was sighted. Thereafter the land and naval forces co-operated--so
far, at least, as the somewhat divergent views and orders of their
respective commanders permitted. A day or two was spent off one of
the Clallum villages, near New Dungeness, in apparently fruitless
negotiations for the return of the Indian woman, whose father was a
man of great influence in his own tribe. Not until a chief and eight
others had been slain by shots from the vessel's guns and a bombardment
of a village, where some articles of Mr. McKenzie's were found, had
taken place, was the woman brought on board. A second village, from
which the murderers of McKenzie's party were said to have set out,
was burned. The force then parted from the _Cadboro'_ and returned to
Fort Vancouver. The Indians stated that seven people had been killed
at the lodge fired upon on the 1st, and that the friends of these had
at once avenged their deaths, by putting to death two of the principal
murderers of McKenzie. In all, they reported 25 people killed in these
various affrays, to avenge the original crime, not to speak of a very
considerable quantity of Indian property destroyed.
It would be unjust to charge Dr. McLaughlin with the responsibility
for the entire proceedings of this merciless expedition. What his
instructions to _Mr. McLeod_ were that gentleman kept pretty well to
himself. Unfortunately the latter showed vacillation and timidity, at
the moments when firmness and promptness were required, disputed and
quarrelled with Captain Simpson on board his own vessel, assumed too
much authority at one time, too little at another, with the result
that indiscriminate slaughter and destruction of property seem to have
taken the place of just and merited punishment. It is to be presumed,
however, that the deterrent effect was produced, at any rate as to the
Clallums.
The population, native and foreign, of the Columbia district, at this
period, was of a wonderfully heterogeneous character. The number of
small tribes into which the native population of the Pacific Coast and
islands was divided is well known to have been large. Yet Indians from
the plains and Iroquois from the far East had come in as servants of
the company, while Sandwich Islanders--or Owhyhees (Hawaiians) as they
were termed--were among almost all the company's crews and forces.
French half-breeds and others of varying tints and gay costumes lent
picturesqueness to the Hudson's Bay posts and campfires. Sir George
Simpson gives a striking instance of the variety in colour and language
afforded by a single boatload. "Our batteau carried as curious a
muster of races and languages as perhaps had ever been congregated
within the same compass in any part of the world. Our crew of ten men
contained Iroquois, who spoke their own tongue; a Cree half-breed of
French origin, who appeared to have borrowed his dialect from both his
parents; a North Briton, who understood only the Gaelic of his native
hills; Canadians who, of course, knew French; and Sandwich Islanders,
who jabbered a medley of Chinook and their own vernacular jargon. Add
to all this that the passengers were natives of England, Scotland,
Russia, Canada and the Hudson's Bay Company's territories; and you have
the prettiest congregation of nations, the nicest confusion of tongues,
that has ever taken place since the days of the tower of Babel. At
the native camp near which we halted for the night, we enriched our
clans with one variety more, by hiring a canoe and its complement of
Chinooks, to accompany us."
Sir George Simpson was at this time on his famous overland journey
round the world, having the previous day, Sept. 1st, 1841, left Fort
Vancouver, where, by the way, his party found two vessels of the United
States exploring squadron under command of Lieutenant (afterward)
Commodore Wilkes, which contributed much to the enjoyment of their
week's stay there. The circumnavigators had parted on the beach at
Fort Vancouver with Lieutenant Wilkes and party and had added to their
number another Hudson's Bay officer, Mr. Douglas (afterwards Sir James
Douglas, governor of Vancouver Island) and had visited the company's
extensive dairy on the delta or island of Multnomah or Wapatoo.
Thence down the Columbia and up the Cowlitz, across to Fort Nisqually
and Puget's Sound, visiting the Cowlitz farm and the sheep ranch--a
four days' journey from Fort Vancouver brought them to the company's
steamer, the _Beaver_, on which they set out for the posts of the
Pacific coast and Sitka--that coast trip now familiar to thousands of
gold-seekers.
At the Stikine (or Stickeen) River--a place much in the world's eye
during the past year or two--Sir George found young John McLaughlin, a
son of the big doctor, in charge of the company's post, with a force
of twenty-two men. The governor next proceeded to Sitka, and, after a
somewhat protracted side trip to California and the Sandwich Islands,
returned in the Spring of '42 to Stikine on board the company's ship,
the _Cowlitz_, in tow of a Russian steamer loaned him by Governor
Etholine of Sitka--to find that young McLaughlin had just been murdered
by his own men, who were in a state of mingled mutiny and intoxication
within the fort, while about 2000 Indians were gathered without, in
readiness to take advantage of the insurrection within! The opportune
arrival of Sir George, with two ships' crews at his disposal, enabled
him to speedily quell the disturbance and disperse the Indians, after
preparing their minds for a measure which the company was anxious here
as elsewhere to enforce--the discontinuance of the liquor traffic. It
may here be remarked that the one good result of this most unhappy
tragedy at the Stikine was the agreement arrived at soon after with the
Russian company--whose bad example had been held to necessitate the
British company's fighting "firewater" with "firewater" at competitive
trading posts--under which agreement both companies inaugurated a
prohibitory liquor law on this coast.
Doubts as to his powers and the best policy to pursue led Sir George to
take the man who fired the fatal shot with him to Sitka, whither he was
returning _en route_ to Siberia and Europe. For a less comprehensible
reason he sent another man--a supposed participant in the affair--to
Fort Vancouver, accompanied by a letter to Dr. McLaughlin, apprising
him of the tragedy and casting some blame upon the murdered son for the
insurrection. The letter the big doctor had, of course, no alternate
but to receive, but the man he would not see nor so much as suffer to
set foot on shore at Fort Vancouver--but had him kept a prisoner on
board the _Cadboro_. On a trip of that vessel to Vancouver Island, this
man saw Mr. Douglas and at once made a confession to him, implicating
all the people at Stikine in a plot to murder John the younger. He even
stated that an agreement to that effect had been drawn up by the man
who was acting as a temporary assistant or clerk to the murdered man.
The confession absolved the young trader from the charge of drunkenness
and contradicted the depositions taken by Sir George in every material
point. Little wonder is it that the doctor, smarting under the blow
received, was not satisfied with the apparently easy methods pursued
by Sir George, with whom he had moreover recently exchanged some angry
words in California on matters of business; nor that he sent an officer
of the company to Mr. Manson, with a complete new complement of men, to
the Stikine to re-open the investigation--with no known retributive
result, though the evidence taken tends to justify the doctor's summing
up--his vigorous penmanship adding strength to his words--"The short
and the long of the affair is, these fellows wanted to impose on my
son, to which he would not submit"--true chip of the old block it
seemed!--"They, finding they could not make him bend, conspired and
murdered him."
It is worthy of note that at the last the young man seems to have
relied upon his Owhyhees (Hawaiians) to make a stand against the whites.
The doctor's subordinate officers at these various and remote posts
eagerly scanned all news of the affair which reached them and
sympathized with the afflicted father--but they could scarcely grasp
the situation in all its details of doubt and difficulty as to criminal
procedure, territorial jurisdiction, etc. "I fear we have got ourselves
into a hobble and that it will turn out we are more _au fait_ in our
humble occupation as Indian traders than as the dispensary of Her
Majesty's criminal law," wrote one. But the big doctor's feelings were
still aroused--he attributed, whether rightly or wrongly, his son's
death to Sir George indirectly, as a result of the governor's having
removed a trusted man, Mr. Finlayson, from the post of assistant to the
young trader, substituting a labourer in his place--and he carried the
matter before the heads of the company in England--"wrote a thundering
epistle to their honours at home, concerning Sir George, ripping up old
grievances," as another old trader, John Tod (1 Sept. 1842) put it. Yet
Sir George remained at the head of the company, while the old doctor
continued to mourn the unavenged death of the son he evidently loved
much.
The witnesses who were examined by Mr. Manson at Stikine testified that
the document referred to by their former comrade in his confession,
as an agreement to murder the trader, was simply a formal complaint
against him, which they intended presenting to Sir George Simpson, as
head of the company, on his expected arrival--but that it was never
presented, but destroyed, because it was too dirty to be presented to
the governor. Not only was Sir George a man whose examples as to soiled
documents had to be considered, but he seems to have had a prejudice in
favour of clean linen as well--as the following less tragic incident
would seem to indicate: Sir George at one time wrote Dr. McLaughlin to
remove the officer in charge of Fort George (Astoria), with a seven
years' pension. The doctor declared the governor "must do his dirty
work himself," and took no decisive steps to interfere with the officer
in question, who was described as youthful in appearance, though fat
and indolent, but with "children enough far a colony." The officer
nominated to succeed him enquired of the condemned, what he had done
to offend the governor. He stated that Sir George had sent two cotton
shirts ashore to be washed and while they were being taken, under the
fat officer's charge, from the fort to the ship, one of them fell
overboard, but he declared his intention of sending another to London
and hoped his offense would be forgiven. His propitiatory offering, or
Sir George's better feelings, it is presumed, prevented his becoming
the victim of another "tale of a shirt," by an ignominious expulsion
from office, for such a cause.
On December 8th, 1846, there arrived at Fort Vancouver a person whose
errand was of a novel character to dwellers upon the Columbia--Mr.
Paul Kane, to whom reference has already been made, was a native of
Toronto, who had adopted painting as the profession of his choice
and, after spending some four years in Europe qualifying himself in
his art, conceived the idea of making an overland trip across the
continent, making sketches, as he proceeded, of the representative
Indians of the various tribes and of the scenery of the country
through which he passed, then an almost unbroken wilderness. He spent
nearly four years in these wanderings, to and from the Pacific,
sketching portraits of chiefs, medicine men, warriors, their wives and
daughters--also fishing, hunting and other scenes, illustrative of the
customs, occupations and amusements of the red men and the physical
features of the country. From these sketches he subsequently executed
many paintings, some of which are on the walls of the embryo Canadian
national gallery at Ottawa, but a much more extensive and elaborate
series in oils--numbering about 100 canvasses--is among the valued
possessions of a Toronto gentleman, the Hon. George W. Allen, Canadian
senator.[214] The artist's Journal, published in London in 1859,
with specimens of his work--now unfortunately out of print--gave an
interesting narrative of his travels and adventures, with much of the
history and folklore of the various people of the Northwestern regions.
Kane reached the height of land on November 12th. His voyage down
the Columbia to Fort Vancouver he accomplished in little more than a
fortnight--including stoppages at Forts Colville and Walla Walla _en
route_--whereas it took him four months to cover the same distance on
his return the following year.
It may well be imagined that the advent of such a character excited
no little interest. At Fort Vancouver two chief factors, Messieurs
Douglas and Ogden, now reigned, in place of Dr. McLaughlin, with eight
or ten clerks and 200 voyageurs. Her Majesty's warship _Modeste_, with
her complement of officers, lay in the broad river, opposite the fort.
Outside the stockade was the village with its motley population of
English, French, Iroquois, Sandwich Islanders, Crees and Chinooks,
and its confusion of tongues. The artist enjoyed the hospitality of
the officers at the fort for about a month and on 10 January, 1847,
in company with Mr. MacKenzie, a chief trader, proceeded up the
Willamette to Oregon City, passing "two cities that are to be," one of
which contained but two houses and the other not much more advanced.
Oregon City, located by Dr. McLaughlin, who owned the chief mills,
contained then about ninety-four houses and two or three hundred
inhabitants, a Methodist and a Roman Catholic church, two grist mills
and as many hotels. A lawyer and "doctors ad libitum" were already
on the ground. That it would be rivalled, if not eclipsed, by a city
to be built where Portland now is, was even then predicted, owing to
intervening impediments to navigation. A few weeks at Oregon City and
a few days at the Roman Catholic missions further up the Willamette,
and Kane returned to spend the balance of the winter pleasantly with
the Hudson's Bay and naval officers at Fort Vancouver in riding,
and in fishing and shooting the waterfowl and seal with which the
neighbourhood abounded. In the Spring he made a trip to Vancouver
Island and adjacent coasts and islands, returning to Fort Vancouver in
June, and on July 1st began his homeward journey.
The artist was regarded as a great "medicine man" by the natives,
who sometimes gathered in great numbers to watch him manipulate his
supposed implements of magic--insomuch that at one village on the coast
of De Fuca Straits, so great was the crowd gathered in the head chief's
lodge that it was filled, and those outside climbed to the roof and,
tearing the mats from their supports, to which they slung one upon
another, peered down at him from above. He experienced much difficulty
everywhere, however, in prevailing upon the natives to sit for their
portraits, owing to their superstitious fear that the possessor of
their likenesses would have some mysterious power or evil influence
over them. In addition to entreaties and bribes, he had sometimes to
resort to various strategies and arguments to attain his end--as, for
instance, that the pictures were to be shown to their "great mother,"
the queen, who would no doubt be much disappointed on missing his
proposed subject's portrait. On one occasion he allayed the fears
of a repentant sitter, who continued to pursue him only by hastily
preparing a duplicate sketch of him and destroying the duplicate in
his presence--on another occasion he was in great peril owing to the
unexpected death of one of his subjects--a woman--whose demise was
attributed to his malign influence.
Kane, notwithstanding, had many interesting subjects. Among others he
met at Fort Victoria the great Yellow-cum, head chief of the Macaws
at Cape Flattery and the wealthiest man of his tribe in slaves and
iaquas, the shell money then in circulation there. His father was
the pilot of the _Tonquin_, who escaped destruction by the terrible
explosion, which blew in pieces Mr. Astor's ship, with the man who
fired the magazine and all the savage horde on her deck. On his
way home he paid a four days' visit to Dr. Whitman, the well known
missionary, and his family at their home on the banks of the Walla
Walla. The doctor took him to see an Indian named To-ma-kus that he
might take his likeness--his appearance being the most savage, Kane
says, he ever beheld. The Indian, a prey to superstitious fears,
endeavoured to burn the sketch made of him by Kane, who snatched
it from him and fled, the man appearing to be greatly enraged.
The circumstance is referred to, as it must have been peculiarly
distressing to the artist to hear when at Colville of the massacre
of Doctor and Mrs. Whitman and a dozen others and that the ferocious
To-ma-kus was the man who had tomahawked his late host, while another
Indian, whom he had sketched, was present when the deed was done. Kane
had, however, done all he could to warn Dr. Whitman of his danger and
endeavoured to persuade him to seek safety at Fort Walla Walla--having,
indeed, taken a three hours' ride back from the fort, where he had
heard and seen enough to arouse his fears for the missionary, to the
missionary--but in vain. The devoted man said he had lived so long
among these Indians that he had no apprehension of their injuring
him--yet they attributed, it seems, to him various ills which
Providence and their enemies visited upon them, with the lamentable
result just mentioned. Rev. H. Spalding and family were made prisoners
by another tribe, from whom, however, Mr. Ogden, chief factor of the
Hudson's Bay Company, who had at once repaired to the scene on hearing
of the trouble, purchased their release.
The light of the gospel had first been brought to the natives of the
Columbia some 14 years before this sad occurrence by a young Indian
lad, christened Spaganbarry, by the English missionary at Red River,
where he with some other sons of chiefs, had been sent in 1825, through
the instrumentality of Governor Simpson. He returned in 1832 and
subsequently spent some time in instructing his people, but afterwards
himself lapsed into a profligate and savage life, according to the
testimony of Governor Simpson himself. The Methodist Episcopal mission
on the Willamette was begun by the Lees in 1834. In 1836 Dr. Whitman
and Rev. H. Spalding with their wives--said to have been the first
white women to cross the mountains--had begun their work among the
Indians, as did also two Roman Catholic missionaries in 1838--while
a chaplain, Rev. Mr. Beaver, and his wife, had come from England to
supply the spiritual wants of Fort Vancouver. More than a decade
of Christian teaching, it will be seen, had failed to eradicate
superstition and savagery from the native character; yet the same
spirit which has imbued those who have suffered similarly in Africa and
China, in more recent years, has inspired the soldiers of the Cross on
the Columbia and its tributaries to persist in their self-sacrificing
labours, with what success the present residents of Oregon and
Washington can best attest.
The difference in appearance and customs, as well as language, between
the Indians of the plains east of the mountains and those of the coast
was great. Washington Irving attributed--no doubt correctly--the bent
legs, corpulent bodies and generally squat appearance of the latter, as
compared with the tall, straight figures of many of the natives of the
East, to their life as fishermen and mariners, constantly squatting in
canoes, while the aborigines of the plains scoured the prairies in the
chase. Their disposal of their dead also reflected the character of the
coast Indian's life--their cemeteries being collections of elaborately
decorated canoes, containing the corpses, and finished with all manner
of paraphernalia and provision for the deceased in their future state,
in happy _fishing_, rather than _hunting_, grounds.
Slavery was rife among the aborigines of the coast, the number of a
man's wives and slaves being the two chief items in estimating his
importance. The lives of these slaves were completely at the mercy of
their owners, who killed them without compunction whenever the occasion
seemed to them to call for such a sacrifice.
The custom of flattening the head in infancy was a characteristic of
certain of the tribes in the region of the Columbia and Puget's Sound,
especially of the Chinooks and Cowlitz Indians. The process, which is
well depicted, as well as described by Paul Kane, commenced with the
birth of the infant and continued for a period of from eight to twelve
months, in which time the head had lost its natural shape and acquired
that of a wedge, the front of the skull flat and higher at the crown,
giving it a very unnatural appearance. The infants are said to have
shown no signs of suffering while subjected to the treatment, but on
the contrary to have cried when their bands were removed--nor was
their health or acuteness of intellect apparently impaired by it. The
Flatheads took their slaves from among the roundhead tribes, the former
looking with contempt even upon the whites, whose heads had grown in
the natural shape which served to distinguish slaves from their masters.
The fondness of the Indian for arraying himself in the white man's
garments, especially if they be of a showy or striking appearance, has
been often remarked, and the Indians of the Columbia were no exception
to the rule. "I remember old King Comcomly," said the old Hudson's Bay
clerk quoted in the earlier part of this article[215], "once marching
into Vancouver, with all his naked aides and followers, rigged out
in a British general's uniform. But His Majesty had thrown off the
pantaloons before he marched out--considering that they impeded his
progress"--a scene which reminds one somewhat of the visit of the
founder of the late Hawaiian dynasty and his suite to the _Tonquin_,
while she lay at the Sandwich Islands.