turn the wheels of factories the value of whose exports to China, Japan,
and other lands is expressed in millions. The waterpower speeds electric
street-cars over ninety miles of track, and conducts electricity through
two hundred and fifty miles of arc mains. All the elevators and
printing-presses of the city are operated by power from the falls, and to
this all-supplying current are attached many sewing-machines, typewriters,
phonographs, graphophones, churns, electric fans, music boxes, door-bells,
burglar alarms, clocks, and hundreds of other contrivances calling for
constant or occasional motive power. Spokane is credited with being the
most modern and best-equipped city in the world, and this is due, first, to
the falls whose power brings many utilities, considered luxuries in other
communities, within reach of the lowliest consumer; and secondly, to the
singular fact that the city is newer than the telephone, the electric
light, and other latter-day inventions and discoveries. There were no
ancient institutions and prejudices to supplant. To children reared in
Spokane, other cities seem archaic, their streets sloven, and their homes
grotesquely behind the times. A girl from Spokane visiting in New York is
known to have written home about the bizarre appearance of "electric cars
drawn by horses."
London gropes by night through dismal glimmerings of gas and it would
require millions of reluctant pounds sterling to substitute more modern
light. In the new city of Spokane it was the most natural procedure to
install the latest conveniences of modern life. When the little settlement
was but a cluster of ambitious cabins every abode had its telephone and its
electric lights. The Spokane workman does not stumble up the steps of a dim
tenement. Lumber is cheap and in variety, and even Spokane granite is
within his means. He dwells in a good home. A click of a button at the door
floods the dwelling with light. Sputtering wicks have no place in his
economy. He can afford, too, to order his groceries by telephone or use the
same medium to discuss politics with a friend in a distant part of the
city. All members of polite society in Spokane have telephones. A lady
planning an impromptu tea or lawn party gets out her calling list, reaches
for the telephone, and issues her amiable summons. A great amount of local
business is transacted over the wires in the city. The power of the falls
likewise enables the telephones of Spokane to talk and trade with a
thousand towns, the distant city of San Francisco coming within the Spokane
circuit.
Thus, in the employment of waterpower to serve the city in manifold ways,
the Indians say, has been fulfilled the prophecy of Speelyai that a race
would come which should yoke the goddess of the cataract in perpetual
servitude.
[Illustration THE LAST CHIEF TO INTIMIDATE THE INHABITANTS OF SPOKANE.]
In further fulfilment of the prediction that the demoniacal siren of the
falls should no longer have dominion over his people, the Spokanes and
kindred tribes shunned the river, and from a race of fishers, paddling bent
and kneeling in their crude canoes, they became an intrepid race of
horsemen. On horseback they rode to war or hunted the moose and antelope,
and horses became the sign of wealth and the medium of exchange. For their
obedience in carrying out the details of his malediction upon the water
demon, Speelyai prospered them. Their wealth increased and their numbers
multiplied. Their tepees were warm with many furs and picturesque with the
trophies of battle and the chase. Their larders abounded with dried meat,
meal, wapatoo, and camas root. They became the most valiant warriors
between the Bitter Root Mountains and the sea. The power of the allied
tribes of Eastern Washington became so formidable that the American
Government was compelled to send its most skilful military leaders to
effect their pacification, and it was not until Phil Sheridan eclipsed
them in daring and General Miles forced Chief Joseph to capitulation that
the scattered settlers in the Spokane country ceased to tremble at the
impending descent of mounted savages.
By repeated violation of treaty stipulations, by burnings and massacres and
thefts, they had asserted their dominion. In 1858 the Spokanes gave tragic
demonstration of their determination to enforce the native declaration that
the armies of the whites should never traverse their domain. In that year
Colonel Steptoe, seeking to lead a detachment to garrison the post of the
Hudson Bay Company at Colville, near the British border, was defeated with
great slaughter by the Spokanes. With an unscalped remnant of his force he
crawled at night from the scene of his disaster and, abandoning his guns,
rushed in confusion back to Walla Walla. The god of Indian battles still
reigned and the Government at Washington was alarmed. Then Colonel George
Wright was chosen to command, a man whose merciless determination and
sanguinary triumphs gave to his notable campaign a distinction not
paralleled until the Sirdar of Egypt just forty years later led his
expedition to Khartoum, silenced the dervishes near Omdurman, and hurled
the severed head of the Khalifa into the Nile. The Spokanes did not
attribute their defeat to the superior strategy of their pale-faced foe.
Their fatal mistake, they said, was in making their last stand on the
Spokane Plains, within sound of the exultant shrieking and sinister roaring
of their ancient enemy, the evil spirit of the Spokane cataract, and it was
she, not their white conqueror, who herded and stampeded them into
terrified surrender. They had fought with abandoned daring, and had
employed all their arts of strategy, but were forced back toward the abode
of the water monster until her roaring mockery thundered in their ears. Now
they set the tall prairie grass afire, and over the site of the coming city
there blazed on that parched day of September 5, 1858, a conflagration no
less formidable than war. It enveloped, but could not stay the pursuing
column. Destiny was striding through flame and blood that day to open a way
for civilized occupation of the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds of painted
warriors, including the leader of the Palouses, a chief of the Pend
d'Oreilles, one of the chiefs of the Coeur d'Alenes, and two brothers of
Spokane Gary, the commander of the savage army, lay dead.
[Illustration THE CITY HALL, SPOKANE.]
As if by a miracle, not one of Colonel Wright's soldiers fell, a further
proof to the Indians that their evil goddess had presided over the
conflict. In token of their subjection they brought their wives, children,
horses, and all portable belongings and made complete offering at the feet
of their conqueror. Thus the site of the present city of Spokane became the
scene of one of the most striking and significant triumphs of civilized man
over the aborigines of the American continent. What William Henry Harrison
did at Tippecanoe for the old Northwest in scattering the allied natives
under Tecumseh, Colonel Wright accomplished at Spokane Plains for the
Northwest in demolishing the league of tribes under the Spokanes. It is
true that Chief Joseph later, emulating the ambitions of Black Hawk, sought
to reunite the tribes in rebellion against the whites, but though he
succeeded in stirring the Federal Government to vigilant campaigns, he
failed in his great object, just as did the successor of Tecumseh. Wright's
sway was undisputed. Indians convicted of crimes he ordered hanged.
Superfluous horses were shot. He spread terror as he moved, and peace
followed in his footsteps.
But the Civil War and financial panic delayed the Western movement. In 1863
there were but ninety registered citizens in the Spokane country. And when
the first sawmill came, in 1873, its wheels revolved slowly, for the
failure of Jay Cooke delayed the transcontinental railway, that was to
connect the city with the East. Eight years later, just twenty years ago,
the first locomotive rumbled into the new settlement. Now there was to be a
city. On September 1st of that year came the first lawyer, J. Kennedy
Stout, and it is characteristic of the spirit that has ever continued to
quicken the activities of the community that four days after his arrival he
had drafted a charter for the city, taken the necessary legal steps toward
its incorporation, and had been chosen its attorney.
[Illustration J. KENNEDY STOUT.]
In 1885, the city, numbering two thousand people, was an alert and
distributing centre. Grain was pouring in from the fertile acres of the
Palouse to be ground into flour, and the time was at hand when a remarkable
discovery in the neighboring mountains of Idaho was to turn the tide of
travel toward Spokane, and in less than a decade develop it into the
greatest railroad centre west of Chicago. It was in that year that three
men and an ass, in the Coeur d'Alenes, a few miles from Spokane, camped
toward night in a desolate cañon. Their provisions were nearly exhausted.
They held forlorn council, and decided to abandon their search for mines in
those gloomy and precipitous solitudes. Toward sundown the animal strayed
from its tether. They found it gazing across the ravine at a reflected
gleam of the setting sun. A marvellous series of ore seams had mirrored the
light. The dumb beast had discovered the greatest deposits of galena on the
globe. The whole mountain was a mine.
Within an hour after the arrival of the sensational news at Spokane, that
city's unparalleled boom began. Prospectors, engineers, and capitalists
from the four corners of the Republic hurried to the new city. A railway
magnate rode out on horseback to view the mountain, and within four months
from the day of his visit ore was being shipped by rail to Spokane. North
and south, for three hundred miles, mines were found on every mountainside,
and every additional discovery hastened Spokane's growth and quickened the
fever of its speculation. As a local historian said, "Men went to sleep at
night on straw mattresses, and woke to find themselves on velvet couches
stuffed with greenbacks." Wealth waited for men at every corner. The
delirium of speculation whirled the sanest minds. Of the many clergymen,
for example, who arrived to advocate the perfecting of titles to homes not
made with hands, eleven abdicated the pulpit and, indifferent to the menace
of moth and rust, laid up substantial treasure.
Five years from the discovery of the mines in the Coeur d'Alenes the city
numbered twenty thousand inhabitants. Fire swept over it and laid
twenty-two solid squares in ashes. Before the ruins cooled, the city was
being rebuilt, this time in steel and brick and stone. The
_Spokesman-Review_, which began its editorial career in a small, discarded
chapel, soon moved into a ten-story structure, and that evolution was, in
epitome, the story of the city. Architects of some renown designed palaces
and châteaux for the wealthy. Every citizen hoped to outdazzle his neighbor
in the beauty of his home, and this has resulted in giving Spokane unique
distinction in architectural impressiveness.
[Illustration THE "SPOKESMAN-REVIEW" BUILDING.]
Though Spokane has had abundant share of that rampant Western virility, the
story of whose unrestraint would constitute a daring contribution to
profane history, the city from the start displayed a dominating purpose
that made for civic righteousness. It is true that during its earlier years
there were many murders in Spokane, for citizens, in the midst of its
hurrying events, were impatient of prolix complaints and the tardy
judgments of the law. Nor did this reckless code much concern the hangman,
for the legal execution of a citizen in Spokane would have been regarded
much as the world would now look upon the shuddering crime of burning a
Christian at the stake; yet in its blood-shedding there was little, if
any, of the wanton element of anarchy, and upon few occasions in the
history of the Northwest has crime stooped to assassinate from ambush.
Outwardly calm, but with desperation in his mood, the insulted approached
the object of his wrath and warned him to "heel" himself. Inevitable
shooting marked their next meeting, and their funerals were not
infrequently held simultaneously.
The bad man of melodrama is an execrable creation of fiction, whose
counterpart was not long tolerated in Spokane's career, and who does not
seem to have made his presence felt in other sections of the West. A
desperado of the early days sent word from a neighboring town that, because
of some dispute, he would kill a certain Spokane citizen on sight. The
community could not afford to lose an influential pioneer, and the city
fathers met to consider the outlaw's menace. They decided that, inasmuch as
they would be called upon to execute him ultimately, they would better hang
him before he had opportunity to pull his criminal trigger, and to this
programme they pledged their official honor and forwarded notice of their
grim deliberation to the desperado, who thereupon deemed it expedient to
strike the Lolo trail that led to less discriminating frontiers. Spokane
has outlived its lawless days. For several years it enjoyed the police
protection of a noted bandit-catcher, whose nerve was unfailing and whose
aim was sure. The ensuing hegira of criminal classes was a spectacle for
other cities to contemplate with awe. During his stern _régime_, a riotous
stranger, mistaking the temper of the community, flourished weapons and for
a few agonizing moments made pedestrians his targets. The clamor brought
the cool chief of police. "Did you subdue the stranger?" he was afterward
asked. "We buried him the next day," was the reply.
In the few years that have ensued since the country's occupation by the
whites, the once masterful Spokane tribe has degenerated, the Indians
around Spokane to-day shambling about under the generic epithet of
"siwash"; and a writer visiting this region in recent days came to the
etymological conclusion that the first syllable in their unhappy title
stood for "never."
Though Spokane is famous, its precise locality is not generally known. When
it became ambitious and first held expositions, it ordered lithographic
posters from Chicago. They came representing steamboats plying placidly in
a river whose falls are as deadly as Niagara's. Spokane is twenty-four
hours' ride from the cities of Puget Sound. It is three days' journey from
San Francisco, and to go from Spokane to Helena or Butte is like travelling
from Chicago to Denver. Its future must be great. It has no rival. Eight
railroads, three of them transcontinental, assert its supremacy. Southward
stretches the most prolific grain empire in the world. Almost boundless
forests of valuable timber cover surrounding mountains to the north and
east, whose mineral wealth is beyond compute.
[Illustration MIDDLE FALLS, SPOKANE.]
A typical Westerner, in an interesting autobiography, states that the ass
that discovered the mines of the Coeur d'Alene, and thus caused a stampede
of civilization to Spokane, was buried with the ceremonial honors due a
potentate. It takes conspicuous place in distinguished company. On the
heights of Peor an altar was reared to canonize the ass that saw the Light
the prophet Balaam all but passed. An ass by its braying wrought the
salvation of Vesta, and the animal's coronation was an event in the
festival of that goddess. For ages the Procession of the Ass was a solemn
rite in religious observances. In Spokane, a favorite canvas pictures the
Coeur d'Alene immortal gazing enraptured across a mountain chasm at shining
ledges of galena. When explaining the various causes of the matchless
development of Spokane and its tributary region, the resident, in merry
mood, does not forget to pilot the visitor to this quaint memorial.
Afterward there was litigation over the mineral wealth now valued at
$4,000,000 located by this animal, the outcome of which was the following
decision handed down by Judge Norman Buck of the District Court of Idaho:
"From the evidence of the witnesses, this Court is of the
opinion that the Bunker Hill mine was discovered by the
jackass, Phil O'Rourke, and N.S. Kellogg; and as the jackass is
the property of the plaintiffs, Cooper & Peck, they are
entitled to a half interest in the Bunker Hill, and a quarter
interest in the Sullivan claims."
[Illustration MIDDLE FALLS, ECHO FLOUR MILLS, AND OLD POWER HOUSE.]
Spokane has a rare climate of cloudless days. The Indians say that once it
shared the fogs and copious rains of the seacoast, but that their tutelary
god, ascending to the heavens, slew the Thunderer, and that thenceforth
they dwelt under radiant skies, and were called Spokanes, or Sons of the
Sun.
A college of artists could not have devised a more beautiful location for a
city. It is set in a gigantic amphitheatre two thousand feet above sea
level. High walls of basalt, picturesque with spruce and cedar and pine,
form the city's rim. Against this background have been built mansions that
would adorn Fifth Avenue or the Circles of the national capital. Forming
the city's southern border winds an abysmal gorge, and along its brink has
been built one of the city's fashionable boulevards. The cataracts of the
Spokane some day must inspire poets. In some parts of the city, affording
adornments for numberless gardens, are volcanic, pyramidal rocks. The
Indians say that these columns are the petrified forms of amazons who,
issuing from the woods, were about to plunge into the river for a bath,
ignorant of the water demon, when Speelyai to save them turned them into
stone.
It is significant of the lure of Spokane that men who have accumulated
millions and sold their mines still make it their place of permanent
residence. Though the city as it is to-day has been built in the dozen
years that have elapsed since its great fire, there is no hint of hasty
development within its boundaries. Singular fertility in its soil has so
fostered its shade trees and its gardens that a sense is conveyed of years
of affluent ease and attention to æsthetic detail. Spokane is in many
respects the most consummate embodiment on the continent of that typical
American genius that has redeemed the wilderness of the frontier.
[Illustration]
PORTLAND
THE METROPOLIS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
"Where rolls the Oregon."--_Bryant_.
BY THOMAS L. COLE
One autumn evening in 1843, A.M. Overton and A.L. Lovejoy, two residents of
Oregon City, on their way home from Vancouver, landed from their canoe and
pitched their tent for the night under the pine trees upon the west bank of
the Willamette River. Before they resumed their journey, the next day, they
had projected a town upon the site of their encampment. Within a few
months, a clearing was made and a log cabin built. From this beginning grew
the present city of Portland.
But our story must go back of this beginning, for the historical
significance of Portland lies not so much in the fact that it is to-day the
great metropolis of that vast territory, once all called Oregon, and now
divided into the States of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and parts of Wyoming
and Montana, not to mention British Columbia; but its significance is
rather to be sought in the consideration that in Portland culminated and
found final form the metropolitan life of Oregon Territory, which, in its
earlier and richer historical period, found expression successively in
Astoria, Vancouver, and Oregon City. Thus, for the essential beginning of
the history of the metropolis of the Pacific Northwest, we must go back to
the embryo metropolis established by Astor at the mouth of the Columbia
River. This point of departure, while relatively remote, yet carries us
back over less than a century of time.
[Illustration JOHN JACOB ASTOR.]
Nearly two hundred years had passed after Henry Hudson sailed the
_Half-Moon_ up the North River before the waters of the mighty Oregon were
disturbed by any craft save the Indian's canoe. Beyond suspicions and
reports of Indians, the great "River of the West" was unknown, and that
vast territory beyond the Rocky Mountains which it drains was undiscovered
until April 29, 1792, when Captain Gray, commanding the _Columbia
Rediviva_, from Boston, crossed its bar and landed upon its bank, to the
consternation of the Indians, who now saw a white face for the first time.
Gray named the river after his vessel, the Columbia, and took possession of
the country in the name of the United States. A few months later,
Broughton, a lieutenant of the explorer Vancouver, to whose incredulous
ears Gray had communicated his discovery, entered the Columbia, and in turn
claimed everything in the name of King George. These conflicting claims
furnish a key to the critical period in the history of the Columbia River
territory. For a long time neither America nor Great Britain forced a
determination of its claim, and a succession of treaties gave to the
citizens of both countries equal rights in the territory. Each government,
however, encouraged its citizens to make good the national claim by actual
possession. The first attraction to Oregon Territory was that which led
Captain Gray, with other expeditions, to the coast, viz., the abundance of
fur-bearing animals. The first British occupation was that of the Northwest
Fur Company of Canada, which pushed some posts across the Rockies to the
far north. The way for American occupation was opened when the successful
explorations of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which camped over the
winter of 1805 at the mouth of the Columbia, demonstrated the
practicability of an overland route to Oregon. Into this opening John
Jacob Astor promptly entered. As the "American Fur Company," Astor had
successfully checked the aggressions of the powerful Canadian companies in
the northern United States. He now projected a scheme, under the name of
the "Pacific Fur Company," whereby to check the movements of these same
companies beyond the Rocky Mountains, and to possess the new country for
the United States. The heart of his plan and purpose was a settlement at
the mouth of the Columbia River. Says Washington Irving, to whose
fascinating book, _Astoria_, the reader must go for the story of this
magnificent, if ill-starred, enterprise:
"He considered his projected establishment at the mouth of the
Columbia as the emporium to an immense commerce, as a colony
that would form the germ of a wide civilization, that would, in
fact, carry the American population across the Rocky Mountains
and spread it along the shores of the Pacific."
Jefferson, who had sent out the Lewis and Clark expedition, heartily
endorsed this project, as did also his Cabinet. In prosecution of Astor's
purpose, on April 12, 1811, the _Tonquin_, the precursor of an intended
"annual vessel," bringing partners, clerks, _voyageurs_, and artisans, as
well as material and merchandise, crossed the bar of the Columbia and cast
anchor. Point George, as it had been named by Broughton, was selected as a
site for the embryo metropolis, and was renamed Astoria, after the great
commoner whose enterprise it represented. Here, after the _Tonquin_ had
sailed away to its tragic fate, the little colony proceeded to establish
itself. A fort, a stone mansion, and other buildings were erected, and a
schooner, the _Dolly_, was constructed and launched. The colonists did some
trading with the neighboring Indians but delayed to reach out into the
surrounding country until the arrival of Wilson Price Hunt, who was
bringing an expedition overland and was to establish suitable trading posts
_en route_. Hunt, who was an American and the chief partner under Mr.
Astor, was to be in charge at Astoria. While engaged in their work of
construction, the colonists were disturbed by rumors that their rivals, the
Northwest Company, had entered their territory and established a post on
the Spokane River. This rumor was confirmed when a canoe came down the
Columbia flying the British standard, and a gentleman, stepping ashore,
introduced himself as David Thompson, an astronomer and a partner of the
Northwest Company. McDougal, who was temporarily in charge, was, like
several of Astor's partners, a Scotchman, and a former Northwest employé.
This visitor, therefore, was treated as an honored guest instead of as a
spy, which he really was. However, it was determined that David Stuart
should at once take a small party and set up a post as a check to the one
on the Spokane, which he did at Oakinagen.
[Illustration ASTORIA IN 1811. BASED ON A PRINT IN GRAY'S "HISTORY OF
OREGON."]
Another interruption was occasioned by the shocking news of the massacre of
the _Tonquin's_ crew by Indians and the destruction of the vessel. To grief
at the loss of their friends was added fear of the Indians, who they now
suspected were plotting against them. However, McDougal's wit served and
saved them. He threatened to uncork the smallpox, which he professed to
hold confined in a bottle, and so gained the fear of the Indians, and the
title, "The great smallpox chief."