CHAPTER XXXI
1824-1838
JOURNALS OF PETER SKENE OGDEN, EXPLORER AND FUR TRADER, OVER THE REGIONS NOW KNOWN AS WASHINGTON, OREGON, CALIFORNIA, IDAHO, MONTANA, NEVADA AND UTAH—HE RELIEVES ASHLEY’S MEN OF 10,000 BEAVER—HE FINDS NEVADA—HE DISCOVERS MT. SHASTA—HE TRICKS THE AMERICANS AT SALT LAKE.
JOURNALS OF PETER SKENE OGDEN, EXPLORER AND FUR TRADER, OVER THE REGIONS NOW KNOWN AS WASHINGTON, OREGON, CALIFORNIA, IDAHO, MONTANA, NEVADA AND UTAH—HE RELIEVES ASHLEY’S MEN OF 10,000 BEAVER—HE FINDS NEVADA—HE DISCOVERS MT. SHASTA—HE TRICKS THE AMERICANS AT SALT LAKE.
Gaywere the fur brigades that swept out from old Fort Vancouver for the South. With long white hair streaming to the wind, Doctor McLoughlin usually stood on the green slope outside the picketed walls, giving a personal hand-shake, a personal God-bless-you to every packer, every horseman of the motley throng setting out on the yearly campaign for beaver. There were Iroquois from theSt.Lawrence. There were Ojibways from Lake Superior. There were Cree and Assiniboine and Sioux of the prairie, these for the most part to act as packers and hunters and trappers in the horse brigades destined inland for the mountains. Then, there were freemen, a distinct body of trappers owning allegiance to no man, but joining theCompany’s brigades for safety’s sake and selling the beaver they trapped to the trader who paid the highest price. Of coast Indians, there were very few. The salmon runs of the river gave the coast tribes too easy an existence. They were useless for the hardships of inland service. A few Cayuses and Flatheads, and Walla Wallas might join the brigades for the adventure, but they did not belong to the Company’s regular retainers.
Three classes, the Company divided each of the hunting brigades into—gentlemen, white men, hunters. The gentlemen usually went out in twos—a commander and his lieutenant, dressed in cocked hat and buttons and ruffles and satin waistcoats, with a pistol somewhere and very often a sword stuck in the high boot-leg. These were given the best places in the canoes, or mounted the finest horses of the mountain brigades. The second class were either servants to beat the furs and cook meals, or young clerks sent out to be put in training for some future chieftaincy. But by far the most picturesque part of the brigades were the motley hunters—Indians, Half-breeds, white men—in buckskin suits with hawks’ bills down the leggings, scarlet or blue handkerchief binding back the lank hair, bright sash about the waist and moccasins beaded like works of art. Then somewhere in each brigade wasa musician, a singer to lead in the voyageurs’ songs, perhaps a piper from the Highlands of Scotland to set the bagpipes droning “The Campbells Are Coming,” between the rock walls of the Columbia. And, most amazing thing of all, in these transmontane brigades the men were accompanied by wives and families.
A last hand shake with Doctor McLoughlin; tears mingled with fears over partings that were many of them destined to be forever, and out they swept—the Oregon brigades, with laughter and French voyageurs’ song and Highland bagpipes. A dip of the steersman’s lifted paddle, and the Northern brigades of sixty men each were off for Athabasca and the Saskatchewan and theSt.Lawrence. A bugle call, or the beat of an Indian tom-tom, and the long lines of pack horses, two and three hundred in each brigade, decked with ribbons as for a country fair, wound into the mountain defiles like desert caravans of wandering Arabs. Oregon meant more in those days than a wedge stuck in between Washington and California. It was everything west of the Rockies that Spain did not claim. Then Chief factor McLoughlin, whom popular imagination regarded as not having a soul above a beaver skin, used to retire to his fort and offer up prayer for those in peril by land and sea.
The man chosen to lead the southern brigades to the mountains and whose wanderings led to the exploration of Oregon, northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and Utah—was a short rotund, fun-loving, young barrister of Montreal, Peter Skene Ogden. His ancestors had founded Ogdensburg of New York State and at an earlier day in the history of Scotland had won the surname “Skene,” through saving the life of King Malcolm by stabbing a wolf with a dagger—“a skene.” During the American Revolution, his father left New York for Montreal, and had risen to be chief justice of the courts there, so that the young barrister could claim as relatives the foremost families of New York State and the Province of Quebec: but an evil star presided at the birth of Peter Skene.
Ogden and Ross ExplorationsClickherefor larger map
Ogden and Ross Explorations
He was finishing his law course when his boyhood voice changed, and instead of the round orotund of manhood came a little, high, falsetto squeak that combined with Peter’s little, fat figure and round head proved so irresistibly comical, it blasted his hopes as a pleader at the bar. John Jacob Astor was in Montreal wrangling out his quarrel over Mississippi territory with the Northwest Company. Judge Ogden was a friend of Astor’s. Peter applied to go out to Astoria on the Pacific. Astor took him as supercargo onThe Lark; but in 1813,The Larkwas wrecked in a squall two hundred miles off the Sandwich Islands, and young Ogden was of those who, lashed to the spars of the drifting wreck, fell to the mercies of the Hawaiians, and finally reached Astoria only to find it captured by the Northwest Company. That was his introduction to the fur trade of Oregon, and it was typical. McLoughlin had no sooner moved headquarters from Astoria inland to Fort Vancouver, than Peter Skene was sent to the Flatheads of the West. Here, one of his servants got into a scuffle with the Indians over a horse, and Ogden was carried to the Flathead chief to be shot.
“What?” he demanded of the astonished chief. “Do you think a white man is to be bullied over a horse? Do you think a white man fears to be shot? Shoot,” and he bared his breast to the pistol point.
But the Flathead chief did not shoot. “He brave man,” said the chief, and he forthwith invited Ogden to remain in the tent as a friend, and proposed another way out of the quarrel that would be of mutual benefit to the Company and to the Flatheads. The Company wanted furs; the Flatheads, arms. Let Ogden marry the chief’s daughter—Julia Mary. It was not such a union as his relatives of New York would approve, or his father, the chief justice of Montreal. She was not like the young ladies hehad known in the seminaries of the East, but her accomplishments were of more use to Peter Ogden. When Peter Skene walked out of the Flatheads’ tent, he had paid fifty ponies for a wife and was followed by the chief’s daughter. To what period of his life they belong, I do not know. His own journals tell nothing of them, but legends are still current in the West about this Flathead princess of the wilds; how when a spring torrent would have swept away a raft-load of furs, Julia leaped into the flood tide, roped the raft to her own waist, and towed the furs ashore; how when the American traders, who relieved Ogden of his furs, in 1825, stampeded the Hudson’s Bay horses and Julia’s horse galloped off with her first-born dangling from the saddle straps in a moss bag, she dashed into the American lines. With a bound, she was in the saddle. She had caught up the halter rope to round baby and horses back to the Hudson’s Bay camp, when a drunken Yankee trader yelled, “Shoot that d—— squaw!” But the squaw was already hidden in a whirl of dust stampeding back to the British tents. This, then, was the man (and this the wife, who accompanied him) chosen to lead the mountain brigades through the unexplored mountain fastnesses between the prairie and the Pacific. Lewis and Clarke had crossed to the Columbia, and the Spaniards to theColorado, but between the Colorado and the Columbia was an absolutely unknown region.
With Ogden as first lieutenant went Tom McKay. McKay was the best shot in the brigade, a fearless fighter, a tireless pathfinder, and one old record says “combined the affable manners of a French seigneur with the wild-eyed alertness of a mountaineer.” With hatred of the Indian bred in him from the time of his father’s murder, he could no more see a savage hostile without cracking off his rifle than a war horse could smell powder and not prance. Among the trappers were rough, brave fellows—freemen, French Canadians—whose names became famous in Oregon history: La Framboise, Astor’s old interpreter, who became a pathfinder in California; Gervais, who alternately served American and British fur traders, helped to find Mt. Shasta, finally sold his trapping outfit and retired to the French colony of the Willamette; Goddin and Payette and Pierre, the Iroquois, and Portneuf, who have left their names to famous places of Idaho. The brigade numbered a score of white men, some fifty or sixty nondescript trappers, as many women, some children and an average of three horses for each rider in the party. These horses came from the Cayuse Indians of the Walla Walla plain. This was the rendezvous after leaving Fort Vancouver. Herewas always good pasturage for the horses, and the fur post had store of pemmican traded from the buffalo hunters of the Cayuse and Flathead nations.
Pouring into the south side of the Columbia between Walla Walla and Fort Vancouver, were the Walla Walla, Umatilla, John Day’s, the River of the Falls. In the mountains southward, were the beaver swamps. As the entire region was unknown, Ogden determined to lead his brigade West close to the Columbia, then strike up the fartherest west river—double back eastward on his own tracks at the headwaters, and so come down to the Columbia again by the Snake. The circle would include all the south of Oregon and Idaho. He writes: “Monday, November 21st, 1825—Having sent off all hands yesterday from Walla Walla, I took my departure and overtook my party awaiting my arrival. We are following the banks of the Columbia southwest. Our road is hilly, and we have great trouble with our horses, for they are all wild. We are followed by a large camp of Indians bent on stealing our horses. Although we rise at day dawn, we are never ready to start before ten o’clock, the horses are so difficult to catch. Wednesday, 30th—We have reached John Day’s River. A great many Indians have collected about us. Each night the beaver traps are set out, and in the morning some have been stolen by theIndians. Many horses missing, having been stolen. This does not prevent raising camp, as by remaining we should lose more horses than we could get back. Saturday, December 3rd—We bade farewell to the Columbia River and struck south up the River of the Falls. It is scarcely credible, though we are such a short distance from the Columbia, what a difference there is in the country. This soil is rich. The oaks are large and abundant. The grass is green, though at a distance on both sides all the hills are powdered with snow. Sunday, December 4th—It is now very cold, for we have begun ascending the mountains and camp wherever we can find a brook. The man I sent back for the lost horses, found them on the north side of the Columbia. He was obliged to give the Indians thirty balls of powder to get them back, no doubt a trick, and the thief, himself, restored them, a common practice with all the Indians. We are coming to the end of the Columbia hills. Mt. Hood, a grand and noble sight, bears west; Mt. Helen’s north; and to the south are lofty mountains the shape of sugar loaves. On all of these are pines, that add to the grandeur. After descending the divide we reached a plain and struck east, gathering some curious petrifactions of fir trees. Our horses are greatly fatigued, for the road is of cut rocks. Deer are abundant. We saw upward of one hundredto-day, but too swift to be overtaken on this dangerous ground. Many of the bare hills are of blood-red color. In this quarter are three boiling fountains of sulphur. I must find an Indian, who will guide us. If not, we must attempt to cross east without. Our horses are saddle deep in mire.”
From the time Ogden crossed the sky line of the Blue Mountains for the headwaters of the Snake, his difficulties began. Hunters to the fore for the game that was to feed the camp, the cavalcade began zigzagging up the steep mountain sides. Here, windfall of pines and giant firs, interlocked twice the height of a man, scattered the wild Cayuse ponies in the forest. There, the cut rocks, steep as a wall and sharp as knives, crowded the pack horses to the edge of bottomless precipices where one misstep meant instant death for rider and horse. And the mountain torrents tearing over the rocks swept horses away at fording places, so that once Ogden was compelled to follow the torrent down its cañon to calmer waters and there build a canoe. In this way his hunters crossed over by threes and fours, but how to get the fractious horses across? It was too swift for men to swim, and the bronchos refused to plunge in. Getting two or three of the wise old bell-mares, that are in every string of packers, at the end of a long rope, the canoemen shot across the whirl ofmidstream and got footing on the opposite shore. Then by dint of pulling and yelling the frantic horses were half frightened, half-tumbled into the river, and came out right side up a hundred yards farther down. At other places, the cut-rocks—a local term that explains itself—were so steep and sharp, Ogden ordered all hands dismounted and half the packs carried up on the men’s backs. It was high up the mountain, and the snow that falls almost continuously in winter above tree line made the rocks slippery as ice. For a few days, owing to the altitude and cold, no beaver had been taken, no game seen. The men were toiling on empty stomachs and short tempers. Night fell with all hands still sweating up the slippery rocks. A slave Indian lost his self control and struck Jo. Despard, one of the freemen, on the back. Throwing down his load, Despard beat the rascal soundly, but when the battle was over and all the bad temper expended, the slave Indian was dead. Poor Despard was mad with grief, for no death was ever passed unpunished by the Hudson’s Bay. Sewing the murdered man in rolls of buffalo skin, they buried him with service of prayers on the lonely heights of the Blue Mountains. “It is not in my power,” writes Ogden, “to send Despard to Vancouver. Until we return to the headwaters, I will let the affair remain quiet. The poor fellow is wretched over the murder.”
Peter Skene Ogden, who led the Hudson’s Bay Company Mountain Brigades of three and four hundreds through Idaho, Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona.
Peter Skene Ogden, who led the Hudson’s Bay Company Mountain Brigades of three and four hundreds through Idaho, Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona.
During the march eastward across the valleys, between the Cascade range and the Rockies, one hundred and sixty traps for beaver were set out each night. In the mornings, when camp was broken, from thirty to sixty beaver were considered a good night’s work. Snake Indians were met and a guide engaged, but the Snakes were notorious horse thieves, and a guard was kept round the horses each night. Ogden makes a curious discovery about the beaver in this region. “Owing to the mildness of the climate,” he writes, “beaver here do not lay up a stock of provisions as in cold countries.” As the cold of mid-winter came, the beaver seemed simply to disappear to other haunts. In vain, the men chiselled and trenched the ice of the rivers above and below the beaver dams. The beaver houses were found empty. Tom McKay was scouring the cut-rocks for game with his band of hunters; but it is the season when game leaves the cut-rocks, and night after night the tired hunters came in hungry and empty handed. The few beavers trapped were frequently stolen at night, for there are no ten commandments to hungry men, and in spite of cold and wet the trappers began sleeping in the swamps near their traps to keep guard. “If we do not soon find game,” writes Ogden on December 22nd, “we shall surely starve. My Indian guide threatens to leave us. Ifwe could only find the headwaters of the Snake without him, he might go to the devil. We do not see the trace of an animal. I feel very uneasy about food. Sunday, December 25th—This being Christmas, all hands remained in camp and I held prayers. The cold increases. Prospects, gloomy; not twenty pounds of food in camp. If we escape starvation, God preserve us, it will depend on Tom McKay’s hunters. On collecting our horses, we found one-third limping. Many of them could not stand and lay helpless on the plain. If this cold does not soon pass, my situation with so many men will be terrible. December 31st—One of the freemen, three days without food, killed one of our horses. This example will soon be followed by others. Only one beaver to-day. Gave the men half rations for to-morrow, which will be devoured to-night, as three-quarters in camp have been two days without food. Sunday, New Year’s, 1826—Remained in camp. Gave all hands a dram. We had more fasting than feasting. This is the first New Year’s day since I came to the fur country that my men were without food. Only four beaver to-day. Sent my men to the mountains for deer. Our horses can scarcely crawl for want of grass; but march they must, or we starve. In the evening, Tom McKay and men arrived without seeing the track of an animal, so this blasts my hope. Whatwill become of us? So many are starving in camp that they start before daylight to steal beaver out of their neighbors’ traps.Had the laconic pleasure of seeing a raven watching us to-day!The wolves follow our camp. Two horses killed for the kettle. January 11th—Reached the source of Day’s River. Our horses are too lame to move. A horrible road we have had for ten days of rock and stone. We have taken in all two hundred and sixty-five beaver and nine otter here. Our course is due east over barren hills, a lofty range of mountains on both sides covered with Norway pines. Thank God if we can cross these mountains I trust to reach Snake River. There are six feet of snow on the mountain pass here. We must try another. For ten days we have had only one meal every two days. January 29th—A horse this day killed—his hoof was found entirely worn away, only the raw stump left.”
February 2nd, they left the streams flowing west and began following down a cañon of burnt windfall along the banks of a river that ran northeast. The divide had been crossed, and the worn bronchos were the first to realize that the trails of the mountains were passed. Suddenly pricking forward, they galloped full pace into the valley of Burnt River, a tributary of the Snake. “A more gloomy looking country,” writes Ogden, “I never saw. We havebeen on short allowance too long and all resemble so many skeletons. We are skin and bone. More beggarly looking fellows the world could not produce. All the gay trappings at the beginning of the march have disappeared. Still I have no complaint of my men. Day after day, they labor in quest of food and beaver without shoe or moccasin to their feet. The frozen ground is hardly comfortable for people so scantily clothed. Ten days east is the buffalo country of the plains, but in our present weak state we could not reach it in a month.” Ogden was now in the beaver country of the Snakes and to avoid starvation divided his brigade into small bands under McKay and Gervais and Sylvaille. These, he scattered along the tributaries of the Snake River north and south, in what are now known as Oregon and Idaho, some to the “Rivier Malheur (Unfortunate River) so-called because this is the place where our goods were discovered and stolen by the Americans last year”; others to Sandwich Island River, and Reed’s River, and Payette’s and the Malade, given this name because beaver here lived on some root which made the flesh poisonous to the trapper.
Few Snakes were met, because this was the season when the Snakes went buffalo hunting, but “in our travels this day (26 February) we saw a Snake Indian’shut near the road. Curiosity induced me to enter. I had often heard these wretches subsisted on ants, locusts and small fish not larger than minnies (minnows); and I wanted to find out if it were not an exaggeration, but to my surprise I found it was true. One of the dishes was filled with ants collected in the morning before the thaw commences. The locusts are gathered in summer in store for the winter. The Indians prefer the ants. On this food the poor wretches drag out existence for four months of the year and are happy. During February, we took one hundred and seventy-four beaver. Had the weather been mild, we should have had three thousand. An incredible number of deer here, but only skin and bone, nevertheless most exceptable (?) to us starving.” He mentions that it was on Sickly or Malade River that the Blackfeet killed one of his men the preceding year. “If the Americans have not been here since, we shall find beaver.” On the 13th of March, McKay came in with a dozen elk, and the half-starved hunters sat up till dawn feasting. But alas, on March 20th, near Raft River, came a camp of Indians with word “that a party of Americans are not three days’ march away. If this be true, our hunts are damned. We may prepare to go home empty handed. With my discontented men, I dread meeting the Americans. After the sufferings themen have endured with me, they will desert.” Snake camps now began to pass westward at the rate of four hundred people a day, carrying their supply of buffalo meat and also—what struck sorrow to Ogden’s heart—an American flag. A thousand Snake warriors were on the way to the Spanish settlements of the South to trade buffalo meat and steal horses. Near the American Falls, the Brigade fell in with marauding Blackfeet, friendly, no doubt, because of Ogden’s wife, who was related to the Northern tribes. “The Blackfeet informed me, they left the Saskatchewan in December and were in quest of the Snakes, but finding them so strong did not attempt it. They consisted of eighty men with the usual reserve of twenty or thirty Piegans hidden in the hills. March 31st—To-day, twenty-seven beaver, which makes our first thousand with two to begin the second thousand. I hope to reach Fort Vancouver with three thousand.”
“Sunday, April 9th, Portneuf River, headwaters of the Snake—About 10A. M., we were surprised by the arrival of a party of Americans, and twenty-eight of our deserters of last year. If we were surprised, they were more so. They expected their threats of last year would prevent us returning to this quarter, but they find themselves mistaken. They encamped a short distance away. With the glass, we couldobserve the Blackfeet on the hills spying on our movements.
“Monday, April 10th—The strangers have paid me a visit. I had a busy day settling old scores with them and more to my satisfaction and the Company’s than last year’s disaster. We received from them eight thousand one hundred and seventy-two beaver in payment of their debts due the company and two notes of hand from Mr. Monton.We secured all the beaver they had.Our deserters are tired of their new masters and will soon return to us. How the Americans make profit when they pay $3.00 per pound for beaver, I cannot imagine. Within ten months the Indians have stolen one hundred and eighty traps from these Americans.”
In those few words, does Peter Skene Ogden record an episode that has puzzled the West for fifty years. How did these Americans come to sell all the beaver they had to him, at less than they had paid, for the Hudson’s Bay Company never paid $3.00 a beaver? Were they short of powder as well as traps? And what old score was Ogden paying off? What had happened to him the year before? Was that the year when the Americans stampeded his horses? The record of Ogden’s 1824-25 trip has been either lost or destroyed, and the Americans’ version of the story was very vague. General Ashley’s huntershad gone up fromSt.Louis and were in the mountains destitute. Suddenly, they met Ogden’s brigade on the banks of the Snake north of Salt Lake. When the rival hunters parted, Ogden was destitute and the Americans had Hudson’s Bay furs variously valued at from $75,000 to $350,000—a variation accounted for by the fact that theSt.Louis traders valued beaver five times higher than the Hudson’s Bay. The legend is that Ogden’s men were demoralized by laudanum and whiskey. He acknowledges that twenty-eight of his men deserted. If the deserters took their furs with them, the transaction is explained. The Hudson’s Bay would be out of pocket not only the furs but the hunting outfit to the men. Ashley’s record of the matter was that he got “a fortune in furs for a song.” Whatever the explanation, Ogden now scored off the grudge. He took the entire hunt from his rivals and exacted two promissory notes for former debts.
With almost 10,000 beaver, Ogden now led his brigade down the Snake northwest for Fort Vancouver on the Columbia. “The Blackfeet,” he writes, “have set fire to the plains to destroy us, and collect war parties to surround us. May 6th—It began to snow and continued all night. Our trappers come in almost frozen. Naked as many are and without shoes, it is surprising not a murmur or complaintdo I hear. Such men are worthy to follow a Franklin to the Pole. Two-thirds are without blanket or any shelter and have been so for the last six months. This day, thirty-four beaver from the traps. Sunday, June 18th—All along the plains of Snake River are women digging the bitter root. Their stones are sharp as flint. Our tracks could be followed by the blood from our horses’ feet.” From the headwaters of Day’s River, the brigade wound across westward to the beautiful valley of the Willamette. “A finer stream is not to be found,” relates Ogden of the valley that was to become famous. “All things grown in abundance here. One could enjoy every comfort here with little labor. The distance from the ocean is ninety miles. No doubt in years a colony will be formed on the stream and I am of opinion it will flourish with little care. Thus ends my second trip to the Snake Country.” The accuracy of Ogden’s prophecy is fulfilled in prosperous cities on the banks of the Willamette to-day.
So far, the Oregon brigades had not gone south over the height of land that divides the Columbia from the Sacramento, but as they had followed up to the headwaters of the Willamette and the River of the Falls and John Day’s River, they found their sources in those high, beautiful Alpine meadowsjust fringed by trees, walled in by the snowy peaks and presenting the peculiar phenomenon of swamps above the clouds. Here were beaver runs and houses in a network. Seventy beaver a day—each worth two dollars to the trapper—the hundred traps set out each night—yielded in these uplands. But many of the mountain torrents, that took their rise in these swamps, flowed south and west. Would these streams, too, yield as rich harvest of beaver? “The country must be explored,” writes Ogden, “though we may waste our pains doing it”; and he steered his brigade of 1826-27 to that region, which was to become so famous for its gold and silver mines, California and Nevada.
Striking straight south from the Dalles of the Columbia, Ogden had twenty-five trappers behind in line. Tom McKay, the hunter, marched to the fore with twenty-five more. Gervais and Sylvaille and Payette each boasted a following of five or six, some seventy men all told, not including the women and Indian hangers-on. From the first night out, horse thieves hung on the heels of the marchers. Half way up the River of the Falls, one night in October, when a high, dry wind was blowing a gale, and the brigade had camped in a meadow of brittle rushes seven feet high, the horse thieves drew off in hiding till the hunters’ ponies had been turned loose.Then they set fire to the grass and swooped down with a yell to stampede the camp. But Tom McKay was too keen a hunter to be caught napping. Mounted on his favorite cayuse, he was off through the swale like an arrow and rounded the entire brigade into a swamp of willows, where fire could not come. Another time, Payette and that Pierre, whose death a few years later gave his name to the famous trappers’ rendezvous of Pierre’s Hole, had gone over a hillock to set their traps in a fresh valley, when they came on seven of their own horses being quietly driven off by two Snake Indians. With a shout, the two indignant trappers fell on the Indians with fists and clubs. Indian spies, watching from ambush, dashed to the rescue, with the result that four of the horses were shot, three rushed off to the hills, and the two trappers left weltering in blood more dead than alive. Ogden thus expresses his feelings: “It is disgraceful. The Indians have a contempt for all traders. For the murders committed not one example has been made. They give us no credit for humanity but attribute our not revenging murders to cowardice. If opportunity offers for murder or theft, they never allow it to pass. I am of opinion if on first discovery of a strange tribe, a dozen Indians were shot, it would be the means of saving many lives. Had this plan been adopted with the Snakes,they would not have been so daring and murdered forty of our men in a few years. Scripture gives us a right to retaliate for murder. If we have means to prevent murder, why not use them? Why allow ourselves to be butchered and our property stolen by such vile wretches not fit to be numbered among the living and the sooner dead, the better?... It is incredible the number of Snake Indians here. We cannot go ten yards without finding their huts of grass. No Indian nation in all North America is so numerous as the Upper and Lower Snakes, the latter as wild as deer. They lead a most wretched life. An old woman camped among us the other night. She says from the severe weather last winter, her people were reduced for want of food to subsist on the bodies of their children. She, herself, did not kill any one, but fed on two of her children who died of starvation—an encouraging example for us at present, reduced to one meal a day.”
By November, the brigades were on the height of land between the Sacramento and the Columbia, in the regions of alkali plains and desert mountains in northern California and Nevada. Ogden at once sent back word of his whereabouts to Chief Factor McLoughlin of Fort Vancouver, little dreaming that the trail southward, which he was now finding, would be marked by the bleaching bones of treasurehunters in the rush to the gold mines. Trappers under McKay and Gervais and Sylvaille were spread out on the headwaters of the Willamette, and the Klamath and the Sacramento; but the dusty alkali plains were too dry for beaver. In three months, only five hundred were taken, while man and beast were reduced to extremity of endurance from lack of food and water. By the 16th, they were on the very apex of the divide, a parched, alkali plain, where the men got water by scooping snow from the crevices of the rocks and tried to slake their horses’ thirst by driblets of snow-water in skin-bags. Two thirst-maddened horses dropped dead on the march, the famished trappers devouring the raw flesh like ravenous wolves. Two little lakes, or alkali sinks were found—“a Godsend to us”—writes Ogden, and the horses plunged in to saddle girths drinking of the stagnant, brackish stench. From where they paused to camp—though there was neither wood nor sage bush for fire—they could see the Umpqua in the far north, the Klamath straight northwest, a river which they did not know was the Sacramento, south; and towering in the west above the endless alkali and lava beds of the plains stretching east, the cones of a giant mountain high as Hood or Baker, opalescent and snow-capped. Ogden named both the mountain and the river here Shasta, after the name of theIndian tribes whom he met. He was on the borderlands of California, on the trail which thousands of gold-seekers were to follow from Oregon in ’49.
Speaking of the Klamath Indians, he says: “They live in tents built on the water of their lakes, approachable only by canoes. The tents are of logs like block houses, the foundation stone or gravel made solid by piles sunk six feet deep. The Indians regretted we had found our way through the mountains. They said, ‘the Cayuses tried to attack us, but could not find the trail. Now they will follow yours.’”
McKay had brought in only seven hundred beaver from his various raids on the waters west of Shasta. In these alkali swamps were no beaver. Ogden had explored the height of land. He now determined to cross the alkali desert eastward while there was still a chance of winter snow and rain quenching thirst; and he only awaited the return of his messengers from McLoughlin. “Friday, December 2nd—Late last night, I was overjoyed by the arrival of my expressmen from the fort. One of the trappers hunting lost horses discovered them; otherwise, they would never have reached camp. They could no longer walk and were crawling. For fourteen days they had been without food, for nine days without quenching thirst. Their horses were stolen by the Snakes. On entering my lodge, the poor man fellfrom weakness and could not rise. I immediately sent back for the other man. About midnight he was brought in, thank God, safe!” Christmas was spent on the edge of the desert: “Did not raise camp. We are reduced to one meal a day. Discontent prevails. We have yet three months of winter travel. God grant them well over and that our horses escape the kettle. I am the most unfortunate man on earth, but God’s will be done.”
Possibly, Ogden’s low spirits may be traced to drinking that alkali water on the divide. For two months the whole camp suffered. The brigade was still among the Shastas and Klamaths in February, and Ogden records a curious incident of one Indian: “Among our visitors is a man with only one arm. I asked him how he lost the other. He informed me the other arm was badly wounded in battle, very painful and would not heal; so he cut it off himself three inches below the socket with his flint knife and axe made of flint. It is three years since. He healed it with roots and is free from pain.” Rains now began to fall in such torrents the leather tents fell to pieces from rain rot and for twenty days not a blanket in camp was dry. Ogden set out to cruise across the desert, thankful that sickness quieted the cravings for food. Shasta River was left on the rear on March 13th, “our unruly guide being forcibly tiedon horseback by ropes and all hands obliged to sleep in pouring rains without blankets. Not one complaint in camp. This life makes a young man old. Wading in swamps ice-cold all day, the trappers earn their ten shillings for beaver. A convict at Botany Bay has a gentleman’s existence compared to my poor fellows. March 26th—Our guide discovered a grizzly bear. One of the trappers aimed but only wounded it. Our guide asked permission to pursue it. Stripping himself naked, armed only with an axe, he rushed after the bear, but he paid dearly for the rashness, for his eyes were literally torn out, and the bear escaped to the sage-bush.”
The guide had to be left with his tribe and the white men to shift for themselves crossing the desert. Knowing vaguely that Snake River was northeast, Ogden struck across the northwest corner of the Nevada desert, Desert of Death it was called among the trappers. Each night a call was made for volunteers, and two men set out by moonlight to go ahead and hunt water for the next camp. The water was often only a lava sink, into which horses and men would dash, coming out, as Ogden describes it, “looking blistered and as if they had been pickled.” Sometimes, the trail seekers came back at day-dawn with word there wasnowater ahead. Then Ogden sat still beside his mud lakes, or stagnant pools whosestench sickened man and beast, and sent out fresh men by twos in another direction till water was found. Again and again he repeats the words: “It is critical, but the country must be explored if we can find water to advance.... We can’t go on without water, but the country must not remain unknown any longer. There are Snake huts ahead. There must be muddy lakes somewhere. June 2nd—I sent two men to proceed southeast and try that direction. They will march all night to escape the heat. If we do not succeed in that direction, our starvation is certain. Sunday, June 3rd—8A. M., the two men arrived and report nothing but barren plains—no water. No hope in that direction. I at once ordered the men off again northeast. They left at 9A. M.All in camp very sick owing to stagnant water. If I escape this year, I will not be doomed to come again. June 4th, at dawn of day, men came back. They found water, where we camped last fall (on the Snake). At 9A. M.we started quick pace,sauve qui peutover dreary, desolate, sandy country, horses panting from thirst. At 6A. M., June 6th, we reached water to the joy of all.” They were really on the upper forks of Sandwich and Malheur rivers. The end of July saw the horses of the brigade pasturing in the flowery meadows at Walla Walla and the happy trappers forgetful of allpast miseries, sweeping down the swift current of the Columbia for Fort Vancouver, where Doctor McLoughlin awaited with a blessing for each man.
Ogden had vowed he would not be doomed to cruise in the wilderness another year. He reached Vancouver in July. On August 24th, he was again at the head of the Oregon brigade, leading off from Walla Walla for the Grande Ronde, a famous valley of the Snake where the buffalo runners gathered to trade with the mountaineers and coastal tribes. There was good pasturage summer and winter. A beautiful stream ran through the meadow and mountains sheltered it from all but the warm west winds. Indian women came here to gather the camas root and set out from the Grande Ronde in spring for the buffalo hunts of the plains. Here, trappers could meet half a dozen tribes in friendly trade and buy the cayuse ponies for the long trips across the mountains to the Missouri, or up the Snake to Great Salt Lake, or across the South Pass to the Platte. Ogden divided his brigade as usual into different parties under McKay and Payette and Sylvaille, scattering his trappers on both sides of the Snake south as far as the bounds of the present State of Utah.
Toward the end of September, when in the region of Salmon Falls on the Snake, he was disgusted to encounter a rival party of forty American tradersled by a man named Johnson. “My sanguine hopes of beaver are blasted,” he despairingly writes. “I am camped with the Americans. Their trappers are everywhere. They will not part with a single beaver. Kept advancing south. The Americans informed me they meant to keep on my trail right down to the Columbia. We are surrounded by Blackfeet and Snakes bound to the buffalo hunt. I am uneasy. The Snake camp has upward of fifteen hundred warriors and three thousand horses. We are in full view of the Pilot Knobs or Three Tetons where rise the waters of the Columbia, the Missouri, and the Spanish River. The waters of Goddin’s River disappear in this plain, taking a subterraneous route to Snake River. The chief of the Snakes carries an American flag. The headquarters of the Americans are south of Salt Lake (on Green River). December 14th—Another party of six under a leader named Tullock, a decent fellow, has joined us. He told me his Company wished to enter an agreement with the Hudson’s Bay regarding the return and debts of deserters who go from us to them, or from them to us. He says the conduct of Gardner at our meeting four years ago”—when Ogden was robbed—“has not been approved. Our trappers have their goods on moderate terms, but the price we pay them for beaver is low compared to the Americans. The Americanspay $5.00 for beaver large or small. We pay $2.00 for large and $1.00 for small. Here is a wide difference to the free trapper. If he takes his furs toSt.Louis, he will get $5.50. Most of the American trappers have the following plan: Goods are sold to them at 150 per cent. advance, but delivered to them here in the Snake country. Not requiring to transport their provisions, they need few horses. For three years, General Ashley has brought supplies to this country fromSt.Louis and in that time cleared $80,000 and retired, selling his goods at an advance of 150 per cent., payable in five years in beaver at $5.00 a beaver. Three young men, Smith, Jackson, Sublette, bought the goods and in the first year cleared $20,000. Finding themselves alone, they sold their goods to the Indians one-third dearer than Ashley did. What a contrast to myself. They will be independent in a few years.” It may be explained that Ogden’s prediction of these American trappers was fulfilled. Those who were not killed in the Indian country retired rich magnates ofSt.Louis, to become governors and senators and men of honor in their state.
But Ogden could not forget these men were of the same company who had robbed him four years before, and when snow fell six feet deep in the mountain pass to Green River, Ogden laid his plans to payback the grudge in his own suave way. “Tullock, the American, who failed to get through the snow to Salt Lake, tried to engage an Indian to carry letters to the American camp. This, I cannot prevent.I cannot bribe all the Indians, but I have succeeded in keeping them from making snowshoes for the Americans. The Americans are very low spirited. They cannot hire a messenger or purchase snowshoes, nor do they suspect that I prevent it. I have supplied them with meat, as they cannot kill buffalo without snowshoes. I dread if they go down to Salt Lake, they will return with liquor. A small quantity would be most advantageous to them but the reverse to me. If I had the same chance they have (a camp near) long since I would have had a good stock of liquor here; and every beaver in the camp would be mine. As all their traps have been stolen but ten, no good can result from their reaching their camp and returning here. We have this in our favor—they have a mountain to cross and before the snow melts can bring but little from Green River here.”
Three times the Americans set out for their rendezvous south of Salt Lake, and three times were driven back by the weather. “It is laughable,” chuckles the crafty Briton, who was secretly pulling the strings that prevented his rivals getting eithergoods or snowshoes. “It is laughable, so many attempts, and no success. They have only twenty-four horses left. The rest of the fifty they brought are dead from cold. I have small hope that our own horses can escape, but I can cover them with robes each night.”
On the 16th of March, the entire encampment of Americans and Hudson’s Bay were paralyzed with amazement at a spectacle that was probably never seen before or since so far south in the mountains—messengers coming through the snow-blocked mountain pass from the American camp on Green River by means of dog sleds. “It was a novel sight to see trappers arrive with dogs and sleds in this part of the world; for usually, not two inches of snow are to be found here. They brought the old story, of course, that the Hudson’s Bay Company was soon to quit the Columbia. At all events the treaty of joint occupation does not expire till November. By their arrival, a new stock of cards has come to camp, and the trappers are gambling day and night. Some have already lost upwards of eight hundred beaver. Old Goddin, who left me last year, goes toSt.Louis, having sold his eight horses and ten traps for $1,500. His hunt is worth $600.00 more, which makes him an independent man. In our Hudson’s Bay service, with the strictest economy, he could scarcely savethat in ten years. Is it any wonder the trappers prefer the American service? The American trader, Mr. Campbell, said their treatment of me four years ago is greatly regretted. The Americans leave for the Kootenay Country of the North. We separate on the best of terms. They told me their traders fromSt.Louis failed to arrive last fall owing to severe weather and their camp south of Salt Lake had been attacked by Blackfeet, and Pierre, my old Iroquois, was cut to pieces.” In other words, Ogden’s narrative proves that theSt.Louis traders, with a camp on the upper waters of Colorado River, had gone as far north as Kootenay by 1828. I fancy this will be news to the most of investigators, as well as the fact that the Hudson’s Bay were as far south as California before 1828. Two months later, in May, on his way down the Snake River to Vancouver, Ogden met a large band of Snake warriors returning from raiding the Blackfeet on the Saskatchewan. In the loot captured from the Blackfeet, were the clothes and entire camp outfit of the forty Americans, who had wintered with Ogden, a convincing enough proof of foul play. The Snakes reported that the furs of the Americans had been left scattered on the plains, and the party, itself, massacred. “The sight of this booty caused gloom in camp. God preserve us from a like fate,” writes Ogden. Two weeks later, LaValle, one ofhis own trappers, was found dead beside his traps. Near-by lay a canvas wrapper with the initials of the American Fur Company, proof that the marauders had been the same band of Blackfeet who attacked the Americans, first on Green River and then on the Saskatchewan.
Ogden’s wanderings had now taken him along all the southeastern tributaries of the Columbia from Mt. Shasta across California, Nevada and Idaho to the headwaters of the Snake, but there was still one beaver region unpenetrated by him—between Salt Lake desert and the Nevada desert. In crossing from Mt. Shasta to the Snake, he had but scampered over the northern edge of this region, and hither he steered his course in 1828. As usual, the brigade went up the valley of the Walla Walla, pausing in the Grande Ronde to prepare tent poles, for the year’s wandering was to be over the treeless desert. Powder River, Burnt River, Malheur, where the Americans had robbed him—were passed in succession. Then Sandwich Island and Portneuf were trapped. They were now on the borders of the arid, sage-bush plains. Ashley’s man, Jim Bridger, sometime between 1824 and 1828, had found the south side of Salt Lake; and as early as 1776, the Spaniards had legends of its waters. Ogden now swung fourdays’ march southwest and explored the entire surroundings of Salt Lake. Then he struck westward across those wastes that were to be the grave of so many California and Nevada gold-seekers. High winds swept the dry dust in clouds through the air. The horses sank to their saddle girths through the fine sand, and hot winds were succeeded by a blanketing fog, that obliterated all marks of direction, so that the brigade was blindly following the trail of some unknown Indian tribe. “Nov. 1st, 7A. M.—Our track this day between high mountains on both sides over a plain covered with wormwood. The scouts saw two Indians, whom they captured and brought to camp. More stupid brutes I never saw. We could not make them understand our meaning. Gave one a looking glass and set them at liberty. In less than ten minutes, they were far from us. Had not advanced three miles next morning when we found three large lakes covered with wild fowl. The waters were salt. Next day the men in advance discovered the trail to a large river. Reached a bend in the river and camped. Indians numerous. They fly from us in all directions. We are the first whites they have seen. This is the land of the Utas. I have named the river the River of the Lakes, not a wide stream but certainly a long one.”
Ogden had discovered the river that was calledby his own name among trappers, but was later named Humboldt by Freemont. To his great joy, beaver were as abundant as the Indians. The traps set out each night yielded sixty beaver each morning. Ogden at once scattered his brigade in three directions: west toward Salt Lake, where the river seemed to but did not take its rise; north toward the forks of the Snake four days’ march away, and southwest where the river seemed to flow. “Nov. 9th—One of the hunters going downstream returned with word this river discharges into a lake, no water or grass beyond, only hills of sand. Advanced to the lake and camped. I was surprised to find the river takes a subterranean passage and appears again, a large stream lined with willows. So glad was I to see it, that at the risk of my life I dashed over swamps, hills, and rocks to it and the first thing I saw was a beaver house well stocked. Long before dawn of day, every trap and trapper was in motion. As dawn came, the camp was deserted. Success to them all! As far as I can see, this river flows due west. Trappers arrived at night with fifty beaver. Indians paid us a visit. On asking them what they did with their furs, they pointed to their shoes. Examination showed them to be made of beaver. It is warm here as in September and the Indians wear no clothing. They are without houses or arrows or any defence.”
In the midst of all this jubilation over the discovery of a large river and the success in trapping, one of the hunters, Jo Paul, the same Jo Paul who had acted as guide for the Nor’Westers in Athabasca, fell dangerously ill. He was in too great pain to be moved. Yet to remain for the sake of one man meant starvation for the whole camp. Ogden would not hasten the poor fellow’s death by marching and the brigade waited till the horses were out of grass. Ogden sent spies forward to reconnoiter good camping ground, sent the tenting kit on, and had the sick man moved on a stretcher. There was no blare of trumpets after the manner of civilized heroism, but on the morning of the 11th of December, two hunters came forward to Ogden and quietly volunteered to remain in the desert with the sick man. The man, himself, had been begging Ogden to throw him in the river or shoot him, as it was quite apparent he could not recover. “I gave my consent for the two men to remain,” relates Ogden, not even mentioning the names of the heroes. “There is no other alternative for us. It is impossible for the whole party to remain and feed on horse flesh for four months. One hundred horses would not suffice, and what would become of us afterward?”
Turning back up Unknown River, Ogden wintered on Salt Lake; “a gloomy, barren region, except forwolves, no other animals seen,” he relates of the backward march. “Here we are at the end of Great Salt Lake, having this season explored half the north side of it, and we can safely assert, as the Americans have of the south side, that it is a country destitute of everything.” On the 1st of January, came the trappers who had nursed their comrade to the time of his death.
“Of all the men who first came to the Snake country,” writes Ogden, “there remains now only one alive. All the others have been killed except two, who died a natural death. It is incredible the number who have perished in this country.” When spring came, Ogden again set out for Unknown or Humboldt River, following it westward where it disappears into alkali sinks. Two thousand beaver in all were taken from the river. “Country level far as eye can see. I am at a loss to know where this river discharges. We start at dawn to escape the heat. The journey is over beds of sand. The horses sink leg deep. The country is level, though hills can be seen southwest. The Indians are not so numerous as last fall, but from the number of fires seen in the mountains, I know they are watching us and warning their tribes. Nowhere have I found beaver so abundant. The total number of American trappers in this region is eighty. My trappers averageone hundred and twenty-five a man for the season and are greatly pleased. The number of pelicans seems to indicate a lake. If it is salt, there is an end to our beaver.”
It was not the desert but the Indians that finally drove Ogden back. He had advanced almost to the Shasta in California when a tribe of Indians from Pit River began mauling his trappers, though Ogden had taken the precaution of sending them out only in twos. It was the 28th of May. The brigade had turned northeast to strike for some branch of the Columbia, to pass from what is now known as Nevada to Oregon, when “a man who had gone to explore the lake (where the river disappears) dashed in breathless with word of ‘Indians.’ He had a narrow escape. Only the fleetness of his horse saved him. When rounding a point within sight of the lake, twenty men on horseback gave the war cry. He fled. An Indian would have overtaken him, but the trapper discharged his gun in the fellow’s face. He says the hills are covered with Indians. I gave orders to secure our horses, and for ten men to advance and spy on what the Indians were doing, but not to risk a battle, as we were too weak. They reported more than two hundred warriors marching on us. On they galloped. Having signaled a spot for them to halt five hundred yardsfrom our camp, I went out, met them, desired them to be seated.” One wonders what would have happened at this point if instead of the doughty little man with the squeaky voice and podgy body and spirit of a lion, there had been a coward at the head of the Oregon brigade. What if the leader had lost his head and fled in panic, or fired?
“This order,” writes Ogden, “was obeyed. They sat down. From their dress and drums, I knew it was a war party. If they had not been discovered, they had intended to attack us. Weak as we were—only twelve guns in camp—they would have been successful. They gave me the following information through a Snake interpreter: this river discharges in a lake, that has no outlet. In eight days’ march is a large river but no beaver” (the Sacramento, or Rogue River named after these Indians). “There is another river (Pit River). We saw rifles, ammunition and arms among them. This must be the plunder of the sixteen Americans under Jedediah Smith, who were murdered here in the fall” (Smith had reached Fort Vancouver naked, and Doctor McLoughlin had sent Tom McKay out to punish these Indians). “They wanted to enter my camp. I refused. A more daring set of rascals I have never seen. The night was dark and stormy. The hostile fires burned all night. As I do not wish to infringeon the territory of Mr. McLeod’s Umpqua brigade, I gave orders to raise camp and return. McLeod’s territory is on the waters emptying in the Pacific. If Mr. McLeod had reached Bona Venture, he must have passed this stream. I told the Indians in three months, they would see us again, and we steered for Sylvaille’s River. Passed Paul’s grave where he must sleep till the last great trumpet sounds.” In July, the brigade reached Fort Vancouver by way of John Day’s River. In four years, the South Brigades had explored Oregon, Idaho, the north of California, Nevada and Utah as well as the corner of Wyoming—a fairly good record for brave men, who made no pretenses and thought no greatness of daily deeds. The next few years, other men led the Oregon brigade South. Ogden was sent North to open up that Russian strip of coast leading to the interior of British Columbia. Henceforth, he led the canoe brigade to the famous Caribou and Cassiar regions, but he came back to pass his last days in Oregon, where he died on the banks of the Willamette about 1854. Looking back over the plain little man’s plain life, told in plain words without a thought of heroism, I cannot say I am surprised that his numerous descendants and distinguished relatives of the East are as proud of him as other people are of the Mayflower and William the Conqueror.