Sovereigns of Themselves:
A Liberating History of Oregon And Its Coast
Volume I
Abridged Online Edition
Compiled By M. Constance Guardino III
  And Rev. Marilyn A. Riedel
July 2008 Maracon Productions

Historians M. Constance Guardino III and Rev. Marilyn A. Riedel

I offer thanks to my friends, relatives, and ancestors whose strength of purpose
led me to my own. A special thanks to my co-author,
Rev. Marilyn A. Riedel, for her deep love and dedication to me and this project.
Without her tireless effort and selfless interest,
this liberating history of Oregon would never have been written.

     History... is a wallflower. She sits neglected in the corner, drab and demure, invited to the dance. What does it take to get us to notice her? A suitor, of course. The most popular boy in the class, say, who suddenly sees her there and proclaims her beautiful.

Chapter 1: Corps of Discovery 1804

 The idea of the penetration of Oregon by land had originated with the American Philosophical Association, and to promote it, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) had contributed $12.50 each. It was Jefferson, however, who finally followed through, who persuaded Congress to fund an Expedition across the continent to the Northwest Coast. To head the expedition he chose his secretary-aide, Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809). Lewis, in turn, chose William Clark (1770-1838), an army comrade, to share the command.

(1) Lewis & Clark Statue at University of Missouri (2) Sacagawea Statue at Bismarck, North Dakota
(3) Lewis & Clark With Slave York at Great Falls, Montana

The Co-Commanders

 Meriwether Lewis was born August 18, 1774, near Charlottesville, Virginia, and was a boyhood neighbor of Thomas Jefferson. In 1794, Lewis joined the militia and, at the rank of ensign, was attached to a sublegion of general "Mad Anthony" Wayne commanded by Lt. William Clark. In sharing the experiences of the North campaign against the British and Indians, Lewis and Clark fashioned the bonds of an enduring friendship.
 On March 6, 1801, Lewis, as a young army captain in Pittsburgh, received a letter from Jefferson, the soon-to-be inaugurated president, offering Lewis a position as his secretary-aide. It is said,

Your knowledge of the Western Country, of the army, and of all it's interests and relations has rendered it desirable for public as well as private purposes that you should be engaged in that office.

Lewis readily accepted the position.
 The reference to Lewis' "knowledge of the Western Country" hinted that Jefferson was again planning an Expedition to explore the West and had tentatively decided it would be its commander. On February 28, 1803, Congress appropriated funds for the expedition, and Lewis, who had worked closely with Jefferson on preparations for it, was commissioned its leader.
 As he made arrangements for the expedition, Lewis concluded it would be desirable to have a co-commander. With Jefferson’s consent, he offered the assignment to his friend and former commanding officer, William Clark, who was living with his brother, George Rogers, at Clarksville, Indiana Territory (1800-1816). Clark accepted, stating in his reply,

The enterprise, etc., is such as I have long anticipated and am much pleased. My friend, I do assure you that no man lives with whom I would prefer to undertake such a trip, etc., as yourself.

 Also a native of Virginia, Clark, born August 1, 1770, was four years older than Lewis. In capability and background, he and Lewis shared much in common. They were relatively young, intelligent, adventurous, resourceful, and courageous. Born leaders, experienced woodsmen-frontiersmen, and seasoned army officers, they were cool in crises and quick to make decisions. Clark, many times over, would prove to be the right choice as joint leader of the expedition.
 In temperament, Lewis and Clark were opposites. Lewis was introverted, melancholic, and moody; Clark, extroverted, even-tempered, and gregarious. The better-educated and more refined Lewis, who possessed a philosophical, romantic, and speculative mind, was at home with abstract ideas; Clark, of a pragmatic mold, was more of a practical man of action. Each supplied vital qualities which balanced their partnership.
 The purpose of the Corps of Discovery was threefold:

• to determine a route between the Missouri and Columbia rivers and thereby facilitate travel and trade;
• to report on the flora and fauna and geography of the region; and
• to establish friendly relations with the Indians.

Another purpose, though not stated, was to lay further basis for new territorial claims should the US decide to make them.
 The Expedition departed from Saint Louis in the spring of 1804. They proceeded upstream in a leisurely fashion through desertions and thievery, all severely punished with the lash. On arriving at the Platte they had reached the end, as it were, of their world. Lewis wrote:

We were now about to penetrate a country at least 2,000 miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man has never trodden; the good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine.

 More good than evil was their lot on the westward trek. Despite the cold, they wintered comfortably near present-day Bismark, North Dakota. What difficulties they suffered were minor, as for example, the behavior of the Indians they encountered after crossing the Continental Divide. Lewis wrote in his diary:

We were caressed and besmeared with their grease and paint till I was heartily tired of the national hug.

Also, they grew weary of a diet consisting of so much fish, but this they remedied on reaching the Columbia by purchasing 40 dogs.
 On November 15, 1805, 19 months after their departure from Saint Louis, the expedition saw the Pacific at the mouth of the Columbia. Here they spent a miserable winter in a little log stockade,Fort Clatsop, which they built on a low hill above a bog of tidal creeks. It rained every day but six. They spent these dreary days making salt at present-day Seaside, hunting the scarce game and fighting the abundant fleas. On Christmas Day they celebrated with

poor elk, so much spoiled that we ate it through necessity, some spoiled pounded fish and a few roots.

 Explorers Infect Natives with Venereal Disease

 There was also much sickness: colds, dysentery, rheumatism. Many of the men acquired venereal diseases from the Indians who, in turn, had been infected by sailors of the fur trade. Indeed, in the scant 13 years since Gray and Broughton, there had been a shocking deterioration of the native peoples, far fewer of the "fine looking fellows" and "women very pretty" than Gray's party had noted. And instead of the "deer and otter many now wore the tattered castoffs of the foreign sailors." One Indian woman wore a more permanent adornment: the name J. Bowman tattooed on her arm.

Corps Departs the Columbia 1806

 With spring the expedition was only too happy to be on its way, departing the Columbia in March of 1806, arriving in Saint Louis in September, thus completing one of the most remarkable journeys of exploration in the history of the Americas and establishing another basis for eventual US claims in the West. Of more immediate importance was the fact that Lewis and Clark's reports now made known to all that here was a place suitable for non-indian settlement.

Sacajawea "Bird Woman" (1789-1812)

 Across the West more memorials of various kinds commemorate Sacajawea (c1789-1812) than any other woman in American history. "Her name is to be found on everything from mountains and lakes to museums and Girl Scout Camps," according to Dorothy Kamer Gray, author of Women of the West. So widely has she become a legend for her critical role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition that the facts of her life and the true significance of her involvement in the expedition has been almost entirely obscured. Like so many Femelle trailblazers, the actual Sacajaweahas remained a figure hidden in the shadows of history. Since she could neither write nor speak any of the European languages, she left no first-hand record of her observations or feelings. What we know of her is contained in the often brief journal entries of the two captains of the expedition and various other members of the party.
 Sparse as the record is, however, it establishes Sacajawea as a major figure at a critical moment of American history. At the vital moment of crisis in the Lewis and Clark Expedition it was upon her that the success of the journey rested and with it the future of the young US and the dreams of Jefferson, its visionary president, who hoped to increase knowledge through exploration and scientific observation and establish "peace" among the indigenous tribes within the new territory.
 Sacajawea not only made a significant contribution to the development of the nation, she did so as a member of a socially despised group—an Indian woman. In this latter aspect she is a figure of transition, marking out the sorrows, benefits, and cruel "choices" that women of various races would experience in the long social upheaval known as the opening of the West.
 She was born a Shoshone in about 1786, a member of a subtribe later to be called the Lemhi, who were then living in what is today the State of Idaho. Through acquisition of horses from the Spanish far to the south, the Shoshone group to which she belonged had transformed itself within one generation from a desert tribe living a meager and circumscribed existence in the Great Basin west of the Rocky Mountains to a tribe capable of crossing the splendid heights of the Rocky Mountains to hunt buffalo on the Great Plains to the east. The tribe's transformation is critical to the role Sacajawea played in the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
 Another basic change occurred in the life of the tribe shortly after Sacajawea's birth. To the east and north of the Lemhi-Shoshone hunting grounds their implacable foe, the Blackfeet, had obtained guns from the English and French-Canadian and were now able to inflict terrible losses upon the Shoshone. But the Shoshone advantage in being mounted was steadily overcome by the Blackfeet's superior weaponry. The Blackfeet drove them from the Great Plains and back into the game-sparse Rockies, securing abundant buffalo hunting grounds and obtaining Shoshone horses as well.
 When Sacajawea was ten or 11 years old her tribe could venture down on the Great Plains after buffalo only to risk a Blackfeet attack.
 On one occasion a war party of Hidasta, allies of the Blackfeet, surprised the Shoshone at a camp near Three Forks on the Missouri. At the sound of gunfire the men leapt to their horses and fled, leaving women, children, and elderly to run towards the woods. A number of Shoshone men and boys were killed, and the attackers rounded up some of the women and children as captives. Sacajawea was taken as she attempted to cross the river at a shallow place.
 Now began five long years of exile. Indian captives were generally regarded as slaves; however it is unlikely that Sacajawea or the other children were mistreated since Indians were usually gentle with children., The difficult part was separation from homeland and family. Rather than endure such separation, a number of children risked escape and a long dangerous journey home through hundreds of miles of strange land. It is not factually known why Sacajawea did not join them, but tradition says she chose to stay with a young friend, Otter Woman, who could not be roused from sleep the night of the escape.
 Sacajawea and the other captives of the Hidatsa were taken to Mandan villages on the Upper Missouri near today’s Bismark, North Dakota. It was a tremendous change; from this place on the vast flat plains the Shoshoni could not even see the soaring mountains that had been their home.
 But there were other changes of even greater significance. Sacajawea was now intermingling with one of the most developed and admirable people among the Western Indians. The Mandan were a permanently settled tribe, living in earthen lodges and engaged in farming. They were an unusually handsome people, tall and of fine form, and noted for their intelligence and level dispositions. Among the Plains Indians they were the only people who made pottery.
 Here at the cluster of five villages on the Upper Missouri were encamped over 4,000 Mandan and the related Arikara and Midasta, the largest single concentration of indigenous peoples west of the Mississippi. The villages formed an important trade center to which came Indians from a wide area of the West to trade. Through here passed beaver and otter pelts, deerskins, hides of elk and even white buffalo, beads of bone, ornaments of shells and feathers, and, increasingly, white people's goods. By this time the French and English traders from Canada had worked their way up the Missouri seeking precious furs.
 It was at the Mandan villages that Sacajawea and Otter Woman grew to what was then considered womanhood by both Indians and non-indian. At the age of 15, Sacajawea and her slightly older companion were either bartered or gambled away by their Hidatsa master to a Frenchman named Touissant Charbonneau who took the two women as slaves.
 Charbonneau was what is known as a voyageur. He, like other voyageurs, knew the waters and the woods as no other men interested in the Northwest did. He worked hard; was responsible for the success or failure of an axpedition; knew the many varieties of aboriginal languages; and spent long winters in distant, ramshackle outposts. One of these men, long past age 75, gave the following account of his life:

 I have been 42 years in this country. For 24 I was light canoe-man; I required but little sleep, but some times got less than I required. No portage was too long for me... Fifty songs a day were nothing to me. I could carry, paddle, walk, and sing with any man I ever saw... No water, no weather, ever stopped the paddle or the song. I had 12 wives in the country; and was once possessed of 50 horses, and six running dogs... I want for nothing; and I spent all my earnings in the enjoyment of pleasure... Yet, were I young again, I should glory in commencing the same career again...

 In the autumn of 1804, a new element was introduced into the life at the Mandan villages. A large party of Americans arrived. Known as the Corps of Discovery, it was headed by captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, under the direction of Thomas Jefferson to explore through to the Pacific Ocean. The Expedition leaders decided to winter over at the villages and set about building Fort Mandan.
 At the fort, the captains sentenced Pvt. John Collins to 100 lashes for getting drunk on guard duty. Collins was described by one of his ancestors, historical novelist Rita Cleary of Oyster Bay, New York as "something of a ne'er do well."
 On November 4, Charbonneau came in from a hunt on the Great Plains and applied to the expedition for a job as an interpreter. A week later Sacajawea, who was pregnant, appeared at the fort with Otter Woman, who was also pregnant with her second child.
 Clark was proficient at geography and was able to assemble what would prove to be a highly accurate idea of the territory up to the base of the Rockies.
 During the winter, Charbonneau moved into the fort with his two Shoshone slave-wives and possibly a third unnamed Mandan slave-wife.
 By Christmas the fierce plains winter had driven temperatures to 20 below zero on the thermometer of the Corps of Discovery but the Americans celebrated anyway.
 Then in January, Clark learned something that made the Shoshone, Sacajawea, a potentially significant asset to the expedition. A war chief from the Gros Ventres tribe revealed to Clark his plan to attack the Shoshone in the spring. The last thing that Clark wanted was war upon the Great Plains the Corps would be crossing, and he dissuaded the young chief. But from the conversation Clark learned that the Shoshone had horses. Lewis and Clark had some idea that an overland journey might be necessary in the Rockies between the headwaters of the Missouri and the beginning of a navigable river flowing to the Pacific. Although they thought such a portage would only be a day or two in duration, the availability of horses must certainly have seemed a potential advantage.
 Sacajawea’s people provided horses and a guide, "Old Toby," for the grueling trip over the Continental Divide.
 The two captains had other matters to consider that winter. From the English and French fur traders who came to the fort, they learned that two English fur companies in Canada, the North West and Hudson's Bay companies, had merged and would soon be able to move into the unclaimed lands of the far Northwest along the Columbia and even further south. If that occurred before the Americans lay claim through exploration, then President Jefferson's dream of one nation spanning a continent would be foreclosed forever. Clearly Lewis and Clark were in a race with the British and—history.
 Sacajawea gave birth to her son, Jean Baptise Charboneau (1804-1866), February 11, 1804. She called him Pompey or Pomp, a name in Shoshone meaning "first born" or "leader of people." Because of her timely delivery, she was allowed to go on the expedition as planned. Otter Woman, who had not delivered by the time of departure, was left behind, much to the grief of both women who "wept upon being parted."
 The Corps of Discovery, led by captains Lewis and Clark, departed for the Great Northwest on April 7, 1805.
 As the journey up the Missouri progressed, there was much hard working to get the boats upstream against strong current, but the country was full of the wonders of a new land unseen before by white races and unsullied by their ways.

Clark's Slave York: The Corp's Shining Star

 In 1788, Captain Robert Gray (1775-1806), the first American landing in Oregon, arrived at Tillamook. Markus Lopius, reputedly the first person of African decent to set foot on Oregon soil, was aboard Gray's sloop Lady Washington.
 If Lopius was indeed the first African to step foot on the Oregon Coast, perhaps York, William Clark's slave, was the second some 16 years later.
 York was the first black person known to have crossed the continent from the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast, and the first to cross the US western frontier north of Mexico.
 Most notably, at a time when slaves and women were not allowed to vote, both York and Sacajawea were treated as equals in the entourage. They participated in the polls by Lewis and Clark to weigh group opinions along the journey—most notably in a decision to built Fort Clatsop on what became the Oregon side of Columbia River.
 In part, York is a lesser known member of the expedition because he did not write and keep a journal. Nor did Sacajawea, but she had an advocacy group speak for her; she was singled out by the Woman's Suffrage Movement about 100 years ago and catapulted to fame.
 Despite his contributions, York's name does not appear in most history books, movies and other depictions of the explorers' journey to the Northwest between 1803 and 1806.
  The bronze edifice of York with William Clark at the University of Portland is thought to be the first time he was included in a statue.
 "This is unfortunate," James J. Holmberg, editor and annotator of a cache of Clark's personal letters, told the Oregonian. "He was more important to the success of the expedition than most of the guys in the group."
 Unlike Lopius and Sacajawea, York, has slipped out of the pages of Oregon history. Yet he was a hard man to ignore. Over six feet in height and weighing more than 200 pounds, he was often the main attraction for Indians who visited the explorers. Many had not seen an African before, or at least not one so large. To the delight of visitors, York would jump and bound about, showing a remarkable athletic agility. All this he did in good humor—a form of friendly communication to those who might find his spoken language difficult to understand.
 Oregon historians Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown wrote that most of the expedition party

were fair-skinned, except for the member with the "buffalo hair on his head," Clark's black servant, York, who helped keep natives along the way more curious than contentious.

 He played his role as the expedition's star attraction to the hilt. When one tribe presented a dance entertainment for the Lewis and Clark party, the headmen wondered how to reciprocate the favor. They asked York to dance, and he did, Clark noting in his diary that York "amused the crowd very much, and somewhat astonished them, that so large a man should be active."
 Pierre Cruzatte, a French-Canadian boatman, was the expeditions fiddler. Impromptu hoe downs helped keep up morale during the explorers' long winter encampments. According to Daniel Slosberg, whose stated goal is to create a historical reenactment of Cruzatte, "They had a couple of fiddles, a tambourine, a jaw harp...as well as a horn they used to sound between boats when they were heading up the Missouri." Cruzatte's fiddling delighted the Mandan and Hidatsa, settled tribes that lived in earth lodges on the upper Missouri and controlled a far-flung trade in furs.
 Another time, among the Mandan in North Dakota, York patiently submitted to an examination of his skin. Tribesmen wet their fingers and rubbed his black skin to see if the color would come off. For those who had seen only white and red-skinned people, this was important scientific experiment. The moment was preserved in a painting by the noted western artist Charles Marion Russell (1865-1926).
 While world traveler and humanitarian Shirley MacLaine was on safari, she spent two weeks with the Masai tribe of East Africa. She reported an experience similar to York's:

 I stopped to gaze unabashedly into the mouth of one of the women. She giggled and pointed to my hand. I didn’t understand. She lifted one of my fingers and caressed one of the pink, polished nails. Her child saw her touch me and screamed in consternation. Clearly, few of the children had seen a white person so close before. With noses running, bellies protruding, and eyes wide in disbelief, they crowded around me to stare. Intrigued by freckles, one of them touched my arm, shrieking with delight at his courage. He looked down at his own finger—no damage. He tried again, this time touching the white skin between the freckles. He pulled away with a jerk—but still no damage. Then there was an invasion of small jabs and touches, all over me, accompanied by contagious giggles.
 My long, painted fingernails, my passport to conversation, continued to be the object of attention. How was it possible to grow such long ones, and of such an unusual color? Ten children, one on each finger, studied the phenomenon. Freeing my hands gently, I peeled the polish from one nail. There was a communal intake of breath. Didn't such tearing hurt? Where was the blood underneath? Disbelief turned to compassion as one of the bravest boy children gently caressed my natural fingernail and began to spit and blow on it to ease the pain. I tried to gesture that it didn’t matter, that it was all right, and I started to peel another nail. Again the blowing and spitting.
 Kijimbele tried to reassure them, but they had found a new game. The Masai children closed around my hands, tearing the polish to shreds with cruel, delighted, childlike fervor, salving the pain of it with spits and blows as they worked.

 When the party reached Idaho and the Nez Perceé tribe, York danced and allowed them to rub his skin. Clark's diary recorded a story York concocted for the tribe: "By way of amusement he told them that he had once been a wild animal, and caught, and tamed by his master; and to convince them showed them feats of strength which, added to his looks, made him more terrible than we wished him to be." The Nez Percé were pleased with York and permitted him, along with the non-colored males of the expedition, to take an Indian wife during their two-week stay.
 Despite his comic and athletic feats, York was considered powerful medicine by those he met. He was taken seriously, and accorded the respect due a man of his skills. A Flathead tribesman recalled that his people thought York had merely painted himself in charcoal: "Those who had been brave and fearless, the victorious ones in battle, painted themselves in charcoal. So the black man, they thought, had been the bravest of his party."
 As the mission across the continent progressed, York learned more frontier skills. Hunting, fishing, and swimming were required, and he excelled in each. Along with Sacajawea and Charbonneau, he served as an interpreter. Messages from Indian tribes went from Sacajawea to Charbonneau to York and then to Lewis and Clark—York had probably picked up some French during his stay in Saint Louis before the expedition began. However, one member of the party felt that York "spoke bad French and worse English."
 With the other members of the party, York survived the rigors of the difficult journey from Saint Louis to the Columbia and back. Indeed, he had contributed to its success in many ways—from utilizing his frontier skills as a resourceful hunter, fisherman, trader and scout, to serving as an entertainer and informal ambassador of good will to all he met.
 Much of York's life is still a mystery, especially his experiences after returning from the expedition in 1806.
 Historians still debate whether York was granted his freedom immediately upon returning or continued to work as one of Clark's slaves. There also are lingering questions about York's marriage and family life, and the legend that he returned to the West and became a chief in the Crow (Apsaalooke/Absaroke) nation.
 More than 50 recently discovered letters written by Clark between 1792 and 1811 indicate that York apparently was married before the expedition and he definitely wasn't freed immediately afterward.

 More intriguing are Clark's heated condemnations and retaliations for York's escalating efforts to gain his freedom.
 York had been Clark's personal body servant and companion since both men were children, and they both lived in Saint Louis before the trip. But after contributing greatly to the big expedition, York thought he had earned his freedom with his services to the famous Corps of Discovery.
 Sparks flew between the two men after Clark decided in 1808 to move permanently to Saint Louis from Louisville, where York's wife (whose name remains unknown) and other relatives lived.
 Holmberg told the Oregonian:

As York starts agitating...to stay in Louisville with his family...William gets madder and madder. His letters to his (older and closest brother, Jonathan) are really steaming.

 Finally, later in 1808, Clark sent York back to Louisville to work for Jonathan, with confidential instructions to send him to New Orleans to be sold or hired out to a severe master if he refused to perform his duties as a slave or attempted to escape.
 Details of York’s death are vague; Holmberg thinks it was 1822 when there was a cholera outbreak in the area. But witnesses reported encountering York as late as 1832 and 1834.

Great Falls

 At last they reached the long sought Great Falls of the Missouri. It was an important achievement, confirming to the leaders that thus far they had correctly charted their course. But joy soon faded in the face of hardship. For a full month they labored to get their canoes and equipment up the falls.
 Sadly, they suffered more than was necessary. The slow ordeal round the falls was rooted in the persistent dream of the Northwest Passage sought by explorers since the time of Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). They were sure that somewhere, only a day's portage beyond the river, there would be navigable waters to carry them to the Western Sea.
 On July 4, the Great Falls were surmounted and a celebration was held. But the hard work was by no means over. Even though the river course leveled out somewhat beyond the falls, the ascent against the current was still difficult. Almost another month passed as they worked their way up into the Rocky Mountains to the place called Three Forks. Here, at a crossroads for Indian travel from all over the West, the Missouri divided and the Corps of Discovery elected to take the branch that they named for Jefferson.
 On July 28, Sacajawea recognized familiar territory, the place where the Hidatsa had attacked her tribe and seized her as a prisoner of war years ago.
 Sherr and Kazickas wrote that as they neared the land of the Shoshone

Sacajawea showed Lewis and Clark the shoal place midriver where as a child she had been captured by the Hidatsa. "She does not show any distress at these recollections or any joy at the prospect of being restored to her country," wrote Lewis in his diary, underestimating with a white man's insensitivity his faithful guide's capacity for sentiment.

If they were to proceed over the Rocky Mountains they must have horses soon. They had reached the point at which the expedition must decide to continue or turn back.
 At this most critical moment Sacajawea again sighted familiar terrain and announced that they were near the home of her people. With this encouragement Lewis determined to push ahead and find the Shoshone, and as he did so, the entire hope of the expedition rested upon making contact with the Sacajawea's tribe.
 Finally, on August 11, Lewis saw in the distance a mounted brave. He tried to signal the man to come closer but he fled in fear. Lewis and his men followed. In doing so they passed a narrow valley between high peaks and thus, on August 12, 1805, they passed the Continental Divide, the first Americans to do so.
 The next day they came upon more tribesmen but those fled too. At last they found an elderly Shoshone woman and a young girl who, despairing of flight, sat down with heads bowed as though awaiting a death blow from the strangers. Lewis put down his gun and approached them. He raised them up and then gave them their presents and painted their faces with vermilion as a symbol of peace.
 Before long he and his men were in the midst of the tribe, being embraced and smeared with bear grease and paint. Lewis persuaded them to accompany him to the rendezvous with Clark, but when they arrived at the designated spot Clark was not there and the Shoshones' suspicions returned.
 While Lewis held the Indians at the rendezvous, Clark slowly struggled to the meeting place. Suddenly, he saw Sacajawea ahead of the party begin to dance and "show every mark of extravagant joy." She had sighted several people on horseback and recognized them as being her tribe.
 Sacajawea discovered that the headman was none other than her own brother! Chief Cameahwait, was the sole surviving member of her family except for one other brother, then absent from the tribe, and an orphaned nephew who, states the record, "was immediately adopted by her."
 Although he hesitated to do so at first, Cameahwait provided the horses and guides necessary for the Corps to continue on across the Rocky Mountains.
 Lynn Sherr and Jurate Kazickas wrote of the event, which took place near Armstead, Montana:

 In August 1805, Sacajawea was picking Serviceberries in the high, dew-covered grass when suddenly she saw some Indians riding toward her. According to William Clark, his brave scout "danced for the joyful sight, and she made signs to me that they were her nation." Sacajawea ran to embrace her brother, Chief Cameahwait, whom she had not seen since she had been captured by the Hidatsa tribe as a child. Through Sacajawea's intercession, Lewis and Clark were able to obtain more horses for their historic Westward journey.

 Following a long and difficult overland trip the expedition finally reached the Clearwater in Idaho, the expedition members built more canoes. After some 600 miles of water travel down the Snake and Columbia rivers, they sighted the Pacific Ocean in November 1805 near present-day McGowan, Washington.
 The Corp of Discovery's successful crossing established firm grounds for America's claim to the far Northwest as opposed to that of the British. In the face of British arguments, the expedition was the strong lynch pin that secured the outline of the American nation and opened the territory to the vast migration in the century ahead. The Expedition literally began the recorded history of the West.

Chapter 2: Fort Astoria

 Astoria, celebrating its 175th anniversary in 1986, has a long and eventful history. The Clatsop and ChinookIndians at the Columbia's mouth linked an extensive network up and down the Pacific Coast of North America and hundreds of miles up the Columbia. Yet explorers and fur traders failed to discover the mighty river until Capt. Robert Gray of the US crossed its treacherous bar in 1792. Many ships and several nations followed hard on his heels.
 In 1805 the remarkable Lewis and Clark Expedition set out by Jefferson erected Fort Clatsop, a small winter outpost, near Astoria's future site.

Fort Clatsop Established 1805

 Fort Clatsop was the first military establishment to be built in Oregon, and it served as the Lewis and Clark winter quarters for 1805-1806. The men were allowed to vote on the location. Lewis made a reconnaissance and on December 5, 1805, rejoined Clark, reporting that he had found a food situation. Construction of a stockade about 50 feet square was started at once. This was built around seven cabins. On January 1, 1806, Lewis recorded in his orderly book that the fort was completed, and the first orders for its operation and security were officially issued on that date. The party left the fort on the return trip at 1pm, Sunday, March 23, 1806. On March 20, Lewis wrote: "We have lived quit as comfortable as we had any reason to expect we should."
 The Charbonneau quarters were on the south side of the captain's quarters. Touissant Charbonneau, his slave-wife, Sacajawea, and their son Jean Baptiste lived in this room during the winter encampment.
 A guard shack was located outside the door to the mean room and to the captain's quarters. The guard had to check the meat room for spoilage at least once every 24 hours. He was also responsible for daily checking of the canoe landing and for clearing the fort of guests each evening.
 Sgt. Patrick Gass, a member of the expedition, noted in his journals that

near our camp the country is closely timbered with spruce pine, the soil is rich, but not deep, and there are numerous springs of running water.

This spring, located about 50 yards behind the fort, was probably the main source of fresh water.
 According to the journals kept by Lewis and Clark, the canoe landing was originally part of a large marsh area and about 200 yards from the fort on Netul River, now called Lewis and Clark River.
 The members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition remained at Fort Clatsop from December 7, 1805, until March 23, 1806. Perhaps the most important activity undertaken during their winter here was the reworking of the journals by the leaders, and the preparation of organized accounts of the scientific data gathered during the journey. Here also, Clark prepared many of the maps which were among the most significant contributions of the expedition. Some of the maps were based only on information supplied by Indians. Through use of the maps, Lewis and Clark determined that the way they had come was not the easiest and decided to change part of their return route.
 Indians, whom Clark described as "close bargainers," came to Fort Clatsop came to Fort Clatsop almost daily to visit and trade, which quickly depleted the expeditions' gift supplies. They traded for items such as otter skins, seal meat, fish, roots, elk meat, and canoes. Lewis and Clark wrote often in their journals about the tribes, their appearance, habits, living conditions, lodges, and abilities as fishermen and hunters. Much of the available information on past tribes comes from their observations.
 All the men on the expedition hunted and trapped, but George Drouillard, an adept hunter, earned high praise from his commanders for his skills. The 33-member party killed and ate 131 elk and 20 deer. A few small animals were killed, such as otter and beaver and one raccoon. As spring approached, the elk took to the hills and it became increasingly difficult for the hunters to keep the camp supplied with meat and hides for food and clothing.

Salt Cairn at Seaside

 To augment their low supply of salt upon arriving at the Pacific Coast, Lewis and Clark held a high priority to the task of producing salt. During the winter of 1805-1806 a salt-making camp was set up "near the houses of some Clatsop and Kilamox families" about 15 miles southwest of present-day Seaside. Clark wrote that he:

"directed... Joseph Fields, Bratton Gibson to proceed to the ocean at some convenient place form a camp and commence making salt with five of the largest kittles, and Willard and Wiser to assist them in carrying the kittles to the sea coast." Messengers reported that "the men had at length established themselves on the coast about 15 miles southwest from this, near the lodge of some Killamuck families; that the Indians were very friendly and had given them a considerable quantity of the blubber of a whale which perished on the Coast some distance southeast of them; part of this blubber they brought with them, it was white and not unlike the fat of pork, though the texture was more spongy and somewhat courser..." Lewis and Clark had some of the blubber cooked and liked it. Lewis continued: "They commenced making salt and found that they could obtain from three quarts to a gallon a day; they brought with them a specimen of the salt of about a gallon; this was a great treat to myself and most of the party, having not had any since the 20th ult. month; I say most of the party, for my friend Capt. Clark, declares it to be a mere matter of indifference with him whether he uses it or not; for myself I must confess I felt a considerable inconvenience from the want of it; the want of bread I consider trivial provided, I get fat meat, for as to the spices of meat I am not very particular, the flesh of the dog the horse and the wolf, having from habit become equally familiar [as] with any other, and I have learned to think that if the chord be sufficiently strong, which binds the soul and body together, it does not so much matter about the materials which compose it."

 The camp operated until February 21, 1806. Usually at least three men were assigned here thought the number varied and personnel were rotated. Salt was obtained by laboriously boiling sea water in five large kettles. Very shortly the men were producing "excellent, fine, strong and white" salt. They were able to make about three quarts a day and accumulated enough for the trip home. About three of the approximately four bushels produced at the camp were packed in kegs and carried eastward from Fort Clatsop with the expedition on March 23.
 The original low-impact campers, Lewis and Clark left little behind which can be unequivocally traced to them. However, at Fort Clatsop, there is evidence of the remains of what may have been a privy.

Vermin and Virus

 Life at the outpost was far from pleasant. It rained every day but 12 of the 106 days at Fort Clatsop. Clothing rotted and sand fleas infested the furs and hides of the bedding. So bad was this pest that Lewis and Clark wrote often of a lack of a full night's sleep. The dampness gave nearly everyone rheumatism or colds, and many suffered from other diseases, which Lewis treated vigorously. Some suffered from dislocated shoulders, injured legs, and back pains.

Whale on Tillamook Head

 In addition to the salt-making endeavor, Clark, Sacajawea, and other members of the expedition hiked over Tillamook head to present-day Cannon Beach. There they acquired whale oil and blubber from a group of Salish-speaking Tillamook.
 Ruby and Brown wrote that a few events transpiring near Fort Clatsop diverted the party's attention from the soggy, flea ridden winter:

On January 6, Clark set out with a group in two canoes to see a whale washed up on a Tillamook beach. Sacajawea insisted on going along, for she had never seen the ocean. By the time they arrived at the beach, Tillamooks had cut most of the flesh from the 105-foot mammal, rendering slabs of its meat into oil in wooden vessels heated with hot stones and storing the sticky substance in the whale's bladder and intestines. Cooked, the whale meat was palatable and tender, resembling in taste that of a dog or beaver. Tillamooks were very possessive of their oil and blubber, trading But small quantities of it; nevertheless, Chinooks and Clatsops went down to trade beads for it.

 On March 23, 1806, after the disappointment of no contact with coastal vessels for possible return by sea, the Corps of Discovery began the long trek home.
 By the time the men returned to Saint Louis in September of that year, they had traveled over 8,000 miles, established cordial relations with dozens of Indian tribes, accurately mapped the regions they traveled, kept daily journals, and cataloged new species of plants and animals.
 After the expedition, Lewis was appointed governor of Louisiana-Missouri Territory (1805-1821); Clark was promoted to brigadier general and appointed to the superintendency of Indian affairs. Lewis, at age 35, died tragically October 11, 1809, just three years after the expedition. Clark lived a long and productive life in Saint Louis, dying September 1, 1838, at age 68.
 Lewis and Clark's well-published venture helped fire the imagination of John Jacob Astor, perhaps the young nation's wealthiest man.

John Jacob Astor

 Astoria represented the key to Astor's ambitious Pacific Fur Company. Traders from the North American interior would carry bundles of furs to the Columbia's mouth. Others would conduct a maritime trade with Indians up and down the coast and with the Russians and Alaska. Ships laden with furs would said from Astoria for the lucrative Chinese markets in Canton.
 Astor selected most of his partners, clerks, and voyagers from Great Britain's North West Fur Company, based in Montreal. In September 1810, the ship Tonquin sailed from New York with men and supplies for the new post. On March 12, 1811 an overland party left Saint Louis. They were to locate sites for future trading posts as they worked their way across the continent to the Columbia.
 Neither party fared well. The Tonquin's dictatorial captain, Jonathan Thorn, quickly earned the enmity of the fun-loving French-Canadian and Scottish fur traders. He needlessly squandered eight men's lives while crossing the Columbia's bar in March 1811. Wilson Price Hunt's overland party moved tentatively across the continent and was fragmented after being turned back to impenetrable rapids on the Snake. They limped into Astoria in early 1812, many months overdue.

 They talked to me of whites who had built a large house at the mouth of the river, had surrounded it with palisades, etc. They had not been there; but they informed me that the whites were in great trouble, expected a large number of their friends, constantly looked toward Big River and, when we arrived, would dry their tears and would sing and dance.

Astoria's First Days

 Astoria got off to a rough start. Men began clearing brush and cutting huge trees at the post's site on April 12, 1811. On May 18 they named the post "Astoria" and were building a warehouse. But hard labor, the rain, poor food and medical care, and Duncan McDougall's leadership wore on the men. Then, in late summer, they learned that Vancouver Island natives had killed the Tonquin's crew. The loss cost the Astorians most of their supplies and firepower, as well as the means of pursuing the rich coastal fur trade. They quickly built palisades and installed cannon to intimidate the local Indians. A few men tried to desert.

 I have seen the whole party so reduced that scarcely one could help the other, and all this chiefly owning to the conduct of Mr. Astor; first, in not sending out a medical man with the party; and, secondly, in his choice of the great pasha, McDougall, whom he placed at the head of his affairs.

 In 1812 the Astorians' luck turned. They overland party finally arrived, and the fur trade on the Upper Columbia looked promising. On May 10 the ship Beaver arrived with provisions, trade goods, and nearly 30 more men for the enterprise. The now optimistic partners soon dispatched large parties to trade on the Willamette, Snake, and Upper Columbia rivers. The Beaver sailed north to obtain furs from Russians in Alaska. Astor's plans were proceeding well.

 The buildings consisted of apartments for the proprietors and clerks, with a capacious dining hall for both, extensive warehouses for the trading goods and furs, a provision store, a trading shop, smith's forge, carpenter's workshop, etc. The whole surrounded by stockades forming a square, and reaching about 15 feet over the ground.

The War of  1812

 The possibility of war with Great Britain or competition with the aggressive North West Fur Company had threatened the Pacific Fur Company from its beginnings, and in 1813 both threats materialized. News of the War of 1812 reached the post in January 1813. Despite appeals to the US government, Astor failed to get an armed ship to protect his investment on the Pacific. He succeeded in squeezing a supply ship through the tight British stockade, but the vessel wrecked in Hawaii before reaching the now-beleaguered Astorians. In July, 1813 the four partners present in Astoria agreed to abandon the post in 11 months if Astor failed to provide support.

 ...even yet it is not too late to do good if our government would act with promptness... Good God what an object is to be secured... I have not time to point out all the advantages that would result from the securing the river for us.

 In fine, circumstances are against us on every hand, and nothing operates to lead us into a conclusion that we can succeed.

Astoria Abandoned

 The North West Fur Company forced the Astorians' hand before the year ended. In September 75 of them arrived and boisterously announced that a British warship soon would arrived to seize Fort Astoria. A month later, on October 6, Pacific Fur Company partners agreed to sell out to the Nor'Westers to salvage what they could before the warship arrived. Some of the Astorians joined the British fur company. Others would return to the East in the spring. Over 60 of them had lost their lives, and no fortunes had been made.

 ...the agents of the North West Company had exaggerated the importance of the factory in the eyes of the British ministry; for if the latter had known what it really was—a mere trading post—and that nothing but the rivalry of the fur traders of the North West Company was interested in its destruction, they would have taken umbrage at it, or at least would never have sent a maritime Expedition to destroy it.

Astoria Under the British Flag

 The British fur traders quickly displaced the Astorians. On December 18, 1813, Capt. Black of HMS Raccoon formally took possession of the small post and renamed it Fort George. In April 1814 the long-awaited ship Isaac Todd arrived with supplies, more Nor'Westers, and the first European woman in Oregon, an English barmaid named Jane Barnes.

Jane Barnes Aboard Isaac Todd 1813

 In Portsmouth, England, he ordered ale and found both it and the barmaid heady stuff. He took her aboard the Isaac Todd and sailed for the outpost on the Columbia where he spent half his time keeping "his" Jane out of the amorous clutches of other men. But finally he had to "share" her, lose her and then his life in the stormy Columbia.
 When the North West Fur Company appointed Donald McTavish (1772-1814) to the post of chief factor at Fort George all he knew about the place was it was situated at the mouth of the Columbia in Oregon Country and that it lacked all the comforts of home. The fort was started as Astoria by J. J. Astor but the British had taken over at the outbreak of the War of 1812 and renamed it.
 On a late evening in February 1813, McTavish was stopping at an inn in Portsmouth where the Isaac Todd, the vessel that would carry him to the far outpost, was anchored. He expected to sail in a few days and had tried to think of everything he could take along to keep him comfortable and happy in the raw New World. He had quantities of fancy cheeses, liquors and other delicacies in the hold but what about women? He was going to miss his women friends, he mused, as he went into the barroom of the inn. What he saw relieved his mind and sparked an idea—blonde, buxom Jane Barns, one of the barmaids. Damn all ridicule—she was a lovely bit. As she served him he caught her wrist. Would she go with him to Fort George?

Barnes and McTavish Sail for Fort George

 That she would, gracious sir, and Barnes flew into a tizzy of excitement, spending hours in the town’s best stores buying dresses and other finery, all to the account of Donald McTavish. And when the Isaac Todd sailed into the Atlantic, Jane Barnes sailed into McTavish's cabin as Fancy Lady.

Jane Barnes, Oregon's First Pioneer Woman 1813

 The crew, from the captain to cabin boy, harbored ideas about luring the pretty barmaid into their raw-knuckled hands. McTavish, however, kept her in his own iron fist and stayed close to the cabin during the long months at sea, and when the Isaac Todd crossed the Columbia bar on April 17, 1813 and anchored off the primitive Fort George, the barmaid was still "his" Jane exclusively.
 But McTavish had qualms when he went ashore in the long boat about leaving Barnes on board. And then, after a few days getting familiar with things, he invited young Alexander Henry, head clerk, and other officials on board the ship to dinner and to meet Barnes. The meeting was electric. Any non-colored woman would have made and impression on men so long removed from any females other than the vermin-infested Chinook squaws, but these men were fairly bedazzled by the blonde beauty of the English woman. After a few drinks had loosened restraints the conversation began to get out of hand, according to an item in Henry's journal: "A vile discourse took place in the hearing of Barnes, on the subject of venereal disease among the Chinook squaws." Henry stopped the talk, no doubt aware the barmaid had heard worse.
 Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown wrote that the biggest surprise package aboard the Isaac Todd was Jane Barnes,

a Portsmouth barmaid, a "flaxen-haired, blue-eyed daughter of Albion" who "in a temporary fit of erratic enthusiasm" had consented to become "le compagnon du voyage" of one Donald McTavish, a former Nor’Wester proprietor now out of retirement to organize the new Columbia District. Not only was Jane an object of interest to traders, but she also was "the greatest curiosity that ever gratified the wondering eyes of the blubber-loving aboriginals of the northwest coast of America." They named their daughters for her and thronged the fort to examine her various adornment and attire, which she sported in daily evening walks on the beach. Native male royalty sought to prevent a rumored move by McTavish to send her east by proposing marriage to her.

 When she made her first visit ashore she flaunted her new finery before all the men at the fort and ignored the venomous looks of the Chinook squaws, always eager to entangle a white man. Then McTavish began to worry about his charge. He was increasingly busy with fort affairs, feeling Jane was unsafe ashore or on board without him. His original plan had been to arrange matters at the fort quickly and return overland to Montreal with his love interest. It was now pointed out this was too dangerous and difficult.

McTavish Marries a Chinook Squaw

 McTavish came to a decision. Barnes had been "his" for several months and now he would "share" her with Alexander Henry so the clerk could keep an eye on her when he couldn’t. The arrangement was most agreeable to Henry and apparently to Barnes but not, it soon appeared, to the chief factor. Henry began to "watch out for her" full time, McTavish usually sleeping alone. In spite of this both men continued to get along well in their business relations, and McTavish took to one of the Chinook squaws left behind by a departing American who had worked for Astor. The squaw was "deloused," somewhat "cleansed" of fish oil and was fairly easy to live with once the chief factor realized he had lost Barnes.

McTavish Drowns Crossing the Columbia May 22, 1814

 On May 22, 1814, McTavish, Henry and five crewmen boarded a longboat for what should have been a routine crossing of the Columbia to the Isaac Todd. They may have intended to visit the Chinook Camp at Point Ellice to look over some squaws but they failed to make the crossing. A strong wind was kicking up huge swells, an almost normal condition at the mouth of the river, over five miles wide at this point. The boat was swamped and all were drowned.
 The body of Donald McTavish drifted ashore and was buried in the tiny cemetery at the northeastern bastion of the fort, a suitable tombstone erected some time later. This is of sandstone, not native to the area, presumed to be finished from a "blank" among many shipped as ballast in North West ships, the company expecting many deaths among personnel at Fort George.

Barnes Refuses Prince Casaka's Marriage Proposal 1814

 Barnes was now left without a benefactor but also without restraint, free to make the rounds of the men at the fort. One day, Prince Casaka, a son of Tyee Concomly, one-eyed Chinook leader from Point Ellice across the Columbia, was at the fort, offering Barnes 100 of the finest otter skins for her hand. But the one-time barmaid took a look at his painted face and decided all that fur wouldn’t keep out the smell of his body coating of whale oil. She said, "Chinook go home" or a similar phrase of the day.
 Sherr and Kazickas wrote that in April 1814 when Jane Barnes set her tiny foot on the banks of the Columbia, she became the first white woman on the Pacific Northwest Coast:

A waitress from Portsmouth, England, in search of adventure, Jane arrived with territorial governor Donald McTavish. He drowned a few weeks later, thus clearing the way for Cassakas, son of a Chinook chief, to woo her. Exquisitely decorated with red paint and shiny whale oil, Cassakas promised Jane she would never have to carry wood, draw water, dig for roots, or hunt. She could have all she wanted of salmon, elk, and anchovies to eat and unlimited pipes of tobacco. Jane nevertheless declined such tempting offers until Cassakas threatened to kidnap her, forcing Jane to leave Oregon in September. Apparently heading for home, Jane stopped in China, where it was learned "she was enjoying all the luxuries of eastern magnificence."

 Ruby and Brown wrote that Cassakas arrived at Fort Astoria all dandied up in his best attire,

face debaubed with red paint and body redolent in whale oil, and offered to buy her for a hundred sea otter skins. Were she to have accepted his offer he would have made her his special wife. No hewing of wood and carrying of water and that sort of thing for her—his four other wives could do that. She would have lived a life of leisure, smoked as many pipes of tobacco as she thought proper, and dressed in the manner to which she was accustomed. Rebuffed in his attempts to win her for himself, he plotted with other young men of his tribe to kidnap her as she took her usual stroll on the beach, hoping no doubt to insure himself in Tarzanian fashion a happy life in the wilderness with his Jane. Why not? White man had cohabited with his women; this plan would simply be a fair turnabout.

Jane Leaves Astoria with the East India Company 1814

 Some time later capt. Robinson of the ship Columbia offered her passage to Canton, China, and she went with him. At least he did "escort a young woman ashore" in Canton, one record states.
 Ruby and Brown elaborate on Barnes' trip to the Orient:

 In the fall of 1814, Jane would leave the Columbia to receive an even better offer from a nabob of the East India Company. She would later return to the fort after having experienced marriage and motherhood, which one trader thought had improved neither her outlook nor her language.
 Cargo from the Isaac Todd had been unloaded and shuttled to the fort on the ten-ton coasting schooner Dolly, whose frame the Astorians had shipped to the Columbia aboard the Tonquin. The craft was renamed the Jane for the lady of the hour.

Stories about Jane Barnes from here on are less well documented, but she is supposed to have taken up with a wealthy Englishman for a time, eventually returning to England where her trail vanishes.
 On the Columbia, history was in the making. The Americans regained the country, and in 1818 Fort George was once again Fort Astoria. The town grew. Sometime in the 1870s workmen excavating for a building uncovered half a dozen skeletons and presumably the McTavish headstone. A Catholic priest blessed the bones which were then moved to a new small burial ground near the top of the hill where the Astor Column now stands. In time the sandstone marker fell over and was covered with weeds and brush.

McTavish Grave Excavated 1904

 About 1904, Samuel Gill, an uncle of Harold Gill of the present J. K. Gill Company in Portland, was in Astoria as a crew member of the government survey ship Lincoln. Familiar with the McTavish story, young Gill searched for the long lost grave, located the cemetery on the hill and cutting through the weeds, finally reclaimed the fallen stone. Determined that the relic be properly preserved, he enlisted the aid of an expressman and got the marker in a large gunny sack and on board the sternwheeler Lurline, putting it in the hands of the Oregon Historical Society in Portland.
 There the stone rested until an Astoria business man visited the Society's museum and George Hines, the curator, showed him the exhibit. The Astoria man and fellow townsmen wanted it returned and promised to take proper care of it. So the slab went back to Astoria and was mounted near the front door of the newly erected City Hall at 16th and Exchange streets with a cage to protect it from vandals. Much later, when Astoria garden clubs finished landscaping the grounds at the Fort Astoria memorial site, the stone was again moved to a spot a block and a half above the original location.

North West Fur Company and Hudson's Bay Company Merge 1821

 Over the next few years the British expanded the fort, traded for furs throughout the Pacific Northwest, and enjoyed rollicking rendezvous at the damp post on the great river's mouth. In 1821 the North West Fur Company merged with the Hudson's Bay Company, another British concern, and a new set of men came to Astoria. Then, in 1825, Sir George Simpson (1786-1860) moved his headquarters upriver to Fort Vancouver. The Hudson's Bay Company, however, kept at least one man at Fort George from 1829 to 1846 to help their ships negotiate the river's bar and to keep an eye on the restless Americans who were again pushing into the region.

Fort George has "an air of appearance of grandeur and consequences which does not become and is not at all suitable to an Indian trading post."

The Americans Return

 Settlers from the East trickled steadily into Astoria in the 1840s. In 1846 the US and Great Britain settled their old boundary dispute and divided the Oregon Country along the 49th parallel. Astoria had become part of the US! The town boasted 252 people in 1850. It grew but slowly until salmon canneries began multiplying in the 1870s. By 1900 Astoria had become the second largest city in the state with 8,381 residents. Declining salmon runs and a large fire reversed the city's growth in the 1820s. Armed services personnel temporarily swell its population during WWII. Today Astoria's economy depends largely upon the traditional fishing, lumbering, and shipping industries while developing services for the thousands of visitors who flock to the historical and natural attraction in and about the venerable old city. Astoria features many reminders of its illustrious past. There is no better place to reflect upon great events and people who shaped Western American history.

Bethenia Owens-Adair, MD

  Bethenia Owens' family was among The earliest settlers in Oregon Territory (1848-1859), heading West in 1843 when she was three years old. The Owens family, which was eventually to include nine children, settled southwest of Astoria. Bethenia spent much of her childhood doing family chores, particularly taking care of the many younger children. "I was the family nurse, and it was seldom that I had not a child in my arms... Where there is a baby every two years, there is always no end of nursing to be done..."
 Bethenia's brother Flem was her "constant companion," and the two enjoyed fighting one another to see who was the stronger. Flem, though younger, was bigger, but he never got the best of Bethenia during her tomboy years. The tiny Bethenia's tomboyishness seems to have been based not only on competition with her brother but on the general frontier admiration of strength. "My father, a tall athletic Kentuckian, served as sheriff of Pike County for many years, beginning as a deputy at the age of 16. It was often said of him: '"Thomas Owens is not afraid of man or the devil.'"
 Watching her father build a fine farm on the Oregon frontier and seeing her younger brother outpace her in growth and strength, Bethenia admitted that

The regret of my life up to the age of 35 was that I had not been born a boy, for I realized very early in life that a girl was hampered and hemmed in on all sides simply by the accident of sex.

 Bethenia did try, however, to follow the principle course then open to women. At the age of 14, in the manner of the frontier in marrying young, she became the spouse of LeGrand Hill, a man who had worked on her father's farm. She went to marriage with all the womanly delight of the time in furnishing out a new home and a new life.

 I spent all my time in preparing for my approaching marriage. I had four quilts already pieced and ready for the lining... [mother] also gave me muslin for four sheets, two pairs of pillowcases, two tablecloths, and four towels. I cut and made two calico dresses for myself, and assisted in the making of my wedding dress, which was a pretty, sky-blue figured lawn.

 The hopes and enthusiasm that Bethenia had for a happy traditional marriage were soon crushed by disillusionment. When she looked up at her spouse—he was five feet eleven inches tall and she could fit snugly under one of his arms—she must have thought that she had married the kind of man her father was—a strong, able, and responsible person who would provide for his family and take pride in doing so. Indeed, her spouse was off to a far better start than her father had been when He first reached Oregon. To the marriage Bethenia had brought a goodly array of pots and pans, her father's credit in buying groceries (which she did on the afternoon following her wedding), a riding mare, two cows and a heifer, a wagon and harness and considerable furniture including "a good feather bed." Her husband had a horse and saddle, a gun, and less than $20. He also had a woman who believed in him: "I thought my husband was the equal of any man living."
 But whereas her father had started out in Oregon with 50 cents and in less than ten years had over $20,000, Bethenia's new spouse was unable to take hold well enough even to provide her with proper shelter. "Mr. Hill was always ready to go hunting, no matter what work was pressing to be done." The unimproved cabin they had acquired along with 360 acres remained unimproved the first year, and, by the coming winter, rain was pouring in and skunks roamed the kitchen at night. "I was not yet 15 but, girl as I was, I could but realize that this condition was due not only to poor management, but to a want of industry and perseverance."
 At Hill's insistence the couple tried one move after another to improve their situation. First they went back to "visit" Bethenia's father at his ranch near Roseburg where the Owens family had moved to accommodate their growing herds. If her father was surprised that his new son-in-law had given up so quickly on making his own way, he said nothing. Next Hill took his wife to live near his family in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains. Unlike Bethenia's parents, Hill's apparently refused to help the couple. Having tried to lean upon each set of parents, Hill cast around for some other scheme whereby he could achieve easily what usually comes hard. This time he decided to join the goldrush occurring in Yreka, California.
 Although Bethenia was considerably younger than Hill, she had grown up with a sense of strong values and believe in her own abilities.

A girl of 15 was then considered a woman... I was at home in the saddle (on the journey to Yreka) and felt perfect confidence in myself.

But her sense of confidence in Hill was dying. He had forced her to sell her two cows in order to finance the will-o-the-whisp chase to Yreka.
 In Yreka Bethenia gave birth to a son whom they named George. As if she had not worries enough about how her husband was failing as a provider, one of Hill's aunts urged her to give up the baby to her.

I will give him all that I have and that is more than his father will ever be able to do for him. I know very well that LeGrand will just fool around all his life and never accomplish anything.

 Bethenia was of stronger stuff: "My baby was too precious to give to anyone."
 By 1857 the couple was backs trying a new start in Roseburg. Bethenia had been sick since childbirth and the baby was ill and fretful. Hill could not stand the baby's condition and treated him callously. Often he lost his temper with both wife and child, as though his own failures were somehow their fault. Finally Bethenia went to her parents and told them she could stand marriage to Hill no longer. Her mother favored a separation, fearing that "...with his temper he is liable to kill you at any time." But Bethenia's father told her to go back and try again.
 Before long the baby was sick again, and again Hill acted up under strain. Added to her troubles with Hill were Bethenia's anxieties for her child: "I slept little that night, expecting that the child would be in convulsions before morning." This time when she went home to her parents she stayed.
 Hill repented of his treatment of Bethenia, but It was too late. Deep within herself she had formed a strength and resolve that was never to leave her in her whole life. Bethenia's weak spouse had forced her to develop a determination to meet life on her own. To her penitent spouse she said, "I have told you many times that if we ever did separate, I would never go back, and I never will."
 Although she was free after four years of roller-coaster life with Hill, she was in a difficult position:

And now at 18 years of age, I found myself broken in health and spirit, again in my father's house, from which only four years before I had gone with such a happy heart and such bright hopes for the future. It seemed to me that I should never be happy or strong again... surrounded with the difficulties seemingly almost insurmountable—a husband for whom I had lost all love and respect, a divorce, the stigma of which would cling to me all my future life, and a sickly babe of two years in my arms, all this rose darkly before me.

On top of all this Bethenia could scarcely read or write, having only been to a three-month's school taught by an itinerant teacher the summer she was 12 years old.
 "I realized my position fully and resolved to met It bravely, and do my very best." The first step in her new resolve was to go to school. After getting up each morning at 4am to help with the family milking, she went with her younger brothers and sisters to primary school.

"I Was Never Born to be Stuck by Mortal Man"

 After mastering the fundamental subjects she decided to go to live with her married sister and begin to earn her own way. Before leaving her parents' home, however, she filed for a divorce. A neighbor woman, shocked at her action, advised her that the only permissible cause for divorce was adultery. "Go back and beg him on your knees to receive you," the neighbor urged. Bethenia answered firmly, "I was never born to be stuck by mortal man."
 The divorce blew up into a rough court fight because Hill's mother sought custody of Bethenia's child, hoping thereby to draw her own son closer to her. Bethenia's attorney, later governor of Oregon, fought the case successfully and Bethenia secured her divorce, custody of the child, and the right to resume her maiden name.
 The struggle only deepened her determination "to make my own livelihood and that of my child." This she first did by taking in laundry, "one of the few (occupations) considered "proper" for women in those days." To this she added sewing and nursing and "thus a year passed profitably." But she became restless "because of my intense thirst for learning. An education I must have at whatever cost."

Bethenia Attends School in Oyster, Washington 1860

 Then in 1860 her chance came. Friends in Oysterville, Washington Territory, with whom she was visiting offered to let her stay with them and go to school there. She agreed to their proposal only if she could earn her own way. For the next five years she struggled to get an education, actually spending most of this period in Astoria where she took in laundry, did housekeeping, and finally was teaching school. Before she got this far she had to bear the "humiliation of having to recite with children from eight to 14 years of age." But she stuck to her studies, beginning each morning at 4am, and advanced rapidly. "Nothing was permitted to come between me and this, the greatest opportunity of my life."
 Not only did she manage to support herself, take care of her son George, and progress in school, but she also managed to save enough money to build herself a little house in Astoria. After her heartbroken disappointment in Hill, she rejoiced in her own ability to do well.
 During the five years of working 18 and more hours a day, Bethenia was "happy in my independence, I dare say, as John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)." Repeatedly Hill wrote to her asking her to remarry him, but she steadfastly refused. Then one night he showed up in person and found, as Bethenia viewed it, not the child bride he had abused but "a full-grown, self-reliant, self-supporting woman who could look upon him only with pity." Although Hill had failed to provide child support he asked if the could have George visit him. Bethenia agreed but, being older and wiser, alerted the town sheriff to make sure George was not taken out of town.

Bethenia Starts Millinery Business in Roseburg 1867

 In 1867 she returned to Roseburg and started what was to become a successful millinery business.
 Lynn Sherr and Jurate Kazickas wrote of this venture:

 At first, Bethenia Owens-Adair didn't know anything about blocking, bleaching, or trimming hats. But with the unwitting help of a competitor whose secrets she learned in 1867 by spying from the rooftop, she soon had one of the most successful shops in town.

By 1870 she was able to send her son to the University of California at Berkeley. With her easier financial situation there began to grow in her the desire to become a doctor.
 Sherr and Kazickas wrote that she was, however, destined for more vital work with scissors and thread:

She memorized Gray's Anatomy and left for Philadelphia to study medicine. "The delicate and sympathetic office of a physician belongs more to my sex than to the other and I will enter it, and make it an honor to women," she vowed.

Stephen F. Chadwick, the attorney who had fought her divorce case, heard her ambition and told her, "Go ahead. It is in you; let it come out. You will win."

Bethenia Attends Electric School of Medicine in Philadelphia

 Systematically she began to make arrangements to go East to medical school, turning over her business to her sister. "But I was not prepared for the storm of opposition that followed. My family felt that they were disgraced... people sneered and laughed derisively." One respected woman friend told her that she personally would never have submit to a woman doctor. Bethenia choked back tears and replied, "Time will tell. People have been known to change their minds."
 Against all arguments she set out for the East, taking a train from Marysville, California, on a rain-swept night. She was all alone in the car as the rain beat down and there came to her the full realization "that I was starting out into an untried world alone, with only my own unaided resources to carry me through."
 Her unaided resources were sufficient. Despite the doubts that assailed her as the train stood in the Marysville station, Bethenia completed the course offered at Philadelphia's Electric School of Medicine.

Doctor Owens Returns to Roseburg 1874

 When she returned to Roseburg in 1874, she was jokingly invited by six male doctors to participate in an autopsy. Although the corpse was a male (the autopsy was of genitalia) and a crowd of 50 people were watching, Bethenia skillfully and calmly maneuvered her scalpel. When she had finished, the audience, but not the doctors, gave three cheers for "the woman who dared."
 Her boldness so scandalized the town, however, that later she said she believed she had narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered. Enraged at the attitude among her own townspeople, she decided to move to Portland and there she fitted up her office with electrical and medical baths, the style of medical treatment she had learned in Philadelphia.
 Sherr and Kazickas commented that while in Portland:

...Bethenia dared to ice skate, ride astride on a horse, and go around town without a hat, pleasures as forbidden to women as the vote—for which she relentlessly campaigned.

 Her practice became so successful that she was able to send George to medical school at Willamette University and her sister to Mills College in Oakland, California. During this time she also adopted the daughter of a deceased patient.
 Bethenia was not satisfied to be what was then termed a "bath doctor" and she decided "I've done my duty to those depending upon me and now I will treat myself to a full medical course in the old school."
 At the age of 38 she entered the University of Michigan Medical College. She received her MD in 1880 and supplemented her education with clinical work in Chicago, further postgraduate work, and a tour of European facilities. On her return to Portland in 1881 she specialized in eye and ear diseases. Although her practice soon reached $7,000 per year, a huge sum in those days, few men were among her patients. But the Roseburg woman who said she would never have a woman doctor changed her mind and became one of Bethenia's patients.
 Bethenia became active in the Women's Suffrage Movement and in the Oregon State Medical Society and contributed papers and lectures to both organizations. She called these years some of the happiest and most prosperous years of her life. Looking back on her original decision to become a doctor she said, "I can assure you it was no laughing matter then to break through the customs, prejudices, and established rules..."

Controversy Over Eugenic Sterilization

 She was not yet done with controversy, however, for in later years her pioneer advocacy of eugenic sterilization brought another storm around her.
 Sherr and Kazickas said that her greatest notoriety came from:

...her 15 year effort to pass a law to sterilize the criminally insane. The law was approved in 1925, a year before her death.

Owens Marries John Adair 1884

Nor was she done with family life. In 1884 she married John Adair, a childhood friend. Gen. John Adair, then a colonel, was the first collector of customs at Astoria. He became postmaster of the Astoria office on November 8, 1849. This was the first American post office on the Pacific Coast. On April 10, 1852, Gen. Adair wrote to Gov. Joseph Lane as follows:

 When I came to the country, or shortly after, you know [John M.] Shively, who was postmaster and resided on the hill at Fort George, left for the mines, leaving no one to take care of the office... McClure, who would not allow a mail bag to go into his house and demanded of the postmaster general an immediate release as security. I consented to take the poor bantling.

John Adair was also prominent in Clatsop County affairs and the father of Henry Rodney Adair for whom Camp Adair (Benton and Polk counties) was named. Henry’s son, Samuel, had a summer home high on the ground above the small waterfall in Fall Creek.
 In 1887, Bethenia and John moved to Clatsop County established a farm along the upper reaches of Adair Slough. They adopted two more children: George's son, whose mother had died, and the newborn baby of a patient. In 1887, Dr. Owens-Adair, then 47, gave birth to a daughter but the baby died within a few days.
 Upon her marriage to John Adair, Bethenia gave up her city practice and became part time doctor and part time farmer. Her active career in public life continued almost up until the time of her death at age 86.
 One of the proudest moments in her life occurred in 1905 when the Portland Medical Club hosted the American Medical Association at a banquet honoring women physicians. Bethenia noted,

This is the first time in the history of the sessions of the AMA that women have had a distinct recognition... It is another instance of the West setting the pace and establishing precedents for the rest of the country to follow... I thank God that I have been spared to see this day, when women are acknowledged before the world as the equal of men in medicine and surgery; and, above all, that my own Oregon is in the forefront of this grand forward movement.

"Feminist, Teacher, Physician and Social Reformer"

  For almost 50 years after her death in 1926, the grave of Oregon's most controversial pioneer doctor was marked with only a tiny cement pauper's marker, overgrown by grass. In July 1975, concerned citizens of Clatsop County finally dedicated this fitting memorial. Bethenia Owens-Adair is praised as "feminist, teacher, physician and social reformer." Her much debated book Human Sterilization and her outspoken championing of Equal Rights for women were an outgrowth of one of her favorite creeds, carved into granite stone:

Only the enterprising and the brave are actuated to become pioneers.

Chapter 3: The Fur Trade

 Portage, Wisconsin, which was headquarters for John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company from 1812 to 1842, gained significance as early as the 1670s as part of the Fox-Wisconsin waterway system which carried furs gathered west of and in Wisconsin and to eastern markets. Existing 19th century maps illustrate the portage crossing the 1.5 miles interval at approximately its narrowest width. Until 1850, the portage forked with one leg ascending the hill to the northwest and the other going directly west to the Wisconsin. A corduroy road spanned the marshy portage. For its role in the fur trade, Wauona Trail, which follows the approximate course of the portage, gained National Register recognition in 1973.
 The fur trade provided the milieu within which Europeans in Wisconsin first exploited its resources, formulating policies towards its inhabitants, and in some cases adopted new life styles. Indians, in turn, began to adapt their traditional cultures to the presence of the Europeans. Native American groups in the Midwest participated in the fur trade well before the appearance of the Europeans in Wisconsin.
 In their book, Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West, Historians Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage write:

The fur trade also introduced wage work for women who performed domestic and gardening work on the trading posts or who worked in the fish canneries in coastal trading posts. While these types of occupations may have helped to support families, we do not have a clear picture of how the women themselves viewed the effect on their lives—an emic (insider's) view. From an etic, or an outsider's, view, women do not appear to gain in general, if they lack control over what they produce and wages are minimal.

The Huron and Ottawa occupying territory to the east of Wisconsin served as middlemen between the French at Montreal and Wisconsin groups who received European goods for furs. The struggle of the Huron, Ottawa, and Iroquois to protect their positions as middlemen from competing groups to their west resulted in the movement of Native American groups west into Wisconsin in the 1640s and 1650s. By the 1660s, the Ottawa and Huron, having been defeated by the Iroquois, reestablished themselves at Chequamegon Bay along Lake Superior. Since these two groups continued their role as middlemen between Wisconsin Native Americans and other groups of the Upper Mississippi basin and the French, Chequamegon Bay remained a major fur trade center in specific European goods and associated technologies which represented an improvement over weapons and tools already in use. At this stage, the Native Americans adapted primarily to economic aspects of the European culture. They shifted the emphasis in their economy toward hunting but did not abandon their other seasonal activities. They expanded their territory, engaged in additional warfare to accomplish it, often formed small living units, and gained greater mobility to secure the furs but did not alter the essential patterns of their culture. But, to accomplish this change, rapid adjustments within the culture did occur.
 American historian Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932), who was born in Portage, Wisconsin, discusses the negative effects of the fur traders on Native Americans:

 Why was it that the Indian trader passed so rapidly across the continent? What effects followed from the trader's frontier?
 The explanation of the rapidity of this advance is bound with the effects of the trader on the Indian. The trading post left the unarmed tribes at the mercy of those that had purchased firearms—a truth which the Iroquois wrote in blood, and so the remote and unvisited tribes gave eager welcome to the trader. "The savages," wrote French explorer René-Robert Cavalier de La Salle (1643-1687), "take better care of us French than of their own children; from us only can they get guns and goods." This accounts for the trader's power and the rapidity of his advance. Thus the disintegrating forces of civilization entered the wilderness. Every river valley and Indian trail became a fissure in Indian society, and so that society became honeycombed. Long before the pioneer farmer appeared on the scene, primitive Indian life had passed away. The farmers met Indians armed with guns. The trading frontier, while steadily undermining Indian power by making the tribes ultimately dependent on the whites, yet through its sale of guns gave to the Indian increased power of resistance to the farming frontier. French colonization was dominated by its trading frontier, English colonization by its farming frontier. There was an antagonism between the two frontiers as between two nations. Said Dequesne to the Iroquois,

 Are you ignorant of the differences between the king of England and the king of France? Go see the forts that our king has established and you will see that you can still hunt under their very walls. They have been placed for your advantage in places which you frequent. The English, on the contrary, are no sooner in possession of a place than the game is driven away. The forest falls before them as they advance, and the soil is laid bare so that you can scarce find the wherewithal to erect a shelter for the night.

 By the 1660s, some French traders and missionaries had begun to accompany the Huron and Ottawa middlemen west. However, the fur trade in then Wisconsin remained in the hands of the Ottawa and Huron not the French, and these Native Americans took the furs to Montreal. But when the Sioux drove the Huron and Ottawa from their position as middlemen in 1671, the French soon arrived to fill the void. In that year, Simon Francois Daumont de Saint Lusson arrived at Sault Saint Marie, Michigan to claim the lands to be discovered north, south, and west of lakes Huron and Superior for the French government.
 Perhaps even preceded by some French coureur de bois or illegal independent traders, the trip of Jacques Marquette (1637-1675) and Louis Jolliet (1645-1700) opened a new era in the Mississippi provided a trade route to the Pacific. They traveled from the Great Lakes, up the Fox River, over the portage, and along the Wisconsin River to the Mississippi. Marquette and Jolliet left Saint Ignatius Mission established in 1672 at Mackinac, Michigan on May 17, 1673. Their Miami guides led them across the portage on June 14, 1673, and they entered the Mississippi on June 17. Marquette and Jolliet reached the mouth of the Arkansas before returning north in July by way of the Illinois, Des Plaines, and Chicago rivers to Lake Michigan. Other representatives of the French government followed. They explored the waterways primarily to locate available trade routes, remaining alert to possible opportunities in which they might engage the Native American groups in the fur trade. Sent by La Salle to explore the Upper Mississippi, Fr. Louis Hennepin (c1626-1701), a Jesuit missionary, crossed the portage with his party in 1679. Daniel Greysolon de Duluth (1636-1710) later recovered him from the Sioux. La Salle first traveled the waterway and crossed the portage to contact and establish trade relations with the Sioux in 1683. In 1685, Nicolas Perrot (1644-1717) traversed the Fox-Wisconsin waterway and the intervening portage to establish a fur trading post at Lake Pepin in Sioux territory. He was transporting his furs across the portage was were other Frenchmen whom he encountered in 1690-1691. These individuals constituted some of the better known traders and missionaries crossing the portage in the late 1600s, but there were certainly many others after 1673.
 The fur trade system remained in transition in the 1670s and 1680s. The French slowly assumed the role of the Native American middleman, bringing the trade goods to Wisconsin and removing the furs from Wisconsin to Montreal. The Fox, Sac, and Potawatomi resisted this shift in roles and attempted to block their passage through Wisconsin in the 1680s and periodically as late as the 1730s. As the Fox in particular continued to block French traders in the early 1700s, the French engaged them in a series of wars between 1712 and 1738. It was not until after the Fox wars that the French finally gained complete control of the trade in Wisconsin. By that date, the French initiated the trading system which they had previously developed outside the Mississippi River Valley.
 Because of its dispersed nature, the fur trade remained difficult to regulate. The French government required that each independent trader or bourgeois financed by credit from a trading company obtained one of a limited number of trading licenses from the government at Montreal or Quebec. The bourgeois sold his beaver pelts at a fixed price to designated buyer at Montreal. The French bourgeois directed the activities of his voyageurs who carried trade goods into major interior posts and took furs to Montreal from them in their canoe brigades. The Native American groups now traded with the bourgeois or his representative at these posts or rendezvous points rather than selling their furs to the Huron and Ottawa. Here, they bargained with bourgeois's agent for the sale of the furs in the spring, and the voyageurs returned in the fall with trade goods.

Missionaries Accompany Fur Traders West

 In the late 1600s and early 1700s, Catholic missionaries accompanied the voyageurs West. To engage the Native Americans and survive in the interior, the French adopted parts of their culture such as their foods, some of their technology, and Native American ceremony such as the gift exchange, use of ceremonial metals, and other forms of diplomacy. They married into the Native American groups.
 Historians Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage wrote that one of the outcomes of unions between French and British traders or trappers and Indian women

was the creation of a mixed-blood group. In Canada the French-Indian mixed-bloods (Métis) form a group considered separate from either Indian or white. In the US, mixed-bloods were considered Indian but were more likely to have received Euro-American education and to have become part of an elite "comprador" group who often worked more closely with whites and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Those involved in the fur trade eventually formed small communities adjacent to the trading posts at such locations as Green Bay and Prairie du Chien.
 By the mid-18th Century, the bourgeois trading in the Upper Mississippi District with the Menomonee, Winnebago, Fox, Sac, and Potawatomi used Green Bay as their base of operations. Because its northern location reduced spoilage, the Fox-Wisconsin waterway became a favored route along which to transport the furs. Along with this water route, the portage remained in active use especially after the 1730s. Although it may have periodically served as a meeting place and point of distribution of goods and collection of furs by the late 1600s until the 1730s, the adjacent Fox blocked the passage of French traders until the end of the Fox wars.
 The volume of the fur trade and level of contact intensified after the British gained control of the Mississippi Valley. The trading patterns established by the French by the 1740s and 1750s generally continued under British rule beginning at the close of the French and Indian War in 1763. Although some of the same French merchants retained control, Scottish investors replaced many of the French bourgeois in the Montreal trading companies. After 1770, the bourgeois or traders gradually established temporary sub-posts or wintering quarters closer to the territory of the Native American groups. In the fall, they began to send engages who completed the trading and clerks with the trade goods to wintering quarters near each band. Furs were brought to the wintering quarters in the spring and taken to the rendezvous point or main posts in the early summer. Then, accounts were settled with each band and the next year's arrangements consummated. By the late 1700s, the bourgeois extended increasing amounts of credit to Native American groups. The smaller traders sold their furs and purchased goods from these larger merchants at Prairie du Chien. By the 1760s, use of the portage as a minor rendezvous point had probably begun. A deserter from a French garrison in Illinois, Pinneshon, became the first known squatter at the portage by 1766. American explorer Jonathan Carver noted the presence of the Frenchman as he crossed the portage in that year. Although it is certainly possible, there is no evidence that he operated as a small trader. He engaged in the transport business moving at least goods if not the large mackinaws (barges) across the portage. Pinneshon erected a dwelling midway between the Fox and Wisconsin.
 There is a story about Pinneshon that was obviously told in order to "poke fun" at and to test the credulity of a "greenhorn" in the wilderness for the first time:

 I observed here (the portage) a great number of rattle snakes. Monsieur Pinneshon, a French-Canadian fur trader, told me a remarkably story concerning one of these reptiles, of which he said he was an eye-witness. An Indian, belonging to the Menomonee nation, having taken one of them, found means to tame it; and when he had done this, treated it as a deity; calling it his great father; and carrying it with him in a box wherever he went. This the Indian had done for several summers, when Monsieur Pinneshon accidentally met him at this carrying place, just as he was setting off for a winter's hunt. The French gentleman was surprised, one day, to see the Indian place the box which contained his God on the ground, and opening the door give him his liberty; telling him, whilst he did it, to be sure and return by the time he himself should come back, which was to be in the month of May following. As this was but October, Monsieur told the Indian, whose simplicity astonished him, that he fancied he might wait long enough when May arrived, for the arrival of his great father. The Indian was so confident of his creature's obedience, that he offered to lay the Frenchman a wager of two gallons of rum, that at the time appointed he would come and crawl into his box. This was agreed upon, and the second week in May following fixed for the determination of the wager. At the appointed day both men arrived but the snake did not appear. The Indian offered to double the bet if his great father did not come within two days. This was agreed upon; when behold on the second day, about 1pm, the snake arrived, and of his own accord, crawled into the box, which was placed ready for him! The Frenchman vouched for the truth of this story.

 After the closing of the French forts in the early 1760s, the French bourgeois continued to winter at interior settlements such as Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. But, the regional administrative headquarters where furs were deposited and trade goods received shifted from Green Bay to Mackinac. Warehouses at the regional headquarters housed trading goods and supplies for the field. In 1774, the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions were placed in the Province of Quebec and governed from Montreal. With the onset of the American Revolution, the hostilities between tribes supporting the British and Americans tended to turn traders away from the Upper Mississippi Valley to its northwest until 1783. Despite the peace treaty of 1783, the British retained control of the fur trade from their Canadian posts until the War of 1812. The Jay Treaty of 1796 stipulated that the British evacuate posts occupied in American territory, but it allowed both nations to engage in trade with Native Americans on either side of the boundary. The treaty permitted the British to use the Fox-Wisconsin waterway.

The North West Company 1783

 After 1783, British traders began to form fur companies to deal with the raising number of competitors. As a group of British traders formed the North West Company and held a monopoly over the trade along Lake Superior and to the West, independent traders many of whom were headquartered at Prairie du Chien turned to the Upper Mississippi. The French traders operating along the Upper Mississippi including Wisconsin who were based at Prairie du Chien and Green Bay then lost the trading advantage of the less expensive British trade goods. But, they continued to operate successfully as independent traders, often forming short-lived partnerships, until after 1803 when the center of trade shifted to Saint Louis which served the Missouri basin. Traders at Green Bay at the turn of the century included Charles de Langlade, Pierre Grignon, Jacques Portlier, John Lawe, Joseph LeRoy, and Jacques Vieau. John Campbell, a Scot, located at Prairie du Chien. These traders or their representatives periodically traded in the portage vicinity.
 By the 1770s and 1780s, the portage served as an established gathering place for traders and Native Americans. In 1787, Joseph Ainse described his arrival at Green Bay, his ascent of the Fox, and the meeting and gift exchange with the Puant or Winnebago at the portage. Primarily Green Bay traders or their representatives began temporary settlement at the portage with increasing frequency by the 1790s. Some also continued to operate a transport business. In 1792-1793, James Portlier and Charles Reaume traded and transported goods for a short period. Laurent Barth obtained permission from the Winnebago to transport goods across the portage in 1793. He and subsequent operators hauled the goods and later the mackinaws on carts. Engaging in the fur trade as an independent trader and selling his furs at Mackinac, he also established a small trading post and constructed a cabin at the west of the portage. Barth first located on the lowlands of the portage and removed to higher ground in 1794. He appears to have resided at the portage during much of the year. In 1798, Jean Lecuyer established a similar business, placing himself at the east end of the portage. John Campbell purchased Barth’s business rights in 1803, and Barth departed. Both Campbell and Lecuyer died in 1808 and 1810 respectively. In 1797 and 1798, Jacques Vieux, who is usually associated with Milwaukee, wintered and traded at the portage. In 1801-1802, Augustine Grignon, a noted trader, also wintered at the portage. They presumably provided the local Winnebago with supplies and collected their furs for transportation to Mackinac.

Michilimachinac Company Merges with Astor's South West Company 1811

 In 1805, several Canadian traders including independent traders at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien united into a single company, Robert Dickason and Company. The company attempted to limit the ruinous competition among the traders by expanding their trading areas to the northeast and assigning specific areas to each trader. After this company's failure in 1807, the same group of Montreal merchants who controlled the North West Company absorbed the former into their newly formed Michilimachinac Company to control the trade south of the Canadian border. After the onset of hostilities between the British and the Americans, the Michilimachinac Company maintained its trade south of the border by merging with Astor's South West Company in 1811. After the War of 1812, the Americans gained control of the final years of the fur trade. The government attempted to regulate the trade through a dual system of government fur trade factories and the licensing of private traders by the superintendent of Indian affairs and his agents. The regulations under the later system were poorly enforced. In the face of this competition, the absence of credit, gifts, and alcohol doomed the government factory system which lasted from 1796 to 1822.

Astor Forms the American Fur Company 1812-1842

 Buying out his Canadian partners in the South West Company, Astor reestablished it as the American Fur Company and dominated the Wisconsin fur trade after the War of 1812. An 1816 law barred aliens from the fur trade. It forced the Wisconsin traders, a majority of whom had supported the British, to gain American citizenship or act as agents for Astor under the direction of a licensed American clerk. Astor operated by either hiring agents to manage the trade in specific regions or contracting with independent traders who dealt only through the American Fur Company. Under either system, the agent or trader worked on commission receiving trade goods and supplies on credit and welling their furs to the company at their prices. As the fur harvest waned, Astor profited while his agents accumulated debts to him. By operating in this fashion, Astor absorbed many of his competitors. When Astor retired from the fur trade in 1834, the company underwent reorganization under the ownership of Hercules Dousman, Henry Sibley, and by 1840 Joseph Roulette. The general pattern prevailing during the British era of trade remained. With the introduction of the steamboat on the Mississippi by the 1820s, trade goods often came up the Mississippi rather than across the Fox-Wisconsin waterway. Prairie du Chien became a major distribution point for goods. But, traders continued to ship furs across the waterway to Mackinac and onto New York to prevent the spoilage of furs. Because the distances made transportation difficult, small traders frequently purchased Native American furs and stored them for sale to more substantial traders during the trading season. In 1842, the American Fur Company failed, and fur trade activities were controlled by the Chouteau Company at Saint Louis which primarily operated along the Upper Mississippi. As settlement expanded from the lead mining centers in Southwest Wisconsin, Native American populations were removed. The number of fur bearing animals significantly declined, and the fur trade waned rapidly after 1830.

Government Builds Fort Winnebago to Protect Astor's Fur Trading Interests 1821

 In 1821, the American Fur Company established itself at the portage. The Southwestern Fur Company acquired the fur trading post located at the east end of the portage north of the site of the Agency House and across the Fox River from the site of Fort Winnebago in 1808. Roulette purchased the post as an independent trader in 1815 and sold it to the American Fur Company in 1821. The government constructed the fort in part to protect Astor’s fur trading interests at the portage. The company maintained a series of traders at the post including Pierre Pauquette who became established perhaps by 1824 but before 1827 or 1834. Pauquette also employed five or six men and maintained oxen to haul mackinaw boats across the portage. By 1828, the post included a log house, barracks, and a barn. In 1834, Pauquette pursued his trading activities independently. He moved to the Wisconsin placing his building complex on a knoll west of the south end of the site of the Wisconsin River bridge. On what became the Barden property, he established a trading house, dwelling, and two or three farm buildings. He also operated a ferry at this site. After Pauquette, Henry Merrill, then sutler at Fort Winnebago, represented the American Fur Company in 1834. Following its usual practice, the American Fur Company furnished him goods on shares. Prior to 1839, perhaps as early as 1837, John Baptiste DuBay was located on the Grignon Tract to the west and participated as an independent trader. The post remained under the ownership of the American Fur Company until 1851 when Dousman transferred his rights to the post to DuBay. DuBay remained the trader at the post until his departure in 1857 following the shooting of John Reynolds. His departure represented the close of fur trading activities adjacent to what had become the City of Portage, Wisconsin.

Fur Magnate John Jacob Astor Arrives in Baltimore 1784

 In the winter of 1784, a German immigrant named John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) arrived in Baltimore with seven flutes, which he sold at a profit and thence went on to more and greater profits—through the sale of furs, not flutes. By 1810 and now a magnate in the trade he decided to establish his new subsidiary, the Pacific Fur Company, at the mouth of the Columbia. His scheme was to sell goods to the Indians and the Russians in Alaska, and in return buy furs from them to sell in the Orient. It could not have been a more promising scheme. In operation it could have hardly been more disastrous.
 One contingent of the staff Astor sent to the Columbia traveled by land, the other by sea, the latter in the Tonquin captained by Jonathan Thorn. Capt. Thorn turned out to be a psychopath, and through his madness, eight men were lost at sea before the Tonquin reached its destination. This destination lay on the south side of the Columbia's mouth, a rise of land at the end of a little Bay—present-day Astoria.

Psychopath Jonathan Thorn Anchors at Fort Astoria 1811

 At first glance it seemed most inviting. "The weather was magnificent," wrote Gabriel Franchere, one of the company clerks, "and all nature smiled. The forest looked like pleasant groves and the leaves like flowers." The trees in this forest, however, often had a girth of 50 feet, grew densely together, and were interspersed by giant boulders. Few of the company clerks had ever felled a tree and none under such conditions. After planting the 12 potatoes that had survived the journey, the company set to work. Two months later barely an acre had been cleared, two men had been badly injured by falling trees and one had blown his hand off. Morale was not helped by the fact that in the same period three of the company were killed by the natives.
 At about the same time—the spring of 1811—Capt. Thorn set off in the Tonquin for a trading expedition up the coast while, at Saint Louis, Astor’s overland contingent set off for the Columbia. On Vancouver Island, Thorn, acting with his usual intemperance, struck an Indian chief across the face with a roll of fur. A few days later, in retaliation, the natives massacred Thorn and his crew, during which the ship blew up.

Astor's Overland Land Contingent Survived on Shoe Leather and Urine

The overland contingent was plagued by disaster as well. One party, lost in the uplands of the Snake, was reduced for nourishment to their own moccasins and quenched their thirst with urine.

Fort George Under British Control 1813

 The coup de grace to Astor's scheme occurred in June 1812, when the US declared war on Britain. This put the Astorians in an awkward position. At any time the British might arrive and seize the post. Also, more and more men of the British-owned North West Fur Company, "those strutting and plumed bullies of the north," were showing up at the post, waiting for the prize to drop into their hands. But there was uncertainty as to when the British would arrive, and the outcome of the war, and so the Astorians succeeded in persuading the Nor'Westerners to buy the post. In December of 1813 the Stars and Stripes came down, the Union Jack went up and Astoria became Fort George.
 The Astorian enterprise resulted in some benefits. The overland parties explored new territory. The fur-collection stations established in various locales of the Pacific Northwest, including the Willamette Valley, provided a more extensive knowledge of the region. And finally the settlement of Astoria, along with Gray and Lewis and Clark's activities, would be another basis for the American territorial claim to the Northwest. But the price was very high. All told, the Astorian enterprise took the lives of over 60 adventurers (and many Indians as well).

Hudson's Bay Company Buys Fort George 1821

 The sale of Astoria had much to do with the fact that for the next three decades Britons, rather than Americans, dominated the American country. This occurred through the agency of the Hudson's Bay Company. The company operating by royal charter in the vicinity of Hudson's Bay in Eastern Canada, gradually moved westward—a move that culminated in its merger with the North West Company and the acquisition of Fort George in 1821. The company's principal activity was the trading of articles such as blankets, ironworks and firearms for pelts mainly sold in England. The specific reason for its interest in the Northwest lay in a fashion—the fashion for beaver hats. This simple fad rather than some grand strategy, lay behind the British presence in the Northwest.

Fort Vancouver Established 1825

 The headquarters for this presence was Fort Vancouver, established in 1825 near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. Canadian explorer Sir George Simpson (1792-1860), the company's governor in the West, used to say that no great English country house occupied a site more beautiful—there on the gently sloping downs above the river with the mountains and the valley beyond. Here was finally erected a stockade 20 feet high, 150 yards wide, 215 yards long. It contained some 40 buildings. Among these was Bachelor Hall, a residence for the company's unmarried officers, which boasted a wine cellar as well as a library with the latest London journals.
 The fort’s warehouses stocked supplies for the fur brigades, the Indian and squatter trade, and for the 20-30 other company posts in the department. Most Indians were shrewd traders, so trade goods were carefully chosen. Almost all of the trade items were imported from Oregon through Britain, so there was a two-year lapse between ordering and receiving.
 The fort's shops bustled with activity, manufacturing as many items as possible. The fort echoed to sounds of carpenters hammering and sawing, of blacksmiths making tools and repairing old ones, and of coopers making barrels. Carts rumbled to and fro piled high with supplies and with firewood for the bakehouse's large brick ovens. Indians arrived continually to trade, passing farmers and herders tending crops and livestock. Company clerks bent over their account books figuring out how much who owed whom. Frequent visitors were welcomed and eagerly quizzed for news and gossip of the outside.
 Though everyone worked hard and for long hours—Sunday was the only day of rest in the yearly years—the free time was enjoyed to the fullest. Hunting, riding, picnicking, foot racing, and other competitive feats of strength were favored past times. The arrival of a supply ship or of one of the Royal Navy's vessels was cause for extra celebration. Once a group of naval officers produced a play, the first theatrical performance in the Northwest.
 Clerks and officers, who came from the British isles, formed the "gentlemen" class. The lower class, or "engagés," made up the bulk of the employees. With few exceptions, they were illiterate and lived outside the palisade.
 Simpson once wrote a description of a trip down the Columbia River and it indicated the diversity of Fort Vancouver:

Our crew of ten men contained Iroquois who spoke their own tongue; a Cree half-blood of French origin, who appeared to have borrowed his dialect from both his parents; a north Britain who understood only the gaelic of his native hills; Canadians who, of course, knew French, and Sandwich Islanders, who jabbered a medley of Chinook and their own vernacular jargon. Add to all this that the passengers were natives of England, Scotland, Russia, Canada, and the Hudson Bay territories.

The environment might have been primitive, but that was no reason why the life lived in it should be so as well.

Marguerite and John McLoughlin Build Wilderness Mansion 1829

 The most impressive of the fort's structures lay at its center, a manorhouse in the French-Canadian style, flower beds before it, cannon to either side, and pacing sentries. This was the residence of the chief factor of the district—Alaska to California—Dr. John McLoughlin (1784-1857):

Simple in design, with two stories and a root cellar, the mouse was elegant for the Willamette Valley, where most emigrant families lived in crude log cabins. It was built completely of finished lumber—local timber and prefabricated trim shipped from a Boston factory. The first floor consisted of a large parlor, a dining room, a reception room, and McLoughlin's office. Upstairs were three bedrooms, as well as a sitting room and a hallway that often doubled as a guest room. The McLoughlin home was known locally as "the house of many beds," a reference to the hospitality the family extended to just about anyone passing through Oregon City. The steady stream of house guests included relatives, friends, business associates, new emigrants, a traveling artist, and a good many retired Hudson's Bay Company employees to whom McLoughlin felt a special responsibility. McLoughlin's wife Marguerite opened her home to the needy and was thought of as "one of the kindest women in the world." Other permanent residents were daughter Eloisa and her family, and the Indian servants who had been in McLoughlin's employ at Fort Vancouver.

The White-Headed Eagle

 Primarily responsible for the post's success was Dr. John McLoughlin, an energetic man and a genius at organization who served as chief factor during most of those years. He was a man of remarkable intelligence, vigor, color, character and those qualities from which our pioneer predecessors benefited greatly; generosity and compassion.
 McLoughlin was born in Rivière du Loup, the Province of Quebec and trained as a physician near Montreal. The son of an Irish father and a mother half-Scottish, half-French, he had in his youth two great advantages. On the one hand he knew the hard work and hardships of a poor farmer's son. On the other he had the good fortune to spend time at the estate of his maternal grandfather, a man of cultivation. From these two experiences he acquired that balance so rare—the balance of toughness and grace.
 He joined the North West Company as a physician at its post at Fort William. When the North West and Hudson’s Bay companies merged, McLoughlin was named head of the Columbia Department by Sir George Simpson, head of the Hudson's Bay Company.