1848. When Meek arrived at Coleman's it was the dinner hour, and
following the crowd to the dining saloon, he took the first seat he came
to, not without being very much stared at. He had taken his cue and the
staring was not unexpected, consequently not so embarrassing as it might
otherwise have been. A bill of fare was laid beside his plate. Turning
to the colored waiter who placed it there, he startled him first by
inquiring in a low growling voice--
"What's that boy?"
"Bill of fare, sah," replied the "boy," who recognized the Southerner in
the use of that one word.
"Read!" growled Meek again. "The people in _my_ country can't read."
Though taken by surprise, the waiter, politely obedient, proceeded to
enumerate the courses on the bill of fare. When he came to game----
"Stop thar, boy!" commanded Meek, "what kind of game?"
"Small game, sah."
"Fetch me a piece of antelope," leaning back in his chair with a look of
satisfaction on his face.
"Got none of that sah; don't know what that ar' sah."
"Don't know!" with a look of pretended surprise. "In _my_ country
antelope and deer ar' small game; bear and buffalo ar' large game. I
reckon if you haven't got one, you haven't got the other, either. In
that case you may fetch me some beef."
The waiter disappeared grinning, and soon returned with the customary
thin and small cut, which Meek eyed at first contemptuously, and then
accepting it in the light of a sample swallowed it at two mouthfuls,
returning his plate to the waiter with an approving smile, and saying
loud enough to be overheard by a score of people----
"Boy, that will do. Fetch me about four pounds of the same kind."
By this time the blanketed beef-eater was the recipient of general
attention, and the "boy" who served him comprehending with that
quickness which distinguishes servants, that he had no ordinary
backwoodsman to deal with, was all the time on the alert to make himself
useful. People stared, then smiled, then asked each other "who is it?"
loud enough for the stranger to hear. Meek looked neither to the right
nor to the left, pretending not to hear the whispering. When he had
finished his beef, he again addressed himself to the attentive "boy."
"That's better meat than the old mule I eat in the mountains."
Upon this remark the whispering became more general, and louder, and
smiles more frequent.
"What have you got to drink, boy?" continued Meek, still unconscious.
"Isn't there a sort of wine called--some kind of _pain_?"
"Champagne, sah?"
"That's the stuff, I reckon; bring me some."
While Meek drank his champagne, with an occasional aside to his faithful
attendant, people laughed and wondered "who the devil it was." At
length, having finished his wine, and overhearing many open inquiries as
to his identity, the hero of many bear-fights slowly arose, and
addressing the company through the before-mentioned "boy," said:
"You want to know who I am?"
"If you please, sah; yes, if you please, sah, for the sake of these
gentlemen present," replied the "boy," answering for the company.
"Wall then," proclaimed Meek with a grandiloquent air quite at variance
with his blanket coat and unkempt hair, yet which displayed his fine
person to advantage, "I am Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary from the Republic of Oregon to the Court of the United
States!"
With that he turned and strode from the room. He had not proceeded far,
however, before he was overtaken by a party of gentlemen in pursuit.
Senator Underwood of Kentucky immediately introduced himself, calling
the envoy by name, for the dispatch from St. Louis had prepared the
President and the Senate for Meek's appearance in Washington, though it
had not advised them of his style of dress and address. Other gentlemen
were introduced, and questions followed questions in rapid succession.
When curiosity was somewhat abated, Meek expressed a wish to see the
President without delay. To Underwood's question as to whether he did
not wish to make his toilet before visiting the White House, his reply
was, "business first, and toilet afterwards."
"But," said Underwood, "even your business can wait long enough for
that."
"No, that's your mistake, Senator, and I'll tell you why: I can't dress,
for two reasons, both good ones. I've not got a cent of money, nor a
second suit of clothes."
The generous Kentuckian offered to remove the first of the objections
on the spot, but Meek declined. "I'll see the President first, and hear
what he has to say about my mission." Then calling a coach from the
stand, he sprang into it, answering the driver's question of where he
would be taken, with another inquiry.
"Whar should a man of _my_ style want to go?--to the White House, of
course!" and so was driven away amid the general laughter of the
gentlemen in the portico at Coleman's, who had rather doubted his
intention to pay his respects to the President in his dirty blankets.
He was admitted to the Presidential mansion by a mulatto of about his
own age, with whom he remembered playing when a lad, for it must be
remembered that the Meeks and Polks were related, and this servant had
grown up in the family. On inquiring if he could see the President, he
was directed to the office of the private Secretary, Knox Walker, also a
relative of Meek's on the mother's side.
On entering he found the room filled with gentlemen waiting to see the
President, each when his turn to be admitted should arrive. The
Secretary sat reading a paper, over the top of which he glanced but once
at the new comer, to ask him to be seated. But Meek was not in the humor
for sitting. He had not traveled express for more than two months, in
storm and cold, on foot and on horseback, by day and by night, with or
without food, as it chanced, to sit down quietly now and wait. So he
took a few turns up and down the room, and seeing that the Secretary
glanced at him a little curiously, stopped and said:
"I should like to see the President immediately. Just tell him if you
please that there is a gentleman from Oregon waiting to see him on very
important business."
At the word _Oregon_, the Secretary sprang up, dashed his paper to the
ground, and crying out "Uncle Joe!" came forward with both hands
extended to greet his long lost relative.
"Take care, Knox! don't come too close," said Meek stepping back, "I'm
ragged, dirty, and--lousy."
[Illustration: "TAKE CARE, KNOX."]
But Walker seized his cousin's hand, without seeming fear of the
consequences, and for a few moments there was an animated exchange of
questions and answers, which Meek at last interrupted to repeat his
request to be admitted to the President without delay. Several times the
Secretary turned to leave the room, but as often came back with some
fresh inquiry, until Meek fairly refused to say another word, until he
had delivered his dispatches.
When once the Secretary got away he soon returned with a request from
the President for the appearance of the Oregon messenger, all other
visitors being dismissed for that day. Polk's reception proved as
cordial as Walker's had been. He seized the hand of his newly found
relative, and welcomed him in his own name, as well as that of messenger
from the distant, much loved, and long neglected Oregon. The interview
lasted for a couple of hours. Oregon affairs and family affairs were
talked over together; the President promising to do all for Oregon that
he could do; at the same time he bade Meek make himself at home in the
Presidential mansion, with true southern hospitality.
But Meek, although he had carried off his poverty and all his
deficiencies in so brave a style hitherto, felt his assurance leaving
him, when, his errand performed, he stood in the presence of rank and
elegance, a mere mountain-man in ragged blankets, whose only wealth
consisted of an order for five hundred dollars on the Methodist mission
in New York, unavailable for present emergencies. And so he declined the
hospitalities of the White House, saying he "could make himself at home
in an Indian wigwam in Oregon, or among the Rocky Mountains, but in the
residence of the chief magistrate of a great nation, he felt out of
place, and ill at ease."
Polk, however, would listen to no refusal, and still further abashed his
Oregon cousin by sending for Mrs. Polk and Mrs. Walker, to make his
acquaintance. Says Meek:
"When I heard the silks rustling in the passage, I felt more frightened
than if a hundred Blackfeet had whooped in my ear. A mist came over my
eyes, and when Mrs. Polk spoke to me I couldn't think of anything to say
in return."
But the ladies were so kind and courteous that he soon began to see a
little, though not quite plainly while their visit lasted. Before the
interview with the President and his family was ended, the poverty of
the Oregon envoy became known, which led to the immediate supplying of
all his wants. Major Polk was called in and introduced; and to him was
deputed the business of seeing Meek "got up" in a style creditable to
himself and his relations. Meek avers that when he had gone through the
hands of the barber and tailor, and surveyed himself in a full length
mirror, he was at first rather embarrassed, being under the impression
that he was being introduced to a fashionable and decidedly good-looking
gentleman, before whose overpowering style he was disposed to shrink,
with the old familiar feeling of being in blankets.
But Meek was not the sort of man to be long in getting used to a
situation however novel or difficult. In a very short time he was _au
fait_ in the customs of the capital. His perfect frankness led people to
laugh at his errors as eccentricities; his good looks and natural
_bonhomie_ procured him plenty of admirers; while his position at the
White House caused him to be envied and lionized at once.
On the day following his arrival the President sent in a message to
Congress accompanied by the memorial from the Oregon legislature and
other documents appertaining to the Oregon cause. Meek was introduced to
Benton, Oregon's indefatigable friend, and received from him the kindest
treatment; also to Dallas, President of the Senate; Douglas, Fremont,
Gen. Houston, and all the men who had identified themselves with the
interests of the West.
It should be stated that only a short time previous to the Waiilatpu
massacre a delegate had left Oregon for Washington, by ship around Cape
Horn, who had been accredited by the governor of the colony only, and
that the legislature had subsequently passed resolutions expressive of
their disapproval of "secret factions," by which was meant the mission
party, whose delegate Mr. Thornton was.
It so happened that, by reason of the commander of the _Portsmouth_
having assumed it to be a duty to convey Mr. Thornton from La Paz, where
through the infidelity of the Captain of the _Whitton_, he was stranded,
he was enabled to reach the States early in the Spring, arriving in fact
a week or two before Meek reached Washington. Thus Oregon had two
representatives, although not entitled to any: nor had either a right to
a seat in either House; yet to one this courtesy was granted, while the
two together controlled more powerful influences than were ever before
or since brought to bear on the fate of any single territory of the
United States. While Mr. Thornton sat among Senators as a sort of
consulting member or referee, but without a vote; Meek had the private
ear of the President, and mingled freely among members of both Houses,
in a social character, thereby exercising a more immediate influence
than his more learned coadjutor.
In the meantime our hero was making the most of his advantages. He went
to dinners and champagne suppers, besides giving an occasional one of
the latter. At the presidential levees he made himself agreeable to
witty and distinguished ladies, answering innumerable questions about
Oregon and Indians, generally with a veil of reserve between himself and
the questioner whenever the inquiries became, as they sometimes would,
disagreeably searching. Again the spirit of perversity and mischief led
him to make his answers so very direct as to startle or bewilder the
questioner.
On one occasion a lady with whom he was promenading a drawing-room at
some Senator's reception, admiring his handsome physique perhaps, and
wondering if any woman owned it, finally ventured the question--was he
married?
"Yes, indeed," answered Meek, with emphasis, "I have a wife and several
children."
"Oh dear," exclaimed the lady, "I should think your wife would be _so_
afraid of the Indians!"
"Afraid of the Indians!" exclaimed Meek in his turn; "why, madam, she is
an Indian herself!"
No further remarks on the subject were ventured that evening; and it is
doubtful if the lady did not take his answer as a rebuke to her
curiosity rather than the plain truth that it was.
Meek found his old comrade, Kit Carson, in Washington, staying with
Fremont at the house of Senator Benton. Kit, who had left the mountains
as poor as any other of the mountain-men, had no resource at that time
except the pay furnished by Fremont for his services as guide and
explorer in the California and Oregon expeditions; where, in fact, it
was Carson and not Fremont who deserved fame as a path-finder. However
that may be, Carson had as little money as men of his class usually
have, and needed it as much. So long as Meek's purse was supplied, as it
generally was, by some member of the family at the White House, Carson
could borrow from him. But one being quite as careless of money as the
other, they were sometimes both out of pocket at the same time. In that
case the conversation was apt to take a turn like this:
_Carson._ Meek, let me have some money, can't you?
_Meek._ I haven't got any money, Kit.
_Carson._ Go and get some.
_Meek._ ---- it, whar am I to get money from?
_Carson._ Try the "contingent fund," can't you?
Truth to tell the contingent fund was made to pay for a good many things
not properly chargeable to the necessary expenditures of "Envoy
Extraordinary" like our friend from Oregon.
The favoritism with which our hero was everywhere received was something
remarkable, even when all the circumstances of his relationship to the
chief magistrate, and the popularity of the Oregon question were
considered. Doubtless the novelty of having a bear-fighting and
Indian-fighting Rocky Mountain man to lionize, was one great secret of
the furore which greeted him wherever he went; but even that fails to
account fully for the enthusiasm he awakened, since mountain-men had
begun to be pretty well known and understood, from the journal of
Fremont and other explorers. It could only have been the social genius
of the man which enabled him to overcome the impediments of lack of
education, and the associations of half a lifetime. But whatever was the
fortunate cause of his success, he enjoyed it to the full. He took
excursions about the country in all directions, petted and spoiled like
any "curled darling" instead of the six-foot-two Rocky Mountain trapper
that he was.
In June he received an invitation to Baltimore, tendered by the city
council, and was received by that body with the mayor at its head, in
whose carriage he was conveyed to Monument Square, to be welcomed by a
thousand ladies, smiling and showering roses upon him as he passed. And
kissing the roses because he could not kiss the ladies, he bowed and
smiled himself past the festive groups waiting to receive the messenger
from Oregon. Music, dining, and the parade usual to such occasions
distinguished this day, which Meek declares to have been the proudest of
his life; not denying that the beauty of the Baltimore ladies
contributed chiefly to produce that impression.
On the fourth of July, Polk laid the corner stone of the National
Monument. The occasion was celebrated with great _eclat_, the address
being delivered by Winthrop, the military display, and the fire-works in
the evening being unusually fine. In the procession General Scott and
staff rode on one side of the President's carriage, Col. May and Meek
on the other,--Meek making a great display of horsemanship, in which as
a mountain-man he excelled.
[Illustration: _A MOUNTAIN-MAN IN CLOVER._]
A little later in the summer Meek joined a party of Congressmen who were
making campaign speeches in the principal cities of the north. At
Lowell, Mass., he visited the cotton factories, and was equally
surprised at the extent of the works, and the number of young women
employed in them. Seeing this, the forewoman requested him to stop until
noon and see the girls come out. As they passed in review before him,
she asked if he had made his choice.
"No," replied the gallant Oregonian, "it would be impossible to choose,
out of such a lot as that; I should have to take them all."
If our hero, under all his gaity smothered a sigh of regret that he was
not at liberty to take _one_--a woman like those with whom for the first
time in his life he was privileged to associate--who shall blame him?
The kind of life he was living now was something totally different to
anything in the past. It opened to his comprehension delightful
possibilities of what might have been done and enjoyed under other
circumstances, yet which now never could be done or enjoyed, until
sometimes he was ready to fly from all these allurements, and hide
himself again in the Rocky Mountains. Then again by a desperate effort,
such thoughts were banished, and he rushed more eagerly than before into
every pleasure afforded by the present moment, as if to make the present
atone for the past and the future.
The kindness of the ladies at the White House, while it was something to
be grateful for, as well as to make him envied, often had the effect to
disturb his tranquility by the suggestions it gave rise to. Yet he was
always demanding it, always accepting it. So constantly was he the
attendant of his lady cousins in public and in private, riding and
driving, or sauntering in the gardens of the presidential mansion, that
the less favored among their acquaintances felt called upon to believe
themselves aggrieved. Often, as the tall form of our hero was seen with
a lady on either arm promenading the gardens at evening, the question
would pass among the curious but uninitiated--"Who is that?" And the
reply of some jealous grumbler would be--"It is that ---- Rocky Mountain
man," so loud sometimes as to be overheard by the careless trio, who
smothered a laugh behind a hat or a fan.
And so passed that brief summer of our hero's life. A great deal of
experience, of sight-seeing, and enjoyment had been crowded into a short
few months of time. He had been introduced to and taken by the hand by
the most celebrated men of the day. Nor had he failed to meet with men
whom he had known in the mountains and in Oregon. His old employer,
Wilkes, who was ill in Washington, sent for him to come and tell "some
of those Oregon lies" for his amusement, and Meek, to humor him,
stretched some of his good stories to the most wonderful dimensions.
But from the very nature of the enjoyment it could not last long; it was
too vivid and sensational for constant wear. Feeling this, he began to
weary of Washington, and more particularly since he had for the last few
weeks been stopping away from the White House. In one of his restless
moods he paid a visit to Polk, who detecting the state of his mind asked
laughingly----
"Well, Meek, what do you want now?"
"I want to be franked."
"How long will five hundred dollars last you?"
"About as many days as there ar' hundreds, I reckon."
"You are shockingly extravagant, Meek. Where do you think all this money
is to come from?"
"It is not my business to know, Mr. President," replied Meek, laughing,
"but it _is_ the business of these United States to pay the expenses of
the messenger from Oregon, isn't it?"
"I think I will send you to the Secretary of War to be franked, Meek;
his frank is better than mine. But no, stay; I will speak to Knox about
it this time. And you must not spend your money so recklessly, Meek; it
will not do--it will not do."
Meek thanked the President both for the money and the advice, but gave a
champagne supper the next night, and in a week's time was as
empty-handed as ever.
The close of the session was at hand and nothing had been done except to
talk. Congress was to adjourn at noon on Monday, August 14th, and it was
now Saturday the 12th. The friends of Oregon were anxious; the two
waiting Oregonians nearly desperate. On this morning of the 12th, the
friends of the bill, under Benton's lead, determined upon obtaining a
vote on the final passage of the bill; resolving that they would not
yield to the usual motions for delay and adjournments, but that they
would, if necessary, sit until twelve o'clock Monday.
Saturday night wore away; the Sabbath morning's sun arose; and at last,
two hours after sunrise, a consultation was held between Butler, Mason,
Calhoun, Davis, and Foote, which resulted in the announcement that no
further opposition would be offered to taking the vote upon the final
passage of the Oregon bill. The vote was then taken, the bill passed,
and the weary Senate adjourned, to meet again on Monday for a final
adjournment.