Col. B. F. Shaw, who Won the Battle of Grande Ronde in 1856.By Courtesy of Major Lee Moorehouse.
And now came on the second great Walla Walla council. The tribes were gathered as before, and were aligned as before. The division of Nez Percés under Lawyer stood firmly by Stevens and the treaty. The others did not. The most unfortunate feature of the entire matter was that Colonel Steptoe, acting under General Wool’s instructions, thus far kept secret, refused to grant Stevens adequate support and subjected him to humiliations which galled the fiery Governor to the limit. In fact, had it not been for the vigilance of the faithful Nez Percés of Lawyer’s band, Stevens and his force would surely have met the doom prepared for them at the first council. The debt of gratitude due Lawyer is incalculable. Spotted Eagle ought to be recorded, too, as of similar devotion and watchfulness. Governor Stevens afterward declared that a speech by him in favour of the whites was equal in feeling, truth, and courage to any speech that he ever heard from any orator whatever.
But in spite of oratory, zeal, and argument, nothing could overcome the influence of Kamiakin, Owhi, Quelchen, Five Crows, and others of the Yakimas and Cayuses. Nothing was gained. They stood just where they were a year before. The fatal results of divided counsels between regulars and volunteers were apparent.
The baffled Governor now started on his way down the River, but not without another battle. For, ashe was marching a short distance south of what is now Walla Walla city, the Indians burst upon his small force with the evident intention of ending all scores then and there. But Colonel Steptoe came to the rescue, and with united forces the Indians were repulsed.
That was the last battle on the Walla Walla. Colonel Steptoe established a rude stockade fort on Mill Creek in what is now the heart of the present Walla Walla city, and went into winter quarters there in 1856-57. Governor Stevens returned to Olympia and launched forth a bitter arraignment against Wool. The latter, however, was in a position of vantage and issued a proclamation commanding all whites in the upper country to go down the River and leave the Cascade Mountains as the eastern limit of the white settlement. Thus ended for a time this unsatisfactory and distressing war. To all appearances Kamiakin and his adherents had accomplished all they wanted.
But this was not the end. Gold had been discovered in Eastern Washington. Vast possibilities of cattle raising were evident on those endless bunch-grass hills. Although there was as yet little conception of the future developments of the Inland Empire in agriculture and gardening, yet the keen-eyed immigrants and volunteers had scanned the pleasant vales and abounding streams of the Walla Walla and the Umatilla and the Palouse, and had decided in their own minds that, Wool or no Wool, this land must be opened. In 1857 the Government decided on a change of policy and sent General N. S. Clarke to take Wool’s place. General Clarke opened thegates, and the impatient army of land hunters and gold hunters began to move in. Meanwhile, Colonel Wright and Colonel Steptoe, though formerly they had closely followed Wool’s policy, now began to experience a change of heart. Out of these conditions the third Indian war, in 1858, quickly succeeded the second, being indeed its inevitable sequence.
Fort Sheridan on the Grande Ronde, Built by Philip Sheridan in 1855.By Courtesy of Major Lee Moorehouse.
Three campaigns marked this third war. The first was conducted by Colonel Steptoe against the Spokanes and Cœur d’Alenes, and ended in his humiliating and disastrous defeat. The second was directed by Major Garnett against the Yakimas, resulting in their permanent overthrow. The third was conducted by Colonel Wright against the Spokanes and other northern tribes who had defeated Steptoe. This was the Waterloo of the Indians, and it ushered in the occupation and settlement of the upper Columbia country.
The Steptoe expedition was the most ill-starred event in the whole history of the North-west, unless we except that of the destruction of theTonquin. Colonel Wright was then in command of the new Fort Walla Walla, located in 1857 on the present ground. Perceiving his former error in giving the turbulent and treacherous natives undisputed sway, he ordered Colonel Steptoe to go with two hundred dragoons to the Spokane region and subject the restless tribes centring there. Steptoe’s force was well equipped in every way except one. The pack train was heavily laden, and an inebriated quartermaster conceived the brilliant idea of lessening the burden byleaving out the larger part of the ammunition. Even aside from this fatal blunder, Colonel Steptoe seemsto have had no adequate conception of the vigour and resources of the Indians.
As before, the Nez Percés were the faithful friends of the whites. Timothy, a Nez Percé chief living on Snake River at the mouth of the Alpowa, put them across the wicked stream, then running high with the May freshet, and went on with them as guide.
On May 16, 1858, the force reached a point near four lakes, probably the group of which Silver Lake and Medical Lake are the chief ones, a few miles west of Spokane. Here was gathered a formidable array, Spokanes, Pend Oreilles, Cœur d’Alenes, Okanogans, and Colvilles, the hosts of the upper country. Steptoe was soldier enough to perceive that it was time for caution, and he halted for a parley. Saltese, a brawny chief of the Cœur d’Alenes, declared to him that the Indians were ready to dispute his farther progress, but that if the white men would retire the Indians would not molest them. A friendly Nez Percé, seeing the duplicity of Saltese, struck his mouth, exclaiming, “You speak with a double tongue.”
The force turned back and that night all seemed well. But at nine o’clock the next morning, while the soldiers were descending a cañon to Pine Creek, near the present site of Rosalia, a large force of Indians burst upon them like a cyclone. As the battle began to wax hot, the terrible consequences of the error of lack of ammunition began to become manifest. Man after man had to cease firing. Captain O. H. P. Taylor and Lieutenant Gaston commanded the rear-guard. With extraordinary skill and devotion they held the line intact and foiled the effortsof the savages to burst through. Meanwhile the whole force was moving as rapidly as consistent with formation on their way southward. Taylor and Gaston sent a messenger forward, begging Steptoe to halt the line and give them a chance to load. But the commander felt that the safety of the whole force depended on pressing on. Soon a fierce rush of Indians followed, and, when the surge had passed, the gallant rear-guard was buried under it. One notable figure in the death-grapple was De May, a Frenchman, trained in the Crimea and Algeria, and an expert fencer. For some time he used his gun barrel as a sword and swept the Indians down by dozens with his terrific sweeps. But at last he fell before numbers, and one of his surviving comrades relates that he heard him shouting his last words, “O, my God, my God, for a sabre!”
But the lost rear-guard saved the rest. For they managed to hold back the swarm of foes until nightfall, when they reached a somewhat defensible position a few miles from the towering cone of what is now known as Steptoe Butte. There they spent part of a dark, rainy, and dismal night, anticipating a savage attack. But the Indians, sure of their prey, waited till morning. Surely the first light would have revealed a massacre equal to the Custer massacre of later date, had not the unexpected happened. And the unexpected was that old Timothy, the Nez Percé guide, knew a trail through a rough cañon, the only possible exit without discovery. In the darkness of midnight the shattered command mounted and followed at a gallop the faithful Timothy on whose keen eyes and mind their salvation rested. Thewounded and a few footmen were dropped at intervals along the trail. After an eighty-mile gallop during the day and night following, the yellow flood of Snake River suddenly broke before them between its desolate banks. Saved! The unwearied Timothy threw out his own warriors as a screen against the pursuing foe, and set his women to ferrying the soldiers across the turbulent stream.
Thus the larger part of the command reached Fort Walla Walla alive.
One of the most extraordinary individual experiences connected with the Steptoe retreat, was that of Snickster and Williams. Some of the survivors question the correctness of this, and others vouch for its accuracy. It perhaps should not be set down as proven history. Snickster and Williams were riding one horse, and could not keep up with the main body. The Indians, therefore, overtook and seized them before they reached the Snake River. In a rage because of having been balked of their prey, the Indians determined to have some amusement out of the unfortunate pair, and told them to go into the river with their horse and try to swim across. Into the dangerous stream, two thousand feet wide, almost ice-cold, and with a powerful current, they went. As soon as they were out a score of yards, the Indians began their fun by making a target of them. The horse was almost immediately killed. Williams was struck and sank. Snickster’s arm was broken by a ball, but diving under the dead horse, and keeping himself on the farther side till somewhat out of range, and then boldly striking across the current, which foamed with Indian bullets, he reached the south sideof the river and was drawn out, almost dead, by some of Timothy’s Nez Percé Indians.
Tullux Holiquilla, a Warm Springs Indian Chief,Famous in the Modoc War as a Scout for U. S. Troops.By Courtesy of Major Lee Moorehouse.
With the defeat of Steptoe, the Indians may well have felt that they were invincible. But their exultation was short-lived. As already noted, Garnett crushed the Yakimas at one blow, and Wright a little later repeated Steptoe’s march to Spokane, but did not repeat his retreat. For in the battle of Four Lakes on September 1st, and that of Spokane Plains on September 5th, Wright broke for ever the power and spirits of the northern Indians.
The treaties were thus established at last by war. The reservations, embracing the finest parts of the Umatilla, Yakima, Clearwater, and Cœur d’Alene regions, were set apart, and to them after considerable delay and difficulty the tribes were gathered.
With the end of this third great Indian war and the public announcement by General Clarke that the country might now be considered open to settlement, immigration began to pour in, and on ranch and river, in mine and forest, the well-known labours of the American state-builders and home-builders became displayed. The ever-new West was repeating itself.
The Valley of the Columbia now rested from serious strife for a number of years. But in 1877, an echo of the war of 1855 suddenly startled the country, and provided an event to which lovers of the tragic and romantic in history have ever since turned with deep interest. This was the “Joseph War” in the Wallowa. Our readers will recall that the so-called Joseph band of Nez Percés opposed the Walla Walla Treaty at first, but finally acquiesced, with what they understood was the stipulation thatthey should possess the Wallowa country as their permanent home. The Joseph of that time was succeeded by his son, whose Indian name was Hallakallakeen, “Eagle Wing.” He was the finest specimen of the native red man ever produced in the Columbia Valley. Of magnificent stature and proportions, with a rare dignity and nobility, which wider opportunities would have made remarkable, and with a career of mingled light and shade, pathos and tragedy, Hallakallakeen will go down into history with a record of passionate devotion from his followers and unstinted encomiums from most of his opponents.
Joseph loved the Wallowa with a passionate affection, and made at first every effort to maintain amity with his white neighbours. But when the Government violated what he had regarded its sacred pledge and permitted entrance upon the lands which he claimed, he refused to abide by the decision and led out his warriors to battle. The Nez Percés, though few in number, could fight face to face with white men, and could use white men’s weapons and white men’s tactics. At a desperate battle at White Bird Cañon they routed the detachment in command of Colonel Perry. The result was to put arms, ammunition, and provisions in abundance into the hands of the Indians and hope into their hearts.
General O. O. Howard, then commanding the department of the Columbia, now assumed command and began so vigorous a campaign against Joseph that the Indian chief plainly saw that with all his activity he could not avoid being seized in the closing arms of Howard’s command. The interesting details of the marches, countermarches, desperate encounters,sometimes favourable to white man and sometimes to red, are to be found in General Howard’s own book. At last, with marvellous skill and good fortune, Joseph eluded capture and adopted the desperate resolution of crossing the Bitter Root Mountains by the Lolo trail, descending the Missouri, and ultimately reaching the Canadian line beyond the land of the Sioux. Encumbered as he was with his women, children, and entire movable possessions, obliged to forage and hunt on the way, and avoiding pursuers in rear as well as forces coming to meet him in front, fighting frequent and some of the time successful battles,—the Nez Percé chieftain exhibited qualities of leadership and resources of mind and body which offer materials for a historical romance equal to De Quincey’sFlight of the Kalmuck Tartars.
Hallakallakeen (Eagle Wing) or Joseph, the Nez Percé Chief.By T. W. Tolman.
Howard’s tireless pursuit in the rear and the active and intelligent co-operation of Gibbon and Miles, who ascended the Missouri to meet the fleeing Nez Percés, resulted at last in their capture at Bear Paw Mountain on the Milk River in Montana.
General Howard says that the campaign from the beginning of the Indian pursuit across the Lolo trail until the embarkation on the Missouri for the homeward journey, including all stoppages and halts, extended from July 27th to October 10th, during which time his command marched one thousand three hundred and twenty-one miles. He says that Joseph, encumbered with women, children, and possessions, traversed even greater distances, “for he had to make many a loop in his skein, many a deviation into a tangled thicket, to avoid or deceive his enemy.” Howard pays the highest tribute to his Indian foe anddeclares that some of his operations are not often equalled in warfare.
Joseph’s subsequent career was a melancholy one. Transported with his band to Oklahoma, the wild eagle of the Wallowa so pined away on the flat prairie and begged so piteously to be allowed to return to the waters of the Columbia, that his request was granted. But so intense was the feeling among the people who had suffered from their dangerous enemy that this poor fragment of the Nez Percés was placed on the Colville Reservation in Northern Washington. There the restless heart of the Nez Percé Bonaparte was eaten out by bitter yearnings for his loved Wallowa.
He had an occasional proud and interesting hour. At the time of General Grant’s obsequies at New York, Joseph was in Washington to see the “Great Father” about his reservation. General Miles, who greatly admired the hero of the Lolo trail, asked him to ride with himself at the head of the funeral procession. Mounted on a magnificent charger, Joseph rode solemnly through the streets of the metropolis by the side of the conqueror of Bear Paw Mountain, and there were not wanting those who said that the Indian was the finer horseman and the finer-looking man.
But Joseph died at his camp on the Nespilem without ever seeing Wallowa. His last request was that he be buried there. He remained an Indian to the last, not ordinarily living in a house or wearing civilised costume or even speaking English, though perfectly able to do so. His life might have been happier had he never been known to fame.
Camp of Chief Joseph on the Nespilem, Wash.Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.
The next year after the Joseph War, or in 1878, occurred the Bannock War, the scene of which was mainly Umatilla County in Oregon and other parts adjoining the River. Though at first, as has happened so many times, the Indians met with successes, the end was their inevitable defeat.
With the close of the Bannock War it may be said that Indian warfare practically ended. The war-whoop ceased to be heard and the tomahawk was brandished no more along the Columbia.
When the Fire-Canoes Took the Place of the Log-Canoes
Variety of Craft that have Navigated the Columbia—TheBeaver,Carolina,Columbia, andLot Whitcomb—Beginning of Steamboating above the Cascades—Steamboats above The Dalles—Rival Companies on the River—The Oregon Steam Navigation Company—Great Business Developments of the Decade of the Sixties—Specimen Shipments in 1862—The Steamboat Ride from Portland to Lewiston—Some of the Steamboat Men of the Period—Story of W. H. Gray and his Sailboat on the Snake River—Descending The Dalles—Captain Coe’s Account of the First Steamboat Ride on the Upper Columbia and the Snake—Navigation above Colville and on the Lakes—The Locks and Prospects of Future Navigation—Remarkable Trips on the River—Some Steamboats of the Present.
Variety of Craft that have Navigated the Columbia—TheBeaver,Carolina,Columbia, andLot Whitcomb—Beginning of Steamboating above the Cascades—Steamboats above The Dalles—Rival Companies on the River—The Oregon Steam Navigation Company—Great Business Developments of the Decade of the Sixties—Specimen Shipments in 1862—The Steamboat Ride from Portland to Lewiston—Some of the Steamboat Men of the Period—Story of W. H. Gray and his Sailboat on the Snake River—Descending The Dalles—Captain Coe’s Account of the First Steamboat Ride on the Upper Columbia and the Snake—Navigation above Colville and on the Lakes—The Locks and Prospects of Future Navigation—Remarkable Trips on the River—Some Steamboats of the Present.
Wehave learned that our River has been navigated by boats of almost every description. At one time it was the hollowed cedar-log canoes of the aborgines. Again, the bateaux of the trappers were the chief craft to cut the blue lakes and the white rapids. At yet other times it was the flat-boats of the immigrants. Sailing ships of every sort—frigates, galleons, caravels, men-of-war, full-rigged ships, barks, brigs, schooners, and sloops—crowded early to the silver gate of the River.
In due process of time the “Fire-canoes,” as the natives called steamers, let loose their trails of smoke amid the tops of the “continuous woods.” TheBeaver, a small steamship belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company and sent from England, entered the River in 1836, the first steamer to ply these waters. The Company afterwards sent her to Puget Sound, and, if we are correctly informed, she is still afloat on the Gulf of Georgia. In 1850 the first American steamship, theCarolina, crossed the Bar. In the same year a little double-ender, called theColumbia, began running between Portland and Astoria.
Tirzah Trask, a Umatilla Indian Girl—Taken as an Ideal of Sacajawea.Photo. by Lee Moorehouse, Pendleton.
The first river steamer of any size to ply upon the Willamette and Columbia was theLot Whitcomb. This steamer was built by Whitcomb and Jennings. J. C. Ainsworth was the first captain, and Jacob Kamm was the first engineer. Both these men became leaders in every species of steamboating enterprise. In 1851 Dan Bradford and B. B. Bishop inaugurated a movement to connect the up-river region with the lower river by getting a small iron propeller called theJason P. Flintfrom the East and putting her together at the Cascades, whence she made the run to Portland. TheFlinthas been named as first to run above the Cascades, but the author has the authority of Mr. Bishop for stating that the first steamer to run above the Cascades was theEagle. That steamer was brought in sections by Allen McKinley to the upper Cascades in 1853, there put together, and set to plying on the part of the river between the Cascades and The Dalles. In 1854, theMarywas built and launched above the Cascades, the next year theWascofollowed, and in 1856 theHassalobegan to toot her jubilant horn at the precipices of the mid-Columbia. In 1859 R. R. Thompson and Lawrence Coe built theColonel Wright, thefirst steamer on the upper section of the River. In the same year the same men built at the upper Cascades a steamer called theVenture. This craft met with a curious catastrophe. For on her very first trip she swung too far into the channel and was carried over the upper Cascades, at the point where the Cascade Locks are now located. She was subsequently raised, rebuilt, and rechristened theUmatilla.
This part of the period of steamboat building was cotemporary with the Indian wars of 1855 and 1856. The steamers,Wasco,Mary, andEaglewere of much service in rescuing victims of the murderous assault on the Cascades by the Klickitats.
While the enterprising steamboat builders were thus making their way up-river in the very teeth of Indian warfare, steamboats were in course of construction on the Willamette. TheJennie Clarkin 1854 and theCarrie Laddin 1858 were built for the firm of Abernethy, Clark & Company. These both, the latter especially, were really elegant steamers for the time.
The close of the Indian wars in 1859 saw a quite well-organised steamer service between Portland and The Dalles, and the great rush into the upper country was just beginning. TheSeñorita, theBelle, and theMultnomah, under the management of Benjamin Stark, were on the run from Portland to the Cascades. A rival steamer, theMountain Buck, owned by Ruckle and Olmstead, was on the same route. These steamers connected with boats on the Cascades-Dalles section by means of portages five miles long around the rapids. There was a portage on each side of the River. That on the north side was operated by Bradford & Company, and their steamerswere theHassaloand theMary. Ruckle and Olmstead owned the portage on the south side of the River, and their steamer was theWasco. Sharp competition arose between the Bradford and Stark interests on one side and Ruckle and Olmstead on the other. The Stark Company was known as the Columbia River Navigation Company, and the rival was the Oregon Transportation Company. J. C. Ainsworth now joined the Stark party with theCarrie Ladd. So efficient did this reinforcement prove to be that the Transportation Company proposed to them a combination. This was effected in April, 1859, and the new organisation became known as the Union Transportation Company. This was soon found to be too loose a consolidation to accomplish the desired ends, and the parties interested set about a new combination to embrace all the steamboat men from Celilo to Astoria. The result was the formation of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which came into legal existence on December 20, 1860. Its stock in steamboats, sailboats, wharf-boats, and miscellaneous property was stated at $172,500.
Such was the genesis of the “O. S. N. Co.” In a valuable article by Irene Lincoln Poppleton in theOregon Historical Quarterlyfor September, 1908, to which we here make acknowledgments, it is said that no assessment was ever levied on the stock of this company, but that from the proceeds of the business the management expended in gold nearly three million dollars in developing their property, besides paying to the stockholders in dividends over two million and a half dollars. Never perhaps was there such a record of money-making on such a capitalisation.
The source of the enormous business of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company was the rush into Idaho, Montana, and Eastern Oregon and Washington by the miners, cowboys, speculators, and adventurers of the early sixties. The up-river country, as described more at length in another chapter, wakened suddenly from the lethargy of centuries, and the wilderness teemed with life. That was the great steamboat age. Money flowed in streams. Fortunes were made and lost in a day.
When first organised in 1860, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company had a nondescript lot of steamers, mainly small and weak. The two portages, one of five miles around the Cascades and the other of fourteen miles from The Dalles to Celilo Falls, were unequal to their task. The portages at the Cascades on both sides of the River were made by very inadequate wooden tramways. That at The Dalles was made by teams. Such quantities of freight were discharged from the steamers that sometimes the whole portage was lined with freight from end to end. The portages were not acquired by the company with the steamboat property, and as a result the portage owners reaped the larger share of the profits. During high water the portage on the Oregon side at the Cascades had a monopoly of the business, and it took one-half the freight income from Portland to The Dalles. This was holding the whip-hand with a vengeance, and the vigorous directors of the steamboat company could not endure it. Accordingly, they absorbed the rights of the portage owners, built a railroad from Celilo to The Dalles on the Oregon side, and one around theCascades on the Washington side. The company was reorganised under the laws of Oregon in October, 1862, with a declared capitalisation of two million dollars.
Business on the River in 1863 was something enormous. Hardly ever did a steamer make a trip with less than two hundred passengers. Freight was offered in such quantities at Portland that trucks had to stand in line for blocks, waiting to deliver and receive their loads. New boats were built of a much better class. Two rival companies, the Independent Line and the People’s Transportation Line, made a vigorous struggle to secure a share of the business, but they were eventually overpowered. Some conception of the amount of business may be gained from the fact that the steamers transported passengers to an amount of fares running from $1000 to $6000 a trip. On April 29, 1862, theTenino, leaving Celilo for the Lewiston trip, had a passenger load amounting to $10,945, and a few trips later reported receipts of $18,000, for freight, passengers, meals, and berths. The steamships sailing from Portland to San Francisco showed equally remarkable records. On June 25, 1861, theSierra Nevadaconveyed a treasure shipment of $228,000; July 14th, $110,000; August 24th, $195,558; December 5th, $750,000. The number of passengers carried on The Dalles-Lewiston route in 1864 was 36,000 and the tons of freight were 21,834.
It was a magnificent steamboat ride in those days from Portland to Lewiston. The fare was sixty dollars; meals and berths, one dollar each. A traveller would leave Portland at fiveA.M.on, perhaps, theWilson G. Hunt, reach the Cascades sixty-five miles distant at elevenA.M., proceed by rail five miles to the upper Cascades, there transfer to theOneontaorIdahofor The Dalles, passing in that run from the humid, low-lying, heavily timbered West-of-the-mountains, to the dry, breezy, hilly East-of-the-mountains. Reaching The Dalles, fifty miles farther east, he would be conveyed by another portage railroad, fourteen miles more, to Celilo. There theTenino,Yakima,Nez Percé Chief, orOwyheewas waiting. With the earliest light of the morning the steamer would head right into the impetuous current of the River, bound for Lewiston, two hundred and eighty miles farther yet, taking two days, sometimes three, though only one to return. Those steamers were mainly of the light-draught, stern-wheel structure, which still characterises the Columbia River boats. They were swift and roomy and well adapted to the turbulent waters of the upper River.
The captains, pilots, and pursers of that period were as fine a set of men as ever turned a wheel. Bold, bluff, genial, hearty, and obliging they were, even though given to occasional outbursts of expletives and possessing voluminous repertoires of “cuss-words” such as would startle the effete East. Any old Oregonian who may chance to cast his eyes upon these pages will recall, as with the pangs of childhood homesickness, the forms and features of steamboat men of that day; the polite yet determined Ainsworth, the brusque and rotund Reed, the bluff and hearty Knaggs, the frolicsome and never disconcerted Ingalls, the dark, powerful, and nonchalant Coe, the patriarchal beard of Stump, the loquacious“Commodore” Wolf, who used to point out to astonished tourists the “diabolical strata” on the banks of the River, the massive and good-natured Strang, the genial and elegant O’Neil, the suave and witty Snow, the tall and handsome Sampson, the rich Scotch brogue of McNulty, and dozens of others, whose combined adventures would fill a volume. One of the most experienced pilots of the upper River was Captain “Eph” Baughman, who has been running on the Snake and Columbia rivers for fifty years, and is yet active at the date of this publication. W. H. Gray, who came to Waiilatpu with Whitman as secular agent of the mission, became a river man of much skill. He gave four sons, John, William, Alfred, and James, to the service of the River, all four of them being skilled captains. A story narrated to the author by Captain William Gray, now of Pasco, Washington, well illustrates the character of the old Columbia River navigators. W. H. Gray was the first man to run a sailboat of much size with regular freight up Snake River. That was in 1860 before any steamers were running on that stream. Mr. Gray built his boat, a fifty-ton sloop, on Oosyoos Lake on the Okanogan River. In it he descended that river to its entrance into the Columbia. Thence be descended the Columbia, running down the Entiat, Rock Island, Cabinet, and Priest Rapids, no mean undertaking of itself. Reaching the mouth of the Snake, he took on a load of freight and started up the swift stream. At Five-mile Rapids he found that his sail was insufficient to carry the sloop up. Men had said that it was impossible. His crew all prophesied disaster. The stubborn captain merelydeclared, “There is no such word as fail in my dictionary.” He directed his son and another of the crew to take the small boat, load her with a long coil of rope, make their way up the stream until they got above the rapid, there to land on an islet of rock, fasten the rope to that rock, then pay it out till it was swept down the rapid. They were then to descend the rapid in the small boat. “Very likely you may be upset,” added the skipper encouragingly, “but if you are, you know how to swim.” They were upset, sure enough, but they did know how to swim. They righted their boat, picked up the end of the floating rope, and reached the sloop with it. The rope was attached to the capstan, and the sloop was wound up by it above the swiftest part of the rapid to a point where the sail was sufficient to carry, and on they went rejoicing. Any account of steamboating on the Columbia would be incomplete without reference to Captain James Troup, who was born on the Columbia, and almost from early boyhood ran steamers upon it and its tributaries. He made a specialty of running steamers down the Dalles and the Cascades, an undertaking sometimes rendered necessary by the fact that more boats were built in proportion to demand on the upper than the lower River. These were taken down the Dalles, and sometimes down the Cascades. Once down, they could not return. The first steamer to run down the Tumwater Falls was theOkanogan, on May 22, 1866, piloted by Captain T. J. Stump.
The author enjoyed the great privilege of descending the Dalles in theD. S. Bakerin the year 1888, Captain Troup being in command. At thatstrange point in the River, the whole vast volume is compressed into a channel but one hundred and sixty feet wide at low water and much deeper than wide. Like a huge mill-race this channel continues nearly straight for two miles, when it is hurled with frightful force against a massive bluff. Deflected from the bluff, it turns at a sharp angle to be split in sunder by a low reef of rock. When theBakerwas drawn into the suck of the current at the head of the “chute” she swept down the channel, which was almost black, with streaks of foam, to the bluff, two miles in four minutes. There feeling the tremendous refluent wave, she went careening over and over toward the sunken reef. The skilled captain had her perfectly in hand, and precisely at the right moment, rang the signal bell, “Ahead, full speed,” and ahead she went, just barely scratching her side on the rock. Thus close was it necessary to calculate distance. If the steamer had struck the tooth-like point of the reef broadside on, she would have been broken in two and carried in fragments on either side. Having passed this danger point, she glided into the beautiful calm bay below and the feat was accomplished. Captain J. C. Ainsworth and Captain James Troup were the two captains above all others to whom the company entrusted the critical task of running steamers over the rapids.
In theOverland Monthlyof June, 1886, there is a valuable account by Captain Lawrence Coe of the maiden journey of theColonel Wrightfrom Celilo up what they then termed the upper Columbia.
This first journey on that section of the River was made in April, 1859. The pilot was Captain LewWhite. The highest point reached was Wallula, the site of the old Hudson’s Bay fort. The current was a powerful one to withstand, no soundings had ever been made, and no boats except canoes, bateaux, flatboats, and a few small sailboats, had ever made the trip. No one had any conception of the location of a channel adapted to a steamboat. No difficulty was experienced, however, except at the Umatilla Rapids. This is a most singular obstruction. Three separate reefs, at intervals of half a mile, extend right across the River. There are narrow breaks in these reefs, but not in line with each other. Through them the water pours with tremendous velocity, and on account of their irregular locations a steamer must zigzag across the River at imminent risk of being borne broadside on to the reef. The passage of the Umatilla Rapids is not difficult at high water, for then the steamer glides over the rocks in a straight course.
In the AugustOverlandof the same year, Captain Coe narrates the first steamboat trip up Snake River. This was in June, 1860, just at the time of the beginning of the gold excitement. TheColonel Wrightwas loaded with picks, rockers, and other mining implements, as well as provisions and passengers. Most of the freight and passengers were put off at Wallula, to go thence overland. Part continued on to test the experiment of making way against the wicked-looking current of Snake River. After three days and a half from the starting point a few miles above Celilo, theColonel Wrighthalted at a place which was called Slaterville, thirty-seven miles up the Clearwater from its junction with the Snake. Therethe remainder of the cargo was discharged, to be hauled in waggons to the Oro Fino mines. The steamerOkanoganfollowed theColonel Wrightwithin a few weeks, and navigation on the Snake may be said to have fairly begun. During that same time the city of Lewiston, named in honour of Meriwether Lewis, the explorer, was founded at the junction of the Snake and Clearwater rivers.
While parts of the Columbia and it chief tributary, the Snake, were thus opened to navigation by 1860, no “fire-canoe” had yet appeared on that magnificent stretch of navigable water from Colville into the Arrow Lakes. From contemporary files of theDaily Mountaineerof The Dalles, we learn that Captain Lew White launched theForty-ninein November, 1865, at Colville. In December theForty-nineascended the Columbia one hundred and sixty miles, nearly to the head of lower Arrow Lake, whence, meeting floating ice, she returned. From theMountaineerwe learn also that in the early months of 1866 a steamer was constructed at the mouth of Boisé River for navigation of the far upper Snake. At the same time also the steamerMary Moodywas constructed by Z. F. Moody, on Pend Oreille Lake, the first steamer on any of the lakes except the Arrow Lakes of the Columbia.
With the close of the decade of the sixties, it may be said that the Columbia and its tributaries had fairly entered upon the steamboat era. While many steamers were added within the succeeding years, the steamboat business was never so active on the upper River as during that early age. After the building of the railroads along the River and into interiorvalleys and eastward, it became apparent that the heavy handicap of rehandling freight at two portages would forbid the steamers from competing with the railroads. In 1879 the Oregon Steam Navigation Company sold out to the Villard interests for $5,000,000, and the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company was the result.
Since that time there have been few steamboats on that part of the River above The Dalles. The section between The Dalles and the Cascades was joined to the tide-water section by the opening of the Government locks at the Cascades in 1896, and since that time many of the finest steamers on the River do an immense tourist business between The Dalles and Portland. It is only a question of a few years till the locks at Celilo will be completed, and then the whole vast Inland Empire, with its enormous production, will be thrown open to the sea. Then there will come on a new age of steamboat navigation, and with it the electric railroad. The steamer and the trolley car will set the whole Columbia Basin next door to tide-water. When improvements now in view by Government are completed, our River will be one of the most superb steamer courses in the world. That may truthfully be said already of the two hundred and twenty miles from The Dalles to the Ocean, as well as of the three hundred miles from Kettle Falls, Washington, to Death Rapids, B. C.
The Government engineers in Senate Document, 344, February, 1890, name the amount of navigable water on the Columbia and its tributaries at 1664 miles. This may, perhaps, be an underestimation, since President Roosevelt has recently referred to itas twenty-five hundred miles, in which he probably included the lakes. Generally speaking, the rivers of the Pacific slope descend from high altitudes in comparatively short distances, and are necessarily swift. Hence we can expect no such vast extent of navigable water on them as the Mississippi and its affluents offer. Aside from the Columbia itself, the main streams, east of the Cascade Mountains offering steamboat transportation, are the Snake, Okanogan, and Kootenai, together with Lakes Pend Oreille, Chelan, Cœur d’Alene, Flathead, Okanogan, Kootenai, Arrow, Christina, and Slocan. On the west side are the Willamette, Cowlitz, and Lewis rivers.
It would fill a volume to narrate even a tithe of the thrilling tales of daring and tragedy which gather around the subject of boating in all its forms on the Columbia.
One of the most remarkable steamboat journeys was that elsewhere described in this work, under command of Captain F. P. Armstrong, of theNorth Star, from Jennings, Montana, on the Kootenai to Canal Flats and thence through the canal to Lake Columbia. With that should be coupled as equally daring and more difficult, the trip down Snake River, from the Seven Devils to Lewiston, in a steamer piloted by Captain W. P. Gray.
Undoubtedly the most remarkable journey in any other sort of craft than a steamboat was that undertaken by a party of eighteen miners in 1865. They built a large sailing boat at Colville and in her ran up the entire course of the River, never having their boat entirely out of water, though our informant says that they must have had her on skids part ofthe way. They reached the very head of the Columbia, over seven hundred miles above their starting point, hauled their boat across Canal Flats, launched her again on the Kootenai, and so descended that furious stream to Fort Steele on Wild Horse Creek. The full history of that journey would be deserving of a place in any record of daring exploration.
In concluding this chapter, it may be said that there are now upon the lower Columbia some of the swiftest and most beautiful “fire-canoes” in the world. These ply on the two great scenic routes, one from Portland to Astoria, and the other from Portland to The Dalles. The most noted of these swift steamers at present writing are theHassalo(No. 2), theT. J. Potter, theCharles D. Spencer, and theBailey Gatzert.
Era of the Miner, the Cowboy, the Farmer, the Boomer, and the Railroad Builder
Early Gold-hunters—Gold in California—Effects of that Discovery on the Columbia River Country—Growth of Towns on the Columbia—Discovery of Gold in the Colville Country—Gold on the Clearwater—Stampede to the Idaho Mines—Cowboys Rush in with the Miners—Sudden Development of Industries at Walla Walla, Lewiston, and Other Towns—Profits and Fare in the Mines in 1861—The Hard Winter—Development of the Farming Industry—The Boomers—The Hard Times—The Railroad Age—Beginning of Railroading in the Willamette Valley—Ben Holladay—Transcontinental Railways—Henry Villard—His Great Building and his Downfall—The Present Railroads on the River—Dr. D. S. Baker and the Pioneer Railroad on the Upper River.
Early Gold-hunters—Gold in California—Effects of that Discovery on the Columbia River Country—Growth of Towns on the Columbia—Discovery of Gold in the Colville Country—Gold on the Clearwater—Stampede to the Idaho Mines—Cowboys Rush in with the Miners—Sudden Development of Industries at Walla Walla, Lewiston, and Other Towns—Profits and Fare in the Mines in 1861—The Hard Winter—Development of the Farming Industry—The Boomers—The Hard Times—The Railroad Age—Beginning of Railroading in the Willamette Valley—Ben Holladay—Transcontinental Railways—Henry Villard—His Great Building and his Downfall—The Present Railroads on the River—Dr. D. S. Baker and the Pioneer Railroad on the Upper River.
Theage of gold in the Columbia pressed hard upon that of the trappers. But it dawned first far south.
The Spaniards had sought the precious metals with boundless energy. Richly had the treasures of the Montezumas and the Incas rewarded their reckless cupidity. But as they moved northward they met with nothing but disappointment. The El Dorados of their ardent fancy had vanished as they turned toward Oregon and California.
In 1848 the guns of Stockton and Fremont thundered the salvos of American occupation over the Sierras. Just as the sovereignty of Uncle Sam wasacknowledged, the long-sought discovery of gold startled the world.
In 1838 a gay, mercurial Switzer, Captain Sutter, had made his way with a band of trappers across the plains to Oregon, and thence had gone to California. A dashing adventurer, without money, but with boundlesssang-froidandbonhommie, Sutter had marvellously interested all whom he met and in some inexplicable manner had got money and credit sufficient to build a fort and start an immense ranch on the Sacramento, almost on the site of the present capital of the Golden State. “Sutter’s fort” became one of the most notable places in California. In 1844 James W. Marshall went to the Columbia, but after only a year’s stay made his way to California. In 1847 he entered into partnership with Sutter in a sawmill enterprise at Coloma on the south fork of the American River. There, while at work in the mill-race on the 19th of January, 1848, Marshall discovered shining particles. Gold!
The discovery was made, and soon the secret was out. And then—! There never was anything quite comparable to what followed. The first and greatest of the great stampedes for gold took place.
When the tidings reached Oregon it was as though a prairie fire were running over the country. Men went fairly mad. Throngs, hardly stopping to take their ploughs from the furrow, mounted their horses, galloped off up the Willamette, through the lonely valleys of the Umpqua and the Rogue River, over the Siskiyou, and down the Sacramento, where a fortune could be had for the digging.
All the stress and strain of American life andhistory reached the utmost intensity in the fever strife for gold on the Sacramento. The Willamette and Columbia were almost equally stirred. During the first two years of the gold excitement homes on the Columbia were well-nigh deserted. Then the Oregonians began to drift back again. Some came with gold-bricks in their pockets and sacks of gold-dust in their packs. Some came broken in health and spirits, sick with disappointment. Some did not come at all, and their bones found unmarked graves in the pestilential ditches of the Sacramento.
But the shrewder Oregonians perceived that they had better than a gold mine in the trade with California. Grain, fruit, eggs, lumber,—these were in such demand that frequently twenty ships at a time were moored by the dense forests of the lower Willamette waiting for cargoes. Gold-dust was the universal medium, and it seemed to be cheaper than anything else. Four bushels of Oregon apples brought five hundred dollars in gold-dust in San Francisco. Tons of eggs were sold for a dollar apiece in the gold mines.
Portland, the lonely little village on the Willamette, with just enough of a foothold by the edge of the forest to keep from rolling into the River, sprang at a bound into the rank of a city. The huge firs were dug out, and wharves went in. The face of nature, even, as well as that of industry and politics, was transformed by that gold-dust in Marshall’s mill-race on the Sacramento.
But, most of all, the disposition of the people was changed. The serene, idyllic, pastoral age passed, and the fierce lust for wealth, the boundless imagination,the fever in the veins, came on. Why should there not be gold as well by the Columbia as by the Sacramento! The men who had come down the Columbia in search for homes and grass-land for cattle, now began to retrace their steps and turn again up the River in search of the precious metals. Nor was it long before discovery of gold in the region tributary to Colville was made known. The first discovery was at the mouth of the Pend Oreille River. A regular stampede ensued. Other discoveries on a greater scale were soon to follow. During the early days of the gold excitement of California, a Nez Percé Indian had wandered on to the Sacramento. He made acquaintance with a group of miners, who became impressed with his general force and dignity. Among these miners was E. D. Pearce, and to him the Indian gave a vivid account of his home in the wilds of what is now Idaho. He told also a tale of how he with two companions were once in the high mountains, when they beheld in the night a light of dazzling brilliance, with the appearance of a refulgent star. The Indians looked at this with awe as the eye of the Great Spirit. But in the morning they summoned courage sufficient to investigate, and found a glittering ball that looked like glass. It was so embedded in the rock that they could not dislodge it. It was clear to them that this was some great “tomanowas.” On hearing this fantastic story, the mind of Pearce was kindled with the idea that perhaps the Indians had found an immense diamond. He determined to seek it. After several years he made his way up the Columbia and reached Walla Walla. From that point he ranged the mountains of Idaho,but for a long time met no success. With a company of seven men, he entered upon an elaborate search, which finally so much aroused the suspicion of the Indians that they ordered him from the country. Nothing daunted, however, he induced a Nez Percé woman to guide the party from the Palouse to the Lolo trail, from which they reached an unfrequented valley on the north fork of the Clearwater. There one of the party, W. F. Bassett, tried washing a pan of dirt, with the result that he got a “colour.” This was the first discovery of gold in Idaho, and the spot was where Oro Fino afterwards stood.
Fall was coming on, and after digging out a small amount of dust, the party deemed it wise to return to the settlements for a more thorough outfitting. Accordingly, they went to Walla Walla and located with J. C. Smith, to whom they imparted their secret. So impressed was Mr. Smith with the tidings that he organised a party of fifteen, with whom he returned just at the opening of the winter of that same year, 1860. Soon shut in by deep snows in inaccessible mountains, the little company built five rude huts, and in the intervals of the storms they dug for gold along the streams, meeting with such success that in March Mr. Smith made his way to Walla Walla with $800 in gold-dust. The dust was sent to Portland. Now ensued another gold excitement and stampede almost equal to that of ’49 in California.
As the miners rushed into Idaho, every other species of industry rushed up the River with them. The cowboy came side by side with the miner. In fact, already following close on the heels of the Indianwar, had come an inrush of cattle, horses, and sheep. During the last years of the decade of the fifties, stockmen had driven from the Willamette Valley thousands of head of stock to the rich pasture lands of the Walla Walla, Umatilla, and Yakima. When the gold discoveries of 1860 and 1861 became known, the activities of the cowboys were multiplied, added bands of stock were driven in, all the wild and extravagant features of a combined cowboy and mining age, vendors of “chain-lightning and forty-rod,” gamblers, prostitutes, murderers,—and with them missionaries and teachers,—became reproduced again on the shores of the Columbia, Snake, Clearwater, Salmon, Walla Walla, and other rivers of the Inland Empire. It was another of those wild eras in which the worst and the best that are in human nature jostled each other at every turn.
Transportation problems followed close upon the cowboy and the miner. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company, organised in 1860, began within a year to run steamboats from Portland to Lewiston, with portage railroads around the Cascades and the Dalles. Stage lines were started from Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Lewiston, within a year or two after the gold discoveries of Oro Fino. Prairie-schooners, huge waggons, sometimes three in tandem fashion, drawn by a team of twenty mules, with jingling bells, driven with a “single line,” formed the approved system of hauling freight over the mountain roads. In addition to the stages and prairie-schooners, however, thousands of mules and horses were driven with pack-saddles over the trails and roads. Then was the time when “throwing the diamond hitch”became a fine art. Then was the time, too, when it behooved stage-drivers and packers to be handy with a “gun,” for “road-agents” were plentiful and vigilant. Many a man with a pack-saddle loaded with gold-dust, or sometimes with whiskey or even “canned goods,” “passed in his checks” under some over-shadowing tree or behind some sheltering rock.
Both the distresses and the successes of that epoch are well illustrated by extracts from some of the newspapers of the time. From issues of theWashington Statesmanof Walla Walla, we learn that flour was at one time a dollar a pound; beef, thirty to fifty cents a pound; bacon, sixty; beans, thirty; rice, fifty; tea a dollar and a half; tobacco, a dollar and a half; sugar, fifty cents; candles, a dollar. Some of these staples could not be had at all. Physicians, when they got into the mines, would charge twenty dollars a visit. Board was from five to ten dollars a day, frequently more.
But as an offset to the expense and frequent positive suffering, we gather the following item from an issue of theStatesmanin December, 1861: