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[Illustration: Portrait of Dr. Robert Brown]
THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN JEWITT
Only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship _Boston_
During a Captivity of Nearly Three Years Among
the Indians of Nootka Sound in Vancouver Island
Edited with an Introduction and Notes
by
Robert Brown, Ph.D., M.A., F.L.S.
Commander of the First Vancouver Exploring Expedition
With Thirteen Illustrations
Clement Wilson
29 Paternoster Row, London, E.C.
1896
[_All Rights Reserved_]
Morrison and Gibb, Printers, Edinburgh
IN MEMORY
A sad interest attaches to this little book. Although published after
his death, and therefore deprived of his final revision, it was not the
last work which Dr. Robert Brown did. His manuscript was actually
completed many months ago, but at his own request it was returned to him
to receive a last careful overhaul at his hands. This revision had been
practically finished, and the MS. lay ready uppermost among the papers
in his desk, where it was found after his death. Dr. Brown died on the
morning of the 26th of October, 1895, working almost to his last hour.
Before the leader he had written for the _Standard_ on the evening of
the 25th had come under the eyes of its readers, the hand that had
penned it was cold in death. Between the evening and the morning he went
home. He was only fifty-three, but "a righteous man, though he die
before his time, shall be at rest."
And in one sense Dr. Brown needed rest--ay, even this last and sweetest
rest of all. His life had been one of unremitting work--work well done,
which the busy, hurrying world mostly heeded not, knowing naught of the
hand that did it. Some twenty years ago, when I first knew him, he was a
fair, stalwart Northerner, full of vigour, mirthful also, and apparently
looking out on the voyage of life with the confident, joyous eye of one
who felt he had strength within him to conquer. His latter days were
saddened by incessant toil, performed in weakness of body and jadedness
of brain, and by the feeling that his best work, the work into which he
put his rich stores of knowledge, was neither recognised nor requited as
it should have been.
To a sensitive man the daily wear and tear of a journalist's life in
London is often murderous, always exhausting--and Dr. Brown was very
sensitive. Beneath the genial exterior, which seemed to indicate a
careless, light-hearted spirit, lay great depths of feeling, and a
tenderness that shrank from expressing itself. The man was too proud and
self-restrained to betray these depths even to those nearest and dearest
to him. This was at once a nobility in him and a weakness. Had he opened
his heart more, he would have chafed and fretted less, little annoyances
would not have become mountain loads of care. But the truth is, Dr.
Brown was not cut out for the life of an everyday journalist, either by
training, habits, or disposition. The ideal post for him would have been
that of a professor at some great university, where he could have had
abundant leisure to pursue his favourite studies, where young men would
have surrounded him and listened with delight to the outpouring of the
wealth of lore with which his capacious intellect was stored. His lot
was otherwise cast, and he accepted it manfully, battling with his
destiny to his last hours, grimly and in silence of soul, intent only on
one thing, to lift his children clear above the necessity for treading
the same rough road upon which he had worn himself out.
Other and worthier hands than mine may trace, it is to be hoped, the
story of his life, his expeditions in America and Greenland, and his
many literary labours not only in popularising scientific subjects, with
a thoroughness and attractiveness too little recognised, but in walks
apart where the multitude could not judge him. My dominant feeling about
him for many years has been one of regret that he should be wearing his
life away so fast. He never learned to play; to be completely idle for a
day even became, latterly, irksome, almost irritating, to him. His
fingers itched to hold the pen, to handle a book. Although in earlier
times he could enjoy a brief holiday, he ever mixed work with his
pleasure; could, indeed, accept no pleasure which did not imply work
somewhere close to his hand. Thus his various journeys to Morocco,
ostensibly taken, at any rate the earlier of them, to escape from all
kinds of work, and from the sight of the day's newspaper, ended in his
becoming the foremost authority in Great Britain upon the literature,
present social condition, and probable future of that perishing country.
The acquisition of this knowledge was all in his day's enjoyment.
The testimony of the introduction and notes to this little book is
enough to prove how thoroughly and conscientiously everything that Dr.
Brown undertook was done. The question of payment rarely entered into
his calculations. Some of his very best work was done for nothing,
because he loved to do it. Witness his edition of _Leo Africanus_,
prepared for the Hakluyt Society, and his innumerable memoirs to the
various learned Societies of which he was a member.
Few of Dr. Brown's London friends were aware that his attainments as a
scientific botanist were of the highest order. Yet in this department of
science alone he had written thirty papers and reports, besides an
advanced text-book of Botany (published by William Blackwood and Sons),
before the summer of 1872, when he was only thirty years of age. These
were entirely outside his contributions to general literature on that
and other subjects, already at that date numerous; and if we add to the
list the various reports, essays, memoranda contributed by him to the
Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, of which he was President, to the
Royal Geographical Society, of whose Council he was a member at his
death, and to numerous other bodies, as well as to scientific and
popular journals, on geographical, geological, and zoological subjects,
from first to last the total mounts to several hundreds. In these
branches of science his heart lay always, but he laboured for his daily
bread and to give to him that needed.
The portrait forming the frontispiece to this volume is from a
photograph of Dr. Brown taken in 1870, just after his return from his
last expedition to Greenland, and represents him much as he looked when,
some years later, he first came to London, after failing to obtain the
chair of Botany in Edinburgh University. That was a disappointment which
he cannot be said ever to have entirely surmounted. The memory of it to
some extent kept him aloof from his fellow-labourers in the world of
journalism. What work he had to do he did loyally, manfully, and with
the most scrupulous care; but he lived a man apart, more or less, from
his first coming among us to the end. In his family circle, and where he
was really known, his loss has brought a great sorrow.
A. J. W.
LONDON, _February 16, 1896_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. BY DR. ROBERT BROWN 13
CHAPTER I
BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY LIFE OF THE AUTHOR 43
CHAPTER II
VOYAGE TO NOOTKA SOUND 53
CHAPTER III
INTERCOURSE WITH THE NATIVES--MAQUINA--SEIZURE
OF THE VESSEL AND MURDER OF THE CREW 58
CHAPTER IV
RECEPTION OF JEWITT BY THE SAVAGES--ESCAPE OF
THOMPSON--ARRIVAL OF NEIGHBOURING TRIBES--AN INDIAN FEAST 70
CHAPTER V
BURNING OF THE VESSEL--COMMENCEMENT OF JEWITT'S JOURNAL 83
CHAPTER VI
DESCRIPTION OF NOOTKA SOUND--MANNER OF BUILDING
HOUSES--FURNITURE--DRESSES 95
CHAPTER VII
APPEARANCE OF THE NATIVES--ORNAMENTS--OTTER-HUNTING--
FISHING--CANOES 112
CHAPTER VIII
MUSIC--MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS--SLAVES--NEIGHBOURING
TRIBES--TRADE WITH THESE--ARMY 129
CHAPTER IX
SITUATION OF THE AUTHOR--REMOVAL TO TASHEES--FISHING
PARTIES 142
CHAPTER X
CONVERSATION WITH MAQUINA--FRUITS--RELIGIOUS
CEREMONIES--VISIT TO UPQUESTA 156
CHAPTER XI
RETURN TO NOOTKA (FRIENDLY COVE)--DEATH OF MAQUINA'S
NEPHEW--INSANITY OF TOOTOOSCH--AN INDIAN MOUNTEBANK 172
CHAPTER XII
WAR WITH THE A-Y-CHARTS--A NIGHT ATTACK--PROPOSALS TO
PURCHASE THE AUTHOR 185
CHAPTER XIII
MARRIAGE OF THE AUTHOR--HIS ILLNESS--DISMISSES HIS
WIFE--RELIGION OF THE NATIVES--CLIMATE 198
CHAPTER XIV
ARRIVAL OF THE BRIG "LYDIA"--STRATAGEM OF THE
AUTHOR--ITS SUCCESS 223
APPENDIX
I. THE "BOSTON'S" CREW 247
II. WAR-SONG OF THE NOOTKA TRIBE 248
III. A LIST OF WORDS 249
INDEX 253
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
PORTRAIT OF DR. ROBERT BROWN (1870) _Frontispiece_
DR. BROWN'S "BOY" 14
PORT SAN JUAN INDIANS 16
OHYAHT INDIAN 24
INDIAN ENCAMPMENT NEAR THE LANDING-STAGE, ESQUIMAULT 33
HABITATIONS IN NOOTKA SOUND (TEMP. 1803) 97
INTERIOR OF A HABITATION IN NOOTKA SOUND 103
NOOTKA SOUND INDIANS 111
INDIAN CANOES, VICTORIA, V. I. (TEMP. 1863) 125
UK-LULAC-AHT INDIAN 135
SALMON WEAR NEAR THE INDIAN VILLAGE OF QUAMICHAN, V. I. 149
CALLICUM AND MAQUILLA, CHIEFS OF NOOTKA SOUND
(TEMP. 1803) 159
INDIAN CHIEF'S GRAVE (TEMP. 1863) 209
ADVENTURES OF JOHN JEWITT.
INTRODUCTION
Many years ago--when America was in the midst of war, when railways
across the continent were but the dream of sanguine men, and when the
Pacific was a faraway sea--the writer of these lines passed part of a
pleasant summer in cruising along the western shores of Vancouver
Island. Our ship's company was not distinguished, for it consisted of
two fur-traders and an Indian "boy," and the sloop in which the crew and
passengers sailed was so small, that, when the wind failed, and the
brown folk ashore looked less amiable and the shore more rugged than was
desirable, we put her and ourselves beyond hail by the aid of what
seamen know as a "white ash breeze." Out of one fjord we went, only to
enter another so like it that there was often a difficulty in deciding
by the mere appearance of the shore which was which. Everywhere the
dense forest of Douglas fir and Menzies spruce covered the country from
the water's edge to the summit of the rounded hills which here and there
caught the eye in the still little known, but at that date almost
entirely unexplored interior. Wherever a tree could obtain a foothold,
there a tree grew, until in places their roots were at times laved by
the spray. Beneath this thick clothing of heavy timber flourished an
almost equally dense undergrowth of shrubs, which until then were only
known to us from the specimens introduced from North-West America into
the European gardens. Gay were the thickets of thimbleberry[1] and
salmonberry[2] wherever the soil was rich, and for miles the ground was
carpeted with the salal,[3] while the huckleberry,[4] the crab-apple,[5]
and the flowering currant[6] varied the monotony of the gloomy woods. In
places the ginseng, or, as the woodmen call it, the "devil's
walking-stick,"[7] with its long prickly stem and palm-like head of
great leaves, imparted an almost tropical aspect to scenery which, seen
from the deck of our little craft, looked so like that of Southern
Norway, that I have never seen the latter without recalling the outer
limits of British Columbia. On the few flat spits where the sun reached,
the gigantic cedars[8] and broad-leaved maples[9] lighted up the scene,
while the dogwood,[10] with its large white flowers reflected in the
water of some river which, after a turbulent course, had reached the sea
through a placid mouth, or a Menzies arbutus,[11] whose glossy leaves
and brown bark presented a more southern facies to the sombre jungles,
afforded here and there a relief to the never-ending fir and pine and
spruce.
[Illustration: DR. BROWN'S "BOY."]
A more solitary shore, so far as white men are concerned, it would be
hard to imagine. From the day we left until the day we returned, we
sighted only one sail; and from Port San Juan, where an Indian trader
lived a lonely life in an often-beleaguered blockhouse, to Koskeemo
Sound, where another of these voluntary exiles passed his years among
the savages, there was not a christened man, with the exception of the
little settlement of lumbermen at the head of the Alberni Canal. For
months at a time no keel ever ploughed this sea, and then too frequently
it was a warship sent from Victoria to chastise the tribesmen for some
outrage committed on wayfaring men such as we. The floating fur-trader
with whom we exchanged the courtesies of the wilderness had indeed been
despitefully used. For had he not taken to himself some savage woman,
who had levanted to her tribe with those miscellaneous effects which he
termed "iktas"? And the Klayoquahts had stolen his boat, and the
Kaoquahts his beans and his vermilion and his rice, and threatened to
scuttle his schooner and stick his head on its masthead. And, moreover,
to complete this tale of public pillage and private wrong, a certain
chief, to whom he applied many ornate epithets, had declared that he
cared not a salal-berry for all of "King George's warships." So that the
conclusion of this merchant of the wilds was that, until "half the
Indians were hanged, and the other half badly licked, there would be no
peace on the coast for honest men such as he." Then, under a cloud of
playful blasphemy, our friend sailed away.
[Illustration: PORT SAN JUAN INDIANS.]
For if civilisation was scarce in the Western Vancouver of '63,
savagedom was all-abounding. Not many hours passed without our having
dealings with the lords of the soil. It was indeed our business--or, at
least, the business of the two men and the Indian "boy"--to meet with
and make profit out of the barbarous folk. Hence it was seldom that we
went to sleep without the din of a board village in our ears, or woke
without the ancient and most fish-like smell of one being the first
odour which greeted our nostrils. In almost every cove, creek, or inlet
there was one of these camps, and every few miles we entered the
territory of a new tribe, ruled by a rival chief, rarely on terms with
his neighbour, and as often as not at war with him. More than once we
had occasion to witness the gruesome evidence of this state of matters.
A war party returning from a raid on a distant hamlet would be met with,
all painted in hideous colours, and with the bleeding heads of their
decapitated enemies fastened to the bows of their cedar canoes, and the
cowering captives, doomed to slavery, bound among the fighting men. Or,
casting anchor in front of a village, we would be shown with pride a row
of festering skulls stuck on poles, as proof of the military prowess of
our shifty hosts.
These were, however, unusually unpleasant incidents. More frequently we
saw little except the more lightsome traits of what was then a very
primitive savage life, and the barbarous folk treated us kindly. A
marriage feast might be in progress, or a great "potlatch," or
merrymaking, at which the giving away of property was the principal
feature (p. 82), might be in full blaze at the very moment we steered
round the wooded point. Halibut and dog-fish were being caught in vast
quantities--the one for slicing and drying for winter use; the other for
the sake of the oil extracted from the liver, then as now an important
article of barter, being in ready demand by the Puget Sound saw-mills.
Now and then a fur-seal or, better still, a sea-otter would be killed.
But this is not the land of choice furs. Even the marten and the mink
were indifferent. Beaver--which in those days, after having been almost
hunted to death, were again getting numerous, owing to the low prices
which the pelts brought having slackened the trappers' zeal--would often
be brought on board, and a few hides of the wapiti, the "elk" of the
Western hunter, and the black-tailed deer which swarm in the Vancouver
woods, generally appeared at every village. The natives are, however,
essentially fish-eaters, and though in every tribe there is generally a
hunter or two, the majority of them seldom wander far afield, the
interior being in their mythology a land of evil things, of which wise
men would do well to keep clear. Even the black bear, which in autumn
was often a common feature of the country, where it ranged the
crab-apple thickets, was not at this season an object of the chase. Like
the deer and the wolves, it was shunning the heat and the flies by
summering near the snow which we could notice still capping some of the
inland hills, rising to heights of from five thousand to seven thousand
feet, and feasting on the countless salmon which were descending every
stream, until, with the receding waters, they were left stranded in the
upland pools. So cheap were salmon, that at times they could be bought
for a cent's worth of "trade goods," and deer in winter for a few
charges of powder and shot. A whale-hunt, in which the behemoth was
attacked by harpoons with attached inflated sealskins, after a fashion
with which I had become familiar when a resident among the Eskimo of
Baffin Bay, was a more curious sight. Yet dog-fish oil was the staple of
the unpicturesque traffic in which my companions engaged; while I, a
hunter after less considered trifles, landed to roam the woods and
shores for days at a time, gathering the few flowers which bloomed under
these umbrageous forests, though in number sufficient to tempt the
red-beaked humming-bird[12] to migrate from Mexico to these northern
regions, its tiny nest being frequently noticed on the tops of low
bushes.
[Sidenote: The Aht Indians.]
But, after all, the most interesting sight on the shore was the people
who inhabited it. They were the "Indians," whom my friend Gilbert Sproat
afterwards described as the "Ahts,"[13] for this syllable terminates the
name of each of the many little tribes into which they are divided. Yet,
with a disregard of the laws of nomenclature, the Ethnological Bureau at
Washington has only recently announced its intention of knowing them
officially by the meaningless title of "Wakashan." They are a people by
themselves, speaking a language which was confined to Vancouver Island,
with the exception of Cape Flattery, the western tip of Washington,
where the Makkahs speak it. In Vancouver Island, a region about the size
of Ireland, three, if not four distinct aboriginal tongues are in use,
in addition to Chinook Jargon, a sort of _lingua franca_ employed by the
Indians in their intercourse with the whites or with tribes whose speech
they do not understand. The Kawitshen (Cowitchan) with its various
dialects, the chief of which is the Tsongersth (Songer) of the people
near Victoria, prevails from Sooke in the Strait of Juan de Fuca,
northwards to Comox. From that point to the northern end of the island
various dialects of the Kwakiool (Cogwohl of the traders) are the medium
in which the tribesmen do not conceal their thoughts. The people of
Quatseno and Koskeemo Sounds, owing to their frequent intercourse with
Fort Rupert on the other side of the island, which at this point is at
its narrowest, understand and frequently speak the Kwakiool. But after
passing several days entirely alone among these people, I can vouch for
the fact that this dialect is so peculiar that it almost amounts to a
separate language. However, from this part, or properly, from Woody
Point southwards to Port San Juan, the Aht language is entirely
different.
The latter locality,[14] nearly opposite Cape Flattery, on the other
side of Juan de Fuca Strait, the most southern part, and the only one on
the mainland where it is spoken, is the special territory of the
Pachenahts. When I knew them, they were, like all of their race, a
dwindling people. A few years earlier, Grant had estimated them to
number a hundred men. In 1863 there were not more than a fifth of that
number fit to manage a canoe, and the total number of the tribe did not
exceed sixty. War with the Sclallans and Makkahs on the opposite shore,
and smallpox, which is more powerful than gunpowder, had so decimated
them that, no longer able to hold their own, they had leagued with the
Nettinahts, old allies of theirs, for mutual defence. Quixto, the chief,
I find described in my notes as a stout fellow, terrible at a bargain,
very well disposed towards the whites, as are all his tribe, the husband
of four wives, an extraordinary number for the Indians of the coast, and
reputed to be rich in blankets and the other gear which constitutes
wealth among the aborigines of this part of the British Empire. In their
palmy days they had made way as far north as Clayoquat Sound and the
Ky-yoh-quaht-cutz in one direction, and with the Tsongersth to the
eastward, though that now pusillanimous tribe had generally the best of
them. Their eastern border is, however, the Jordan River, but they have
a fishing station at the Sombria (Cockles), and several miles up both
the Pandora and Jordan Rivers flowing into their bay. Karleit is their
western limit.
The Nettinahts[15] are a more powerful tribe; indeed, at the period when
the writer of this book was a prisoner in Nootka Sound, they were among
the strongest of all the Aht people. Even then, they had four
hundred[16] fighting men, and were a people with whom it did not do to
be off your guard. They have--or had--many villages, from Pachena
Bay[17] to the west and Karleit to the east, besides three villages in
Nettinaht Inlet,[18] eleven fishing stations on the Nettinaht River,
three stations on the Cowitchan Lake, and one at Sguitz on the Cowitchan
River itself, while they sometimes descend as far as Tsanena to plant
potatoes. They have thus the widest borders of any Indian tribe in
Vancouver Island, and have a high reputation as hunters, whale-fishers,
and warriors. Moqulla was then the head chief, but every winter a
sub-tribe hunted and fished on the Cowitchan Lake, a sheet of water
which I was among the first to visit, and the very first to "lay down"
with approximate accuracy. Though nowadays--_Eheu fugaces, Postume,
Postume, labuntur anni!_--there is a waggon road to the lake, and, I am
told, "a sort of hotel" on the spot where eight-and-twenty years ago we
encamped on extremely short rations, though with the soothing knowledge
that if only the Fates were kindly and the wind favourable, there were
plenty of trout in the water, and a dinner at large in the woods around.
In those days most of the Nettinaht villages were fortified with wooden
pickets to prevent any night attack, and from its situation, Whyack, the
principal one (built on a cliff, stockaded on the seaward side, and
reached only by a narrow entrance where the surf breaks continuously),
is impregnable to hostile canoemen. This people accordingly carried
themselves with a high hand, and bore a name correspondingly bad.
Barclay--or Berkeley Sound--is the home of various petty
tribes--Ohyahts, Howchuklisahts, Yu-clul-ahts, Toquahts, Seshahts, and
Opechesahts. The two with whom I was best acquainted were the last
named. The Seshahts lived at the top of the Alberni Canal--a long
narrow fjord or cleft in the island--and on the Seshaht Islands in the
Sound. During the summer months they came for salmon-fishing to Sa ha,
or the first rapids on the Kleekort or Saman River,[19] their chief
being Ia-pou-noul, who had just succeeded to this office owing to the
abdication of his father, though the entire fighting force of the tribe
did not number over fifty men. As late as 1859 the Seshahts seized an
American ship, the _Swiss Boy_. The Opechesahts, of whom I have very
kindly memories, as I encamped with their chief for many days, and
explored Sproat Lake in his company, were an offshoot of the Seshahts,
and had their home on the Kleekort River, but, owing to a massacre by
the now extinct Quallehum (Qualicom) Indians from the opposite coast,
who caught them on an island in Sproat Lake, they were reduced to
seventeen men, most of them, however, tall, handsome fellows, and good
hunters. Chieftainship in that part of the world goes by inheritance.
Hence there may be many of these hereditary aristocrats in a very small
tribe. Accordingly, few though the Opechesaht warriors were, three men,
Quatgenam, Kalooish or Kanash, and Quassoon, a shaggy, thick-set, and
tremendously strong individual who crossed the island with me in 1865,
were entitled to that rank; and it may be added that the women of this,
the most freshwater of all the Vancouver tribes, were noted for a more
than usual share of good looks.
The Howchuklisahts, whose chief was Maz-o-wennis, numbered forty-five
people, including twenty-eight men. They lived in Ouchucklesit[20]
Harbour, off the Alberni Canal; they had also a fishing camp on
Henderson Lake, and two or three lodges on the rapid or stream flowing
out of that sheet of water, which was discovered and named by me. But
they were "bad to deal with."
[Illustration: OHYAHT INDIAN.]
The You-clul-ahts of Ucluelt Inlet, ruled by Ia-pou-noul, a wealthy man
in blankets and other Indian wealth, numbered about one hundred. The
chief of the Toquahts in Pipestem Inlet was Sow-wa-wenes, a middle-aged
man, who had an easy task, as his lieges numbered only eleven, so that
they were thirty years ago on the eve of extinction. The Ohyahts of
Grappler Creek were estimated in 1863 to be about one hundred and
seventy-five in fighting strength--which, multiplied by four for women
and children, would make them, for that region, an unusually strong
community. These figures are probably correct, since the man who made
the statement was, after living for years amongst them, eventually
murdered by the savages,[21] whom he had trusted too implicitly.
Kleesheens, a notorious scoundrel, was their chief. In Clayoquat Sound
were the Klahoquahts, Kellsmahts, Ahousahts, Heshquahts, and
Mamosahts--the last a little tribe numbering only five men. Indeed, with
the exception of the Klahoquahts (who numbered one hundred and sixty
men) and the Ahousahts (who claimed two hundred and fifty), these little
septs, all devoured by mutual hatred, and frequently at war with each
other, were even then dwindling to nothingness. But the Opetsahts,
though marked on the Admiralty Chart[22] as a separate tribe, are--or
were--only a village of the Ahousahts.
In Nootka Sound, the Muchlahts and Mooachahts lived. In Esperanza
Inlet were the villages of two tribes--the Noochahlahts and Ayattisahts,
numbering forty and twenty-two men respectively, and chiefed at that
time by two worthies of the names of Mala-koi-Kennis, and
Quak-ate-Komisa, whom we left in the delectable condition of each
expecting the other round to cut his and his tribesmen's throats.
North of this inlet were Ky-yoh-quahts, of the Sound of that name
(Kaioquat), numbering two hundred and fifty men. To us they were
exceedingly friendly, though a trader whom we met had a different tale
to tell of their treatment of him. Kanemat, a young man of about
twenty-two, was their chief, though the tribe was virtually governed by
his mother, a notable lady named Shipally, and at times by his pretty
squaw, Wick-anes, and his lively son and heir, Klahe-ek-enes. The
Chaykisahts, the Klahosahts, and the Neshahts of Woody Point are the
other Aht tribes, though the latter is not included among them by Mr.
Sproat. But they speak their language, of which their chief village is
its most northern limit.
Everywhere their tribes showed such evident signs of decadence that by
this time some of them must be all but extinct. Still, as the whites had
not come much in contact with them--though all of them asked us for
"lum" (rum), but did not get it, it is clear enough what had been the
traders' staple--the "diseases of civilisation" could not be blamed for
their decay. Even then the practical extermination of two tribes was so
recent that the facts were still fresh in their neighbours' memory.
These were the Ekkalahts, who lived at the top of the Alberni Canal, but
were all but killed off in the same massacre by which the Opechesahts
were decimated. The only survivor was a man named Keekeon, who lived
with the Seshahts, most of whom had forgotten even the name of this
vanquished little nationality. The other tribe was the Koapinahts (or
Koapin-ah), who at that time numbered sixty or seventy people, but at
the period to which I refer they were reduced to two adults--a man and a
woman--all the rest having been slaughtered a few years earlier by the
Kwakiools from the other side of the island, in conjunction with the
Neshahts of Woody Point. In after days I learned to know these tribes
very familiarly, crossing and recrossing the island with or to them,
hunting and canoeing with them, in the woods, up the rivers, or on the
lakes, and gathering from their lips
"This fair report of them who dwell
In that retirement."
At first sight these "tinkler loons and siclike companie" were by no
means attractive. They were frowsy, and, undeniably, they were not
clean. But it was only after penetrating their inner ways, after
learning the wealth of custom and folk-lore of which they, all
unconscious of their riches, were the jealous custodians, that one began
to appreciate these primitive folk from a scientific point of view. Even
yet, as the writer recalls the days when he was prone to find men more
romantic than is possible in "middle life forlorn," it is difficult not
to associate the most prosaic of savages with something of the
picturesqueness which, in novels at least, used to cling to all their
race. For, as the charm of such existence as theirs unfolded itself to
the lover of woods and prairies, and lakes and virgin streams, the
neglect of soap and of sanitation was forgotten. As Mr. Leland has
remarked about the gipsies: "When their lives and legends are known,
the ethnologist is apt to think of Tieck's elves, and of the Shang
Valley, which was so grim and repulsive from without, but which, once
entered, was the gay forecourt of Goblin-land."
In those days little was known--and little cared--about any of the
Western tribes, except by the "schooner-men," as the Indians called the
roving traders. Their very names were strange to the majority of the
Victoria people, and I am told that very few of the colonists of to-day
are any better informed. It has therefore been thought fitting that I
should go somewhat minutely into the condition of the Indians, at a
period when they were more primitive than now, as a slight contribution
to the meagre chronicles of a dying race. For if not preserved here, it
is likely to perish with almost the last survivor of a little band with
whom, during the last two decades, death has been busy.
[Sidenote: Nootka Sound and its memories.]
Among the many inlets which we entered on the cruise which has enabled
me to edit this narrative of a less fortunate predecessor, was Nootka
Sound. No portion of North-West America was more famous than this spot,
for once upon a time it was the former centre of the fur trade, and a
locality which more than once figured prominently in diplomatic
correspondence. Indeed, so associated was it as the type of this part of
the western continent, that in many works the heterogeneous group of
savages who inhabit the entire coast between the Columbia River and the
end of Vancouver Island was described as the "Nootka-Columbians." More
than one species of plant and animal attest the fact of this Sound
having been the locality at which the naturalist first broke ground in
North-West America. There are, for instance, a _Haliotis Nutkaensis_ (an
ear shell), a _Rubus Nutkanus_ (a raspberry); and a yellow cypress,
which, however, attained its chief development on the mainland much
farther north, bears among its synonyms that of _Chamcæcyparis
Nutkaensis_. For though it is undeniable that Ensign Juan Perez
discovered it as early as 1779, and named it Port San Lorenzo, after the
saint on whose day it was first seen, this fact was unknown or
forgotten, when, four years later, Cook entered, and called it King
George Sound, though he tells us it was afterwards found that it was
called Nootka by the natives. Hence arose the title it has ever since
borne, though this was an entire mistake on the great navigator's part,
since there is no word in the Aht language at all corresponding to
Nootka, unless indeed it is "Nootche," a mountain, which not unlikely
Cook mistook for that of the inlet generally. The proofs of the presence
of earlier visitors were iron and other tools, familiarity with ships,
and two silver spoons of Spanish manufacture, which, we may take it, had
been stolen from Perez's ship. The next vessel to enter the Sound was
the _Sea Otter_, under the command of Captain James Hanna, who made such
a haul in the shape of sea-otter skins that for many years Nootka was
the great rendezvous of the fur-traders who cruised as far north as
Russian America--now Alaska--and, like Portlock, Dixon, and Meares,
charted and named many of the most familiar parts of the British
Columbian coast. Meares built the _North-West America_ by the aid of
Chinese carpenters in Nootka Sound in the winter of 1788-89, this little
sloop being the first vessel, except a canoe, ever constructed in the
country north of California.
The lucrative trade done by the English and American traders, some of
whom, disposing of their furs in China, sailed under the Portuguese flag
and fitted out at Macao as the port most readily open to them,
determined the Spaniards to assert their rights to the original
discovery. This was done by Don Estevan Martinez "taking possession" of
the Sound, seizing the vessels there, and erecting a fort to maintain
the territory against all comers. A hot diplomatic warfare ensued, the
result of which was the Convention of Nootka, by which the Sound was
made over to Great Britain; and it was while engaged on this mission of
receiving the Sound that Vancouver, conjointly with Quadra, the Spanish
commander, discovered that the region it intersects is an island, which
for a time bore their joint names, but by general consent has that of
Vancouver only attached to it nowadays.
This was in the year 1795. Being now indisputably British territory,
Nootka and the coasts north and south of it became more and more
frequented by fur-traders, who found, in spite of the increasing
scarcity of pelts, and the higher prices which keener competition
brought about, an ample profit in buying tolerably cheap on the American
coast and selling very dear to the Chinese, whose love for the sea-otter
continues unabated. Many of these adventurers were Americans--hailing,
for the most part, from Boston. Hence to this day an American is
universally known among the North-Western Indians as a "Boston-man,"
while an Englishman is quite as generally termed a "Kintshautsh man"
(King George man), it being during the long reign of George III. that
they first became acquainted with our countrymen. Their barter was
carried on in knives, copper plates, copper kettles, muskets,
brass-hilted swords, soldiers' coats and buttons, pistols, tomahawks,
and blankets, which soon superseded the more costly "Kotsaks" of
sea-otter until then the principal garment, though the women wore, as
they do still at times (or did when I knew the shore), blankets woven
out of pine-tree bark. Rum also seemed to have been freely disposed of,
and no doubt many of the outrages which early began to mark the
intercourse of the brown men and their white visitors were not a little
due to this, and to the customs, ever more free than welcome, in which
it is the habit of the mariner to indulge when he and the savage
forgather. At all events, the natives and their foreign visitors seem to
have come very soon into collision. Indeed, it was seldom that a voyage
was completed without some outrage on one or both sides, followed by
reprisals from the party supposed to have been wronged. Thus part of the
crew of the _Imperial Eagle_, under the command of Captain Barclay,[23]
who discovered and named in his own honour the Sound so called, were
murdered at "Queenhythe,"[24] south of Juan de Fuca Strait, which
Barclay was amongst the first to explore, or rather to rediscover. At a
later date, namely, in 1805, the _Atahualpa_ of Rhode Island was
attacked in Millbank Sound, and her captain, mate, and six seamen were
killed. In 1811 the _Tonquin_, belonging to John Jacob Astor's romantic
fur-trading adventure, which is so well known from Washington Irving's
_Astoria_, was seized by the savages on this coast, and then blown up by
M'Kay, the chief trader, with the entire crew and their assailants. The
scene of the catastrophe has been stated to be Nootka, but other
commentators have fixed upon Barclay Sound, and as late as 1863 an
intelligent trader informed me that some ship's timbers, half buried in
the sand there, were attributed by the Indians to some disastrous event,
which he believed to have been the one in question.[25] I am, however,
now inclined to think that in crediting Nahwitti, at the northern end of
Vancouver Island, with this notable event in the early history of
North-West America,[26] Dr. George Dawson has arrived at the truth.
To this day--or until very recently--the Indians of the North-West
coast are not accounted very trustworthy, and at the period when I knew
them they were suspected of killing several traders and of looting more
than one small vessel, acts which earned for them frequent visits from
the gunboats at Esquimault, and in several instances the undesirable
distinction of having their villages shelled when they refused to
give up the offenders--generally a difficult operation, since it meant
pretty well the entire village.
[Illustration: INDIAN ENCAMPMENT NEAR THE LANDING-STAGE, ESQUIMAULT.]
[Sidenote: John Jewitt and the capture of the "Boston" in 1803.]
But the most famous of all the piracies of the Western Indians is that
of which an account is contained in John Jewitt's Narrative. The
ostensible author of this work was a Hull blacksmith, the armourer of
the _Boston_, an American ship which was seized while lying in Nootka
Sound, and the entire crew massacred, with the exception of Jewitt, who
was spared owing to his skill as a mechanic being valuable to the
Indians, and John Thompson, the sail-maker, who, though left for dead,
recovered, and was saved by the tact of Jewitt in representing him to be
his father. This happened in March 1803, and from that date until the
20th of July 1805, these two men were kept in slavery to the chief
Maquenna or Moqulla, when they were freed by the arrival of the brig
_Lydia_ of Boston, Samuel Hill master. During this servitude, Jewitt,
who seems to have been a man of some education, kept a journal and
acquired the Aht language, though the style in which his book is written
shows that in preparing it for the press he had obtained the assistance
of a more practised writer than himself. Still, his work is a valuable
contribution to ethnology. For, omitting the brief but excellent
accounts by Cook and Meares, it is the earliest, and, with the exception
of Mr. Sproat's lecture, the fullest description of these Indians. It is
indeed the only one treating specially on the Nootka people, with whom
alone he had any minute acquaintance. Some of the habits he pictures are
now obsolete, or greatly modified, but others--it may be said the
greater number--are exactly as he notes them to have been eighty-six
years ago. Besides the internal evidences of its authenticity, the truth
of the adventures described was vouched for at the time by Jewitt's
companion in slavery; and though there is no absolute proof of its
credibility, it may not be uninteresting to state that, thirty years
ago, I conversed with an American sea captain, who, as a boy, distinctly
remembered Jewitt working as a blacksmith in the town of Middleton in
Connecticut. When the book was first published, in the year 1815,
several editions appeared in America, and at least two reprints were
called for in England, so that the Narrative enjoyed considerable
popularity in the first two decades of the century. Writing in 1840,
Robert Green Low, Librarian to the Department of State at Washington,
characterises it as "a simple and unpretending narrative, which will, no
doubt, in after centuries, be read with interest by the enlightened
people of North-West America." Again, in 1845, the same industrious,
though not always impartial, historian remarks that "this little book
has been frequently reprinted, and, though seldom found in libraries, is
much read by boys and seamen in the United States." As copies are now
seldom met with, this is no longer the case, though on our cruise in
1863 it was one of the well-thumbed little library of the traders, one
of whom had inherited it from William Edy Banfield, whose name has
already been mentioned (p. 25). This trader, for many years a well-known
man on the out-of-the-way parts of the coast, furnished a curious link
between Jewitt's time and our own. For an old Indian told him that he
had, as a boy, served in the family of a chief of Nootka, called
Klan-nin-itth, at the time when Jewitt and Thompson were in slavery; and
that he often assisted Jewitt in making spears, arrows, and other
weapons required for hostile expeditions. He said, further, that the
white slave generally accompanied his owner on visits which he paid to
the Ayhuttisaht, Ahousaht, and Klahoquaht chiefs. This old man
especially remembered Jewitt, who was a good-humoured fellow, often
reciting and singing in his own language for the amusement of the
tribesmen. He was described as a tall, well-made youth, with a mirthful
countenance, whose dress latterly consisted of nothing but a mantle of
cedar bark. Mr. Sproat, who obtained his information from the same
quarter that I did, adds that there was a long story of Jewitt's
courting, and finally abducting, the daughter of Waughclagh, the
Ahousaht chief. This incident in his career is not recorded by our
author, who, however, was married to a daughter of Upquesta, an
Ayhuttisaht Indian.
Apart, however, from Jewitt not caring to enlighten the decent-living
puritans of Connecticut too minutely regarding his youthful escapades,
it is not unlikely that Mr. Banfield's informant mixed up some
half-forgotten legends regarding another white man, who, seventeen years
before Jewitt's captivity, had voluntarily remained among these Nootka
Indians. This was a scapegrace named John M'Kay,[27] an Irishman, who,
after being in the East India Company's Service in some minor medical
capacity, shipped in 1785 on board the _Captain Cook_ as surgeon's mate,
and was left behind in Nootka Sound, in the hope that he would so
ingratiate himself with the natives, as to induce them to refuse furs to
any other traders except those with whom he was connected. This man
seems to have been an ignorant, untruthful braggart, who contradicted
himself in many important particulars. But entire credence may be given
to his statement that in a short time he sank into barbarism, becoming
as filthy as the dirtiest of his savage companions. For when Captain
Hanna saw him in August 1786, the natives had stripped him of his
clothes, and obliged him to adopt their dress and habits. He even
refused to leave, declaring that he had begun to relish dried fish and
whale oil--though, owing to a famine in the Sound, he got little of
either--and was well satisfied to stay for another year. After making
various excursions in the country about Nootka Sound, during which he
came to the conclusion that it was not a part of the American continent,
but a chain of detached islands, he gladly deserted his Indian wife, and
left with Captain Berkeley in 1787. To "preach, fight, and mend a
musket" seems to have been too much for this medical pluralist. His
further history I am unable to trace, though, for the sake of historical
roundness, it would have been interesting to believe that he was the
same M'Kay who twenty-four years later ended his career so terribly by
blowing up the _Tonquin_, with whose son I was well acquainted.
In all of these transactions the head chief of Nootka, or at least of
the Mooachahts, figures prominently. This was Maquenna or Moqulla
(Jewitt's Maquina), who, with his relative Wikananish, ruled over most
of the tribes from here to Nettinaht Inlet. He was a shifty savage,
endowed with no small mental ability, and, though at times capable of
acts which were almost generous, untrustworthy like most of his race,
and when offended ready for any act of vindictiveness. Wikananish was on
a visit to Maquenna when the _Discovery_ and _Resolution_ entered the
Sound, and among the relics which Maquenna kept for many years were a
brass mortar left by Cook, which in Meares's day was borne before the
chief as a portion of his regalia, and three "pieces of a brassy metal
formed like cricket bats," on which were the remains of the name and
arms of Sir Joseph Banks, and the date 1775--Banks, it may be
remembered, being the scientific companion of Cook. In every subsequent
voyage Maquenna figures, and not a few of the outrages committed on that
coast were due either to him or to his instigation. Some, like his
attempt to seize Hanna's vessel in 1785, are known from extraneous
sources, and others were boasted of by him to Jewitt. The last of his
proceedings of which history has left any record, is the murder of the
crew of the _Boston_ and the enslavement of Thompson and Jewitt, and in
the narrative of the latter we are afforded a final glimpse of this
notorious "King."[28]
[Sidenote: Changes since Jewitt's time.]
When I visited Nootka Sound in 1863, fifty-eight years had passed since
the captivity of the author of this book. In the interval many things
had happened. But though the Indians had altered in some respects, they
were perhaps less changed than almost any other savages in America since
the whites came in contact with them. Eighty-five years had passed since
Cook had careened his ships in Resolution Cove, and seventy since
Vancouver entered the Sound on his almost more notable voyage. Yet the
bricks from the blacksmith's forge, fresh and vitrified as if they had
been in contact with the fire only yesterday, were at times dug up from
among the rank herbage. The village in Friendly Cove--a spot which not a
few mariners found to be very unfriendly--differed in no way from the
picture in Cook's _Voyage_; and though some curio-hunting captain had no
doubt long ago carried off the mortar and emblazoned brasses, the
natives still spoke traditionally of Cook and Vancouver, and were ready
to point out the spots where in 1788 Meares built the _North-West
America_ and the white men had cultivated. Memories of Martinez and
Quadra existed in the shape of many legends, of Indians with Iberian
features, and of several old people who by tradition (though some of
them were old enough to have remembered these navigators), could still
repeat the Spanish numerals. And the head chief of the Mooachahts in
Friendly Cove--vastly smaller though his tribe was, and much abridged
his power--was a grandson of Maquenna, called by the same name, and had
many of his worst characteristics. This fact I am likely to remember.
For he had been accused of having murdered, in the previous January,
Captain Stev of the _Trader_, and since that time no whites had ventured
near him. He, however, assured us that the report was simply a scandal
raised by the neighbouring tribes, who had long hated him and his
people, and would like to see them punished by the arrival of a gunboat,
and that in reality the vessel was wrecked, and the white men were
drowned. At the same time, among the voices heard that night at the
council held in Maquenna's great lodge, supported by the huge beams
described by Jewitt, were some in favour of killing his latest visitors,
on the principle that dead men tell no tales. But that the Noes had it,
the present narrative is the best proof.
So far as their habits were concerned, they were in a condition as
primitive as at almost any period since the whites had visited them.
Many of the old people were covered only with a mantle of woven pine
bark, and beyond a shirt, in most cases made out of a flour sack, a
blanket was the sole garment of the majority of the tribesmen. At times
when they wanted to receive any goods, they simply pulled off the
blanket, wrapped up the articles in it, and went ashore stark naked,
with the exception of a piece of skin round the loins. The women wore
for the most part no other dress except the blanket and a curious apron
made of a fringe of bark strings. All of them painted hideously, the
women adding a streak of vermilion down the middle division of the hair,
and on high occasions the glittering mica sand, spoken of by Jewitt, was
called into requisition. Their customs--and I had plenty of
opportunities to study them in the course of the years which
followed--were in no way different from what they were in Cook's time.
No missionary seemed ever to have visited them, and their religious
observances were accordingly still the most unadulterated of paganism.
Jewitt's narrative is, however, as might have been expected, very vague
on such matters; and, curiously enough, he makes no mention of their
characteristic trait of compressing the foreheads of the children, the
tribes in Koskeemo Sound squeezing it, while the bones are still
cartilaginous, in a conical shape--though the brain is not thereby
permanently injured: it is simply displaced.
Since that day, the tribesmen of the west coast of Vancouver Island have
grown fewer and fewer. Some of the smaller septs have indeed become
extinct, and others must be fast on the wane. They have, however, eaten
of the tree of knowledge, and the gunboats have now little occasion to
visit them for punitive purposes. Missionaries have even attempted to
teach them better manners. The Alberni saw-mills have long been
deserted, though other settlers have taken possession of the ground, and
several have squatted in Koskeemo Sound, in the hope that the coal-seams
there might induce the Pacific steamers to make that remote region their
headquarters. Finally, an effort is being made to induce fishermen from
the West of Scotland to settle on that coast. There is plenty of work
for them, and the Indians nowadays are very little to be feared. Indeed,
so far from the successors of Moqulla and Wikananish menacing Donald and
Sandy, they will be ready to help them for a consideration; though a
great deal of tact and forbearance will be necessary before people so
conservative as the hot-tempered Celts work smoothly with a race quite
as fiery and quite as wedded to old ways, as the Ahts among whom John
Jewitt passed the early years of this century.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Rubus Nutkanus._
[2] _Rubus spectabilis._
[3] _Gaultheria Shallon._
[4] _Vaccinium ovatum._
[5] _Pyrus rivularis._
[6] _Ribes sanguineum_, now a common shrub in our ornamental grounds.
[7] _Echinopanax horridum._
[8] _Thuja gigantea_, a tree which to the Indian is what the bamboo is
to the Chinese.
[9] _Acer macrophyllum._
[10] _Cornus Nuttallii._
[11] _Arbutus Menziesii._
[12] _Selasphorus rufus._ It is one of one hundred and fifty-three birds
which I catalogued from Vancouver Island (_Ibis_, Nov. 1868).
[13] _Scenes and Studies of Savage Life_ (1868), by the Hon. G. M.
Sproat, late Commissioner of Indian Affairs for British Columbia.
[14] "Pachena" of the Indians.
[15] Or, as they call themselves in their dialect of the Aht,
"Dittinahts." Nettinaht is a white man's corruption.
[16] A few years earlier they were estimated at a thousand.
[17] "Klootis" of the Indians.
[18] Known to them as "Etlo."
[19] They were not permitted this privilege until the whites came to
Alberni in August 1860.
[20] Though the orthography of these names is often incorrect, and not
even phonetically accurate, I have, in order to avoid the mischief of a
confusion of nomenclature, kept to that of the Admiralty Chart.
[21] This was the Banfield who acted as Indian agent in Barclay Sound.
He was drowned by Kleetsak, a slave of Kleesheens, capsizing the canoe
in which he was sailing, in revenge for a slight passed upon the chief.
I went ashore at the Ohyaht village in the same canoe, and was asked
whether I was not afraid, "for Banipe was killed in it." There was also
a story that the capsize was an accident.
[22] It may be proper to state in this place that the interior details
of that chart are, with very few exceptions, from my explorations. But
the map on which they were laid down by me has been so often copied by
societies, governments, and private individuals without permission (and
without acknowledgment), that the author of it has long ceased to claim
a property so generally pillaged. The original, however, appeared, with
a memoir on the interior--"Das Innere der Vancouver Insel"--which has
not yet been translated, in Petermann's _Geographische Mittheilungen_,
1869.
[23] Or Berkeley--for the name is spelt both ways.
[24] Destruction Island, in lat. 47° 35'. This was almost the same spot
as that in which the Spaniards of Bodega's crew were massacred in 1775,
and for this reason they named it Isla de Dolores--the "Island of
Sorrows." It is in what is now the State of Washington, U.S.A.
[25] Green Low will even blame Wikananish, who figures in Jewitt's
narrative, as the instigator of the outrage.
[26] The Nahwitti Indians. Compare the Tl[=a]-tl[=i]-s[=i]--Kwela and
Nekum-ke-l[=i]sla septs of the Kwakiool people. They now inhabit a
village named Meloopa, on the south-east side of Hope Island. But their
original hamlet was situated on a small rocky peninsula on the east side
of Cape Commerell, which forms the north point of Vancouver Island. Here
remains of old houses are still to be seen, at a place known to the
Indians as Nahwitti. It was close to this place that the _Tonquin_ was
blown up.--_Science_, vol. ix. p. 341.
[27] "Maccay" (Meares); "M'Key" (Dixon).
[28] There is a portrait of him, apparently authentic, in Meares's
_Voyages_, vol. ii. (1791). That in the original edition of Jewitt's
Narrative, like the plate of the capture of the _Boston_, appears to
have been drawn from description, though there is a certain resemblance
in it to Meares's sketch made fourteen or fifteen years earlier. But the
scenery, the canoes, the people, and, above all, the palm trees in
Nootka Sound, are purely imaginary.
JOHN JEWITT'S NARRATIVE
CHAPTER I
BIRTH, PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE OF THE AUTHOR
I was born in Boston, a considerable borough town in Lincolnshire, in
Great Britain, on the 21st of May, 1783. My father, Edward Jewitt, was
by trade a blacksmith, and esteemed among the first in his line of
business in that place. At the age of three years I had the misfortune
to lose my mother, a most excellent woman, who died in childbed, leaving
an infant daughter, who, with myself, and an elder brother by a former
marriage of my father, constituted the whole of our family. My father,
who considered a good education as the greatest blessing he could bestow
on his children, was very particular in paying every attention to us in
that respect, always exhorting us to behave well, and endeavouring to
impress on our minds the principles of virtue and morality, and no
expense in his power was spared to have us instructed in whatever might
render us useful and respectable in society. My brother, who was four
years older than myself and of a more hardy constitution, he destined
for his own trade, but to me he had resolved to give an education
superior to that which is to be obtained in a common school, it being
his intention that I should adopt one of the learned professions.
Accordingly, at the age of twelve he took me from the school in which I
had been taught the first rudiments of learning, and placed me under the
care of Mr. Moses, a celebrated teacher of an academy at Donnington,
about eleven miles from Boston, in order to be instructed in the Latin
language, and in some of the higher branches of the mathematics. I there
made considerable proficiency in writing, reading, and arithmetic, and
obtained a pretty good knowledge of navigation and of surveying; but my
progress in Latin was slow, not only owing to the little inclination I
felt for learning that language, but to a natural impediment in my
speech, which rendered it extremely difficult for me to pronounce it, so
that in a short time, with my father's consent, I wholly relinquished
the study.
The period of my stay at this place was the most happy of my life. My
preceptor, Mr. Moses, was not only a learned, but a virtuous,
benevolent, and amiable man, universally beloved by his pupils, who took
delight in his instruction, and to whom he allowed every proper
amusement that consisted with attention to their studies.
One of the principal pleasures I enjoyed was in attending the fair,
which is regularly held twice a year at Donnington, in the spring and in
the fall,[29] the second day being wholly devoted to selling horses, a
prodigious number of which are brought thither for that purpose. As the
scholars on these occasions were always indulged with a holiday, I
cannot express with what eagerness of youthful expectation I used to
anticipate these fairs, nor what delight I felt at the various shows,
exhibitions of wild beasts, and other entertainments that they
presented; I was frequently visited by my father, who always discovered
much joy on seeing me, praised me for my acquirements, and usually left
me a small sum for my pocket expenses.
Among the scholars at this academy, there was one named Charles Rice,
with whom I formed a particular intimacy, which continued during the
whole of my stay. He was my class and room mate, and as the town he came
from, Ashby, was more than sixty miles off, instead of returning home,
he used frequently during the vacation to go with me to Boston, where he
always met with a cordial welcome from my father, who received me on
these occasions with the greatest affection, apparently taking much
pride in me. My friend in return used to take me with him to an uncle of
his in Donnington, a very wealthy man, who, having no children of his
own, was very fond of his nephew, and on his account I was always a
welcome visitor at the house. I had a good voice, and an ear for music,
to which I was always passionately attached, though my father
endeavoured to discourage this propensity, considering it (as is too
frequently the case) but an introduction to a life of idleness and
dissipation; and, having been remarked for my singing at church, which
was regularly attended on Sundays and festival days by the scholars, Mr.
Morthrop, my friend Rice's uncle, used frequently to request me to sing;
he was always pleased with my exhibitions of this kind, and it was no
doubt one of the means that secured me so gracious a reception at his
house. A number of other gentlemen in the place would sometimes send for
me to sing at their houses, and as I was not a little vain of my vocal
powers, I was much gratified on receiving these invitations, and
accepted them with the greatest pleasure.
Thus passed away the two happiest years of my life, when my father,
thinking that I had received a sufficient education for the profession
he intended me for, took me from school at Donnington in order to
apprentice me to Doctor Mason, a surgeon of eminence at Reasby, in the
neighbourhood of the celebrated Sir Joseph Banks.[30] With regret did I
part from my school acquaintance, particularly my friend Rice, and
returned home with my father, on a short visit to my family, preparatory
to my intended apprenticeship. The disinclination I ever had felt for
the profession my father wished me to pursue, was still further
increased on my return. When a child I was always fond of being in the
shop, among the workmen, endeavouring to imitate what I saw them do;
this disposition so far increased after my leaving the academy, that I
could not bear to hear the least mention made of my being apprenticed to
a surgeon, and I used so many entreaties with my father to persuade him
to give up this plan and learn me his own trade, that he at last
consented.
More fortunate would it probably have been for me, had I gratified the
wishes of this affectionate parent, in adopting the profession he had
chosen for me, than thus to have induced him to sacrifice them to mine.
However it might have been, I was at length introduced into the shop,
and my natural turn of mind corresponding with the employment, I became
in a short time uncommonly expert at the work to which I was set. I now
felt myself well contented, pleased with my occupation, and treated with
much affection by my father, and kindness by my step-mother, my father
having once more entered the state of matrimony, with a widow much
younger than himself, who had been brought up in a superior manner, and
was an amiable and sensible woman.
About a year after I had commenced this apprenticeship, my father,
finding that he could carry on his business to more advantage in Hull,
removed thither with his family. An event of no little importance to me,
as it in a great measure influenced my future destiny. Hull being one of
the best ports in England, and a place of great trade, my father had
there full employment for his numerous workmen, particularly in vessel
work. This naturally leading me to an acquaintance with the sailors on
board some of the ships: the many remarkable stories they told me of
their voyages and adventures, and of the manners and customs of the
nations they had seen, excited a strong wish in me to visit foreign
countries, which was increased by my reading the voyages of Captain
Cook, and some other celebrated navigators.
Thus passed the four years that I lived at Hull, where my father was
esteemed by all who knew him, as a worthy, industrious, and thriving
man. At this period a circumstance occurred which afforded me the
opportunity I had for some time wished, of gratifying my inclination of
going abroad.
* * * * *
Among our principal customers at Hull were the Americans who frequented
that port, and from whose conversation my father as well as myself
formed the most favourable opinion of that country, as affording an
excellent field for the exertions of industry, and a flattering prospect
for the establishment of a young man in life. In the summer of the year
1802, during the peace between England and France, the ship _Boston_,
belonging to Boston, in Massachusetts, and commanded by Captain John
Salter, arrived at Hull, whither she came to take on board a cargo of
such goods as were wanted for the trade with the Indians, on the
North-West coast of America, from whence, after having taken in a lading
of furs and skins, she was to proceed to China, and from thence home to
America. The ship having occasion for many repairs and alterations,
necessary for so long a voyage, the captain applied to my father to do
the smith's work, which was very considerable. That gentleman, who was
of a social turn, used often to call at my father's house, where he
passed many of his evenings, with his chief and second mates, Mr. B.
Delouisa and Mr. William Ingraham,[31] the latter a fine young man of
about twenty, of a most amiable temper, and of such affable manners, as
gained him the love and attachment of the whole crew. These gentlemen
used occasionally to take me with them to the theatre, an amusement
which I was very fond of, and which my father rather encouraged than
objected to, as he thought it a good means of preventing young men, who
are naturally inclined to seek for something to amuse them, from
frequenting taverns, ale-houses, and places of bad resort, equally
destructive of the health and morals, while the stage frequently
furnishes excellent lessons of morality and good conduct.
In the evenings that he passed at my father's, Captain Salter, who had
for a great number of years been at sea, and seen almost all parts of
the world, used sometimes to speak of his voyages, and, observing me
listen with much attention to his relations, he one day, when I had
brought him some work, said to me in rather a jocose manner, "John, how
should you like to go with me?" I answered, that it would give me great
pleasure, that I had for a long time wished to visit foreign countries,
particularly America, which I had been told so many fine stories of, and
that if my father would give his consent, and he was willing to take me
with him, I would go.
"I shall be very glad to do it," said he, "if your father can be
prevailed on to let you go; and as I want an expert smith for an
armourer, the one I have shipped for that purpose not being sufficiently
master of his trade, I have no doubt that you will answer my turn well,
as I perceive you are both active and ingenious, and on my return to
America I shall probably be able to do something much better for you in
Boston. I will take the first opportunity of speaking to your father
about it, and try to persuade him to consent." He accordingly, the next
evening that he called at our house, introduced the subject: my father
at first would not listen to the proposal. That best of parents, though
anxious for my advantageous establishment in life, could not bear to
think of parting with me, but on Captain Salter's telling him of what
benefit it would be to me to go the voyage with him, and that it was a
pity to keep a promising and ingenious young fellow like myself confined
to a small shop in England, when if I had tolerable success I might do
so much better in America, where wages were much higher and living
cheaper, he at length gave up his objections, and consented that I
should ship on board the _Boston_ as an armourer, at the rate of thirty
dollars per month, with an agreement that the amount due to me, together
with a certain sum of money, which my father gave Captain Salter for
that purpose, should be laid out by him on the North-West coast in the
purchase of furs for my account, to be disposed of in China for such
goods as would yield a profit on the return of the ship; my father being
solicitous to give me every advantage in his power of well establishing
myself in my trade in Boston, or some other maritime town of America.
Such were the flattering expectations which this good man indulged
respecting me. Alas! the fatal disaster that befell us, not only blasted
all these hopes, but involved me in extreme distress and wretchedness
for a long period after.
The ship, having undergone a thorough repair and been well coppered,
proceeded to take on board her cargo, which consisted of English cloths,
Dutch blankets, looking-glasses, beads, knives, razors, etc., which
were received from Holland, some sugar and molasses, about twenty
hogsheads of rum, including stores for the ship, a great quantity of
ammunition, cutlasses, pistols, and three thousand muskets and
fowling-pieces. The ship being loaded and ready for sea, as I was
preparing for my departure, my father came to me, and, taking me aside,
said to me with much emotion, "John, I am now going to part with you,
and Heaven only knows if we shall ever again meet. But in whatever part
of the world you are, always bear it in mind, that on your own conduct
will depend your success in life. Be honest, industrious, frugal, and
temperate, and you will not fail, in whatsoever country it may be your
lot to be placed, to gain yourself friends. Let the Bible be your guide,
and your reliance in any fortune that may befall you, that Almighty
Being, who knows how to bring forth good from evil, and who never
deserts those who put their trust in Him." He repeated his exhortations
to me to lead an honest and Christian life, and to recollect that I had
a father, a mother, a brother, and sister, who could not but feel a
strong interest in my welfare, enjoining me to write him by the first
opportunity that should offer to England, from whatever part of the
world I might be in, more particularly on my arrival in Boston. This I
promised to do, but long unhappily was it before I was able to fulfil
this promise. I then took an affectionate leave of my worthy parent,
whose feelings would hardly permit him to speak, and, bidding an
affectionate farewell to my brother, sister, and step-mother, who
expressed the greatest solicitude for my future fortune, went on board
the ship, which proceeded to the Downs, to be ready for the first
favourable wind. I found myself well accommodated on board as regarded
my work, an iron forge having been erected on deck; this my father had
made for the ship on a new plan, for which he afterwards obtained a
patent; while a corner of the steerage was appropriated to my
vice-bench, so that in bad weather I could work below.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] These fairs are still held, though the dates are now May 26th,
September 4th, and October 27th.
[30] The companion of Cook, and for many years President of the Royal
Society.
[31] This William Ingraham must not be confounded with Joseph Ingraham,
who also visited Nootka Sound, and played a considerable part in the
exploration of the North-West American coast.