CHAPTER X

1779-1794

GEORGE VANCOUVER, LAST OF PACIFIC COAST EXPLORERS

Activities of Americans, Spanish, and Russians on the West Coast

of America arouse England--Vancouver is sent out ostensibly to

settle the Quarrel between Fur Traders and Spanish Governors at

Nootka--Incidentally, he is to complete the Exploration of America's

West Coast and take Possession for England of Unclaimed Territory--The

Myth of a Northeast Passage dispelled forever

With Gray's entrance of the Columbia, the great drama of discovery on

the northwest coast of America was drawing to a close.

After the death of Bering on the Commander Islands, and of Cook at

Hawaii, while on voyages to prove there was no Northeast Passage, no

open waterway between Pacific and Atlantic, it seems impossible that

the myth of an open sea from Asia to Europe could still delude men; but

it was in hunting for China that Columbus found America; and it was in

hunting for a something that had no existence except in the foolish

theories of the schoolmen that the whole northwest coast of America was

exploited.

{264} Bering had been called "coward" for not sailing through a solid

continent. Cook was accused of fur trading, "pottering in peltries,"

to the neglect of discovery, because his crews sold their sea-otter at

profit. To be sure, the combined results of Bering's and Cook's

voyages proved there was no waterway through Alaska to the Atlantic;

but in addition to blackening the reputations of the two great

navigators in order to throw discredit on their conclusions, the

schoolmen bellicosely demanded--Might there not be a passage south of

Alaska, between Russia's claim on the north and Spain's on the south?

Both Bering and Cook had been driven out from this section of the coast

by gales. This left a thousand miles of American coast unexplored.

Cook had said there were no Straits of Fuca, of which the old Greek

pilot in the service of New Spain had told legends of fictitious

voyages two centuries before; yet Barclay, an East India English

trader, had been up those very straits. So had Meares, another trader.

So had Kendrick and Gray, the two Americans. This was the very section

which Bering and Cook had left untouched; and who could tell where

these straits might lead? They were like a second Mediterranean.

Meares argued they might connect with Hudson Bay.

Then Spain had forced matters to a climax by seizing Meares's vessels

and fort at Nootka as contraband. That had only one meaning: Spain was

trying to lay hands on everything from New Spain to Russian {265}

territory on the north. If Spain claimed all north to the Straits of

Fuca, and Russia claimed all south to the Straits of Fuca, where was

England's claim of New Albion discovered by Sir Francis Drake, and of

all that coast which Cook had sighted round Nootka?

Captain George Vancouver, formerly midshipman with Cook, was summoned

post-haste by the British Admiralty. Ostensibly, his mission was to

receive back at Nootka all the lands which the Spaniards had taken from

Meares, the trader. Really, he was to explore the coast from New Spain

on the south, to Russian America on the north, and to hold that coast

for England. That Spain had already explored the islands of this coast

was a mere detail. There remained the continental shore still to be

explored. Besides, Spain had not followed up her explorations by

possession. She had kept her navigations secret. In many cases her

navigators had not even landed.

[Illustration: Captain George Vancouver.]

Vancouver was still in his prime, under forty. Serving in the navy

from boyhood, he had all a practical seaman's contempt for theories.

This contempt was given point by the world's attitude toward Cook.

Vancouver had been on the spot with Cook. He knew there was no

Northeast Passage. Cook had proved that. Yet the world refused

credence.

For the practical navigator there remained only one course, and that

course became the one aim, the consuming ambition of Vancouver's

life--to destroy the {266} last vestige of the myth of a Northeast

Passage; to explore the northwest coast of America so thoroughly there

would not remain a single unknown inlet that could be used as a

possible prop for the schoolmen's theories, to penetrate every inlet

from California to Alaska--mainland and island; to demonstrate that not

one possible opening led to the Atlantic. This was to be the object of

Vancouver's life, and he carried it out with a thoroughness that left

nothing for subsequent explorers to do; but he died before the record

of his voyages had been given to the world.

The two ships, _Discovery_ and _Chatham_, with a supply ship, the

_Daedalus_, to follow later, were fitted out for long and thorough

work. Vancouver's vessel, the _Discovery_, carried twenty guns with a

crew of a hundred men. The tender, _Chatham_, under Broughton, had ten

guns and forty-five men. With Vancouver went Menzies, and Puget, and

Baker, and Johnstone--names that were to become place marks on the

Pacific. The _Discovery_ and _Chatham_ left England in the spring of

1791. A year later found them cutting the waves from Hawaii for

America, the New Albion of Drake's discovery, forgotten by England

until Spain's activity stimulated memory of the pirate voyage.

A swashing swell met the ships as they neared America. Phosphorescent

lights blue as sulphur flame slimed the sea in a trail of rippling

fire; and a land bird, washed out by the waves, told of New Albion's

shore. {267} For the first two weeks of April, the _Discovery_ and

_Chatham_ had driven under cloud of sail and sunny skies; but on the

16th, just when the white fret of reefs ahead forewarned land, heavy

weather settled over the ships. To the fore, bare, majestic, compact

as a wall, the coast of New Albion towered out of the surf near

Mendocino. Cheers went up from the lookout for the landfall of Francis

Drake's discovery. Then torrents of rain washed out surf and shore.

The hurricane gales, that had driven all other navigators out to sea

from this coast, now lashed Vancouver. Such smashing seas swept over

decks, that masts, sails, railings, were wrenched away.

Was it ill-luck or destiny, that caught Vancouver in this gale? If he

had not been driven offshore here, he might have been just two weeks

before Gray on the _Columbia_, and made good England's claim of all

territory between New Spain and Alaska. When the weather cleared on

April 27, the ocean was turgid, plainly tinged river-color by inland

waters; but ground swell of storm and tide rolled across the shelving

sandbars. Not a notch nor an opening breached through the flaw of the

horizon from the ocean to the source of the shallow green. Vancouver

was too far offshore to see that there really was a break in the surf

wash. He thought--and thought rightly--this was the place where the

trader, Meares, had hoped to find the great River of the West, only to

be disappointed and to name the point Cape Disappointment. Vancouver

was {268} not to be fooled by any such fanciful theories. "Not

considering this opening worthy of more attention," he writes, "I

continued to the northwest." He had missed the greatest honor that yet

remained for any discoverer on the Pacific. Within two weeks Gray, the

American, heading back to these baffling tides with a dogged

persistence that won its own glory, was to succeed in passing the

breakers and discovering the Columbia. As the calm permitted approach

to the shore again, forests appeared through the haze--that soft,

velvet, caressing haze of the dreamy, lazily swelling Pacific--forests

of fir and spruce and pine and cypress, in all the riot of dank spring

growth, a dense tangle of windfall and underbrush and great vines

below, festooned with the light green stringy mosses of cloud line

overhead and almost impervious to sunlight. Myriad wild fowl covered

the sea. The coast became beetling precipice, that rolled inland

forest-clad to mountains jagging ragged peaks through the clouds. This

was the Olympus Range, first noticed by Meares, and to-day seen for

miles out at sea like a ridge of opalescent domes suspended in

mid-heaven.

Vancouver was gliding into the Straits of Fuca when the slender colors

of a far ship floated above the blue horizon outward bound. Another

wave-roll, and the flag was seen to be above full-blown sails and a

square-hulled, trim little trader of America. At six in the morning of

April 29, the American saluted with a {269} cannon-shot. Vancouver

answered with a charge from his decks, rightly guessing this was Robert

Gray on the _Columbia_.

[Illustration: The _Columbia_ in a Squall.]

Puget and Menzies were sent to inquire about Gray's cruise. They

brought back word that Gray had been fifty miles up the Straits of

Fuca; and--most astounding to Vancouver's ambitions--that the American

had been off the mouth of a river south of the straits at 46 degrees 10

minutes, where the tide prevented entrance for nine days. "The river

Mr. Gray mentioned," says Vancouver, "should be south of Cape

Disappointment. This we passed on the forenoon of the 27th; and if any

inlet or river be found, it must be a {270} very intricate one,

inaccessible . . . owing to reefs and broken water. . . . I was

thoroughly convinced, as were most persons on board, that we could not

possibly have passed any cape . . . from Mendocino to Classet

(Flattery)."

Keen to prove that no Northeast Passage existed by way of the Straits

of Fuca, Vancouver headed inland, close to the south shore, where

craggy heights offered some guidance through the labyrinth of islands

and fog. Eight miles inside the straits he anchored for the night.

The next morning the sun rose over one of the fairest scenes of the

Pacific coast--an arm of the sea placid as a lake, gemmed by countless

craggy islands. On the land side were the forested valleys rolling in

to the purple folds of the mountains; and beyond, eastward, dazzling as

a huge shield of fire in the sunrise, a white mass whiter than the

whitest clouds, swimming aerially in mid-heaven. Lieutenant Baker was

the first to catch a glimpse of the vision for which every western

traveller now watches, the famous peak seen by land or sea for hundreds

of miles, the playground of the jagged green lightnings on the hot

summer nights; and the peak was named after him.--Mount Baker.

For the first time in history white men's boats plied the waters of the

great inland sea now variously known as Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound,

Hood Canal. There must be no myth of a Northeast Passage left lurking

in any of the many inlets of this spider-shaped sea. {271} Vancouver,

Menzies, Puget, and Johnstone set out in the small boats to penetrate

every trace of water passage. Instead of leading northeast, the

tangled maze of forest-hidden channels meandered southward. Savages

swarmed over the water, paddling round and round the white men, for all

the world like birds of prey circling for a chance to swoop at the

first unguarded moment. Tying trinkets to pieces of wood, Puget let

the gifts float back as peace-offerings to woo good will. The effect

was what softness always is to an Indian spoiling for a fight, an

incentive to boldness. When Puget landed for noon meal, a score of

redskins lined up ashore and began stringing their bows for action.

Puget drew a line along the sand with his cutlass and signalled the

warriors to keep back. They scrambled out of his reach with a great

clatter. It only needed some fellow bolder than the rest to push

across the line, and massacre would begin. Puget did not wait. By way

of putting the fear of the Lord and respect for the white man in the

heart of the Indian, he trained the swivel of the small boat landward,

and fired in midair. The result was instant. Weapons were dropped.

On Monday, midday, June 4, Vancouver and Broughton landed at Point

Possession. Officers drew up in line. The English flag was unfurled,

a royal salute fired, and possession taken of all the coast of New

Albion from latitude 39 to the Straits of Fuca, which Vancouver named

Gulf of Georgia. Just a month before, Gray, the American, had preceded

this act of {272} possession by a similar ceremony for the United

States on the banks of the Columbia.

The sum total of Vancouver's work so far had been the exploration of

Puget Sound, which is to the West what the Gulf of St. Lawrence is to

the East. For Puget Sound and its allied waters he had done exactly

what Carrier accomplished for the Atlantic side of America. His next

step was to learn if the Straits of Fuca leading northward penetrated

America and came out on the Atlantic side. That is what the old Greek

pilot in the service of New Spain, Juan de Fuca, had said some few

years after Drake and Cavendish had been out on the coast of California.

Though Vancouver explored the Pacific coast more thoroughly than all

the other navigators who had preceded him,--so thoroughly, indeed, that

nothing was left to be done by the explorers who came after him, and

modern surveys have been unable to improve upon his charts,--it seemed

his ill-luck to miss by just a hair's breadth the prizes he coveted.

He had missed the discovery of the Columbia. He was now to miss the

second largest river of the Northwest, the Fraser. He had hoped to be

the first to round the Straits of Fuca, disproving the assumption that

they led to the Atlantic; and he came on the spot only to learn that

the two English traders, Meares and Barclay, the two Americans,

Kendrick and Gray, and two Spaniards, Don Galiano and Don Valdes, had

already proved {273} practically that this part of the coast was a

large island, and the Straits of Fuca an arm of the Pacific Ocean.

Fifty Indians, in the long dugouts, of grotesquely carved prows and

gaudy paint common among Pacific tribes, escorted Vancouver's boats

northward the second week in June through the labyrinthine passageways

of cypress-grown islets to Burrard Inlet. To Peter Puget was assigned

the work of coasting the mainland side and tracing every inlet to its

head waters. Johnstone went ahead in a small boat to reconnoitre the

way out of the Pacific. On both sides the shores now rose in beetling

precipice and steep mountains, down which foamed cataracts setting the

echo of myriad bells tinkling through the wilds. The sea was tinged

with milky sediment; but fog hung thick as a blanket; and Vancouver

passed on north without seeing Fraser River. A little farther on,

toward the end of June, he was astonished to meet a Spanish brig and

schooner exploring the straits. Don Galiano and Don Valdes told him of

the Fraser, which he had missed, and how the Straits of Fuca led out to

the North Pacific. They had also been off Puget Sound, but had not

gone inland, and brought Vancouver word that Don Quadra, the Spanish

emissary, sent to restore to England the fort from which Meares, the

trader, had been ousted, had arrived at Nootka on the other side of the

island, and was waiting. The explorers all proceeded up the straits

together; but the little Spanish crafts were unable {274} to keep

abreast of the big English vessels, so with a friendly cheer from both

sides, the English went on alone.

Strange Indian villages lined the beetling heights of the straits. The

houses, square built and of log slabs, row on row, like the streets of

the white man, were situated high on isolated rocks, inaccessible to

approach except by narrow planking forming a causeway from rock walls

across the sea to the branches of a tree. In other places rope ladders

formed the only path to the aerial dwellings, or the zigzag trail up

the steep face of a rock down which defenders could hurl stones.

Howe's Sound, Jervis Canal, Bute Inlet, were passed; {275} and in July

Johnstone came back with news he had found a narrow channel out to the

Pacific.

[Illustration: The Discovery on the Rocks.]

The straits narrowed to less than half a mile with such a terrific tide

wash that on Sunday, July 29, the ships failed to answer to the helm

and waves seventeen feet high dashed over decks. Progress was made by

hauling the boats alongshore with ropes braced round trees. By the

first of August a dense fog swept in from the sea. The _Discovery_

crashed on a sunken rock, heeling over till her sails were within three

inches of water. Ballast was thrown overboard, and the next tide-rush

lifted her. By August 19 Vancouver had proved--if any doubt

remained--that no Northeast Passage was to be found by way of the

Straits of Fuca.[1] Then, veering out to sea at midnight through

squalls {276} of rain, he steered to Nootka for the conference with

Spain.

Vancouver came to Nootka on the 28th of August. Nootka was the grand

rallying place of fur traders on the Pacific. It was a triangular

sound extending into the shores of Vancouver Island. On an island at

the mouth of the sound the Spaniards had built their fort. This part

of the bay was known as Friendly Cove. To the north was Snug Cove,

where Cook had anchored; to the south the roadstead of the fur traders.

Mountains rose from the water-line; and on a terrace of hills above the

Spanish fort was the native village of Maquinna, the Indian chief.

{277} Here, then, came Vancouver, met at the harbor mouth by a Spanish

officer with pilot to conduct the _Discovery_ to the Spanish fort of

Nootka. The _Chatham_, the _Daedalus_, Vancouver's store ship, two or

three English fur-trading ships, Spanish frigates bristling with

cannon, were already at anchor; and the bright Spanish pennant, red and

yellow, waved to the wind above the cannon-mounted, palisaded log fort

of Nootka.

[Illustration: Indian Settlement at Nootka.]

Donning regimentals, Lieutenant Puget marched solemnly up to the fort

to inform Don Juan de la Bodega y Quadra, representative of Spain, that

Captain George Vancouver, representative of England, had arrived at

Nootka to await the pleasure of New Spain's commander. It was New

Spain's pleasure to receive England's salute; and Vancouver's guns

roared out a volley of thirteen shots to the amaze of two thousand or

more savages watching from the shores. Formally accompanied by his

officers, Vancouver then paid his respects to New Spain. Don Quadra

returned the compliment by breakfasting next morning on board the

_Discovery_, while his frigates in turn saluted England by a volley of

thirteen guns. In all this solemn parade of formality, Maquinna, lord

of the wild domain, began to wonder what part he was to play, and

ventured to board the _Discovery_, clad in a garb of nature, to join

the breakfast of the leaders; when he was summarily cuffed overboard by

the guard, who failed to recognize the Indian's quality. Don Quadra

then gave a grand dinner to the English, to which the irate Maquinna

{278} was invited. Five courses the dinner had, with royal salutes

setting the echoes rolling in the hills. Seventeen guns were fired to

the success of Vancouver's explorations. Toasts were drunk, foaming

toasts to glory, and the navigators of the Pacific, and Maquinna, grand

chief of the Nootkas, who responded by rising in his place, glass in

hand, to express regret that Spain should withdraw from the North

Pacific. It was then the brilliant thought flashed on Don Quadra to

win the friendship of the Indians for all the white traders on the

Pacific coast through a ceremonious visit by Vancouver and himself to

Maquinna's home village, twenty miles up the sound.

Cutter and yawl left Friendly Cove at eight in the morning of September

4, coming to Maquinna's home village at two in the afternoon. Don

Quadra supplied the dinner, served in style by his own Spanish lackeys;

and the gallant Spaniard led Maquinna's only daughter to the seat at

the head of the spread, where the young squaw did the honors with all

the hauteur of the Indian race. Maquinna then entertained his visitors

with a sham battle of painted warriors, followed by a mask dance. Not

to be outdone, the whites struck up fife and drum, and gave a wild

display of Spanish fandangoes and Scotch reels. In honor of the day's

outing, it was decided to name the large island which Vancouver had

almost circumnavigated, Quadra and Vancouver.

When Maquinna returned this visit, there were fireworks, and more

toasts, and more salutes. All this {279} was very pleasant; but it was

not business. Then Vancouver requested Don Quadra to ratify the

international agreement between England and Spain; but there proved to

be a wide difference of opinion as to what that agreement meant.

Vancouver held that it entailed the surrender of Spain's sovereignty

from San Francisco northward. Don Quadra maintained that it only

surrendered Spanish rights north of Juan de Fuca, leaving the northwest

coast free to all nations for trade. With Vancouver it was all or

nothing. Don Quadra then suggested that letters be sent to Spain and

England for more specific instructions. For this purpose Lieutenant

Broughton was to be despatched overland across Mexico to Europe. It

was at this stage that Robert Gray came down from the north on the

damaged _Columbia_, to receive assistance from Quadra. Within three

weeks Gray had sailed for Boston, Don Quadra for New Spain, and

Vancouver to the south, to examine that Columbia River of Gray's before

proceeding to winter on the Sandwich Islands.

The three English ships hauled out of Nootka in the middle of October,

steering for that new river of Gray's, of which Vancouver had expressed

such doubt. The foaming reefs of Cape Disappointment were sighted and

the north entrance seen just as Gray had described it. The _Chatham_

rode safely inside the heavy cross swell, though her small boat smashed

to chips among the breakers; but on Sunday, October {280} 21, such

mountainous seas were running that Vancouver dared not risk his big

ship, the _Discovery_, across the bar. Broughton was intrusted to

examine the _Columbia_ before setting out to England for fresh orders.

The _Chatham_ had anchored just inside Cape Disappointment on the

north, then passed south to Cape Adams, using Gray's chart as guide.

Seven miles up the north coast, a deep bay was named after Gray. Nine

or ten Indian dugouts with one hundred and fifty warriors now escorted

Broughton's rowboat upstream. The lofty peak ahead covered with snow

was named Mt. Hood. For seven days Broughton followed the river till

his provision ran out, and the old Indian chief with him explained by

the signs of pointing in the direction of the sunrise and letting water

trickle through his fingers that water-falls ahead would stop passage.

Somehow, Broughton seemed to think because Gray, a private trader, had

not been clad in the gold-braid regimentals of authority, his act of

discovery was void; for Broughton landed, and with the old chief

assisting at the ceremony by drinking healths, took possession of all

the region for England, "having" as the record of the trip explains,

"every reason to believe that the subjects of no other civilized nation

or state had ever entered this river before; in this opinion he was

confirmed by Mr. Gray's sketch, in which it does not appear that Mr.

Gray either saw or was ever within five leagues of the entrance."

{281} Any comment on this proceeding is superfluous. It was evidently

in the hope that the achievement of Gray--an unassuming fur trader,

backed by nothing but his own dauntless courage--would be forgotten,

which it certainly was for fifty years by nearly all Americans. Three

days later, on November 3, Broughton was back down-stream at the

_Chatham_, noting the deserted Indian village of Chinook as he passed

to the harbor mouth. On November 6, in heavy rain, the ship stood out

for sea, passing the _Jenny_ of Bristol, imprisoned inside the cape by

surf. Broughton landed to reconnoitre the passage out. The wind

calmed next day, and a breach was descried through the surf. The

little trading ship led the way, Broughton following, hard put to keep

the _Chatham_ headed for the sea, breakers rolling over her from stem

to stern, snapping the tow-rope of the launch and washing a sailor

overboard; and we cannot but have a higher respect for Gray's feat,

knowing the difficulties that Broughton weathered.

Meanwhile Vancouver on the _Discovery_ had coasted on down from the

mouth of the Columbia to Drake's Bay, just outside the Golden Gate of

San Francisco, where the bold English pirate had anchored in 1579. By

nightfall of November 14 he was inside the spacious harbor of San

Francisco. Two men on horseback rode out from the Spanish settlement,

a mile back from the water front, firing muskets as a salute to

Vancouver. The next morning, a Spanish friar and {282} ensign came

aboard the _Discovery_ for breakfast, pointing out to Vancouver the

best anchorage for both wood and water. While the sailors went

shooting quail on the hills, or amused themselves watching the Indians

floating over the harbor on rafts made of dry rushes and grass, the

good Spanish padre conducted Vancouver ashore to the presidio, or house

of the commandant, back from the landing on a little knoll surrounded

by hills. The fort was a square area of adobe walls fourteen feet high

and five deep, the outer beams filled in between with a plaster of

solid mortar, houses and walls whitewashed from lime made of

sea-shells. A small brass cannon gathered rust above one dilapidated

carriage, and another old gun was mounted by being lashed to a rotten

log. A single gate led into the fort, which was inhabited by the

commandant, the guard of thirty-five soldiers, and their families. The

windows of the houses were very small and without glass, the

commandant's house being a rude structure thirty by fourteen feet,

whitewashed inside and out, the floor sand and rushes, the furnishings

of the roughest handicraft. The mission proper was three miles from

the fort, with a guard of five soldiers and a corporal. Such was the

beginning of the largest city on the Pacific coast to-day.

Broughton was now sent overland to England for instructions about the

transfer of Nootka. Puget became commander of the _Chatham_. The

store ship _Daedalus_ was sent to the South Seas, and touching only

{283} at Monterey, Vancouver sailed to winter in the Sandwich Islands.

Here two duties awaited the explorer, which he carried out in a way

that left a streak both of glory and of shame across his escutcheon.

The Sandwich Islands had become the halfway house of the Pacific for

the fur traders. How fur traders--riff-raff adventurers from earth's

ends beyond the reach of law--may have acted among these simple people

may be guessed from the conduct of Cook's crews; and Cook was a strict

disciplinarian. Those who sow to the wind, need not be surprised if

they reap the whirlwind. White men, welcomed by these Indians as gods,

repaid the native hospitality by impressing natives as crews to a

northern climate where the transition from semitropics meant almost

certain death. For a fur trader to slip into Hawaii, entice women

aboard, then scud off to America where the victims might rot unburied

for all the traders cared--was considered a joke. How the joke caused

Captain Cook's death the world knows; and the joke was becoming a

little frequent, a little bold, a little too grim for the white

traders' sense of security. The Sandwich Islanders had actually formed

the plot of capturing every vessel that came into their harbors and

holding the crews for extortionate ransom. How many white men were

victims of this plot--to die by the assassin's knife or waiting for the

ransom that never came--is not a part of this record. It was becoming

a common thing to find white men living in a state of quasi-slavery

among the {284} islanders, each white held as hostage for the security

of the others not escaping. Within three years three ships had been

attacked, one Spanish, one American, one English--the store ship

_Daedalus_ on the way out to Nootka with supplies for Vancouver. Two

officers, Hergest and Gooch of the _Daedalus_, had been seized,

stripped naked, forced at the point of spears up a hill to the native

village, and cut to pieces. Vancouver determined to put a stop to such

attacks. Arriving at the islands, he trained his cannon ashore,

demanded that the murderers of the _Daedalus's_ officers be

surrendered, tried the culprits with all the solemnity and speed of

English court-martial, sentenced them to death, had them tied up to the

mast poles and executed. That is the blot against Vancouver; for the

islanders had put up a trick. The real murderers had been leading

chiefs. Not wishing to surrender these, the islanders had given

Vancouver poor slaves quite guiltless of the crime.

In contrast to this wrong-headed demonstration of justice was

Vancouver's other act. At Nootka he had found among the traders two

young Hawaiian girls not more than fifteen and nineteen years of age,

whom some blackguard trader had forcibly carried off. The most of

great voyagers would not have soiled their gloves interfering with such

a case. Cook had winked at such crimes. Drake, two hundred years

before, had laughed. The Russians outdid either Drake or Cook. They

dumped the victims overboard where the {285} sea told no tales.

Vancouver might have been strict enough disciplinarian to execute the

wrong men by way of a lesson; but he was consistent in his strictness.

Round these two friendless savages he wrapped all the chivalry and the

might of the English flag. He received them on board the _Discovery_,

treated them as he might have treated his own sisters, prevented the

possibility of insult from the common sailors by having them at his own

table on the ship, taught them the customs of Europeans toward women

and the reasons for those customs, so that the young girls presently

had the respect and friendship of every sailor on board the

_Discovery_. In New Spain he had obtained clothing and delicacies for

them that white women have; and in the Sandwich Islands took

precautions against their death at the hands of Hawaiians for having

been on the ship with strange men, by securing from the Sandwich Island

chief the promise of his protection for them and the gifts of a home

inside the royal enclosure.

April of 1793 saw Vancouver back again on the west coast of America.

In results this year's exploring was largely negative; but the object

of Vancouver's life was a negative one--to prove there was no passage

between Pacific and Atlantic. He had missed the Columbia the previous

year by standing off the coast north of Mendocino. So this year, he

again plied up the same shore to Nootka. No fresh instructions had

{286} come from England or Spain to Nootka; and Vancouver took up the

trail of the sea where he had stopped the year before, carrying forward

survey of island and mainland from Vancouver Island northward to the

modern Sitka or Norfolk Sound. Gray, the American, had been attacked

by Indians here the year before; and Vancouver did not escape the

hostility of these notoriously treacherous tribes. Up Behm Canal the

ships were visited by warriors wearing death-masks, who refused

everything in exchange for their sea-otter except firearms. The canal

here narrowed to a dark canyon overhung by beetling cliffs. Four large

war canoes manned by several hundred savages daubed with war paint

succeeded in surrounding the small launch, and while half the warriors

held the boat to prevent it escaping, the rest had rifled it of

everything they could take, from belaying-pins and sail rope to

firearms, before Vancouver lost patience and gave orders to fire. At

the shot the Indians were over decks and into the sea like water-rats,

while forces ambushed on land began rolling rocks and stones down the

precipices. One gains some idea of Vancouver's thoroughness by his

work up Portland Canal, which was to become famous a hundred years

later as the scene of boundary disputes. Here, so determined was he to

prove none of the passages led to the Atlantic that his small boat

actually cruised seven hundred miles without going more than sixty

miles from ocean front. By October of 1793 Vancouver had demolished

the myth of {287} a possible passage between New Spain and Russian

America; for he had examined every inlet from San Francisco to what is

now Sitka. While the results were negative to himself, far different

were they to Russia. It was Vancouver's voyage northward that stirred

the Russians up to move southward. In a word, if Vancouver had not

gone up as far as Norfolk Sound or Sitka, the Russian fur traders would

have drowsed on with Kadiak as headquarters, and Canada to-day might

have included the entire gold-fields of Alaska.

Again Vancouver wintered in the Sandwich Islands. In the year 1794 he

changed the direction of his exploring. Instead of beginning at New

Spain and working north, he began at Russian America and worked south.

Kadiak and Cook's Inlet were regarded as the eastern bounds of Russian

settlement at this time, though the hunting brigades of the Russians

scoured far and wide; so Vancouver began his survey eastward at Cook's

Inlet. Terrific floods of ice banged the ships' bows as they plied up

Cook's Inlet; and the pistol-shot reports of the vast icebergs breaking

from the walls of the solid glacier coast forewarned danger; but

Vancouver was not to be deterred. Again the dogged ill-luck of always

coming in second for the prize he coveted marked each stage of his

trip. Russian forts were seen on Cook's Inlet, Russian settlements on

Prince William Sound, Russian flotillas of nine hundred {288} Aleutian

hunters steering by instinct like the gulls spreading over the sea as

far east as Bering Bay, or where the coast of Alaska dips southward.

Everywhere he heard the language of Russia, everywhere saw that Russia

regarded his explorations with jealousy as intrusion; everywhere

observed that Russian and savage had come to an understanding and now

lived as friends, if not brothers. Twice Baranof, the little Czar of

the North, sent word for Vancouver to await a conference; but Vancouver

was not keen to meet the little Russian potentate. One row at a time

was enough; and the quarrel with Spain was still unsettled. The waters

of to-day plied by the craft of gold seekers, Bering Bay, Lynn Canal,

named after his birthplace, were now so thoroughly surveyed by

Vancouver that his charts may still be used.

[Illustration: Reindeer Herd in Siberia.]

Only once did the maze of waterways seem to promise a northeast

passage. It was up Lynn Canal, where so many gold seekers have rushed

to have their hopes dashed, like Vancouver. Two officers had gone up

the channel in a small boat to see if any opening led to the Atlantic.

Boisterous weather and tremendous tide had lashed the sea to foam. The

long daylight was so delusive that the men did not realize it was

nearly midnight. At ten o'clock they had rowed ashore, to rest from

their fight with wave and wind, when armed Indians suddenly rushed down

to the water's edge in battle array, spears couched. The exhausted

rowers bent to the oars all night. At one place in their {289} retreat

to open sea, the fog lifted to reveal the passage between precipices

only a few feet wide with warriors' canoes on every side. A crash of

musketry drove the assailants off. Two or three men kept guard with

pointed muskets, while the oarsmen pulled through a rolling cross swell

back to the protection of the big ships outside.

On August 19, as the ships drove south to Norfolk or Sitka Sound, the

men suddenly recognized headlands where they had cruised the summer

before. For a second they scarcely realized. Then they knew that

their explorations from Alaska southward had come to the meeting place

of their voyage from New Spain northward. Just a little more than

fifty years from Bering's discoveries, the exploration of the northwest

coast of America had been completed. Some one emitted an incoherent

shout that the work was finished! The cheer was caught up by every man

on board. Some one else recalled that it had been April when they set

out on the fool-quest of the Northeast Passage; and a true April's fool

the quest had proved! Then flags were run up; the wine casks brought

out, the marines drawn up in line, and three such volleys of joy fired

as those sailors alone could feel. For four years they had followed

the foolish quest of the learned world's error. That night Vancouver

gave a gala dinner to his crews. They deserved it. Their four years'

cruise marked the close of the most heroic epoch on the Pacific coast.

Vancouver had accomplished his life-work--there {290} was no northeast

passage through the west coast of America.[2]

[1] The legend of Juan de Fuca became current about 1592, as issued in

_Samuel Purchas' Pilgrims_ in 1625, Vol. III: "A note made by Michael

Lok, the elder, touching the strait of sea commonly called _Fretum

Anian_ in the South Sea through the North-West Passage of Meta

Incognita." Lok met in Venice, in April, 1596, an old man called Juan

de Fuca, a Greek mariner and pilot, of the crew of the galleon _Santa

Anna_ taken by Cavendish near southern California in 1587. The pilot

narrated after his return to Mexico, he was sent by the viceroy with

three vessels to discover the Strait of Anian. This expedition

failing, he was again sent in 1592, with a small caravel in which "he

followed the course west and northwest to latitude 47 north, there

finding a broad inlet between 47 and 48, he entered, sailing therein

more than twenty days . . . and found very much broader sea than was at

the said entrance . . . a great island with a high pinnacle. . . .

Being come into the North Sea . . . he returned to Acapulco." According

to the story the old pilot tried to find his way to England in the hope

of the Queen recouping him for goods taken by Cavendish, and furnishing

him with a ship to essay the Northeast Passage again. The old man died

before Raleigh and other Englishmen could forward money for him to come

to England. Whether the story is purely a sailor's yarn, or the pilot

really entered the straits named after him, and losing his bearings

when he came out in the Pacific imagined he was on the Atlantic, is a

dispute among savants.

[2] The data of Vancouver's voyage come chiefly, of course, from the

volume by himself, issued after his death, _Voyage of Discovery to the

Pacific Ocean_, London, 1798. Supplementary data may be found in the

records of predecessors and contemporaries like Meares's _Voyages_,

London, 1790, Portlock's _Voyage_, London, 1789; Dixon's _Voyage_,

London, 1789, and others, from whom nearly all modern writers, like

Greenhow, Hubert Howe Bancroft, draw their information. The reports of

Dr. Davidson in his Coast and Survey work, and his _Alaska Boundary_,

identify many of Vancouver's landfalls, and illustrate the tremendous

difficulties overcome in local topography. It is hardly necessary to

refer to Begg and Mayne, and other purely local sketches of British

Columbian coast lines; as Begg's _History_ simply draws from the old

voyages. Of modern works, Dr. Davidson's Survey works, and the

official reports of the Canadian Geological Survey (Dawson), are the

only ones that add any facts to what Vancouver has recorded.

{291}

PART III

EXPLORATION GIVES PLACE TO FUR TRADE--THE

EXPLOITATION OF THE PACIFIC COAST UNDER

THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY, AND

THE RENOWNED LEADER BARANOF

{293}

CHAPTER XI

1579-1867

THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY

The Pursuit of the Sable leads Cossacks across Siberia, of the

Sea-Otter, across the Pacific as far South as California--Caravans of

Four Thousand Horses on the Long Trail Seven Thousand Miles across

Europe and Asia--Banditti of the Sea--The Union of All Traders in One

Monopoly--Siege and Slaughter of Sitka--How Monroe Doctrine grew out of

Russian Fur Trade--Aims of Russia to dominate North Pacific

"_Sea Voyagers of the Northern Ocean_" they styled themselves, the

Cossack banditti--robber knights, pirates, plunderers--who pursued the

little sable across Europe and Asia eastward, just as the French

_coureurs des bois_ followed the beaver across America westward. And

these two great tides of adventurers--the French voyager, threading the

labyrinthine waterways of American wilds westward; the Russian voyager

exchanging his reindeer sled and desert caravans for crazy rafts of

green timbers to cruise across the Pacific eastward--were directed both

to the same region, animated by the same impulse, the capture of the

Pacific coast of America.

{294}

[Illustration: Raised Reindeer Sledges.]

The tide of adventure set eastward across Siberia at the very time

(1579) Francis Drake, the English freebooter, was sacking the ports of

New Spain on his way to California. Yermac, robber knight and leader

of a thousand Cossack banditti, had long levied tribute of loot on the

caravans bound from Russia to Persia. Then came the avenging army of

the Czar. Yermac fled to Siberia, wrested the country from the

Tartars, and obtained forgiveness from the Czar by laying a new realm

at his feet. But these Cossack plunderers did not stop with Siberia.

Northward were the ivory tusks of the frozen tundras. Eastward were

precious furs of the snow-padded forests and mountains toward

Kamchatka. For both ivory and furs the smugglers of the Chinese

borderlands would pay a price. On pretence of collecting one-tenth

tribute for the Czar, forward pressed the Cossacks; now on

horseback,--wild {295} brutes got in trade from Tartars,--now behind

reindeer teams through snowy forests where the spreading hoofs carried

over drifts; now on rude-planked rafts hewn from green firs on the

banks of Siberian rivers; on and on pushed the plunderers till the

Arctic rolled before them on the north, and the Pacific on the east.[1]

Nor did the seas of these strange shores bar the Cossacks. Long before

Peter the Great had sent Vitus Bering to America in 1741, Russian

voyagers had launched out east and north with a daredevil recklessness

that would have done honor to prehistoric man. That part of their

adventures is a record that exceeds the wildest darings of fiction.

Their boats were called _kotches_. They were some sixty feet long,

flat bottomed, planked with green timber. Not a nail was used. Where

were nails to come from six thousand miles across the frozen tundras?

Indeed, iron was so scarce that at a later day when ships with nails

ventured on {296} these seas natives were detected diving below to pull

the nails from the timbers with their teeth. Instead of nails, the

Cossack used reindeer thongs to bind the planking together. Instead of

tar, moss and clay and the tallow of sea animals calked the seams.

Needless to say, there was neither canvas nor rope. Reindeer thongs

supplied the cordage, reindeer hides the sails. On such rickety craft,

"with the help of God and a little powder," the Russian voyagers

hoisted sail and put to sea. On just such vessels did Deshneff and

Staduchin attempt to round Asia from the Arctic into Bering Sea

(1647-1650).

To be sure, the first bang of the ice-floes against the prow of these

rickety boats knocked them into kindling-wood. Two-thirds of the

Cossack voyagers were lost every year; and often all news that came of

the crew was a mast pole washed in by the tide with a dead man lashed

to the crosstrees. Small store of fresh water could be carried. Pine

needles were the only antidote for scurvy; and many a time the boat

came tumbling back to the home port, not a man well enough to stand

before the mast.

Always it is what lies just beyond that lures. It is the unknown that

beckons like the arms of the old sea sirens. Groping through the mists

that hang like a shroud over these northern seas, hoar frosts clinging

to masts and decks till the boat might have been some ghost ship in a

fog world, the Cossack plunderers {297} sometimes caught glimpses far

ahead--twenty, thirty, forty miles eastward--of a black line along the

sea. Was it land or fog, ice or deep water? And when the wind blew

from the east, strange land birds alighted on the yard-arms. Dead

whales with the harpoons of strange hunters washed past the ship; and

driftwood of a kind that did not grow in Asia tossed up on the tide

wrack. It was the word brought back by these free-lances of the sea

that induced Peter the Great to send Vitus Bering on a voyage of

discovery to the west coast of America; and when the castaways of

Bering's wreck returned with a new fur that was neither beaver nor

otter, but larger than either and of a finer sheen than sable, selling

the pelts to Chinese merchants for what would be from one hundred and

fifty to two hundred dollars each in modern money, the effect was the

same as the discovery of a gold mine. The new fur was the sea-otter,

as peculiar to the Pacific as the seal and destined to lead the

Cossacks on a century's wild hunt from Alaska to California. Cossacks,

Siberian merchants, exiled criminals, banded together in as wild a

stampede to the west coast of America as ever a gold mine caused among

civilized men of a later day.

The little _kotches_ that used to cruise out from Siberian rivers no

longer served. Siberian merchants advanced the capital for the

building of large sloops. Cargo of trinkets for trade with American

Indians was supplied in the same way. What would be fifty thousand

dollars in modern money, it took to build and {298} equip one of these

sloops; but a cargo of sea-otter was to be had for the taking--barring

storms that yearly engulfed two-thirds of the hunters, and hostile

Indians that twice wiped Russian settlements from the coast of

America--and if these pelts sold for one hundred and fifty dollars

each, the returns were ample to compensate risk and outlay.

Provisions, cordage, iron, ammunition, firearms, all had to be brought

from St. Petersburg, seven thousand miles to the Pacific coast. From

St. Petersburg to Moscow, Kasan, the Tartar desert and Siberia, pack

horses were used. It was a common thing for caravans of four or even

five thousand pack horses employed by the Russian fur traders of

America to file into Irkutsk of a night. At the head waters of the

Lena, rafts and flatboats, similar to the old Mackinaw boats of

American fur traders on the Missouri, were built and the cargo floated

down to Yakutsk, the great rendezvous of Siberian fur traders. Here

exiles acting as packers and Cossacks as overseers usually went on a

wild ten days' spree. From Yakutsk pack horses, dog trains, and

reindeer teams were employed for the remaining thousand miles to the

Pacific; and this was the hardest part of the journey. Mountains

higher than the Rockies had to be traversed. Mountain torrents

tempestuous with the spring thaw had to be forded--ice cold and to the

armpits of the drivers; and in winter time, the packs of timber wolves

following on the heels of the cavalcade could only be driven off by the

hounds kept to course down grouse and hare {299} for the evening meal.

If an exile forced to act as transport packer fell behind, that was the

last of him. The Russian fur traders of America never paused in their

plans for a life more or less. Ordinarily it took three years for

goods sent from St. Petersburg to reach the Pacific; and this was only

a beginning of the hardships. The Pacific had to be crossed, and a

coast lined with reefs like a ploughed field traversed for two thousand

miles among Indians notorious for their treachery.

The vessels were usually crammed with traps and firearms and trinkets

to the water-line. The crews of forty, or seventy, or one hundred were

relegated to vermin-infested hammocks above decks, with short rations

of rye bread and salt fish, and such scant supply of fresh water that

scurvy invariably ravaged the ship whenever foul weather lengthened the

passage. Having equipped the vessel, the Siberian merchants passed

over the management to the Cossacks, whose pretence of conquering new

realms and collecting tribute for the Czar was only another excuse for

the same plunder in gathering sea-otter as their predecessors had

practised in hunting the sable. Landsmen among Siberian exiles were

enlisted as crew of their own free will at first, but afterward, when

the horrors of wreck and scurvy and massacre became known, both exiles

and Indians were impressed by force as fur hunters for the Cossacks.

If the voyage were successful, half the {300} proceeds went to the

outfitter, the remaining half to Cossacks and crew.

The boats usually sailed in the fall, and wintered on Bering Island.

Here stores of salted meat, sea-lion and sea-cow, were laid up, and the

following spring the ship steered for the Aleutians, or the main coast

of Alaska, or the archipelago round the modern Sitka. Sloops were

anchored offshore fully armed for refuge in case of attack. Huts were

then constructed of driftwood on land. Toward the east and south,

where the Indians were treacherous and made doubly so by the rum and

firearms of rival traders, palisades were thrown up round the fort, a

sort of balcony erected inside with brass cannon mounted where a sentry

paraded day and night, ringing a bell every hour in proof that he was

not asleep. Westward toward the Aleutians, where driftwood was scarce,

the Russians built their forts in one of two places: either a sandy

spit where the sea protected them on three sides, as at Captain Harbor,

Oonalaska, and St. Paul, Kadiak, or on a high, rocky eminence only

approachable by a zigzag path at the top of which stood cannon and

sentry, as at Cook's Inlet. Chapel and barracks for the hunters might

be outside the palisade; but the main house was inside, a single story

with thatch roof, a door at one end, a rough table at the other.

Sleeping berths with fur bedding were on the side walls, and every

other available piece of wall space bristled with daggers and firearms

ready {301} for use. If the house was a double-decker, as Baranof

Castle at Sitka, powder was stored in the cellar. Counting-rooms, mess

room, and fur stores occupied the first floor. Sleeping quarters were

upstairs, and, above all, a powerful light hung in the cupola, to guide

ships into port at night.

But these arrangements concerned only the Cossack officers of the early

era, or the governors like Baranof, of a later day. The rank and file

of the crews were off on the hunting-grounds with the Indians; and the

hunting-grounds of the sea-otter were the storm-beaten kelp beds of the

rockiest coast in the world. Going out in parties of five or six, the

_promyshleniki_, as the hunters were called, promised implicit

obedience to their foreman. Store of venison would be taken in a

preliminary hunt. Indian women and children would be left at the

Russian fort as hostages of good conduct, and at the head of as many as

four, five hundred, a thousand Aleut Indian hunters who had been

bludgeoned, impressed, bribed by the promise of firearms to hunt for

the Cossacks, six Russians would set out to coast a tempestuous sea for

a thousand miles in frail boats made of parchment stretched on

whalebone. Sometimes a counter-tide would sweep a whole flotilla out

to sea, when never a man of the hunting crew would be heard of more.

Sometimes, when the hunters were daring a gale, riding in on the back

of a storm to catch the sea-otter driven ashore to the kelp beds for a

rest, the back-wash of a billow, or a sudden {302} hurricane of wind

raising mountain seas, would crash down on the brigade. When the spray

cleared, the few panic-stricken survivors were washing ashore too

exhausted to be conscious that half their comrades had gone under.

Absurd as it seems that these plunderers of the deep always held

prayers before going off on a hunt--is it any wonder they prayed? It

was in such brigades that the Russian hunters cruised the west coast of

America from Bering Sea to the Gulf of California, and the whole

northwest coast of America is punctuated with saints' names from the

Russian calendar; for, like Drake's freebooters, they had need to pray.

Fur companies world over have run the same course. No sooner has game

become scarce on the hunting-grounds, than rivals begin the merry game

of slitting one another's throats, or instigating savages to do the

butchering for them. That was the record of the Hudson's Bay Company

and Nor'westers in Canada, and the Rocky Mountain men and American

Company on the Missouri. Four years after Bering's crew had brought

back word of the sea-otter in 1742, there were seventy-seven different

private Russian concerns hunting sea-otter off the islands of Alaska.

Fifty years later, after Cook, the English navigator, had spread

authentic news of the wealth in furs to be had on the west coast of

America, there were sixty different fur companies on the Pacific coast

carrying {303} almost as many different flags. John Jacob Astor's

ships had come round the Horn from New York and, sailing right into the

Russian hunting-grounds, were endeavoring to make arrangements to

furnish supplies to the Russians in exchange for cargoes of the

fur-seals, whose rookeries had been discovered about the time sea-otter

began to be scarce. Kendrick, Gray, Ingraham, Coolidge, a dozen Boston

men were threading the shadowy, forested waterways between New Spain

and Alaska.[2] Ships from Spain, from France, from London, from

Canton, from Bengal, from Austria, were on the west coast of America.

The effect was twofold: sea-otter were becoming scarce from being

slaughtered indiscriminately, male and female, young and old; the fur

trade was becoming bedevilled from rival traders using rum among the

savages. The life of a fur trader on the Pacific coast was not worth a

pin's purchase fifty yards away from the cannon mouths pointed through

the netting fastened round the deck rails to keep savages off ships.

Just as Lord Selkirk indirectly brought about the consolidation of the

Hudson's Bay fur traders with Nor'westers, and John Jacob Astor

attempted the same ends between the St. Louis and New York companies,

so a master mind arose among the Russians, grasping the situation, and

ready to cope with its difficulties.

[Illustration: John Jacob Astor.]

This was Gregory Ivanovich Shelikoff, a fur trader {304} of Siberia,

accompanied to America and seconded by his wife, Natalie, who succeeded

in carrying out many of his plans after his death. Shelikoff owned

shares in two of the principal Russian companies. When he came to

America accompanied by his wife, Baranof, another trader, and two

hundred men in 1784, the Russian headquarters were still at Oonalaska

in the Aleutians. Only desultory expeditions had gone eastward.

Foreign ships had already come among the Russian hunting-grounds of the

north. These Shelikoff at once checkmated by moving Russian

headquarters east to Three Saints, Kadiak. Savages warned him from the

island, threatening death to the Aleut Indian hunters he had brought.

Shelikoff's answer was a load of presents to the hostile messenger.

That failing, he took advantage of an eclipse of the sun as a sign to

the superstitious Indians that the coming of the Russians was noted and

blessed of Heaven. The unconvinced Kadiak savages responded by

ambushing the first Russians to leave camp, and showering arrows on the

Russian boats. Shelikoff gathered up his men, sallied forth, whipped

the Indians off their feet, took four hundred prisoners, treated them

well, and so won the friendship of the islanders. From the new

quarters hunters were despatched eastward under Baranof and others as

far as what is now Sitka. These yearly came back with cargoes of

sea-otter worth two hundred thousand dollars. Shelikoff at once saw

that if the Russian traders were to hold their own against {305} the

foreign adventurers of all nations flocking to the Pacific,

headquarters must be moved still farther eastward, and the prestige of

the Russian government invoked to exclude foreigners. There were, in

fact, no limits to the far-sighted ambitions of the man. Ships were to

be despatched to California setting up signs of Russian possession.

Forts in Hawaii could be used as a mid-Pacific arsenal and halfway

house for the Russian fleet that was to dominate the North Pacific. A

second Siberia on the west coast of America, with limits eastward as

vague as the Hudson's Bay Company's claims westward, was to be added to

the domains of the Czar. Whether the idea of declaring the North

Pacific a _closed sea_ as Spain had declared the South Pacific a

_closed sea_ till Francis Drake opened it, originated in the brain of

Shelikoff, or his successors, is immaterial. It was the aggrandizement

of the Russian American Fur Company as planned by Shelikoff from 1784

to 1796, that led to the Russian government trying to exclude foreign

traders from the North Pacific twenty-five years later, and which in

turn led to the declaration of the famous Monroe Doctrine by the United

States in 1823--that the New World was no longer to be the happy

hunting-ground of Old World nations bent on conquest and colonization.

Like many who dream greatly, Shelikoff did not live to see his plans

carried out. He died in Irkutsk in 1795; but in St. Petersburg, when

pressing upon {306} the government the necessity of uniting all the

independent traders in one all-powerful company to be given exclusive

monopoly on the west coast of America, he had met and allied himself

with a young courtier, Nikolai Rezanoff.[3] When Shelikoff died,

Rezanoff it was who obtained from the Czar in 1799 a charter for the

Russian American Fur Company, giving it exclusive monopoly for hunting,

trading, and exploring north of 55 degrees in the Pacific. Other

companies were compelled either to withdraw or join. Royalty took

shares in the venture. Shareholders of St. Petersburg were to direct

affairs, and Baranof, the governor, resident in America, to have power

of life and death, despotic as a czar. By 1800 the capital of Russian

America had been moved down to the modern Sitka, called Archangel

Michael in the trust of the Lord's anointed protecting these plunderers

of the sea. Shelikoff's dreams were coming true. Russia was

checkmating the advances of England and the United States and New

Spain. Schemes were in the air with Baranof for the impressment of

Siberian exiles as peasant farmers among the icebergs of Prince William

Sound, for the remission of one-tenth tribute in furs from the Aleuts

on condition of free service as hunters with the company, and for the

employment of Astor's ships as purveyors of provisions to Sitka, when

there fell a bolt {307} from the blue that well-nigh wiped Russian

possession from the face of America.

It was a sleepy summer afternoon toward the end of June in 1802.

Baranof had left a guard of twenty or thirty Russians at Sitka and,

confident that all was well, had gone north to Kadiak. Aleut Indians,

impressed as hunters, were about the fort, for the fiery Kolosh or

Sitkans of this region would not bow the neck to Russian tyranny. Safe

in the mountain fastnesses behind the fort, they refused to act as

slaves. How they regarded this invasion of their hunting-ground by

alien Indians--Indians acting as slaves--may be guessed.[4] Whether

rival traders, deserters from an American ship, living with the Sitkan

Indians, instigated the conspiracy cannot be known. I have before me

letters written by a fur trader of a rival company at that time,

declaring if a certain trader did not cease his methods, that "pills

would be bought at Montreal with as good poison as pills from London;"

and the sentiment of the writer gives a true idea of the code that

prevailed among American fur traders.

The fort at that time occupied a narrow strip between a dense forest

and the rocky water front a few miles north of the present site.

Whether the renegade American sailors living in the forests with the

Kolosh betrayed all the inner plans of the fort, or the squaws daily

passing in and out with berries kept their {308} countrymen informed of

Russian movements, the blow was struck when the whites were off guard.

It was a holiday. Half the Russians were outside the palisades

unarmed, fishing. The remaining fifteen men seem to have been upstairs

about midday in the rooms of the commander, Medvednikoff. Suddenly the

sleepy sentry parading the balcony noticed Michael, chief of the

Kolosh, standing on the shore shouting at sixty canoes to land quickly.

Simultaneously the patter of moccasined feet came from the dense forest

to the rear--a thousand Kolosh warriors, every Indian armed and wearing

the death-mask of battle. Before the astounded sentry could sound an

alarm, such a hideous uproar of shouts arose as might have come from

bedlam let loose. The Indian always imitates the cries of the wild

beast when he fights--imitates or sets free the wild beast in his own

nature. For a moment the Russians were too dumfounded to collect their

senses. Then women and children dashed for refuge upstairs in the main

building, huddling over the trapdoor in a frenzy of fright. Russians

outside the palisades ran for the woods, some to fall lanced through

the back as they raced, others to reach shelter of the dense forest,

where they lay for eight days under hiding of bark and moss before

rescue came. Medvednikoff, the commander, and a dozen others, seem to

have hurled themselves downstairs at the first alarm, but already the

outer doors had been rammed. The panels of the inner door were slashed

out. A flare of {309} musketry met the Russians full in the face. The

defenders dropped to a man, fearless in death as in life, though one

wounded fellow seems to have dragged himself to the balcony where he

succeeded in firing off the cannon before he was thrown over the

palisades, to be received on the hostiles' upturned spears. Meanwhile

wads of burning birch bark and moss had been tossed into the fort on

the powder magazines. A high wind fanned the flames. A terrific

explosion shook the fort. The trap-door where the women huddled

upstairs gave way. Half the refugees fell through, where they were

either butchered or perished in the flames. The others plunged from

the burning building through the windows. A few escaped to the woods.

The rest--Aleut women, wives of the Russians--were taken captive by the

Kolosh. Ships, houses, fortress, all were in flames. By nightfall

nothing remained of Sitka but the brass and iron of the melted cannon.

The hostiles had saved loot of some two thousand sea-otter skins.

All that night, and for eight days and nights, the refugees of the

forest lay hidden under bark and moss. Under cover of darkness, one, a

herdsman, ventured down to the charred ruins of Sitka. The mangled,

headless bodies of the Russians lay in the ashes. At noon of the

eighth day the mountains suddenly rocked to the echo of two

cannon-shots from the bay. A ship had come. Three times one Russian

ventured to the shore, and three times was chased back to the woods;

{310} but he had seen enough. The ship was an English trader under

Captain Barber, who finally heard the shouts of the pursued man, put

off a small boat and rescued him. Three others were saved from the

woods in the same way, but had been only a few days on the ship, when

Michael, the Kolosh chief, emboldened by success, rowed out with a

young warrior and asked the English captain to give up the Russians.

Barber affected not to understand, lured both Indians on board, seized

them, put them in irons, and tied them across a cannon mouth, when he

demanded the restoration of all captives and loot; but the Sitkan chief

probably had his own account of who suggested the massacre. Also it

was to the English captain's interests to remain on good terms with the

Indians. Anyway, the twenty captives were not restored till two other

ships had entered port, and sent some Kolosh canoes to bottom with

grape-shot. The savages were then set free, and hastening up to

Kadiak, Barber levelled his cannon at the Russian fort and demanded

thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars' salvage for the rescue of

the captives and loot. Baranof haggled the Englishman tired, and

compromised for one-fifth the demand.

Two years passed, and the fur company was powerless to strike an

avenging blow. Wherever the Russians led Aleuts into the Kolosh

hunting-grounds, there had been ambush and massacre; but Baranof {311}

bided his time. The Aleut Indian hunters, who had become

panic-stricken, gradually regained sufficient courage again to follow

the Russians eastward. By the spring of 1804 Baranof's men had

gathered up eight hundred Aleut Indians, one hundred and twenty Russian

hunters, four small schooners, and two sloops. The Indians in their

light boats of sea-lion skin on whalebone, the Russians in their

sail-boats, Baranof set out in April from St. Paul, Kadiak, with his

thousand followers to wreak vengeance on the tribes of Sitka.

Sea-otter were hunted on the way, so that it was well on in September

before the brigades entered Sitka waters. Meanwhile aid from an

unexpected quarter had come to the fur company. Lieutenant Krusenstern

had prevailed on the Russian government to send supplies to the Russian

American Company by two vessels around the world instead of caravans

across Siberia. With Krusenstern went Rezanoff, who had helped the fur

traders to obtain their charter, and was now commissioned to open an

embassy to Japan. The second vessel under Captain Lisiansky proceeded

at once to Baranof's aid at Sitka.

Baranof was hunting when Lisiansky's man-of-war entered the gloomy

wilds of Sitka Sound. The fur company's two sloops lay at anchor with

lanterns swinging bow and stern to guide the hunters home. The eight

hundred hostiles had fortified themselves behind the site of the modern

Sitka. Palisades the depth of two spruce logs ran across the front of

the {312} rough barricade, loopholed for musketry, and protected by a

sort of cheval-de-frise of brushwood and spines. At the rear of the

enemy's fort ran sally ports leading to the ambush of the woods, and

inside were huts enough to house a small town. By the 28th of

September Baranof's Aleut Indian hunters had come in and camped

alongshore under protection of cannon sent close inland on a small

boat. It was a weird scene that the Russian officers witnessed, the

enemy's fort, unlighted and silent as death, the Aleut hunters

alongshore dancing themselves into a frenzy of bravado, the spruce

torches of the coast against the impenetrable forest like fireflies in

a thicket; an occasional fugitive canoe from the enemy attempting to

steal through the darkness out of the harbor, only to be blown to bits

by a cannon-shot. The ships began to line up and land field-pieces for

action, when a Sitkan came out with overtures of peace. Baranof gave

him the present of a gay coat, told him the fort must be surrendered,

and chiefs sent to the Russians as hostages of good conduct. Thirty

warriors came the next day, but the whites insisted on chiefs as

hostages, and the braves retired. On October the first a white flag

was run up on the ship of war. No signal answered from the barricade.

The Russian ships let blaze all the cannon simultaneously, only to find

that the double logs of the barricade could not be penetrated. No

return fire came from the Sitkans. Two small boats were then landed to

destroy the enemy's {313} stores. Still not a sign from the barricade.

Raging with impatience, Baranof went ashore supported by one hundred

and fifty men, and with a wild halloo led the way to rush the fort.

The hostile Sitkans husbanded their strength with a coolness equal to

the famous thin red line of British fame. Not a signal, not a sound,

not the faintest betrayal of their strength or weakness till in the

dusk Baranof was within gunshot of the logs, when his men were met with

a solid wall of fire. The Aleuts stopped, turned, stampeded. Out

sallied the Sitkans pursuing Russians and Aleuts to the water's edge,

where the body of one dead Russian was brandished on spear ends. In

the sortie fourteen of the Russian forces were killed, twenty-six

wounded, among whom was Baranof, shot through the shoulder. The guns

of the war ship were all that saved the retreat from a panic.

Lisiansky then undertook the campaign, letting drive such a brisk fire

the next day that the Sitkans came suing for peace by the afternoon.

Three days the cunning savages stayed the Russian attack on pretence of

arranging hostages. Hailing the fort on the morning of the 6th and

securing no answer, Lisiansky again played his cannon on the barricade.

That night a curious sound, that was neither chant nor war-cry, came

from the thick woods. At daylight carrion crows were seen circling

above the barricade. Three hundred Russians landed. Approaching

cautiously for fear of ambuscade, they clambered over the {314}

palisades and looked. The fort was deserted. Naught of the Sitkans

remained but thirty dead warriors and all their children, murdered

during the night to prevent their cries betraying the retreat.

New Archangel, as it was called, was built on the site of the present

Sitka. Sixteen short and forty-two long cannon mounted the walls. As

many as seven hundred officers and men were sometimes on garrison duty.

Twelve officers frequently dined at the governor's table; and here, in

spite of bishops and priests and deacons who later came on the ground,

the revellers of the Russian fur hunters held high carnival.

Thirty-six forts and twelve vessels the Russian American fur hunters

owned twenty years after the loss of Sitka. New Archangel became more

important to the Pacific than San Francisco. Nor was it a mistake to

move the capital so far south. Within a few years Russian traders and

their Indians were north as far as the Yukon, south hunting sea-otter

as far as Santa Barbara. To enumerate but a few of the American

vessels that yearly hunted sea-otter for the Russians southward of

Oregon and California, taking in pay skins of the seal islands, would

fill a coasting list. Rezanoff, who had failed to open the embassy to

Japan and so came across to America, spent two months in Monterey and

San Francisco trying to arrange with the Spaniards to supply the

Russians with provisions. He was received coldly by the Spanish

governor till {315} a love affair sprang up with the daughter of the

don, so ardent that the Russian must depart post-haste across Siberia

for the Czar's sanction to the marriage. Worn out by the midwinter

journey, he died on his way across Siberia.

[Illustration: Sitka from the Sea.]

Later, in 1812, when the Russian coasters were refused watering

privileges at San Francisco, the Russian American Company bought land

near Bodega, and settled their famous Ross, or California colony, with

cannon, barracks, arsenal, church, workshops, and sometimes a

population of eight hundred Kadiak Indians. Here provisions were

gathered for Sitka, and hunters despatched for sea-otter of the south.

The massacres on the Yukon and the clashes with the Hudson's Bay

traders are a story by themselves. The other doings of these "Sea

Voyagers" became matters of international history when they tried to

exclude American and British traders from the Pacific. The fur hunters

in the main were only carrying out the far-reaching plans of Shelikoff,

who originated the charter for the company; but even Shelikoff could

hardly foresee that the country which the Russian government was

willing to sell to the United States in 1867 for seven million dollars,

would produce more than twice that during a single year in gold.

To-day all that remains to Russia of these sea voyagers' plundering are

two small islands, Copper and Bering in Bering Sea.

[1] Coxe and Müller are the two great authorities on the early Russian

fur trade. Data on later days can be found in abundance in

Krusenstern's _Voyage_, London, 1813; Kohl's _History_, London, 1862;

Langsdorff's _Travels_, London, 1813; Stejneger's _Contributions to

Smithsonian_, 1884, and _Report on Commander Islands_; Elliott's _Our

Arctic Province_; Dall's _Alaska_; Veniaminof's _Letters on Aleutians_;

Cleveland's _Voyages_, 1842, Nordenskjöld's _Voyage of the Vega_;

Macfie's _Vancouver Island_; Ivan Petroff's _Report on Alaska_, 1880;

Lisiansky's _Voyage Round the World_; Sauer's _Geographical Account of

Expedition to Northern Parts_; Kotzebue's _Voyages of Discovery_, 1819,

and _New Voyage_, 1831; Chappe d'Auteroche's _Siberia_ and

Kracheninnikof's _Kamchatka_, 1764; Simpson's _Voyage Round World_,

1847; Burney's _Voyages_; Gmelin's _Siberia_, Paris, 1767; Greenhow's

_Oregon_; Pallas's _Northern Settlements_; Broughton's _Voyage_, 1804;

Berg's _Aleutian Islands_; Bancroft's _Alaska_; _Massa. Hist. Coll._,

1793-1795; _U. S. Congressional Reports_ from 1867; Martin's _Hudson's

Bay Territories_, London, 1849.

[2] Over one hundred American ships had been on the Pacific coast of

America before 1812.

[3] Rezanoff married the fur trader's daughter. The bride did not live

long, nor does the union seem to have been a love affair; as Rezanoff's

infatuation with the daughter of a Spanish don later seemed to indicate

a heart-free lover.

[4] See Chapter XII.

{316}

CHAPTER XII

1747-1818

BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR OF THE PACIFIC

Baranof lays the Foundations of Russian Empire on the Pacific Coast of

America--Shipwrecked on his Way to Alaska, he yet holds his Men in Hand

and turns the Ill-hap to Advantage--How he bluffs the Rival Fur

Companies in Line--First Russian Ship built in America--Adventures

leading the Sea-otter Hunters--Ambushed by the Indians--The Founding of

Sitka--Baranof, cast off in his Old Age, dies of Broken Heart

No wilder lord of the wild northland ever existed than that old madcap

Viking of the Pacific, Alexander Baranof, governor of the Russian fur

traders. For thirty years he ruled over the west coast of America from

Alaska to southern California despotic as a czar. And he played the

game single-handed, no retinue but convicts from Siberia, no subjects

but hostile Indians.

Whether leading the hunting brigades of a thousand men over the sea in

skin canoes light as cork, or rallying his followers ambushed by

hostiles repelling invasion of their hunting-ground, or drowning

hardships with seas of fiery Russian brandy in midnight carousals,

Baranof was supreme autocrat. Drunk or {317} sober, he was master of

whatever came, mutineers or foreign traders planning to oust Russians

from the coast of America. Baranof stood for all that was best and all

that was worst in that heroic period of Pacific coast history when

adventurers from all corners of the earth roamed the otter-hunting

grounds in quest of fortune. Each man was a law unto himself. There

was fear of neither man nor devil. The whole era might have been a

page from the hero epic of prehistoric days when earth was young, and

men ranged the seas unhampered by conscience or custom, magnificent

beasts of prey, glorying in freedom and bloodshed and the warring

elements.

[Illustration: Alexander Baranof.]

Yet in person Baranof was far from a hero. He was wizened, sallow,

small, a margin of red hair round a head bald as a bowl, grotesque

under a black wig tied on with a handkerchief. And he had gone up in

life much the way a monkey climbs, by shifts and scrambles and

prehensile hoists with frequent falls. It was an ill turn of fortune

that sent him to America in the first place. He had been managing a

glass factory at Irkutsk, Siberia, where the endless caravans of fur

traders passed. Born at Kargopol, East Russia, in 1747, he had drifted

to Moscow, set up in a shop for himself at twenty-four, failed in

business, and emigrated to Siberia at thirty-five. Tales of profit in

the fur trade were current at Irkutsk. Tired of stagnating in what was

an absolutely safe but unutterably monotonous life, Baranof left the

factory and invested all his {318} savings in the fur trade to the

Indians of northern Siberia and Kamchatka. For some years all went

well. Baranof invested deeper, borrowing for his ventures. Then the

Chukchee Indians swooped down on his caravans, stampeded the pack

horses, scuttled the goods, and Baranof was a bankrupt. The rival fur

companies on the west coast of America were now engaged in the merry

game of cutting each other's throats--literally and without restraint.

A strong hand was needed--a hand that could weld the warring elements

into one, and push Russian trade far down from Alaska to New Spain,

driving off the field those foreigners whose relentless

methods--liquor, bludgeon, musket--were demoralizing the Indian

sea-otter hunters.

Destitute and bankrupt, Baranof was offered one-sixth of the profits to

become governor of the chief Russian company. On August 10, 1790,

about the same time that John Jacob Astor also embarked in the fur

trade that was to bring him in contact with the Russians, Baranof

sailed to America.

Fifty-two men the ragamuffin crew numbered, exiles, convicts, branded

criminals, raggedly clad and ill-fed, sleeping wherever they could on

the littered and vermin-infested decks; for what did the lives of a

convict crew matter? Below decks was crammed to the waterline with

goods for trade. All thought for furs, small care for men; and a few

days out from port, the water-casks were found to be leaking so badly

that allowance {319} of drinking water was reduced; and before the

equinoctial gales, scurvy had already disabled the crew. Baranof did

not turn back, nor allow the strong hand of authority to relax over his

men as poor Bering had. He ordered all press of sail, and with the

winds whistling through the rigging and the little ship straining to

the smashing seas, did his best to outspeed disease, sighting the long

line of surf-washed Aleutian Islands in September, coasting from

headland to headland, keeping well offshore for fear of reefs till the

end of the month, when compelled to turn in to the mid-bay of Oonalaska

for water. There was no ignoring the danger of the landing. A shore

like the walls of a giant rampart with reefs in the teeth of a saw,

lashed to a fury by beach combers, offered poor escape from death by

scurvy. Nevertheless, Baranof effected anchorage at Koshigin Bay, sent

the small boats ashore for water, watched his chance of a seaward

breeze, and ran out to sea again in one desperate effort to reach

Kadiak, the headquarters of the fur traders, before winter. Outside

the shelter of the harbor, wind and seas met the ship. She was driven

helpless as a chip in a whirlpool straight for the granite rocks of the

shore, where she smashed to pieces like the broken staves of a dry

water-barrel. Led by the indomitable Baranof, who seemed to meet the

challenge of the very elements, the half-drowned crew crawled ashore

only to be ordered to save the cargo now rolling up in the wave wash.

{320} When darkness settled over the sea on the last night of

September, Baranof was in the same predicament as Bering--a castaway

for the winter on a barren island. Instead of sinking under the

redoubled blows of an adverse fate, the little Russian rebounded like a

rubber ball. A messenger and some Indians were at once despatched in a

skin boat to coast from island to island in an effort to get help from

Kadiak. Meanwhile Baranof did not sit lamenting with folded hands; and

well that he did not; for his messengers never reached Kadiak.

Holes were at once scooped out of the sand, and the caves roofed over

with the remnants of the wreck. These underground huts on an island

destitute of wood were warmer than surface cabins, and better withstood

the terrible north winds that swept down from the Arctic with such

force that for two months at a time the men could go outside only by

crawling under shelter of the boulders. Ammunition was distributed to

the fifty castaways; salmon bought from the Indians, whom Baranof's

fair treatment won from the first; once a week, rye meal was given out

for soup; and for the rest, the men had to depend on the eggs of

sea-birds, that flocked over the precipitous shores in myriads, or on

the sea-lions roaring till the surf shook on the rocky islets along the

shore.

If there is one characteristic more than another that proves a man

master of destiny, it is ability not only to meet misfortune but to

turn it to advantage when it {321} comes. While waiting for the rescue

that never came, Baranof studied the language of the Aleuts, sent his

men among them to learn to hunt, rode out to sea in their frail skin

boats lashed abreast to keep from swamping during storm, slept at night

on the beach with no covering but the overturned canoes, and, sharing

every hardship, set traps with his own hands. When the weather was too

boisterous for hunting, he set his people boiling salt from sea-water

to dry supplies of fish for the summer, or replenishing their ragged

clothes by making coats of birds' skin. The last week before Easter,

provisions were so low the whole crew were compelled to indulge in a

Lenten fast; but on Easter Monday, behold a putrid whale thrown ashore

by the storm! The fast was followed by a feast. The winds subsided,

and hunters brought in sea-lions.

It was quite apparent now no help was coming from Kadiak. Baranof had

three large boats made of skin and wreckage. One he left with the men,

who were to guard the remnants of the cargo. A second he despatched

with twenty-six men. In the third he himself embarked, now in a raging

fever from the exposure of the winter. A year all but a month from the

time he had left Asia, Baranof reached Three Saints, Kadiak, on June

27, 1791.

Things were black enough when Baranof landed at Kadiak. The settlement

of Three Saints had been depending on the supplies of his wrecked ship;

and {322} when he arrived, himself in need, discontent flared to open

mutiny. Five different rival companies had demoralized the Indians by

supplying them with liquor, and egging them on to raid other traders.

Southward, toward Nootka, were hosts of foreign ships--Gray and

Kendrick and Ingraham from Boston, Vancouver from England, Meares from

East India, Quadra from New Spain, private ventures outfitted by Astor

from New York. If Russia were to preserve her hunting-grounds, no time

should be lost.

Baranof met the difficulties like a commander of guerilla warfare.

Brigades were sent eastward to the fishing-ground of Cook's Inlet for

supplies. Incipient mutiny was quelled by sending more hunters off

with Ismyloff to explore new sea-otter fields in Prince William Sound.

As for the foreign fur traders, he conceived the brilliant plan of

buying food from them in exchange for Russian furs and of supplying

them with brigades of Aleut Island hunters to scour the Pacific for

sea-otter from Nootka and the Columbia to southern California. This

would not only add to stores of Russian furs, but push Russian dominion

southward, and keep other nations off the field.

That it was not all plain sailing on a summer day may be inferred from

one incident. He had led out a brigade of several hundred canoes,

Indians and Russians, to Nuchek Island, off Prince William Sound.

Though he had tried to win the friendship of the coast Indians by

gifts, it was necessary to steal from point {323} to point at night,

and to hide at many places as he coasted the mainland. Throwing up

some sort of rough barricade at Nuchek Island, he sent the most of his

men off to fish and remained with only sixteen Aleuts and Russians. It

was perfectly natural that the Alaskan Indians should resent the Aleuts

intruding on the hunting-grounds of the main coast, one thousand miles

from the Aleutian Islands. Besides, the mainland Indians had now

learned unscrupulous brutality from foreign traders. Baranof knew his

danger and never relaxed vigilance. Of the sixteen men, five always

stood sentry at night.

The night of June 20 was pitch dark. Terrific seas were running, and a

tempest raged through the woods of the mainland. For safety,

Ismyloff's ship had scudded to the offing. Baranof had undressed,

thrown himself down in his cabin, and was in the deep sleep of outdoor

exhaustion, when above the howling of the gale, not five steps away, so

close it was impossible to distinguish friend from foe in the darkness,

arose the shrill war-cry of hostiles. Leaping to his feet, Baranof

rushed out undressed. His shirt was torn to shreds by a shower of

flint and copper-head arrows. In the dark, the Russians could only

fire blindly. The panic-stricken Aleuts dashed for their canoes to

escape to Ismyloff's ship. Ismyloff sent armed Russians through the

surf wash and storm to Baranof's aid. Baranof kept his small cannon

pounding hot shot where the shouts sounded till daylight. Of the

sixteen men, two {324} Russians and nine Aleuts were dead. Of the men

who came to his aid, fifteen were wounded. The corpses of twelve

hostiles lay on the beach; and as gray dawn came over the tempestuous

sea, six large war canoes vanished into the morning mist, a long trail

of blood over the waves showing that the hostiles were carrying off

their wounded. Well might Baranof write, "I will vanquish a cruel

fate; or fall under its repeated blows." The most of men would have

thought they had sufficient excuse to justify backing out of their

difficulties. Baranof locked grapples with the worst that destiny

could do; and never once let go. Sometimes the absolute futility of so

much striving, so much hardship, so much peril, all for the sake of the

crust of bread that represents mere existence, sent him down to black

depths of rayless despondency, when he asked himself, was life worth

while? But he never let go his grip, his sense of resistance, his

impulse to fight the worst, the unshunnable obligation of being alive

and going on with the game, succeed or fail. Such fits of despair

might end in wild carousals, when he drank every Russian under the

table, outshouted the loudest singer, and perhaps wound up by throwing

the roomful of revellers out of doors. But he rose from the depths of

debauch and despair, and went on with the game. That was the main

point.