.

We presume most persons thought that when the tide of emigration reached Oregon it would go no farther, for it did not seem that the "Far West" could get beyond the Pacific. We find, however, that some of the emigrants who have reached Oregon are "dissatisfied with the country, and contemplate going to California this spring." So says a letter in the Iowa Herald from one of the settlers, who for his own part likes the country very well, and expects to end his days there. He describes the Oregon region as rough and broken, generally heavy timbered, principally with fir, yellow pine, cedar, hemlock, oak, ash, and maple—well watered, with about one tenth prairie of excellent quality. In the streams is an abundance of fish, among which are the finest salmon in the world. Oregon City is a thriving little place, and from its advantageous position it is likely to become a thriving great one. It is situated at the head of navigation on the Oregon or Columbia River, and at the foot of Walhammat Falls, one of the greatest water powers in the world.

Of the foregoing documents, the editorial from the Daily Tribune, New York, of March 29, 1843, the second in the order of the excerpts, was found and copied by Dr. J. R. Wilson; for all the others the editor is indebted to Prof. Joseph Schafer.

THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
Oregon Historical Society.

Volume IV.]                      SEPTEMBER, 1903                      [Number 3

[Entered at Portland, Oregon, Post Office as second-class matter.]

HISTORY OF THE PREPARATION OF THE FIRST CODE OF OREGON.

I am requested by the Oregon Bar Association to write a paper on "The Preparation and Adoption of the First Code."

Before writing about the actual preparation of the first code, I desire to say something about the confused and uncertain condition of statutory law in Oregon Territory, prior to 1853, and the reasons which induced the territorial legislature of 1852-53 to elect three commissioners to prepare a code of laws for Oregon Territory.

On June 27, 1844, the Provisional Government of Oregon, declared that "All the statute laws of Iowa Territory, passed at the first session of the legislative assembly of said territory, and not of a local character, and not incompatible with the conditions and circumstances of this country, shall be the law of this government, unless otherwise modified": Laws, 1843-49, p. 100.

The fourteenth section of the act of Congress of August 14, 1848, organizing the Territory of Oregon, continued these laws of the Provisional Government in force until they should be altered or repealed.

At the first session of the legislative assembly, held at Oregon City, two acts were passed by that body, which, owing to the construction placed upon them by the supreme court of the Territory, had a tendency to produce dissension and discord among the people of Oregon, which lasted for two or three years. One of these was "An act to provide for the selection of places for location and erection of the public buildings of the Territory of Oregon," passed February 1, 1851.

The other act was one which declared to be adopted, and in force, certain acts of the revised statutes of Iowa Territory published in 1843. The legislative assembly of Oregon by a single act adopted these acts of Iowa, designating them by their several titles, and the dates of their passage. This law was generally known as the "Chapman Code," owing to the fact that the bill was introduced by and its passage secured through the influence of Hon. W. W. Chapman, then a member of the legislative assembly.

Soon after these two acts were passed, their validity was questioned, especially that of the one which located the public buildings, and transferred the seat of government from Oregon City to Salem. Those who denied their validity did so on the ground that they contravened that clause of the organic act of August 14, 1848, section 6, which provides that "To avoid improper influences which may result from intermixing in one act such things as have no proper relation to each other; every act shall embrace but one object, and that shall be expressed in the title."

Legal proceedings were soon taken by persons interested in retaining the capital at Oregon City to declare the act of removal invalid. A suit brought for that purpose came on for hearing before the supreme court at Oregon City, in December, 1851. By law the judges of the district courts composed the supreme court of the territory. They were Thomas Nelson, Chief Justice, O. C. Pratt, and William Strong. Of these Nelson and Strong had been appointed by Presidents Fillmore and Taylor, respectively, while Pratt was holding over under an appointment of President Polk. The former were Whigs politically, while the latter was a Democrat. Judges Nelson and Strong convened at Oregon City, and opened the supreme court there. Judge Pratt went to Salem under the act which changed the seat of government, but without a quorum could not hold a session of the court. Judges Nelson and Strong then decided that the act of the legislative assembly providing for the selection of places for the location and erection of the public buildings, passed February 1, 1851, was void, because it contravened the organic law of August 14, 1848, as before stated. The opinions of the judges were never published in the Oregon Reports, for what reason I do not know. Possibly they were not filed with the supreme court. Judge Pratt claimed that this decision amounted to nothing because it was not made at the seat of government, as established by act of the legislative assembly, and in this opinion that body then assembled at Salem, readily concurred. This heated controversy about the location of the capital was, however, settled by a joint resolution of Congress, adopted May 4, 1852 (10 U. S. Statutes, 146). The first section legalized the act of the territorial legislature which located the public buildings, and the second section declared that the late session of the legislative assembly was held in conformity with the provisions of law. This, of course, ended all dispute about the location of the capital, but unhappily another controversy grew out of the construction placed by Judges Nelson and Strong upon the sixth section of the organic law of August 14, 1848. For the same reasons which they held the act for the location of the public buildings void, they also held the act of the legislative assembly, which adopted the revised statutes of Iowa, to be also invalid. In other words, these judges held that by adopting several distinct statutes of Iowa in one act, it necessarily embraced more than one object. Judge Pratt took a different view and held that the act of the legislative assembly embraced but one object, to wit, the adoption of a code of laws of the territory.

The result of these conflicting views of the judges was that in Judge Nelson's judicial district, composed of Clackamas, Marion, and Linn counties, and in Judge Strong's district, composed of Clatsop County and the counties north of the Columbia River, the Iowa Code of 1838, adopted by the Provisional Government, was held to be in force. Judge Pratt's district, composed of all the territory west of the Willamette River, included the counties of Washington, Yamhill, Polk, and Benton, and in this district the "Chapman Code" of the Revised Code of Iowa Statutes of 1843, was recognized as the law in force. In the district of Nelson and Strong, the lawyers would cite the law from the "Little Blue Book," as the volume of Statutes of Iowa of 1838 was called. In Judge Pratt's district the same lawyers would quote from the "Big Blue Book," as the Iowa Code of 1843 was called. There were but three or four copies of the little blue book in the territory, one of which was owned by Hon. A. E. Wait. The last time I saw it it was in the possession of Hon. Benton Killin. There were only two copies of the big blue book in Oregon and the statutes adopted by the Chapman Code were not published until the latter part of 1853, when they were printed by the territorial printer and bound in paper covers. A number of these printed copies were distributed among the several counties in the territory, but the uncertainty and doubt as to their validity made them of little value.

As I said before, Judge Pratt's views of this legal controversy coincided with those of the legislative assembly, then in session at Salem, and that body passed an act detaching the counties of Marion and Linn from the judicial district of Judge Nelson, leaving him only Clackamas County, in which he resided. In this act it was provided that the terms of court in Marion and Linn counties should commence one week earlier than they did under the old law. So Judge Pratt held court at Salem and Albany under the new law, and a week later in each county Judge Nelson went to Salem and Albany to hold the district court under the old law. He found, however, that Judge Pratt had preceded him, held the courts, and adjourned for the term. Judge Nelson finding that no business was prepared for hearing before him by the lawyers, and no jury summoned to try cases, returned somewhat disgusted to Oregon City, and was soon after relieved by the appointment of Hon. George H. Williams, as chief justice of the territory. He went back to his home in New York, where I believe he still lives [1894.]

I have referred to this almost forgotten history of the early days of the territorial government of Oregon to show the necessity that existed for a revision of the statutory laws of the territory. The uncertainty as to what laws were then in force, and the desire to be relieved from this condition of affairs was the principal reason which induced the legislative assembly to pass the act of January, 1853, providing for the election by that body of three commissioners to prepare a draft for a code of laws, to be submitted to the next legislature. In pursuance of this act, the legislative assembly elected the following commissioners in the order named: James K. Kelly, of Clackamas County, Reuben P. Boise, of Polk County, and Daniel R. Bigelow, of Thurston County.

Being first elected, I acted as chairman of the board, and notified the other commissioners of the time of our first meeting, which took place some time in March, 1853. We met in the council chamber of the legislative building, where all our subsequent meetings were held.

The first two or three days were occupied in discussing the general outline of our duties and the kind of code to be prepared. By common consent we agreed to accept the New York code of practice as the basis of our own, but with a notable exception in regard to proceedings in equity. Mr. Bigelow strongly insisted upon having no separate court of equity or of equity proceedings, but urged that we should follow the example of California in this respect. Mr. Boise and I differed from Mr. Bigelow. We contended that in the organic act of August 14, 1848, a separate system of equity proceedings was contemplated, wherein it is provided that "each district court or judge thereof shall appoint its clerk, who shall be the register in chancery": Act, August 14, 1848, § 9.

That it was so understood by the members of the first legislative assembly appears by the act of September 14, 1849, directing the mode of proceedings in chancery: See Hamilton Laws.

The system of equity jurisprudence and proceedings in equity adopted by the first code commissioners has now prevailed in Oregon for forty years, and during all that time I think has met the approbation of both bench and the bar.

Another thing agreed upon by the commissioners was that the code should be prepared so that it might be adopted by the legislative assembly in several acts instead of one, as was done in the Chapman Code in 1850. This was done in order to comply with the provisions of the organic law, which required that every act should embrace but one object.

These preliminaries being settled it was agreed that each commissioner should take one subject and prepare the draft for an act upon that particular branch of the law. During the preparation of these drafts the commissioners held frequent consultations, as often as once or twice a week, to discuss and agree upon the proper phraseology to be adopted, or arrangement of subject-matter in the proposed act.

It was agreed among us that Mr. Boise should prepare the act relating to executors and administrators, and also proceedings in the probate courts.

To Mr. Bigelow was assigned the duty of preparing the act relating to crimes and misdemeanors, and to regulate criminal proceedings. I undertook to prepare the code of civil procedure in actions at law and suits in equity.

These three subjects embraced the greater part of the laws which we undertook to prepare, and, after their completion, the remaining portion of our work was comparatively easy and brief. According to my recollection it was completed in the latter part of the summer or early fall of 1853. We prepared the draft for an entirely new code of statutory laws, with the single exception of the law relating to wills. This had been enacted by the legislative assembly in 1849, at its first session, the main features of it being a transcript from the Missouri statute on the same subject. As this was one of the first acts passed by our own legislation we adopted it in our draft with only a few verbal changes.

In the spring of 1853 Joseph G. Wilson, afterwards Judge Wilson of the supreme court, came to Oregon, and about May we employed him as our clerk to transcribe the drafts prepared by us, in order that they could be printed for the use of the legislative assembly at its next session in December. We caused about two hundred copies to be printed by Mr. Asahel Bush, the territorial printer, for that purpose. These were published in an unbound octavo volume, so that they could be readily separated into different bills for legislative use.

Soon after we entered upon the discharge of our duties as commissioners many of our political friends suggested the propriety of electing one or all of us members of the next legislative assembly, so that we could explain to the members or give any desired information to them concerning our work. We soon, however, learned that Congress had passed the act to organize the Territory of Washington, and this would necessarily prevent Mr. Bigelow from becoming a member of the Oregon legislative assembly.

Mr. Boise was nominated by the Democratic party as a candidate for member of the House of Representatives from Polk County. I was nominated by the same party as member of the Council, to fill a vacancy caused by the resignation of Hon. A. L. Lovejoy, who had recently been appointed Postal Agent for Oregon by President Pierce. Both Mr. Boise and myself were elected on the first Monday in June, 1853.

The legislative assembly met on the first Monday in December, and after the respective houses were organized Mr. Boise was appointed chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the lower house, while I was appointed chairman of the same committee in the upper branch of the legislature. Of course, the burden of seeing the code properly passed rested with him and myself. We divided the draft which the code commissioners had prepared into proper bills, according to the subject-matter of each. Some of these bills were introduced into the House of Representatives by Mr. Boise, and others of them into the Council by myself. All we had to do was simply to preface an enacting clause to the bill as it had been printed by order of the commissioners, and to insert a section at the end of each bill declaring that the act should be in force from and after the first of May next. The reason these acts were made to take effect on May 1, 1854, was that there was no possibility of having them printed before that time. Indeed, there were no facilities then existing in Oregon for either printing or binding the volume containing the statutes comprised in the first code. Mr. Bush, the territorial printer, made arrangements to have them printed and bound in New York. I do not now remember how many copies of the code were ordered to be printed, but certainly several hundred. About two hundred of these were sent to Oregon by way of Panama and arrived safely some time in the summer of 1854. The remaining copies of that edition were sent around Cape Horn by a sailing vessel. These never reached Oregon. They were either shipwrecked or so injured that they were worthless. At the next session of the legislative assembly, commencing in December, 1854, that body ordered a new edition to be printed to supply the place of the copies which were lost at sea, and that edition was printed in New York in 1855. It included the acts which were passed at that session with those of the code adopted at the preceding session of the legislature. This accounts for the printing of two editions—one in 1854 and another in 1855.

Between May 1, 1854, when the code took effect and the arrival of the first copies of the printed volume from New York, we were somewhat troubled for want of evidence of existing statutes, and the judges and lawyers used in the courts copies of the printed draft reported by the code commissioners. A few of these unbound volumes still remained and such changes as had been made by the legislature were noted in them. Some of the lawyers even went to the trouble of having them indexed so as to be more convenient for reference and citation. When, however, the first copies of the code arrived from New York these unbound copies of the code commissioners' draft were thrown aside. One of them I kept as a time-honored curiosity for many years.

Although the Oregon Code, as it was then termed, has since been revised two or three times to adapt it to a state, instead of a territorial government, yet in its main features it has remained substantially the same as when prepared by the first code commissioners and adopted by the legislative assembly of 1853-54.

The commissioners who prepared the first code of Oregon are all still living [1894], but nearly all the members of the legislature that adopted it are gone. Besides Judge Boise and myself I can think of no one of them who is now living.

JAMES K. KELLY.

September 25, 1894.

A PIONEER RAILROAD BUILDER.

Responding to a request for an account of the operations of Dr. D. S. Baker as a promoter and financier of transportation enterprises, and particularly of the Walla Walla and Columbia River Railway, I herewith submit some scraps of history.

Dr. Dorsey S. Baker was born in Wabash County, Illinois, October 18, 1823. He studied the profession of medicine at the Philadelphia Medical College. Crossed the Plains to Oregon with the emigration of 1848, and went to California in 1849. The practice of his profession was remunerative, but his strong predilection for business led him to abandon a profession always distasteful.

He engaged in the hardware business in Portland in the early fifties, and subsequently built a flouring mill at Oakland, in Southern Oregon, and it was his boast that he brought to Oregon the first pair of mill stones ever used in the State. In 1861 he removed to Walla Walla, then a trading post adjacent to the army garrison established some years previously. He engaged in the mercantile business, being associated with William Stephens. The firm name was D. S. Baker & Co., afterward changed to Baker & Boyer, when his brother-in-law, John F. Boyer, was taken into the firm. The firm did a large business with the stockmen and settlers, and in outfitting miners and packers flocking by thousands to the Oro Fino and Florence mines, and later to Boisé, Idaho, and Montana. Sales were large and profits good, and the firm of Baker & Boyer flourished.

Doctor Baker was a man of keen business judgment and great foresight. It is probably not an over statement to say that the State of Washington has not numbered among her citizens any that approached him in financial ability. In 1862 he became associated with the late Senator Corbett and Captain Ankeny in the steamboat business. They built the steamer Spray, which plied between Celilo and Lewiston. The company had boats on what was known as the Middle River, between The Dalles and the Cascades, and also on the Lower River between the Cascades and Portland. They built a wooden tramway portage on the Washington side at the cascades, using mules as motive power. The remains of this tramway could be seen from the opposite shore within recent years. This company's line was run in opposition to that of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, to which it finally sold.

The portage of the cascades, being the key to the situation, was the bone of contention. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company had procured the passage of a bill through Congress giving them what they claimed to be an exclusive right of way over the cascade portage, and this question not having been at that time adjudicated, Doctor Baker's company sold out as above recited.

Doctor Baker's next transportation enterprise was the building of a narrow gauge railroad from Walla Walla to Wallula. He organized a company under the corporate name of the Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad Company in 1871. Among the original stockholders were Doctor Baker, John F. Boyer, Paine Brothers & Moore, B. L. Sharpstein, Charles Moore, B. F. Stone, William Stephens, William O. Green—all residents of Walla Walla. Doctor Baker was, however, the capitalist, and it was his money, his energy and unflagging perseverance that carried the enterprise to a successful consummation. To build thirty miles of railroad under conditions then existing was a great undertaking. Ties and timber for bridges had to be obtained from the head waters of the Yakima River, an untried stream.

A logging camp was established in the winter of 1872—a Wisconsin lumberman named Tarbox being placed in charge. An attempt was made to drive logs to the mouth of the Yakima the following spring, but the water proved insufficient and the log drive was hung up. Another expedition was sent to the woods the following winter, in charge of D. W. Small, afterward a well known resident and business man of Walla Walla. He succeeded, by incredible effort, in bringing out the logs. A mill was erected on the banks or east bank of the Columbia above the old town of Wallula, where the ties were sawed, and it was at this point that the first railroad construction in Washington, other than the portage road of the cascades, was begun. Two small dummy or camel-back engines were bought in Pennsylvania and shipped out via San Francisco and Portland. Freight on them from Portland to Wallula was about $450 each. The first ten miles of the road was built with wooden stringers six by six, laid on cross ties. It was Doctor Baker's belief that these ties would last for a few years, and it was his intention to then replace them with T rails, but in this he was doomed to disappointment. When construction had reached the ten-mile post, the wooden rails at the river end were worn out. He then bought ten miles of strap iron and continued construction. This also proved a failure. Finally, convinced in the rough school of actual experience that T rail only would serve his purpose, he ordered, through Allen & Lewis of Portland, twenty miles of 26-pound rail. This was purchased in Wales and was brought around the Horn in a clipper ship coming to the Columbia River for a cargo of wheat. From Portland the rail was shipped by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company line to Wallula. This involved five handlings—two at the cascade portage, two at The Dalles, and one at Wallula. The cost of the rails and the freight were both very great. When the road reached a point ten miles out from the Columbia it began to haul wheat, the teamsters being glad to avoid the long, hard pull over the sandy roads.

When the road had reached Whitman Station, six miles west of Walla Walla, Doctor Baker's available funds were exhausted, and he would not borrow. He thereupon announced that its terminus would remain there until the earnings sufficed to complete it to Walla Walla. The citizens, fearing a rival town would spring up at Whitman, promptly raised and donated $25,000 to secure the continuance of the road to Walla Walla.

In the inception of the enterprise, Doctor Baker had asked Walla Walla County, through the board of county commissioners, to guarantee the interest on a proposed issue of bonds, to be sold to provide funds for the construction of the road, offering in return to permit the commissioners to fix the rate for carrying grain to the Columbia, provided only the rate should not be less than $3 per ton. The question was submitted to a vote, and rejected by a decided majority. Doctor Baker then said: "I will build the road without your assistance, and you must allow me to fix the rate." The rate was $5 per ton from Walla Walla to the river. There was an additional charge of fifty cents for transfer to the steamboat. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company's charge was $6 per ton, and there was a wharfage charge at Portland of 50 cents, making a total of $12 per ton, or thirty-six cents per bushel from Walla Walla to Portland. The charge of $5 per ton seems now a pretty stiff rate, but teamsters in those days sometimes charged $12 per ton for the same haul, although the usual charge was $6. They could not always handle the crop, and the price fluctuated.

During the discouraging period of construction few people believed Doctor Baker would ever complete the road. His friends thought he would fail utterly, and predicted that his fortune would be lost, but the Doctor knew better than most the wealth of the country's undeveloped resources, and with a faith that nothing could shake, and with a determination that grew stronger as each obstacle presented itself, continued the work of construction, staking his last dollar on the success of his enterprise. No mortgage was ever placed on the property during his ownership, and no lien or debt encumbered it. It paid unheard of dividends, and was sold at a price greatly exceeding its cost. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company bought six-sevenths of the stock in 1877, Doctor Baker remaining as president. During this ownership a branch line was built from Whitman to a point known as Blue Mountain Station, in Umatilla County, Oregon, to tap the wheat fields of that county.

Still later, on the first day of July, 1879, the road was included in a sale made by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company to Henry Villard. The track was changed to a standard gauge, and became a part of the present Oregon Railway and Navigation system.

Many amusing stories are told of experiences in traveling over this line, known as Doctor Baker's "rawhide road." Wheat was hauled on flat cars. A box car, with seats along the sides, originally did duty as a passenger coach. To the traveling public this was known as "the hearse," but no serious accident ever occurred on the line. It was strictly a daylight road, Doctor Baker persistently refusing to allow trains to be run at night.

H. W. Fairweather, who took charge of the road after its purchase by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, still tells of some of his early experiences. At that time the law required a printed schedule of freight rates to be posted in each car. Looking about in vain, he finally found the required notice posted in the roof of the car in such a position that to read it the reader must lie on his back. The newspapers have another story regarding General Sherman's ride over this road. In 1877 the General had ridden through Montana and Idaho, examining the country with reference to the proper location of military posts, and had reached Walla Walla on his way to the coast. He is said to have made application for a special train to take him to Wallula, which Doctor Baker refused to furnish, remarking that there was a train load of wheat going out during the afternoon, upon which the General could take passage, and that availing himself of the opportunity, this aggregation of military glory bestrode a sack of wheat, and thus mounted, was dispatched on his journey. The fact was that he rode in a passenger coach attached to the freight train, but perhaps it is hardly worth while to spoil so good a story.

Some years after the sale of the Walla Walla and Columbia River line, Doctor Baker built another narrow gauge to connect with a timber flume bringing lumber and wood to Walla Walla. This line was fifteen miles in length and extended to the town of Dixie in the foot hills of the Blue Mountains. It did a considerable business in transporting wheat. This was also sold to the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, which company still operates it as a narrow gauge.

This was Doctor Baker's last undertaking, his health having failed soon after the completion of this road.

When Henry Villiard first met Doctor Baker, he said to him: "You were a bold man to build into the lion's jaws," refering to the fact that the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company controlled the outlet down the Columbia, but Doctor Baker had formulated a maxim, "He who owns the approaches to the river owns the river," by which he meant that the business of the boats originated on the railroad and the boats were dependent on the railroad.

One of Doctor Baker's biographers has said of him, "He was the self-reliant architect of his own fortune." Perhaps no man in the Northwest has left his name more completely entwined into the history of his chosen country and city than has Dorsey S. Baker, who cast his lot with Walla Walla forty years ago, whose fortunes were the fortunes of the town and whose successes were the successes of the place he called his "home."

He died at Walla Walla July 5, 1888. An imposing granite monument, in the City Cemetery, emblematic of his rugged virtues and strength of character, marks his last resting place.

MILES C. MOORE.

Walla Walla, Wash., August 7, 1903.

FROM WALLA WALLA TO SAN FRANCISCO.

By Capt. John Mullan, U. S. A.

From the Washington Statesman (Walla Walla) of November 29 and December 6, 1862.

For those who have not made the journey direct from Walla Walla, through the agricultural heart of Oregon, and across the mountains through the mining region of northern California, there is much of interest and pleasure; and though the trip should be fraught with much personal discomfort, there is much to repay the traveler in the collection of statistics, and in seeing a region where the wilderness of yesterday has to-day given place to homes, where material prosperity, at least, arrest the attention of the traveler at every mile of the journey. The mode of conveyance from Walla Walla to Wallula is by stages that run daily between these points, and where the journey is of six hours and a cost of $5 brings you to the banks of the Columbia, whence you take steamers for the Des Chutes Landing. The improvements along the banks of the Walla Walla, in the shape of new and additional enclosures for farming purposes, during the last two years, have been many, and mark with unerring certainty the future of the Walla Walla country, as the distributing center for a radius of three hundred miles of country, now fast developing in all the elements of material, social, and political prosperity. It has more than once occurred to me that the Walla Walla River, by a system of locks, could be advantageously used as a line of connection between Wallula and Walla Walla, and one needs but see the long line of wagons and pack trains, heavily freighted for the interior, to become convinced that either this or some more rapid and economical means is positively demanded, in order to connect the heart of the valley with the Columbia River. Economy at the present would argue in favor of converting the river into a canal, but the prospective wants of the country are much more in favor of a railroad connection. For a distance of eighteen miles below Walla Walla the nature of the face of the country is eminently suited in its present condition for laying a railroad track; and thence to Wallula the character of work being either excavation in sand, clay, or soft rock, will enable a road to be built at economical figures. The Touchet and the crossings of the Walla Walla River will require heavy bridges but good abutment sites are to be had, and the streams not being subject to overflow, no impediment will ever be had from this cause. It could be safely stated that a capital of $600,000 would construct and equip this road, and when it is known that not less than one hundred thousand tons of freight, at $20 per ton, and ten thousand passengers, at $5 each, pass over this line annually, it does seem strange that capitalists are not disposed to move in the matter in a practical shape. It is a project in which every citizen could become interested. The farmers could supply all the ties needed; the mills are fully capacitated to supply all the lumber demanded, and the surplus population from the mines and those out of employment could advantageously supply all the labor needed in its construction; and with the valley of Walla Walla to supply every necessary of life, to me it is anything but an Utopian idea, and I feel warranted in believing that another twelve months will not roll around before the matter is taken up with a view to its practical execution. The teams now freighting on the road will not necessarily be thrown out of employment, but the increasing development of the interior will cause them simply to seek new lines upon which to transport this same freight after the railroad shall have deposited it at the city of Walla Walla, which nature has constituted a commercial center, and from which will be distributed to every point of the compass the merchandise which their wants demand.

Reaching the Columbia at Wallula one is pleased with the commercial character which this point is fast assuming. Freight strewn along the levee for half a mile—stores erected, commission houses plying their vocations, and everything giving an earnest of a prosperous future. This site has doubtless many advantages as a commercial point; but so long as men shall desire pleasant homes,—where the eye is as desirous of drinking in draughts of pleasure and beauty as the pocket is of accumulating wealth,—where mills, farms, gardens, and pleasant enclosures can be had,—where the products of the fields are garnered with a short transportation to a ready market—just so long will Walla Walla and not Wallula be the chief emporium and point of business for the interior, and for supplying the more immediate demands of the Walla Walla Valley. That Wallula will always be a point where commission houses, a few stores, and one or more hotels will always be supported, no one can doubt; but looking toward a large and growing city with all the pleasant appurtenances that make life happy, I can not but conceive that its growth must become circumscribed within the above limits.

We took passage on the pleasant steamer Tenino, and in eight hours were landed at Celilo, a point some two miles below the Des Chutes Landing, where the Oregon Steam Navigation Company have already formed the nucleus of a thriving village. The freshet of the past season has strewn the banks of the Columbia with cord wood in abundance—which commands $10 per cord. The John Day's wood yard, however, is the chief depot for fuel. Here, too, one notices the marked progress that is daily making its onward march to the interior. Here we saw two steamers building, one already launched, owned by Captain Gray, and still another at Celilo, of large dimensions. There is no doubt we are far in advance, in point of boldness and daring, in the question of river navigation on the Columbia, of those similarly engaged on the eastern waters; and the success which has thus far attended the efforts of those who dared to move in the navigation of the Upper Columbia, has only emboldened them to greater efforts, and it is no dream to feel that the day is not far distant when the Snake to the American Falls, and the stretches of the Columbia from Wallula to Fort Colville, and the Clark's Fork, from Park's Crossing to Horse Plain, will all be tested by steam and thus made tributary to the growing wants of trade and travel.

The fare from Wallula to Celilo is $10. A ride of three hours brings us to The Dalles—which point, too, is showing visible signs of a healthy improvement; and the increasing trade to the mines of John Day's and Powder rivers is destined to make it a point of great commercial import. Whether the idea entertained by Mr. Newell, and other men at The Dalles, of a direct trade from San Francisco to The Dalles, shall ever be realized, is not so easy to be determined. It certainly has a favorable location for the full consummation of such an idea—and we all know what magic results gold can be made to produce, and without desire of detriment to Portland, I should heartily desire to see such a happy result attained. The will to do it, and the means with which to do it, are the only two essentials needed; and if these are had, it will be done—and the sooner the two former are ascertained the sooner will the commercial idea (grand in its conception and pregnant with so many grand results) become a matter of past history. The railroad company have resumed the work of grading and ballasting, and it is the desire of the company to have the cars running by the first of next May. The roadbed is prepared for some five or six miles out from the city, and the iron track laid for half a mile. My own convictions are that the railroad, eventually, is to be more beneficial to Walla Walla than The Dalles, but that the latter is also to derive much benefit no one will doubt.

We found the line of opposition steamers running, which, having the tendency to reduce the rates of freight and travel, was a thing that the commercial and traveling public were but too glad to see. The passage from The Dalles to Portland was only one dollar. That competition on this immense line will be fraught with healthy results no one will doubt. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company, as the pioneers on an untested river, do certainly merit much credit for the bold hazard they so successfully made, and merit reward as such; and though many complaints (founded in justice, doubtless,) have been urged, still the history of all monopolies has shown a greater degree of extortion than I have heard urged against this company. But so long as the Columbia River shall remain an open sea I do heartily desire to see competition seek here a channel of investment—and which it will always do so long as it is found to pay. All philanthropic ideas of "parties desiring to serve the public, without being remunerated," will find no believers among the merchants and travelers of the Upper Columbia. The merchant and traveler will take that line where the rates are the lowest and accommodation the best, irrespective of the owners of the line or those who pioneered them through to a success. At least this is the history of the commercial past, and I see no reason why it should not be the history of the commercial future. Just so soon as capitalists find that putting steamers on the upper Columbia is a paying investment, steamers will be put on; and, unless the capitalist is so convinced, it will be a difficult task to cause him to turn his capital into such a channel.

This age is, preëminently, an utilitarian one; in which facts and figures are, particularly, the weapons with which the capitalist wages his financial war. Armed with these, his victory is in his own hands; not so armed, it is in those of some one else. The portage of the Cascades, heretofore so great a bugbear in the trip from The Dalles to Portland, is now made in a brief hour on the cars, without detriment or danger. An extra dollar for riding on the cars is charged, though, if you prefer it, you can walk on the road in nearly the same time, free of cost. No traveler passes over this portage without awarding to Colonel Ruckle every praise for the bold prosecution of his bold project, and no one begrudges him the ample reward which he is to-day deriving in token of his past labors. This portage is on the Oregon side; but it is to be hoped that the difficulties on the Washington side, between Bradford and Bush, will be speedily adjusted, so that the steam cars, now running on a portion of the track already completed, shall connect the two termini of the portage, and thus reduce the time of travel within the minimum limits. The post at Fort Cascades is now abandoned, nor does it seem at present necessary to hold it under garrison, so far as the Indians are concerned. The question of a foreign war, however, would render it a key-point of marked importance.

A run of seven hours brings us to Portland. I fear, from the present appearance of Vancouver, that all chances of commercial rivalry with Portland have been banished. Capital is certainly not seeking it at present as a point of investment. The freshet has left its marks of devastation along the levee and lower portions of the city, and it will require much capital and energy to reinstate Vancouver in the position it occupied two years since; and if the idea of making The Dalles a large commercial emporium be ever consumated, I can not conceive that Vancouver will ever occupy a position of more than secondary importance, unless the western slopes of the Cascades should open up a gold-bearing region. In such an event Vancouver would necessarily become a point of fixed commercial importance; but so long as the permanency which now marks Portland shall continue to be maintained, and the question on the part of the citizens of The Dalles to make it a commercial depot shall continue to be agitated, so long will Vancouver stand the chance of being kept in the background. On the Lower River we traveled to Portland in company with quite a a number of emigrants destined to Puget Sound, and they all regretted that they could not have gone from Walla Walla to the Sound by land. This is a matter in which every citizen of Washington Territory is more or less interested. The road opened in 1853, by the Natchess Pass, has fallen into such a state, that, unless repaired and kept so, it will be useless for all practical purposes of emigrants for the Sound from the States. I understand that the Packwood trail is deemed by many preferable to the Natchess route; but whether we shall have a route via the Natchess, Snoqualmie, Packwood, or any other pass, is a matter about which those truly interested in seeing the Sound section brought directly in communication with the interior, will not fall out. The citizens of the Sound need a good road across the Cascades, direct from Wallula. The valley of the Yakima will doubtless give us a good line, and then across to the Wenatchee, via Packwood's Pass, either into Olympia or Steilacoom. The long interval which has elapsed since the Natchess Pass was traveled has naturally caused the line to fall out of repair. The emigrants who desire to locate on the Sound need a line by which they can carry their wagons, and over which drive their stock, and not be driven to take the steamers down to Monticello, thus increasing costs so heavy that it seems impracticable. This is a matter of great importance, not only for emigrants, but in order to bring the citizens of the Sound, by the most direct trade and associations, with those resident on the eastern slopes of the Cascades,—and is one of such importance that it is to be hoped that the attention of Congress will be duly called to it. Military necessity calls for such a line, and a military road should be so located and constructed.

The large crowd that daily assembles on the wharf on the arrival of the steamer from The Dalles is an unerring barometer of the interest felt in the development of the upper country; and a conversation with the leading merchant of the city convinced me that the trade of the Willamette—where the returns to the merchants are in flour, grain, hides, and fruit,—is small and of minor importance compared to that whence their returns are by daily steamers and in gold dust. The latter is immediately converted into coin and seeks new channels of investment, and is turned over a half-dozen times a year, whereas the former must bide its fortunate market and sales thus delayed from week to week and from month to month. The establishment of a branch mint, either at Portland or The Dalles, is becoming a subject of daily commercial necessity, and should such a branch be established, if the treasurer was allowed, as soon as the assays were made and the value of the certificate of deposit made known, to pay out the coin immediately for these deposits, much time would be saved to the depositor, and much gain and saving to the miner, whereas now, without a branch mint, the miners are forced to sell their dust to speculators, who must be paid for their time; and this payment is kept up till it reaches San Francisco—here from fourteen to twenty days are consumed before the dust is coined—though not more than two days before the value of the deposit by the assayer is determined. The treasurer has always on hand an amount of funds which could be paid out for the deposits made, which deposits, when coined, could replace that paid out, thus benefiting the miner by bringing him directly in contact with the Government, who has eventually to coin his dust, and save him time and "shaving" by the speculator, and to this extent materially benefits the country by distributing and disbursing the money in the very same region where it is dug from the earth. A branch mint for Oregon and Washington, and an authority for the assistant treasurer to pay out at once the value of the deposit as soon as the assay is determined, are two things which, if effected, would materially tend to benefit the miner, and hence the country; whereas now the time consumed in sending the dust from the mines and getting it back in coin must be paid for by somebody, and that somebody ever has been, and, unless these changes be made, will always be the miner. Just as quick as the dust of the miner is returned to him in coin in the minimum space of time and with the minimum "shave"—which in this case would be only the cost of transporting it to the branch mint and back,—then will the capital of the country be in the hands of the greater number, and that number a class of people who are interested in the material interest and prosperity of the country—and thus on [will our] roads, rivers, and works of internal improvement—our schools, academies, and all the elements of social and substantial happiness and wealth be added to and quickened by an impulse that is healthy in itself, and which aims at and desires healthy avenues of investments. Should such a branch mint be established, Portland would doubtless claim the site; but whether it be there, at The Dalles, or Walla Walla, is not a subject upon which there should be any feeling. Let us have it at one of these points; and if there is any one point where arguments could be adduced to determine the matter to the exclusion of the others, that point is at Walla Walla. For it is here whence the greater bulk of gold dust must flow; and if not here, then at The Dalles—the great Golden Gate of the Upper Columbia.

Desiring to see a section of the country through which I had never passed we took the stage from Portland to Sacramento, which at the end of the first day's journey brings us to Salem—where I determined to lay over a day to visit the woolen factory, and observe the characteristics of the place. The ride through the Willamette from Portland to Salem is pleasant and refreshing,—large and well-tilled farms, orchards of great proportions, with their trees ladened with the golden fruit—peaches, apples, and pears, in most profuse abundance; neat and well-trimmed gardens, where the poetry of horticulture bespoke the appreciation of the owners of well-tilled acres. The style of farms, buildings, barns, and outhouses were all in good taste, and indicated the extent of means of the farmers of Oregon. The orchards of Oregon during the past twelve years have proven to be a source of golden wealth; nor is their value in the least diminished by the large amount of fruit being now raised in California. Many have asked where Oregon would find a market for her orchards when California should produce her own fruit, and though it is more than doubtful whether California will ever rival Oregon in the growth of apples, yet if this should prove to be the case, the mining sections of eastern Oregon and of Washington are to-day sending forth a message to all fruits growers to dry, preserve, and can all their fruits, and they offer even to-day a golden market that must forever consume all fruits so preserved; and I have no doubt but that those who will turn their attention to this employment of preparing fruits, either as dried or canned, must always reap a golden reward for their labors. I noticed at several points that attention was already being much given this species of labor, and the future will prove that the mining sections for dried fruits will guarantee an equally lucrative market for Oregon, that California has proven for her in green fruits in times past.

In point of natural beauty I do not think that the Willamette Valley compares favorably with the smaller but equally well cultivated valley of the Rogue River; but when we see once a magnificent outlet for all the produce of the farmer, and the absence of such an outlet in the latter, we are forced to prefer a home in the Willamette—where Ceres has erected her temple of large proportions, and where her votaries are annually basking in the sunshine of her smiles, her bounteous plenty. In passing through this rich and exuberant country I could not but regret that the donation law that first opened homes to the first settlers of Oregon was as generous as it was in the largeness of its grant—six hundred and forty acres, in other words, was too large a grant for the full and truly healthy growth of any new country. True, it required a great inducement to turn a pioneer colony toward the Pacific so early as '46 and '47; but I verily believe that one half the grant would have brought as many settlers as double the amount has done. The true index, doubtless, of the prosperity of a country might be regarded the ratio of its population to the square mile; but when we find only one settler to the square mile, the country, from necessity, must be sparsely populated; and this condition must hold for so long a period that detriment on a large scale must be felt. That the donation act has had, therefore, its disadvantages with its advantages no one I think will doubt,—taking the present as the standpoint from which to view the prosperity of the country. This, coupled with the fact that the lands were taken without any regard to the points of compass—thus ignoring our system of land surveys, so simple and yet so beautiful,—I can not but regret that the action of our Government could not have foreseen some of the detrimental results into which its generosity has led it. Of course, it is among the things of the past, but not on that account the less to be regretted. The experience in this matter may not, and, probably, never will find any field for application—for the spirit of all preëmption, homestead, and donation laws, as since passed, has studiedly held two things in view, namely, the minimum amount of land commensurate with the object to be attained by their cession and the most rigid adherence to the points of the compass in their location. In referring to the donation act, I do not cavil at the generous action of a generous government—for I but too well appreciate that it has had the effect to open to our grasp a golden continent, with avenues of trade and with wealth—which has built up a line of battlement of half a million of Freemen; not probably, in looking at the results attained, it might seem ungenerous to object, at this late date, to any of those measures that assisted even in part to bring about this result. But I am rather disposed to believe that the agricultural districts of the Pacific were occupied and filled more in consequence of the gold discoveries and to supply their wants than from the spirit which pervaded the donation acts; for the latter antedating the discovery of gold on the Pacific did not point out the market where the produce of well-tilled fields should be sold. The coincidences of that date, however, were most happy.

At Salem we found the legislature in session, and the excitement incident to the election of Mr. Harding as United States Senator having subsided, the body were moving in such business as looked toward the growing wants of the State. I found in Mr. Harding a plain, unpretending, and sensible gentlemen, and in whom the interests of Oregon will find a true representative. At the invitation of Governor Gibbs I visited the Committee of the State Fair, composed of delegates from all the counties. It was here decided to make Salem the site for holding the annual fairs; a point so central, so well suited in every respect, that there seemed to be great unanimity of sentiment in the matter. The grounds around are open and spacious, and you feel that you breathe the air and tread the ground of a rural city, in making a tour of its extent. It is one of the most beautiful localities I have seen in Oregon—on the right bank of the Willamette, with beautiful shade trees, neat cottages, not cramped or huddled together, but with ample spaces for gardens—with a fine view of the woods, which, in a vista of twenty miles, surround it—and, in the background, with the bold slope of the Cascades, renders it one of the most beautiful sites for a city to be found in Oregon. It is not only the political center of Oregon, but it is also destined to become a point of great manufacturing importance. It is surrounded by fine forests of oak, fir, pine, cedar. The large fields of grain here cluster around it as the center. Its pioneer woolen factory, turning its hundred of spindles, here rears its head, thus attracting toward it every milling interest. The same stream that turns its gristmills, turns its sawmills—and even then the water is not allowed to run to waste, but is again caught and harnessed up to the spindles of industry where the covering of the back of the sheep of yesterday is converted into a covering for your own back of to-day. No one resident north of California can visit the woolen factory of Salem without a feeling of pride and of pleasure; and as he sees the bales of blankets, of clothes, and of flannels, lading the wagons which stand ready to be freighted for every homestead in Oregon, he feels the glow of pride in thus seeing our own looms weaving wools of our own growth, and desires instantly to robe himself in garments that no foreign hand has woven, and from wool grown from flocks no alien hand has tended. Let "Home Industry" be patronized, home products be consumed, and the country will be benefited to such an extent that we shall not have idlers to stir up mischief nor rebels to stir up rebellion in either the North or South. Mr. Rector, the obliging and gentlemanly head of the factory, showed me through the compartments and gave me some valuable statistics relative to its annual growth. His intention is to double this year the number of spindles. The surplus wool, heretofore shipped to New York, will be retained and manufactured at home; thus, our clothes and blankets will all be supplied from wool which all can grow. Mr. Rector finds difference in the wools grown on the east and the west of the Cascades, and preference being given to the latter, as containing more oily or fatty matter, and hence requiring less oiling in the process of manufacturing. That grown to the east of the Cascades is thought to be not only drier but harsher—more dirty—but time and the proper attention to its culture will doubtless bring about changes. New breeds, housing in winter, and dry foothills for grazing, are all advantages which wool growers to the east of the Cascades can have on their side. There are few regions where finer grazing fields are to be had than the slopes of the Bitter Root Mountains; and the freedom from excessive dampness, the pure, fresh mountain springs, are all so many advantages, that I confidently look forward to the day when these many well-grassed slopes shall be covered with fleecy flocks, and when the waters of the many silvery streams that now flow through the Walla Walla Valley, shall be caught and used to turn the wheels of a woolen factory, from which shall be turned out all the fabrics needed to clothe the population destined to find homes to the east of the Cascade Mountains. The clothes made by the Salem factory compare favorably with those imported. One thing certain, there is no cotton in their fabrics. Flannels of every hue are turned out at forty cents per yard; blankets from $4 to $8, according to texture; and clothes from 75 cents to $1.50 per yard, according to fineness. It would be a most happy result if every merchant, farmer, miner, and professional man in Oregon and Washington would determine in his own mind to have at least one suit of clothes made from Salem cloth, and every bed to be covered by at least one pair of Salem blankets. This would be affording a practical proof of our pride in seeing established in our midst these factories, which must eventuate in the profit of individuals. It is much to be regretted that the immense and illimitable mill power at Oregon City is not now turned to good account. The disasters by fire and flood of the Linn City mills have been of such a sad character that the tendencies now are to intimidate capitalists, at least for a time, from embarking in similar investments at the same site. A substantial railroad is being built around the portage at Oregon City, destined to diminish the time and cost of shipment up and down the Willamette. The season for practicable steam navigation to the upper points of the river being over, but little business could be noticed on the part of those engaged in this enterprise.

While in Salem I called the attention of Judge Humason, of Wasco, and of Governor Gibbs, to the importance of establishing a mail line from Walla Walla to Fort Laramie, to there tap the present daily overland mail service, by which means our mails at Walla Walla could be delivered in fifteen days from Saint Louis, and in seventeen days to Portland—this in the summer season—or twenty to twenty-two days in the winter. At present our mails cross the continent to Sacramento, two thousand miles; thence to Portland, seven hundred; thence to Walla Walla, three hundred more; making a total of three thousand miles to travel before we get them; whereas I can guarantee a line by the route indicated of one half the distance and one half the time. I framed a memorial, which Judge Humason would introduce in Congress, for this line; and was promised by Mr. Harding his coöperation to see that the matter was not allowed to pass unnoticed during the coming winter.

Leaving Salem, a journey of twenty-four hours passes us through Corvallis and Eugene City; and through an exceedingly beautiful and rich agricultural country on to Oakland, where the celebrated "Baker Mills" are established, producing, it is said, the finest flour in Oregon. The disasters of the flood were too visible at each and every point, sweeping away bridges and ferries, and destroying property to the extent of thousands of dollars. A large structure across the Umpqua, costing $10,000, was thus carried off—its convenience being now replaced by a ferry. All along the road we passed small parties of immigrants who crossed the Plains this season; some in search of new homes; others to join their friends who years since had preceded them. The Umpqua is a beautiful valley in a high state of cultivation; the school-houses, dotting here a hill, and there a valley, betoken that the education of the youth of the country was not being neglected. Roseburg, the county seat of the Umpqua region, is a gem of a village; streets neatly laid out, and neat, white, frame cottages, giving the place a rare picturesque beauty, where mountain and dale, and the hand of refined culture, all joined in beautiful harmony. The line of telegraph posts extends throughout this entire distance from Portland to Canyonville—the farthest point south where they are as yet erected. It is fully anticipated to have the line from Salem to Portland in working order by winter; as also the line from Jacksonville to Yreka. The posts are supplied and erected by contract by the farmers and others living along the line, at a cost of from $1.25 to $2 per post, and the line when completed will cost $200 per mile. Local intelligence, and the interest which every citizen feels in the reception of intelligence, now bristling with so much import, will cause this line, as soon as placed in good working order, to pay to the stockholders fair dividends on their capital. This link between Canyonville and Jacksonville will be completed during the next season. I saw Mr. Strong in Yreka, and found him pushing ahead the line with all his characteristic energy. He deserves much credit for prosecuting this project thus far to a success that is to bring to our doors daily intelligence from the East, and it is to be hoped that the citizens of the Upper Columbia will move in the same matter as soon as the line is completed to Portland.

A ride of twenty hours brings us into the Rogue Valley and to Jacksonville, a region I regard as one of the most beautiful and picturesque to be found in Oregon. The valley is from twenty-five to thirty miles square, entirely taken up by beautiful farms and under high cultivation; with farmhouses and barns in good keeping with the character of its progress; grist and sawmills erected to supply the wants of its inhabitants, and with inexhaustible forests of timber. Gold mining is here carried on with much success; and it was interesting to see the lines of sluice boxes running through the streets of Jacksonville that turned out as pretty gold as any mine on the coast. Unfortunately for this fine valley, it has no outlet for its produce, and is dependent solely on a home market. Its supplies are brought in by the way of Crescent City, by a good wagon road, at a cost of four to five cents per pound. Oats here are 40 cents a bushel; wheat, 70 to 90 cents; lumber, $15 per thousand; labor from $30 to $40 per month. We observed, in squads, the ubiquitous Chinaman, moving from mining locality to mining locality, fleeing from the kicks of one to the cuffs of the other, with no fixed abiding place to be called his permanent home.

A location for a railroad line from Portland to Jacksonville is eminently practicable, and the citizens of the Willamette will be blind to their own interests if they do not so move in the matter so as to secure to themselves the advantages of the ample provisions made in the Pacific Railroad Bill for a connection between Portland and Sacramento; but south from Jacksonville there will be a severe problem for the engineers to solve, both in the shape of grades and tunnels. The Calapooia range will present an easy problem for solution; but the Scott's [Siskiyou?] and Trinity mountains will not be easily handled. They are high, broad, and broken, and no railroad line can be laid across or through them, except at most enormous cost. But that it is practicable, and will in time be built, I have no doubt. But my views relative to this location as a branch of the Pacific Railroad have been more than confirmed by a detailed view of its geography, and I still insist that a branch of the Pacific Railroad that will benefit Oregon and Washington as such can only be found by tapping the main trunk at or near Fort Laramie, and coming into the Columbia at or near the mouth of Snake River; and thence using the main Columbia to such a point whence freight can be shipped to and across the ocean. I made special inquiries relative to the depth of snow across the Calapooia, Scott's and Trinity mountains during the past winter, and learned that not less than eight feet fell upon these mountains; still the stage coach passed these mountains every day until the freshet suspended the travel; which was for the period of six weeks. The Scott's and Trinity mountains are higher than any mountains crossed by my road from Walla Walla to Fort Benton; and knowing that the question of snow with us is no more difficult than that met and overcome on this and other lines, I am sanguine to believe that a mail line from Fort Laramie to Walla Walla will prove eventually practicable. But the experimentum crucis, that will leave no lingering doubt even with the most uncompromising cavalier, will be afforded us, I trust, during the next twelve months; and that will deliver at our doors in Walla Walla the mails direct from Saint Louis in fifteen days. I am but too anxious that this last crowning success should be afforded us; not only to give us increased mail facilities for the present, but to awaken a practical attention to that region where the isothermal and isochimal lines have for ages past presented, and do still continue to present, to us meteorological phases as wonderful in their nature as they are destined to prove useful in their future results.

To those who derive pleasure in seeing the rough, rugged, wild face of Nature, made to wear the smiles of civilization and of progress, and to witness what money and labor can accomplish, I know of no point where they can visit to see these in all their grandeur than across the Scott's and Trinity mountains, which, in point of difficulty and rugged wildness, surpass any mountain region it has ever been my lot to travel, from the Columbia to the Missouri River. Toll roads lead over both of these mountains; one connecting Yreka with Rogue River; and the other, Yreka with Shasta. The road over Scott's Mountain is about twenty miles long, and made at a cost not far from $200,000; and the other, eight miles, made at a cost of $16,000. The mind that conceived the road, and the hand that executed it, were not cast in Nature's ordinary mould; genius of a higher order was Nature's gift to them. Those who invested their capital (for they were both built by private enterprise) are now being well repaid; of this, the long line of wagons and pack trains, freighted from Red Bluff to the northern mines, furnish unmistakable evidence.

A ride over Scott's Mountain amply repays one for all the labor required to make it; and can be made by no one who will not appreciate that bold enterprise that is to-day leveling mountains, leveeing valleys, bridging torrents, and, by the sound of pick and drill, even arousing Nature from her lethargy sleep—deep down in the very bowels of the mountains—throughout the length and breadth of California.

Leaving Rogue River, we pass at once from an agricultural to a wild, mountainous region, which constitutes the mining section of northern California, of which Yreka may be considered the center. It is a place of much trade, built mostly of brick, and presents a bustling appearance. It supports two newspapers, three or four hotels; has a large post office, and, at present, is the northern terminus of the State telegraph line. A cemetery, well arranged in its plan, forms the northern entrance to the city; the number of graves it contains shows that here as elsewhere death has done its work. A day's journey, and we come to Shasta, a mining town of one thousand people, possessing few attractions outside of a business locality. The road, approaching Yreka, winds near the northern base of Mount Shasta, a frowning snow peak, fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. Though grand and majestic, it does not compare favorably in either respect with Mount Hood—the father of all snow peaks on the Pacific. From Shasta a ride of a day brings us to Red Bluff—to which point steamers of light draught are still running from Sacramento, but with so many delays and uncertainties that the traveler prefers to continue the journey by the stage. At this point, however, we finally emerge from the mountains of California and enter upon the broad swelling prairie which constitutes the norther portion of the Sacramento Valley—where, though the country is mostly a waste, dotted here and there with clumps of oak, or openings of the same growth, yet where many large and inviting farming sections are had. At Tehama we cross the Sacramento, by a buoy-ferry, and, in a few miles, enter upon one of the most choice agricultural districts the eye ever rested upon—where grain fields are not measured by the acre, nor yet by the mile, but by the league. By a day's drive we passed through the extensive and rich fields of Major Bidwell, where eleven thousand acres of grain were being threshed—where his own mill stood ready to convert into flour the produce of his own fields; where his own mammoth store furnished hundreds of his employés with all the wants of life; where his own energy was opening, with his own means, a wagon road from the Sacramento River to the Humboldt mines; and where his own purse has already paid out $35,000, and backed by a willingness to pay as much more, in order to open up a new market for the exuberant products of so rich a soil as he himself possesses. The center of his large estate is the beautiful village of "Chico," where, in rural wealth as well as in rural simplicity, live an educated and contented peasantry, all more or less supported by the means of this bachelor millionaire—whose residence, on the banks of the Sacramento, is one of those architectural gems hid away amidst shrubs, trees, orchards, and groves, as if to avoid the gaze of him whose residence is of crowded cities and who is almost unworthy to breath the sweet perfume of a region where such bowers grow. May Major Bidwell long live—though bachelor he be—to dispense his bounties to a people who respect him for the liberal and generous manner in which he shares his wealth with those not similarly blest.

From Tehama the ride of half a day brings us to Oroville, a city well named, for situated as it is on the Feather River, it is in the heart of a rich mining country, where the miners have worked like so many beavers, and where the water of the Feather River is made to run in pipes and reservoirs into lakes for hundreds of feet above the level of the river, at the site of the town. This river is crossed by a ferry. A steamer is said to have once landed here from Sacramento, but such occurrences I regard as rare. The river is rapid; boils and surges over a rocky and rugged bed, and joins the Sacramento at Marysville—to which point a night's ride brings us—continuing to pass through a rich agricultural region, under a state of high cultivation. Marysville is a large, prosperous city—houses, mostly of brick—at the junction of the Yuba and Feather rivers. Thence on to Sacramento, (a journey of eight hours' staging,) the road is over a level, agricultural district, throughout which the piles of drift timber and the absence of fences, in many places, and the presence of boats and bateaux, all told that the water had been here supreme not many months past; barns with their roofs a mile distant; houses without any; outhouses and dwellings with a watermark up to the second story—and in many localities no dwellings at all, where commodious and comfortable tenements had been—all told of the presence and the power of the waters of Sacramento when charged with fullness on its way to the ocean. It seems to me that a system of high levees is the only thing to reclaim hundreds of acres of fine swamp land along the Sacramento, and to prevent the repetition of these disastrous results, which made the people poor and retard the growth of the State. Sacramento is already surrounded by a high levee which may protect it another season; but the levee should begin at Marysville and extend to Sacramento. It will, of course, be expensive, but it will repay the labor in the end.

Between Marysville and Sacramento we passed the large and magnificent claim called "Sutter's Ranch," though not under a high state of cultivation. The old pioneer is now poor, but his friends are sufficiently zealous in his behalf to see that his wants go not unsupplied. One can not pass over this region and at the same time observe how rapidly the Sacramento River is being obstructed by the immense deposits of sand and sediment which its current is daily bringing down, thus forming bars and deltas destined not only to intercept but probably to suspend at no distant day navigation to its upper waters,—without feeling the pressing importance of a railroad connection between Sacramento and the more northern regions of California. Already are parties out viewing and prospecting a road through Noble's Pass, where it is proposed by some to carry the Pacific railroad line.

That California will be covered with a network of railways is only a question of time, and that time determined by the low rates of interest that will cause capitalists to become interested in these great works of internal improvement. Local trade and travel must always be great, and must always increase so long as gold shall be mined, and that period seems to be illimitable.

From Sacramento we took passage on the fine steamer Antelope, for San Francisco, which in six hours and at a cost of $5 brought us to the end of one section of our journey. There are no opposition steamers on now and hence the monopolists command the river. The signs of the devastation of the flood marked the entire distance from Sacramento to the bay of San Francisco. But here and there we found the inhabitants raising their dwellings a story, and by levees and other improvements trying to reclaim their fields, as well as to defy the freshets of coming years. No one can pass over this exceedingly interesting region from Portland to Sacramento without feeling a thrill of pride and of pleasure to see what American energy and American capital have accomplished during the past fourteen years of its occupancy; and to picture in imagination what the next fourteen years may produce, would almost render oneself liable to such an unjust criticism that I would forbear to enter upon a theme so pregnant with interest; suffice it to say, let those who have not made the trip, make it at least once and see for themselves pleasant homes and well-tilled fields, grand mountains, useful rivers, forests of orchards, and oceans of grain; miles of sluice boxes and tons of gold; and the beauty of a region redolent with the songs of thrift and industry—and if they be not well repaid for all the fatigues of a mountain journey, the fault will certainly be theirs, and not the bounty of generous nature, who with lavish hand has spread so many pictures of the grand and beautiful—nor yet the fault of the inhabitants by the wayside, who by culture and improvement have framed these pictures in gilded and golden casements, and where contentment and happiness are the visible garments in which everything would seem to be enrobed.

INDIAN WARS OF SOUTHERN OREGON.

Address of Hon. William M. Colvig Delivered at the Reunion of the Indian War Veterans, at Medford on Saturday, July 26, 1902.

I was first invited to deliver an address of welcome to the Indian war veterans, who meet here to-day; but within the past few days I was informed that an historical sketch of early days in southern Oregon, including an account of the Indian wars, would be my part in the programme of exercises.

My knowledge of the subject is not very extensive. I lived in southern Oregon as early as 1852, but was only a boy, not old enough to take part in any of the stirring incidents which I remember of those days. I see before me faces that recall events long past, and which left pictures in the album of memory that time will never efface, and you will pardon me if I refer to one of those personal recollections.

In 1855 my father, Dr. Wm. L. Colvig, and family lived in a log cabin on the South Umpqua River, near Canyonville. One bright, clear day in October of that year, myself and brother, on returning from a trip in the "cañon," saw standing, in an exhausted condition, a white cayuse pony before the door of our home. The horse was covered with blood. Everything seemed quiet about the place. We rushed into the house and saw a man lying on his back, full length, upon the puncheon floor. His clothing was partially removed. His body was covered with blood. Father was kneeling over him on one side and mother on the other. They were dressing his wounds. He had nine separate bullet holes in his limbs and body. Doctor Colvig had his case of surgical instruments at hand, which consisted of a butcher knife and a pair of scissors. The knife was the one we had used to cut meat when crossing the plains. Mother was preparing bandages by tearing up some of our old "hickory" shirts. Well, they patched Uncle Bill Russell—called "Long Bill" in those days—up in pretty good shape. I see him here to-day, but I don't think that he is looking for a fight with Indians. At the time of which I speak, he had been shot by the Indians about five miles from my father's house but succeeded in riding to our door. His companion, Weaver, had a close call, but escaped unhurt.

The Indian wars of southern Oregon were stubborn contests. It is a natural law that the fittest survive, and wherever civilization in its advance meets barbarian force, the latter must give way. When they meet there is an "irrepressible conflict," the details of which we can not always reconcile with the Golden Rule. The tribes who took part in these several wars in southern Oregon were the Rogue Rivers, Modocs, Klamaths, Shastas, and Umpquas. The only honest acquisition of the Rogue River Indians was their name. On account of the thieving and treacherous habits of the people of that tribe, the river which flows through the valley was called by the early French trappers "Riviere aux Coquin," the river of rogues. The Oregon legislature in 1853 sought to change the name, and did name it Gold River, but, as the boys say, "it didn't take."

It will be impossible for me to do more than mention a few of the more prominent incidents, and I can not be very accurate in regard to dates and other matters pertaining to that period, as my information has been gathered from many sources, some of which are not very authentic.

It may be of interest to know that on December 27, 1850, Congress passed what is known as the donation land law, which gave to every American citizen over the age of eighteen years, if single, one half section of land; if married, one section of land, one half of which was the absolute property of the wife, the other half of the husband. There were no settlers in the Rogue River Valley prior to New Year's day, 1851. In the spring of 1851 a man by the name of Evans constructed a ferry across Rogue River, just below the town of Woodville. During the same spring a man by the name of Perkins also established a ferry on that river. The first donation land claim was located by Judge A. A. Skinner, an Indian agent, in June, 1851. This claim is the Walker farm, near Central Point. Upon it he built the first settler's house ever built in the valley. Chesley Gray, his interpreter, also located a donation land claim in June, 1851. It is what is known as the "Constant Farm," near Central Point. The following named persons filed donation land claims prior to February, 1852: Moses Hopwood, on Christmas day, 1851; N. C. Dean, at Willow Springs, December, 1851; Stone and Poyntz, at Wagner Creek, December, 1851; L. J. C. Duncan, Major Barron, Thomas Smith, Pat Dunn, E. K. Anderson, and Samuel Culver had made their locations prior to February, 1852. I do not pretend that these were all, but the entire number of claims taken up to that time did not exceed twenty-eight.

In December, 1851, James Clugage and J. R. Poole located the first mining claim in southern Oregon, at a point near the old brewery in Jacksonville. They had been informed by a couple of young men who were passing through the country that they had found gold near that place. Immediately after this discovery became known in California and by the incoming immigrants to Oregon, there was a rush made to the mines of Jacksonville. Old man Shiveley, the discoverer of Shiveley Gulch, above Jacksonville, inside of eighteen months had taken out over $50,000, and since that time, from the best statistics obtainable, the mines of southern Oregon have yielded about $35,000,000 in gold.

During the winter of 1852 flour was sold at $1 per pound, tobacco at $1 an ounce, and salt was priceless. Jacksonville was laid out as a town in the summer of 1852 by Henry Klippel and John R. Poole.

I will now speak of the Indian wars in which the people of southern Oregon were engaged. The first recorded fight between the Indians and whites in any portion of southern Oregon occurred in 1828, when Jedediah S. Smith and seven other trappers were attacked by the Indians on the Umpqua River, and fifteen of the whites were slain, only Smith and three of his companions escaping. The next fight of which we have any account was in June, 1836, at a point just below the Rock Point bridge, where the barn on the W. L. Colvig estate stands. In this fight there were Dan Miller, Edward Barnes, Doctor Bailey, George Gay, Saunders, Woodworth, Irish Tom, and J. Turners and squaw. Two trappers were killed, and nearly all were wounded. Within my recollection, Doctor Bailey visited the scene of this fight, and pointed out to my father its location. In September, 1837, at the mouth of Foots Creek, in Jackson County, a party of men who had been sent to California by the Methodist mission to procure cattle, while on their return were attacked by the Rogue River Indians and had a short, severe fight, in which several of the whites were badly wounded and some twelve or fourteen of the Indians killed. In May, 1845, J. C. Fremont had a fight with the Indians in the Klamath country; it may have been a little over the line in California. Four of Fremont's men were killed and quite a large number of the Indians. Kit Carson was a prominent figure in this battle.

As before stated, a few bold adventurers had located in Rogue River Valley as early as December, 1851. During the spring, summer, and fall of that year there was a considerable amount of travel through the valley, by parties from northern Oregon going to and returning from the great mining excitement of California. Fights between these travelers and the Indians were of frequent occurrence. On the fifteenth day of May, 1851, a pack train was attacked at a point on Bear Creek, where the town of Phœnix is now situated, and a man by the name of Dilley was killed. On June 3, 1851, a party of Oregonians, under the leadership of Dr. James McBride, had a severe fight near Willow Springs with Chief "Chucklehead" and his band. Chucklehead and six other Indians were killed; several of the whites were severely wounded.

About this time Maj. Phil Kearny, afterwards General Kearny, who was killed at the battle of Chantilly in the Civil war, happened to be passing through the valley on his way from Vancouver to Benicia, California, with a detachment of two companies of United States regulars. He remained a short time and assisted in punishing the Indians for the numerous depredations committed by them during the year. He had several fights while in the valley, in which about fifty Indians were killed. One of these fights was on Rogue River, near the mouth of Butte Creek, where Captain Stuart, of the United States army, received an arrow wound from an Indian, who was also wounded. The arrow penetrated the captain's body, and he died the next day at the camp on Bear Creek, near Phœnix. The camp thenceforth took the name of Camp Stuart, and Bear Creek in all government records is called Stuart's Creek. The captain's body was buried at a spot where the wagon road crosses the mill race in the town of Phœnix. Some years ago his remains were taken up and sent to Washington, D. C., to be buried by the side of his mother. Captain Stuart's last words were, "Boys, it is awful to have passed through all the battles of the Mexican war, and then be killed by an Indian in this wild country."

At the massacre of emigrants at Bloody Point, Klamath County, in 1852, thirty-six men, women, and children were murdered. Capt. Ben Wright and twenty-seven men from Yreka and Col. J. E. Ross and some Oregonians went out to punish these Modocs. Old Schonchin, who was afterwards hung at Fort Klamath in 1873, at the close of the Modoc war, was the leader. Wright gave them no quarter. He and his men, infuriated at the sight of the mangled bodies of the emigrants, killed men, women, and children without any discrimination—about forty in all; and it is said that they asked for a "peace talk," whereupon a roast ox was prepared. Wright poisoned it, gave it to the Indians, and then rode away. [This story is now generally discredited.—Editor.]

I can not give you the names of all who were killed in Rogue River Valley during the years 1851, 1852, and 1853. I will mention some that were killed in 1853. In August of that year Edward Edwards was killed near Medford; Thomas Wills and Rhodes Nolan, in the edge of the town of Jacksonville; Pat Dunn and Carter, both wounded in a fight on Neil Creek above Ashland. In a fight with the Indians on Bear Creek, in August, 1853, Hugh Smith was killed, and Howell, Morris, Hodgins, Whitmore, and Gibbs wounded, the last named three dying from their wounds soon after.

These murders, and many more that could be mentioned, brought on the Indian war of 1853. Southern Oregon raised six companies of volunteers, who served under the following named captains, viz, R. L. Williams, J. K. Lamerick, John F. Miller, Elias A. Owens, and W. W. Fowler. Capt. B. F. Alden, of the Fourth U. S. Infantry, with twenty regulars, came over from Fort Jones, California, and with him a large number of volunteers under Capt. James P. Goodall and Capt. Jacob Rhoades, two Indian fighters of experience. Captain Alden was given the command of all the forces. The first battle of the war was fought on the twelfth day of August, 1853, and was an exciting little fight between about twenty volunteers under Lieut. Burrell Griffin, of Miller's company, and a band of Indians under Chief John. The volunteers were ambushed at a point near the mouth of Williams creek, on the Applegate. The whites were defeated with a loss of two killed and Lieutenant Griffin severely wounded. There were five Indians killed and wounded in the battle. On August 10, 1853, John R. Harding and Wm. R. Rose, of Captain Lamerick's company, were killed near Willow Springs. On the sixteenth of August, 1853, Gen. Joseph Lane, afterwards United States senator from Oregon, and a candidate for vice president in 1860, came out from his home in Douglas County and brought fifty men with him, to take part in the war. General Lane was a man of large experience in Indian warfare and in all military matters. He had commanded an Indiana regiment in the Mexican war and enjoyed a well earned reputation for bravery. On the day that General Lane arrived what is known as the battle of Little Meadows was fought. Lieutenant Ely and twenty-two men met the Indians near Evans Creek, in the timber, and a short, but deadly conflict took place. Seven whites were killed inside of an hour; Lieutenant Ely and three men wounded. They left the battlefield in charge of the Indians—at least, in the popular phraseology of that day, "they got up and got out." On August 24, 1853, the battle of Evans Creek was fought. In this fight the Indians did not fare so well, twelve of them being killed and wounded. One volunteer named Pleasant Armstrong was killed and Captain Alden and Gen. Joe Lane were each wounded. During the summer of 1853 several men were shot by Indians in Josephine County. In the fall General Lane patched up a temporary peace, which lasted till 1855.

The war of 1855-56 was preceded by a great many murders and depredations by the Indians in different parts of southern Oregon. I will mention a few: ——. Dyar and ——. McKew, killed while on the road from Jacksonville to Josephine County on June 1, 1855. About the same time a man by name of ——. Philpot was killed on Deer Creek, Josephine County, and James Mills was wounded at the same time and place. Granville Keene was killed at a point on Bear Creek, above Ashland, and J. Q. Faber was wounded. Two men, ——. Fielding and ——. Cunningham, were killed in September, 1855, on the road over the Siskiyou mountains.

On account of these various depredations Maj. J. A. Lupton raised a temporary force of volunteers, composed of miners and others, from the vicinity of Jacksonville, about thirty-five in number, and proceeded to a point on the north side of Rogue River, opposite the mouth of Little Butte Creek. There he attacked a camp of Indians at a time when they were not expecting trouble. It is said that about thirty men, women, and children were killed by Lupton's men. The major himself received a mortal wound in the fight. This fight has been much criticised by the people of southern Oregon, a great many of them believing that it was unjustifiable and cowardly. Two days after this affair a series of massacres took place in the sparsely settled country in and about where Grants Pass is now situated. On the ninth day of October, 1855, the Indians, having divided up into small parties, simultaneously attacked the homes of the defenseless families located in that vicinity. I will name a few of those tragic events. On the farm now owned by James Tuffs, Mr. Jones was killed, and his wife, after receiving a mortal wound, made her escape. She was found by the volunteers on the next day and died a few days afterwards. Their house was burned down. Mrs. Wagner was murdered by the Indians on the same day. Her husband was away from home at the time, but returned on the following day to find his wife murdered and his home a pile of ashes. The Harris family consisted of Harris and wife and their two children, Mary Harris, aged twelve, and David Harris, aged ten, and T. A. Reed, a young man who lived with the family. Mr. Harris was shot down while standing near his door, and at a moment when he little suspected treachery from the Indians with whom he was talking. His wife and daughter pulled his body within the door, and seizing a double-barreled shotgun and an old-fashioned Kentucky rifle, commenced firing through the cracks of the log cabin. They kept this up till late in the night, and by heroic bravery kept the Indians from either gaining an entrance into the house or succeeding in their attempts to fire it. Just back of the cabin was a dense thicket of brush, and during a lull in the attack the two brave women escaped through the back door and fled through the woods. They were found the next day by volunteers from Jacksonville, our late friend, Henry Klippel, being one of the number. Mrs. Harris lived to a good old age in this county. Mary, who was wounded in the fight, afterwards became the wife of Mr. G. M. Love, and was the mother of George Love of Jacksonville and Mrs. John A. Hanley of Medford. David Harris, the boy, was not in the house when the attack was made, but was at work on the place. His fate has never been ascertained, as his body was never found. The Indians stated, after peace was made, that they killed him at the time they attacked the Harris house. Reed, the young man spoken of, was killed out near the house.

On October 31, 1855, the battle of Hungry Hill was fought near the present railway station of Leland. Capt. A. J. Smith of the United States army was at that battle, and a large number of citizens soldiery. The result of the battle was very undecisive. There were thirty-one whites killed and wounded, nine of them being killed outright. It is not known how many of the Indians were killed, but after the treaty was made they confessed to fifteen. The Indians were in heavy timber and were scarcely seen during the two days' battle.

In April, 1856, after peace had been concluded between the whites and Indians, the Ledford massacre took place in Rancherie Prairie, near Mount Pitt, in this county, in which five white men were killed. This event was the last of the "irrepressible conflict." Soon afterward the Indians were removed to the Siletz reservation, where their descendants now live and enjoy the favors of the government which their fathers so strongly resisted.

The war in Rogue River Valley had now virtually ended. "Old Sam's" band, with an escort of one hundred United States troops, was taken to the coast reservation at Siletz. Chiefs "John" and "Limpy," with a large number of the most active warriors, who had followed their fortunes during all these struggles, still held out and continued their depredations in the lower Rogue River country and in connection with the Indians of Curry County.

Gen. John E. Wool, commander of the department of the Pacific, in November, 1855, had stopped at Crescent City while on his way to the Yakima country. He received full information while here of the military operations in southern Oregon. Skipping many details, it is sufficient to state that he ordered Capt. A. J. Smith to move down the river from Fort Lane and form a junction with the United States troops under Captains Jones and E. O. C. Ord (afterward a major-general in United States army), who were prosecuting an active campaign in the region about Chetco, Pistol River, and the Illinois River Valley. Captain Smith left Fort Lane with eighty men—fifty dragoons and thirty infantry. I can only take the time to mention a few of the fights in that region during the spring of 1856. On March 8th Captain Abbott had a skirmish with the Chetco Indians at Pistol River. He lost several men. The Indians had his small force completely surrounded when Captain Ord and Captain Jones with one hundred and twelve regular troops came to his relief. They charged and drove the Indians away with heavy loss. On March 20, 1855, Lieutenant-Colonel Buchanan, assisted by Captains Jones and Ord, attacked an Indian village ten miles above the mouth of Rogue River. The Indians were driven away, leaving several dead and only one white man wounded in the fight. A few days later Captain Angne's [Augur?] company (United States troops) fought John and "Limpy's" band at the mouth of the Illinois River. The Indians fought desperately, leaving five dead on the battlefield. On March 27, 1855, the regulars again met the Indians on Lower Rogue River. After a brisk fight at close quarters the Indians fled, leaving ten dead and two of the soldiers were severely wounded. On April 1, 1855, Captain Creighton, with a company of citizens, attacked an Indian village near the mouth of the Coquille River, killing nine men, wounding eleven and taking forty squaws and children prisoners. About this time some volunteers attacked a party of Indians who were moving in canoes at the mouth of Rogue River. They killed eleven men and one squaw. Only one man and two squaws of the party escaped. On April 29, 1855, a party of sixty regulars escorting a pack train were attacked near Chetco. In this fight three soldiers were killed and wounded. The Indians lost six killed and several wounded.

The volunteer forces of the coast war were three companies known by the names of "Gold Beach Guards," the "Coquille Guards," and the "Port Orford Minute Men." I have not the time to enter into the details of the battle that was fought on the twenty-seventh of May, 1855, near Big Meadows, on Rogue River. Captain Smith was in command of his eighty regulars. Old "John" lead the Indians. The operations covered a period of two days, John using all the tactics of military science in handling his four hundred braves during the battle. Just as everything was ready, according to "John's" plans for an attack upon the regulars, Captain Angne's [Augur?] company was seen approaching. The Indians were then soon dispersed. Captain Smith lost twenty-nine men killed and wounded in this battle, and had it not been for the timely arrival of Angne's [Augur?] company, his men would all have been killed.

While these operations were being carried on by the United States troops, the volunteer forces were not idle. They were kept busy with "Limpy" and "George's" warriors, at points in Josephine County. On January 28, 1856, Major Latshaw moved down the river with two hundred and thirteen men. He had several skirmishes and lost four or five men in killed and wounded. On May 29th "Limpy" and "George" surrendered at Big Meadows to Lieutenant-Colonel Buchanan. On May 31st Governor Curry ordered the volunteer forces to disband—nearly all the Indians had surrendered. About one thousand three hundred of the various tribes that had carried on the war were gathered in camp at Port Orford. About July 1, 1856, "John" and thirty-five tough looking warriors, the last to surrender, "threw down the hatchet." I have now gone over, in chronological order, the principal events connected with the Indian wars of southern Oregon. I am fully aware that the narrative is very defective, and that many events of importance have not even been mentioned. You who took part in these early struggles can easily fill in the gaps, and correct the errors that I may have unconsciously made.

There were some men who took part in the Indian wars of southern Oregon who afterward became prominent in the history of the Nation. I will name a few, viz, Gen. U. S. Grant, Gen. J. B. Hood (late of Confederate army), Gen. Phil Kearny, Gen. Wool, Gen. A. J. Smith, Gen. Geo. Crooks, Gen. A. V. Kautz, Gen. Phil Sheridan, Gen. J. C. Fremont, Gen. Joe Lane (candidate for vice president of the United States in 1860), Gen. Joe Hooker (who built the military road in the Canyon Mountains in 1852), and Kit Carson.

We all rejoice that the general government has at last acknowledged the value of your services to civilization; and has made some provision of recompense for the privations which you suffered.

I see before me old gray headed mothers who will also share with you this recognition of the Nation's gratitude. It is well, and to my comrades of the Civil war, who are here, and who have been the promotors of this reunion of veterans, let me say that no women of any war, in which the American people have ever been engaged, are more deserving of the Nation's bounty than these old, feeble, pioneer mothers of southern Oregon. When their fathers, brothers, and husbands went out to meet their savage foes, these women were not left in well protected cities, villages, and homes, but often in rude cabins, situated in close proximity to the conflict; and unlike the chances of civilized warfare, no mercy could be expected from the enemy—surrender meant not only death, but torture and heartless cruelty. In every hour of those dark days these women proved themselves to be fit helpmates to a race of daring men—and worthy all honors that are accorded the brave.

MINTO PASS: ITS HISTORY, AND AN INDIAN TRADITION.

By John Minto.

There was a tradition among the Indians of the central portion of the Willamette Valley at the time when the missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Church attempted christianization from 1834 to 1840, that a trail or thoroughfare through this natural pass had formerly been much used by their people and that its use was abandoned after, and as one of the results of, a bloody battle between the Mollalas (who claimed the western slopes of the Cascades from the Clackamas River south to the Calapooia Mountains,) and the Cayuses who were originally of the same tribe, but who had become alienated by family feuds, of which the battle or massacre of their tradition was the end. The superstitious belief of the Indians in the transmigration of the souls of dead warriors into the bodies of beasts of prey, like panthers, bears, and wolves, would of itself go far to cause the Indians to abandon the use of such a trail, but the formation of the gorge by which the river cuts its way through the roughest portion of the range is such as to give great numbers of opportunities for ambuscades—a common resort of Indian warfare. Certain is it that for some cause the Indians of Chemeketa, Chemawa, and Willamette spoke with dread of going up that river. They did, however, have trails on each side of this natural pass,—that to the south being first used by a pioneer settler named Wyley. It became known as the Wyley Trail, and subsequently was adopted as a general route over which the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Military Wagon Road was located. The other to the north comes into the Willamette Valley via the Table Rock and down the Abiqua. Both these trails were used exclusively by the Indians of the east side of the range as means of coming into the Willamette Valley with the exception of the Mollalas, who were intermarried with the Warm Springs Indians and the Klamaths when the settlement by the whites began. The free trappers and the retired Canadians, who had settled as farmers and trading parties of the Hudson Bay Company, continued to use the trail up the North Santiam Valley until 1844-45, when, in addition to the country reached by it being "trapped out," furs fell in price in the general market so that it temporarily ceased to be used by the engagees of the Hudson Bay Company. In the summer of 1845 Dr. E. White, then a sub-agent of the United States for the Indians of Oregon, examined, or claimed to have examined, the route as a means of getting immigration into western Oregon more easily than by way of the Columbia River Pass. Either the doctor did not examine closely or was very easily discouraged; at all events no beneficial results followed. At this same time Stephen L. Meek was leading a party of the immigration of that year with the purpose of entering the Willamette Valley by that way. Meek had trapped on the head waters of the John Day River a few seasons previous, and had here met Canadians from the Willamette, who had come over the trail and doubtless thought he could easily find it; and there is little reason to doubt that he would have done so had it not been that by reason of their much wandering in searching the way from the mouth of the Malheur to the waters of the Des Chutes, the people he led were in such desperate straits that he had to flee for his life. There was another reason: a ridge makes out on the east side of the main range, but parallel with it, which completely shuts the pass from being seen in outline from the east.

The failure of Meek to get his party through raised the question in the settlements as to whether there was so easy a means of passing the Cascade range at that point as the Hudson Bay Company trappers and traders represented, and in the spring of 1846 a public meeting was held at Salem and a committee of six citizens was selected to go and make an examination of the trail. Col. Cornelius Gilliam was the head of the committee of the American portion of the party, and Joseph Gervais, a Canadian trapper, preëminent for general intelligence among his class, went along to show the way. The Hon. T. C. Shaw, nephew of Gilliam, was of the party (the youngest). He is at present (1887) county judge of Marion County, and recently went over part of the ground they then passed. From him it is learned that the trail did not then pass through the narrow gorge which has been spoken of, but took over the tops of the most broken and rugged portion of the range. The party proceeded until they came to what they termed the "scaly rock mountain," which Colonel Gilliam pronounced impassable for wagons. The party returned and reported accordingly, and from that date till late in 1873 that pass way was unused and to a great extent forgotten.

In October, 1873, two hunters in search of good game range penetrated up the north bank of the river through the gorge before mentioned, and found that about twelve miles from the then settlement on King's Prairie that the valley widened out and the mountains seemed lower; narrow belts of bottom land lay between the mountains and the river, and appeared to continue up to near the base of Mount Jefferson, which, in fact, they do. One of these hunters (Henry States) sent for John Minto, being unable, on account of a sprained ankle, to go to the latter, and told him of their findings. This rediscovery or new discovery revived recollections of statements made by Joseph Gervais and others, and Minto took sufficient interest in the subject to go before the board of county commissioners of Marion County and repeat the statements of the hunters, volunteering the suggestion that it was important if such a natural pass existed as was thus indicated the county had an interest in making the fact known. One of the commissioners, Hon. Wm. M. Case, had long lived near neighbor to the famous Hudson Bay Company's leader, Tom McKay, and had often heard him speak of that as the shortest and best way across the Cascades. A short consultation resulted in the "order" that Mr. Minto take two comrades and proceed up the valley of the North Santiam until he was satisfied whether it made such a natural cut into the range or not. After an absence of twelve days the party returned and Minto reported a deep valley apparently almost dividing the range, and so sheltered that several varieties of wild flowers were found in bloom on the eighteenth of November. Upon this representation a petition for the survey of a road was presented to the board of county commissioners early in 1874, and the viewing out and survey of such a road ordered, Porter Jack, Geo. S. Downing, and John Minto to act as viewers, and T. W. Davenport as surveyor. The survey was made and the viewers' report in favor of an excellent roadway was made to the county commissioners of Marion County, August, 1874. The results were got by following up the north bank of the Santiam River, generally within sight or sound of its waters, from the point where it enters the Willamette Valley to its most eastern springs. Starting from the bank of the Willamette River at Salem, where its course is east of north parallel with the Cascade range, the survey leads up its Santiam branch eighty-three (83) miles, to the true summit of the Cascades, here found in a narrow cut or pass lying across the summit ridge, the general course of the survey being southeast by east. From the summit thus found it is an estimated distance of only five (5) miles down to the Matoles branch of the Des Chutes River, here running east of north parallel with the range, the same course as that of the Willamette on the west side; but taking down the eastern declivity with an easy grade for a wagon road, the plain of the Des Chutes would be reached in about seven miles and the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountains Road, where it skirts the base of Black Butte, three miles into the Des Chutes plain, in about ten miles. In making this view and survey an old and deeply worn trail was frequently crossed, and such a trail, less deep, was found leading over the pass eastward. The first observed trail gives some support to the Indian tradition of a former native thoroughfare down the valley.

The trail out of the pass is not so much worn, neither is the Strong trail leading off towards the west from a point about seven miles eastward, used by Lieutenant Fremont as he passed the locality in 1843. The trail so noted reaches first the immense springs of Matoles, where a full grown river rises from under the northeast base of Black Butte, into which the salmon ascend in July and August for spawning purposes, at that date and since making a valuable fishery for the Indians, and scarcely less valuable as fisheries where the numerous lakes to the westward, which, taken in connection with abundant game of the entire region, make it a hunter's paradise. At the date of Fremont's march, of which had Meek been informed in 1845, he would have almost certainly succeeded in getting the people he led into the Willamette Valley by that way easier than they reached The Dalles after he abandoned them.

After the viewing out and survey of the wagon road as before related, parties incorporated or filed articles of incorporation for a projected railroad through the pass to Winnemucca. It was a mere speculation on the part of persons who had neither money nor credit of any kind. It had the effect of weakening the public interest in having a common road constructed, so that after the lapse of the legal hold on the pass thus attained, there was little disposition to spend money on the opening of a common road which was liable to be destroyed at any time by a railroad interest. An association was formed, however, and a stock trail was opened at a cost of $1,800, in labor. As much more spent at that time would have enabled wagons to pass. For lack of this small sum the trail constructed did not attract the public use except in a small measure for horses. In 1880 Hon. John B. Waldo, while enjoying a summer recreation trip along the summit ridge, came to a point some seven or eight miles south of the point to which the survey had been made and over which a trail had been opened, which he felt confident was lower than it. He spoke of it to Mr. Minto, who, the next spring, had a small sum ($200) placed at his disposal by Marion County in order to remove obstructions which had fallen into the trail. After removing these obstructions that had fallen in during the previous four years, Mr. Minto had $111 of the money left which he asked permission of the board of commissioners to use in viewing out and surveying the most southern of the two main branches of the Upper North Santiam. The suggestion was made that this arm of the stream trended so far southward that it would probably be found to reach the summit by a greater meander and consequently afford a more gradual approach to this supposed lower point of the summit, and therefore be more favorable for railroad purposes. The order was made in accordance with the suggestion, and Capt. L. S. Scott, Geo. S. Downing, and John Minto were appointed viewers and T. W. Davenport surveyor. After some loss of time by efforts to locate a line of communication, Minto took one comrade and went eastward through the old pass, taking the altitude of it as he went and finding it, according to an ordinary barometer, such as is used by railroad surveyors, to be five thousand five hundred and thirty-six feet above the sea, and proceeding southward and then westward on the same day found the instrument to read at the point indicated by Judge Waldo, four thousand nine hundred and eleven feet above the sea. From this point a line was struck and surveyed, which by way of the southeast branch of the North Santiam, connects with the original survey by an easy grade for railroad purposes and of which the projectors of the Corvallis and Eastern railroad were immediately informed. An examination of the whole route from Gates to Summit via the last viewed section, was made by Colonel Eccleson, civil engineer, and Summit was reached by a fraction over a two per cent grade. Construction began at the Summit with the least possible delay and rails were hauled by wagon from Albany and laid in order to hold the pass. From the pass westward more than half of the right of way was cut and much of the grade made ready for the ties between this lowest pass and the junction with the original Marion County survey at what the party making it called Independence Valley, directly south of and as the bird flies about eight miles from the apex of Mount Jefferson. From Idanha, the terminal of railroad track laid, four miles east of Detroit, fully twelve miles of right of way and grade were constructed when work was suspended by the original railroad company. From Mill City eastward to the Summit, the company appropriated fully ninety per cent of the original surveys made at the cost of Marion County. This need not be objected to, but in addition to this these railroad promoters often exercised an assumed right to name points that will be of permanent interest which they did not discover. This seems hardly fair. From my point of view the Hon. John B. Waldo, who first observed the apparent lowness of the pass, and called my attention to it, is more entitled to have his name attached to it than Col. T. E. Hogg, whose name I understand was given to by J. I. Blair, the railroad magnate of New York, who was one of the chief supporters of Colonel Hogg's enterprise.

As a matter of some historical interest I will close this paper by inserting some of the original names given places and things by the first white explorers of the valley.

The stream named Breitenbush was named by Henry States, Frank Cooper, and John Minto on the first legal examination for the pass for John Breitenbush a hunter who had cut his way to it ahead of them. Detroit was named by the man from Michigan who first opened a house for entertainment there. Boulder Creek was named by T. W. Davenport on his survey notes in 1874. It makes in from the north at Idanha which was a Muskrat Camp of first surveying party, but renamed by the proprietor of the first summer resort house. Minto Mountain was named by some one unknown to the writer, after he had led to the opening of a trail to Black Butte, in Crook County, in 1879. It was the grass covered mountains seen by Minto from the top of a fir tree into which he pulled himself to get a view of their surroundings when first seeking the pass in November, 1873, and which grass land his associate, Frank Cooper, asserted was in eastern Oregon, to his, Cooper's, personal knowledge, though he would not risk climbing the tree to see it, being a very heavy man. This mountain will for all time be an attractive object to summer recreationists and the most easily reached from the center of the Willamette Valley when the railroad is extended twelve miles farther east. The first stream making in from the northeast of Boulder Creek was called, by the surveying party of 1874, the White, a first fork from Jefferson. In August the snow melts from the southwest slopes of Jefferson and runs through volcanic ash as fine as bolted flour and it enters the main Santiam like thickened milk, coloring it down to Mehama sometimes. Custom has adopted the name "Whitewater." In 1879 I gave the name Pamelia Creek to the next stream which flows off the south face of Mount Jefferson and the same name now attaches to the lake at its south base. The name was given for Pamelia Ann Berry, because of her cheerfulness as one of the girl cooks of the working party, of which her father and sister were valued members. Independence Valley was so named by the road viewing party in 1874. Our party rested there on the fourth of July. The first waterfall on the east branch was named Gatch's Falls for Prof. T. M. Gatch, by election of the party, the young members all having been his students. Marion Lake and Orla Falls at the head of it were named at the same time. The latter by the younger members of the company who had danced with Miss Orla Davenport, the oldest daughter of our surveyor. The most of the water of Marion Lake seems to come over these falls from the northern declivities, a rocky peak of many pinnacles, locally called "Three-fingered Jack," but to which the name of Mount Marion was given in the report of this survey. This peak rises from the summit ridge south of Mount Jefferson and north of Mount Washington about equal distance of seven miles from each and about fifteen miles from the most northern of the Three Sisters. There are inviting situations for delightful summer residences on or near the ridge, both north and south of Mount Marion, which will in the near future probably become sites of permanent homes. The climate, as indicated by plant life, is that of the Highlands of Scotland, as here the American congener of both purple and white heather is found on and near the summit ridge.

The writer, who was an active member of these first exploring, surveying, and road constructing parties, closes this with the statement that the rugged labor sometimes involved was the very best kind of summer recreation, where nature in all her varying phases was enjoyed and the sights of the day made themes of camp fire talks, intermingled with subjects connected with social, educational, business, and public interests. There was little difference in this respect between the camp fires of a party of professional men seeking rest and that of road makers constructing lines of development.

REMINISCENCES.

Secured by H. S. Lyman.

ANSON STERLING CONE.

Anson Sterling Cone, who came to Oregon in 1846, and is now—February, 1900,—living upon his donation claim a mile and a half from Butteville, on one portion of French Prairie, is a native of Indiana, having been born in Shelby County of that State in 1827. At the age of seventy-three he is still in good health, and of good memory. He is carrying on a large farm, and, together with his wife, is supporting the family of his brother's daughter, as his own. He is a man of medium size, of rather sandy complexion, with hair and beard now white. He is plain and straightforward in manner, and remembers distinctly many details of his early experiences in Oregon. Some of the most interesting features of his narrative are his meeting with Whitman; his service as juror on the trial of the Indian murderers of Whitman; and his trip overland to California in the first wagon train to the mines. His story, however, will be given as he relates it, and the reader may then use his own judgment as to the relative importance of his recollections.

With his father's family, who removed for a short residence from Shelby to La Porte County, Indiana, he went as a mere lad to Iowa. The farm occupied by his father was alongside one of the main roads, and there, year after year, he saw the emigrants in their great wagons on the way to Oregon. In the course of time he took the fever to go with them to that enchanted country. The opportunity was not long withheld.

In 1846 a well-to-do neighbor, Edward Trimble, made up a party, in which an older brother of Anson's, Aaron Cone, was to go. Obtaining permission of his father, Anson, then but a youth of eighteen, assisted in helping the train off, and drove with the party for some distance. When the time arrived for him to return home (his dejected appearance probably indicating his longing to go on with the emigrants) Trimble said to him: "Anson, I don't advise or ask you to go to Oregon; but if you are bound to, you may go with me." "I have no outfit," said the young man. "I have $1,000," answered Trimble; "and as long as that lasts you shall have your share of it."

Anson went. His patron, however, never reached Oregon. Trimble was one of the comparatively few who fell a victim to the treachery of the Indians. He was killed by the Pawnees, on the Platte River, near the big island. He had been selected captain of the company of forty-three wagons which was made up at Saint Joe, where the train crossed the Missouri, and took the route south of the Platte.

At a point opposite the big island, as then known, the cattle were stampeded by the Pawnees, and driven away, so that the train was left entirely without teams. Trimble started out to hunt the animals; but his wife, seeing that he had no arms, said to him, "Edward, you had better take your rifle." He answered, "I do not need it; I am only going to look for the trail." But reaching a knoll and finding the trail of the lost stock, which led to the river, he and a man named Harris rode on without stopping, until they discovered the cattle on the island. Going down to the river side, however, they were suddenly confronted by a party of armed Pawnees, who had secreted themselves under the steep bank. Harris then, in his excitement, left his horse, and Trimble delaying for him was shot by the Indians. His body was not recovered but arrows stained with blood were found, which had probably been shot through his body. These were preserved by Mrs. Trimble, and it is thought that they are still in possession of the family; a daughter of Trimble, having become Mrs. Pomeroy, of Pomeroy, Washington.

By the men of the train who saw the affair, Harris was rescued, and the most of the oxen, though in a sad state of demoralization, were recovered. A considerable number were never found, and on account of this seven wagons were compelled to return to Saint Joe, with just enough cattle to draw them. But the mischief was also played with the oxen that went forward. After one thorough stampede such animals are always unreliable. Mr. Cone remembers one serious stampede later, of the whole train on the road, which was started only by a jack rabbit driven by the dogs under a wagon. "It was a pretty hard sight," he says, "to see the wagon hauled off, with oxen on the run. But they had to stop at last; some fell down and were dragged along. Many an old ox lost his horns. There were horns flying then—let one catch his tip in the ground and it was gone!"

However, though under unusual strain from this unlucky incident with the rascally Pawnees, the plains and mountains were crossed at last. Fort Bridger, Fort Hall, and the Grande Ronde and Blue Mountains were passed in due order, and about the middle of October the wagons descended upon the Umatilla.

Here the two young men, Anson and his brother Aaron, thought it advisable to leave the train and push on to the Willamette. To accomplish this they went over to the Walla Walla, with the idea of working for Whitman long enough to pay for a pack horse. At Waiilatpu they found the doctor at home, and made known their intention. "Boys," replied the Old Man (A. S. C.), "you had better take Bob there, and all the provisions you need, and go at once. At the end of the season there will be those coming who will have to stay here anyhow, and I had better save the work for them. I will be down in the Willamette country next summer, and you can pay me then." The young men accordingly took "Bob," a trusty old white cayuse horse and a good pack animal, who had somehow lost his tail, all except a short stump, just sufficient to hold the crupper.

By this kindness and confidence of Whitman Mr. Cone was greatly impressed. "He was a good man," he says, "he had a heart like an ox!" According to his recollections Whitman was about six feet tall, straight as an Indian and of fine presence. His face was florid, his hair chestnut, and not noticeably gray. In manner he was quick "for a big man," and "always in for anything that had life"—sociable, and a good joker. The horse and provisions, taken from the doctor's door, amounted to about $25 worth; "and the next summer," says Mr. Cone, "when I heard that the Old Man was at Oregon City, didn't I rustle around to have the money ready for him!"

Young Cone arrived at Oregon City on November 6th, his nineteenth birthday. He began almost immediately to look about the country, and taking the road to Tualatin Plains, was surprised, but greatly pleased, to meet on the way—at the house of Mr. Masters, near the present town of Reedville—an old friend, whom he had known at the East. This was T. G. Naylor, long a well known resident of Forest Grove. By this hospitable friend Cone was invited to spend the winter on the farm on Gale's Creek, and actually spent two months, managing to find eight working days between showers, out of that time—which indicates that the climate, even then, was rainy. However the young immigrant had good health, enjoyed life, and grew fat. For his eight days of work he received an order for eight bushels of wheat, and being in great need of new clothes, went back to Oregon City, and obtaining work at rail splitting, he succeeded in mending his fortunes sufficiently to procure new garments. He also found work afterwards in the sawmills. "Many a day," he says, "I worked alongside the Kanakas." There was at that time a considerable number of these native Sandwich Islanders in Oregon. They were good workmen, says Mr. Cone, being especially useful in work about the water. They had their own quarters, which they kept themselves, and provided their own sustenance quite independently.

During the dry season of 1847 the two brothers having decided to return East across the Plains, made a long tour of the Willamette Valley, in order to tell all about Oregon, with which, however, they were not fully satisfied as a permanent home; but their preparations not being complete they were delayed until late in the next season.

It was in August of that year that the Cayuse Indian murderers were brought down from the upper country, and were tried and hanged at Oregon City [Mr. Cone was evidently confused in this part of his recollections as the Cayuse Indian murderers did not give themselves up until April 1850; and were tried later in that year.—Editor.] The Indians had the benefit of counsel, and the usual motions were made for acquittal. Among others was rejection of many jurymen, on the ground of prejudice. As it began to seem that no jury could be found, Cone, who was present as a spectator at the trial, whispered to a companion, "Come, let's go; they will be getting us on the jury!"

They quietly slipped out, therefore, and retiring to a big rock on the bluff, were engaged chatting. A young man soon approached, however, whom they took to be another like themselves, but they recognized that he was after them and a deputy sheriff, when he proceeded to summon them to the jury box. They were accordingly impaneled, with the necessary number, and listened to the evidence. The case was entirely clear, the prosecution simply presenting evidence to show that the accused were the Indians who had committed the crime.

As to the motive of the murder, or the causes back of it, Mr. Cone inclines to the opinion very prevalent at the time, that it was due to religious differences; "there was another church there, and this I know, that none of the other church were hurt." He mentions particularly Joe Stanbough, who was not injured, yet was a full-blood white man. This is mentioned here, and indeed is given very cautiously by Mr. Cone, not as any brand for present sectarian differences, but as a true reflection of opinion at the time. The precise justice of that opinion is not discussed here.

Very soon after the trial Cone was told by General Lovejoy, at Oregon City, of the discovery of gold in California. "If I were you," said Lovejoy, "I would go as soon as possible." By this advice Cone and his brother were led to get together three wagons and join the overland company. This was a most eventful journey and illustrates the capacity of the trained Oregon men.

According to Mr. Cone's recollections there were forty one wagons; though Peter Burnett says, in "An Old Pioneer," that there were fifty and one hundred and fifty men. There was but one family in the train, the name of which Mr. Cone has forgotten. In this he coincides with Burnett. Cone also recalls Thomas McKay very distinctly as the guide and virtual leader; who said that he could take them through to the Sacramento River without trouble; "and there is only one place that I am afraid of; that is going down the mountain into the Sacramento Valley. You may have to let your wagons down with ropes there."

Burnett, in his vivid sketch of this journey, says that he went to Doctor McLoughlin for advice, and was directed by him to employ McKay, as this intrepid son of the unfortunate Alexander McKay was acquainted with every foot of the way and was especially efficient in dealing with the Indians. But Mr. Cone recollects nothing of Burnett.

As to Indian troubles, Cone says that there was only one Indian killed. This was in the Umpqua Valley, and the deed was without provocation, and by an irresponsible young man, of the kind that hung on to almost every party. McKay read the young man a severe lesson, and complained to the company, endeavoring to show how reckless such actions were. The young man made the saucy reply that he must be still, or else there would be another Indian killed—alluding to McKay's Indian blood. However, there were no other natives disturbed, and the way was through the country of the Klamaths, the Modocs, and the Pitt River Indians. Burnett mentions meeting a very few natives near the end of the journey, but says there was no trouble whatever.

In the Pitt River Valley the Oregon wagon train came upon the track of the California immigrants, whom Peter Lawsen—or Lassen, as Burnett spells the name—was guiding to his great ranch on the Upper Sacramento. When at last overtaken they were found to be in great destitution, and so exasperated at Lassen, who had lost the way, and was wandering in the Sierra Nevadas, trying to find a practicable way down their stupendous western declivities, that he seemed in danger of his life. A practicable descent was found at last, however, and then began the race to see who would be first into the valley. This was near Lassen's Peak, which is so high as to be spotted with old snow, even to late autumn.

Here Mr. Cone describes "the maddest man he ever saw." This was the pioneer, Job McNemee, of Portland. With an extra good team and high determination of his own he had declared that he would be first in the valley. He was well on the way to success, having got and held the lead; but halfway down the mountain side, in his wild career, he ran his wheel against a protruding bowlder, by which the heavy wagon was upset, and there it lay, while the other wagons, nine in number, of that particular section of the train, went bouncing by. But at last, in spite of all accidents, men and animals reached Lassen's ranch, and were there treated with royal hospitality. The vaqueros were directed to slaughter beef, and the Oregon men, as well as the California party, were invited to the barbecue. The Oregonians, however, were not likely to wait long. It was now late in November, and though some went first up to Redding's ranch, all soon struck out for Coloma. Although not an active participant in the Indian troubles there, these are recalled by Mr. Cone. He remembers the murder of the party of Oregon men, recalling the circumstance, however, that the number killed was five, and that one of the six escaped. The Indians, as he remembers, were tracked to their camp on the river, and attacked and punished.

His memory was more deeply impressed, however, with the enormous price of provisions; as, for instance, going down one day to Sacramento, and seeing some nice little hams, he had a mind to purchase one. On asking the price he was told four dollars a pound. He concluded he did not want any. That was late in the season of '48 or early '49. Vast quantities of stores were shipped in soon, and prices fell. Misfortunes robbed Mr. Cone of the results of his adventure. His brother was taken sick and died. He was himself attacked by scurvy, and finally being unable to work longer, sought passage home on a sailing vessel, which crossed the Columbia bar late in the fall of '49, a very smoky season, and of long drouth, the vessel being becalmed for days together.

Mr. Cone remembers many amusing incidents of the mining life; one of which was the shooting of Weimer's pig by his partner—the animal being a nuisance around camp, yet of great value. One morning the partner of Cone said: "Load the gun and I'll shoot the —— sow." To run the bluff, Cone did so, and not to be backed off, the partner shot and killed. Then to hide their trespass the carcass was hidden in the brush; but upon returning at evening from their rockers the young men found that the ravens had taken care of the pork.

In 1850 Mr. Cone, having recovered his health, located a claim on French Prairie. His father arrived in Oregon in 1851. His brothers, Oscar and G. A., Jr., came in 1847. Three other brothers also became Oregonians, Oliver, Francis Marian, and Philander Johnson. All found claims near each other on French Prairie, or just across the river. Anson and Oscar are the only ones now living.

Of the old father, G. A. Cone, there are eighteen grandchildren and thirty-seven great-grandchildren.

Anson Cone was married in 1866 to Sarah A., the widow of his brother Oliver, whose maiden name was Wade, and who is herself a pioneer of '53.

MRS. REBEKA HOPKINS.

Mrs. Hopkins, the daughter of Mr. Peter D. Hall, who perished near Fort Walla Walla—Wallula—after escaping from the Whitman massacre, is now living on the farm held by her first husband, Philander J. Cone. Although past the age of fifty she is in good health, of prepossessing appearance, and of very active habits. Her cosy farm home, which is on the prairie, but at the edge of the grove, and shaded by some oak trees in the dooryard, is ornamented also with choice varieties of flowers, especially of roses, of which she has many rare kinds.

She was but five years of age when the massacre occurred; and by the terror of that event all previous recollections seem to have been completely obliterated. She does not remember anything of her father; but of the massacre itself, so far as her own observation went, she still has a vivid picture in her mind. She recalls the upstairs room where the women and children were huddled together after Whitman was struck down, and where Mrs. Whitman came after she was shot in the breast. Mrs. Whitman, she says, was standing, when wounded, at a window, and was washing the blood from her hands, as she had been dressing the wounds of her husband. Mrs. Hall was with her. It could not have been apprehended that further murders would be committed, and Mrs. Whitman must have been the equal object of the Indians superstitious rage, as she was the only woman killed.

Mrs. Hopkins remembers the appearance of the upstairs room, and that the Indians were kept back from coming up for a time by an old gun, which was probably not loaded, but was laid so as to point across the stairway. The savages would come to the stairway until within sight of this gun barrel, and then afraid, or pretending to be afraid, of its fire, would scamper back. Mr. Rogers was with the women and children.

As to the death of her father, who escaped and sought safety at old Fort Walla Walla, on the bank of the Columbia River, but was refused admission, Mrs. Hopkins believes he was killed near the fort. By Mr. Osborne, who with his family, finally reached the fort, the clothes of Hall were seen and recognized. It was said to him, when he exclaimed, "those are Hall's clothes," that Hall had been drowned in attempting to cross the Columbia.

Mrs. Hopkins considers the account of the massacre as given in the June number of the Native Son [1899], which was furnished by Mrs. O. N. Denny, as the most accurate that she has seen. Mrs. Denny, Mrs. Hopkins' older sister, who was about twelve years old at the time of the tragedy, has a comprehensive recollection of the whole affair.

MRS. ANNA TREMEWAN.

Mrs. Tremewan, now residing at Champoeg, has many most interesting recollections of her early life. Although now past middle age she is of magnificent physique, being about five feet eight inches tall, straight as an arrow and well proportioned, but at the same time of that peculiarly supple mold and movement that so distinguishes the French creoles. Her hair is still jet black, and long and wavy and very thick; her eyebrows heavy and black, and her features, though strong and marked, refined and very intelligent.

Her speech is remarkably clear, every word being distinctly pronounced, with rather an English or Scotch accent, and in a full rich voice of rather low key. During conversation her features light up noticeably, and though she speaks deliberately she has no hesitation, never pausing to think of a word or construction. She complains of her poor memory for dates, but possesses a large fund of family information, both of her own people and the Hudson Bay Company.

Her mother was a daughter of Etienne Lucier, of French Prairie; her father was Donald Manson, a trusted captain of the Hudson Bay Company, and her first husband was Isaac Ogden, a son of Peter Skeen Ogden, governor during the latter years of the Hudson Bay Company's occupation of Fort Vancouver. She is living now at Champoeg, in the old house built by her father, though now owned by herself with her husband.

Her brothers are men of education and ability; Donald Manson, Jr., being a resident of Portland; James Manson, living at Victoria; and William Manson, who was educated in Scotland, being principal of a school at New Westminister, B. C. Another brother, Stephen, no longer living, who was named by his mother or his grandfather Lucier, is described by those who knew him as a man of remarkably handsome appearance, and bright intellect. He was, as a boy, attending the school at Waiilatpu at the time of the Whitman massacre, and although uninjured was so shocked by the bloody occurrence that long afterwards he would start from sleep crying out "The Indians, the Indians!" There were two daughters besides Anna (Mrs. Tremewan), Isabella and Lizzie.

The following are some of the recollections taken hurriedly at a morning call of Mrs. Tremewan. In reply to a question about her father she said: "My father was in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company—you may have heard of it. We lived until I was fifteen in British Columbia; no, not at Victoria, but on the head waters of Frazer River, at Stuart's Lake—you might call that a little ocean. That was a long way from Victoria, though that was our point of supplies, and my father made a trip from there every year to carry out the furs—for that was what he dealt in. He went a part way by river, and a part way by horses. At Fort Langley he met the steamer from Victoria, and from that point the goods were brought up the river to our place.

"Yes, he used to leave us all alone at Stuart's Lake every year while he made the trip, and that would be from April to September. On one time I remember perfectly well he came back on the seventh of September. What makes me remember this was because it was then my sister Lizzie was born, and my mother was still in bed, and when the cry was made that the boats were coming, we were all so eager to have papa see the baby.

"Indeed, Stuart Lake was a beautiful place, the loveliest I have ever seen. The mountains were blue across it, they are so far away. When the wind blew the waves rolled up like a sea. The water is perfectly clear. When we used to walk along the shore, or swim in the lake, we could see to the bottom. It was full of fishes of all kinds; salmon and sturgeon and trouts. I have often told my husband that I wished I could see Stuart Lake again.

"But I was born in Alaska,—in the land where the gold is now; at Fort Stikeen. The cabin was so near the water that the waves rolled up against it. I have have often heard my mother tell about it.

"Yes, I remember the trip out from Stuart Lake perfectly. Our first stop was at Fort Alexandria; then we came on by boat to a place called Kamloops, where we waited a month while the horses were got together and trained for the rest of the journey. We came on to Fort Hope, and then by boat to Fort Langley. There we took the steamer Otter. There were two steamers then, the Otter and the Beaver; we had the Otter.

"I did not know what a Yankee was. I remember that when I was on the steamer they used to say to me 'So you are going to be a Yankee!' I did not like it a bit. We had more the English way of talking, and did not say 'I guess.' It was a long time before we could talk like the Yankees.

"When my father first came to Oregon he was pretty wealthy and bought this place. But he lost so much in the flood of '61 that he was nearly broken up. He never fully got over this—together with sickness and other things.

"When the Hudson Bay Company was at Fort Vancouver, and during the Whitman massacre, Ogden was governor at the fort. Well, his son was my first husband—his name was Isaac. Peter Skeen Ogden was a wealthy old man; he was from Montreal. He left considerable money to his children. He had four; Isaac, who lived at Champoeg, where we were married; William, who lives in Portland; Emma, who died at the age of thirty; and Mrs. Sarah Draper, of McMinnville, who has six children.

"My mother was a daughter of Stephen Lewis—I think that would be the English of it; but the French called it Lucier, Etienne Lucier. What makes me think it was 'Stephen,'—I have heard mother say she named my brother Stephen for his grandfather. My grandfather was a Frenchman from Canada, and my mother was the daughter of his first wife; I think she came from east of the Rocky Mountains."

Mrs. Tremewan was well acquainted with Archibald McKinley, who settled just across the river from Champoeg; and the family of Mr. Pambrun, one of whose daughters was Mrs. Dr. Barclay, of Oregon City; Mrs. William Pratt, another; and Mrs. Harriet Harger, of Chehalem Valley, another. Mrs. Harger has a family of six daughters.

LOUIS LABONTE'S RECOLLECTIONS OF MEN.

See Reminiscences of Louis Labonte, Vol. 1, p. 169.

Doctor McLoughlin: Big man, hair white as snow, face ruddy; fine man, but like a grizzly if he was mad; carried a cane, stood straight as an arrow; treated him very kindly; got him to school at Vancouver, took him by the hand, told him he would provide him books and pens; he went to school to Mr. Ball.

Douglass: Slim, but even taller than McLoughlin; his hands reached below his knees.

Peter Skeen Ogden: A tall, big man—big as McLoughlin; an American by birth.

Donald Manson: A large man; face ruddy; white hair.

Jason Lee: Very tall, powerful; not straight.

Doctor Barclay: Medium height, heavy set.

Pambrun: Medium size; his wife from the Red River.

Archibald McKinley: Lived across the river from Champoeg; big man; red face.

George T. Allen: A small looking man; he was nicknamed Twahalasky, Indian name for coon; and a small-sized Cascade Indian bearing that name traded names with Allen.

James Birnie: A powerful, heavy man; very fine looking; exceedingly hospitable.

Alexander Latty: A fine man; captain of steamer Beaver two years; he was also mate of the schooner Cadboro, built in England.

Captain Scarborough: Medium size, good looking; father of Edward Scarborough, of Cathlamet; had a Chinook wife; made frequent trips to England in command of Hudson Bay vessels, and introduced pigs and Shanghai chickens from China; also took pains to bring ornamental shrubbery, perhaps introduced the "Mission Rose."

Captain Brotchie: Another sea captain on Hudson Bay vessels; introduced from England the "Brotchie" potato, an early kidney variety.

Robert Newell: A very fine man; Labonte's captain when in the Indian war of '56, stationed at Vancouver.

Calvin Tibbetts: Came with Wyeth.

Alexander Duncan: Captain of the Dryad; came in the river when Labonte lived at Scappoose; particular friend of Birnie's.

Thomas McKay: About six feet tall; walked with a limp; never was scared; very keen eyes; shot "War Eagle" in Cayuse war.

COMMUNICATIONS.

EARLY SCHOOLS IN LANE COUNTY.

Latham, Oregon, February 6, 1902.

Mr. Geo. H. Himes, Assistant Secretary Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon—

Dear Sir: Your letter of 3d received [asking for data on early schools in Lane County.] In response would say the first two schools I remember in our district were taught by Mr. James M. Parker and Mr. H. Clay Huston, in a log house on my claim in Lane County. The branches taught were A B C's, spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, geography. I do not recollect which of these two gentlemen taught first. I taught many terms of three months each in various districts. In early days most districts were weak financially, and but few could afford more than one term in a year. Public money from school funds would not be quite enough to pay the bill, and rate bill would be made for balance and collected from patrons. The method of making rate bills would be to average and find price per day per scholar, and number of days' attendance per rate would be each scholar's fee. Sometimes a subscription school would be gotten [up] at so much per scholar for the term, the teacher taking the subscribers for pay.

The houses were either log, frame, or box, principally log, but as fast as district became able improvements were made. Some had huge fireplaces where red hot coals assisted the teacher's switch to keep the outer boy and girl warm while he stored away his A B C's or fed his mind on ab, ib, ob. Some were heated by stoves. Some would have long, narrow windows, one on each side of the house, and under them long desks fastened to the walls to write on, and long benches for the writers to sit on; others would be constructed with plenty of windows and reasonably comfortable seats and desks.

The books principally used were Sanders' and Webster's elementary spelling books, Sanders' first, second, third, and fourth readers. I think Montieth's geographies, Thompson's arithmetics, Smith's and Clark's grammars. Teachers set most of copies for writers, but some copy plates were used. Classes would be formed as much as possible. A-B-C scholars would have to be heard singly, and those just commencing to spell. Those in arithmetic would have to be attended to singly except in general exercises on blackboard. Four lessons a day in A B C's, spelling, first, second, and third readers; two in the fourth reader, besides closing spelling classes at noon and night. Often these would consist of two classes, one class containing the smaller, the other the larger scholars. One geography, one grammar, one blackboard exercise for each class—about fifteen or twenty minutes, set apart especially in fore and afternoon for writers, so teachers could give them close attention. Commencing with the A B C's first, after calling school to order, then the spellers, next first, second, third, and fourth readers; mingled with this would be the necessary assistance to the arithmeticians, geographers, grammarians. Classes having recited, then write geography, grammar,—and blackboard exercise heard, usually in the afternoon. Quiet could be better kept by requiring the scholars to ask permission to speak when they wanted to whisper, to leave their seats when wanting something in another part of the room, or to go out when they wanted to leave the room. Compositions would be better written, speeches committed to memory, and read and delivered at stated times; spelling schools in winter at night, and sometimes examination or exhibition on last day. Christmas times were apt to be jolly times. The scholars made it a point to get to the schoolhouse before the teacher and either bar him out or catch him before he got in, carry him to a pond of water, and make him treat. Teachers would sometimes board around among the scholars and sometimes board at one place. The easiest, best way to control the school was to make no rules only as needed; when irregularity occurred, correct as required, with the understanding that no such would be allowed the second time.

Patrons of the school furnished fuel, usually hauling wood, wagon lengths, about ten or twelve feet long. Teacher and larger scholars would chop it up for fires. Teacher or large scholars did the sweeping.

Respectfully.
JOS. H. SHARP.

THE MONTURES ON FRENCH PRAIRIE.

In his history, H. S. Lyman speaks of "Montour, a character considered fabulous by Bancroft, but said to have made a settlement on French Prairie."

Referring to notes given me by Mr. L. H. Ponjade, one of the old residents on French Prairie, I found the following:

My father, the old French doctor, had studied at Montpelier, and after receiving his diploma as surgeon and physician, was immediately taken into the service of Napoleon, and served three years as surgeon on the army of France, mostly in Spain. He naturally did not wish to serve in the army again, so came to America, found his way to Oregon, and from force of associations, made his home on French Prairie.

Our first camp was at the ranch of old man Monture, that at that time looked like an old farm, as it was well improved. Peter Depot then owned the claim where Gervais is now situated, and I understood that he got it from Monture some time previous to that, but do not know the particulars.

Monture had two sons, named George and Robert. Whether they were both sons of the wife he then lived with I do not know, as morals were rather loose previous to arrival of the missionaries. There was a custom among ex-servants of the Hudson Bay Company to claim a wife wherever they might be among the Indians. After the arrival of Father Blanchet they were allowed to have but one wife.

I remember that George Monture was a very large man and very powerful; must have weighed 350 pounds. I have seen him lasso wild cattle and hold them to be branded without any cinch or other thing to hold the saddle on the horse. He did it by mere weight and bodily strength. He would do this for half a day together at a time.

Bob—as he was called—was not so large, but was stout and active. He was a fine shot with his rifle.

When I saw this mention of "Montour," I wrote to my old friend, L. H. Ponjade, to ask if his mention of Monture meant the same that Lyman thus referred to, and he confirms it as the same, and adds: "The old place where they lived was about one quarter of a mile west of Parkersville. Every man with any knowledge of old settlers knows of the Montures."

S. A. CLARKE.

DOCUMENTS.

Oregon Material Taken from a File of an Independence (Mo.) and Weston (Mo.) Paper for 1844 and 1845; Also Some Minor Extracts from Other Papers in That Vicinity.

During this time these towns were important outfitting points for Oregon pioneers. The Oregon fever was raging throughout the surrounding country, the frontier counties of Missouri. The newspapers, Democratic and Whig, in this vicinity appreciated the interest in the Oregon Country and in the movement of emigration thither. Their columns were open to reports of travelers returning from the Columbia. Letters sent back by pioneers in the Willamette Valley seemed to be in great demand. The documents printed below contain two noteworthy letters from persons who were in the great migration of 1843. Contemporary sources of the history of that epochal event are especially valuable.

[These extracts were made from the files of these papers in the possession of the Missouri Historical Society, Saint Louis, Mo.]

From the Independence Journal, September 12, 1844.
(Vol. I, No. 1, G. R. Gibson, editor.)

"Civis," in a communication, dwells upon the importance of the Independence trade in outfitting Santa Fé traders. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars are annually expended at Independence for this purpose. There are good reasons for believing that in a few years it will quadruple that amount. Concerning the outfitting of the Oregon pioneers, he says:

"The Oregon emigrants will, no doubt, continue to rendezvous near this place, and will number annually 1,500 persons, the outfit for which number will cost $50,000, and all of which our citizens may furnish."

Mountain trade, now of inconsiderable importance, will be worth $10,000 per annum. "Civis" is urging the establishment of a turnpike to the Missouri River.

From the Independence Journal, September 12, 1844.

OREGON TERRITORY.

Last Saturday's Expositor contains a long letter from Peter H. Burnett, dated Linnton, Oregon, July 25, 1844, which we shall publish in our next; not having received it in time for this week's paper.

From the Independence Journal, September 12, 1844.

OREGON EMIGRANTS.

We have news from the Oregon emigrants up to the 3d of August, at which time they left Fort Laramie. They expected to reach their destination about the beginning of October. They were deficient in breadstuffs and could not procure any at the fort without money. They expected to obtain a supply at Buffalo, five or six days' journey from the fort. Some fears were entertained that the Sioux Indians would steal their stock, and otherwise give them trouble. Altogether they appear to have got along very well, considering the unusual weather they experienced between this and the Big Platte.

The Independence Journal of September 19, 1844, gives Peter H. Burnett's letter, written from Linnton, Oregon, July 25, 1844. [This letter was printed in the June Quarterly, 1903, pages 181-184 of this volume. It was taken from the Ohio Statesman, which quoted it from the Washington Globe.]

In the Independence Journal, September 19, 1844, under the caption of "Independence: Its Trade and Prospects," the high state of prosperity of the town is spoken of. Wagon makers are employed to build seventy-five wagons for the Santa Fé traders by next spring, in place of only fifty made the present year. Santa Fé road within the State must be improved. United States Government should give it a port of entry, and the State legislature should locate a branch of State Bank there to accommodate Santa Fé traders and commerce of western part of State.

From the Independence Journal, October 24, 1844.

Mr. Gilpin, of this place, who went out to Oregon about eighteen months since, arrived on Tuesday last with several other persons. They left Bent's Fort on the 22d of September. All was quiet and well at the fort, but there was a difficulty between the Santa Féans and Eutaw Indians. The Spaniards had killed some Eutaws; and the head chief and five other principal chiefs went to Santa Fé to receive compensation. The Governor gave them what he could, or what he thought was enough, and, refusing to give more, the head chief, in a passion, pulled his beard, when he seized his sword and killed him and another, and the guards, being called, fell upon the other four and killed them. The Indians who accompanied them immediately left, and killed, on their retreat, several Spaniards who were going from Taos to Santa Fé. Altogether they had killed ten or twelve Spaniards. A war between the Indians and Santa Féans, of course, was expected. Some Spaniards, who were out on a buffalo hunt, met Colonel Owens' company at the Cimmaron, and dispatched immediately an express to Santa Fé. They made up a company at Santa Fé, on receipt of the intelligence, among whom were Messrs. Chavis, Armigo, and Percas, to escort him to Santa Fé; and brought out fresh mules, and everything they would probably need. Colonel Owens accompanied them to Santa Fé, where a ball was to be given him. They met Charles Bent, Mr. Alvarez (our consul at Santa Fé), and Mr. Ferguson, at Choteau's [Chouteau's] Island, about three days' travel this side of Bent's Fort. Mr. St. Vrais [Vrain?] was this side of Corn Creek with waggons, going on well. Doctor Connolly, with Lucas, was between Ash Creek and Pawnee Fork, twenty-five miles ahead of Mr. Speyers' company, which was near Walnut Creek. Mr. Speyers' mules were poor and much worn out; they had left several on the road, beside ten or fifteen lost shortly after they left Independence. All the teams of Messrs. Bent and Connolly were in good order, and they were getting along well.

We are indebted to a Spaniard, who accompanied Mr. Gilpin, for the foregoing. We have not heard anything of particular importance from Oregon. Mr. Gilpin brought a large number of letters, but we have not, as yet, been favored with the perusal of any. The emigrants, we understand, were generally getting along well.

The Independence Journal, October 31, 1844, under the heading "Oregon and Colonel Polk," gives an extract of a speech delivered by Colonel Polk in Congress on a bill for extending jurisdiction of the laws of the United States over all the people of Oregon Territory, and directing officers of the Government to take possession of the mouth of Columbia River, and establish a fort there. This, it says, will show whether he (Polk) is for immediate occupation of it or not; and that his opinions coincide with Mr. Clay's upon this subject. Gives an extract of Polk's speech to substantiate its claim that Polk was no more radical than Clay on this Oregon question. (Independence Journal was supporting candidacy of Clay.)

Weston Journal, January 4, 1845 (Vol. 1, No. 1), Geo. R. Gibson, editor (the same who edited Independence Journal in 1844), in leader: "To the Patrons of the Journal," he refers to recent political campaign, and says, among other things:

We shall advocate the annexation of Texas, but we wish to do it without dishonor and by common consent. We shall advocate the occupation of the Oregon Territory, and the erection of a chain of posts from Missouri to the mountains; to protect and extend facilities to companies, etc. Proposes to open correspondence as soon as possible with mountain traders and the settlers in Oregon.

The Weston Journal prospectus contained regularly this paragraph:

From the great intercourse between this place and the mountains, the editor will pay special attention to the news from that quarter, the Oregon Territory, and the whole Indian country. The Oregon Territory, attracting at the present time the public attention, the patrons of the Journal may expect to find in its columns everything of interest which may be gathered either from public or private resources, relative to a country of such vast extent, varied scenery, and diversified soil and climate.

From the Weston Journal, January 4, 1845.

LETTER FROM THE SANDWICH ISLANDS, OREGON, CALIFORNIA, EMIGRATION, ETC.

We publish the subjoined letter, received by one of our citizens a few days since, from a gentleman who accompanied the Oregon emigration last year [1843]. We give it entire, that our readers may have all the information that can be gathered from this section of the country. It is not so favorable, in some respects, of the Oregon Territory, as the accounts of others, but it is by no means disparaging. Mr. Gilpin thinks that corn can be raised to advantage, and says that the reason why they have none, is—because they plant none. It is undoubtedly a fine country for all the small grains and is unsurpassed as a grazing country. The emigrants who went out the past season have made a great change in business, and money now circulates on the Columbia as well on this side of the mountains, and everything begins to assume the appearance of civilization, business, trade, and the refinements this side the mountains. We see that Mr. Cushing, our minister to China, has returned by way of the city of Mexico; and here we have a letter from one of our enterprising citizens from the halfway house—the Sandwich Islands.

We have been in the habit of looking to Europe for Asiatic news; let our government establish a chain of posts from this to Oregon, an overland mail will speedily follow, and the China and East India trade will pour into our channels of commerce from the gorges of the Rocky Mountains: and a journey from New York to China, by way of Oregon, will be less thought of than it formerly was to Saint Louis. The Government should consider that a little enterprise will place the East India trade at our door; and the sooner the better. We hope Congress, this winter, will take active measures to bring about such a state of things. What is a few thousand dollars compared with the object to be acquired?

Lahiana, Maui, Sandwich Islands, July 17, 1844.

J. Wells, Esq.—

Dear Sir: In a few days the first ship that has left this place for the States, since my arrival here, will sail, and I take this opportunity to tell you something of my journey and Oregon, etc., though probably you have heard all the news long before you get this. I should have written you ere this, had an opportunity offered. But to tell you of the trip: I left the Shawnee mission on the 29th of May; our route was through the Caw Indian country, which is good, has considerable timber, and is well watered. It is a bad country for wagons to travel through, having so many sloughs and bad creeks; the teams were often stalled, and made very slow progress. We had three rivers and creeks to cross before we reached the Platte River. The Platte River has good grass—plenty of it—but is destitute of timber; here we saw the first buffalo—they were poor and tough. We saw a few of the Pawnee Indians. They are fine looking fellows, and no doubt, live well on buffalo meat; they are quite treacherous. We reached the crossing of Platte on the twenty-sixth day of July, a little more than one month out. The traveling up the Platte is very good, level, and hard. We struck from this to the north fork of the Platte, one day's travel. On the 13th of July we arrived at the crossing of Laramie's Fork, at the fort of the American Fur Company; before arriving here we saw many splendid sights; also many of the dog towns that you have heard of. I saw quantities of the dogs; they are small, round animals, the size of a cat. Certain it is that there are owls that visit them, also rattlesnakes, but for what reason is a matter of dispute. After we left Laramie we came to the Black Hills, the worst of all traveling,—hilly, sandy, and full of wild sage—'tis death on a wagon. The country is all of this barren, sandy kind, until we reach Fort Hall and destitute of timber. Arrived at Fort Hall the 13th of September, after experiencing some cold rains, snow, hail, etc. At Fort Hall we could get no provisions, and were obliged to go down the river (Snake), and depend on getting fish to subsist on; this was the reason of my going to Oregon instead of California. The country down Snake River is hilly, rocky, sandy, no timber, but an abundance of sage, until we get to the Blue Mountains; here is plenty of pine, the country very broken, and bad traveling, though the wagons went through. After getting through the Blue Mountains we came to a splendid country of grass, where there were thousands of Indian horses grazing. About twenty miles from this, we come to the Walla Walla Valley. There is a missionary establishment here. They raise grain and vegetables, but no timber, except for firewood. About twenty miles from this we came to the Columbia River. Many of the emigrants sold their cattle here, and went down the river by water, as they could not cross the Cascade mountains with their wagons, though they could go down one hundred miles farther and then take water, as many did. The country on the Columbia is only fit for grazing, being good grass, but sandy soil. On the 3d of November arrived at Fort Vancouver, just as the rainy season had commenced; and it was very disagreeable and rained most of the time I was there. I then went to the Willamette Falls; quite a town here—forty houses, four stores, two sawmills, one flour mill, and another to be erected soon. This country is not capable of half as large a settlement as people represent; there is much timber, and it can not be cleared in many years, so as to be capable of great production; and what prairie there is will not produce as much as your land; but the wheat is better. Neither do many think the soil will last long, but that it is rather shallow; and there is much fever and ague. Besides, the winters are so wet 'tis impossible to do much out of doors. It has the advantage that grain (wheat) is worth eighty cents per bushel, and cattle will winter themselves. Take it all in all, 'tis nothing like your country.

After my arrival there, finding that I could not get to California until spring, I concluded to take a vessel for the Sandwich Islands, and then go from here to California, so I concluded to stay. It [this] is a fine climate—a perpetual summer, and little rain. The natives require but little clothing, and, in fact, some of them do not wear any.

I hardly know what to write about Oregon, or what you would like to know; though if I was where you are, and should see some one from Oregon, I could ask him a hundred questions, as you could me. The report of Wilkes that you had is very correct. There are thousands of salmon here [Oregon]—some wild game, plenty of ducks, geese, and swans, and some good wet places to raise more of them—as there must be some wet places, being so much rain in the winter, and no snow.

There is scarcely any corn raised—it will not do well. I saw a little, but it was poor. Most other kinds of grains do well. There is no money in Oregon; although most of those who have been farming a few years have made property, as grain is high and cattle take care of themselves, and sell high. Oxen are worth $75 to $125 per yoke; beef, six cents per pound. Many of the people who went to California have left it and gone to Oregon. I saw many of them while there, and they gave as one of the reasons of leaving—trouble with the Spaniards.

Truly yours,
JOHN BOARDMAN.

From the Weston Journal, January 11, 1845.

THE OREGON.

The editor of the New York Commercial has read letters from the Oregon Territory, brought overland and mailed at the extreme western frontier of the United States. They are as late as June 17th, from the Methodist missionary station at Willamette. The Rev. Mr. Gary, who was sent out by that missionary society, had arrived at Willamette via the Sandwich Islands, himself and wife in good health. Mr. Gary had been but a short time in Oregon when an opportunity offered of sending a communication to the Board of Missions by a small party who were about to return to the United States. He had, however, seen all the mission family, except Rev. Mr. Perkins, who was at a distant post. The missionaries and their families were in good health at the date above mentioned. No event of special interest regarding the mission had taken place since last previous advices. Mr. Gary concurs, with several missionaries who have returned from that far country, in the opinion that the natives are a degraded race of beings, and that there is little prospect of doing them permanent good by any ministerial labor which may be expended among them.

From the Weston Journal, January 18, 1845.

OREGON AND CALIFORNIA.

A gentleman well qualified for the task has prepared a pamphlet, called a guide to Oregon and California, which will probably be published during the present winter. The readers of the New Era will recollect several well written communications on that subject published during the past year, which emanated from the same pen. The writer has lived in Oregon and California, has traveled different routes to and from those regions, and is well qualified to give full and satisfactory information to emigrants and other persons. Success to his efforts.—New Era.

From the Weston Journal, January 25, 1845.

OREGON.

(Editorial.)

Congress may provide for the occupation of it—for the formation of a territorial government—they may establish posts and a military road across the mountains, and encourage emigration in every possible manner, and the whole will not contribute so much towards its settlement as the negotiations of a treaty with China, opening to us a market for our products in that country. If the one now before Congress has done so, Great Britain may set her claim to the Columbia—it will be a claim for but a short time. Our shipping, farmers, merchants, and tradesmen will soon find a road to a country possessing the advantages the west side of the American continent would possess, in that event, and but a short time would elapse before China would be supplied by American skill and industry, from the mouth of the Columbia, with all she would admit.

The Weston Journal, March 1, 1845, under heading, "Oregon Territory," speaks of a bill introduced into the Senate proposing that Oregon include: All the territory lying west of the Missouri River south of the forty-ninth degree of north latitude and east of the Rocky Mountains, and north of the boundary line between the United States and Texas, not included within the limits of any State, and also over the territory comprising the Rocky Mountains, and country between them and the Pacific Ocean south of fifty-fourth degree and forty-nine minutes of north latitude, and north of the forty-second degree of north latitude, etc. [!!!]

From the Weston Journal, March 1, 1845.

RAILROAD TO OREGON.

The Philadelphia Ledger's Washington correspondent says that Mr. Whitney, of New York, contemplates the construction of a railroad from the western shore of Lake Michigan, in a direct line through to the Columbia River, covering the distance of some 2,100 miles, which shall be the point of debarkation to China.

The cost of the road, when completed, is estimated at fifty millions of dollars, and twenty-five years would be required to perfect the scheme. Eight days would be about the traveling time from New York City to the terminus of the road, and if [steamship?] facilities were employed, some twenty-five more would convey one to Amoy, in China, so that by this short cut, a journey across the globe might be accomplished within the narrow limit of a single month.

By the establishment of this means of communication, we should be enabled to command the Chinese market, and to extend our commerce with South America, Mexico, India, and other parts.

And, in addition to the vast results that would necessarily ensue from this work by the force of circumstances, we should secure the transportation of the English trade on account of the great shortening of time.

All the coöperation and assistance that Mr. Whitney asks the government is a grant of sixty miles wide of the public land, from one terminus of the contemplated road to the other, for which a full consideration would be given in carrying the mails, and transporting ammunition stores, soldiers, and all public matters free of cost.

From the Weston Journal, March 15, 1845.

OREGON EMIGRANTS.

Preparations are making on the whole frontier, by the Oregon emigrants, to leave at an early day. One company goes from Savannah, another from some point between that and this, and the company from this county, we understand, will leave at Fort Leavenworth, or its neighborhood. One of the emigrants who goes with the Savannah company informs us that not less than one hundred families will leave at Elizabethtown, and thirty families from the other points. The number from this county we do not know. * * * A committee has submitted some rules and regulations for the intending emigrants. They have not yet had a meeting to adopt them, but they no doubt will do so. They go about it in the right way, and the rules and regulations are such as to secure order and method. They expect to leave about the first of April, if the grass is sufficient, or as soon thereafter as it is.

REPORT
Of the committee appointed to draft a constitution for "Savannah Oregon Emigrating Company."

Whereas, in order the better to prepare the way for and to accomplish our journey to Oregon with greater harmony, it was deemed advisable to adopt certain rules and regulations; and whereas the undersigned, having been appointed a committee to draft and prepare said rules and regulations, and having given the subject that attention which its importance demands, beg leave respectfully to report the following as the result of their deliberations, viz:

§ 1. This association shall be known by the style and name of the "Savannah Oregon Emigrating Company."

§ 2. Any person over the age of sixteen may become a member of this company by subscribing to this constitution and paying into the treasury the initiation fee of one dollar.

§ 3. No person under the age of twenty-one years can become a member without the consent of their legal guardian.

§ 4. No person shall be admitted whose intention is obviously apparent to avoid payment of his debts.

§ 5. A majority of the members shall have power to expel any member for good cause.

§ 6. The officers of this company shall consist of a president, commandant captain, lieutenant, secretary, treasurer, and executive council of thirteen, the commandant being one thereof, and such other inferior military officers as the executive council shall determine.

§ 7. The president shall be elected on the adoption of this constitution, and shall continue in office until the commandant captain shall be elected, when his functions as presiding officer shall cease.

§ 8. The secretary shall be elected on the adoption of this constitution, and shall continue in office until the completion of the objects of this company; and he shall keep a record of the transactions of the company, and perform such other duties as usually pertain to his office.

§ 9. The treasurer (ditto as to election) shall collect and safely keep, and at the direction of the commandant shall disburse all moneys belonging to the company.

§ 10. The commandant captain, lieutenant, and such other military officers as the council shall determine, shall be elected when the company shall assemble at rendezvous preparatory to a final start; and they shall hold office until the completion of their journey, and shall perform such duties as usually appertain to military officers of their respective grades.

§ 11. The executive council, to consist of twelve men, beside the commandant, shall be elected when assembled at the rendezvous, and shall have general superintendence of the affairs of the company, and perform such other duties as may be assigned to them.

§ 12. The company shall elect, at least one month before the rendezvous, three inspectors (not members of the company), whose duty it shall be, after taking oath, to perform all duty faithfully, to inspect the wagons, teams, cattle, and provisions, and report to the executive council, who shall determine upon their report as regards the outfit of all members of the company; said inspectors to be paid a sum not exceeding one dollar for every day actually engaged in such services.

§ 13. The funds of the company shall be faithfully applied for contingent expenses in furthering the objects of the association.

§ 14. The necessary outfit shall consist of 150 pounds of flour, or 200 pounds of meal, and 60 pounds of bacon for every person (excepting infants) in the company.

§ 15. The wagons shall be expected to be able to carry double the amount of their loads, and the teams to be able to draw double the amount the wagons are capable of bearing.

§ 16. All cattle, excepting teams in use, shall be considered as common stock; an inventory of age, brand, kind, and number, shall be handed in by the contributor to the secretary, and at the termination of the journey the company shall account to each contributor for the amount inventoried.

§ 17. The number of cattle thus inventoried and put in shall never exceed fifty to one driver.

§ 18. No ardent spirits to be taken or drank on the route, except for medicinal purposes, and if smuggled in shall, when discovered, be destroyed under the control of the commandant.

§ 19. Every person over the age of sixteen shall furnish himself with a good and sufficient rifle, —— pounds of powder, and —— pounds of lead, to be inspected by the inspector, and reported on as in other cases.

§ 20. All members of this association shall assemble at ——, and on the —— day of ——, 1845, and organize for the final trip.

§ 21. * * * This constitution may be altered or amended at any time by a vote of two thirds of the members present at any regular meeting of the company, or at any special meeting called by the commandant.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

James Officer,
Wm. Deakins,
B. M. Atherton,
C. F. Hally,
Committee.

January 4, 1845.

From Western Journal, March 15, 1845.

LETTER FROM OREGON.

The following extracts from a letter written by one of the emigrants of 1843, will be particularly interesting at this time, and should be carefully read by those going out this spring. It will be particularly useful to emigrants who leave from this part of the country:

Fort Vancouver, November 11, 1843.

Dear Sir: We were six months to-day, from the time we left home, in getting to this place, though we might have arrived one month sooner had we not unnecessarily wasted time on the way. To give you a full description of our travels would occupy more time than I have to spare. I will, however, give you and my friends a short sketch. We left Westport on the 27th of May, and crossed the Kansas River near the old village: thence up the north side of the Kansas, where we had a great deal of rain and stormy weather to encounter which made it very disagreeable traveling. We then crossed over [to] the Platte, about eighty miles above the Pawnee village; thence up the Platte about fifty miles above the forks, where we crossed the South Fork. We then struck over on to the North Fork and traveled up it until we came to Fort Laramie. We then crossed Laramie's Fork of Platte, which we found very difficult to pass. We still kept up the North Fork to within forty miles of the Rocky Mountains, where we crossed it. We came to a small stream, called Sweetwater, one of the streams of the northern branch of Platte; we traveled up this until we passed through the Rocky Mountains, which we found to be as good as any part of our road. We then came to the waters of Green River, which is one of the branches of the Colorado—then to Fort Bridges [Bridger], which is on the waters of Green River; from there we next struck Bear River, which empties into the Great Salt Lake. We traveled several days down this river, then crossed over on to the Snake River, and arrived at Fort Hall on the 25th day of August. Here I found some of the best beef I ever saw. From here we traveled down Snake or Lewis River, crossing and recrossing the same to Fort Bosie [Boisé]; thence to Fort Walla Walla, crossing the Blue Mountains in our route. We passed them much easier than I expected.

At Walla Walla myself and Reeves, and many others of the emigrants, exchanged cattle [for cattle] at Vancouver. We got age for age and sex for sex. Here we found it advisable to take [to the] water and travel down the great Columbia, which we did with some difficulty. Those who did not exchange their stock went to the Methodist mission at the foot of the Cascade Mountains. Here they carried their wagons by water and drove their stock through by land. A large portion of the emigrants have arrived, and the remainder will be here in a few days. Those who have been to the Willamette Valley say it is a rich and beautiful country, but to what extent they know not, as they have not had sufficient time to examine it. I find any quantity of provisions can be had here. Doctor McLoughlin, of Vancouver, has rendered great assistance to the emigrants in loaning them his boats and furnishing them with provisions to take back to the companies that are yet behind—at the same time refusing any compensation for either. We have found the Hudson Bay Company at all the forts very accommodating. The road from Independence to Fort Hall is as good a road as I would wish to travel,—from Fort Hall there is some bad road and some good. The reason why we did not try to take our wagons across the Cascade Mountains was that the season had so far advanced it was thought to be a dangerous undertaking through so much snow and cold weather. We will prepare a road across these mountains next summer, so that the next emigration can bring their wagons through without any difficulty. Some of us will meet the next emigration at Fort Hall.

I will now give you a description of the necessary outfit each person should have to come to this terrestrial paradise. Your wagons should be light, yet substantial and strong, and a plenty of good oxen. Though I wrote while on the Sweetwater that mule teams were preferable, but after seeing them thoroughly tried I have become convinced that oxen are more preferable—they are the least trouble and stand traveling much the best—are worth a great deal more when here. Load your wagons light and put one third more team to them than is necessary to pull the load. Bring nothing with you except provisions and a plenty of clothes to do you one year from the time you leave. They can all be had on as good terms here as in Missouri, and even better; bring but few bedclothes, for they will be worn out when they arrive here—they can be had here on good terms. Your oxen will not require shoeing. Bring a plenty of loose cattle, cows and heifers particularly, as they are but little trouble and are worth a great deal. Bring mules to drive your loose stock. Bring a few good American mares, but use them very tenderly or you will not get them here. American horses are worth considerable in this country. Horses can not get here except they are well used, and you should have two or three pairs of shoes and nails for them and your mules. You should bring 200 pounds of flour, 100 pounds of bacon, for every member of the family that can eat, besides other provisions. Make no calculation on getting buffalo or other wild meat, for you are only wasting time and killing horses and mules to get it. Have your wagon beds made in such a manner that they can be used for boats; you will find them of great service in crossing streams—have your wagons well covered, so that they will not leak, or your provisions and clothes will spoil. Have your tents made water tight; start as early as possible; let your teams and stock all be in good order. Start as soon as your stock can get grass enough to travel on, for the grass will be getting better every day until you arrive at Fort Hall; after that you will find the grass bad in places until you get to the Blue Mountains. You will find plenty of grass from there to the Willamette Valley. Our cattle are in better order than they were one month ago. Large flintlock guns are good to traffic with the Snake Indians. Bring a plenty of cheap cotton shirts to trade to the Indians on this side of the mountains. You might start with calves and kill them on the way, before they get poor, for fresh eating. You will find some beans, rice, and dried fruit of great use on the road. You should travel in companies of forty wagons, and continue together the whole route. You will find some ship biscuit to be of great use at times when you can not find fuel sufficient to cook with.

Be sure and bring nothing except what will be of material use to you on your journey, for, depend upon it, if you overload you will lose your team, wagon, and goods. You will find good stout young cows to answer in place of oxen, in case you should not have sufficient; let them be about middle size; let them be good, sound oxen, that have never been injured. I am satisfied from the products of the country that a man can live easier here than he can in any part of the United States. If he raises any produce he is sure of getting a good price for it in anything he may call for, money excepted. There is very little money in this country, though it is very little use when a man can get anything he wants without it. The merchants here will sell their goods cheaper for produce or labor than they will for cash, because they make a profit on the commodities they purchase, while there is no profit on cash. In fact, business is done here altogether by exchanging commodities. We can purchase anything of the Hudson Bay Company cheaper by promising wheat next year than we can for cash in hand. Cows are worth (that is, American,) from $30 to $50; American horses from $60 to $100; oxen $60 to $80; wheat $1 per bushel; oats, 40 cents; potatoes, 40 cents; peas the same; beef, 6 cents; pork, 10 cents; butter, 20 cents; common labor, $1.50; mechanics, $2 to $3.

The next emigration will get their cattle and wagons through quite easy, if they will start early and travel constantly though slow; they must not push.

Persons on the north side of the Missouri should rendezvous on the south side of the river, opposite the Blacksnake Hills, and go up the Nemaha and strike the Platte near the Pawnee village; by so doing they will avoid crossing the Kansas, and avoid some bad roads, and go 100 miles nearer.

We were not troubled with the Indians in the dangerous part of the country, for this reason, I have no doubt,—we kept a strong guard in nighttime and a sharp lookout in daytime. After we passed Green River we abandoned guarding and broke up into small companies, though advised to the contrary, and in passing from the Blue Mountains to the valley some of the emigrants were imposed on, in fact, some of them were robbed, though it was their own fault for not sticking together. You should start with some medicine, for you will have more or less sickness until you get to Fort Hall. Be sure and take good care not to expose yourself unnecessarily, for people have to go through a seasoning on the road, which makes the most of them sick. We are now eating apples which grew at Vancouver. They are now gathering their apples, peaches, and grapes, etc.; these are the only fruits tried as yet; they are fine.

The missionaries here have done more toward Christianizing the Indians in five years than has been done in the States in twenty years. Numbers of them who can not speak one word of English hold regular family worship. They are members of the Methodist Episcopal church. I am convinced it is in consequence of not being able to get liquor. The Hudson Bay Company and missionaries and settlers have taken a bold stand against the introduction of ardent spirits into this country, and I am convinced while they continue this praiseworthy course we all will see more satisfaction and pleasure, and our little colony will profit thereby.

S. M. GILMORE.

From Weston Journal, April 5, 1845.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Mr. Editor: I desire to recommend, through your paper, to all emigrants to Oregon, to pass by the Council Bluffs. The road from Weston to the Bluffs is now in fine order. All the streams are bridged or have ferries, so that there is no obstacle to cause an hour's detention until the company shall reach the Bluffs. The best route is that crossing the Nishnebatona at Huntseeker's Ferry; thence by the residence of Major Stephen Cooper to Port au Poule, where a good ferry-boat is now in preparation to cross the Missouri. From the Missouri, at that point, to the Pawnee villages, the road is much better than on the lower route, and the distance is about the same.

ONE WHO KNOWS.

Weston, April 2, 1845.

From Weston Journal, March 15, 1845.

OREGON! OREGON!! OREGON!!!

Mr. Editor: I wish to give notice, through your paper, to all those parties who intend to emigrate to Oregon, that arrangements have been made to cross the Missouri River at two different points, the one in Andrew, the other in Buchanan County. Some of the citizens of Andrew have made an arrangement with the Sacs Indians for the privilege of range, wood, and water, opposite Elizabethtown.

They have promised the Indians six two-year-old beeves, to be paid by that portion of the Oregon company which may cross at Elizabethtown. This point is very suitable for crossing the Missouri River. The rates of only about half what is usual at the common ferries on the Missouri.

The company expect to rendezvous in the Indian country, opposite Elizabethtown, between the first and tenth of April. A number of excellent citizens expect to cross at this place. This is the point from which a portion of the Oregon company started last spring. Taking all things into consideration, this is probably the best route to cross the Missouri at Elizabethtown (where there is an excellent large, new ferry-boat), and fall over on the Platte, opposite the Pawnee village, and thence pass along up the south side of the Platte River.

A MEMBER OF THE OREGON COMPANY.

March 8, 1845.

From Cherokee Advocate, Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, February 27, 1845.

LATER FROM THE SANDWICH ISLANDS AND OREGON.

Advices are to September 4th. The United States ship Warren, Hull, sailed on the 8th of August from Honolulu for Mazatlan, by way of California. The Delaware, Carter, which arrived at Honolulu with naval stores from Valparaiso, September 1st, reports having seen a large vessel, probably the United States ship Savannah, entering Honolulu Bay. The Polynesian contains intelligence from Oregon to August 2d.

The legislature of Oregon adjourned a few days before the 3d of July, having passed some important laws. One of its acts is: "Any person who shall make, sell, or give away ardent spirits in Oregon, south of Columbia River, shall forfeit and pay $100 for each and every such offense." The legislature is called the "Legislative Committee," and consists of nine persons elected by the people. The officers of the Oregon Territory consist of three governors, called the Executive Committee, a Supreme Judge, and a Legislative Council. The laws are the same as those governing the Territory of Iowa. The government is purely democratic republican. Doctor Babcock is the supreme judge. The name of only one of the governors, Doctor Bailey, is mentioned. On the 1st of August a Belgian brig arrived at the Oregon city, having on board a number of nuns and several Catholic priests from Antwerp, sent out to Oregon by the church of Rome.

The colony is in a most encouraging condition. The crops were giving promise of an abundant harvest.

People were coming into the territory in large numbers, and the country is filling up with thriving and energetic colonists. Doctor Babcock, "the supreme judge," went to Oregon as physician to the Methodist mission family. Doctor Bailey was from this city, where his family now resides.—New York Evening Post.

From Cherokee Advocate, February 27, 1845.

A large company of emigrants are expected to leave Independence, Missouri, about the first of May for Oregon.

From Cherokee Advocate, Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, February 27, 1845.

PRINTING PRESS FOR OREGON.

We see by the Commercial that the proprietors of that paper forwarded one of Hoe's best printing presses to Oregon last week, with type, printing ink, paper, etc., for the newspaper about to be established in Oregon. The paper is to be connected with the missionary station there.—New York Sun, 27th ultimo.

Missouri Statesman, September 1, 1843.

The Western Expositor is the name of a new Democratic paper published in Independence. Editor, Robert G. Smart, Esq. It takes the place of the Western Missourian.

CORRECTION.

Note.—"William Marshal," on page 11 of the March Quarterly, should read "James Wilson Marshall."

THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
Oregon Historical Society.

Volume IV.]                      DECEMBER, 1903                      [Number 4

THE ORIGIN AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE BANCROFT PACIFIC STATES PUBLICATIONS: A HISTORY OF A HISTORY.—I.

By William Alfred Morris.

The true student of history, when confronted for the first time with a statement of what purports to be an historical fact, weighs at the outset, as all-important, the evidence of its accuracy. If there be at hand no means of verifying the statement, the only ground of assurance is a knowledge of who is speaking, how likely he is to know the truth, and how well fitted he is to tell it; for to be a writer of accurate history one must not only know facts, but must also be truthful, and so far above bias upon his subject as to be able to treat it fairly, openly, and without false coloring of any part. It is therefore the first canon of historical criticism to accept as authority no statement unless it be known who is making that statement.

The greater our interest in a given subject, the more important to us becomes the question of the authority for all statements concerning that subject. As the field of history is narrowed down to a single state or to a single locality, where every man may to a certain extent be an historian, an anonymous written account, though excellent in itself, will still be viewed with suspicion. The fact that there is a good local knowledge of the subject by no means removes the necessity of determining authorship.

Fortunate it is for the Pacific States and Territories of the United States that data concerning their history from its beginning were collected during the lifetime of men who laid the foundations of these commonwealths. It is then a matter of the highest importance to the people of this vast empire to know who wove this material together, and wrote the only attempt at a full and connected history of the Pacific Coast which has ever been published.

The completion of the Bancroft series of Pacific Slope histories, to which reference is here made, marks an event unique in the annals of history writing. At no other time and in no other land has there been carried to completion a work of like character and magnitude. There had previously been written a few histories of Oregon and California covering a certain period, and designed chiefly to give a treatment of a certain institution or political subject, but so far as the thorough working up of the whole ground was concerned, a virgin field presented itself.

Moreover, the undertaking was an unusually inspiring one. It was none other than that of tracing from the days when Europeans first trod the Pacific shores of America the sequence of events by which these lands were acquired and occupied by their present holders, political governments organized, and the development of resources entered upon; in short, it was the following up of the successive steps by which the institutions and industries of a nineteenth century civilization were established in a western wilderness. When we remember that the greater part of this record could at the time of writing be made from information furnished directly by the men who made this history, and that the lack of material which so often embarrasses the writer could not here be a cause of complaint, we may well conclude that such an opportunity had never before fallen to the lot of the historian.

Again, in the vast collection of historical sources into one place, as well as in the newness of the field and inspiring nature of the work, the undertaking presents a most remarkable feature. The projector of this enterprise was the first on the coast to undertake such a collection on a large scale. This fact, together with the recency of many of the events, which both rendered an unending number of eye-witnesses easily accessible for procuring personal narratives, and likewise caused those who possessed papers and books throwing light upon history, to set slight value upon them, enabled Mr. Bancroft to collect a library of material such as on the beginning and early chapters of Pacific Coast history in all probability can never again be equalled.

Finally, in the amount of material which it presents, and in the extent of ground which it covers, the Bancroft series has attained epoch-making proportions. So closely related is the history of the Pacific states and territories of the United States to that of the regions north and south, that to insure a complete understanding of it required the writing also of the History of Mexico, Texas, and Central America, as well as that of British Columbia and Alaska. When we learn that two thousand different authorities were consulted in writing the History of Central America, and ten thousand in arranging the material for the History of Mexico; that in taking out material for the History of California eight men were employed for six years; and that in merely indexing the material for the History of Mexico five men worked ten years, we are inclined to quote approvingly these words of Mr. Bancroft:

"I say, then, without unpardonable boasting, that in my opinion there never in the history of literature was performed so consummate a feat as the gathering, abstracting, and arranging of the material for this History of the Pacific States": (Bancroft's Literary Industries, 581).

The history of no American locality would be considered without some account of its aborigines. The result, then, of this Bancroft plan has been the writing of the History of the Pacific slope of the continent from Bering Sea to Darien, with a History of the Native Races in five volumes as an introduction, and a half dozen volumes of sketches and essays by way of conclusion, in all thirty-nine octavo volumes.

But this work, the greatest of the kind, few if any of whose separate divisions have been superseded by later works has suffered greatly in the estimation of historians because they do not know who is authority for the statements contained in them. Justice to the people of any state or territory whose history appears in this series demands that they should know in whose words it is related. A compliance with the reasonable expectations of the pioneers who contributed books, narrations, and documents to aid in the preparation of a standard history of their respective states calls for a public knowledge of the identity of the writer to the end that the volume in which their chief interest centers be not stigmatized as anonymous. And above all, a conformity with usage, not to mention an observance of the principles of right, requires that the author of finished work published in this series, or any other, should receive public acknowledgment of his labors and whatever of praise or blame is his due.

Ten years ago it was shown in the California press that the Bancroft histories are not the works of the man who claims to be their author. But to say that "The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft" were written by any person other than Hubert Howe Bancroft is such a contradiction as to startle today the great majority both East and West whose attention have never been directed to the question. To determine the authorship of a work we are wont to consult its title page, and the title pages of these volumes all declare that they are "By Hubert Howe Bancroft." The advertising matter sent out by the Bancroft publishing establishment refers to them as "the writings of Mr. Bancroft," with never a suggestion that any other person wrote a line. The same course was followed in the reviews of these volumes, which at the time of their publication were scattered by the press throughout the length and breadth of the leading countries of Europe, as well as in our land, although here we must remember that book reviews may be but another name for advertising matter prepared by the publisher and inserted at advertising rates. In his Literary Industries, the volume giving an account of his literary activities, Mr. Bancroft refers to himself as the author (Lit. Ind., 361, 661), and speaks of his own writing without a clear reference to that of others (Lit. Ind., 288, 568, 571, 653) in such terms as to give the impression that he was the only writer who prepared the manuscript as it went to the printer. True, he mentions assistants, and we can easily see, as he tells us, that he must have had fifteen or twenty note takers, cataloguers, and other library aids (Lit. Ind., 582) in order to arrange so vast an amount of material. When assistants are mentioned it is usually in words which justify the reader in the inference that these aids are meant (see Central America I, preface, viii; Literary Industries, 584), and that, therefore, the assistants are in no sense authors.

By a careful reading of the Literary Industries, however, we find that there was a class of assistants who are differentiated from ordinary library aids, by the statement that they were "more experienced and able," and whose work Mr. Bancroft describes as "the study and reduction of certain minor sections of the history which I employed in my writing after more or less condensation and change": (Lit. Ind., 568). But even this passage seems to indicate that the material prepared by these writers was rewritten by Mr. Bancroft.

As a result, therefore, of the indication of the title page of these works, of the recognition of the public press, of the statements of the Literary Industries, and of Mr. Bancroft's connection with the work widely known through personal means, it happens that today he is called the "Historian of the Pacific Coast." Furthermore, he is the only person to whom such a title is given, being so recognized by newspapers, encyclopedias, and the people at large. In the minds of the great number, Hubert Howe Bancroft is the historian of the Pacific states for just the same reason that George Bancroft is the historian of the United States. Speaking in accord with this popular estimate of Mr. Bancroft's work, Wendell Phillips once called him "The Macaulay of the West."

Nowhere, however, can there be found a statement by this historian in which he lays an unequivocal claim to the authorship of the works which have been published under his name. By his own words quoted above he admits that the work was, at least in part, coöperative, and that he was a compiler of the work of his assistants. And for any one man to assert authorship of the Bancroft series of histories would be preposterous. According to actual computation, the mere work of arranging the material and writing the History of the Pacific States, after a small army of note-takers had concluded their operations, represents an equivalent to the labors of one man for a hundred years: (Frances Fuller Victor in Salt Lake Tribune, April 14, 1893.) Moreover, the use of quotations from foreign languages, of which Mr. Bancroft had no knowledge, proves that parts of the work are not from his pen, while the different literary styles (see for example, the review of Oregon I in the New York Tribune, Nov. 26, 1886; in the S. F. Argonaut, Oct. 23, 1886; in the Sacramento D. Record-Union, Oct. 27, 1886; and in the Portland Oregonian, Oct. 28, 1886), and varying degrees of historical workmanship (Compare reviews of Oregon II in N. Y. Tribune, January, 1887; and in S. F. Chronicle, Jan. 13, 1887, with reviews of other Bancroft works) clearly reveal the work of a number of writers.

A little knowledge on this point has proved a dangerous thing for the reputation of the histories. Some of the newspapers of the coast have learned that Mr. Bancroft did not do all the writing and have even published the names of other authors of the series with statements more or less conjectural as to the writing done by them. In some cases, wild speculations as to the authorship of the works have been published. Many are under the impression that those who went about taking statements of pioneers and in other ways collecting material were themselves writing the manuscript which was published, and that consequently much of the history is no more critically written than an ordinary newspaper article, and as little known about its authorship. Furthermore, it is believed in some quarters that those who prepared narrations for Mr. Bancroft were writing history for him to publish, and that persons not connected with the Bancroft library were authors of parts of the work. In accordance with this idea, it has been claimed that a certain tone favorable to the Mormons which runs through the History of Utah is to be accounted for by the theory that the volume was written by some one connected with the Mormon church, whereas the truth is that, although the historian of that church prepared some data for Mr. Bancroft's use, the work was prepared in the library by Mr. Bancroft and one of his assistants from the annals in his possession (Frances Fuller Victor in Salt Lake Tribune, April 14, 1893).

In some instances, the histories have lost standing because of the assumption that Mr. Bancroft was their author. Thus statements in the History of California supposed to be, but now known not to be from his pen, have been singled out as reckless, and argument has been made upon the principle "false in one thing, false in all," that the seven whole volumes of California history are unworthy of credence (pamphlet proceedings of the Society of California Pioneers in reference to the histories of Hubert Howe Bancroft, page 10). Following this lead an attempt has been made to discredit Bancroft's Oregon on the ground that his California is said to be unreliable.

Had Mr. Bancroft made public the fact that three persons besides himself wrote the History of California, that he was in reality the author of but sixty pages in the entire seven volumes of that set, that he had not the least claim to the authorship of the History of Oregon, and that the histories of the two states were in the main written by different persons, the fallacy of this argument would have been clear, estimates of the collections of matter in these volumes would have been made on their own intrinsic merit, and their value would not have been impaired by false assumptions concerning their authorship.

A third result of this neglect of Mr. Bancroft to make public acknowledgment of the extent of the writings of his assistants has been the accusation "that he is a purloiner of other peoples' brains," (Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 16, 1893) and that he has made a reputation as an author at the expense of his assistants. Concerning this charge, the most remarkable ever made in the annals of American historical writing, the reader must be the judge after weighing all the facts.

The writer's apology for this article is his desire to give such facts as he has in the hope that they will do something to clear up mistaken ideas concerning the authorship of these histories, that they may aid somewhat in forming a correct estimate of the series, and that they may secure for the other authors as well as for Mr. Bancroft whatever credit is rightfully theirs. To these ends it is to be hoped that those who have any additional facts will make them public. The late Frances Fuller Victor, one of the Bancroft corps of writers, had long collected material on the authorship of the histories. In preparing this paper, the writer has depended largely upon information furnished by her correspondence and papers, and by explanations given by her in conversation.

The statement of Mr. Bancroft in the Literary Industries to the effect that his "assistants" merely wrote up minor topics which he then used in his own writing, must be taken as applying to the work as projected rather than as actually carried out. In a letter written in 1878 before the final division of labor was made, Mr. Bancroft said, "When all the material I have is gone over and notes taken according to the general plan, I shall give one person one thing or one part to write, and another person another part": (Letter to Mrs. Victor of August 1, 1878.) Here, it will be observed, the plan is for the "assistants" to do the actual work of writing history and not to prepare material for their chief to use in his writing. And it will shortly appear that it was the "assistants" who wrote the work and Mr. Bancroft who wrote the minor parts. To understand why the intended order was thus reversed, it is necessary to study the growth of the history project and to enter into the steps through which it was evolved.

Hubert Howe Bancroft, with whose name these works are linked, and who has been widely credited as their author, is a native of Granville, Ohio, where he was born May 5, 1832, a descendent of old New England families through both the paternal and maternal lines. In his own account of his life (Literary Industries, 47-244), he tells us that when but three years old he could read the New Testament without having to spell many of the words. At the school age, however, he found it difficult to learn, and after a winter at the brick schoolhouse under the tutelage of a brother of his mother, the latter became satisfied that he was not treated judiciously and fairly took him out of school.

A sister had married George H. Derby, a bookseller of Geneva, New York, subsequently of Buffalo, and at about the age of fifteen, the boy was offered the choice of preparing for college or entering the Buffalo bookstore. He at first chose the former course and spent a year in the academy of his town, but becoming discouraged in his study, entered the employ of Derby in August, 1848. Discharged from the store in six months, he returned to Ohio and acted as a sales agent for his brother-in-law's goods with such success that he was invited back to the store and became a clerk with the beginning of the year 1850. His father, influenced by the gold excitement, decided to go to California in February of that year, and with George L. Kenny, his closest friend, he was sent by Derby to handle books in the land of gold, setting out in December, 1851.

After their arrival in San Francisco, Sacramento was determined upon as a place of business, and young Bancroft worked in the mines until arrangements could be made with his brother-in-law. But Derby's death in the meantime ended the plan, and in 1853, he set out to try his fortune at the newly-boomed mining town of Crescent City. Here he was employed as bookkeeper and bookseller, and made six or eight thousand dollars, most of which he subsequently lost through investing in Crescent City property. In 1855, Mr. Bancroft made a visit to his old home in the East, and his sister, in return for his assistance in recovering the amount of Derby's California investment, let him have the sum, amounting to $5,500, with which to begin business. Obtaining credit in New York he shipped a ten thousand dollar stock of goods for San Francisco, and with Kenny organized the firm of H. H. Bancroft and Company about December 1, 1856.

From the first, Mr. Bancroft tells us, he had a taste for publishing, and it was but three years until the inception of what grew into the historical project. In 1859, Wm. H. Knight, manager of the Bancroft publishing department, while employed in preparing the Hand Book Almanac for the next year, asked for the books necessary to carry on the work. It occurred to the head of the firm that he would again have occasion to refer to books on the coast states, and he accordingly transferred to Mr. Knight a copy of each of the fifty or seventy-five books in stock that had reference to the country. Later he added to the number by purchases in second-hand stores, and when in the East secured from the bookstores of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, volumes which fell under his observation. By 1862, he had a thousand volumes, and upon a visit to London and Paris in that year, learned that much more remained to be done. In 1866, he started on a search throughout Europe, which resulted in increasing his collection to ten thousand volumes. As to the field covered by these works, he says:

"Gradually and almost imperceptibly had the area of my efforts enlarged. From Oregon it was but a step to British Columbia and Alaska; and as I was obliged from California to go to Mexico and Spain, it finally became settled in my mind to make the western half of North America my field": (Lit. Ind. 180). He now began the collection of Mexican works and the purchase of private libraries in the United States. In 1869, after ten years' collecting, the library numbered sixteen thousand volumes, about half of which were pamphlets. In May of the next year, these were placed on one floor of the Bancroft building on Market Street, and a young New Englander named Henry L. Oak, lately editor of a religious journal published by the firm, was installed as librarian.

(The main facts of Oak's life, as learned by Mrs. Victor, are as follows: Henry Labbeus Oak was born at Garland, Maine, in 1844. His ancestry—including the family names of Oak, Merriam, Hastings, Hill, and Smith—was entirely American from a period preceding the Revolutionary War, being originally English and Welsh. He was educated at the public and private schools of his native town until, in 1861, he entered Bowdoin College, and was graduated at Dartmouth in the class of 1865. During his college course, he taught in the public and high schools of different towns in Maine; and after graduation, for a year in an academy at Morristown, New Jersey.

Mr. Oak came to California by steamer in 1866, and, after some attempts at commercial life, broken by a long illness, again became a teacher. A year was spent as principal of the public school at Haywards, and as instructor in the collegiate institute at Napa, and in the spring of 1868, he became office editor of the Occident, a Presbyterian paper which the Bancroft house was then publishing for an association. According to Mr. Bancroft (Lit. Ind. 219), "the whole burden of the journal gradually fell on him." But when, owing to a disagreement with the religious association, the firm declined to publish the paper any longer, the young editor was left without employment. In the meantime a somewhat erratic Englishman named Bosquetti had succeeded Knight as custodian of the Bancroft library, and Oak was appointed to assist him. Upon his decamping a few months later, at the end of 1868, Mr. Oak was appointed to the position.)

The beginning of a classification of the material in the library had been made by Mr. Knight, who saved clippings and arranged them in scrap-books and boxes. It now became Oak's duty to superintend the extraction of material from the volumes in his custody and to catalogue new books as they came in. In May, 1871, he prepared for publication by the firm, two guide-books for tourists. It was at the same time that Mr. Bancroft took another step toward the history plan.

The plan of publishing a Pacific Coast encyclopedia had been under consideration for a year or two, and was now adopted. Mr. Bancroft began to look for contributors. John S. Hittell, publisher of the Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast, prepared a list of the principal subjects to be treated, and Oak began to gather statements from pioneers and contributors of every sort by issuing circulars and writing letters. For about a year the preparations continued. During the first half of 1872 Ora Oak, a younger brother of the librarian, together with others, extracted material on Pacific Coast voyages and travels. Walter M. Fisher, an educated young Englishman who came to the library early in the year, wrote out such travels as those of Bryant, Bayard Taylor, and Humboldt. The librarian, finding inadequate the system of indexing the library then in use, set to work to devise a more practical one, and spent three months in bringing it to perfection. This was apparently the only part of the year's work which proved abiding.

That the material in the Bancroft library was better adapted to the preparation of a history than of an encyclopedia gradually appeared to those who came in contact with it. (Walter M. Fisher was born in Ulster in 1849, and was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, a member of an English and Scotch colony. He was educated at Queen's College, Belfast. Nemos remembered him as "a handsome fellow, a great eater, and a hard worker." Together with Harcourt, he left Bancroft's employ in 1874 to accept the editorship of the Overland Monthly. Returning to London in 1875, he published a clever work entitled the Californians. Subsequently he became a physician). After several years of suggestion, discussion, and change, Mr. Bancroft decided to reshape the entire plan of work accordingly. The history of the Pacific slope of the continent was to be written, beginning at the Isthmus of Panama with the first appearance of the Spaniards, and then taking up the successive regions to the north as their history had its beginning. This work, embracing an account of all the various republics, provinces, states, and territories along the Pacific, it was decided to designate as The History of the Pacific States.

Heretofore, Mr. Bancroft had been known only as bookseller and publisher, and manager of one of San Francisco's large business houses. His experience in writing had been limited to the preparation of some material for the proposed encyclopedia. But now, when he had reached the age of forty years, practically all of them except the first sixteen, spent in the world of business, the head of the firm of H. H. Bancroft and Company made his first venture as a literary man, writing himself and rewriting the work of others. He began by preparing what he considered a suitable introduction to the history. The task was not easy, especially for one unaccustomed to write. In fourteen weeks he had taken out material from which he wrote three hundred pages of introduction to the History of Central America which he subsequently reduced to seventy-five pages. This seems to have been the only part of the work that he considered as exclusively his own theme: (Lit. Ind., 291). But this matter subsequently had to be rewritten.

While writing on this volume, Mr. Bancroft became convinced that the history could not be complete without an account of the original inhabitants of the coast. To quote his own words, "I did not fancy them, I would gladly have avoided them. I was no archæologist, ethnologist, or antiquary, and I had no desire to become such. My tastes in the matter, however, did not dispose of the subject. The savages were there, and there was no help for me; I must write them up to get rid of them." To compile information concerning the manners and customs, the mythology, the language, and the antiquities of these aborigines, Mr. Bancroft estimated that two volumes would be required: (Lit. Ind., 301). The Native Races as completed is a work of five volumes. So much of an expansion in all of the early historical plan was necessary.

Mr. Bancroft, wrote but two hundred and seventy out of the four thousand pages of the Native Races, devoting his time while that series was in preparation largely to a rewriting of the first volume of Central America, to a continuation of a summary of early voyages for other volumes, and to a perfection of the plan and a collecting of material for the histories. His relation to this work may be likened to that of a managing editor. He decided upon the division of labor as suggested by Oak or others, and required changes in the manuscript as completed if he considered them necessary, either for the sake of treatment or style, but the extent of his writing as printed in this work certainly falls far short of that necessary to substantiate the claim which he has made to its authorship. The chapter which he wrote was that on the Hyperboreans. As to this work, he tells us in the Literary Industries that during the first half of the year 1873 he "was writing on northern Indian matter, giving out the notes on the southern division to go over the field again and take out additional notes": (Lit. Ind. 571). As to his further connection with the work, he says that in December of the same year he became convinced that the plan of treating Indian languages adopted by Goldschmidt was not the proper one, and that the latter was "obliged to go over the entire field again and re-arrange and add to the subject matter before I would attempt the writing of it." (Lit. Ind., 573.) This passage ascribes the actual preparation of the volume to Goldschmidt, and the writing referred to here must have been largely in the nature of editorial work. It is hardly to be presumed that a man of Mr. Bancroft's education and slight literary experience would have attempted at this time anything so ambitious as the complete preparation of a treatise on Indian languages.

We see, then, that although the influence of Mr. Bancroft was felt in arrangement and even in style, the Native Races was written almost entirely by other persons. But one would hardly suppose that such was the case from reading the words: "During the progress of this work I succeeded in utilizing the labors of my assistants to the full extent of my anticipations": (Lit. Ind., 304).

When speaking in the Literary Industries of work done for him by others, Mr. Bancroft shows a habit which is derived from his long experience as manager of a business concern. His constant tendency is to speak of work done by those in his employ as his work, neglecting a distinction between a publisher and an author, which is a vital one. The reputation of a publishing house depends upon the workmanship of its employés, but that of an author depends solely upon his own talents and the work of his own hands. While a publisher may with all propriety speak of work done by agents as his printing, for him to say that writing done for him by others is his writing is a positive misstatement. When Mr. Bancroft paid his writers for their manuscript, he became its owner with full rights of publication, but no one will say for a moment that he thereby became the author. In speaking of the Native Races, as well as the History of the Pacific States, Mr. Bancroft often does so in such terms as to indicate that writing was done by him when it was his only by purchase. (Compare statements in Literary Industries, 303, 568, 571, and in Native Races I, preface xiii, with the facts as shown by the statements of different members of Bancroft's literary corps as to the work actually done by each writer and as given later in this article.)

The division of responsibility for collating and arranging facts for the various divisions of the Native Races was made apparently toward the latter part of the year 1872. We are told that routine work was laid aside for three or four weeks in the middle of the summer, and this time devoted to placing the library in order and cataloguing the new books which had been added. This was obviously done preparatory to entering upon the new work. To a young Englishman who called himself T. Arundel-Harcourt, and who entered the library in November, was assigned the preparation of that portion of the work devoted to the manners and customs of the civilized nations. (This man's true name he did not reveal. His collaborator Nemos says that he attended a boarding school, and then continued his studies in Germany, at Heidelberg, according to his own account. He claimed to have come to America with $5,000 in pocket money, and found his way first to Montana. On his arrival at San Francisco he entered the library. Leaving in 1874 to assume editorship of the Overland Monthly with Fisher, he was soon back in Bancroft's employ. Naturally he was the most able of the library corps. But while he was brilliant, handsome, and witty, he was at the same time erratic and unreliable. He died in 1884.)

Mr. Fisher's part was mythology, while the division of the work relating to language was given to Albert Goldschmidt, a German, who had been employed in the library since the end of 1871. (According to Nemos, Goldschmidt was said to have been the son of a Jewish clothing dealer at Hamburg. In early life he ran off to sea, and claimed to have become master of a vessel. He had acquired much general knowledge, and was musically inclined, often singing in church choirs. Before coming to the library Nemos says that he led a "vagarious life" in Nevada. As a linguist he had great ability, and was able to translate almost any language which he encountered, but was inclined to fritter away his time. Nemos declared him "the most systematic idler in the library." This failing brought about his discharge. Later he became a mining superintendent in Chihuahua.) Mr. Oak took the subject of Antiquities and Aboriginal History (preface to Native Races I, p. 13).

The undertaking was an enormous one, because of the vast quantities of material to be handled, as well as the inexperience of the workers, which made it necessary for them to devise their own system as they proceeded. It is said that by an actual calculation the sum total of all the labor expended upon each of the five volumes of the series represents an equivalent to the work of one man for ten years. (Literary Industries, 305). Indeed, Mr. Bancroft's own reason for entrusting this work to others is that it would have taken him a half century, leaving his main work untouched. Mr. Oak's indexing system proved a great labor saver, as by it the indexers went through all the material, classifying and making references. They were followed immediately by note-takers, who copied the facts indicated in these references. The writers then had the data placed before them for arrangement. When Mr. Bancroft's chapter on the Hyperboreans was completed he went over it with them, all making criticisms and suggestions to be adopted in the arrangement of the other divisions as well as that one. By this means was the library system perfected, a common method developed, and a corps of library workers trained: (Lit. Ind., 304).

The Native Races was very much in the nature of a compilation, and our knowledge concerning the authorship of its various parts is necessarily less exact than is true of any of the other Bancroft works. Such facts as are at hand come from two schedules—one of his own works, the other of that of the corps generally—prepared by William Nemos, a gifted Swedish writer who entered the library in 1873, subsequently becoming Oak's chief assistant, and ultimately his successor in the librarian's office; from separate information gained by Frances Fuller Victor as to the part of the work done by Oak. (This consists of three different statements, one in a letter to a friend, another in an autobiographical sketch, and a third in a statement copied by Mrs. Victor. Mr. Oak himself refuses to give testimony, doubtless on account of his former intimate personal connection with Mr. Bancroft and his acquiescence in the plan followed, as well as his poor health, which renders him unwilling to enter into a discussion of the question, and from statements in an autobiography of Thomas Savage, chief Spanish interpreter in the library after August, 1873.)

The facts as deduced from these sources show that Oak wrote more of the Native Races than any one else, two fifths of the entire work, or to be exact, fifteen hundred and ninety-seven pages out of four thousand. While engaged in this writing, it must be remembered that he also acted as "chief assistant to Mr. Bancroft, manager of all details of this work, as well as that on the History, overseer of the corps of workers, and chief proof reader," duties which so engrossed his time that he wrote principally between eight o'clock in the evening and midnight. The fourth volume on Antiquities is his work entire, as is also the fifth on Primitive History, except the introductory chapter on the Origin of the Americans, in the preparation of which it would appear that Bancroft had a hand (Lit. Ind., 570), and the last three chapters dealing with the tribes of Central America, the authorship of which the writer has no means of determining. Nemos says, however, that he prepared "a good deal of clean manuscript" for this volume as well as for some others.

To Harcourt the division of the field as already given points as the author of the second volume. Oak wrote the introductory chapter entitled General View of the Civilized Nations, and also the chapter on the Aztec Picture Writing and Maya Arts Calendar and Hieroglyphics. Bancroft is the author of the chapter on Savagism and Civilization, and Nemos is to be credited with the writing of some parts. As Harcourt wrote six hundred and thirty-six pages of the Native Races, and there appears but one reference to his writing in connection with another volume, and that a chapter of a hundred and fifty pages, we may conclude that the remainder of Volume II is from his pen.

With Fisher rests the credit for the authorship in the main of the Mythology portion of the third volume. Nemos relates that Fisher sought his aid for this work soon after he came to the library, believing that his previous training in philosophy fitted him for mythology, and that Fisher obtained for him the continuation of the volume, when in October, 1874, he left it "half finished" to accept the editorship of the Overland Monthly. Nemos then being new to the work, Harcourt revised his manuscript.

To Goldschmidt had been assigned the task of writing the treatise on Indian languages for the third volume. The evidence of Nemos shows that Goldschmidt prepared this part of the work, although the quotation from the Literary Industries already given seems to show that it was revised throughout once, and afterward rewritten, in part, at least, by Bancroft. Goldschmidt also prepared the ethnographical map of the coast.

Of the first volume, Oak wrote about half of the preface, and the chapter on the Columbians, Harcourt the chapter on the Californians, and Nemos and Savage the remainder, with the exception of a few slight parts prepared by others.

In a compilation like the Native Races, there was of necessity much matter printed in such a form that those who prepared it could not claim the authorship. Of this character were the contributions of Mr. Savage, the Spanish expert. Nemos also claimed to be the author of parts of every volume except the fourth, but from his own statements we learn that much of his work, like Savage's, consisted in making translations.

The public acknowledgment made in the introduction of this work concerning the part done by the several writers would be fair, if we overlook the fact that its wording tends to give an exaggerated idea of Mr. Bancroft's part in it—were the name of the latter but printed on the title page as editor or compiler. But by omitting either word he has announced himself to the world as author. His own explanation for this seems to be that he considers himself responsible for the work in treatment and style (Native Races I, Preface XIII), but the real reason is no doubt to be found in a desire to give the work standing in the literary world by ascribing it to one name already quite widely known among book dealers and publishers.

As regards scientific merit these volumes can not make great claims. No serious attempt was made to collect facts concerning the American Indians of the West at first hand. Mr. Bancroft made no pretensions as an antiquarian or ethnologist, content with compiling what others had written and thus discharging his duty toward the introductory part of his work that he might the sooner take up the more serious task of writing the histories. Different parts of the Native Races differ greatly in value. Oak was habitually scholarly and always made an effort at honest research. Nemos was likewise thoroughly reliable. Goldschmidt was noted for his shiftlessness, and Fisher and Harcourt are charged with such uncritical methods as the incorporation in their writings of statements found in magazine articles which were nowhere verified. (Mrs. Victor had learned of this.) The last three must, therefore, be considered clever and brilliant writers rather than critical historians.

The chief value of the Native Races consisted in the fact that it presented in accessible form a classified collection of all the facts known concerning the Indians of the Pacific slope. Philosophers who made use of these facts in their generalizations, while prizing the work highly, were not, however, especially concerned as to how it was written. In the East and in Europe the discovery was not made that it is merely a compilation. The Native Races was regarded as a work of great learning (see Literary Industries, 335, 356) and its authorship ascribed to Hubert Howe Bancroft in accordance with a literal reading of its title page. The five volumes were published at three-month intervals between October 1, 1874, and Christmas, 1875. Just before the first volume appeared, Mr. Bancroft made what he called a literary pilgrimage to the Eastern States to bring himself and the work to the notice of the great literary men there. He also made arrangements for publication in France and Germany simultaneously with the issuing of the volumes in New York. This was the result as told in his own words: "Never probably was a book so generally and so favorably reviewed by the best journals in Europe and America. Never was an author more suddenly or more thoroughly brought to the attention of literary men everywhere": (Lit. Ind., 361.)

As director and manager of the Native Races, Mr. Bancroft performed a literary service of great importance and in such a capacity richly deserved the unsparing praise which was showered upon him. But the commendation and honor bestowed upon him as author of the work we must in all fairness regard as quite a different matter. According to his own statement (Lit. Ind., 361), this must be considered as the status generally assigned him and the basis upon which he was presented with a number of complimentary certificates and honorary diplomas, among them being honorary membership in the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Buffalo Historical Society, and the honorary degree of Master of Arts at Yale.

So far as the question of authorship was concerned, all reviews and general press mention of subsequent Bancroft publications followed along the same line as the reviews of the Native Races, recognizing Mr. Bancroft alone as the author. We may, therefore, conclude as does he himself (Lit. Ind., 361, 661) that it was his being accredited with the authorship of the Native Races which made for him his literary reputation. It has been shown that this credit depended in turn upon the fact that his own name was on the title page as author instead of managing editor. The facts show, therefore, that Mr. Bancroft was assisted largely by his corps of writers even in the revision of manuscripts, that due credit has never been given Oak, Fisher, Harcourt, Goldschmidt, and Nemos, who, aided by a number of compilers and writers of fragmentary bits, are the true authors of the work, and that the rise of the fame of Hubert Howe Bancroft as an historical writer was founded upon a popular misconception, both as to the nature of his first work and his connection with that work.

Just as fast as the members of the library force ended their respective labors on the Native Races, they were set to work taking notes for the history, Mr. Oak continuing to act as manager of detail as heretofore. The system of note-taking was perfected by Mr. Nemos and now included a boiling down process by which new members could so prepare rough material as to permit writers to turn out manuscript more quickly.

Laying aside for the time being the work on Central America and Mexico, Bancroft and Oak decided to direct the activities of a library force now thoroughly trained to the material on California, since California history is the starting point for that of a number of other states, including Northern Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, and more especially because the mass of original material collected for this state was greater than for any other, a fact necessitating the reduction to a minimum of the possibility of its accidental destruction while yet unused: (Lit. Ind., 583.) The actual organization of the material on the Southwest, including the writing of the history of the Northern Mexican states and Texas down to 1800, together with the Spanish and Mexican annals of Arizona, New Mexico, California, and the Northwest Coast, was entrusted to Oak as his special field.

The story of the collection of this California material as told by Mr. Bancroft (Lit. Ind., 365 and sq.) is one of the most interesting connected with the history enterprise. In October, 1873, there had entered his service one Enrique Cerruti, an erratic individual, born in Italy, but intimately acquainted with the ways of Spanish-Americans through a long residence in Bolivia, under the government of which state he had served in a diplomatic capacity. Cerruti's diplomacy was turned toward the securing of historical facts in the possession of the old Spanish residents of California, and the first task set for his craft was to gain the coöperation of General Vallejo, a native Californian, early alcalde at San Francisco, and colonizer of Sonoma. After several months' negotiations, his efforts were rewarded by a personal narrative from Vallejo, by the gift of his papers, and by his enthusiastic support in gaining the aid of other Californians of his own race. Among those who furnished dictations at his instance were two of his brothers, and his nephew Alvarado, Governor of California under Mexican rule. For two years Cerruti and Vallejo worked together collecting, their time being divided between Sonoma, San Francisco, and Monterey, from which centers they made divers excursions. It seems that the wily Italian, together with other representatives of Mr. Bancroft, sometimes gained possession of valuable manuscripts by such indirection as to cause much dissatisfaction on the part of the original owners.

The official Spanish records of the country which had been turned over to the United States Surveyor General at San Francisco consisted of four or five hundred volumes. To copy these, twelve Spaniards worked for a year under the direction of Mr. Savage,[40] "the greatest single effort" ever made in connection with the Bancroft enterprise. The mission records in possession of the archbishop of San Francisco were copied by Mr. Savage and three assistants in a month. In quest of data on Southern California, Bancroft and Oak took a trip to San Diego early in 1874, returning overland and visiting depositories of records. On this tour, Judge Benjamin Hays of San Diego turned over to Mr. Bancroft his historical collections, and subsequently directed the collecting in the south. The most efficient of the assistants employed by him was Edward F. Murray who, among other services, copied the records of the Santa Barbara missions. In March, 1877, Mr. Savage began work on the civil and ecclesiastical archives at Salinas, continuing the work at San José, Santa Cruz, and Sacramento. With others, he obtained dictations of the highest importance from native Californians and others, and in 1877 and 1878 spent eight months in that work, visiting all the missions from San Diego to San Juan Bautista with the exception of San Fernando and Purisima.

While his aids were thus gathering the material upon which the History of California is founded, Mr. Bancroft, as he tells us (Lit. Ind., 657-663), was devoting his attention more especially to the gaining of information concerning the proceedings of the two vigilance committees that held sway in San Francisco in the "fifties," by no means an easy task, since the acts of both of these organizations were illegal and their surviving members could not be expected to talk very freely, even after a lapse of twenty years. After considerable urging, however, those who had custody of the records were induced in the interest of history to turn them over for Mr. Bancroft's inspection. This material was made use of in the supplemental volumes on Popular Tribunals; in the first writing of which Mr. Bancroft was himself engaged from 1875 to 1877. Like his manuscript for Central America, however, this work had to be revised before its publication ten years later.

At an early date, Mr. Bancroft tells us (Lit. Ind., 623-628), he had corresponded with the heads of governments lying within his territory. The presidents of the Mexican and Central American republics and the governors of all the states had accorded him every facility. In 1874, especially favorable letters were received from the presidents of Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, the latter appointing a special commissioner to secure and ship documents.

The great mass of California matter, at first so voluminous as to be appalling, was now in hand, and in 1878 Mr. Bancroft turned his attention to the Northwest. Upon a visit to British Columbia in that year, he obtained access to the official records of the province, took the reminiscences of many old fur traders, secured the papers of others, and had help from several who had undertaken to write a history of the country: (Lit. Ind., 534; Hist. N. W. Coast, preface, viii). It was from this data that Mr. Bancroft in the years immediately following wrote, with the aid of some other writers, the History of the Northwest Coast, and the History of British Columbia, volumes constituting the great part of the work of which he can claim the actual authorship: (See Lit. Ind., 549.)

The history seeker had already secured the writings of Gov. Elwood Evans of Washington Territory. Crossing the straits from Victoria, he made some collections about Puget Sound, and then went to Portland and Salem, accompanied by Amos Bowman, a stenographer who subsequently became one of the writers in the library and prepared some manuscript for the History of British Columbia. (Bowman was a Canadian with some experience in government surveys and mining explorations. Before joining Mr. Bancroft on this expedition, he was located at Anacortes, Washington.) The Oregon Pioneer Association was then in session at Salem, and a number of its members furnished dictations. The secretary, J. Henry Brown, was engaged to copy documents in the state archives (Lit. Ind., 540-546). He subsequently made this matter the basis of a book which he himself published on Oregon history.

After dictations had been secured in passing through Southern Oregon, the Oregon material at Mr. Bancroft's disposal was further increased on his return to San Francisco by the employment of Frances Fuller Victor, a writer of experience and author of several books on Oregon, who, during a residence of more than ten years in the state, had collected data with the intention of herself writing and publishing its history. As by her researches she had become familiar with the history of the entire northwestern part of the United States, the working up of this field was assigned her just as the southwest had been assigned to Oak.

(Frances Fuller was born in the township of Rome, New York, May 23, 1826. She was a near relation of Judge Reuben H. Walworth, Chancellor of the State of New York, and through her ancestor, Lucy Walworth, wife of Veach Williams, who lived at Lebanon, Connecticut, in the early part of the eighteenth century, claimed descent from Egbert, the first king of England. Veach Williams himself was descended from Robert Williams, who came over from England in 1637, and settled at Roxbury, Massachusetts.

When Mrs. Victor was thirteen years of age, her parents moved to Wooster, Ohio, and her education was received at a young ladies' seminary at that place. From an early age she took an interest in literature, and when but fourteen years old, wrote both prose and verse for the county papers. A little later the Cleveland Herald paid for her poems, some of which were copied in English journals.

Mrs. Victor's younger sister, Metta, who subsequently married a Victor, a brother of Frances' husband, was also a writer of marked ability. Between the two a devoted attachment existed, and in those days they were ranked with Alice and Phœbe Carey, the four being referred to as Ohio's boasted quartet of sister poets. The Fuller sisters contributed verse to the Home Journal of New York City, of which N. P. Willis and George P. Morris were then the editors. Metta was known as the "Singing Sybil." Both sisters were highly eulogized by Willis, who regarded them as destined for a great future as writers.

In her young womanhood Frances spent a year in New York City, amid helpful literary associations. Being urged by their friends, the two sisters published together a volume of their girlhood poems in 1851. In the more rigorous self-criticism of later years, Mrs. Victor often called it a mistaken kindness which induced her friends to advise the publication of these youthful productions. But in these verses is to be seen the true poetic principle, and their earnestness is especially conspicuous.

Metta Fuller Victor, after her marriage, took up her residence in New York City, and continued her literary work both in prose and in verse. Frances' husband, Henry C. Victor, a naval engineer, was ordered to California in 1863. She accompanied him, and for nearly two years wrote for the San Francisco papers, her principal contributions consisting of city editorials to the Bulletin, and a series of society articles under the nom de plume of Florence Fane, which, we are told, by their humorous hits, elicited much favorable comment.

About the close of the war, Mr. Victor resigned his position and came to Oregon, where his wife followed him in 1865. She has often told how, upon her first arrival in this state, she recognized in the type both of the sturdy pioneers and of their institutions something entirely new to her experience, and at once determined to make a close study of Oregon. As she became acquainted with many of the leading men of the state, and learned more and more about it, she determined to write its history, and began to collect material for that purpose.

Her first book on the history of Oregon was The River of the West, a biography of Joseph L. Meek, which was published in 1870. Many middle-aged Oregonians tell what a delight came to them when in boyhood and girlhood days they read the stories of Rocky Mountain adventures of the old trapper Meek as recited by this woman of culture and literary training, who herself had taken so great an interest in them. The book was thumbed and passed from hand to hand as long as it would hold together, and today scarcely a copy is to be obtained in the Northwest. Intensely interesting as The River of the West is, the chief value of the work does not lie in this fact, but rather in its value to the historian. Meek belonged to the age before the pioneers. It was the trapper and trader who explored the wilds of the West and opened up the way for the immigrant. Later writers freely confess their indebtedness to Mrs. Victor's River of the West for much of their material. The stories of the Rocky Mountain bear killer, Meek, romantic though many of them are, check with the stories given by other trappers and traders, and furnish data for an important period in the history of the Northwest.

In 1872 was published Mrs. Victor's second book touching the Northwest, All Over Oregon and Washington. This work, she tells us in the preface, was written to supply a need existing because of the dearth of printed information concerning these countries. It contained observations on the scenery, soil, climate and resources of the Northwestern part of the Union, together with an outline of its early history, remarks on its geology, botany, and mineralogy, and hints to immigrants and travelers. Her interest in the subject led her at a later date to revise this book and to publish it again, this time under the title Atlantis Arisen.

In 1874 was published Woman's War With Whiskey, a pamphlet which she wrote in aid of the temperance movement in Portland. Her husband was lost at sea in November, 1875, and from this time, she devoted herself exclusively to literary pursuits. During her residence in Oregon she had frequently written letters for the San Francisco Bulletin and sketches for the Overland Monthly. These stories, together with some poems, were published in 1877 in a volume entitled The New Penelope.

This last volume was printed by the Bancroft publishing establishment in San Francisco. The Bancrofts were an Ohio family of Mrs. Victor's early acquaintance. Hubert Howe Bancroft now laid before her his plan for writing the history of the Pacific slope, and asked her to work on the part concerning Oregon. In 1878 she entered the Bancroft library. Leaving the library at the completion of the work, in 1890 she returned to Oregon and was employed by the state in 1893 to compile her History of the Early Indian Wars of Oregon, a volume which was published by the State Printer the following year. She continued to write for the Oregon Historical Quarterly up to the time of her death. Her last published work was a small volume of poems printed in 1900, and selected from the many metrical compositions which she had written for newspapers and magazines through a period of sixty years. She was an able writer of essay, and possessed an insight into the evolution of civilization and government rare, not only for an author of her sex, but for any author. Combining the qualities of poet, essayist and historian, she occupied a position without a peer in the annals of Western literature. She died at Portland, Oregon, November 14, 1902).

Data on Alaska and the Russian Colony at Fort Ross, California, were being collected and translated during these years by Ivan Petroff, a highly educated Russian some time resident at Cook's Inlet. Material from Russia was furnished by the savant M. Pinart who had made a special study of Alaska, and Petroff prepared translations. In 1878 he visited Alaska in search of more material, and spent the year 1879 and part of 1880 in Washington extracting matter from papers, the existence of which he had discovered on the northern trip; (Lit. Ind., 551-561.) Petroff had begun the writing of this material and had done part of the Alaska volume when he left the library to become supervisor of the census of 1880 in the Northern Territory, leaving Mr. Bancroft and others to bring this part of the work to completion.

(The main facts of Petroff's life which had been a very eventful one are here taken from Bancroft's Literary Industries, 270-272. He was born at St. Petersburg in 1842, his father being a soldier. His mother died in his infancy, and at the age of five, he was placed in the military academy of the first corps of cadets at St. Petersburg. Left an orphan when but a boy by the death of his father at the battle of Inkerman, a remarkable talent for languages secured his transfer to the imperial academy of sciences for training as military interpreter. A serious illness caused an impediment in his speech which ended such prospects, but he was nevertheless permitted to continue his studies and became amanuensis for Professor Bohttink while engaged in the preparation of a Sanscrit dictionary. Attached subsequently to M. Brosset, who was making a study of Armenian antiquities and literature, he became so proficient in the language that he was chosen to accompany his superior on a two-year scientific expedition through Georgia and Armenia. He was then sent to Paris to St. Hilaire with part of the material obtained, thence sailing for New York in 1861. After working a short time on the Courier des Etats Unis, he enlisted in the seventh New Hampshire regiment. By hard study he mastered the language, after writing letters for the soldiers as a means of practice, and acquired a proficiency in the use of English such as one seldom meets with in a foreigner. From private he became corporal, then sergeant and color bearer, a rank which he held in 1864, when his company was sent to Florida. He took part in all the battles fought by Butler's army and was twice wounded. After the battle of Fort Fisher, he was promoted to a lieutenancy. Mustered out in July, 1865, he returned to New York, and accepted a position for five years with the Russian American Company at Sitka, believing that this region was sooner or later to pass to the United States. On the way to Alaska he was delayed and improved the time by making a horseback tour of Northern California, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Finding his position filled when he arrived at Sitka, he was given charge of a trading post on Cook's Inlet until the transfer of the territory to the United States in 1867. Subsequently Petroff was appointed acting custom officer on Kodiak Island and was put in charge of the seized barkentine Constitution, with which he arrived in San Francisco in October, 1870. Mr. Bancroft at once sought his services as Russian interpreter for the library. After his return to the government service in the north, he distinguished himself both in 1880 and 1890 by his zeal in securing information concerning Alaska desired by the census bureau, and several times risked his life in this service. Returning to Washington he was subsequently employed both by the census bureau and the state department. With one exception, the Utah volume, this was the last of the series of history proper to the actual authorship of any considerable part of which Mr. Bancroft can lay claim.)

So great was the opposition created among Gentiles in Utah by a turn in the Bancroft history more favorable to the Mormons than they considered fair, and so many and so fierce the charges against Mr. Bancroft in consequence, that he has apparently been very careful to give, in the Literary Industries (pp. 631-640), an extended account of the manner of collecting the material for the History of Utah. Here he tells us that, at an early date in the development of the history project, he realized the difficulty of gaining data on Mormon history, an obstacle apparently so great as to be insuperable. For though the Mormon church have a regular historian, whose duty it is to preserve their archives, the director of the Bancroft project at once perceived the objections which would be made to the turning of this material over to be written up by one not in sympathy with their faith. But he must have seen very clearly that a Gentile history of Utah not unfavorable to the Mormons was the one thing they desired above all else. Accordingly, in 1880, he tells us that he succeeded in showing to their satisfaction that he was not prejudiced against them, and asked Orson B. Pratt, official historian of the Mormon church, for the desired information. John Taylor, president of the church, called a council of its twelve apostles, with the result that it was agreed to comply with the request, and Franklin D. Richards was sent to San Francisco as Professor Pratt's representative, to furnish the Bancroft library with such material as was desired from the official church records.

The year 1880 is an important one for the history project in another and more important respect also. The end of that year found definite plans made for the publication of the History of the Pacific States. Mr. Bancroft had long since decided that, unlike the Native Races, this work should be handled exclusively by his own house, and Mr. Nathan J. Stone was placed in charge of the publication department of the firm, now A. L. Bancroft and Company, to attend especially to this matter. The date of commencement of work by the printers Oak sought to have deferred that there might be no haste in searching out and digesting facts, but against his advice Bancroft determined to begin the publication of the series in 1882, impatient doubtless at the prospect of a deferred return from his large financial investment in the work, and somewhat fearful, as he tells us, lest through some calamity it might never come to publication.

This decision for an early beginning of publication with the general change in plan which it brought, rendered Mr. Oak's complicated tasks too severe, as he was now in failing health. The work of taking notes on the vast amount of material on California and the Spanish Southwest generally had been finished some time before, and, as Oak had now completed his preliminary researches, he determined to give up part of his duties that he might have time to write the volume covering his field. To Mr. Nemos, who up to this time had been employed chiefly on the Mexican volumes, was accordingly turned over the general direction of the half-dozen younger writers, together with the plans of writing, and the management of the note-takers, a change which gave him all interior supervision except over special departments attended to by Mr. Bancroft—such as the work of Oak and Mrs. Victor. Nemos had wonderful ability for drilling men into a common method and served as director of library detail "with remarkable ability and success."

(This was Oak's expression. All who speak of Nemos have much commendation for his ability. He was born in Finland, February 23, 1848, the son of a nobleman. German and piano lessons were first given him by his mother, who belonged to a wealthy family of good stock. After a year's study in a private school at St. Petersburg, he returned home to attend school, and later took a course at the gymnasium, or classic high school, at Stockholm preparatory to entering Upsala university, where a brother was at the time in attendance.

This ambition was not to be attained, however, for in his seventeenth year, family matters compelled him to give up his studies, and a place for him was found in a London commission and ship-broker's office by a family friend who believed that the acquisition of English and a business experience would be of the greatest advantage to the young man. Rather than drag the family title into the by-ways of trade, he laid it aside and assumed the name of Nemos.

Evening and leisure hours were now devoted to the study of philosophy and kindred higher branches under an Upsala graduate. After a business training of eighteen months, he was transferred to a responsible position in a house trading with India. When five years had been spent in this capacity, the fear of consumption induced him to take a long sea voyage, and in the spring of 1870 he left Liverpool by sailing vessel for Australia, arriving at Melbourne in the third month out. A venture at mining resulted disastrously through the dishonesty of his partners, and after a stop at Sydney, he came to San Francisco, where he landed in the summer of 1871. He had completed an engagement as assistant civil engineer on a proposed railroad in Oregon when he returned to California and accepted a position in the library. Nemos is described as retiring in all his tastes and enthusiastic as a student. He was especially fond of philosophy and languages, and had a knowledge of all the principal tongues of Europe.)

Oak, although he now considered himself chief only in name, still acted as librarian, business agent for most of the intercourse with the printing house, and reviser of the final proofs of all the volumes.

For protection against fire, the library was in October, 1881, moved to a building constructed for its reception on Valencia Street. At the same time, the printers began work on the first volume to be published, Central America I, which was immediately followed by Mexico I. After that time Mr. Bancroft (Lit. Ind., 585,) gave out for the press whatever was most convenient, so that frequently parts of several volumes were in type at one time. When the printing began, material aggregating fifteen volumes was ready. These included manuscript for Mexico and Central America, the field assigned Savage and Nemos, matter prepared by Oak for California, by Mrs. Victor for Oregon, by Bancroft for Popular Tribunals, Literary Industries, and The Northwest Coast, and by Petroff for Alaska. Bancroft estimated at this time that the notes were also taken for three fourths of the works which were yet to be written.

Material upon which to base the remaining fourth was collected in the same way as previously, Mr. Bancroft visiting the country to be written up, ascertaining the nature and location of the materials, collecting what could be had conveniently, and then leaving the further ingathering in the hands of agents. A visit to Mexico in 1883 furnished him with some material on social conditions in that country which he tells us was utilized in the last volume of the Mexican history: (Lit. Ind., 701). More extensive collections remained to be made in the regions farther north.

After the completion of the two volumes on Oregon, Mrs. Victor's attention was next directed to the volume on Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. In the carrying on of this work, a greater number of suggestions as to manner of treatment were made by Mr. Bancroft, we may believe, than was usual in the preparation of a volume, for the reasons that it was hurried more for publication than earlier works, that it was written under his immediate direction, and that he himself collected and forwarded material from the field as required. The record of the progress of the work, as it occurs in Mr. Bancroft's letters to the writer of the volume, is of unusual interest in that the methods followed, though in some ways exceptional, may perhaps be taken as fairly typical of those employed by Mr. Bancroft in the preparation of the later volumes of the series which he immediately supervised.

In August, 1884, shortly before the completion of the second volume of the History of Oregon, Mr. Bancroft went to Salt Lake City, where he left with Franklin D. Richards a memorandum to guide him in extracting material on the Mormons in Nevada which, he said, would be about the first material needed. Pending the arrival of this, on September 11th, he advised Mrs. Victor to familiarize herself with the history of Wyoming and Colorado, he himself having done the same for Nevada.

A letter written a few days later presents the idea of making a plan of the volume "as the men do on Mexico, etc.," and says, "By so doing you can give each section its due proportion and by working to the plan save unnecessary labor." As to the method of treating early expeditions to Colorado and Wyoming, he says to consult the History of Utah, and the two opening chapters which he himself had already written on Nevada. When these chapters were prepared, it was the intention to devote an entire volume to this state. In planning the work as recommended in this letter, Mrs. Victor ascertained that these chapters were out of proportion for the volume as now planned, and wrote to Mr. Bancroft to this effect. On September 21st, however, he advised her that he recognized the fact, but that they would "have to do." On the same date he forwarded the dictations of three of the first Mormons in Nevada, requesting that when the material had been used for this volume, they be turned over to Mr. Bates, then at work on the History of Utah. He also suggested a perusal of Benton's City Saints and other Utah books for light on Nevada, and directed that Mr. Newkirk search the library thoroughly for Nevada material.

From Colorado Springs on October 7th he wrote announcing that a package of material on Colorado had been sent, though evidently with more thought of pleasing those who furnished the dictations than of affording material for the history of their state. Said he, "Some of the dictations don't amount to much, but I would like them used for all they are worth, and more too, putting them in list of authorities, quoting them freely, and giving biographical notice, etc." On October 11th, he wrote that he would go to Denver in a few days to finish gathering what material for Colorado he could procure. With reference to this he says, "I am told that there is no file of the Rocky Mountain News, or any other early paper I can get. Possibly I may obtain access to one. Still I think we will have stuff enough, all there will be room for. I will then go to Cheyenne to get what I can on Wyoming, and that will finish up the business of gathering for that volume, or any other volume except what the canvassers bring in."

He calls attention to the fact that in the Colorado dictations there is frequently material on Montana, and in the Utah dictations, material on Idaho and Nevada. The reason for this he gives in the typical Bancroft sentence:

"If I strike a man here, as I frequently do, who has been to these other places in early times I follow him up there for all it is worth of course, the same as here."

At Colorado Springs Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, author of a Century of Dishonor, asked Mr. Bancroft to adopt her views on the Colorado Indian wars. With reference to this matter, he wrote on October 13th, the day of his departure for Denver, as follows:

"She wishing a thing done would be the very reason I would not do it if I could help it. I speak of it that you may get the work and use the information. I do not care about mentioning her name one way or another in the whole work. She has been polite enough here, although she has a broken leg, but I don't care for her politeness. I should have had fair recognition for the service I did her in the matter of her California articles in the Century which I never got."

Writing subsequently from Denver on November 2d, he says: "Everybody in Colorado, nearly, is against Mrs. Jackson on what some call the Chevington massacre. That side don't call it a massacre, but a fight. I should give their side in full, then say some few took exception to this action, and there let it stand on its merits—that is, I think so now."

In the same letter Mr. Bancroft announced that he was going over the Rocky Mountain News with Mr. Byers, the founder and former editor, "a man of remarkable ability and memory," whose dictation to a shorthand reporter was given, he said, in such a way that it was almost pure history and could be taken from his manuscript as fast as one could write. This he advised Mrs. Victor to take as a basis for Colorado history, building upon it and giving it the preference in regard to discrepancy of statement. He also called attention to the fact that "a lot of people" had in one way and another wandered over the region before white men settled there, and said he supposed that what Coronado did should first be considered. As to the wanderings of Spaniards in Colorado, a schedule sent about this time refers Mrs. Victor to all Oak had written on the subject, to the first few pages of the History of Utah, and to the original authorities upon which the latter was based. After calling attention to some works of travel, such as Fremont's writings and Renton's Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, he asked Mr. Nemos to see that the material for Mrs. Victor's use in preparing the volume be taken out more thoroughly than had heretofore been the case, and upon this point directed him to consult the early volumes of the series and make this correspond. Mrs. Victor subsequently asked that she be permitted to take out her own notes, and the request was granted as Mr. Bancroft had now decided to reduce the number of his force as fast as possible and bring the work to a conclusion. Already on October 25th, he had given as his opinion that Colorado should make about half of the volume, at the same time inquiring what laws of Colorado and Wyoming were desired, and recommending a study of "Hepworth Dixon's work on the Great West, Bonneville's Adventures, and Bayard Taylor's Travels."

Writing from Cheyenne on November 8th, Mr. Bancroft announced the shipment of a small package of Wyoming stuff, all that he had been able to secure, and also his intention to have some one take matter from the office files of the newspapers of that place, the Sun and Leader, the latter of which was very complete. Though returning himself to Denver, that day, he promised to have more Wyoming dictations taken.

In a letter dated the next day, he expressed the opinion that a proper division of the work would be made by devoting three hundred and fifty pages to Colorado, two hundred and twenty-five to Nevada, and one hundred and seventy-five to Wyoming, and requested that the writing be done on that basis until some change should be found necessary. In closing, he suggests another line of research to be carried through the volume in the words: "And all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to British Columbia, I want to pay special attention to the cattle interest and cattle men, the origin and development of the industry, one of the most marvelous and important of modern times."

The last letter dealing with the manner of treatment of material dated October 9, 1885, asks Mrs. Victor to do the best she can with Mackey and the silver question in order to satisfy Mr. Stone, the publishing agent, whose work, Mr. Bancroft said, was hard enough at best.

It thus appears that three leading objects were kept constantly in mind at this time: one, the handling of the various subjects in such a way as not to displease the people in the district written up, that the work might be popular and the work of the canvassers easy as they went about soliciting subscriptions for it; another, the writing of the various chapters in such a way that the first draft would constitute finished history and take up no more space than that assigned in the volume; and finally, and really at the bottom of the preceding, a desire to have the history written as soon as possible. Evidence that Mr. Bancroft wished to have the work done in the least possible time and with the least possible cost is abundant in these letters.

In October Nemos had been set to counting the pages which Mrs. Victor had written since entering the library, a proceeding which she resented, believing that it afforded no just basis for judging her historical work. The next letter from Mr. Bancroft, on October 20th, brought the request that she bring the work "at first writing within the requisite compass so as not to make it so terribly costly." An intimation that greater haste would be pleasing was again conveyed on November 1st, when Mr. Bancroft expressed the confidence that if Mrs. Victor were to write three volumes more, they would be done in three years instead of six, a view of the case most contrary to hers, since before entering the library she had already worked out many of the problems in Oregon history, and now that she was entering upon another field, found more time necessary. That Mr. Bancroft did not make allowance for this, however, is shown by a letter written on November 17th. Here he begins the subject by stating that it would be a great mistake to suppose that he was dissatisfied with Mrs. Victor's work, or that any one had in the faintest degree criticised it, and says that all he wants is to practice such economy of time and money as will enable him to complete the work before he is dead or has failed in business. Then he proceeds to reckon up results thus:

"I do not know when the present volume will be finished ready for the printer. But six years have already passed, and, calling this volume done, it would be two years to a volume. About fifteen hundred of your pages make a volume, I believe, and counting three hundred days to the year, would be two and a half pages a day. When you first came, you started off with ten pages, which we all thought rapid, but the outcome makes it exceedingly small. This, with what other work has been done on your volumes, would make every page of your manuscript ready for the printer cost me considerably over two dollars a page."

After a denial that this is intended as a complaint about the past, he says:

"Go on and do the best you can. I have written equivalent to six volumes during the last six years besides devoting my time to revising and outside matters. But I don't expect any one to work as I do. I am not satisfied with old hands now, however, who do not give me say, four or five pages a day all ready for the printer."

According to the printed rules of the library, the hours were from 7.15 sharp to 6 o'clock in the evening, with half an hour for lunch. When we recall the complexity and minuteness of research and thought necessary in historical writing, we must consider three hundred such days a year heavy work. The requirement of an average of a certain number of pages a day was therefore one which would naturally tend to increase the worry of the writer. This requirement was also exacted of Mr. Oak, and we may well conclude that if such pressure were brought to bear on the two most experienced writers in the library, upon the junior writers it must have been intense indeed.

The writing of the volume on Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming, so far as the material at hand permitted, was completed at the end of the year 1885. With all of the precautions taken, however, the pages on Colorado had to be condensed nearly a third to bring them within the space allowed. This was done, as was frequently the case, by throwing matter into fine type and printing as footnotes, instead of making many changes in the manuscript.

The system of biographical footnotes as it appears in the history, Mrs. Victor claimed as her contribution to the general plan of the work. The idea was followed with excellent results in her own volumes as well as those written by others, the object being to make biographical mention for the benefit of posterity of every man who took a prominent part in the building of a Pacific state or territory. For carrying out such a purpose, the time of writing during the lives of at least part of the same generation that founded these commonwealths, offered unusually good advantages.

The original intention, Mrs. Victor has told us, was for her to prepare the volume on Utah, since before coming to the coast, she had had occasion to make a study of early Mormon history through coming in contact with some refugees from Nauvoo. But so much work had already been assigned her that when the time came to do the writing, this was impossible. Mr. Bancroft had already made a study of the early Spanish history of the territory, and had written this part when he assigned the work on the bulk of the remainder to Mr. Alfred Bates, a writer of polished English and a man of scholarly attainments who had previously assisted Mr. John S. Hittell in his work on The Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast. (From Literary Industries, 267-68, we learn that Bates was a native of Leeds, England, born May 4, 1840. His father was a wool stapler who lost his fortune in the panic of 1847. Compelled at an early age to earn his own livelihood, he began teaching at the age of fifteen, and later taught at Marlborough College of which the dean of Westminster was then head. To him young Bates became private secretary in 1862. While preparing for Cambridge the following year, he accepted a lucrative position in New South Wales, where he suffered much from ill health, at one time being given up by three doctors. An offer of a position as teacher in California took him thither and he continued at this work for a year. During the two years spent with Mr. Hittell, he was the most valued of his assistants.) Those acquainted with the circumstances and the men have accordingly held that certain incidents in Utah history unfavorable to the Mormons could not have been toned down by Bates as they are in the printed volume, and that the Mormon turn to the work was therefore given by Bancroft in the pages which he wrote and in his revision of Bates' work. (See article by Frances Fuller Victor in Salt Lake Tribune of April 14, 1893.) This seems probable from what Mr. Bancroft tells us of his efforts to secure material for the volume from the Mormon church, as well as his natural desire to please subscribers to the work.

Mr. Nemos, who was a foreigner, had no preference as to the field in which his writing was done, and it was consequently scattered through different volumes. Besides collaborating with Mr. Savage and others on the Mexican and Central American volumes, he wrote part of the material on British Columbia and Alaska. By the time Mrs. Victor's third volume was completed at the end of the year 1885, Oak had completed his work on the North Mexican States and the five volumes on California under Spanish and Mexican rule. The writing of the two volumes containing the American portion of California history was thereupon assigned to Mrs. Victor and Nemos, the former assuming responsibility for the preparation of the political chapters, a field in which her work had been pronounced especially good, and the latter taking up the institutional chapters, a part which he had largely fulfilled toward all the Spanish volumes of the history.

The introduction of the institutional feature is to be accredited to Nemos. The writing done by Oak was in the form of annals, a form in general suited admirably to the provincial records which he worked up; but against such a style throughout the series, Nemos tells us that he presented suggestions and arguments to Mr. Bancroft for introducing material which should tell the history of the people, and that in this he prevailed.

In April, 1886, the burning of the Bancroft business house threatened temporarily to bring the history project to an abrupt termination at a time when only the first volumes had been published, but the enterprise soon recovered from the blow. Under the leadership of Mr. Bancroft, both business and history writing went on as before, the firm of Bancroft and Company being organized for the conduct of the former, while the publication of the history previously carried on as a department of the general book concern was now turned over to The History Company, a corporation organized by Mr. Bancroft for the purpose of handling the work.

At the completion by Oak of his volume on New Mexico and Arizona in May, 1887, he retired from the library with health very much shattered, leaving Mr. Nemos at the head of affairs. After spending some time on a new work now undertaken by Mr. Bancroft, the latter also severed his connection with library matters in August, 1888.

At the time of Oak's departure, Bancroft was planning a biographical work to be issued at the conclusion of the task which was then engaging the attention of the library force. This work, at first called Chronicles of the Kings, but published under the title Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealths, was to present in detail the lives of wealthy and influential men who had borne a prominent part in the affairs of the various Pacific Coast states. For such notice they were charged from a thousand to ten thousand dollars according to the length of the published sketch. (This is according to the printed schedule, the minimum price being paid for three pages print, the maximum for thirty. This included also the printing of a portrait engraved on steel.) The attempt to burden the prestige gained by the histories and their projector with such a load could result only in crippling both. The volumes printed subsequent to the inauguration of this scheme could not be received with the same open-mindedness as former works. The information subsequently made public that money was accepted for notice in the Chronicles lost for Mr. Bancroft the regard of the press of the coast, caused grave doubts to be expressed concerning his disinterestedness as an historian, called out an expression of many bitter—in some cases utterly false—statements concerning his work, and sadly damaged the literary reputation he had been for nearly twenty years building on the work done under his direction.

While it was inevitable that the publication of the Chronicles as a parasite upon the history should result thus disastrously and deplorably for the fame of the latter work, we must not fail to recognize the fact that the labors of the writers upon both works were not a whit less conscientious and painstaking than they had always been. After the sixth and seventh volumes of the California history were completed in 1888, the volume on Washington, Idaho, and Montana was written. In 1890, the final volume on California was published, followed in the next year by the supplementary volumes, Essays and Literary Industries, which ended twenty years of library work for Hubert Howe Bancroft and his assistants.

The History of the Pacific States, we have seen, was an evolution, passing through the stages of handbook and encyclopædia before it became a history. But when the last idea had been reached, the development of the project was by no means complete, but rather just begun. The necessity of the Native Races was demonstrated before work had proceeded for a twelve-month. As late as 1878, Mr. Bancroft estimated that the history proper would comprise but fourteen volumes at the outside.

In his letter to Mrs. Victor, dated August 1st of that year, we get an interesting glimpse of the plan in an earlier stage. The work is to be divided, he says, somewhat in the following manner: Conquest of Darien, one volume; Conquest of Mexico, one volume; Mexico under the Viceroys, two volumes; Mexican Revolution and Modern History, one or two; Explorations Northward and the History of California, three or four; the Northwest Coast, Oregon and British Columbia together, two or three; Alaska, one. Under the head of California history was to be included somewhere the histories of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada, and the history of Oregon was likewise to include Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Oregon and British Columbia he thought could be written in a year. Not until six more years had passed was it finally recognized that natural expansion as the work proceeded would necessitate devoting to the series of history proper a number of volumes exactly double that which was then contemplated. To this series were added as a supplement an even half dozen volumes.

If we find that the outline grew from that of a few volumes in 1872 to one of almost forty in 1884, and that the work expanded fourteen volumes after it had been definitely laid out, we are not at all surprised that the part of the whole which Mr. Bancroft intended to write grew relatively less as time went on, and the part assigned to others became correspondingly greater. There is some evidence to show that when writing began on the first volume of the Central American History in 1873, the director of the project actually had in mind the plan which he gives in the Literary Industries, that of writing with the aid of assistants who were to be responsible for "the study and reduction of certain minor sections" which he was to "employ" in his own writing. Thus we find, according to the information left by Nemos, that Bancroft actually wrote half of the volume, that Oak at first took out notes, and that Nemos prepared his work in the rough, leaving a considerable part of it to be rewritten. For the next volume undertaken, the first of the six on Mexico, we see that the chief was unable to prepare so much material in its final form, and rested with but two chapters completely to his credit, together with the rewriting of part of Nemos' work on the remainder. In four or five years, he expresses the determination of writing what he can himself and leaving the rest to his aids. This as we shall see amounted in the end to his doing about one seventh of the history, slightly revising the work of the other authors, often by the aid of critics in his employ, and preparing most of the material for the supplementary volumes.

Thus it came about that the original plan, the plan as published, was exactly reversed, and instead of Mr. Bancroft's doing all the work in final form, except some minor sections assigned to those whom he called his assistants, it was the so-called assistants who really wrote the History of the Pacific States, and Mr. Bancroft who did a few minor, or at any rate less difficult parts. Nor is it at all true, as one authority has said (Appleton's Encyclopædia of American Biography, I, 156), that Mr. Bancroft wrote the most important chapters. Of course, the surprising thing about this is that Mr. Bancroft should have stated in the Literary Industries that he had followed a plan for the division of labor originally intended, but not followed at all. Especially unfortunate is this, in view of repeated charges of absorbing the literary reputation of his collaborators and aids, and appropriating the credit for their work.

It has long since been recognized that the name of Hubert Howe Bancroft can not be placed in the ranks of great American historical writers. In the first place, he wrote only parts of volumes. It will be observed, too, that as a rule he wrote simpler parts, consisting of synopses of early voyages, or annals easy to handle, such as the rovings of Spaniards in Utah, or the rise of a provincial government among the fur-traders of British Columbia. But Mr. Bancroft, as founder of the library and organizer of the history, has rendered a real and lasting service to historical literature.

The first great end subserved by his undertaking was the preservation of a great mass of invaluable historical material, which would otherwise have been lost. In 1880, he wrote:

"There are men yet living who helped to make our history, and who can tell us what it is better than their sons, or than any who shall come after them. A score of years hence few of them will remain. Twenty years ago, many parts of our territory were not old enough to have a history; twenty years hence, much will be lost that may now be secured": (Lit. Ind., 635).

It is thus for the timeliness of his labors in collecting his library that the Pacific Coast, and the whole world as well, is indebted to Mr. Bancroft. For this work his qualifications as a successful business man experienced in handling books were exactly those required.

A second great end which Mr. Bancroft attained was the founding of a history of Western North America on the original sources which he had collected in order that it might constitute a foundation upon which future histories would be built.

"He who shall come after me," says he in the letter quoted above, "will scarcely be able to undermine my work by laying another and deeper foundation. He must build upon mine or not at all, for he can not go beyond my authorities for facts. He may add to or alter my work, for I shall not know or be able to tell everything, but he can never make a complete structure of his own."

That the volumes supervised by Mr. Bancroft should contain imperfections is in the nature of the case inevitable. Perfect historical estimates of contemporaries can not as a rule be made, and history based largely on personal reminiscence must contain errors of refraction which can be corrected only in the clearer light of later years. The handling of material by a writer who did not collect it, and who is likely to find the places and conditions dealt with strange to his experience, inevitable though it be in so large an undertaking, results in the writing of faulty history. The hastening of the work and the editorial revision of manuscripts by a manager desirous of pleasing subscribers, and impelled by various other motives of his own, are not circumstances likely to increase the accuracy of the work. But after allowance has been made for all inaccuracies which have crept in through these various avenues, we still have the fact that the histories are based upon sources which may be supplemented but can never be displaced. No greater mistake could be made, therefore, than to say that because they contain errors they are worthless. All must agree with the practical argument made by a thoughtful old pioneer of the writer's acquaintance that, in spite of all criticisms which may be passed upon the Bancroft histories, they contain a great fund of information which is nowhere else to be found in print.

A third result of the history plan, and one which is of importance to historical writers everywhere who have large fields to cover, was the devising of a coöperative method for organizing the vast collections in the library. Mr. Bancroft makes the claim of having been the first to resort to such a division of labor; and points out (Literary Industries, 767) that his method avoids the repetition of details and insures a more thorough working up of the field than does the coöperative method as the term is usually understood, under which the writers work independently of each other after the field is divided. Such a claim might indeed be granted had Mr. Bancroft announced himself as editor and reviser instead of author, and had he designated the part of the work written by each of his collaborators in accordance with the usual custom in coöperative works. The printing of his name as author on the title page, and his general recognition as such in accordance with press notices following those of the Native Races, have, of course, largely lost for him the credit of originating a coöperative method for the organizing of large quantities of material.

Concerning the understanding Mr. Bancroft had with his corps of writers generally as to the public acknowledgment of their work which he would make, information is not at hand. Only one had ever before written and published a book, and perhaps the majority gave no thought to the rights which would be theirs as authors. Certain it is that when the greater number of the more prominent writers entered the library, the work was planned on a much smaller scale than that upon which it was carried out, and, as they did not know that they were to become the authors of entire or consecutive volumes, the question was not then of the importance which it assumed with the later growth of the series. What the understanding was with those who first entered the library we can not say definitely, but his ideas on that subject seems to have been a survival of the encyclopædia project. To Mrs. Victor, just prior to her entering his service, he wrote on August 1, 1878:

"The work is wholly mine. I do what I can myself, and pay for what I have done over that; but I father the whole of it and it goes out only under my name. All who work in the library do so simply as my assistants. Their work is mine to print, scratch, or throw in the fire. I have no secrets; yet I do not tell everybody just what each does. I do not pretend to do all the work myself, that is, to prepare for the printer all that goes out under my name. I have three or four now who can write for the printer after a fashion; none of them can suit me as well as I can suit myself. One or two only will write with very little change from me. All the rest require sometimes almost rewriting."

He further adds that it gives him pleasure to acknowledge his obligations to his assistants, but that this acknowledgment is always voluntary on his part and not claimed as a right by them, and says that while he is not sure of mentioning certain persons in connection with certain parts as he had done in the introduction to the Native Races, he will certainly not do more than that. The only mention which he promises definitely to his writers is a biographical notice in the Literary Industries.

"The work in the library," says he, "good or bad, is mine; were it not so, I would simply do what I could with my own fingers, or do nothing."

It is easy enough to see why Mr. Bancroft should wish to have absolute control of manuscripts to insure good work, and a complete covering of the field, but it is difficult to see how he could justly make the claim before the world that manuscripts turned out by other persons were his writing.

Not only was the myth of Mr. Bancroft's authorship repeated on the title page of each volume of the history, and in the reviews which built upon the prestige gained by him as supposed author of the Native Races, but not a word was printed to show that any one else wrote the least part of the work. When asked to indicate in the preface the part done by each person, according to the evidence of a number of his writers, he always declared that this was just the one thing he wished to avoid. The only approach to an acknowledgment is the statement in the preface in words which apparently refer only to indexers and note-takers, that he has been "able to utilize the labors of others," among whom as the most faithful and efficient he mentions Oak, Nemos, Savage, Petroff, and Mrs. Victor. (History of Central America, I, preface viii). The promise is made that he will speak of these and others at length elsewhere, and this promise is redeemed by the printing of their biographies in the Literary Industries without indicating who was engaged in writing and who in purely routine work connected with the library, much less designating what parts of the work each had done. From a popular edition of this volume subsequently issued for wider circulation, even these were stricken out.

While the real authors of the history never agreed to keep silence concerning their right to recognition, it was very well understood that they would remain in Mr. Bancroft's employ only so long as they acquiesced in his claiming the work as solely his own and made no individual claims for themselves. This bread and butter argument for silence proved effective in all cases. An example of the method in meeting claims made for any of the library writers occurs in connection with the publication of the History of Oregon. A notice of the work just before it was issued was sent to the Oregon press and the statement made that Mrs. Victor was the author. (Emma H. Adams in Portland Oregonian, October 5, 1886, under the title, "Mrs. Victor and Her Latest Literary Work.") This was met by Mr. Bancroft with a letter for publication in the paper printing the notice, in which he asserted that no entire volume of the series had been written by Mrs. Victor. Of course the significance of this statement is in the word "entire," which simply meant that he had interpolated a line here and there as he went over the manuscript. A note to Mrs. Victor under date of October 16th explains this apparent denial of her authorship thus:

"I do not want for myself the credit due to my assistants. At the same time, I do not deem it necessary to explain to the public just what part of the work was done by each. Everybody knows that you have been at work on Oregon, and that is all right, although I have done considerable work on your manuscript for better or worse, or at all events to make it conform to the general plan."

In view of Mr. Bancroft's persistent refusal to give "assistants" anything like credit for their work in accord with general custom and literary ethics as well, and in view of the fact that this refusal meant that the public would credit him solely as the author, it must have been a difficult matter for him to convince his corps of writers that he did not want the credit due them.

The process of making Mrs. Victor's manuscripts conform to the general plan, which is here regarded as the principal source of alteration, according to Oak, meant nothing except the condensation of her work, mainly by the omission of considerable portions, in order to bring it within the space assigned. That such revision did not affect her claims to authorship, is of course apparent.

It is sufficiently clear, from what appears above, that Mr. Bancroft's public justification of himself for publishing under his own name all the work done in the library is the fact that he reserved the right to alter all manuscripts and make what changes he saw fit. This made him managing editor, however, not author. The comparatively few additions he made to the manuscripts can not justify such a claim. That the revision of Mrs. Victor's work consisted in the main of nothing more than leaving out parts appears from two cases already cited, one in connection with the History of Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming, the other with the History of Oregon, as well as from the direct statements of those who supervised library work. As we have seen he demanded that his writers turn out a certain number of pages a day "all ready for the printer," so he could have had little occasion to revise their work. The writers who Mr. Bancroft said in 1878 wrote with very little change from him were of course Oak and Nemos. Now Oak wrote seven and a half volumes of the history, and Nemos and Mrs. Victor five each, while Bancroft wrote four—a total of at least twenty-two volumes out of the twenty-eight to the authorship of which no serious claim could be made on the ground of altered manuscripts. Moreover, Savage says in his autobiography that, while Bancroft made additions and amendments to the three volumes which he wrote, in some of his pages only a word or two was changed and that others remained intact. What rewriting was occasionally done on the remaining volumes, was apparently done as often by other persons as by Mr. Bancroft. His relation toward the work was therefore exactly the same as that of a managing editor toward the matter printed in a newspaper. The latter could never claim the authorship of the articles written by his staff, although altered to a considerable extent by him or by his direction.

It should be stated here that Mr. Bancroft justified his course to those in the library by insisting that they furnished him merely with rough notes, and that it would be necessary for him to rewrite the work, or at any rate, considerable portions of it. This, had it been done, would have been strictly in accord with the account of his connection with the work as printed in the Literary Industries. But it was not done, and the account as printed is incorrect.

Since the completion of the history, but one of the writers has publicly claimed the authorship of the volumes written in the library. Ill health, only too common with those who labored through the work, has in most cases been a sufficient barrier to such action. Savage and Bates remained in Mr. Bancroft's employ for a number of years engaged in other work, and of course under such circumstances could not make any claims. Nemos as a foreigner could not be expected to take much interest in such matters, and his early return to Europe and subsequent residence there have rendered it difficult for him to make such a statement did he so desire. Mrs. Victor alone has printed a general statement of the portions of the history written by her, a course in which she was influenced by years of absolute independence in directing her literary energies before entering Mr. Bancroft's employ, and a consequent appreciation of the rights and honors of authorship. Four volumes of the Bancroft histories were exhibited as her work at the Mechanics Pavilion in San Francisco during the fair in January, 1893, and also among a collection of the works of New York women authors made the same year (Utica Morning Herald, May 4, 1893). A special preface over her name inserted in the first volume of the Oregon history in the exhibit claimed the authorship of the volumes.

(These are the words of the preface: "It seems not only just, but necessary to affix my name to at least four volumes of the History of the Pacific States, although that does not cover all the work done on the history by myself. The four volumes referred to comprise the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nevada. My name is therefore placed on the backs of these volumes without displacing that of Mr. Bancroft.")

As to the shares of the various writers in the history proper, we have the sources of information which have already been mentioned in speaking of the Native Races, supplemented by very full data left by Mrs. Victor concerning her part in the work. It is thus possible to give in a general way the authorship of each volume, barring fragmentary writing.

From these sources it is found that during the progress of the work on the Native Races, Mr. Bancroft had after hard labor and much revision completed his introduction to the History of Central America, and had written a half of the first volume. Oak wrote half of the preface and the fine print summary of explorations, and Nemos was responsible for a third of the volume from page 460 on, although he prepared material in the rough, leaving it to be rewritten by a German aid whose name is not given, but who may have been a man by the name of Kuhn mentioned as having done work on the second volume.

Of this latter volume, Mr. Bancroft wrote one chapter, apparently the first, which deals with Pizarro and Peru. Nemos and a writer named Peatfield (J. J. Peatfield, described by Bancroft [Lit. Ind., 265-267,] as a "strong man and one of talent," was born in Nottinghamshire, England, August 26, 1833. His father, a clergyman, educated him for the church and he took his degree at Cambridge in 1857, being graduated in the classical tripos. The church, however, was distasteful to him, and he obtained a tutorship, subsequently in 1862 going to Nicaragua to engage in cacao cultivating. This enterprise proved a failure. After attempting cotton, cacao again, and finally coffee all in vain, in 1865 he became a bookkeeper at San José, the capital of Costa Rica. In January, 1868, he was made a clerk and translator to the legation at Guatemala, and two years later, British Consul General for Central America. While holding the consulship of Guatemala a third time, he resigned on account of ill health and went to San Francisco, where he arrived in November, 1871. Becoming bookkeeper and cashier for a Nevada mine at White Pine, and battling much with ill health, he returned to San Francisco, where he acted as teacher and bookkeeper until February, 1881, when he entered the library), labored together on the volume and prepared half of it, and Bates a fourth. Kuhn wrote a fifth which was partly rewritten by Nemos. The latter claimed about a fourth of a volume as the actual material written by him for the first and second volumes together.

The third volume, including the history of Central America in the nineteenth century, was written by Savage, who, nearly all his life had been engaged in the consular service of the United States in Cuba and Central America.

(Thomas Savage, according to a biography written by himself, was born at Havana, Cuba, August 27, 1823, a short time after his parents had removed thither from Philadelphia. His father, a descendant of the earliest settlers of Massachusetts and a brother of Savage, the famous genealogist of New England, was from Boston, and his mother, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, was the daughter of a French planter who had escaped the great massacre in San Domingo and a Maryland woman of Jewish extraction).

In childhood, Savage was several times taken to the United States and back as the necessities of his father's business demanded. At the age of fifteen, he had studied the Latin classics, advanced mathematics and languages, nearly breaking forever his health, which had always been feeble. Abandoning his studies and taking a long rest in the country, he regained sufficient strength to enable him to support himself, for his parents had now lost their fortune. He entered a commercial house at Havana, and after working a few years as bookkeeper, in the summer of 1846 joined the United States consulate as clerk and translator. From that time until the end of the year 1867, he was attached to the consulate, rising successively to the positions of secretary to the consul general, deputy consul general, and vice consul general. From 1854 on, there was not a single year during which the consulate general was not in his charge for several months. During the War of the Rebellion he was several times in charge, once for twenty months, and during this trying period won the confidence of his government by laboring hard to do his whole duty.

He spent the greater part of the year 1868 in the United States, and then went to Panama, where he was engaged as assistant editor of the Star and Herald, having charge of the Spanish portion of the paper. Savage had lost a wife in Cuba, and in January, 1870, married a second time. Shortly afterward, he embarked for Salvador, where he taught English in the University, became consul-general, and finally started a newspaper. Just as this last enterprise was beginning to pay, his wife's precarious health necessitated his removal to a better climate, and he settled in Guatemala. Here he established a fine printing office, and began the publication of a newspaper. Though aided by the government, the business nevertheless proved unprofitable, and after selling out at a heavy loss, he came to San Francisco in 1873. Throughout life, Savage was a constant reader, with a special fondness for history. He once said that he believed he had read the histories of all the world.

From a perusal of what Nemos says concerning the History of Mexico, we are led to infer that Bancroft again wrote the introduction, as the former librarian credits his chief with two chapters of the first volume. Nemos wrote the remainder, but Bancroft rewrote some of his work, he said only a fifth, much of the revision consisting in a mere change of words. Oak differed with him on this point, holding that Bancroft did more rewriting, but Nemos persists that this is an exaggeration.

The second volume was done by Nemos, Savage, and Peatfield, Nemos writing the first half and some later chapters, two thirds of the volume in all, Savage one fourth, and Peatfield a little.

Of the third volume, Nemos wrote between a third and a half, including, as he tells us, the leading institutional and political parts, Savage a third, a writer named Griffin (George Butler Griffin was a native of New York state, and a graduate of Yale. He was a linguist, and had been an engineer in South America. Apparently early in the eighties, his connection with the library had ceased. He died by his own hand.) two or three chapters, and Peatfield a part.

Of volume four, Bancroft did one chapter, Peatfield a fourth of the whole, and Savage a third. Nemos "assisted on parts," his work aggregating a fourth of the volume.

The fifth volume of the Mexican History, embracing the period from 1804 to 1861, was known as Savage's volume. Of the manuscript, he actually wrote about two thirds. Nemos did about a fourth, including the fall of Mexico and the leading war episodes. Some of the writing was done by Peatfield. (In conversation he claimed to have written a large part of the Mexican War chapters.)

The last volume of the Mexican History was prepared chiefly by Nemos and Savage, the latter writing the first and last chapters, the former about two thirds of the volume, including the history of Maximilian and the institutional chapters. Peatfield did a little work on this volume. Oak's contribution to the History of Mexico, according to his own statement, consisted of a "few slight parts."

The history of the northern part of Mexico, and the Southwest of the United States was Oak's special field, designated by him as The Spanish Northwest. The entire first volume of the History of the North Mexican States is his work. The history of Lower California in this volume, as well as that in the next, was based on a manuscript on Lower California written several years before by Harcourt. But this work was so altered by both Oak and Nemos in their respective volumes through condensation, the changing of conclusions, and the adding of new material, as to amount to a rewriting.

The History of Texas in North Mexican States, second volume, is the work of Peatfield; the remainder of the volume, between a third and a half, that of Nemos. (The Texas part was subsequently extended by Peatfield for the edition now in circulation, that it might find a better sale in that state.)

The volume on Arizona and New Mexico is the work of Oak alone.

Spanish and Mexican California likewise belonged to Oak's field and the first five volumes of the History of California are from his pen. (Nemos adds, "though he neglected to put in institutions, leaving them for W. N. [himself] and Savage." In view of Oak's oft-repeated assertion that he was sole author of these five volumes, this must mean that they were supplied in other volumes. Moreover, there are no institutional parts properly speaking in these five volumes, and if such parts as "Mission Progress," "Commercial Affairs," and the like are to be regarded, they make up half the work.)

The early American history of California was a topic in which Mr. Bancroft was naturally interested because of his own mining experience during the early gold days. Nemos' schedule shows that he wrote sixty pages for the sixth volume of California, a circumstance which taken with our knowledge of fields of research into which he entered in the preparation of California Pastoral and Popular Tribunals makes us reasonably sure that he wrote the first, second, and twenty-fifth chapters. Mrs. Victor, who in her work on Oregon had been found especially strong as a writer on political subjects, was assigned the task of working up the political history of California, and, according to her own statement, wrote two hundred and thirty-four pages for this volume. We can positively identify chapters twelve, thirteen, twenty-three, and twenty-four as her work. From the similarity of their subject-matter to some already treated by her in the Oregon history, and from the fact that their addition to the work just indicated brings the total almost exactly to the figures given, we may conclude that she also wrote the third, fourth, and fifth chapters. The chapter entitled Mexican Land Titles is Oak's work, and the remainder of the volume, almost two thirds, is that of Nemos.

Information given by Mrs. Victor shows that she wrote for the final volume of the History of California four hundred and eighty-nine pages on politics and railroads. We are thus enabled to designate as her work chapters nine to twenty-one inclusive, and chapter twenty-five. This still leaves to her credit eighteen pages to be located in some other chapter. The rest of the volume, embracing the portions dealing with commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and mining, was written, Nemos says, by himself. Before publication, the sheets on California judiciary were submitted to Justice Stephen J. Field for his approval. The estimate of certain pioneer characters in the California history, together with the adopting of the Mexican view of the conquest of that state by Americans, brought down upon Mr. Bancroft the condemnation of the California Society of Pioneers, who, in 1894, expelled him from honorary membership in their body. (See pamphlet proceedings of the Society of California Pioneers in reference to the History of Hubert Howe Bancroft.) It is a curious fact, however, that the passages which were made the basis of the society's indictment are almost entirely in the first five volumes of the California history, which were written by Oak. He has declared that even the revisions were his own and not Bancroft's.

The History of Utah, another storm-center among the histories, was written by Bates and Bancroft, the former, according to Nemos, preparing twice as much manuscript as the latter. The earlier chapters are by Bancroft, but no more certain assignment of their respective shares in the work can be made from the information at hand.

The History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, as already noticed, was written by Mrs. Victor, with the exception of the first two chapters on Nevada, which were by Bancroft. Mrs. Victor's statement of her work includes these also, perhaps by inadvertence. It is possible that she rewrote them, however, as Mr. Bancroft had admitted that they were out of proportion.

In the work on the Northwest Coast, we again see Bancroft's predilection for early voyages. The first half of Volume I, including the Spanish explorations of the coast, belonged to Oak's field, and was written by him. Bancroft wrote most of the remainder of the two volumes, which included the maritime fur trade, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Astor enterprise, the Northwest and Hudson Bay companies, and the later American fur trade.

A hundred pages on the "Oregon Question" written by Mrs. Victor for Oregon were incorporated in the second volume of the History of the Northwest Coast. She had taken the American side of the case, a view with which Mr. Bancroft was not in sympathy. By his order, Mr. Oak rewrote the subject from an English standpoint. He added chapter fifteen, but to some extent made use of her work in preparing chapter sixteen. Mrs. Victor always claimed that he merely altered it, Oak himself that he rewrote it. The remainder of her manuscript was retained and printed as chapter eighteen.

The volume on Washington, Idaho, and Montana, was written wholly by Mrs. Victor, a task for which she was fitted by her work on early Oregon history.

The History of Oregon was also her work, a fact which has been known and fully recognized by prominent Oregonians since the day of its publication. She had contemplated writing such a work even before the beginning of Mr. Bancroft's project, and it was only a realization of her inability to compete single handed with the capital and other resources at his disposal which caused her to enter his employ. In collecting material within the state, she had the assistance of such pioneer families as her friends the Applegates and McBrides, and among others, of Judge Deady and Elwood Evans. Valuable data concerning Hudson Bay rule in Oregon were furnished her in a correspondence with Mr. A. B. Roberts and Mr. Allen, formerly of the Hudson Bay Company. (This correspondence is now in the possession of Mr. E. H. Kilham, of Portland, Or.) The work as written made more than two volumes, and condensation was necessary. A chapter on geology and mining was omitted by Mr. Bancroft; the disposal of the manuscript on the "Oregon Question" has already been noticed, and matter on the San Juan boundary dispute and the Modoc war was also incorporated in other volumes. Mrs. Victor considered the first volume of the History of Oregon as perfect as it could be made at the time. With certain features of the second she was not so well satisfied, the most prominent being the omission of the history of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, necessitated by Mr. Bancroft's failure to secure material, and certain changes made by him in her manuscript on Indian Wars in Southern Oregon in such a way as to throw blame upon the settlers (Mrs. Victor in [Salem] Oregon Statesman February 24, 1895). It is worthy of note that her history is the first to pass over the political results attributed to Whitman's ride by previous writers. The sheets of the Oregon history before they were issued were submitted to Judge Deady for his approval.

In the half of the History of British Columbia which he wrote, Mr. Bancroft utilized some of the material that he had collected in person. Bates prepared a fourth of the manuscript, and Nemos and Bowman together the remainder, Nemos writing some of the chapters and revising others.

The History of Alaska afforded Mr. Bancroft an opportunity for further research in the field of early voyages. He is credited with half of the volume, Bates with a third, Nemos a little, and Petroff about a fourth. Nemos places all of his own writing on this work and British Columbia together at a third of a volume.

A review of the facts shows that if we exclude the comparatively few interpolations and changes made by Mr. Bancroft, we can with assurance declare the authorship of all portions of the third volume of Central America, of the volumes on California, and of those on the North Mexican States, Arizona and New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, the Northwest Coast, Oregon and Washington, Idaho and Montana, and that we can give in general terms, though without being able to locate the exact parts done by individuals, the names of the authors of two volumes of Central America, and all of Mexico, Utah, British Columbia, and Alaska. In these works Oak and Nemos were agreed that there were scattered fragmentary bits aggregating several volumes so worked over by different writers in different ways as to render it impossible to determine the exact authorship.

Turning to a consideration of the individual field of writing, we find that of the twenty-eight volumes of history proper, Bancroft is to be credited with four, no one entire, Oak with seven and a half, Nemos five, no one entire, Mrs. Victor a little less than five, Savage over three, Peatfield one and a half, principally in small parts, and Bates one and a fourth. (This is a computation based exactly upon the facts as given, except in Bancroft's case.) Nemos upon the same basis makes the shares, except Savage's and Bancroft's, all slightly greater. He assigns to Oak between seven and a half and seven and two thirds volumes, to himself and Mrs. Victor over five each, to Peatfield about two, and to Bates one and a half. An actual count of the parts of volumes written by Bancroft gives a total of three and a half, but Nemos said that he took four as the number upon the authority of Oak. This would allow him a half volume of interpolations in the twenty-four and a half volumes done by others. Griffin, Petroff, Kuhn, and a man named Rasmus were the authors of fragments. Oak thought that the name was Erasmus, but said that Nemos who gave Rasmus was the better authority.

Concerning these facts in their main features, there is a complete agreement between Oak and Nemos, who together knew all the details which were to be known, and the evidence of the other writers fits exactly with their statements. The popular estimate of Hubert Howe Bancroft as the historian of the Pacific Coast, is founded upon the vague references and indefinite assertions of the Literary Industries within the pages of which there is nowhere to be found a straightforward statement that this man wrote more than a part of the works to which his name is attached. On the other hand, his own statements over his own signature admit that he did not pretend to be the author of what went out under his name. The ranking of Mr. Bancroft among historians of the United States is, therefore, an error, and what has appeared in the public press concerning an "Historian of the Pacific Coast," and a "Macaulay of the West," is legend pure and simple. Instead of one Pacific Coast historian who wrote the Bancroft volumes, there were eight.

As to the six supplementary volumes of the "Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft," which ended the series, Mrs. Victor had some means of determining the authorship. According to her notes, Savage and Nemos did a great deal of writing and revising. The Modoc War in inter pocula, a part of the chapter entitled Some Indian Episodes, was written by Mrs. Victor from notes obtained by herself on the ground. She also wrote some other matter for this volume. The remainder was done by Bancroft and his family, who also aided him much on Popular Tribunals.

Pastorals was produced chiefly by Bancroft. Of the Literary Industries, Nemos wrote several chapters or parts, Savage a little, and Oak three or four bits of a few paragraphs each. It must be remembered that Bancroft's writing in these private volumes was subjected to criticism, revision, and retouching by the best literary talent which the library afforded.

Concerning the Chronicles of the Builders, the biographical series which followed the histories, with such unfortunate results, some notes in Mrs. Victor's handwriting taken in 1888, about a year before work finally ended, give us the following facts: The introductory essay is by Nemos, as are also the reflective chapters and reviews, together with most of the historical text. Peatfield wrote Oregon, Washington, and Texas, though some of the latter was rewritten by Nemos. Mrs. Victor wrote "Routes and Transportation," and a number of the leading biographies, making nearly a volume. Savage wrote about a third of a volume.

Mr. Bancroft as a writer of history was subject to certain influences likely to be felt in his treatment of facts, which did not affect his coworkers. One great object was of course to make the work popular. It was with this end in view that much attention was given to literary finish and typographical features. It was his practice to have a writer employed for the purpose go over his own manuscripts and sometimes those of his assistants to add "classical allusions," as he termed them, for rhetorical effect. He himself was given to the reading of English classics—Carlyle's works are especially mentioned by his friends—as a means of acquiring a good literary style. To stimulate the reader's attention, he occasionally made a side remark of such a ludicrous character as to be startling when one comes upon it in a perfectly serious paragraph. Mrs. Victor often laughed over the interlineation in a paragraph written by her on the Oregon boundary question of the words:

"Man is a preposterous pig; probably the greediest animal that crawls upon this planet": (Oregon, I, 592.)

In passing upon the work of his corps of writers, one who combined the duties of financier as well as editor of the work either consciously or unconsciously must have been influenced by the question whether the treatment of the subject before him was such as would please the people in the locality whose history was being written. The Mormon turn given the History of Utah by the toning down of certain incidents which other historians have "shrunk from contemplating" occurs to us as a case in point: (Frances Fuller Victor in Salt Lake Tribune, April 14, 1893; New York Mail and Express, November 23d).

The publication of the Chronicles before all of the volumes of history were out could hardly have lessened this tendency, as a favorable mention of a man in the history would naturally tend to make him more approachable upon the subject of contributing to that work. Upon the back of the letter to Mrs. Victor instructing her to give prominence to certain dictations, which he admits are practically worthless, is written in her hand the legend, "Ways that are dark and tricks that are vain." As a result of complaint, changes were sometimes made in the text, even after the first edition was out: (Pamphlet, Proceedings of the Society of California Pioneers in Reference to the Histories of Hubert Howe Bancroft).

In the History of Montana occurs an example of a change made directly for business reasons. Several pioneers justly entitled to a place in the history of their territory disagreed with the agent of the Bancroft house concerning the number of volumes of the history which their contract required them to take. As a punishment for their refusal to comply with the demands of the publisher, their biographies were stricken from their place in the footnotes after the volume was set up, and other matter was substituted. (The original sheets with marginal annotations as to amounts paid and biographies to be omitted are in the possession of Mr. E. H. Kilham of Portland, Oregon.) In view of these facts, we are forced to conclude that the business man in Mr. Bancroft, developed by the experiences and associations of a lifetime, sometimes got the better of the historical editor of scarcely fifteen years' standing.

A second factor to be considered in Mr. Bancroft's writing was sometimes expressed by his acquaintances as a mistaking of contrariness for originality. As already indicated, his tendency is toward a form of writing such as will attract the reader's attention. This tendency frequently asserts itself in sweeping statements and striking characterizations, many of them apparently impelled by a desire to give a turn to an incident or an estimate of a character different from that given by any previous writer. Thus Bancroft wrote an estimate of General Grant, which was startling because of the general hostility of its tone, and was considered so unjust by Mrs. Victor and Oak that they persuaded him to leave it out. (Letter of Mrs. Victor of July 25, 1892. The paragraph which was originally intended as a footnote in the History of Oregon, II, 246, is printed on page 18 of the Pamphlet of the Society of California Pioneers, which gives their proceedings with reference to Bancroft's histories.)

Again, in making an effort to avoid following Washington Irving, he has given in the part of the Northwest Coast which he wrote a treatment of the Astor enterprise, and an estimate of the character of Captain Bonneville, which later historians have shown to be prejudiced and in error. (See Chittenden's History of the American Fur Trade in the Far West, I, 432-33.)

A third influence affecting the treatment of facts of history which passed under Mr. Bancroft's editorship, as well as those which he presented in the scattered portions of volumes of which he could claim real authorship, is that of personal bias. The manager of the Bancroft enterprise was a man, who in the course of a thirty years' business career had many business rivalries and personal enmities. His strong dislikes frequently assert themselves in his writings, if we are to take his own statements. (Lit. Ind., 374.)

Again, the personal equation must be accounted for in the value which he sets on the work of historians who wrote before him. He not infrequently disparages their writings in the strongest terms, his depreciation of Washington Irving being one of the most palpable cases. (Chittenden's History of American Fur Trade in the Far West, I, 244-46), has forcibly revealed the extent of the injustice done by Bancroft in this one case. That there are others like it will readily appear. For the effort to demonstrate the superiority of the Bancroft histories over others, we must accordingly make due allowance when attempting a critical estimate.

Furthermore, the editor-manager began the work with certain theories and notions of history that have found their way into the pages which he has published. From the beginning, he adopted the British side in dealing with the dispute over the Oregon boundary. In his treatment of Indian wars, the same tendency to adopt ready-made theories asserted itself. In the manuscript of Mrs. Victor's History of Oregon, treating of Indian Wars in Southern Oregon which "gave great credit to the veterans of that struggle and the settlers generally for their forbearance," the editor interlined some expressions, throwing the blame upon the settlers. When it was pointed out to him that this was not true, he replied that he had begun his History of Central America with this theory of Indian wars, and must be consistent throughout the entire series (Communication of Frances Fuller Victor to the [Salem] Oregon Statesman, February 24, 1895).

To such errors as those just enumerated the work of Mr. Bancroft's collaborators was not subject. The dislike inspired by some of the measures of their chief has sometimes resulted in their disparagement as historians by a public press, absolutely ignorant of the parts of the work for which they were responsible. (In the Salt Lake Tribune, February 16, 1893, is a very striking example. Occasional utterances of the San Francisco papers of about the same time follow along the same line.) It must be remembered that they were not only able and educated, but that the competitive wage system under which they worked offered every inducement to search for the truth and to make it known as they found it in the best collection of books, pamphlets, and newspapers on Pacific Coast history that was ever made. The only characteristics which were common to the library corps, as shown by a study of their biographies, were good education, ill health, and liberal religious views.

In general, these writers had special qualifications which adapted them for work in their respective fields. To Oak there was a fascination in the study of documents from which the usually uninteresting and sometimes tedious details of events in Spanish and Mexican provincial localities were derived. His contributions to history he could honestly claim were better than other writings on the same subject because of the exhaustiveness of his research through the great amount of material at his disposal. While he admired the finer qualities of style in the writings of others, they were not required in his work. He frankly declared that he had little natural ability in this line, and in the writing of provincial annals found no opportunity for the cultivation of what he had. Oak once asserted in a joking mood that he had found of great service a thorough knowledge of Spanish and French, together with a useful smattering of other languages, including English. None of his chapters were rewritten or even reread with a view to polish, for the reason that he believed his works had their chief value merely as records, and that an attempt to make them fascinating to general readers could but result in impairing their value for reference. The fact that the superintendent of literary activities in the Bancroft library was an enthusiast in original research who cared vastly more what was said than how it was said is a circumstance favoring the accuracy of the histories which must not be overlooked. Oak could say that from the first he had exercised an important influence in the direction of honest research and against superficial work, and that he opposed undue haste in bringing the work to a conclusion.

Nemos, unlike Oak, was a writer of smooth, flowing English. On account of his foreign birth he had no preference in the selection of a field, and wrote for more different volumes than any other member of the library force. His great ability, and his consequent position of all-round man, are to be accounted for by great natural endowment supplemented by a thorough training in youth in his own country, a schooling during his London residence in the philosophy of his own country as well as that of the German universities, and a wide acquaintance with European languages. With a remarkable faculty for systematizing work, he was useful, honorable, and trustworthy.

To Mrs. Victor was assigned the agreeable task of working up the field in which she had long taken special interest. She was the only member of the staff who had a literary reputation before entering the library. Noted as a poetess of unusual promise in her earlier days, she had also written excellent prose for different journals, among them a magazine history of the United States published in serial form by the Harpers, until the beginning of the Civil War compelled the discontinuance of the publication in which it appeared. As a contributor to the San Francisco papers in the early "sixties," she had met with pronounced success, while her work on her projected History of Oregon and her publication of two works on the Northwest fitted her for her special field. She had the enviable faculty of putting life into her writings, and it was partially on account of her graceful style that Mr. Bancroft sought her services, for his eye was always attracted by good literary work. But the volumes written by Mrs. Victor were of a far different stamp from the popular literary history. The late Mary Sheldon Barnes, professor of history in Stanford University, declared that she had done her work well. All who were acquainted with her personally recognized the fact that she placed the truth as she conceived it before all else. The leading opponents of the stand she took on disputed questions freely recognized the fact that she had striven to do conscientious, painstaking work. Given to speaking what she believed was the whole truth, even when it was contrary to her immediate interest to do so, she was the last of all persons whom a regard for literary effect would swerve from the path of historical accuracy.

A better man for chief Spanish authority than Thomas Savage could scarcely have been found. Thoroughly acquainted with the language by a life-long residence in Spanish America, he had a natural fondness for history, to which his long continuance in the consular service had added a habit of accuracy, and a capacity for hard work. The fifth volume of the History of Mexico, embracing the history of that country from 1824 to 1861, and the third volume of the Central American history which threads out the tangled skein of the history of the five little republics in the nineteenth century, serve as examples of the vast amount of detail which his writing covered, to say nothing of his labors in collecting and extracting an overwhelming mass of material on Spanish American history. All agree that he was a polished and sound man.

In the writers of smaller parts of the history, we find that the qualifications and fitness for the individual field of writing were no less than in those who prepared more manuscript. Peatfield's connection with the British consular service bespeaks his reliability and capability; Bates' occupancy of a responsible position under a prominent English educator, and the high regard in which his work was held by Hittell bear witness that he was competent to write history; and Petroff's standing as a scholar in his own country, together with his thorough acquaintance with Alaska, vouch for the character of his work.

While the Bancroft corps of writers were not infallible, they were a class of persons in whose integrity and accuracy we may have as great confidence as in the average historian. We can only regret that we can not point out all parts of the work done by each, and that we can not show in detail the extent of Mr. Bancroft's editorial alterations of their work. This latter feature, inherent in the Bancroft plan of writing history, is its greatest weakness, since it of necessity involves some uncertainty as to whether the words we are reading are those of the author who wrote the volume, or the interpretation of Mr. Bancroft. A comparative study of the style of what we know to be the work of the respective writers may suffice to settle a given case. We may state as a fact that the majority of alterations in the manuscripts of the chief assistants were due to the necessity of condensation; and that, aside from this, the revision of their work usually consisted merely in the suppression of radical utterances and the interlineation of a few lines occasionally for literary effect. The somewhat rough estimate given of the number of volumes written by the respective writers indicates that Mr. Bancroft's revisions constitute about one page in fifty of the work in fields assigned to his assistants, although the average may be lower. In view of these facts, the knowledge that those who wrote the Bancroft histories were capable, honest persons, must tend decidedly toward the increasing of our general confidence in the series.

PIONEER PAPERS OF PUGET SOUND.

By Clarence B. Bagley.

The trapper, the trader, the missionary, and the printer were the pioneers of "Old Oregon," as the original territory lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and extending northward from California to the British possessions may be properly called. A mere handful of patriotic Americans founded a provisional government for this vast wilderness in 1843, and the American Government enclosed it safely in the national fold in 1846 by treaty with Great Britain, and organized it into a territory August 14, 1848.

Those who are the leading spirits in the several historical societies of the Northwest, and the writers of its history, realize the true value to be placed upon the labors of the pioneer printers and newspaper men of "Old Oregon." This expression is tautological. There were no newspaper men who were not printers in the pioneer days.

It has been my good fortune, as child, boy, and man, to know nearly all the old newspaper men of Oregon and Washington of that period by sight, and to be on terms of friendship with most of them, as well as most intimate with the majority. Among them were:

Ashael Bush, W. L. Adams, Thomas H. Pearne, T. J. Dryer, Harvey W. Scott, H. L. Pittock, Beriah Brown, James O'Meara, W. Lair Hill, Wm. G. T'Vault, Samuel A. Clarke, Mrs. Duniway, D. W. Craig, John Atkinson, E. M. Waite, L. Samuels, John Burnett, J. M. Baltimore, William Newell, P. B. Johnson, R. R. Rees, E. T. Gunn, Charles Besserer, Eugene Semple, A. M. Poe, John Miller Murphy, Randall H. Hewitt, L. G. Abbott, Thornton F. McElroy, James N. Gale, J. R. Watson, David Higgins, Charles and Thomas W. Prosch, John F. Damon, D. C. Ireland, Francis H. Cook, S. L. Maxwell, H. C. Patrick, R. F. Radebaugh, and many of their contemporaries, as well as a host of their successors.

Nearly all these were practical printers, and most of them skillful at the case, capable of taking entire charge of the mechanical department of the early day printing offices.

This training made them accurate in their literary work. While some of them might not have been on intimate terms with the rules of grammar, they made up for any such deficiency by untiring and conscientious efforts to give their readers good newspapers, in the face of the gravest difficulties. In the matter of politics full allowance had ever to be made for the personal bias of the writer, but in the matter of news, especially that of a local character, the most absolute fidelity to the truth was ever maintained. No efforts were made for a "good story" at the expense of truth. The head of the paper always had a personal knowledge of the facts and usually prepared the account of them. If he found he had made a mistake he usually corrected it in the next issue, if it was of sufficient importance. For this reason the writer of the present day who delves among the old newspaper files of pioneer days, and even down to within twenty or twenty-five years ago, can rely upon the fairness and truthfulness of their local columns. They were all writing history but few of them realized it.

Life was too strenuous with the pioneers of the "forties" and "fifties" for them to spend much time in keeping diaries or other records of passing events. If they had done so, the unsettled conditions under which they lived, the lack of substantial buildings, the migration to new countries, and the rush to new mines, would have resulted in the loss or destruction of most of such manuscripts.

Of the early Oregon papers, I doubt if more than two or three perfect files exist. Of the early papers of Washington, not more than three or four complete files remain of any of them. Of the first Seattle papers, there is but one file. It I began collecting more than forty years ago. How much care, then, should be exercised in gathering these old papers from the garrets and the closets where they have lain fifty years or more, perhaps—as well as to observe the most painstaking care for their preservation.

When the missions among the Indians of Oregon were established by Messrs. Whitman and Spalding in 1836, the First Native Church of Honolulu decided to send to it a small printing press and some type and material that had been in use for some time there in printing spelling books and religious matter, thinking the work of the mission in Oregon would be advanced by its aid.

Edwin O. Hall had been one of the printers of the Honolulu mission and he was engaged to accompany the printing outfit to Oregon. With the press, type, fixtures, a stock of paper and binding apparatus in his charge he, accompanied by his wife, arrived at Vancouver, on the Columbia River, early in the month of April, 1839. In a few days the press and party started up the Columbia River in a canoe and reached Wallula on the 30th. From there the press was sent on pack animals to Lapwai, on the Clearwater River, not far from the present City of Lewiston, Idaho, while the rest of the outfit and the party went on up the river by canoe.

May 18, 1839, the first proof sheet in the original Oregon Territory was struck off amid great rejoicing among the missionary party. A large number of publications in the Flathead, Spokane, Cayuse, and Nez Percé language was printed by the mission people. In fact, the press was in use a great deal until in 1846, when Doctor Whitman sent it to The Dalles, where it remained until after the Whitman massacre, November 29-30, 1847.

In 1848 it was in use near Hillsboro, on Tualatin Plains, for several months, where eight numbers of the Oregon American and Evangelical Unionist appeared, which was the third paper in chronological order.

By this time more modern presses, apparatus and types had reached Oregon and the pioneer outfit was laid aside. Years later it came into the possession of the Oregon Historical Society at Portland.

The Oregon Spectator was the first newspaper in Old Oregon, and the initial number appeared at Oregon City on Thursday, February 5, 1846. A new plant had been procured for it in New York, whence it was sent around "The Horn." Col. William G. T'Vault was its editor and John Flemming the printer. This paper passed through many vicissitudes in the ensuing years—numerous changes of editors and publishers with frequent alterations in size, now larger and again smaller, until it finally suspended in 1855.

The second paper was the Oregon Free Press, which appeared in March, 1848, under the control of George L. Curry, who later became Governor of Oregon.

The fourth in order was the Western Star, first issued at Milwaukie November 21, 1850, by Lot Whitcomb. At that time Milwaukie, on the east side of the Willamette, a few miles above Portland, was a rival of the latter place for commercial supremacy, but in May, 1851, Milwaukie had fallen behind in the race, and the Star was moved to Portland, and its name changed to the Oregon Weekly Times. It lived much longer than most of the early newspaper ventures of the Northwest. Among its numerous editors were A. C. Gibbs, Governor of Oregon during the Civil War period, and also W. Lair Hill, with whom all lawyers of Oregon and Washington are familiar personally or by reputation. He was the author of the well-known code of this state bearing his name, and for a considerable period a resident of Seattle.

The fifth was the Weekly Oregonian and the only one of all the newspapers of Oregon and Washington appearing prior to 1860 to survive with its original name and without periodical suspensions.

The Oregonian had to struggle for existence during all its early years. Rivals unnumbered went to the newspaper graveyard during the succeeding quarter century. It is a conservative estimate to place the aggregate at a $1,000,000 sunk during that period by ambitious printers, dissatisfied politicians, and by corporations who could not control its editorials, in the various attempts to break the Oregonian down. The most notable contest was between the Oregonian and the Bulletin, when Ben. Holladay was the great magnate in railroad and steamship affairs of the Northwest. He established, about 1872, a first-class newspaper and job printing office that cost not less than $50,000. He employed the best newspaper talent he could secure, and the Bulletin at once became a dangerous rival for the Oregonian, which had to depend solely on its own resources for its support, while the weekly deficit in the Bulletin office was made good by a check from Ben. Holladay.

The Oregonian had at that time about seven thousand subscribers at $3 per year to its weekly paper, while the Bulletin had only a few hundred. The Weekly Oregonian saved the day, and the Bulletin died the death. Its backer is reputed to have sunk not less than $100,000. This left the Oregonian master of the field, and it became the overshadowing journalistic power of the Northwest until the great dailies of Seattle forced it to the rear in the State of Washington.

Thomas J. Dryer was its first editor and A. M. Berry the first printer. Henry L. Pittock became a printer in its office in November, 1853, and was admitted to partnership in 1856, and only four years later became its sole owner. Mr. Harvey W. Scott went on its editorial staff in May, 1865. In 1877 he bought an interest in the paper and became editor-in-chief. He and Mr. Pittock still own the paper, and it need not be added that it has made them immensely wealthy.

The Daily Oregonian made its first appearance February 4, 1861. It consisted of four pages, each page about 11½x18 inches, four columns to the page.

March 26, 1851, the Oregon Statesman was launched on the newspaper sea at Salem, the state capital, with Joseph S. Smith at the helm. In later years Smith went to Congress from that state and was always a conspicuous figure in Democratic circles. In September, 1852, when we arrived in Salem from across "the plains," Asahel Bush had become owner and editor. He soon became public printer, then an exceedingly profitable billet, and in six or eight years was quite wealthy. The Statesman was the leading Democratic journal for a long period and wielded a powerful influence until Joseph Lane and the Democratic party under him lost the state, when Abraham Lincoln was elected President. After that its influence gradually declined. It underwent the usual changes of ownership and temporary suspensions.

It will be difficult for the younger men in the newspaper offices of today, with their many departments and special work, to realize the many cares and duties devolving upon the pioneer newspaper men. The successful one was a capable printer who could "set type," run a press, make up the forms, make a roller, and wash it if need be. He was editorial writer, local reporter, business manager, and mailing clerk. A "job office" was usually a part of the printing establishment and he, perforce, must be his own job printer and pressman as well.

During all the earlier years there were no telegraphic dispatches, the "news" being selected from the weekly issues of the Tribune or Herald of New York City, which came by mail steamer to the Isthmus of Panama, thence across and by steamer to San Francisco, and thence with the utmost irregularity by steamer to Portland, from there down the Columbia and up the Cowlitz River and by pack animal or mud wagon to Olympia.

Under all these adverse circumstances it is remarkable what good newspapers were issued. They were usually on paper 24x36 inches in size, which was about the limit for hand presses then in use. The editorial matter was vigorous and able, the typography and presswork equal to that of the present day, the selection of news and literary matter unexceptionable. It is not a matter of surprise that men capable of accomplishing such good work in the face of such difficulties should have wielded a powerful influence in the pioneer work of the territory.

Of the pioneer newspaper men of Oregon and Washington there are many in Seattle. First in age and experience is Charles Prosch, with over forty years to his credit. Rev. John F. Damon comes next in seniority of service. Judge Orange Jacobs had much editorial experience in Oregon before coming here. Henry G. Struve, Esq., was an editorial writer for years prior to 1873, in Vancouver, Clarke County, and in Olympia. Ex-Governor Semple spent many years in all kinds of newspaper work in Oregon and Washington, beginning about 1870. Thomas W. Prosch learned to be a printer as he learned to read on the Herald at Steilacoom and the Tribune in Olympia. C. B. Bagley began newspaper work in 1868 and continued it with little intermission for twenty years. Samuel C. Crawford began as printer's devil for John Miller Murphy on the Olympia Standard thirty years or more ago. Beriah Brown, the senior of them all, recently died here, and his son Berry began "at the case" and other newspaper work as early as 1868.

The Columbian was the "pioneer newspaper west of the mountains, between the father of Oregon waters and Kamstkatka," as an editorial paragraph in the first number puts it. Messrs. Wiley & McElroy established it in Olympia September 11, 1852. Later its name was changed to the Pioneer, and not long afterward it was merged with the Democrat, a rival paper, under the name of Pioneer and Democrat. From the above date Olympia has never been without one or more weekly papers, and at times has enjoyed two daily papers at the same time.

The Puget Sound Courier was the pioneer paper at Steilacoom, which was started by Affleck & Gunn, May 19, 1854. It was Whig in politics, and as the population was overwhelmingly Democratic it soon died for lack of sustenance.

Mr. Charles Prosch, the dean of newspaperdom on Puget Sound, whose erect form and snow-white hair are familiar on the streets of Seattle, published the Puget Sound Herald at Steilacoom, beginning March 12, 1858, for about six years, and later other papers at Olympia.

The Northern Light appeared at Whatcom in 1858, under the management of W. Bausman & Co., during a few weeks of the height of the Fraser River gold rush, but its light was soon snuffed out.

The Port Townsend Register was started January 4, 1860, by a young man named Travers Daniels, but the field was not an encouraging one, and at the end of ten weeks he sold out to William T. Whitacre, who kept it alive until August, when it suspended.

July 5 of the same year the Northwest was started in Port Townsend by E. S. Dyer, publisher, and John F. Damon, editor. Mr. Damon continued with the paper until it suspended, before the second volume was completed.

Rev. John F. Damon, the Congregational clergyman of Seattle, is too widely known to require extended mention here.

The Register was resuscitated late in 1860 and run a violent career for several months, and later was followed by the Message, which ran several years under different management.

In 1874 C. W. Philbrick purchased the press on which the last-named paper was printed, changed the name to Puget Sound Argus, and succeeded in placing it on a paying basis, a hitherto impossible achievement in Port Townsend. In 1877 Philbrick, after accumulating considerable property, sold the Argus to Mr. Allen Weir.

July 29, 1861, the Overland Press was started in Olympia. A short time before the pony express had been put on the route between the Missouri River and Sacramento, carrying the news and a few letters, thus placing San Francisco and New York in communication with each other in from ten to twelve days. This suggested the name of the paper. It was enabled to give a brief summary of Eastern news only three weeks old. Prior to this it had been from six weeks to three months old when it reached Olympia.

The great Civil War had broken out only a few weeks earlier and the manager of the Press of Victoria, British Columbia, with commendable business sagacity, determined to establish a paper in Olympia containing the latest war news, and have it ready to distribute at all Puget Sound ports and have a supply to distribute to its own readers in Victoria and other parts of British Columbia on the arrival of the weekly mail. The Eliza Anderson, then the crack steamer of Puget Sound waters, made weekly trips, leaving Olympia early on Monday morning, arriving at Seattle about 4 P. M., and at Victoria early Tuesday morning. The paper at once became very popular and gained an immense circulation for those days.

Early in the fourth volume its name was changed to the Pacific Tribune. Randall H. Hewitt, now living in Los Angeles, owned and published it for a time, when Charles Prosch acquired it and continued its publication at Olympia until 1873. By this time his son, Thomas W. Prosch, had manifested much newspaper ability and had become the owner of the paper. He moved it to Tacoma, the new railroad town, that year and continued there until the almost total death of the place forced another move and he came to Seattle with it. In 1878 Thaddeus Hanford bought it and merged it with the Post-Intelligencer. With but one change of name it had lived about seventeen years, or longer than any other of the early Washington papers, with one exception.

This exception was and is the Washington Standard of Olympia, the most notable instance of newspaper longevity, with the exception of the Oregonian, in old Oregon. Its first number was largely written, set up and printed by its founder, John Miller Murphy, and now, almost forty-three years later, it is his proud boast that it has never missed an issue, has never changed its name and that not a single one of its weekly issues has failed to have more or less editorial matter from his pen. It was "Union" in sentiment during the war of the rebellion, but espoused the cause of Andrew Johnson in his contest with a Republican Congress, and since then has always been consistently Democratic. Mr. Murphy has always been too proud of his independence to subordinate his will or the expressions of his journal to the control of his party leaders, and has often refused preferment at their hands on that account. He still superintends the mechanical department of his office, as well as attending to his editorial duties. He had achieved a competence but the panic of 1893 and the ensuing period of financial depression made great inroads upon his fortune, so that necessity compels him to remain in the harness, though nearly a half century of continuous work has certainly earned him rest.

The Seattle Gazette was the name under which the first paper published in Seattle appeared, dated December 11, 1863, nearly forty years ago. It was edited, set up, published, and with the assistance of an Indian for roller boy, printed by J. R. Watson. The office was in the second story of one of Yesler's buildings, then standing near the present north line of the Scandinavian Bank Building. The paper consisted of four pages, the printed matter on each page measuring 9½x14½ inches. The type and other material were destroyed many years ago, but the old Ramage[41] printing press is a relic highly prized at the State University. The Seattle Gazette, Puget Sound Gazette, and Puget Sound Weekly continued nearly four years with frequent changes in form and ownership.

Pioneer printers have taken a great deal of interest in regard to the antecedents of this old press. Mr. George H. Himes was an Olympia boy, who served his apprenticeship in the office of the Washington Standard under John Miller Murphy. From there he went to Portland and in time "Himes the Printer" became a household word in Oregon and Washington. He has of late years been prominent in the pioneer and historical societies of Oregon. He has given much time to research regarding this old press, and as a result gives it as his opinion that it was first sent from New York to Mexico, thence to Monterey, California, in 1834, where it was used by the Spanish governor for a number of years in printing proclamations, etc., and on August 15, 1846, the Californian, the pioneer paper of California, was printed on it. Late in 1846 it was sent from Monterey to San Francisco and used in printing the Star, the first paper of that city, issued in January, 1847. These two papers were combined at a later date, and in the fall of 1848 the first number of the Alta California was issued from it. From San Francisco it went to Portland and the first number of the Oregonian was taken off it. In 1852 it and the old plant of the Oregonian was bought by Thornton F. McElroy and J. W. Wiley, who brought it around on the schooner Mary Taylor to Olympia, where the first number of the Columbian was printed on it. In 1863 J. R. Watson brought it to Seattle, and December 10th the first paper, the Seattle Gazette, was printed on it. Again in 1865 S. L. Maxwell used it to print the earlier numbers of the Intelligencer.

There seems to be no doubt that it was used to print the first newspapers on the Pacific Coast, the first in Monterey, San Francisco, Portland, Olympia, Seattle.

Although Seattle's first paper was of much more modest proportions than any of its predecessors or contemporaries, it had the honor of starting the first daily paper in the territory, which appeared April 23, 1866, and continued to August 11th of the same year.

The Western Union Telegraph line was completed to Seattle October 26, 1864, and at 4 P. M. of that date the Gazette issued its "Citizen's Dispatch," giving the first published dispatch coming by wire to this place. It gave the Eastern war news to October 24th, from Kansas City and from Chattanooga of the operations of Sherman against Hood in the Atlanta campaign.

Occasionally telegraphic dispatches appeared in succeeding papers, but not until about July 1, 1872, when the Puget Sound Dispatch was established by Larrabee & Co., Beriah Brown, editor, was any regular publication of the press dispatches undertaken here.

In June, 1867, a suspension took place, and August 5th next S. L. Maxwell sent to press the first number of the Weekly Intelligencer. The plant had come into the ownership of Messrs. Daniel and C. B. Bagley, and Mr. Maxwell was permitted to use the same and pay for it as he could out of the earnings of the paper. The type, rules, press, and much of the advertising matter of the older paper, still standing in the forms, was used in the makeup of the new paper, so that it may properly be considered a lineal successor of the Seattle Gazette. Mr. Maxwell proved to be a good newspaper and business man, and as the town and surrounding country was having a vigorous growth, it did not take him long to pay off the small debt and to add much needed material to the office, which was moved across Yesler Way to a small wooden building, and, later, up Yesler Way to near the southwest corner of Second Avenue South. It gained influence as it grew, made money for its owner almost from the start, and had the local field to itself until the Dispatch was started.

In the latter part of 1878 some of the prominent local office-holders and business men organized a company to start another paper, and November 21, 1878, the Seattle Weekly Post made its first appearance, being made up from the Daily Post, which started on the 15th of the month. Its first quarters were in the two-story wooden building owned by Hillory Butler that stood on the ground now occupied by the southwest corner of the Hotel Butler. In passing it may be added that this building was, from time to time, the home of more early papers than any other in town—Dispatch, North Pacific Rural, Chronicle, Post, Times, Press, and others with single and hyphenated titles long since forgotten.

In the meantime the Intelligencer had been installed in a larger two-story building then standing on the west side of First Avenue where it deflects into First Avenue South, and remained there several years.

About 1879 Thomas W. Prosch and Samuel L. Crawford had acquired ownership of it. Both had been printers from boyhood, and Mr. Prosch had gained much experience as a newspaper man in Olympia and Tacoma, and under their management it continued to grow in value and influence.

In 1881 the Post Publishing Company began the erection of a substantial brick building, two stories and basement on the northeast corner of Yesler Way and Post Street. As it was nearing completion negotiations were opened for a consolidation of the Post and Intelligencer, and this was effected October 1, 1881, with Thomas W. Prosch owner of one half and John Leary and George W. Harris each one quarter. The basement and lower story of the new building were used by the company and the upper story rented for offices.

This building continued to be the home of the paper under several managements, until the great fire of June 6, 1889, destroyed it and most of its plant.

Early in 1886 a joint stock company, consisting of Frederick J. Grant, C. B. Bagley, Griffith Davies, Jacob Furth, John H. McGraw, E. S. Ingraham, W. H. Hughes, Thomas Burke, and Dr. Thomas T. Miner, bought the Post-Intelligencer from T. W. Prosch. Grant continued editor-in-chief, Bagley was business manager, S. L. Crawford city editor and reporter, and E. S. Meany had charge of the carrier service.

Near the close of the same year L. S. J. Hunt purchased the controlling interest in the paper and assumed management at once. He had come to Seattle with large financial backing, determined to go into the newspaper field, and the majority of the stockholders, fearing he might establish another paper and make it a powerful rival, sold him their interests. He proceeded to spend money most lavishly upon it and soon built it up into a great paper.

In May, 1871, a small printing outfit that had been in use at Sitka, Alaska, was brought to Seattle, and for a few months the Seattle Times and Alaska Herald was printed from it.

Later this material became the nucleus of the office of the Puget Sound Dispatch, which was established by Beriah Brown and Charles H. Larrabee. The latter was then a prominent attorney in Seattle. He was among the killed at the time of an appalling tragedy at Tehachipe Pass, on the line of the Southern Pacific, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He soon retired from the paper, leaving Beriah Brown in sole control, which he retained with an occasional intermission until about 1878, when it was merged with the Intelligencer.

Mr. Brown was one of the old school newspapermen, who were writers of editorials worthy of the greatest papers of the United States. He was a friend of Horace Greeley, the elder Bennett and others of the noted editors of a half century ago. He rarely wrote anything for his own paper. His custom was to go to the case and put his articles in type as he composed them. Few can realize the difficulties occasioned by the dual processes of thought thus brought into play. Local news is the life of all newspapers in young communities. This he could not purvey, nor was his business management a success.

Thaddeus Hanford, the eldest of the brothers of that name, in his early boyhood showed ability as a writer and after he had passed through college with honor he returned to Seattle and engaged in newspaper work. For a year or more he was the owner of the Intelligencer, but sold it about 1879 as is noted elsewhere.

One of the most widely known as well as popular of the old-time newspaper men was E. T. Gunn. He worked in the Oregonian office as early as 1851 and was one of its owners for a time. In 1855 he was engaged in newspaper work at Steilacoom. November 30, 1867, he started the Olympia Transcript and its publication was continued regularly until his death in 1883. The Transcript was the neatest and best-printed of all the early papers and for many years exerted much influence in political affairs of the territory. A split in the Republican party occurred in 1867 and was the cause of the Transcript being started, and for about six years while this schism continued it championed the cause of the "bolting wing" of the party. In 1872 an alliance between the bolters and the Democrats resulted in the overwhelming triumph of the fusion party, Judge O. B. McFadden being elected to Congress over Selucius Garfield, the Republican candidate. All the newspapers in Olympia were in sympathy with the fusionists, and this led to the organization of a company which established the Puget Sound Courier.

This company was under the leadership of Elisha P. Ferry, then Surveyor-General, who became Territorial Governor in 1873, and the first Governor of the State of Washington in 1889.

The Daily Courier made its first appearance January 2, 1872, and the weekly later in the week. During that year H. G. Struve, then practicing his profession in Olympia, did much editorial work, while the late Fred Prosch had charge of the mechanical department. In December C. B. Bagley became business manager and city editor, and in June, 1873, he bought the office and newspaper. The daily was discontinued at the close of 1874. Mr. Bagley was appointed Territorial Printer in 1873, and held that position for ten years. He continued the Weekly Courier until late in 1884, when he sold out to Thomas H. Cavanaugh, who changed the name of the paper to the Partisan.

During the period between 1873 and 1883 Olympia had four weekly newspapers most of the time, while several small dailies appeared from time to time, but never for more than a few months. Until the Seattle papers began to take telegraphic dispatches the Olympia papers had most of their circulation at Seattle and points further down Sound, but this gradually ceased, and long before the admission of the state their patronage had become almost wholly local in character.

Steilacoom, until about 1880, when Tacoma began its second growth, was a favorite field for newspaper ventures. Mr. Charles Prosch held the field there nearly six years, much longer than anyone else, and while some of his early contemporaries manifested more vigor and belligerency in their editorial columns, none of them gave so much local news or possessed one half the literary merit of the Herald.

Francis H. Cook also moved from Olympia to Tacoma, with a newspaper plant, on which he had for a time published the Echo. This paper was started in 1868 by Randall H. Hewitt, and that year in its office the writer began work as a printer. James E. Whitworth, now of Seattle, Nathan S. Porter, of Olympia, and Ike M. Hall worked together in that office. Hundreds of the older residents of Seattle remember Judge Hall, who died here about ten years ago. Early in 1869 C. B. Bagley became the owner and publisher of the Echo for about a year. Like most of its fellows, it underwent all manner of changes of ownership, of form and place of publication during an erratic career of about eight years.

During the eight or ten years following the founding of Tacoma in 1873, many attempts were made to establish newspapers there, but most of them were far from profitable to their backers. In fact, it has been frequently reported that their more pretentious successors have not been far from financial stress.

The Beacon was brought from Kalama by Mr. and Mrs. Mooney, which had been the organ of the Northern Pacific Railroad. This soon died. In 1880 there started the North Pacific Coast, but its life was brief.

R. F. Radebaugh, of San Francisco, and H. C. Patrick, of Sacramento, came to Tacoma and started the Weekly Ledger April 23, 1880. April 7, 1883, the Daily Ledger was started, and both the weekly and daily are still appearing regularly, having long passed the usual period that has been fatal to so many papers on Puget Sound.

Mr. Patrick left the Ledger in 1882 and bought the Pierce County News, which had been started August 10, 1881, by George W. Mattice. Mr. Patrick changed the name to Tacoma News, and it appeared as a weekly paper until September 15, 1883, when he started the Daily News. It continues to occupy the evening field, while the Ledger retains the morning field.

The limits of this article do not permit mention of many papers which have appeared from time to time in every town and almost every village. In the writer's collection there are not less than one hundred publications, daily, weekly, or monthly, that have sprung into life since 1852. Most of them are forgotten in the communities where they appeared. Success has come to but here and there one.

Kirk C. Ward was a fluent writer and a promoter of no small sagacity. Having lost control of the Post, he soon induced some friends to back him and started the Chronicle. It had a variegated career and finally became the property of one of the leading law firms of the city, McNaught, Ferry, McNaught & Mitchell. They employed a Bohemian from Kansas, named Frank C. Montgomery, as editor, who conducted it until May 1, 1886, when Homer M. Hill, who is now engaged in other business in Seattle, bought it.

The Hall brothers were conducting the Call and the two papers were consolidated, and on Monday, May 3, 1886, the paper came out with Vol. 1, No. 1 of the Seattle Daily Press. A weekly paper was also run in connection with the daily. Mr. Hill ere long acquired the entire ownership of the paper. He was a shrewd, capable business man of untiring industry, and under his management the paper became a valuable property. Interests in it had been sold and bought back from time to time, and at the time Mr. Hill closed out his ownership Harry White held some of its shares. At that time the paper was absolutely free from debt and had a good bank account and was making money for its owners.

Mr. W. E. Bailey, a wealthy young man from Philadelphia, had large interests here, and he became the victim to an ambition to conduct a big newspaper. Under these circumstances Mr. Hill had no difficulty in getting his price for the Press. Mr. L. S. J. Hunt of the Post-Intelligencer conducted the negotiations and made the purchase and at once transferred the property to Mr. Bailey. He made important additions to the mechanical department and engaged a large news and editorial force, whose chief instructions were to make a clean, live newspaper.

At the time Mr. Hill bought the Chronicle it owned the Associated Press evening franchise, which was its most valuable asset.

In passing, it is proper to note the fact that the present Times is the lineal successor of the Chronicle, and while for a brief period there was a break in the legal succession, it may be truthfully said that the historical succession to the Associated Press franchise is derived from the Chronicle down through the Press and the Press-Times to The Times of to-day.

The consolidation of the Chronicle and Call threw a lot of printers and newspaper men out of employment, including Thomas H. Dempsey, the foreman of the Chronicle office. The latter was a keen business man and a competent printer. He and the late Col. George G. Lyon and James P. Ferry at once organized a new company, and secured a printing outfit that served their purpose temporarily. The same day, May 3, 1886, that the Press was issued, No. 1, Vol. 1 of the Daily Times also appeared. Seattle, then a little city of about 10,000 population, was thus the proud possessor of three daily papers.

The starting of these two papers just preceded the "boom" in Seattle real estate, when the volume of advertising was vastly increased as well as population of the city, and both papers made money rapidly.

February 10, 1891, Mr. Bailey bought the Times from Lyon and Dempsey, paying for it $48,000. He had paid somewhere from $20,000 to $25,000 for the Press. He consolidated the two under the name of the Press-Times.

The period of financial depression which followed a couple of years later bore heavily upon Mr. Bailey and and he was finally compelled to give up the paper to his creditors, having lost not less than $200,000 during his journalistic career.

The history of its subsequent vicissitudes and difficulties would fill a volume, but can be touched upon but briefly here. The paper was on the market for a long time. John Collins had it for a time and sunk a lot of money in it, having acquired it through a mortgage of $15,000. John W. Pratt, whose recent lamented death is fresh in the memories of a host of friends, secured control of it for a time. At times it was published by a receiver. Hughes and Davies came into possession of it through ex-Sheriff James Woolery, who had taken it over under the mortgage given to John Collins.

During this troubled period among other happenings the name was changed back to The Times, and also the Associated Press franchise was surrendered and that of the United Service taken over. Later, and subsequent to the mortgage of $15,000 given to John Collins, the Associated Press franchise was again secured, and this was a vital point in the legal contest that arose, The Times Printing Company, headed by Col. A. J. Blethen on one side, and Hughes & Davies on the other.

Colonel Blethen bought The Times August 7, 1897, and his first editorial appeared in it three days later. He came well equipped for newspaper work and management by reason of wide experience in other fields, and month by month he and his sons, Joseph and Clarence B., have made it better and better, and to-day is one of the most valuable newspaper properties on the Pacific Coast and one of the great dailies of the United States.

IN MEMORIAM OF WILLARD H. REES.

It is a labor of love to say that when the writer first met W. H. Rees in 1844, the latter was, for a man in his twenty-fifth year, in advance of his general surroundings. His intelligence and manner of telling what he knew on any subject drew men near his own age to him strongly. There were, I found on riper acquaintance, family reasons for part of this. His father (then a citizen of Hamilton County, Ohio), had been a member of the legislature of his native state of Delaware, and his mother had a place in the literati of her day. The father was of Welsh stock, and judging by the son, an active, ardent member of the Whig party at the time. Willard and I were thrown together in the tide of emigration setting out from Saint Louis towards the rendezvous of proposed emigrants to Oregon. The boat we were on landed at Weston, and from thence we hired a team belonging to other emigrants to haul our effects, and we walked to Saint Joseph. From thence Rees and I footed it ten miles higher up the Missouri to the camp of the emigrants under Gilliam's leadership. Learning there that a man living but three miles off needed two assistants to get his family and effects to Oregon, we were at his residence next morning as he rose from breakfast, and within five minutes were engaged to come to Oregon with him as his assistants. Within twenty-five minutes, mounted on a good horse, with gold coin to purchase breadstuffs for ten persons for three months' journey, Rees was on his way back to Saint Joe. He and I then began a year of such intimate relations to each other as leads me to say Capt. R. W. Morrison, our employer, made no mistake in trusting Mr. Rees with the most important acts in conducting his preparations for the journey to Oregon. When we effected a military organization for the trip, no mistake was made in the election of Rees as first sergeant, with the duties of adjutant. And when, after arrival in Oregon, fifteen of us near the same age were employed logging and running Hunt's saw mill, on the Lower Columbia, Rees was easily our leader. Leaving that in June, 1845, and coming to Oregon City to vote, he still, without effort on his part, was by common consent in the first place. There were at Oregon City two young men I might claim as his peers at that date—Charles E. Pickett and J. W. Nesmith. It was the former and Rees, I believe, who led to the formation of the first literary association. Mr. Pickett was at that time reader from the public news box. The contents were volunteer contributions, each writer choosing his subject, and of course extending from harmless fun to the most serious questions. This suggested the formation of the literary society, naturally.

J. W. Nesmith stood among the young men of 1843 immigration to Oregon as W. H. Rees stood among those of 1844. Both observers and helpers in the history being made, the former watching and participating personally in almost every forward movement, the latter wielding perhaps a greater personal influence, but manifesting no ambition for personal advancement. Mr. Rees worked as a carpenter at Oregon City from June, 1845, to June, 1846 (the exact dates are not remembered), but between these dates had purchased a claim in the northern portion of Champoeg, [Marion] County. At the finishing of Doctor McLoughlin's flouring mill he with other American mechanics celebrated the occasion with a ball, which was attended by most of the leading people of parties having interest in the Oregon Boundary Question. Lieut. Wm. Peel was there using his tongue, eyes and ears, we may suppose, to give reliable information in regard to Americans in Oregon to his father, then premier of the British Government. Lieutenant Peel was of the British navy, but not of the Modeste whose officers generally were in company with him when mingling with Americans as on this occasion. There was no dancing going on. It was a time of social relaxation. Doctor Newell, a Rocky Mountain doctor, and a man of sterling good sense, had been giving his opinion of some of Peel's social behavior as not such as was beyond criticism among Americans. Peel replied, "Well, Doctor, Americans believe in the rule of majorities, and I think the British are in a majority here." Mr. Newell thought not. A Britisher will settle any question by a bet, and Mr. Peel offered the bet of a bottle of wine that a majority of those then present were for the British side of the Oregon Boundary Question. Doctor Newell took the bet. A count was made and Mr. Newell won. Peel on this, looking at a man across the mill floor, offered another bottle on that particular man fighting for the British side in the contingency of war over Oregon. William Penland, an Englishman, put the question: "Sir, which flag would you support in the event of war over Oregon?" Rees replied, "I fight under the Stars and Stripes, sir." Mr. Rees, no matter what his garb, was always comparatively neat, and might well be taken for a middle class Welshman.

Newell and he already neighbors, from this time forward had a potent influence among the French-Canadian farmers. Both were admirers of Doctor McLoughlin, and Rees' influence was greatly enhanced by his taking the finishing of the Catholic Church at Saint Louis, and by writing brief tributes to their lives as they passed to the other side. From his genial social nature it was easy for Mr. Rees to give these retired engagees of the Hudson Bay Company information as to what these newly formed relations to the United States Government required of them, in which he was aided by neighbors and friends—Doctor Newell and F. X. Mathieu. It was his pleasure and pastime to learn of the later life, death and burial in the French settlement of two of the gallant band, Philip Degrett and Francis Rivet, [The authoritative lists of the Lewis and Clark Company does not contain these two names.—Ed.] who followed the lead of Lewis and Clark from the sources of the Columbia to the ocean in 1805, and to give to the historian a transcript of the first Catholic parish registry, including the names and ages of Gervais, Lucier, Cannon, Labonte, and Dubruil, who came with Hunt in 1811.

In 1847 Mr. Rees was elected as a colleague of his friend Dr. Newell. Wm. H. Rector, A. Chamberlain and Anderson Cox being the other members representing Champoeg County in the lower house of the Oregon legislature. From the foregoing causes and his steady patriotism Mr. Rees became a potent influence in sending young men from the French settlement to the fighting field in the Cayuse country on the Whitman massacre, himself going as regimental commissary agent.

As the troops were retiring from the Cayuse country, gold was discovered in California and many of the soldiers were amongst the first to go to the mines, Willard H. Rees of the number. A larger proportion of the French half-breeds never returned than of the Americans, and from 1849 the Canadian settlement began to disintegrate. As the pioneer settlement died, Rees's ready pen gave them kindly notice. In the period between 1850 and 1860 he was watchful and active, but never for himself; being of Whig antecedents it was natural for him to help in the formation of the Union party, and that he did; also, being a leader in the formation of the Pioneer Association, the pages of its annual publications will furnish the future historical gleaner many valuable points there inserted by the pen of Willard H. Rees.

The death of his body at 83 years is not reasonable cause of mourning; his nearest friends have had cause for sadness in the slow and gradual mental decay which was perceptible to them for many years before the final end. A change, slight and unperceived by ordinary observers, was noted by his intimate friends as far back as 1879, when a few lines in the annual address to the pioneers prepared by him but which he was unable to attend and deliver, and were well read by F. M. Bewley, seemed unlike the Rees of 1859. Yet in that address he characteristically goes to the very beginning of social free and easy interchange of personal views on the life of the times of 1845-6. This early social life expressed itself through an organization called the Pioneer Lyceum and Literary Club, and he thus speaks of it: "The following are the names Charlie Pickett had on the membership roll. They were at times widely scattered and are designated upon the roll as regular and visiting members:

"John H. Couch, F. W. Pettygrove, J. M. Woir, A. L. Lovejoy, J. Applegate, S. W. Moss, Robert Newell, J. W. Nesmith, Ed Otie, H. A. G. Lee, F. Prigg, C. E. Pickett, Wm. C. Dement, Medorum Crawford, Hiram Strait, J. Wambaugh, Wm. Cushing, Philip Foster, Ransom Clark, H. H. Hide (Hyde?), John G. Campbell, Top McGruder, W. H. Rees, Mark Ford, Henry Saffren, Noyes Smith, Daniel Waldo, P. G. Stewart, Isaac W. Smith, Joseph Watt, Frank Ematinger, A. E. Wilson, Jacob Hoover, S. M. Holderness, John Minto, Barton Lee, General Husted, and John P. Brooks.

"Perhaps a more congenial, easy-going, self-satisfying club has never since congregated in the old capital city and under changed condition of affairs, especially in fashions so strikingly different from the unique and richly colored costumes of that day, never will the good people of our spray-bedewed old city rest upon the like again." The names are given as history, the last quotation as a sample of Mr. Rees's quiet humor.

Now an end of life by natural law is not a proper subject of mourning. Willard H. Rees did not so regard it, when his generous kindness led him to collect the most praiseworthy incidents of very earliest and most unlettered of the pioneers from those coming with Lewis and Clark and Astor's enterprise to those better informed who came after he himself was here. The contributions of Willard H. Rees, J. W. Nesmith, and M. P. Deady to the Oregon Pioneer Association publication would alone constitute no mean volume of the history of Oregon, beginning with retired Canadian hunters and trappers who by cultivating the soil of Oregon and creating a magazine of supplies to the American homebuilders unawares were cultivating the seeds of civilization aided and foreseen by the Applegates, Burnetts, Waldos, Nesmiths, Rees, and others who managed a bloodless victory over the pro-British occupation of Oregon.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH HOLMAN.

Joseph Holman was born at Little Torrington, Devonshire, England, August 20, 1815. His parents were John and Elizabeth Holman. His father was a mechanic, and manufacturer of agricultural implements, and died when Joseph was quite young, leaving two older sons. The eldest son carried on his father's business, the younger brothers living with him to learn the trade.

When Joseph was sixteen years of age, the second brother emigrated to Canada and sent such good reports of large wages for mechanics that when Joseph was eighteen his elder brother allowed him to follow, though bound to him until twenty-one. In 1833 Joseph took passage on the ship "Eliza" for Canada and landed at Prince Edward's Island where the ship was seized for debt, which detained the passengers some weeks, the creditors furnishing codfish and potatoes only, for food. The ship finally sailed for Quebec and to London, in Canada, where Joseph found his brother, and worked in that place for several years, but disliked the rough ways of that early time. He went alone to New Lisbon, Ohio, where he worked at wagon making for a year. Hearing much of the so-called West at that time, he went to Peoria, Illinois, found work and lived two years there. During that time, Jason Lee, on his way from Oregon to the East, stopped at Peoria and lectured on Oregon. In the spring of 1839 eighteen persons agreed to go to Oregon and settle there. Joseph Holman had ideas of a large city at the mouth of the Columbia River, and he wanted to be one to help take the claim. The party started west with horses and wagons. At Independence, Missouri, they sold the wagons and bought mules to carry packs. Mr. Farnham was chosen captain. They traveled to Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River without mishap, and to Bent's Fort on the Platte River [generally called St. Vrain's] became demoralized. Some went back, Mr. Farnham went to Santa Fé, others went through the next year, but Joseph Holman, with Cook, Fletcher and Kilbourn, determined to go to Oregon. While away from the fort to get dry buffalo meat for food the Indians stole their horses. They worked at the fort until they earned more horses, and late in the fall the four started alone and reached Green River, in the Rocky Mountains, and camped in a sheltered place called "Brown's Hole," also Joe Meek, Doctor Newell, Cary and others. Joseph Holman's mechanical knowledge helped him here, for he stocked guns, made saddles for Indians, and received an extra horse and beaver skins (as good as money) in return. Doctor Newell decided to start early in the spring, with the beaver skins to Fort Hall, in Idaho, to avoid Indian war parties who would be out later on. They were caught in the snow and nearly perished. Where Doctor Newell expected to see buffalo they did not see one. They were four days without any food, until they met a Digger Indian woman who sold them her two dogs. After that they now and then killed an antelope until they reached Fort Hall where they remained three weeks to recuperate themselves and horses. Doctor Newell remained here. The four young men left with a Hudson Bay agent for Fort Boise, but went alone from there to Walla Walla, arriving there May 1, 1840; from there down the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver, was the hardest part of the trip, especially from The Dalles to Fort Vancouver, on the north side of the Columbia. The water was high at that season of the year, had covered the Indian trail on the bank of the river, and they were obliged to lead their ponies over the bluffs to Fort Vancouver, a fact Doctor McLaughlin could hardly believe when they arrived, at 11 o'clock June 1, 1840. In the afternoon of the same day a ship arrived at Fort Vancouver from New York, with forty Methodist missionaries to teach and convert the Indians. A Miss Almira Phelps, from Springfield, Massachusetts, was one, to whom Joseph was married in less than a year. He was twenty-six years of age, and even then showed a progressive spirit. The four, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Kilbourn, and Joseph Holman, rode around looking for places to settle. They took up land and built a cabin. The Methodist mission employed them for a time and paid them in stock.

Joseph Holman cut the first stick of timber on the present town site of Salem, and just back of the asylum for the insane he took up his claim of land, which was a mile square. He rode a horse to the east, to the north, to the west, to the south, and staked it. Years afterward surveyors said he surveyed it correctly on his horse, a mile square. Mrs. John H. Albert, now living, was born on this land, Joseph Holman's eldest daughter. His only son, George Phelps Holman, was the first white child born in Salem, or the county.

Joseph Holman's heart and soul were for Oregon, for its building up, its prosperity. His loyalty was unbounded. He was honest, affectionate, and true.

This short statement was dictated by Mr Joseph Holman to his wife during his last illness in 1880. He was on a lounge, and told these facts, and she penciled them down and copied them June 27, 1902, in the present form.

DOCUMENTS.

Letter of fur traders Jedediah S. Smith, David E. Jackson, and Wm. L. Sublette—1830.

Gives an account of the taking of the first wagons to the Rocky Mountains and of the Hudson's Bay Company post, Fort Vancouver, and its operations in the Oregon Country. An argument for the termination of the convention of 1818.

The letter of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette forms part of Senate Executive Documents 39, 21st Congress, 2d session, pp. 21-23. The whole document is taken up with a consideration of "the state of the British establishments in the valley of the Columbia, and the state of the fur trade, as carried on by the citizens of the United States and the Hudson's Bay Company," as shown in the communications of Gen. W. H. Ashley, Joshua Pilcher, J. D. Smith, David E. Jackson, and W. L. Sublette, and William Clark and Lewis Cass.

St. Louis, October 29, 1830.

Sir: The business commenced by General Ashley some years ago, of taking furs from the United States territory beyond the Rocky Mountains has since been continued by Jedediah S. Smith, David E. Jackson, and William L. Sublette, under the firm of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette. They commenced business in 1826, and have since continued it, and have made observations and gained information which they think it important to communicate to the government. The number of men they have employed has usually been from eighty to one hundred and eighty; and with these, divided into parties, they have traversed every part of the country west of the Rocky Mountains, from the peninsula of California to the mouth of the Columbia River. Pack horses, or rather mules, were at first used, but in the beginning of the present year, it was determined to try wagons, and in the month of April last, on the 10th day of the month, a caravan of ten wagons, drawn by five mules each, and two dearborns, drawn by one mule each, set out from St. Louis. We have eighty-one men in company, all mounted on mules, and these were exclusive of a party left in the mountains. Our route from St. Louis was nearly due west to the western limits of the state and thence along the Santa Fé trail about forty miles, from which the course was some degrees north of west, across the waters of the Kanzas, and up the Great Platte River, to the Rocky Mountains, and to the head of Wind River, where it issues from the mountains. This took us until the 16th of July, and was as far as we wished the wagons to go, as the furs to be brought in were to be collected at this place, which is, or was this year, the great rendezvous of the persons engaged in that business. Here the wagons could easily have crossed the Rocky Mountains, it being what is called the Southern [South] Pass, had it been desirable for them to do so, which it was not for the reason stated. For our support, at leaving the Missouri settlements, until we should get into the buffalo country, we drove twelve head of cattle, beside a milk cow. Eight of these only being required for use before we got to the buffaloes, the others went on to the head of Wind River. We began to fall in with the buffaloes on the Platte, about three hundred and fifty miles from the white settlements, and from that time lived on buffaloes, the quantity being infinitely beyond what we needed. On the fourth of August, the wagons being in the meantime loaded with furs which had been previously taken, we set out on the return to St. Louis. All the high points of the mountains then in view were white with snow, but the passes and valleys, and all the level country, were green with grass. Our route back was over the same ground nearly as in going out, and we arrived at St. Louis on the 10th of October, bringing back the ten wagons, the dearborns being left behind; four of the oxen and the milk cow were also brought back to the settlements in Missouri, as we did not need them for provision. Our men were all healthy during the whole time, we suffered nothing by the Indians, and had no accident but the death of one man, being buried under a bank of earth that fell in upon him, and another being crippled at the same time. Of the mules, we lost but one by fatigue, and two horses stolen by the Kanzas Indians; the grass being, along the whole route going and coming, sufficient for the support of the horses and mules. The usual weight in the wagons was about one thousand eight hundred pounds. The usual progress of the wagons was from fifteen to twenty-five miles per day. The country being almost all open, level, and prairie, the chief obstructions were ravines and creeks, the banks of which required cutting down, and for this purpose a few pioneers were generally kept ahead of the caravan. This is the first time that wagons ever went to the Rocky Mountains, and the ease and safety with which it was done prove the facility of communicating overland with the Pacific Ocean. The route from the Southern Pass, where the wagons stopped, to the Great Falls of the Columbia, being easier and better than on this side of the mountains, with grass enough for horses and mules, but a scarcity of game for the support of men. One of the undersigned, to wit, Jedediah S. Smith, in his excursion west of the mountains, arrived at the post of the Hudson's Bay Company, called Fort Vancouver, near the mouth of Multnomah River. He arrived there in August, 1828, and left the 12th of March, 1829, and made observations which he deems it material to communicate to the government. Fort Vancouver is situated on the north side of the Columbia, five miles above the mouth of the Multnomah, in a handsome prairie, and on a second bank about three quarters of a mile from the river. This is the fort as it stood when he arrived there; but a large one, three hundred feet square about three quarters of a mile lower down, and within two hundred yards of the river, was commenced the spring he came away. Twelve pounders were the heaviest cannon which he saw. The crop of 1828 was seven hundred bushels of wheat, the grain full and plump, and making good flour, fourteen acres of corn, the same number of acres in peas, eight acres of oats, four or five acres of barley, a fine garden, some small apple trees, and grape vines. The ensuing spring eighty bushels of seed wheat were sown. About two hundred head of cattle, fifty horses and breeding mares, three hundred head of hogs, fourteen goats, the usual domestic fowls. They have mechanics of various kinds, to wit, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, carpenters, coopers, tinner, and baker. A good saw mill on the bank of the river five miles above, a grist mill worked by hand, but intended to work by water. They had built two coasting vessels, one of which was then on a voyage to the Sandwich Islands. No English or white woman was at the fort, but a great number of mixed blood Indian extraction, such as belong to the British fur trading establishments, who were treated as wives, and the families of children taken care of accordingly. So that everything seemed to combine to prove that this fort was to be a permanent establishment. At Fort Vancouver the goods for the Indian trade are imported from London, and enter the territories of the United States paying no duties, and from the same point the furs taken on the other side of the mountains are shipped. The annual quantity of these furs could not be exactly ascertained, but Mr. Smith was informed indirectly that they amounted to about thirty thousand beaver skins, besides otter skins and small furs. The beaver skins alone, at New York prices, would be worth above two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To obtain these furs, both trapping and trading are resorted to. Various parties, provided with traps, spread over the country south of the Columbia to the neighborhood of the Mexican territory, and in 1824 and 1825 they crossed the Rocky Mountains and trapped on the waters of the Missouri River. They do not trap north of latitude 49 degrees, but confine that business to the territory of the United States. Thus this territory, being trapped by both parties, is nearly exhausted of beavers, and unless the British can be stopped, will soon be entirely exhausted, and no place left within the United States where beaver fur in any quantity can be obtained.

The inequality of the convention with Great Britain in 1818 is most glaring and apparent, and its continuance is a great and manifest injury to the United States. The privileges granted by it have enabled the British to take possession of the Columbia River, and spread over the country south of it; while no Americans have ever gone, or can venture to go on the British side. The interest of the United States and her citizens engaged in the fur trade requires that the convention of 1818 should be terminated, and each nation confined to its own territories. By this commercial interest there are other considerations requiring the same result. These are, the influence which the British have already acquired over the Indians in that quarter, and the prospect of a British colony, and a military and naval station on the Columbia. Their influence over the Indians is now decisive. Of this the Americans have constant and striking proofs, in the preference which they give to the British in every particular.

In saying this, it is an act of justice to say, also, that the treatment received by Mr. Smith at Fort Vancouver was kind and hospitable; that, personally, he owes thanks to Governor Simpson and the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Company, for the hospitable entertainment which he received from them, and for the efficient and successful aid which they gave him in recovering from the Umquah Indians a quantity of fur and many horses, of which these Indians had robbed him in 1828.

As to the injury which must happen to the United States from the British getting the control of all the Indians beyond the mountains, building and repairing ships in the tide water region of the Columbia, and having a station there for their privateers and vessels of war, is too obvious to need a recapitulation. The object of this communication being to state facts to the Government, and to show the facility of crossing the continent to the Great Falls of the Columbia with wagons, the ease of supporting any number of men by driving cattle to supply them where there was no buffalo, and also to show the true nature of the British establishments on the Columbia, and the unequal operation of the convention of 1818.

These facts being communicated to the Government, they consider that they have complied with their duty, and rendered an acceptable service to the administration; and respectfully request you, sir, to lay it before President Jackson.

We have the honor to be sir, yours, respectfully,

Jedediah S. Smith,
David E. Jackson,
W. L. Sublette.

To the Hon. John H. Eaton, Secretary of War.

Excerpts from St. Louis papers, 1832-1848, on the migration to and settlement of Oregon.

The Missouri Republican, July 5, 1831.

The American Society for encouraging the settlement of Oregon Territory, propose to enlist 1000 men for the purpose, to rendezvous in this city January next. Each man will receive gratuitously a lot of land. There is said to be "an immense water power up the Wallamott or Mulnomah."

Republican, November 8, 1831.

An unlucky little paragraph of ours in relation to the prosperous colony at the mouth of the Columbia River has been the source of much trouble to us. We have been frequently addressed both by letter and in person for information upon the subject, without having the means of replying satisfactorily to querists. * * * We cannot now state whether the plan has been abandoned, but time has passed by when the adventurers were to have assembled here. The project originated in Boston, where, we believe, the principal officers of the society reside.

Republican, April 24, 1832.

OREGON COLONY.

Thirty-six persons attached to this colony arrived in this city Friday last. They have since proceeded on their way.

St. Louis New Era, February 14, 1843.

OREGON, THE NEW ELDORADO.

We derive from a long letter in the National Intelligencer the following sketch of the Territory beyond the Rocky Mts., which is now the theme of debate in the U. S. Senate.

Newark Advertiser.

"Within a few years several Americans, of whom the writer is one, have crossed the Rocky Mts., to the mouth of the Columbia, with objects entirely unconnected with trade or commerce. Mine was a desire to see a new country, a love of adventure for its own sake, and an enthusiastic fondness for natural history. The party with which I traveled left Independence, Mo., about the latter part of April, 1834, and arrived at the British Fort, Vancouver, in September, having performed the whole journey on horseback. From this time until October, 1836, with the exception of the first winter which I passed at the Sandwich Islands, my residence was in the Territory of Oregon. Dr. McLoughlin, chief factor, treated me with uniform and singular kindness, supplying all my wants and furnishing me with every facility in the prosecution of my plans. This is, I believe, the uniform character of the Superintendents of British forts in that country. Travelers, naturalists, and all who are not traders are kindly and hospitably treated, but the moment a visitor is known to trade a beaver skin from an Indian, that moment he is ejected from the community. The company has a sum of money amounting to several thousand pounds sterling, laid aside at Vancouver for the sole purpose of opposing all who may come to interfere with its monopoly, by purchasing at exhorbitant prices all the furs in possession of the Indians, and thus forcing the settler to come to terms or driving him from the country. If it be an individual who is thus starved into submission he then usually clears a piece of land on the Willamette River, takes an Indian wife, and purchases furs of the natives, which, by previous contract, he is bound to sell to the company at an advance which is fixed by the governor.

Ft. Vancouver, the principal trading post of the Oregon, stands on the north bank of the river, about 90 miles from the mouth. The fort consists of several dwellings, storehouses, workshops, etc., all of frame arranged together in quadrilateral form, and surrounded by a stockade of pine logs about 20 ft. high. The Ft. has no bastions, and contains no armament. There are, to be sure, 4 great guns frowning in front of the governor's mansion, 2 long 18s and 2 9-pounders, but two of them have long been spiked and the others are unfit for service.

The rainy season begins here about the middle of October and continues until the first of April. During this period the weather is almost uniformly dull, foggy, or rainy. Sometimes rain falls incessantly for the space of 2 or 3 weeks. Occasionally, during the winter months, there will be a light fall of snow, and in the winter of 1835-6 the river was frozen over. The intensity of cold, however, continued but a few days and was said to be very unusual. The general range of the thermometer, (Fahr.) during that season was from 36-48 degrees, but for 3 or 4 days was as low as 25 degrees.

In the vicinity of Ft. Vancouver, the cattle graze during the whole winter; no stabling or stall feeding is ever requisite, as the extensive plains produce the finest and most abundant crops of excellent prairie grass. In choosing a site for settlement on the main river, it is always necessary to bear in mind the periodical inundations. Ft. Vancouver itself, though built on a high piece of land at a distance of 600 yards from the common rise of the tides, is sometimes almost reached by the freshets of early spring. The soil here, on both sides of the river is a rich black loam, the base being basaltic rock.

The face of the country from Ft. George, (Astoria,) to Vancouver, a distance of 80 miles, is very much of a uniform character, consisting of alluvial meadows, along the river-side, alternating with forests of oak, pine, etc., while behind are extensive plains, some of which receive estuaries of the river, while others are watered by lakes or ponds. The pine forests are very extensive, the trees being of great size, and the timber extraordinarily beautiful. All the timber of the genus pinus is gigantic. I measured with Dr. Gairdner, surgeon of the fort, a pine of the species Douglass, which had been prostrated by the wind. Its height was above 200 ft., and its circumference 45 feet. Large as was this specimen, its dimensions are much exceeded by one measured by the late David Douglas. The height of this tree was nearly 300 ft., and the circumference 56 ft. Cones of this pine, according to Mr. D., were 12 to 15 inches long, resembling in size and form sugar loaves. Oak timber of various kinds is abundant along the river, as well as button wood, balsam, poplar, ash, sweet gum, beech, and many other useful kinds, but no hickory or walnut. The governor of Ft. Vancouver, who is an active agriculturist, has exerted himself for several years in raising whatever appears adapted to the soil. Wheat, rye, barley, pease, and culinary vegetables of all kinds are raised in ample quantity. Fruits of various kinds, apples, peaches, plums, etc., do remarkably well. I remember being particularly struck, upon my arrival at Vancouver in the autumn, with the display of apples in the garden of the fort. Trees were crowded with fruit, so that every limb had to be sustained with a prop. Apples were literally packed along the branches, and so closely that I could compare them to nothing more aptly than ropes of onions. In the vicinity of Walla Walla or the Ney [z] Perce's Fort, the country in every condition for many miles exhibits an arid and cheerless prospect. The soil is deep sand, and the plain upon which the fort stands produces nothing but bushes of aromatic wormwood. Along the borders of the small streams, however, the soil is exceedingly rich and productive, and on these strips of land the superintendent raises his corn and the vegetables necessary for the consumption of his people. The prong-horned antelope occasionally ranged these plains; black-tailed or mule deer is found in the vicinity; grouse of several species are very abundant, and large prairie hare is common. In autumn and winter, in the vicinity of Ft. Vancouver, ducks, geese, and swans swarm in immense numbers. These are killed by the Indians and taken to the Ft. as articles of trade. For a single duck, one load of powder and shot is given; for a goose, 2; and for a swan, 4 loads. For deer 10 loads of ammunition, or a bottle of rum is the usual price. Early in May salmon are first seen entering the river, and the Columbia and all its tributaries teem with these delicious fish. The Indians take great numbers by various modes, subsisting almost wholly on them during their stay, and drying and packing them away in thatched huts to be used for their winter store. Salmon also forms a chief article of food for the inmates of the fort, and hundreds of casks are salted down every season.

About 20 miles above this, in the Wallamet Valley, is the spot chosen by the Methodist missionaries for their settlement, and here also, a considerable number of retired servants of the company had established themselves. The soil of this delightful valley is rich beyond comparison, and the climate considerably milder than that of Vancouver. Rain rarely falls, even in the winter season, but dews are sufficiently heavy to compensate for its absence. The epidemic of the country, ague, is rarely known here. In short, the Wallamet Valley is a terrestrial paradise, to which I have known some to exhibit so strong an attachment as to declare that notwithstanding the few privations which must necessarily be experienced by settlers of a new country, no consideration would ever induce them to return to their former homes."

J. K. T. [Townsend].

Washington, Jan. 26, 1843.

St. Louis New Era, Tuesday, February 28, 1843.

OREGON.

The following is an extract from a letter dated Honolulu, Oct. 30, 1842. "The town is now full of strangers, the Chenamus having brought some 19 passengers from the Oregon, who are returning home, disgusted with the people and the country. Then again, the Victoria brings a few families here on their way to the river to settle. They must be encouraged by meeting so many here, returning."

New Era, Thursday, March 9, 1843.

(Contains notice of "Travels in the Great Prairie Wilderness, the Anahuac and Rocky Mts., and in Oregon Territory," by T. J. Farnham; said to contain full account of a journey overland and the Methodist missions in the Territory. Notice copied into "Era" from N. Y. Tribune, from which office it is issued.)

Republican, July 22, 1843.

We learn from Maj. Albert Wilson who has just returned from the Mountains, that he met the Oregon emigrants on the big Arkansas [Platte], one month after they had left the settlements, and that they were cheerfully wending their way onwards. There were 1150 emigrants, 175 wagons, and a great number of cattle, horses, mules, etc., etc. Lord Stewart and his party of pleasure, consisting of 100 persons, were three days in advance of the Oregon emigrants.

Copied into Rep. from "Liberty Banner."

Republican, August 7, 1843.

A letter received from the emigrants, at Iowa City, some days since:

OREGON EMIGRATING CO.

June 10, 1843.

The return of a company of mountain traders to the settlements presents an opportunity for writing which I feel much inclined to embrace. We are now between 2 and 300 miles west of Independence, on the Blue river, a tributary of the Kansas, in good health and spirits. I regret to say that a division has taken place in the company, in consequence of the number of cattle driven by some, those having no cattle refusing to stand guard over stock belonging to others. The result of all this was that Capt. Burnett resigned command of the company, and the commander, in accordance with our regulations, ordered a new election, and so altered the by-laws that the commander should be called colonel, and also authorized the election of 4 captains, and 4 orderly sergeants. The cattle party selected myself as their candidate, those opposed selected Mr. Wm. Martin, an experienced mountaineer. There being a majority in opposition to the cattle party, Mr. Martin was elected, and a division of the company ensued. About 50 wagons, with those who had large droves of loose cattle, now left, with a general request that all in favor of traveling with them should fall back. I was particularly solicited to leave Martin's party, but as it would travel much the fastest, and Col. Martin was a very clever fellow, I declined. The new company, it is expected, will be commanded by Capt. Applegate. Our roads, since leaving the settlements have been very fine, except within the last few days, during which period they have been almost impassable in consequence of the tremendous rains, but they are again improving. We have had no trouble with the Indians, with the exception of horse and cattle stealing, and this business they have carried on pretty lively. I had a very fine mule and an ox stolen from me on the Kansas river, and we lost in all some 8 or 10 head of horses and mules. I believe there is not a case of sickness in camp, though old Mr. Stout, from Iowa, has a violent swelling in his eyes. Tell the boys from Iowa to come on with all the cattle and sheep they can get, and a company large enough to drive them.

Truly yours, etc.,

M. M. M. [McCarver].

P. S.—My friend, Mr. Henry Lee, from Iowa, has just been elected Capt. of one of the divisions. While writing, news has been brought in of the discovery of a dead Indian about one mile from this place, and freshly scalped, and nearly all the company have gone to see him. He was shot with arrows and is supposed to be a Pawnee, killed by a party of the Kansas Indians whom we met the other day, consisting of 200, with fresh scalps and fingers, which they said had been taken the day before.

Republican, Friday, September 6, 1843.

We have been favored with the perusal of a private letter from Bent's Fort, dated July 26. The writer is one of Mr. Fitzpatrick's party, and says that thus far their trip has been a severe one. The party has been delayed since the 14th inst., waiting for the arrival of Mr. Fremont, who left them on the 17th of June with 18 men. After progressing ahead some distance, he despatched an express back, requesting the rear party with Fitzpatrick not to move until he joined them, alleging as a reason that there were hostile Mexicans on their route. On the morning of the date of the letter, the writer says, they were dividing into two parties again, with the intention of meeting at Ft. Hall, Oregon, in about 4 days [weeks]. Fitzpatrick's party intended crossing the Platte that morning, and would take up its line of march over the mountains. He speaks of a slight difficulty with the Indians, but furnishes no particulars.

Republican, Friday, September 29, 1843.

We have received from Mr. Edward Hutwa a very handsome, and, as far as we have any means of judging, a correct lithograph map of the Oregon Territory, as claimed by the U. S., with a portion of the adjacent territory. The principal rivers, mountains, routes, trading depots, and the trading depots and forts of the Hudson's Bay Co., are laid down with accuracy. To those migrating to the Columbia, or to those wishing to study the topography of the country, this map will be of importance.

Republican, Wednesday, December 13, 1843.

A postscript to a letter from a gentleman in the Indian country, dated October 19, received by a gentleman of this city, says: "Ft. Hall, on the Oregon has been delivered up to Lt. Fremont, and it is believed that Ft. Vancouver soon will be." How far the report is reliable, we have no means of knowing, except that he and his party are in Oregon by the authority and direction of the United States Government.

Republican, Thursday, December 14, 1843.

We yesterday noticed a postscript of a letter from the Oregon country. We have since seen letters from Lt. Fremont and other men of his party, written at Ft. Hall, and bearing date of 20th September, which do not confirm the report alluded to. The silence of these letters as to the surrender of Ft. Hall is full assurance to us that the report is not correct. The letter before us, the statements of which are corroborated by Lt. Fremont, himself, says:—

"I arrived at this place (Ft. Hall) on the 13th inst., with my part of the caravan all safe and in tolerable order. * * * (Unimportant part skipped). Lt. Fremont, whom I parted with on the South fork of the Platte, and expected to meet at this place, joined us yesterday after making a survey of the Salt Lake, which he has done much to his satisfaction. The exploration and new routes which we have taken have made our trip tedious and very laborious, but, I hope it will be satisfactory to the Department. We leave tomorrow for the lower country, and find it necessary to let some of our men off on account of the scarcity of provisions, which are not to be had at this place. The full objects of the expedition, will, I hope, be completed ere we return. I shall leave the party in a few days for Walla Walla, or perhaps lower down, to provide necessary supplies for the completion of the business in that quarter. I can not say what time we will return to St. Louis; it is to be hoped before the adjournment of Congress. The emigrants passed this place some short time since, pretty well worn down and scarce of food. The Indians on the Columbia are expected to become troublesome to these newcomers. It is supposed they are induced to acts of violence by some persons as yet unknown. They have already burned Dr. Whitman's mill, and I fear it is not the last spark which will be kindled in the settlement and occupation of this country. The Hudson's Bay Company are improving and pushing their business, perhaps with greater energy than usual, Dr. McLoughlin is laying off towns on the Willamette, selling lots, etc. This is the report, and you can see that the Dr. is in advance of Dr. Linn's bill."

The foregoing is the latest news from Oregon, and may be relied upon as correct. Not the least interesting part of it is that which relates to the disposition of the Indians towards the emigrants. We have always believed that the Indians, backed and incited as they will be by agents and emissaries of the Hudson's Bay Co., and furnished as they doubtless will be, with arms and means of warfare from some source, would oppose the emigrants in making their settlements. That the country must be conquered before it is attained, we hardly entertain a doubt, and if we did, the supineness of our Government would only strengthen the belief. Why is it that our Government is so indifferent to the claims of the nation upon this territory, its wealth and possessions?

St. Louis Reveille, Oct. 21, 1844.

The Platte Argus contains a letter from "Multnomah City," Oregon, from which we make the following extracts. The killing of the Indian has been briefly mentioned heretofore.

"When I first came here, 19 months ago, there were but 4 or 5 houses, now there is upwards of 80 good buildings, nearly all of two stories, and 4 or 5 of three stories high. If there had been plenty of nails we should have had a number more up. If a supply of nails reaches us this spring, we shall have 200 houses before this reaches you, and some of these of brick, for a company from Baltimore are now building a brickyard. A tanyard is also being established. The fact is, we have mechanics of all kinds here, though not a tenth of the number of each kind required. The winter is past, but it was no winter. It was rather a blooming spring, for we had but little rain and no snow, and grass green all the time. We have had but two days' rain in the last 45. I saw cattle yesterday which had run all winter, in finer condition than I ever saw any in your state. Uncle Sam had better be doing something for this country, for if not, within three years it will be too late. You laugh, but if you live you will see it. Therefore stir them up, Mac, for we do not want trouble here, and would all rejoice if the star-spangled banner embraced us within its ample folds. Our flag flying by authority would make a vast difference here.

An Indian committed some outrages lately, and our sheriff endeavored in vain to arrest him; then offered $100 reward for the Indian, and went to his own house, 30 miles from this place. On Monday the Indian came into Oregon City, close to Dr. McLoughlin's mill, where some 25 or 30 men were at work. Winslow and some white men went to take him, and got close to him. He saw Winslow, fired his gun, which missed its mark, the ball lodging in a tree on this side of the river within 2 feet of me, for I was at work at my garden at the time. The Indian then fired his pistol, 2 balls from which lodged in the shoulder of G. W. LeBreton, clerk of the court, tearing his arm dreadfully. Mr. LeB. seized the Indian with the other hand, and then threw him down. Winslow then ran up and knocked out his brains. In the meantime, 5 other Indians fired their guns, and then their arrows, and wounded two men."

Reveille, November 4, 1844.

NEWS FROM OREGON.

The Western Expositor of Saturday last announces the arrival of Mr. Wm. Gilpin, formerly of this place, from Oregon. Mr. Gilpin passed the winter among the American settlements of the Willamette and the adjacent sea coast, and he describes them as enjoying prosperity when he left them in April last. The emigrant party of '43, which he accompanied, arrived at their destination in November last, "after having braved and overcome unparalleled dangers and difficulties from savages, from hunger, from thirst, crossing parched treeless plains, fierce angry rivers, and forcing their wagons through 1000 miles of mountains, declared impassable by the most experienced guides and voyageurs."

This accession swelled the population of Oregon to upwards of 2000, and they had formed a government, elected officers, established courts, and a record of land titles. "Farms," he says, "freckle the magnificent plains, towns are springing up at convenient points upon the rivers, a dozen of excellent mills supply lumber and flour for home use and export; the fisheries are not neglected, and lands are surveyed. A college, numerous schools, and several churches are scattering education amongst the young. Money has been sent from New York for a printing press and steam engine, cattle and stock of all kinds are accumulating and rapidly increasing under a mild climate and unfailing pastures. Provisions of all kinds are abundant, of most excellent quality and moderate prices."

Mr. Gilpin passed the trading fort of Bridger and Vasquez on the 19th of August. This fort is 100 miles west of Green River, and exactly half way from Independence to the Willamette. The American trappers scattered among the mountains had there collected to meet the emigrants of last spring; an advanced party of 30 of whom, with their wagons and cattle, passed on the 17th, two days later than the emigrants of the preceding year. Two larger companies behind, under the command of Gen. Gilliam and Col. Ford, passed subsequently, and all in good time reached the settlements before the setting in of winter.

Reveille, January 20, 1845.

OREGON.

We learn from a letter published in the Weston Journal, dated at the Sandwich Islands, that the Oregon emigrants who went out during the past season, have made great changes in business, money now circulating, and everything begins to assume the appearance of the civilization, business, trade, and refinements this side of the mountains.

Republican, February 8, 1848.

OREGON.

We see it stated in up-country papers that the late arrivals from Oregon furnished information that two parties of emigrants, dissatisfied with their prospects in that country, attempted to return home last winter, but were prevented by the difficulties of road and weather. We have never entertained a doubt that this disposition was uppermost with all the best portions of the emigration to that region; but obstacles are presented of such a character as to deter many persons from attempting to return. Emigrants from the states find the greatest difficulty in descending the mountain declivities into the valley of the Columbia River, but then their wagons have been relieved of a great part of the provisions and surplus weight, and they do get along. If they should attempt to return to the United States, however, a different prospect is presented. They must start amply provided with provisions and everything necessary for the journey, and thus loaded it has been deemed impossible to get wagons along over the mountains which they necessarily have to ascend in their progress. This cause alone has deterred many persons from making the attempt, and they have been compelled to accommodate themselves to a country and a condition of things in no respect better than they originally left. No man, in our opinion, who has a comfortable home in any of the states can be justified in giving it up in the expectation of bettering himself in Oregon. If he has a family, he does a gross injustice to them in exposing them to the hardships of so long and perilous a journey with no prospect of returning to their friends, should they become discontented; and even if an emigrant has nobody to care for but himself, he had better stay at home and earn an honest living, than go to Oregon and run the risk of working out a precarious one. For this reason we have never countenanced any one for whom we had the least respect in a journey to Oregon or California with a view to a fixed residence there. Neither country presents half the inducements to be found in any one of the Western states, and an adventure of this kind is prima facie evidence of a restless and discontented spirit, not likely to be pleased anywhere.

Republican, May 19, 1848.

On the 20th of November the Governor appointed Columbia Lancaster to be Supreme Judge of Oregon Territory, in place of J. Quinn Thornton, resigned. From some proceedings of the legislature of a subsequent period, we infer that Judge Thornton had left Oregon on a visit to Washington City, as a sort of general agent, to attend to the distribution of offices in the new territory. Of his arrival we have not heard, and it is probable that Mr. Meek may reach Washington before him.

[Then follows proceedings of legislature, resolutions, etc., intended to keep J. Q. T. from leaving the territory, quoted in full. Also Governor's message, expressing the disappointment at the failure of Congress to extend jurisdiction over that country, etc.]

Republican, July 26, 1848.

ARRIVAL OF MR. KIT CARSON FROM CALIFORNIA.

Information has been received by Gov. Mason in California of the difficulties between the Oregon settlers and Indians, but it does not appear to come down to a later date than that which we have received from Oregon direct.

Republican, August 2, 1848.

LATE FROM OREGON.

[General account of defense of Oregon regiment against Indians; death of Col. Gilliam, etc.]

NOTE—A CORRECTION.

The name "L. H. Ponjade" occurring on pages 268 and 269 of the September number of The Quarterly should be L. H. Poujade.

INDEX

INDEX TO VOL. IV.

- Abbott, Captain, 237.

- Abbott, L. G., 365.

- Abrams, W. P., 60.

- Abrams, C., 63.

- Academy, Bishop Scott's, opened, 66.

- Academy, St. Mary's, opened, 66.

- Adair, Col. John, first collector customs at Astoria, 134, 135.

- Adams, Henry, wrote history of United States, 7.

- Adams, Emma H., 342.

- Adams, W. L., 365.

- Affleck & Gunn, publishers of Puget Sound Courier, 372.

- Agriculture in United States, table of, 118.

- Agriculture, 118-122; values, table of, 121.

- Aiken, ——, 139.

- Albert, Mrs. John H., 394.

- Allen, Capt. B. F., wounded, 234.

- Allen and Lewis, 197.

- Allen, ——, 353.

- Allen, George T., 265.

- "All Over Oregon and Washington"; purpose of, 317.

- Alta California, The, 376.

- Alvarez, ——, consul at Santa Fé, 272.

- Alvarado, Governor of California under Mexican rule, 311.

- Alvord, General, 105.

- Anderson, E. K., 229.

- Angne [Augur?], Captain, 237.

- Ankeny, Captain, 196.

- American Antiquarian Society, 309.

- Applegate, Jesse, 106, 390.

- Argonaut, The San Francisco, 292.

- Argus, The Puget Sound, 373.

- Armstrong, Pleasant, 234.

- Arundel, Harcourt T., employed by Bancroft, 303.

- Astoria and Columbia River Railroad Company, 146.

- Astoria and Willamette Barge Company, 136.

- Astoria, Social and Economic History of, by Alfred A. Cleveland, 130.

- Astor, John Jacob, 8, 9, 131.

- Astorian, The, 28, 29, 30, 138; quotation from, 141, 142, 143.

- Atkinson, John, 365.

- "Atlantis Arisen," revision of "All Over Oregon and Washington," 317.

- Augur, General, 105.

Babcock, Doctor, supreme judge of Oregon Territory, 285.

Badollet, and Company, 140.

Bagley, Clarence B., pioneer papers of Puget Sound, 365, 371, 377, 378, 379; business manager Courier, 381; owner and publisher Echo, 382.

Ball, John, teacher, 265.

Bailey, Doctor, 230; governor Oregon Territory, 1845, 285.

Bailey, W. E., purchased the Press, 383; purchased the Times, 384.

Baker, Colonel E. D., candidate for United States senator, 72, 93; elected United States senator, 94, 99; mustered into service, 101; reply to Breckinridge, 102; death of, 103.

Baker, Florence E., 84.

Baker and Boyer, 195.

Baker, D. S. & Company, 195.

Baker, Dr. D. S., the pioneer railroad builder, sketch of life, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200.

Baker Mills, The, 217.

Baltimore, J. M., 365.

Bancroft Pacific States Publications: The origin and authorship of, A History of A History, by William Alfred Morris, 289.

Bancroft, Hubert Howe, "The Macaulay of the West," 292; a sketch of early life and of growth of history project, 296; first venture as a literary man, 301; fame as historical writer, 310; method of collecting material, 324; three leading objects kept in mind in preparation of histories, 328; plan for works, 335; not a great American historical writer, 337; errors in works, 358.

Bancroft, H. H. & Company, firm of, organized, 297.

Bancroft's histories, vastness of the enterprise, 289; not all his own work, 291; parts written by assistants, 330.

Barclay, Mrs. Dr., 264.

Barclay, Doctor, 265.

Barnes, Mary Sheldon, 362.

Barnes, Edward, 230.

Barron, Major, 229.

Bates, Alfred, employed by Bancroft, 325, 363; sketch of life, 331.

Bausman, W., and Company, printers, of Northern Light, 372.

Beacon, The, 382.

Berry, A. M., first printer on the Oregonian, 370.

Berry, Pamelia Ann, 249.

Bent, Charles, 272.

Benton, Senator, 91, 157.

Bewley, F. M., 390.

Black, Capt. H. M., 99.

Blair, J. I., 248.

Besserer, Charles, 365.

Bidwell, Major, 222, 223.

"Blue Book, The Big," name for Iowa code of laws, 188.

"Blue Book, The Little," 188.

Bigelow, Daniel R., elected commissioner to draft code of laws for Oregon, 190, 191, 192.

Bernie, James, 132, 265.

Blakeley, James, 74.

Blanchet, Archbishop, 66, 269.

Blethen, Col. A. J., purchased The Times, 385.

Boelling, V., 22, 32.

Boardman, John, letter from, 276.

Boise, Reuben P., 167; elected commissioner to draft code of laws for Oregon, 190; elected state representative, 192, 194.

Bonneville, Captain, 359.

Boon, John L., 104.

Booth, A., & Company, 140.

Bohttink, Professor, 319.

Bowman, Amos, employed by Bancroft, 314.

Border Ruffians, 42.

Bosquetti, librarian for Bancroft, 299.

Boyer, John F., 195, 196.

Boyle, ——, 145.

Breckinridge, John C., nominated for president, 94, 101.

Breitenbush, John, 248.

Bridger, Jim, 113.

Brotchie, Captain, 265.

Brooks, John P., 390.

Brosset, M., 319.

Brown, ——, 26.

Brown, Miss, teacher, 29.

Brown, John, 42.

Brown, Hugh, founder of Brownsville, 74.

Brown, F. M., 74.

Brown, Beriah, 365, 372; editor Puget Sound Dispatch, 377; publisher Puget Sound Dispatch, 379.

Brown, J. Henry, employed by Bancroft, 314.

Buchanan, Lieutenant Colonel, 99, 237, 238.

Buchanan, President, 126.

Buffalo Historical Society, 309.

Bulletin, The, 317, 369.

Burnett, Peter H., 11, 78, 256, 271; letters of taken from Ohio Statesman and St. Louis Reporter, 180.

Burnett, John, 365.

Bush, Asahel, territorial printer, 192, 193, 365; editor Oregon Statesman, 370.

Burke, Thomas, 379.

Butler, Hillory, 378.

Butler, Henry, 104.

Butterfield, John, 126.

Byers, ——, founder Rocky Mountain News, 327.

Calapooia, The Upper, by George O. Goodall, 70.

Call and Daily Press consolidated, 383.

California Pioneers, Society of, 294, 351.

California material, how collected by Bancroft, 311.

Californian, The, pioneer paper of California, 376.

Campbell, John G., 390.

Carey, Alice and Phœbe, 315.

Carson, Kit, 230, 239.

Carter, Miss Julia, 64.

Carter, ——, 232.

Cartwright, Charlotte Moffett, Glimpses of Early Days in Oregon, 69.

Carey, ——, 393.

Case, Hon. Wm. M., 244.

Casey, General, 105.

Cavalry, The First Oregon, recruited, 100, 103.

Cavender, A. B., 74.

Cavendish, McDonald and, 74.

Cavanaugh, Thomas H., purchased Courier, 381.

Cerruti, Enrique, employed by Bancroft, 311.

Chamberlain, Governor George E., 12.

Chamberlain, A., state representative, 389.

Chapman Code, The, 186, 188, 190.

Chapman, Hon. W. W., 186.

Chittenden, Captain, the American Fur Trade in the Far West (quoted), 6, 9.

Chronicle, The San Francisco, 293.

Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth, plan of, 334.

Clark, George Rogers, proposed expedition of, 5.

Clark, Harvey, 59.

Clark, ——, 167.

Clark, Ransom, 390.

Clarke, S. A., The Montures on French Prairie, 265, 268, 365.

Clay, Henry, 273.

Cleveland, Alfred A., The Educational History of Astoria, Oregon, 21.

Cleveland, Alfred A., The Social and Economic History of Astoria, 130.

Clugage, James and Poole, located first mining claim in Southern Oregon, 229.

Coffin, Stephen, 65.

Columbia River, discovery of, 5.

Columbian, The, pioneer newspaper north of the Columbia River, 372, 376.

Colvig, Hon. Wm. H., Indian Wars of Southern Oregon, 227.

Colvig, Dr. Wm. L., 227, 228, 230.

Collins, John, 385.

Commerce, 123.

Cone, Aaron, 252.

Cone, Anson Sterling, 251.

Cone, Philander J., 259.

Connelly, Dr., 272.

Connelly, Owen, 66.

Cook, Captain, off the Oregon coast, 4.

Cook, Francis H., 366; publisher The Echo, 381.

Cooper, Frank, 248.

Coquille Guards, 238.

Corbett, H. W., 63, 64; senator, 196.

Cornelius, Thomas R., appointed colonel, 99, 101, 135.

Corvallis and Eastern Railroad, 247.

Couch, John H., 390.

Courier, The Puget Sound, 372, 380; the daily, first appearance, 380.

Courtnay, Mrs. Agnes B., 74.

Courtnay, Isaac B., 75.

Coues, Dr. Elliott, 6.

Cowles, Captain R., 100.

Cox, Anderson, state representative, 389.

Craig, D. W., 365.

Crawford, Medorum, 390.

Crawford, P. V., 71, 167.

Crawford, Samuel C., 372.

Crawford, Samuel L., 378; city editor Post Intelligencer, 379.

Creighton, Captain, 237.

Crooks, General George, 239.

Crosby, Captain, 59.

Culver, Samuel, 229.

Cunningham, ——, 234.

Currey, Captain George B., 100.

Curry, Governor George L., 238, 368.

Cushing, William, 390.

Cushing, ——, minister to China, 274.

- Dall, Captain W. L., appointed lieutenant in navy, 104.

- Damon, John F., 365, 371; editor The Northwest, 373.

- Daniels, Travers, publisher Port Townsend Register, 372.

- Daniel, ——., 377.

- Davenport, T. W., An Object Lesson in Paternalism, 33, 244, 247, 248.

- Davenport, Miss Orla, 249.

- Davis, ——, secretary of war, 157.

- Davis, H. W., appointed captain volunteer company, 61.

- Davis, A. L., 63.

- Davies, Griffith, 378.

- Deady, Judge M. P., 352, 353; contributions to Oregon Pioneer Association, 391.

- Deakins, William, 280.

- Dean, N. C., 229.

- Deardorff, J. D., and wife, 26, 27.

- Degrett, Phillip, 389.

- Dement, William C., 390.

- Dempsey, Thomas H., publisher Times, 384.

- Dennison, A. P., 99.

- Denny, Mrs. O. P., 261.

- Dent, Captain F. T., 99.

- Depot, Peter, 269.

- Derby, George H., 296.

- Devlin and Nygant, 140.

- Dilley, ——, 231.

- Dispatch, The Puget Sound, 377, 379.

- Dixon, Hepworth, 327.

- Doane, Rev. N., 65.

- Documents, 78; Oregon material taken from a file of an Independence, Mo., and Weston, Mo., paper for 1844 and 1845, 270, 395.

- Dodge, Hon. A. C., 78.

- Douglas House Bill of 1846, 90.

- Douglas, Stephen A., candidate for president of United States, 94.

- Douglass, ——, 265.

- Downing, George S., 244, 247.

- Draper, Doctor, 34.

- Draper, Mrs. Sarah, 264.

- Drew, C. S., Major First Oregon Cavalry, 100.

- Dryer, Thomas J., 64, 93, 365; first editor of Oregonian, 370.

- Duncan, L. J. C., 229.

- Duncan, Alexander, 266.

- Dunlap, John A., 75; representative, 76.

- Duniway, Mrs., 365.

- Dunn, Pat, 229, 232.

- Dyar, ——., 234.

- Dyer, E. S., publisher Northwest, 373.

- Dyson, George, 74.

- Eberman, N., 132.

- Eccleson, Col. E., 247.

- Edison, Thomas A., 39.

- Edwards, Edward, 232.

- Ely, Lieutenant, 232.

- Ematinger, Frank, 390.

- Emigration of 1843, experiences of, 177.

- Evans Creek, battle of, 233.

- Evans, Mr., constructed a ferry on Rogue River, 229.

- Evans, General Elwood, 314, 352.

- Everett, ——., 43.

- Expositor, The Western, 74.

- Express Advance, The, 74.

- Faber, J. G., 234.

- Failing, Josiah, 63.

- Fairweather, H. W., 199.

- Fessenden, Mr., 102.

- Ferguson, Mr., 272.

- Ferry, Elisha P., first governor of Washington, 380.

- Ferry, James P., published Times, 384.

- Field, Justice Stephen J., 351.

- Fielding, ——., 234.

- Fields, Thomas, 75.

- Fillmore, President, 187.

- Finance, 126.

- Findlay, John, 75.

- Finlayson, Mr., and wife, 28.

- Finley, R. C., 70, 71, 72, 74.

- Fisher, Walter M., 299; sketch of life, 300.

- Flavel, Captain George, 32.

- Flemming, John, printer Oregon Spectator, 368.

- Foard and Stokes Company, 143.

- Ford, Mark, 390.

- Foster, Phillip, 390.

- Fowler, W. W., 232.

- Frazer, Thomas, 63.

- Fremont, Captain, 11, 78; colonel, 157, 158, 230; general, 239, 245.

- Fur and Trading Company, 80.

- Fur Company, The American, 274; The Northwest, 130, 137; The Missouri, organized, 8; The Pacific, 8.

- Furth, Jacob, 378.

- Gale, James N., 366.

- Garfield, Selucius, defeated for congress, 380.

- Gary, Rev. Mr., 276.

- Gatch, Prof. T. M., 249.

- Gay, George, 230.

- Gazette, The Marine, 31, 138.

- Gazette, The, published first dispatch coming by wire to Seattle, 377; first paper in Seattle, 375.

- Gervais, Joseph, 243, 244.

- Gibbs, Addison C., was governor of Oregon, 108, 214, 217.

- Gibbs, A. C., editor Oregon Weekly Times, 368.

- Gibbs, ——., 232.

- Gibson, George R., 273.

- Gilliam, Colonel Cornelius, 243.

- Gilmore, S. M., letter from, 284.

- Gilpin, Mr., 271.

- Glass, Robert, 72.

- Gold, discovery of, in California, prices of products in Oregon, 49, 60.

- "Gold Beach Guards," 238.

- Goldschmidt, Albert, employed by Bancroft, 304.

- Goodall, George O., the Upper Calapooia, 70.

- Goodall, Captain James P., 233.

- Grace Church Parish School started, 23, 27.

- Grant, General, 105, 109, 239.

- Grant, Frederick J., 378.

- Gray, Captain, sent to North Pacific Coast, 5, 9, 131, 205.

- Gray, Chesley, 229.

- Green, Wm. O., 196.

- Greenwood, Mary, 161.

- Griffin, Lieutenant Burrell, 233.

- Griffin, George Butler, sketch of life, 348.

- Gunn, E. T., newspaper man, 380.

- Gunn, Affleck &, 372.

- Gwin, Senator, plan for slave-holding republic on Pacific Coast, 105, 106.

Hall, Peter D., 259.

Hall, Edwin O., 367.

Hall, Ike M., 381.

Hally, C. F., 280.

Hamilton, S. M., 67.

Hamilton, Louis, reference to, 190.

Hand Book Almanac, 297.

Hanford, Thaddeus, 374, 380.

Hanley, Mrs. John A., 235.

Hanthorn & Company, cannerymen, 141.

Harding, Captain E. J., 100.

Harding, Benjamin F., quartermaster First Oregon Cavalry, 100.

Harding, Senator, 214, 217.

Harding, John R., killed by Indians, 233.

Harger, Mrs. Harriet, 264.

Harker, Charles, 104.

Harris, Captain T. S., 100.

Harris, David, 235.

Harris, Mary, 235.

Harris, ——, 252.

Harris, George W., 378.

Hathaway, Major J. S., 135.

Hawthorne, Doctor, 61.

Hays, Judge Benjamin, 312.

Hazen, Captain, 105.

Helm, George, "Lion of Linn," 73.

Hensill, Mrs. Mary J., 66.

Herald, Puget Sound, 372, 381.

Herald, The Cleveland, 315.

Hewitt, Miss, teacher, 24, 29.

Hewitt, Randall H., 365; publisher Pacific Tribune, 374; published Echo, 381.

High School, The Astoria, 31.

Higgins, David, 366.

Hill, Mrs., 26.

Hill, W. Lair, 365; editor Oregon Weekly Times, 369.

Hill, Homer M., purchased Chronicle, 383.

Himes, Geo. H., 375.

History of the Preparation of the First Code of Oregon, by James K. Kelly, 185.

History of the Early Indian Wars of Oregon, 318.

History Company, The, 333.

Hittell, John S., 299, 331.

Hobson, John, 32.

Hobson, Mr., and family, 132.

Hodgins, ——, 232.

Hogg, Col. T. E., 248.

Holderness, S. M., 390.

Holman, Joseph, Short Biography of, 392.

Holman, George Phelps, first white child born in Marion County, 394.

Holladay, Ben, published The Bulletin, 369.

Home Journal, of New York, 315.

Hood, Gen. J. B., 239.

Hooker, Colonel Joseph, 104; builder of military wagon road, 239.

Hoover, Jacob, 390.

Hopkins, Mrs. Rebeka, 259.

Hopwood, Moses, 229.

Hosford, Rev. C. O., opened first school in Astoria, 21.

Houston, Sam, 151.

Howell, ——., 232.

Hudson Bay Company, possession of the Northwest, 9, 78, 81, 82, 83, 89; and Northwest Fur Company consolidated, ——, ——, 132, 153, 154, 156, 242, 261.

Hughes, W. H., 378.

Hughes and Davies, purchased The Times, 385.

Humason, Judge, 217.

Hume, R. D., and Company, 140.

Hungry Hill, battle of, 236.

Hunt, L. S. J., 383.

Hunter, Col. George, "Reminiscences of an Old Timer," quotation from, 97.

Hunt's Astor party, route of, 10.

Heisler, William, 71.

Husted, General, 390.

Hustler, Captain, 134, 139.

Huston, H. Clay, 267.

Hyde, Aaron J., 65.

Hyde, H. H., 390.

Hyland, Rev. T. H., 23.

Hyland, Mrs. T. H., 23.

- Indian Wars of Southern Oregon, an address by William H. Colvig, 227.

- Indians: Umpquas, 228; Klamaths, 228; Rogue Rivers, 228; Modoc, 228; Shasta, 228; Mollalas, 241; Cayuses, 241, 255; Klamaths, 242; Warm Spring, 242; Pawnees, 252.

- Infantry, The First Oregon, 108.

- Informant, The, 74.

- Ingalls, Rufus, 105.

- Ingalls, David, 133, 136.

- Ingraham, E. S., 378.

- Intelligencer, The Weekly, 377.

- Iowa Gazette, 78.

- Iowa Code, 188.

- Ireland, D. C., 366.

- Irish, Tom, 230.

- Irving, Washington, 358.

- Jack, D. N., elected assessor of Linn County, 76.

- Jack, Porter, 244.

- Jackson, Stonewall, 42.

- Jackson, Mrs. Helen Hunt, 326.

- Jackson, P. B., 365.

- Jackson, David E., letter of, 395.

- Jacobs, Judge Orange, 371.

- Jefferson, President, trading posts with Indians, 5, 12, 110.

- Jefferson, Delos, 65.

- Johns, James, 79.

- Johnson, Miss, 24.

- Johnson, Doctor, 38.

- Johnson, Mr., 63.

- Johnson, P. B., 365.

- Jones, Mr., killed by Indians, 235.

- Jones, Captain, 237.

- Journal, The Independence, 270, 277.

- Kautz, General A. V., 239.

- Kearny, Major Phil, 231, 239.

- Keene, Granville, 234.

- Keeney, Johnathan, 74.

- Kelley, Hall J., agitating colonization of Oregon, 9.

- Kelly, Captain William, 100.

- Kelly, James K., History of the Preparation of the "First Code of Oregon," 185; elected commissioner to draft code of laws for Oregon, 189; nominated and elected member of council, 192.

- Kendrick, Captain, sent to North Pacific coast, 5.

- Kenny, George L., 296.

- Kirchoff, Louis, 137.

- Kilham, E. H., 353, 358.

- Killin, Hon. Benton, 188

- Kincaid, Mr., night school taught by, 24.

- King, Colonel William, 60, 65.

- King, Wm. H., 66.

- Kingsley, C. S., 67.

- Kinney's cannery, 140.

- Kinney, R. C., & Sons, 139.

- Kinney, M. J., 141.

- Kirk, Alexander, 74; elected county judge of Linn County, 76.

- Kirk, W. R., 74.

- Klippel, Henry, laid out Jacksonville as a town, 230, 235.

- Knights of the Golden Circle, 73, 106, 108.

- Knight, Wm. H., Manager Bancroft Publishing Department, 297.

- Kuro-shiwo of Japan (Japan current), 39.

La Bonte, Louis, Recollections of Men, 264.

Ladd, W. S., 61, 63.

Lamerick, Captain J. K., 232.

Lampson, Roswell C., 104.

Land Law, The Donation, 37, 38, 229.

Lane, General Joseph, appointed governor of Oregon, 91; nominated for vice president, 94, 95, 101, 105, 106, 233, 234, 239, 370

Larkin, T. N., 63.

Larrabee, Charles H., publisher Puget Sound Dispatch, 380.

Larrabee & Company, publishers Puget Sound Dispatch, 377.

Latshaw, Major, 238.

Latty, Alexander, 265.

Lawrence, Miss, 28.

Lawson, Peter, 257.

Leary, John, 378.

Ledford Massacre, 236.

Ledger, The Philadelphia, 277.

Ledger, The Weekly, 382.

Lee, Jason, 265, 393.

Lee, Barton, 390.

Lee, H. A. G., 390.

Leinweber, Christian, 137.

Lewis and Clark Centennial, The, by F. G. Young, 1.

Lewis and Clark Expedition—Relation to the Northwest, 1; primary inception of, 6.

Lewis and Clark, exploring expedition, 5; the trail, 10, 12, 13, 115.

Lewis and Clark Centennial, mission of, 2; possibilities of, 16; duties of its authorities, 16-18.

Lewis, Mr., 9, 130.

Lewis and Clark, 8.

Lewis, Stephen (Etienne Lucier), 264.

Limerick, L., 63; appointed county school superintendent, 64.

Lincoln, Miss Liza, 26.

Lincoln, Abraham, 74, 97, 99, 101, 108, 370.

Lindgren, Waldemar, 124.

Lingenfelter, James W., 104.

Linn, Senator Lewis F., 151.

Literary Club, The Pioneer Lyceum, 390.

Little Meadows, Battle of, 233.

Lorraine, Lieutenant, 105.

Lorrea, Doctor, 61.

Louisiana Purchase Exposition, purpose of, 14.

Love, George, 235.

Love, G. M., 235.

Lovejoy, Hon. A. L., appointed postal agent for Oregon, 192, 256, 390.

Lownesdale, D. H., 59.

Lucier, Etienne, 261, 264.

Luelling, H., 59.

Lugenbeel, Major, 99.

Lumber Industry, The, 124.

Lupton, Major J. A., 234.

Lyman, Rev. Horace, 65.

Lyman, H. S., Some Corrections, 86.

Lyman, H. S., Reminiscences, 251, 268.

Lyon, Colonel George G., published Times, 384.

Madison, President, 9.

Mail and Express, The New York, 357.

Manufacturing, 122.

Marshall, J. W., discoverer of gold in California, 11.

Massachusetts Historical Society, 309.

Massacre at Bloody Point, 232.

Mason, Robert, & Company, 141.

Masters, ——, 254.

Mathieu, F. X., 167, 389.

Matthews, Captain Wm., 100.

Mattice, George W., purchased Pierce County News, 382.

Maulsby, G. T., 26.

Manson, Donald, 261, 265.

Manson, James, 262.

Manson, Jr., Donald, 262.

Manson, Wm., 261, 262.

Manson, Stephen, 262.

Maury, R. F., Lieutenant Colonel First Oregon Cavalry, 100.

Maxwell, Mr., 26.

Maxwell, S. L., 366; publisher Weekly Intelligencer, 377.

Mead, Elwood, chief of Division of Irrigation, 17.

Meany, E. S., 379.

Medary, Col. Samuel, 174.

Meek, Joseph, 85, 90; United States Marshal, 91, 160, 316, 393.

Meek, Stephen L., 242, 245.

"Message, The," 373.

McBride, Dr. James, 231.

McCarver, M. M., 78; letter of, 403.

McClure, Colonel John, 132, 137.

McDonald & Cavendish, 74.

McElroy, Thornton F., 365, 376.

McFadden, Judge O. B., elected to congress, 380.

McCaw, William, elected clerk of Linn County, 76.

McGraw, John H., 378.

McGregor, Miss, teacher, 29.

McGruder, Top, 390.

McHargue, James, 75.

McKay, Tom, 244, 256, 266.

McKay, Alexander, 257.

McKean, S. T., 32; and family, 133.

McKew, ——, 234.

McKinley, Archibald, 264, 265.

McLoughlin, Dr. John, in charge of Fort George, 131, 154, 257, 264, 281; flouring mill completed, 387.

McNaught, Ferry, McNaught & Mitchell, law firm of, 383.

McNemee, Mr., 64.

McNemee, Job, 258.

Miller, Dan, 230.

Miller, Captain John F., 232.

Mills, James, 234.

Mineral Productions, 123, 124.

Miner, Dr. Thomas T., 379.

Minto Pass: Its History and an Indian Tradition, by John Minto, 241.

Minto, John, 167: Minto Pass: Its History and an Indian Tradition, 241, 243, 244, 247, 390.

Missouri Historical Society, 270.

Mofras' description of Astoria in 1841, 131.

Monnastes, David, 61.

Money, Beaver, coined at Oregon City, 62.

Montgomery, Robert, 75.

Montgomery, Frank C., editor Chronicle, 382.

Monture, George and Robert, 269.

Montures on French Prairie, The, by S. A. Clarke, 268.

Mooney, Mr. and Mrs., publishers The Beacon, 382.

Moore, Mr., 26.

Moore, Asa, 70, 74.

Moore, Robert, 71, 76.

Moore, Miles C., on A Pioneer Railroad Builder, 195.

Moore, Charles, 196.

Moore, Paine Brothers &, 196.

Morrison, Captain R. W., 386.

Morris, ——, 232.

Morris, William Alfred, The Origin and Authorship of the Bancroft Pacific States Publications: A History of a History, 287.

Morris, George P., editor New York Home Journal, 315.

Morse, Mrs. H. B., 22.

Moss, S. W., 390.

"Mountain Men," 9.

Mullan, Captain John, From Walla Walla to San Francisco, 202.

Municipal Exposition, Dresden, Germany, 18.

Murphy, John Miller, 365; publisher Standard, 372, 374, 376.

Murray, Edward F., assistant to Bancroft, 312.

Muscovite, the advance of in the Pacific Northwest, 4.

- Nash, Isaac M., 84.

- Native Races, The, preparation of material, 308.

- Naylor, T. G., 254.

- Neale, Miss, teacher, 29.

- Nelson, Thomas chief justice supreme court, 187, 188; relieved of office of supreme judge, 189.

- Nemos, William, employed by Bancroft, 305; sketch of life, 322; severed connections with Bancroft library, 333.

- Nesmith, Senator Jas. W., 47, 167, 387; contributions to Oregon Pioneer Association, 390, 391.

- New Era, The, 277; extract from, 399.

- Newell, ——, 205.

- Newell, Robert, 265, 388, 390, 393.

- Newell, Wm., 365.

- Newkirk, Mr., employed by Bancroft, 325.

- New Penelope, The, 317.

- News, The Pierce County, 382.

- Nolan, Rhodes, 232.

- North Pacific Coast, 382.

- Northern Light, 372.

- Northwest Coast, 81.

- Northwest, The, 378.

Oak, Ora, employed by Bancroft, 299.

Oak, Henry L., Bancroft's librarian, 298; main facts of his life, 298, 305; retired from Bancroft's library, 333.

O'Bryant, Hugh D., first mayor of Portland, 61.

Occident, The, Presbyterian paper, 298.

Officer, James, 280.

Ogden, Isaac, 262.

Ogden, William, 264.

Ogden, Emma, 264.

Ogden, Peter Skeen, 262, 264, 265.

Ohio Statesman, 78.

Olney, Judge Cyrus, the Olney lottery, 137.

O'Meara, James, 365.

Oregon, Glimpses of Early Days in, by Charlotte Moffett Cartwright, 55.

Oregon Spectator, The, 81; first newspaper in old Oregon, 368.

Oregon and Its Share in the Civil War, by Robert Treat Platt, 89.

Oregon, a territory of United States, 91; became a state, 93; voted for Lincoln, 94; railroad to, 277; printing press, 286.

"Oregon Country, The," 111.

Oregon—Pittsburgh meeting and Dr. White's report, 170.

Oregon Historical Society, 167; old mission press, 368.

Oregon Territory, confused condition of statutory laws, 185.

Oregon Bar Association, 185.

Oregon Emigration Movement, documents relating to, 170.

Oregon Steam Navigation Company, 196, 197, 198; bought six sevenths stock Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad Company, 199, 204, 206, 353.

Oregon, Provisional Government of, adoption of Iowa laws, 185.

Oregon Reports, 187.

Oregon Country and Its Earlier Conditions, Letters descriptive of, 178.

Oregon Code, 194.

Oregon Emigrating Company, 177.

Oregon Emigrants, extract from Independence Journal, 271.

Oregon Pioneer Association, 314.

Oregon Weekly Times, 368.

Oregon American and Evangelical Unionist, The, 368.

Oregon Emigrating Company, 403.

Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, 139, 143, 199, 200.

Oregon Free Press, 368.

Oregonian, first published, 64, 293, 369; Daily, 370, 376.

Ord, General, 105.

Ord, Captain E. O. C., 237.

Osborne, ——, 260.

Otie, Ed, 390.

Overland Monthly, The, 300, 304, 317.

Overland Press, The, 373.

Owens, Adair, Mrs. Dr., 26.

Owens, Captain Elias A., 232.

Owens, Colonel, 272.

Paine Brothers & Moore, 196.

Pambrun, ——., 264, 265.

Parker, Mrs. H. B., 32.

Parker, Mrs. W. W., 29.

Parker, W. W., 32, 133, 135.

Parker, James M., 267.

Parrish, Rev. J. L., 132.

Partisan, 381.

Paternalism, An Object Lesson In, by T. W. Davenport, 33.

Patrick, H. C., 366; started Weekly Ledger, 382.

Pearne, Thomas H., 365.

Peatfield, J. J., employed by Bancroft, 345; sketch of life, 346, 363.

Peel, Lieut. William, 387.

Perry, ——, 132.

Pettygrove, F. W., 390.

Perkins, Dr. J. N., 71.

Perkins, T., constructed a ferry on Rogue River, 229.

Petroff, Ivan, sketch of life, 318; employed by Bancroft, 318, 363.

Phelps, Almira, 394.

Philpot, ——., 234.

Philbrick, C. W., published Puget Sound Argus, 373.

Phillips, Wendell, 292.

Pickett, Charles E., 387, 390.

Pierce, President, 192.

Pinart, M., furnished Bancroft's Alaska material, 318.

Pioneer and Historical Society, 138.

Pioneer Captain of Industry in Oregon, A, by James R. Robertson, 150.

Pioneer Railroad Builder, A, by Miles C. Moore, 195.

Pioneer Papers of Puget Sound, by Clarence B. Bagley, 365.

Pittock, H. L., 365; printer of the Oregonian, 370.

Poe, A. M., 365.

Polk, President James K., 90, 91, 187.

Polk, Colonel, 272.

Pomeroy, Mrs., 253.

Poujade, L. H., 268.

Poole, J. R. and Clugage, located first mining claim in Southern Oregon, 229.

Poole, John R., laid out Jacksonville as a town, 230.

Pope, Miss, teacher, 22.

Population, increase of, in West, 114; table of, for United States, 116.

Porter, Nathan S., 381.

Portland founded, 59.

Port Orford Minute Men, 238.

Post Intelligencer, The, 374.

Post, The Seattle Weekly, 377; The Daily, 378.

Post and Intelligencer consolidated, 378.

Powell, Joab, 71.

Powers, T. P., 22, 29, 136.

Poyntz, Stone &, 229.

Pratt, O. C., justice supreme court, 187, 188.

Pratt, Orson B., appointed historian Mormon Church, 321.

Pratt, Mrs. William, 264.

Pratt, John W., 385.

Press, The, 373; Daily, 383.

Prigg, F., 390; publisher of Pacific Tribune, 374.

Prosch, Thomas W., 366, 371, 378; published Puget Sound Herald, 372.

Prosch, Charles, 366, 371, 374, 381.

Prosch, Fred, in charge mechanical work of Courier, 381.

Provisional Government of Oregon, 89.

Public School, The, of Astoria, 25.

Public buildings, transferred from Oregon City to Salem, trouble caused, 186.

- Radebaugh, R. F., 366; started Weekly Ledger, 382.

- Railroad, Astoria and Willamette Valley, 135.

- Railroad, Astoria and Columbia River, 136.

- Railroad, Astoria and South Coast, 116.

- Railroad Transportation, 125, 126.

- Railroad Bill, The Pacific, 219.

- Railroad, Corvallis and Eastern, 247.

- Raleigh, P., 63.

- Rasmus, employed by Bancroft, 355.

- Record-Union, Sacramento, 292.

- Rector, William H., state representative, 389; head of Salem Woolen Mill, 215.

- Reed, C. A., 60, 65.

- Reed, Henry E., The Great West and The Two Easts, 129.

- Reed, T. A., 235.

- Rees, Willard H., In Memoriam of, 386.

- Rees, Willard H., elected state representative, 389, 390; contribution to Oregon Pioneer Association, 391.

- Rees, R. R., 365.

- Register, The Port Townsend, 372.

- Reminiscences secured by H. S. Lyman, 251.

- Reporter, Saint Louis, 78.

- Republican, The Missouri, extracts from, 399, 402.

- Reynolds, General, 105.

- Rhoades, Captain Jacob, 233.

- Rice, J. N., 72.

- Richards, Franklin D., 321, 324.

- Riggs, T. A., 70, 72; copy letter of, 74.

- Riley and Ginder, 144.

- Rinearson, J. S., junior major First Oregon Cavalry, 100.

- River of the West, The, 316.

- Rivet, Francis, 389.

- Robb, Professor, 28.

- Robertson, James R., on A Pioneer Captain of Industry, 150.

- Roberts, A. B., 353.

- Robnett, Wm., 75.

- Rocky Mountain News, The, 327.

- Roosevelt, Theodore, "Winning of the West," (quoted), 7.

- Rose, Wm. R., death of, 233.

- Ross, Colonel J. E., 232.

- Ruckle, Colonel, 207.

- Russell, General, 105.

- Russell, Uncle Bill, 228.

- Russian-American Company, 319.

Saffren, Henry, 390.

Samuels, L., 365.

Saunders, Mr., 230.

Savage, Thomas, employed by Bancroft, 306; sketch of life, 346, 362.

Savannah Oregon Emigrating Company, report of committee, 278.

Sawmill, first in Oregon, 60.

Scarborough, Captain, 265.

School History of Astoria, what it reveals, 32.

School, The Wilcox, first in Portland, 64.

Schools in Lane County, Early, letter by Joseph H. Sharp, 267.

Scott, Harvey W., 365; editor Oregonian, 370.

Scott, General, 101.

Scott, Captain L. S., 246.

Semple, Eugene, 365, 371.

Sutter's Ranch, 224.

Seattle Times and Alaska Herald, 379.

Seward, William H., 110.

Sharpstein, B. L., 196.

Sharp, Joseph H., Early Schools in Lane County, 268.

Shelby, A. D., 63.

Sheridan, General, 68, 105, 109, 164, 239.

Sherman, General, 109, 200.

Shaw, Hon. T. C., 243.

Shively, Mr., 84, 229.

Shively, J. M., 132; first postmaster west of Rocky Mountains, 133, 136.

Shortess, Robert, 132.

Skinner, Mrs. Judge A. A., 26.

Skinner, Judge A. A., 26; located first donation land claim, 229.

Small, D. W., 197.

Smart, Robert G., editor Western Expositor, 283.

Smith, Gerritt, 36.

Smith, Delazon, 72, 94, 104.

Smith, Volney, 104.

Smith, Solomon, 132.

Smith, Jedediah, attacked by Indians, 230; letter of, 395.

Smith, Thomas, 229.

Smith, Hugh, 232.

Smith, Gen. A. J., 105; Captain, 236, 238, 239.

Smith, Joseph S., editor of the Oregon Statesman, 370.

Smith, Noyes, 390.

Smith, Isaac W., 390.

Snooks, Major, 104.

South Pass, The, discovery of, 10.

Spalding, Rev. H. H., 71, 76, 367.

Spanish, Advance of, in Pacific Northwest, 4.

Speyers, ——., 272.

Stanbough, Joe, 256.

Standard, The Washington, 374.

Star, The, first paper in San Francisco, 376.

States, Henry, 243, 248.

Statesman, The Washington, article of Captain John Mullan, 202.

Statesman, The Oregon, 353, 360, 370.

Steen, Major, 99.

Stein, Mr., 74.

Stephens, J. B., 59.

Stephens, Wm., 195, 196.

Steptoe, Colonel, 69.

Stewart, C., 64.

Stewart, P. G., 390.

Stevens, General, 105.

Stone, B. F., 196.

Stone & Poyntz, 229.

Stone, Nathan J., charge of publication department, A. L. Bancroft & Company, 321.

Strait, Hiram, 390.

Strong, Judge, 134, 187, 188.

Struve, Henry G., 371, 381.

Stuart, Captain, death of, 231.

St. Vrain, Mr., 372.

Sublette, William L., letter of, 395.

Supreme Court, decisions of, 187.

Summers, Doctor, 132.

Sumner, Brigadier General E. V., 99.

- Tarbox, a Wisconsin lumberman, 197.

- Taylor, Colonel James, 32.

- Taylor, Judge F. J., 135.

- Taylor, President, 187.

- Taylor, John, 321.

- Templeton, ——., 71.

- Templeton, William T., 75.

- Terwilliger, L. L., 66.

- Tibbetts, Mr., 132.

- Tilden, of Washington, 106.

- Times Printing Company, 385.

- Times, Daily, 384.

- Thompson, Frank W., 104.

- Thompson, Captain D. P., 100.

- Thornton, Judge, 91, 96.

- Thurston, Samuel R., first delegate Oregon territorial government, 47.

- Transcript, The Olympia, 380.

- Trask, Mr., 132.

- Tremewan, Mrs. Anna, 261.

- Tribune, The New York, 293.

- Tribune, Salt Lake, 293, 294.

- Tribune, The Pacific, 374.

- Trimble, Edward, 251.

- Truax, Captain S., 100.

- Tuffs, James, 225.

- Turner, Professor F. J., 8.

- Turners, J., 230.

- T'Vault, Colonel William G., 365; editor Oregon Spectator, 368.

- Union League, The, 73.

- Unionist, The, 360.

- Vallejo, General, 311.

- Vancouver, Fort, 83.

- VanDusen, Miss Cora, 24.

- Van Voast, Captain, 99.

- Victor, Frances Fuller, 293, 294, 295, 305; employed by Bancroft, 314; sketch of life, 314, 324; volume on Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, 324.

- Victor, Meta Fuller, 315.

- Victor, Henry C., 316.

- Vigilante committee, 107.

- Villard, Henry, bought Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad, 199, 200.

Wagner, Mrs., murdered by Indians, 235.

Wait, Hon. A. E., 188.

Waite, E. M., 365.

Waldo, Hon. John B., 246, 247, 248.

Waldo, Daniel, 390.

Waller, Rev. Alvan F., letter of, 178.

Wallace, General Lew, 104.

Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad Company, 196.

Walla Walla to San Francisco, From, by Capt. John Mullan, U. S. A., 202.

Walworth, Lucy, 314.

Walworth, Judge Reuben, 314.

Wambaugh, J., 390.

Ward, Kirk, a fluent writer, 383.

Warren, Miss Emma C., conducted private school in Astoria, 24.

Warren, Mr. R. K., 27.

Warren, F. M., 66.

Washington, Territory of, organized, 192.

Watt, John, 150.

Watt, Miss, 28.

Watt, Joseph, Sr., 150; early life, 150, 159, 166, 390.

Watson, J. R., 366, 375, 376.

Wayne, J. W., 26.

Weaver, ——, 228.

Webster, Daniel, 43.

Weir, Allen, bought Puget Sound Argus, 373.

Welch, James, 26, 133.

Wells, J., Letter to, 274.

West, The Great and The Two Easts, by Henry E. Heed, 110.

West, future of, 127; The Great, table of comparisons, 114.

Weston Journal, 368.

Western Star, 368.

Western Union Telegraph, 140; completed to Seattle, 377.

Whitacre, William T., 372.

Whiteaker, Governor John, 99.

White, Captain, 134.

White, Dr. E., Indian sub-agent, 242.

White, Harry, 383.

Whitcomb, Lot, published Western Star, 368.

Whitman, Doctor, 78, 79, 84, 254, 260, 367.

Two Whitman Sources, 168.

Whitmore, ——., 232.

Whitney, ——., 277.

Whitworth, James E., 381.

Wilbur, J. H., 59, 64.

Wilcox, Dr. Ralph, 64.

Wiley & McElroy, publishers Columbian, 372.

Wiley, J. W., 376.

Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Military Wagon Road, 242.

Williams, Geo., 104.

Williams, Hon. George H., appointed chief Justice of Oregon Territory, 189.

Williams, Captain R. L., 232.

Williams, Robert, 315.

Williams, Veach, 314.

Williamson, ——., 26.

Willis, N. P., editor New York Home Journal, 315.

Wills, Thomas, 232.

Wilson, A. E., 132.

Wilson, Joseph G., 191.

Woman's War With Whiskey, one of Mrs. Victor's books, 317.

Woir, J. M., 390.

Wood, Tallmadge B., copy of letters from, 80, 84, 132.

Woodfin, Thomas S., 75.

Woodworth, Mr., 230

Wool, General John E., 236, 239.

Woolery, James, 385.

Worthington, Professor, 24, 28, 29.

Wright, Colonel, 99, 105.

Wright, Captain Ben, 232.

Wyeth, Nathaniel J., expedition to the Columbia, 9.

Wyley, ——., pioneer settler, 241.

- Yellowstone Expedition, failure of, 7.

- Young, F. G., The Lewis and Clark Centennial, 1.

- Young, Mrs. Maxwell, 24.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] An historical survey of Public Education in Eugene, Oregon, by Prof. Joseph Schafer, Quarterly, March, 1901.

[2] Letter of C. O. Hosford, January 22, 1903.

[3] Letter of C. O. Hosford, January 22, 1903.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Letter of E. C. Jeffers, February 3, 1903.

[6] Interview with Mr. Sam Adair.

[7] Interview with Mrs. Mary Leinweber.

[8] Interview with Rev. T. H. Hyland and wife.

[9] Marine Gazette, May 30, 1865.

[10] Weekly Astorian, December 18, 1876.

[11] Interview with Mrs. Young.

[12] Interview with Mrs. C. J. Trenchard, nee Miss VanDusen.

[13] Interview with Miss Warren.

[14] County Superintendent's Record Book No. 1, 1853-1874.

[15] Interview with J. M. Welch, and others.

[16] Deed Book No. 1, Clatsop County.

[17] Interview with J. W. Welch.

[18] Interview with F. J. Taylor, and others.

[19] History of Oregon and Washington, Northwest Publishing Company, Vol. II, pp. 502-506.

[20] Letter of Mrs. W. W. Parker, December 12, 1902.

[21] County Superintendent's Record Book No. 1, 1853-1874.

[22] Marine Gazette, May 30, 1865.

[23] Report of County Superintendent W. B. Gray, 1866.

[24] Report of State Superintendent to Governor Geo. L. Woods.

[25] Astorian, July 1, 1873.

[26] Letter of Mrs. W. W. Parker, December 12, 1902.

[27] Weekly Astorian, February 5, 1876.

[28] Weekly Astorian, December 31, 1878.

[29] County Superintendent's Record Book No. 1, 1853-1874.

[30] Weekly Astorian, April 8, 1876.

[31] Daily Astorian, April 4, 1882.

[32] Daily Astorian, April 25, 1882.

[33] Marine Gazette, May 30, 1865.

[34] An eleven-mill tax was levied at the last school meeting.

[35] Riggs says 1848; several old settlers say 1849.

[36] An address delivered before the University of Oregon, May 20, 1903.

[37] For 1870.

[38] Not reported by United States census prior to 1870. Values for this year in depreciated currency. To get true value, reduce one fifth.

[39] Made on farms only.

[40] This is on the authority of Savage.

[41] The Ramage was so called because it was constructed by Adam Ramage, who went to Philadelphia about 1790, and is believed to have been the first press builder in America. For many years he constructed all the presses used in this country. The posts and cross-pieces of the larger sizes of his early presses were made of wood, and the bed, platen, tracks, springs, screw, lever, etc., of iron. The largest Ramage press I ever saw had a bed 22x32 inches, with platen 16x22 inches. This was used in printing the Oregonian for the first four months of its life, December, 1850, to April, 1851, and required four impressions to perfect a paper—an impression for each page. Sixty to seventy perfect papers per hour was the limit of a pressman's capacity. During the summer of 1853 a wooden extension was added to the platen of the press by an Olympia (Wash.) mechanic, thus doubling its capacity. The extra strain upon the muscles of the pressman as a result of this enlargement caused the old machine to be dubbed a "man-killer."—George H. Himes.

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Table of Contents

- THE QUARTERLY OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

- CONTENTS.

- SUBJECT INDEX.

- AUTHORS' INDEX.

- THE QUARTERLY OF THE Oregon Historical Society.

- THE LEWIS AND CLARK CENTENNIAL. THE OCCASION AND ITS OBSERVANCE.

- THE EDUCATIONAL HISTORY OF ASTORIA, OREGON.

- PRIVATE SCHOOLS.

- THE PUBLIC SCHOOL.

- THE HIGH SCHOOL.

- WHAT THE SCHOOL HISTORY OF ASTORIA REVEALS.

- AN OBJECT LESSON IN PATERNALISM

- GLIMPSES OF EARLY DAYS IN OREGON.

- GLIMPSE OF ONE OF MANY SIMILAR SCENES ENDURED OUR LOVED PIONEERS.

- THE UPPER CALAPOOIA.

- DOCUMENTS.

- SOME CORRECTIONS.

- THE QUARTERLY OF THE Oregon Historical Society.

- OREGON AND ITS SHARE IN THE CIVIL WAR.[36]

- THE GREAT WEST AND THE TWO EASTS.

- POPULATION.

- AGRICULTURE.

- MANUFACTURING.

- COMMERCE.

- MINERAL PRODUCTIONS.

- LUMBER INDUSTRY.

- RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION.

- FINANCE.

- FUTURE OF THE WEST.

- SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY OF ASTORIA.

- A PIONEER CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY IN OREGON.

- DOCUMENTS.

- TWO WHITMAN SOURCES.

- DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE OREGON EMIGRATION MOVEMENT, 1842-43.

- EXPERIENCES OF THE EMIGRATION OF 1843.

- LETTERS DESCRIPTIVE OF OREGON COUNTRY AND ITS EARLIER CONDITIONS.

- THE QUARTERLY OF THE Oregon Historical Society.

- HISTORY OF THE PREPARATION OF THE FIRST CODE OF OREGON.

- A PIONEER RAILROAD BUILDER.

- FROM WALLA WALLA TO SAN FRANCISCO.

- INDIAN WARS OF SOUTHERN OREGON.

- MINTO PASS: ITS HISTORY, AND AN INDIAN TRADITION.

- REMINISCENCES.

- ANSON STERLING CONE.

- MRS. REBEKA HOPKINS.

- MRS. ANNA TREMEWAN.

- LOUIS LABONTE'S RECOLLECTIONS OF MEN.

- COMMUNICATIONS.

- EARLY SCHOOLS IN LANE COUNTY.

- THE MONTURES ON FRENCH PRAIRIE.

- DOCUMENTS.

- THE QUARTERLY OF THE Oregon Historical Society.

- THE ORIGIN AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE BANCROFT PACIFIC STATES PUBLICATIONS: A HISTORY OF A HISTORY.—I.

- PIONEER PAPERS OF PUGET SOUND.

- IN MEMORIAM OF WILLARD H. REES.

- SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH HOLMAN.

- DOCUMENTS.

- INDEX

- FOOTNOTES:

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE