The Era of the Pioneers: their Ox-teams and their Flatboats
Events and Men who led the Way to the Pioneer Age--Kelley, Wyeth, and
Bonneville--Ewing Young--Farnham, Shortess, and the "Oregon
Dragoons"--The Wilkes Expedition--The _Star of Oregon_, and the Cattle
Enterprise--Dr. John McLoughlin and the Americans--Dr. Marcus Whitman
and his Winter Ride, and the Immigration of 1843--Retrospect of J. W.
Nesmith--Features of the Journey across the Plains--Whitman's
Services--Getting the Waggons across the Plains--Reaching the River
and Building Boats--Delights and then Distress of the Descent of the
River--Battle with the River--Condition in which they Reached
Vancouver, and their Reception by Dr. McLoughlin--Subsequent
Immigrations--The Barlow Road--The Donation Land Law--Quotation from
Jesse Applegate.
The pioneer era was ushered in by the coming to Oregon of fur-hunters,
missionaries, and little bands of adventurers, who together composed the
nucleus of that American community which formed the Provisional Government
of 1843. There were certain individuals, too, whose agency in leading the
way to the immigration movement was so unique as to deserve mention.
One of these was Hall J. Kelley of Boston. He was a native of New
Hampshire and a Harvard graduate. As early as 1815, when seventeen years
old, he conceived the idea of the colonisation of Americans in Oregon. He
was a man of high scholarship, philanthropic spirit, and patriotic
purpose. He was a dreamer and idealist, planning to form a community on
the Columbia, as one of the Utopias which minds of that stamp, from Plato
down, have been fond of locating somewhere in the unexplored West. After
making a great effort, with partial success, to enlist Congress in his
schemes, he succeeded in organising a company of several hundred, and by
1828 shaped the definite plan of going to St. Louis and following the
route of the fur companies across the plains to the River of Oregon. But
opposition by those same fur companies, and adverse criticism by the press
broke up his enterprise for that time. In 1832 he started with a small
party for the land of his dreams by the route through Mexico and
California. In California, he met with Ewing Young, an American of great
natural abilities and some education. Young and Kelley, brainy and
original men, the former from shrewd commercial instinct and the latter
from philanthropic dreams, formed a little company, and proceeded overland
from California to Oregon. This was in the autumn of 1834. When, after
some disasters, the company of eleven reached the Columbia, Young took up
a great tract of land in the Chehalem Valley, where he devoted himself to
stock-raising. Kelley, having become an invalid, went in distress to Fort
Vancouver, where Dr. McLoughlin treated him with kindness, though the
exclusive "Britishers" would not admit him to "social equality." The other
members of the company were scattered in various directions, but some of
them remained till American occupancy became an accomplished fact.
This company of 1834,--the same year that the Methodist missionaries
under Jason Lee arrived--may be considered the advance guard of American
immigration. Kelley, upon his return to New England by way of the Sandwich
Islands, disseminated much useful information about Oregon. To him,
without doubt, is to be attributed much of the subsequent wave of interest
which swept on toward American immigration. As first a New England college
man, educator, and social theoriser, and then a leader of the pioneer
movement to Oregon, Hall J. Kelley is worthy of permanent remembrance.
Ewing Young became distinguished for leading the party which in 1837 drove
a band of seven hundred cattle from California to Oregon. This even marked
an epoch in preparing for immigration and subsequent American possession.
One of the peculiarly noteworthy facts in connection with Young's
enterprise, is that Dr. McLoughlin, the Hudson's Bay Company's magnate,
who had at first discountenanced Young on account of a charge of stealing
brought against him from California, and who frowned upon the cattle
enterprise for fear of American influence, became reconciled to both Young
and the cattle, and subscribed liberally to the enterprise.
Nearly contemporary with Kelley and Young were Bonneville and Wyeth.
Bonneville was a well-educated French-American, a West Pointer, and
holding the commission of captain in the United States Army. His ardent
and imaginative disposition became fired with the thought of a far western
expedition, and in 1832 he organised a fur-traders' company of a hundred
and ten men. Though not realising his dreams of a fortune in furs,
Bonneville made many interesting and valuable observations upon the
Salmon, Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia rivers. He became thoroughly
imbued with the romance and scenic grandeur of the far West. Upon his
return to New York, he had the good fortune to meet Washington Irving at
the home of John Jacob Astor. Irving had already felt the irresistible
fascination which the River of Oregon has wrought upon all poetical
natures, and the result of this meeting was one of Irving's most charming
volumes, _Bonneville's Adventures_, a volume which became another potent
force in turning toward the Pacific slope the thoughts of the eager,
restless people of the frontier.
Still another in the group of men who led the way to immigration was
Nathaniel Wyeth. He was a talented, well-educated, and energetic
Bostonian. So distinguished a personage as James Russell Lowell has said
of him: "He was a very remarkable person, whose conversation I valued
highly. A born leader of men, he was fitly called Captain Nathaniel Wyeth
as long as he lived."
Wyeth conceived the idea of a great trading company on the Columbia, whose
operations would necessarily create rivalry with the British. His design
was to send companies across the continent to the Columbia head-waters and
to maintain also ship connection by way of Cape Horn. He believed that a
ship load of salmon from the Columbia River to the Atlantic sea-board
would be a paying venture. On so large a scale did he lay out his
enterprise that he expected soon to have a business of two hundred
thousand dollars a year. But he looked beyond the fur and salmon business
to American possession and settlement, at least south of the River to the
California line. He therefore embraced in his view the building of
enterprises which should lead up to and then profit by American
immigration. Wyeth spent five years in Oregon, having many interesting
adventures, and as many business reverses. As was the case with Astor, the
British fur-traders proved too powerful for the Yankee. Among other
undertakings, he built a fort on Sauvie's Island at the mouth of the
Willamette, which he called Fort William. He desired to make this the
basis of his trade, and he expected the Indians to go there to trade. But
such was the influence of the Hudson's Bay people and their employees with
the Indians that Wyeth's fort had no trade. It was during those years that
a frightful pestilence swept the natives away like flies, and there was
great fear among them that Wyeth's fort might harbour the scourge. The
period of Wyeth's enterprise in Oregon extended from the spring of 1832 to
the autumn of 1836. Though not a business success, it had a great bearing
on the creation of an interest in Oregon, and on preparing for immigration
a few years later. It opened the eyes of many Americans to the attractions
of Oregon and to the tremendous power and profits of the Hudson's Bay
Company.
The next movement may be called a real immigration to Oregon. It consisted
of a party of nineteen, commonly known as the "Peoria party," since they
went from Peoria, Ill. Jason Lee, the missionary of Chemeketa, delivered a
lecture at that place in 1838, and so much interest in Oregon was aroused
that in the year following, the Peoria party, the first regular party
from the Mississippi Valley, set forth for the River of the West. Their
leader, T. J. Farnham, christened his followers the "Oregon Dragoons" and
Mrs. Farnham gave them a flag with the inscription, "Oregon or the Grave."
Farnham declared his purpose to seize Oregon for the United States.
The Peoria party had the good fortune to have two writers in the number,
whose accounts possess rare interest. These writers were the leader
Farnham, and Robert Shortess. The party went to pieces at Bent's Fort on
the Arkansas, but its members reached Oregon somewhat in driblets during
that year, and the one following. Shortess reached the Whitman Mission at
Walla Walla in the fall of 1839, and there he remained until the following
spring, when he went down the River to The Dalles. From The Dalles, he
made his way over the Cascade Mountains to the Willamette Valley, and
there he lived many years. Farnham also finally reached Oregon, but his
avowed mission was unfulfilled. Shortess says of him: "Instead of raising
the American flag and turning the Hudson's Bay Company out-of-doors, he
accepted the gift of a suit of clothes and a passage to the Sandwich
Islands, and took a final leave of Oregon." But upon his return to the
"States," Farnham published a _Pictorial History of Oregon and
California_, a book of many interesting features, and one which played a
worthy part in waking the people of the Mississippi Valley to the
attractions of the Pacific Coast.
Soon after the close of Wyeth's enterprise, there were two notable
government expeditions to the Columbia River. One was commanded by Sir
Edward Belcher of the British Navy, and the other by Lieutenant Charles
Wilkes of the American Navy. The Wilkes expedition was one of the most
interesting and important ever undertaken by the United States Government.
The squadron consisted of two sloops-of-war, the _Peacock_ and the
_Vincennes_, the store ship, _Relief_, the brig, _Porpoise_, and the
schooners, _Sea Gull_ and _Flying Fish_. This fine squadron took up its
principal station on Puget Sound, from which extensive surveys were made,
one across the mountains to Fort Okanogan; another of the Cowlitz Valley
and the Columbia River as far as Wallula.
One of the most important results of this elaborate Wilkes expedition was
to establish in the minds of officers of the Government the essential
unity of all parts of the Pacific Coast and the boundless opportunities
offered to American immigration. Wilkes and his intelligent officers
readily grasped, and conveyed through an elaborate report to the
government, the idea that Puget Sound was an inherent and integral part of
Oregon and that the Columbia Basin was essential to the proper development
of American commerce upon the Pacific. They may also have forecast the
time when California with her girdles of gold and chaplets of freedom
would spring, Athena-like, from the Zeus brain of American enterprise. The
control of the River was the key to the control of the entire coast from
San Diego to the Straits of Fuca;--and American ownership should have
extended to Sitka.
A memorable calamity occurred to the squadron upon its entrance to the
River, and that was the loss of the _Peacock_ on the Columbia River bar.
The oft-depicted terrors of the River were realised at that time, and yet
it was not the River's fault for the _Peacock_ was out of the channel.
The spit is known as "Peacock Spit" to this day.
Among the many episodes connecting Wilkes with the early immigration was
the building of the schooner _Star of Oregon_ and her voyage to California
for cattle. This was in 1842. It will be remembered that Ewing Young had
made a successful trip from California with cattle. But as the population
of the Columbia had increased, there was a great desire among the settlers
to obtain a larger number of cattle to let loose upon the rich pasture
lands of the Willamette Valley. A little group of Americans conceived the
adventurous project of building a schooner of Oregon timber, sailing with
her to California, exchanging her there for stock, and driving the band
across the country home again. The schooner was built by Felix Hathaway,
Joseph Gale, and Ralph Kilbourne. The oak and fir timber of which the
vessel was built was cut on Sauvie's Island, at the mouth of the
Willamette, and in due time she was launched and taken to Willamette Falls
for fitting. A difficulty arose. Dr. McLoughlin refused to sell sails,
cordage, and other materials. He had the only supply in Oregon. In despair
the enterprising ship-builders appealed to Lieutenant Wilkes. He felt a
keen interest in their laudable undertaking and made a visit to McLoughlin
to try to change his resolution. By assuring the Doctor that he would be
responsible both for all the bills, as well as for the good conduct of the
party, he induced him to allow the requisition for all materials necessary
to complete the gallant craft. Gale was the only sailor in the party.
Having satisfied Wilkes that he was qualified to command a ship, and
having received from him a present of a flag, an ensign, a compass,
kedge-anchor, hawser, log line, and two log glasses, the captain flung the
flag to the Oregon breeze and turned the prow of the _Star of Oregon_
toward the River's mouth. She may be remembered as the first sea-going
vessel built of Oregon timber. Crossing the Bar in a storm, she sped
southward in a spanking breeze, all hands seasick except Gale. He held the
wheel thirty-six hours continuously, and in five days "dashed through the
portals of the Golden Gate like an arrow, September 17, 1842."
As it was too late to get the cattle back to Oregon that fall, the party
sold their schooner for three hundred and fifty cows, wintered in
California, and the next spring drove to the Columbia twelve hundred and
fifty head of cattle, six hundred head of mules and horses, and three
thousand sheep. This was an achievement which made the way for immigration
clearer than ever before, and in a most effective manner united the
American settlers with the American government. Some of the Hudson's Bay
Company people could begin to see the handwriting on the wall. Dr.
McLoughlin saw most quickly and most clearly, and as elsewhere narrated,
began to transfer his interests to the American side. This fine old man
was big-brained, big-bodied, and big-souled, a natural American, though
compelled to work for the British fur monopolists for the time. He admired
the independent spirit of the incoming Yankee immigrants, even when the
joke was on him. He afterwards told with much gusto of an American named
Woods crossing the Columbia to Vancouver to try to get goods. He found his
credit shaky, and somewhat piqued, he exclaimed: "Well, never mind, I
have an uncle back East rich enough to buy out the whole of your old
Hudson's Bay Company!" "Well, well, Mr. Woods," demanded the autocrat,
"who may this very rich uncle of yours be?" "Uncle Sam," was the unabashed
and characteristic American reply. "Old Whitehead" also appreciated,
though he was obliged to manifest a dignified disapproval, when two young
men from New York, having reached the fort on the River, were asked about
their passports. Laying their hands on their rifles they replied, "These
are an American's passports."
These small miscellaneous immigrations were in continuance from about 1830
to 1842. In the latter year a hundred came. In 1843, as elsewhere related,
the Provisional Government was instituted. At the very same time, the
immigration of 1843 was on its way to the River.
This immigration of 1843 was in many respects the most remarkable of all.
It was the first large one, and it was a type of all. It will be
remembered that Dr. Marcus Whitman had made his great winter ride in
1842-43 across the Rockies to St. Louis, with a double aim. First he
wished to see the officers of the American Board of Missions, and then to
enlist the American government and people in the policy of holding Oregon
against the manifest aims of the British. There was already a tremendous
interest felt in Oregon among the people of Missouri, Illinois, and the
other great prairie States. Whitman's opportune arrival and his announced
purpose to guide an immigration to the Columbia became widely known, and
brought to a focus many vaguely-considered plans.
J. W. Nesmith, subsequently one of the most prominent pioneers and a
member of each House of Congress from Oregon, has given a humorous account
of the manner of starting this immigration of 1843, of which he was a
member, which is so characteristic that we quote it here.
Mr. Burnett, or as he was more familiarly styled, "Pete," was called
upon for a speech. Mounting a log the glib-tongued orator delivered a
glowing florid address. He commenced by showing his audience that the
then western tier of states and territories were crowded with a
redundant population, who had not sufficient elbow room for the
expansion of their enterprise and genius, and it was a duty they owed
to themselves and posterity to strike out in search of a more expanded
field and a more genial climate, where the soil yielded the richest
return for the slightest amount of cultivation,--where the trees were
loaded with perennial fruit,--and where a good substitute for bread,
called La Camash, grew in the ground; where salmon and other fish
crowded the streams; and where the principal labour of the settlers
would be confined to keeping their gardens free from the inroads of
buffalo, elk, deer, and wild turkeys. He appealed to our patriotism by
picturing forth the glorious empire we should establish upon the
shores of the Pacific,--how with our trusty rifles we should drive out
the British usurpers who claimed the soil, and defend the country from
the avarice and pretensions of the British Lion,--and how posterity
would honour us for placing the fairest portion of the land under the
Stars and Stripes.... Other speeches were made full of glowing
descriptions of the fair land of promise, the far-away Oregon, which
no one in the assemblage had ever seen, and about which not more than
half a dozen had ever read any account. After the election of Mr.
Burnett as captain, and other necessary officers, the meeting, as
motley and primitive a one as ever assembled, adjourned with "three
cheers" for Captain Burnett and Oregon.
Peter Burnett to whom Nesmith here refers, was the same who became the
first governor of California.
By the walnut hearth-fires in many a home of the prairie States and at the
corn-huskings and quilting bees the talk of Oregon and the forests of the
Columbia, and the rich pasture lands of the Willamette, and the salmon and
game, and genial climate and majestic mountains, went the rounds. Interest
grew into enthusiasm, enthusiasm waxed hot, and in the early spring the
great immigration of 1843 set forth from Westport, Missouri, for the
Columbia waters. Though the immigration of 1843 was the earliest of any
size and the first with any number of women and children, it had perhaps
the least trouble and misfortune and the most romance and gayety and
enthusiasm of any. The experience of crossing the plains was one which
nothing else could duplicate;--the hasty rising in the chill damp of the
morning, the preparing the cattle and horses for the long, hard drive, the
rounds of the waggons to strengthen bolts and tires and tongues, the
loading of the rifles for possible hostile Indians or buffalo, the setting
forth of the scouts on horseback, the long train strung across the dusty
plain, the occasional bands of wild Indians emerging like a whirlwind from
the broad expanse, and then the approaching cool of night with its hurried
rest on the rough prairie sod. Sometimes there were nights of storm and
stampede and darkness. Sometimes savage beasts and savage men startled the
train, or one of the stupendous herds of buffalo went thundering across
the prairie. Then came the first glimpse of snowy heights, then of deep
canyons, and then the summit was attained, and far westward stretched the
maze of plains and mountains through which the Snake River, the greatest
of the tributaries of the Columbia, took its swift way.
During most of the journey, Dr. Marcus Whitman was guide, physician, and
friend. While severe controversy has arisen as to the extent of his
services in organising the immigration, the testimony is unvarying as to
the value of his presence with the train. Last to bed at night and first
up in the morning, attending both people, cattle, and horses in their
sicknesses and accidents, ahead of the train on horseback to find the
passes of the hills and the fords of the rivers, the watcher by night and
the pilot by day, the missionary doctor was the veritable "Mr. Greatheart"
of the immigration.
Great was the astonishment of Captain Grant, commandant of the Hudson's
Bay Fort Hall on Snake River, near the present Pocatello, when the long
train filed past the enclosure. Grant had known Whitman before and was
aware of his stubborn determination and patriotic purpose. But Grant
attempted just the same to dissuade the immigrants of 1843 from going
farther with their waggons, declaring the Blue Mountains to be impassable.
The doughty doctor simply laughed quietly and told the immigrants to push
on, and he would see them through. But just as they were entering the
rough defiles of the Blue Mountains, a band of Indians from Waiilatpu,
headed by Sticcus, came to meet the train, searching for Whitman, telling
him that his medical services were in great demand at Lapwai. The
much-needed guide turned over the pilotage of the train to Sticcus, and he
himself hastened on to minister to the sick at Lapwai. As he passed
through Waiilatpu he learned that the threatening conduct of the Indians
had led Mrs. Whitman to go to Vancouver, and that during his absence the
Indians had burned his mill and committed other depredations. But it was
his lot to labour and suffer. He had become accustomed to it.
The event proved that Sticcus was a thoroughly capable guide. For, though
not speaking a word of English, he made his directions so well understood
by pantomime that, as Mr. Nesmith has said, he led them safely over the
roughest mountain road that they ever saw. And so in due time the train
emerged from the screen of timber on the Blue Mountains. Stretched wide
before them, lay the plains of Umatilla and Walla Walla, while in the far
distance the River of the West poured through the arid waste. Yet farther
the snow summits of the Cascades ridged the western sky. After a brief
pause at Waiilatpu, the train reached the banks of the River. The
immediate vicinity of the section of the River first reached is very dry
in autumn. Aside from the River itself, the immediate scene is desolate
and forbidding. But probably those immigrants of '43 gazed upon the blue
flood, a mile wide and hastening to the western ocean, with feelings
almost akin to those which swelled the hearts of the Pilgrims landing from
the _Mayflower_. This was another epic of state-making, and one generation
after another of the Americans who have wrought such achievement may well
turn back to join hands with those before.
Doubtless the immigrants, as they stood by the River in the pleasant haze
of the October afternoon, felt as though their journey was substantially
at an end. Being now at Fort Walla Walla on the river of that name, they
paused to make ready for the last stage of the journey, little realising
what perils and sufferings it would entail. Dr. Whitman and Archibald
McKinley, the chief factor at the fort, advised them to leave their cattle
and waggons to winter on the Walla Walla, while they pursued their way
down the stream on flatboats. Part of the company accepted the advice, but
a number determined to keep all their belongings together and to take
their road along the bank of the River to The Dalles, and there make their
flatboats.
To those who remained on the Walla Walla now fell the difficult task of
constructing flatboats. Huge, uncouth, structures they were, made of
timber gathered on the river bank. But when loaded and pushed out into the
swift current, steered with immense sweeps in the stern, these flatboats
afforded to the footsore and exhausted immigrants a delightful change. Out
of the dust, off the rocks, away from the sage-brush, with more of laugh
and song than they had had for many a day, they swept gaily on. For a
hundred miles or more the elements were propitious. With the bright
sunshine, the clear, cool water, the majestic snow-peaks in the distance,
the easily gliding boats,--this seemed the pleasantest part of the entire
journey. But after The Dalles had been reached and the two divisions of
the company were again united and on their way down the River to the
Cascades, disaster began to haunt them. At the Cascades, a boat with
several members of the Applegate family, one of the most prominent in the
immigration as well as afterwards, was overturned in the rapids, and three
of the party drowned in the boiling surge. Two were saved in a way that
seems almost miraculous. One of these was a young boy, the other a young
man. The boy was very active and an excellent swimmer. After the
overturning of the boat he was carried two miles in the current, part of
the time being entirely sucked under by the whirling under-current. After
being tossed with violence betwixt rock and wave till it seemed that he
must expire, he was suddenly spewed forth upon a ledge of slippery rock,
to which he clung desperately till he had recovered breath. Then he drew
himself up on a narrow shelf, and at the same instant saw the young man
swept by. Reaching forth, the brave boy managed to bring the struggling
man to the same shelter with himself. But when they had regained
sufficient strength to examine their surroundings, they discovered that
they were on a rocky niche from which they could find no ascent of the
ragged precipitous cliff. They were in a trap. Looking across the River,
they could see that the bank was smooth and that on that side lay the
trail. Young Applegate saw that a reef extended a considerable part of the
way across the River, and desperate as the attempt seemed, he resolved to
pick his way along the reef to a point whence he might swim to the other
shore. It was his only chance for life. Fearful as were the odds, the
daring lad accomplished his aim. He emerged on the further end of the
reef. Looking around, he discovered that his comrade had not possessed the
nerve to follow. And then,--most wonderful of all,--back he went to assist
his more timid fellow. In this, too, he succeeded, and after a return in
which they should have been drowned a dozen times, they both reached the
farther end of the reef. There casting themselves again into the
inhospitable flood, they buffeted their way to shore. Battered, bruised,
exhausted, they yet recovered and lived to a good old age to tell the tale
of their fight with the Columbia River.
From the Cascades to Vancouver, the company suffered more than in all the
rest of their journey. The fall rains were at hand, and it poured with an
unremitting energy such as no one can realise who has not seen a rain
storm on the lower River. Food had become almost exhausted. Clothing was
in rags. Tired, hungry, wet, cold, disheartened, the immigrants who had so
jauntily descended the River to this "Strait of Horrors," presented a most
woful appearance. It actually seemed that many must perish. But in the
crisis, help came. One of the party managed to procure a canoe and
hastened down the River to Fort Vancouver. As soon as Dr. McLoughlin
learned that nearly nine hundred men, women, and children were beleaguered
in the mist and chill, he equipped boats with flour, meat, and tea, and in
his choleric excitement, waving his huge cane, bade the boatman hurry to
the rescue. It was not business for the good Doctor to thus aid and abet
American immigrants, and the directors of the Hudson's Bay Company and the
cold-blooded Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-chief, disapproved. But it
was humanity, and that ever predominated in the mind of "Old Whitehead."
The next night he caused vast bonfires to be alight along the bank, and
gathered all the eatables and blankets that the place afforded. When the
boat loads of the battered, but rescued Americans drew near, the Doctor
was on the bank to meet them, to hand out the women and children, to
administer the balm of cheery words and warmth and food. Few were the
travellers on the River, none were the immigrants of '43, who would not
rise up and call him blessed.
After this happy pause at Vancouver, the immigration passed on to the
Willamette Falls, then the centre of operations in Oregon, and there they
were soon joined by the chosen men who had driven their thirteen hundred
head of cattle by the trail over the Cascade Mountains, a task toilsome
and even distressing, but one that was accomplished. After an inactive
winter in the mild, muggy, misty Oregon climate, the immigrants of '43
spread abroad in the opening spring to secure land, each his square mile,
as the Provisional Government provided, and as the American government was
contemplating.
Such was the coming of the immigrants to the River. Subsequent
immigrations bore a general resemblance to that of 1843. Each had its
special feature. That of 1845 was conspicuous for its size. It was three
thousand strong. It was also illustrious for the laying out of the road
across the Cascade Mountains near the southern flank of Mt. Hood. This
noble and difficult undertaking was carried through by S. K. Barlow and
William Rector. It was a terrific task, and was not completed the first
year. Canyons, precipitous rocks, morasses, sand-hills, tangled forests,
fallen trees, criss-crossed and interlaced with briars and vines and
shrubbery of tropical luxuriance, such as no one can appreciate who has
not seen an Oregon jungle,--these were the obstructions to the Barlow
Road. But they were vanquished and in 1846 and thence onward the
immigrants made this the regular route to the Willamette Valley. So steep
was Laurel Hill on the western slope that waggons had to be let down by
ropes from level to level. The marks of the ropes or chains are still seen
on the trees of Laurel Hill. The immigration of 1852 was sadly conspicuous
for the devastations of cholera. Many a family was broken in sunder and
some even were entirely eliminated by the dreadful plague. The
immigrations of 1854 and 1855 were notable for the Indian outbreaks, and
especially for the atrocious butchery of the Ward family near Boise in the
earlier year, the most pitiless Indian outrage in Oregon history.
From 1850 onward for some years the Donation Land Law of Congress was a
great lure to immigrants, for by it a man and wife could obtain a section
of land. A single man could take up half a section. That situation
encouraged early marriages. Girls were in great demand. It was not
uncommon to see fourteen-year-old brides. Some narrators relate having
found married women in the woods of the Columbia who were playing with
their dolls! But though the immigrations varied in special features, they
were all alike in their mingling of mirth and melancholy, of toil and
rest, of suffering and enjoyment, of heroism, and self-sacrifice. They
embodied an epoch of American history that can never come again. To have
been an immigrant from the Missouri to the Columbia was an experience to
which nothing else on earth is comparable. It confers a title of American
nobility by the side of which the coronets of some European dukes are
tawdry and contemptible. Perhaps no one ever better phrased the spirit of
Oregon immigration than Jesse Applegate of the train of '43, one of the
foremost of Oregon's builders, long known as the "Sage of Yoncalla." So
fitting do we deem his language that we quote here an extract from one of
his addresses.
The Western pioneer had probably crossed the Blue Ridge or the
Cumberland Mountains when a boy and was now in his prime. Rugged,
hardy, and powerful of frame, he was full to overflowing with the love
of adventure, and animated by a brave soul that scorned the very idea
of fear. All had heard of the perpetually green hills and plains of
Western Oregon, and how the warm breath of the vast Pacific tempered
the air to the genial degree and drove winter back to the North. Many
of them contrasted in imagination the open stretch of a mile square of
rich, green, and grassy land, where the strawberry plant bloomed
through every winter month, with their circumscribed clearings in the
Missouri bottoms. Of long winter evenings neighbours visited each
other, and before the big shell-bark hickory fire, the seasoned walnut
fire, the dry black-jack fire, or the roaring dead elm fire, they
talked these things over; and as a natural consequence, under these
favourable circumstances, the spirit of emigration warmed up; and the
"Oregon fever" became as a household expression. Thus originated the
vast cavalcade, or emigrant train, stretching its serpentine length
for miles, enveloped in vast pillars of dust, patiently wending its
toilsome way across the American continent.
How familiar these scenes and experiences with the old pioneers! The
vast plains, the uncountable herds of buffalo; the swift-footed
antelope; the bands of mounted, painted warriors; the rugged
snow-capped mountain ranges; the deep, swift, and dangerous rivers;
the lonesome howl of the wild wolf; the midnight yell of the
assaulting savage; the awful panic and stampede; the solemn and silent
funeral at the dead hour of night, and the lonely and hidden grave of
departed friends,--what memories are associated with the Plains
across!