Читать книгу A History of Oregon, 1792-1849 - Gray William Henry - Страница 18

An explanation. – Instructions of company. – Their tyranny. – Continuation of journey. – Fording rivers. – Arrival at Boise. – Dr. Whitman compelled to leave his wagon.

It may be asked why the writer gives this explanation of trade and intercourse with the Indians and missionaries before they have reached the field of their future labors? For the simple reason that the party, and the writer in particular, commenced their education in the Rocky Mountains. They learned that in the country to which they were going there was an overgrown, unscrupulous, and exacting monopoly that would prevent any interference in their trade, or intercourse with the Indians. This information was received through the American fur traders, and from Captain Wyeth, who was leaving the country; and from Mr. John McLeod, then in charge of our traveling caravan. It is true, we had only reached Salmon Falls, on Snake River, and we only wished to buy of the miserable, naked, filthy objects before us, a few fresh salmon, which they were catching in apparent abundance; and as is the case with most American travelers, we had many articles that would be valuable to the Indian, and beneficial to us to get rid of. But this overgrown company’s interest comes in. “You must not be liberal, or even just, to these miserable human or savage beings; if you are, it will spoil our trade with them; we can not control them if they learn the value of our goods.”

This supreme selfishness, this spirit of oppression, was applied not only to the Digger Indians on the barren Snake plains and the salmon fisheries of the Columbia River, but to the miserable discharged, and, in most cases, disabled, Canadian-French. This policy the Hudson’s Bay Company practiced upon their own servants, and, as far as was possible, upon all the early settlers of the country. In proof of this, hear what Messrs. Ewing Young and Carmichael say of them on the thirteenth day of January, 1837, just three months after our mission party had arrived, and had written to their friends and patrons in the United States glowing accounts of the kind treatment they had received from this same Hudson’s Bay Company. How far the Methodist Mission joined in the attempt to coerce Mr. Young and compel him to place himself under their control, I am unable to say. The Hudson’s Bay Company, I know, from the statement of Dr. McLaughlin himself, had an abundance of liquors. I also know they were in the habit of furnishing them freely to the Indians, as they thought the interest of their trade required. Mr. Young’s letter is in answer to a request of the Methodist Mission, signed by J. and D. Lee, C. Shepard, and P. L. Edwards, not to erect a distillers on his land claim in Yamhill County (Nealem Valley). The Methodist Mission was made use of on this occasion, under the threat of the Hudson’s Bay Company, that in case Mr. Young put up his distillery the Hudson’s Bay Company would freely distribute their liquors, and at once destroy all moral restraint, and more than probable the mission itself. Lee and party offered to indemnify Mr. Young for his loss in stopping his distillery project. The Hudson’s Bay Company held by this means the exclusive liquor trade, while the mission were compelled to use their influence and means to prevent and buy off any enterprise that conflicted with their interests. Mr. Young says, in his reply: —

“Gentlemen, having taken into consideration your request to relinquish our enterprise in manufacturing ardent spirits, we therefore do agree to stop our proceedings for the present: but, gentlemen, the reasons for first beginning such an enterprise were the innumerable difficulties placed in our way by, and the tyrannizing oppression of, the Hudson’s Bay Company, here under the absolute authority of Dr. McLaughlin, who has treated us with more disdain than any American’s feelings could support; but, gentlemen, it is not consistent with our feelings to receive any recompense whatever for our expenditures, but we are thankful to the society for their offer.”

The writer of the above short paragraph has long since closed his labors, which, with his little property, have done more substantial benefit to Oregon than the Hudson’s Bay Company, that attempted to drive him from the country, which I will prove to the satisfaction of any unprejudiced mind as we proceed, I am fully aware of the great number of pensioned satellites that have fawned for Hudson’s Bay Company pap, and would swear no injustice was ever done to a single American, giving this hypocritical, double-dealing smooth-swindling, called honorable, Hudson’s Bay Company credit for what they never did, and really for stealing credit for good deeds done by others. The company insisted that the mission party should, as a condition of being permitted to remain in the country, comply with their ideas of Indian trade and justice in dealing with the natives. The utmost care and attention was given to impress this all-important fact upon the minds of these first missionaries. They were told: “Gentlemen, your own pecuniary interests require it; the good —yes, the good– of the natives you came to teach, requires that you should observe our rules in trade.” And here, I have no doubt, lies the great secret of the partial failure of all the Protestant missions. But, thank God, the country is relieved of a curse, like that of slavery in the Southern States. An overgrown monopoly, in using its influence with Catholicism to destroy Protestantism in Oregon and the American settlements, has destroyed itself. Priestcraft and Romanism, combined with ignorance and savagism, under the direction of the Honorable Hudson’s Bay Company traders, is a kind of mixture which Mr. Ewing Young says “is more than any American citizen’s feelings could support;” yet for six years it was submitted to, and the country increased, not so much in wealth, but in stout-hearted men and women, who had dared every thing, and endured many living deaths, to secure homes, and save a vast and rich country to the American Republic. Was the government too liberal in giving these pioneers three hundred and twenty acres of land, when, by their toil and patient endurance they had suffered every thing this arrogant, unscrupulous, overgrown monopoly could inflict, by calling to its aid superstition and priestcraft, in the worst possible form, to subdue and drive them from the country?

Is there an American on this coast who doubts the fact of the tyrannical course of the company? Listen to what is said of them in 1857, ’58, in their absolute government of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, by a resident. He says: —

“In my unsophisticated ignorance, I foolishly imagined I was entering a colony governed by British institutions; but I was quickly undeceived. It was far worse than a Venetian oligarchy; a squawtocracy of skin traders, ruled by men whose lives have been spent in the wilderness in social communion with Indian savages, their present daily occupation being the sale of tea, sugar, whisky, and the usual et cæteras of a grocery, which (taking advantage of an increased population) they sold at the small advance of five hundred per cent.; by men, who, to keep up the entente cordiale with the red-skins, scrupled not (and the iniquitous practice is still continued) to supply them with arms and ammunition, well knowing that the same would be used in murderous warfare. I found these ’small fry’ claiming, under some antediluvian grant, not only Vancouver Island, but a tract of country extending from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, from British Columbia to Hudson’s Bay – a territory of larger area than all Europe. The onward march of civilization was checked; all avenues to the mineral regions were closed by excessive, unauthorized, and illegal taxation; and a country abounding with a fair share of Nature’s richest productions, and which might now be teeming with a hardy and industrious population, was crushed and blasted by a set of unprincipled autocrats, whose selfish interests, idle caprices, and unscrupulous conduct, sought to gratify their petty ambition by trampling on the dearest rights of their fellow-men. In Victoria and British Columbia the town lots, the suburban farms, and the water frontage were theirs, – the rocks in the bay, and the rocks on the earth; the trees in the streets, which served as ornaments to the town, were cut down by their orders and sold for fire-wood; with equal right (presumption or unscrupulousness is the appropriate term) they claimed the trees and dead timber of the forests, the waters of the bay, and the fresh water on the shores; all, all was theirs; – nay, I have seen the water running from the mountain springs denied to allay the parched thirst of the poor wretches whom the auri sacra fames had allured to these inhospitable shores. They viewed with a jealous eye all intruders into their unknown kingdom, and every impediment was thrown in the way of improving or developing the resources of the colony. The coal mines were theirs, and this necessary article of fuel in a northern climate was held by them at thirty dollars per ton. The sole and exclusive right to trade was theirs, and the claim rigidly enforced. The gold fields were theirs likewise, and a tax of five dollars on every man, and eight dollars on every canoe or boat, was levied and collected at the mouth of the cañon before either were allowed to enter the sacred portals of British Columbia. This amount had to be paid hundreds of miles from the place where gold was said to exist, whether the party ever dug an ounce or not. They looked upon all new arrivals with ill-subdued jealousy and suspicion, and distrusted them as a prætorian band of robbers coming to despoil them of their ill-gotten wealth.”

Was this the case in 1858? Show me the man who denies it, and I will show you a man devoid of moral perception, destitute of the principle of right dealing between man and man; yet this same Hudson’s Bay Company claim credit for saving the thousands of men they had robbed of their hard cash, in not allowing a few sacks of old flour and a quantity of damaged bacon to be sold to exceed one hundred per cent. above prime cost. “Their goods were very reasonable,” says the apologist; “their trade was honorable.” Has any one ever before attempted to claim honorable dealing for companies pursuing invariably the same selfish and avaricious course? This company is not satisfied with the privilege they have had of robbing the natives of this coast, their French and half-native servants, the American settlers, and their own countrymen, while dependent upon them; but now, when they can no longer rob and steal from half a continent, they come to our government at Washington and make a demand for five millions of dollars for giving up this barefaced open robbery of a whole country they never had the shadow of a right to. It is possible the honorable commissioners may admit this arrogant and unjust claim. If they do, – one single farthing of it, – they deserve the curses due to the company who have robbed the native inhabitants of all their labor, their own servants they brought to it, the country of all they could get from it that was of any value to them, and the nation upon whom they call for any amount, be it great or small.

I have not time, and it would be out of place, to say more upon this subject, at this rime, in the historical sketches we propose to give. Be assured we do not write without knowing what we say, and being prepared to prove our statements with facts that have come under our own observation while in the country. We will leave the Hudson’s Bay Company and return to our mission party.

After getting a full supply of salmon for a tin whistle, or its equivalent, a smell of trail-rope tobacco, we came to the ford at the three islands in Snake River, crossed all safe, except a short swim for Dr. Whitman and his cart on coming out on the north side or right bank of the river. As nothing serious occurred, we passed on to camp. The next day, in passing along the foot hills of the range of mountains separating the waters of the Snake River and La Rivière aux Bois, we came to the warm springs, in which we boiled a piece of salmon. Then we struck the main Boise River, as it comes out of the mountain, not far below the present location of Boise City; thence, about ten miles down the river, and into the bend, where we found a miserable pen of a place, at that time called Fort Boise. It consisted of cotton-wood poles and crooked sticks set in a trench, and pretended to be fastened near the top. The houses or quarters were also of poles, open; in fact, the whole concern could hardly be called a passable corral, or pen for horses and cattle. I think, from appearances, the fort had been used to corral or catch horses in. We were informed that it was established in opposition to Fort Hall, to prevent the Indians, as much as possible, from giving their trade to Captain Wyeth, and that the company expected, if they kept it up, to remove it near the mouth of Boise River.

At this place, McLeod and McKay, and all the Johnny Crapauds of the company, united in the opinion that it was impossible to get the Doctor’s cart any further without taking it all apart and bending the iron tires on the wheels, and packing it in par-fleshes (the dried hide of the buffalo, used as an outside covering for packs), and in that way we might get it through, if the animals we packed it upon did not fall with it from the precipices over which we must pass. Impossible to get it through any other way. After several consultations, and some very decided expressions against any further attempt to take the wagon further, a compromise was made, that, after the party had reached their permanent location, the Doctor or Mr. Gray would return with the Hudson’s Bay Company’s caravan and get the wagon and bring it through. To this proposition the Doctor consented. The wagon was left, to the great advantage of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in removing their timber and material to build their new fort, as was contemplated, that and the following seasons.

All our goods were placed upon the tallest horses we had, and led across. Mrs. Spalding and Mrs. Whitman were ferried over on a bulrush raft, made by the Indians for crossing. The tops of the rushes were tied with grass ropes, and spread and so arranged that, by lying quite flat upon the rushes and sticks they were conveyed over in safety. Portions of our clothing and goods, as was expected, came in contact with the water, and some delay caused to dry and repack. This attended to, the party proceeded on the present wagon trail till they reached the Grand Ronde; thence they ascended the mountain on the west side of the main river, passed over into a deep cañon, through thick timber, ascended the mountain, and came out on to the Umatilla, not far from the present wagon route.

As the party began to descend from the western slope of the Blue Mountains, the view was surpassingly grand. Before us lay the great valley of the Columbia; on the west, and in full view, Mount Hood rose amid the lofty range of the Cascade Mountains, ninety miles distant. To the south of Mount Hood stood Mount Adams, and to the north, Mount Rainier; while, with the assistance of Mr. McKay, we could trace the course of the Columbia, and determine the location of Wallawalla. It was quite late in the evening before we reached camp on the Umatilla, being delayed by our cattle, their feet having become worn and tender in passing over the sharp rocks, there being but little signs of a trail where we passed over the Blue Mountains in 1836.